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Post by Cruise meerkat Youssy on Jul 3, 2020 20:05:13 GMT -5
But I do agree that the structure of the show definitely kinda worked against the teams that were perceived to be stronger.
The final 2: Red didn't win a mission until episode 5. Purple didn't win a mission until episode 7.
Winning missions put a target on your back and brought you "negative karma". No matter what, you were going to have a hand in sending someone home. It kind of ruined anything strategic. Let's go back to Pink deciding to send Yellow... you can say what you want, but at the end of the day they did that because everyone wanted Yellow gone. Point blank. Even if Avon wanted to protect Yellow, even if sending Yellow was good for Pink strategically... at the end of the day, the motivation was that everyone wanted Yellow gone, so Pink had to send Yellow because otherwise they would become a target. But you'd think that protecting Yellow from their third consecutive trip would be GOOD karma, right? But if they protected Yellow it could've come back to bite them in the butt strategically, since the other teams would be against Pink now.
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Post by theacf12 on Jul 3, 2020 21:40:45 GMT -5
I think the show had a weak game structure, that worked against strong teams and gave them little chance to recover outside of winning challenges, which is why I felt more challenges were necessary. The best strategy in Karma is to win no challenges to make it to the end and be as little of a threat as possible. As a whole, the concept of Karma discourages strategic gameplay as it's hard to play strategically without bad karma coming into the mix and I think it clouded the game as a whole. You have to keep on sending the same teams over and over again to avoid "bad karma" from sending other teams and that's why the game felt so linear. I think I understand what you're saying and I agree partially. I'm not sure Karma's structure was really working against the strong teams, though. In Endurance 1, the Blue/Yellow/Red alliance basically consisted of the strongest teams and ran the whole game except for the House of Cards episode. Karma could have had a similar setup if the strongest alliance had been something like Gray/Red/Pink, but Gray seemed to be closest to Blue, and both Red and Pink aligned themselves with Purple. I guess it depends on how you define a strong team. Is Green one of the strong teams? Is Yellow? Is Gray, even? Gray didn't do so well in the bell-ringing challenge. I do think Karma could have had more challenges to earn more Karma coins, like the one Blue earned for winning Tilt. I'm not clear as to why they awarded a bonus coin for winning Tilt but not the other challenges. I suppose they might not have wanted to award coins for the political challenges in Episode 2 and Episode 4, but why not award a coin for Red Team winning the bell-ringing challenge in Episode 5 which wasn't political at all? I also think it might have been interesting if they had rewarded Blue for giving their extra coin for winning Tilt to Gray rather than just saving it for themselves - maybe by, say, giving them two coins to use in the future once they had confirmed they were giving up their extra coin? Obviously if they gave out a lot of bonus Karma coins that wouldn't work, but for a one-time reward that might have been interesting and very much in line with the Karma theme.
It definitely bothered me that medallions weren't given as rewards for challenges like pieces were in Endurance. I think that would have been beneficial also. |
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Post by Cruise meerkat Youssy on Jul 4, 2020 9:14:42 GMT -5
just listened to episode 4 podcast and Illya is the BEST omg I LOVE her
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Post by Huckgreyteam on Jul 4, 2020 13:22:24 GMT -5
I think the show had a weak game structure, that worked against strong teams and gave them little chance to recover outside of winning challenges, which is why I felt more challenges were necessary. The best strategy in Karma is to win no challenges to make it to the end and be as little of a threat as possible. As a whole, the concept of Karma discourages strategic gameplay as it's hard to play strategically without bad karma coming into the mix and I think it clouded the game as a whole. You have to keep on sending the same teams over and over again to avoid "bad karma" from sending other teams and that's why the game felt so linear.
I think I understand what you're saying and I agree partially. I'm not sure Karma's structure was really working against the strong teams, though. In Endurance 1, the Blue/Yellow/Red alliance basically consisted of the strongest teams and ran the whole game except for the House of Cards episode. Karma could have had a similar setup if the strongest alliance had been something like Gray/Red/Pink, but Gray seemed to be closest to Blue, and both Red and Pink aligned themselves with Purple. I guess it depends on how you define a strong team. Is Green one of the strong teams? Is Yellow? Is Gray, even? Gray didn't do so well in the bell-ringing challenge.
I do think Karma could have had more challenges to earn more Karma coins, like the one Blue earned for winning Tilt. I'm not clear as to why they awarded a bonus coin for winning Tilt but not the other challenges. I suppose they might not have wanted to award coins for the political challenges in Episode 2 and Episode 4, but why not award a coin for Red Team winning the bell-ringing challenge in Episode 5 which wasn't political at all? I also think it might have been interesting if they had rewarded Blue for giving their extra coin for winning Tilt to Gray rather than just saving it for themselves - maybe by, say, giving them two coins to use in the future once they had confirmed they were giving up their extra coin? Obviously if they gave out a lot of bonus Karma coins that wouldn't work, but for a one-time reward that might have been interesting and very much in line with the Karma theme.
Just some information from the inside ahaha. At the very beginning at the game, I think we decided what the flow of the game was going to be. The two basic flows of the game are trying to Eliminate all of the strong teams, or strengthen ur alliance by getting out the weak teams. And by sending green and yellow, I think we chose to try and eliminate the strongest teams First. So that’s why the selection process went down, we were all in agreement. But if we decided to do the opposite, there would have been much more pressure to win challenges instead of purposely loosing challenges to avoid pressure. But since that’s how the game was already rolling, it was hard to not send the same team back over and over. If I had beat blue in the cave, I know that I would have kept going back to the cave over and over. It was pretty much known that if you came back from the cave, you were most likely going right back in. |
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Post by carsonvega on Jul 4, 2020 13:24:22 GMT -5
But I do agree that the structure of the show definitely kinda worked against the teams that were perceived to be stronger. The final 2: Red didn't win a mission until episode 5. Purple didn't win a mission until episode 7. Winning missions put a target on your back and brought you "negative karma". No matter what, you were going to have a hand in sending someone home. It kind of ruined anything strategic. Let's go back to Pink deciding to send Yellow... you can say what you want, but at the end of the day they did that because everyone wanted Yellow gone. Point blank. Even if Avon wanted to protect Yellow, even if sending Yellow was good for Pink strategically... at the end of the day, the motivation was that everyone wanted Yellow gone, so Pink had to send Yellow because otherwise they would become a target. But you'd think that protecting Yellow from their third consecutive trip would be GOOD karma, right? But if they protected Yellow it could've come back to bite them in the butt strategically, since the other teams would be against Pink now.
Warning: this is going to be long, sorry if it seems like a rant.
I'm afraid I can't agree that strategy was ruined. Yes, teams perceived to be stronger were targeted, but why was that? It was because the Purple-Red-Pink alliance strategically sold that as a reason to target teams, and the other teams were too divided to see that the Purple-Red-Pink alliance was going to be in control until it was too late. Purple had the easiest case to make of their three team alliance that they were not a threat, but Red contributed as well (by Andrea "slacking" in the early challenges), and so did Pink (by intentionally trying to lay low - Justin mentioned it and Luke also commented what he noticed about Pink Team doing that in Episode 4...which was too late to organize a three-team alliance in opposition). As this card from Magic: The Gathering says, "Show weakness to hide your strength."
By seeming weak, not being loud, and not trying to obviously take charge immediately, Purple, Red, and Pink let the other teams establish themselves as potential threats.
You're right that winning missions could put a target on a team's back, to a point...Purple, Red, and Pink used that as a reason to target Gray and Blue when Pink and Red started to win missions. But it can't be ignored that Red did NOT target Pink in Episode 5 even though Pink had previously won a mission, arguably a mission that demonstrated that they had more strength than Gray's mission win in Episode 2 demonstrated. You could probably call that hypocrisy, but not bad strategy, unless you think that Pink was always going to be better than Gray or Blue at the challenges in the last 3 episodes. Based on what I saw, I would not be comfortable counting on any specific team to win challenges before they were played - credit to the producers for their casting, and Mack for dividing the teams up, because no single team got close to dominating as much as Blue did in Endurance 1.
I don't buy that Purple and Red really wanted Yellow gone immediately when Pink sent them to the Cave of Karma in Episode 4. Remember, both Purple and Red gave their coins to Yellow! Only Blue's normal coin and bonus coin for winning Tilt allowed Gray to make it even. So not every team wanted Yellow gone right at that point. Did Purple and Red want Yellow to be eliminated at some point before their alliance partner Pink, though? Yes, of course - and that's entirely reasonable. It's unfortunate that Yellow had to bear the risk of possibly losing to Gray in the Cave of Karma, but the only other option (that is, outside of the alliance) would have been Blue, and Blue had not performed well in the Episode 4 Fill and Spill challenge. Also, to Blue's credit, they were seen in Episode 4 trying to integrate themselves with the Purple/Red/Pink decision-making and pushing the idea of needing to get rid of Gray and Yellow. I'm not saying Yellow didn't try something similar, but if they did we didn't see it as much. I can't fault Blue for trying to buy themselves more time and making sure that they (Blue) were not selected by Pink to go to the Cave of Karma.
As for a team getting sent to the Cave of Karma repeatedly, consider the following scenario: Teams A, B, and C have the strongest alliance in a game of 8 teams. They believe, and have at least some justification for believing, that Team H is the strongest team in the game or at least the strongest team not in their alliance. Team A wins the first challenge and sends Teams G and H; Team H comes back. Team B wins the second challenge and sends teams F and H; Team H comes back again. Team C wins the third challenge and sends teams E and H; Team H comes back a third time. Team H finally wins the fourth challenge. Team H obviously can't immediately send all of the teams that have sent them to the cave. It is to the benefit of all teams in the alliance (A, B, and C) that having sent Team H to the cave is NOT the only criteria that Team H can use in making their decision. Obviously, this exact scenario did not play out in Karma, but it wasn't too far away from happening. It might not seem "fair" to Team H...but they could have been working harder to get themselves into the the A/B/C alliance, or at least tried to sell the A/B/C alliance on them not being a threat, as Team D apparently did, having not been sent to the cave the first 3 times.
It bothers me to read that people think that Karma was a bad game or there wasn't enough strategy on Karma. I have already stated that I would have enjoyed seeing more challenges with rewards of Karma coins (or maybe additional medallions as theacf12 suggested). I can think of four reasons why people might say Karma, as it existed, wasn't a good game and/or didn't have enough strategy. As I will discuss below, I respectfully disagree.
1) They think it doesn't compare well to other reality competition shows in general (Survivor, Big Brother, The Challenge, etc.) This was brought up a lot in the Reality Blurred article you linked in this thread. The problem with this idea is that Karma necessarily has to be different than those shows, both to be unique enough within the reality show landscape and because most of those shows do not have 13-15 year-old contestants. I know I stated it before but I'll repeat it again - it's hard to mix up which teams get targeted and adopt extremely complicated strategies when there are so few opportunities to eliminate other teams, and Karma necessarily has to be shorter than Survivor or Big Brother because it's not fair to keep 13-15 year-olds isolated in the game for more than a month. (Sure, some teenagers can probably spend more than a month playing a game, but some probably can't, so if they did try to make the game longer they would likely be shrinking their potential pool of contestants.) Further, it's obvious that if there is a second season of Karma that some things will be different in the second season - at a minimum, the final challenge cannot use the same winning phrase, but probably all the challenges will be different. As I mentioned in a recent post, I also think they could make changes in terms of how bonus Karma coins can be earned. It would not surprise me if, for example, they decide to give one or two bonus Karma coins to a team for surviving the Cave of Karma so as to discourage teams from sending the same team over and over. That might have been a good idea to implement within this first season, but the producers didn't have the benefit of knowing how the season was going to play out before they started, of course. So in some sense, the show is well set up to spring many twists on future contestants, which is of course something we know J.D. Roth likes.
2) They think it doesn't compare well with Endurance in particular. Yes, I get that Endurance's additional challenges (Endurance missions to award pyramid pieces and Samadhis) gave more opportunities for the teams to make interesting/difficult decisions. But there were some faults within that system as well. I've mentioned this in other threads in the past, but the Samadhis were far from equal, ranging from making a team completely sit out of a challenge to only making them wait 15 seconds to start (which didn't prevent that team, Blue in Endurance 1, from winning anyway). I honestly felt that the inequality of Samadhis was more unfair than any of the gameplay/strategic elements in Karma. Also, looking at the justifications which teams used to send other teams up for elimination, I thought the justification of "perceived strong teams" in Karma was better than many of the justifications used in Endurance. Mike and Keetin sent Orange twice in Endurance 2 because Tyler talked about wanting to go home (totally disregarding Michelle strongly wanting to be there and them being friends with her); Sarah targeted Yellow in Endurance 3 because Bryanah talked to all the guys too much (at least according to Sarah); Jeszie and Isaac targeted Orange in Endurance 4 by painting Michael as a rat when all he was trying to do was get in with the most powerful alliance; Orange justified targeting Yellow in Endurance 6 by emphasizing the drama surrounding Briana and the partner selection. To me, trying to get targets pointed at other teams because they seem strong is a lot more respectful than all of those four targeting justifications I just listed, especially when the "perceived strong teams" in Karma might actually have been strong and able to win a challenge or even multiple challenges. On another note, though Karma is not Endurance, I'm glad we have it in these times. I freely admit that the body of work of Endurance across 6 seasons is stronger than what Karma produced in one season, but we need to give Karma time and more seasons. It seems to me that most fans on this board think that Endurance hit its high point in Season 3, so we need to give Karma at least that long before we complain a lot about it!
3) They don't like the teams that made it deep into the game in Karma. I haven't heard anyone seriously advocate for this position, but I want to address it anyway in advance of the fourth point below because I strongly disagree with it. I have to say that I think Red, Pink, and Purple all played extremely excellent games. None of them knew what the final challenge was going to be - had it been very physical, it absolutely would have been the correct strategy for both Red and Pink to try to get there with Purple as the other team. Purple did a great job of being well-liked by the other players and minimizing their exposure until they made it to the final three. Red also seemed to be on good terms with almost every team and had very little conflict between the two of them, at least as far as we were shown (still waiting for the podcast featuring Red Team as of this writing). Pink was clearly close with Yellow (as evidenced by Yellow giving them their medallions) but understood that Yellow was a bigger threat to them making the end than their alliance members. (Credit to Purple again here - it seems that if Yellow got through Episode 4, they would have tried to eliminate Blue and Pink before Purple, which means that Purple had really positioned themselves perfectly save for the fact that they were unlikely to win physical challenges. Teams have to play with the cards they are dealt, so to speak.) In the end, Pink was a few seconds' better rowing from securing their place in the final two, and the other two teams actually were the final two. All three teams got to the end with a minimum of rudeness and pettiness, at least as far as we were shown. The Red, Pink, and Purple teams were not bullies despite what the Reality Blurred article might imply about all the teams in the game engaging in collective bullying; collectively Red/Pink/Purple targeted Yellow to go to the Cave of Karma exactly one time, and otherwise just did to the Gray and Blue teams what Gray and Blue had already done to Green, Orange, and Yellow. They also collectively gave Yellow 5 Karma coins versus the 3 Karma coins they gave to Yellow's opponents (all 3 of which were to Orange in Episode 3, which I understand because Orange did seem less powerful overall than Yellow from what we were shown).
4) Their favorite teams were eliminated earlier than they wanted. I understand that Illya, in particular, is very popular. I liked watching her too and would have been happy to see Yellow Team make it farther into the game. But that's the nature of elimination games - sometimes, the person or team you like the best doesn't make it. That does not mean that the game is unfair, broken, or ruined. If you say those sorts of things, you start to sound like Russell Hantz from Survivor, and it means (at least to me) that you either like to complain, you don't understand the game, or you're looking for a different game. It's fine to suggest changes to the game - I like thinking of what implications various changes would have on the game. But tearing the game (or its strategy) down as a whole seems counterproductive as well as potentially disrespectful to the players who weren't your favorites. The teams that made it deep into the game understood the game the best and operated within the parameters of the game to achieve their success, so it was fair. |
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Post by carsonvega on Jul 4, 2020 13:36:18 GMT -5
I think I understand what you're saying and I agree partially. I'm not sure Karma's structure was really working against the strong teams, though. In Endurance 1, the Blue/Yellow/Red alliance basically consisted of the strongest teams and ran the whole game except for the House of Cards episode. Karma could have had a similar setup if the strongest alliance had been something like Gray/Red/Pink, but Gray seemed to be closest to Blue, and both Red and Pink aligned themselves with Purple. I guess it depends on how you define a strong team. Is Green one of the strong teams? Is Yellow? Is Gray, even? Gray didn't do so well in the bell-ringing challenge.
I do think Karma could have had more challenges to earn more Karma coins, like the one Blue earned for winning Tilt. I'm not clear as to why they awarded a bonus coin for winning Tilt but not the other challenges. I suppose they might not have wanted to award coins for the political challenges in Episode 2 and Episode 4, but why not award a coin for Red Team winning the bell-ringing challenge in Episode 5 which wasn't political at all? I also think it might have been interesting if they had rewarded Blue for giving their extra coin for winning Tilt to Gray rather than just saving it for themselves - maybe by, say, giving them two coins to use in the future once they had confirmed they were giving up their extra coin? Obviously if they gave out a lot of bonus Karma coins that wouldn't work, but for a one-time reward that might have been interesting and very much in line with the Karma theme.
Just some information from the inside ahaha. At the very beginning at the game, I think we decided what the flow of the game was going to be. The two basic flows of the game are trying to Eliminate all of the strong teams, or strengthen ur alliance by getting out the weak teams. And by sending green and yellow, I think we chose to try and eliminate the strongest teams First. So that’s why the selection process went down, we were all in agreement. But if we decided to do the opposite, there would have been much more pressure to win challenges instead of purposely loosing challenges to avoid pressure. But since that’s how the game was already rolling, it was hard to not send the same team back over and over. If I had beat blue in the cave, I know that I would have kept going back to the cave over and over. It was pretty much known that if you came back from the cave, you were most likely going right back in.
Thank you for this insight, Huck. I think the thing we can't know for sure until Karma season 2 airs (assuming they do indeed get to do a second season) is if the contestants in season 2 will think the same as those in season 1 or not. That is, will all the teams prioritize eliminating the strong teams early on? Or will they try to form an alliance of the strongest teams and eliminate all the others? I think most of the Endurance seasons mostly followed the second path (with exceptions like Green sending Brown instead of Orange at the final four in Endurance 2 or Yellow and Orange's temporary alliance to break up Purple and Gray in Endurance 3), but Karma season 1 followed the first path.
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Post by neonhusky1011 on Jul 4, 2020 14:11:47 GMT -5
I think I understand what you're saying and I agree partially. I'm not sure Karma's structure was really working against the strong teams, though. In Endurance 1, the Blue/Yellow/Red alliance basically consisted of the strongest teams and ran the whole game except for the House of Cards episode. Karma could have had a similar setup if the strongest alliance had been something like Gray/Red/Pink, but Gray seemed to be closest to Blue, and both Red and Pink aligned themselves with Purple. I guess it depends on how you define a strong team. Is Green one of the strong teams? Is Yellow? Is Gray, even? Gray didn't do so well in the bell-ringing challenge. I do think Karma could have had more challenges to earn more Karma coins, like the one Blue earned for winning Tilt. I'm not clear as to why they awarded a bonus coin for winning Tilt but not the other challenges. I suppose they might not have wanted to award coins for the political challenges in Episode 2 and Episode 4, but why not award a coin for Red Team winning the bell-ringing challenge in Episode 5 which wasn't political at all? I also think it might have been interesting if they had rewarded Blue for giving their extra coin for winning Tilt to Gray rather than just saving it for themselves - maybe by, say, giving them two coins to use in the future once they had confirmed they were giving up their extra coin? Obviously if they gave out a lot of bonus Karma coins that wouldn't work, but for a one-time reward that might have been interesting and very much in line with the Karma theme.
It definitely bothered me that medallions weren't given as rewards for challenges like pieces were in Endurance. I think that would have been beneficial also. I feel like they will do the medallions as rewards in future seasons because there is actually 4 more laws of Karma that the show did not use in this season: The law of creation The law of here and now The law of change And The great law ( It's not limited to these tho, they can very well add their own laws into the game) Now I personally like the fact that each team starts off with a law to represent their team, but at the same time it would be better to have them collect the laws through challenges. Also, I feel like it would be a pretty good karmic decision if the whole group gets to choose one team to give a extra law to, like Endurance Fiji. |
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Post by jmsilver on Jul 4, 2020 14:46:33 GMT -5
Hey everyone, Jack here! Just wanted to say how much I love these discussions, both about events in the first season and possible changes in future seasons. I always enjoy discussing past strategy, especially with people who love the show as much as I do myself. As far as the current discussion goes, I’d have to say I really appreciate what Carsonvega wrote out above. The four points you made in response to criticisms of the show was very well thought out, and I’d love if everyone continues to have wonderful discussions such as this one!
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Post by carsonvega on Jul 5, 2020 19:53:01 GMT -5
Hey everyone, Jack here! Just wanted to say how much I love these discussions, both about events in the first season and possible changes in future seasons. I always enjoy discussing past strategy, especially with people who love the show as much as I do myself. As far as the current discussion goes, I’d have to say I really appreciate what Carsonvega wrote out above. The four points you made in response to criticisms of the show was very well thought out, and I’d love if everyone continues to have wonderful discussions such as this one!
Thank you for your kind words, Jack. I appreciate you and all the contestants who have come to comment in this forum. I hope there's a lot more discussion to come; I feel like there's still quite a bit I don't know about what happened in Karma Season 1 and I look forward to learning more. |
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Post by survivorfan128 on Jul 6, 2020 13:54:45 GMT -5
JD liked a tweet about how to make karma better so at least we have an EP who listens to fans
Probst and the big brother EP never listen to fans
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Post by Cruise meerkat Youssy on Jul 6, 2020 14:19:03 GMT -5
I don’t dislike Karma and I actually rank it personally about on par with E5... and I think the cast was great.
I just think the format needs a little tweaking, and from what I’ve heard/read JD and the producers agree and will be changing up a few things based on how Season 1 played out. I mean, same thing happened on Endurance... most of the basic game mechanics remained the same for season 2 but season 1 did have a lot of changes because they saw what worked and what didn’t.
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Post by survivorfan128 on Jul 6, 2020 14:27:10 GMT -5
Saw on IG It’s Jack’s birthday
Happy birthday to the master mind of karma !
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Post by jmsilver on Jul 6, 2020 14:33:21 GMT -5
Saw on IG It’s Jack’s birthday Happy birthday to the master mind of karma ! Thank you so much!! |
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Post by Cruise meerkat Youssy on Jul 6, 2020 15:28:55 GMT -5
Saw on IG It’s Jack’s birthday Happy birthday to the master mind of karma ! Thank you so much!! Happy birthday king!! |
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Post by kwdrewfan on Jul 6, 2020 22:35:46 GMT -5
Happy Birthday, Jack!!! 😄🎈🎉 I know it's a lil late but I'm wearing my purple shirt in your honor
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Post by survivorfan128 on Jul 7, 2020 7:05:22 GMT -5
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