Post by Survivor Guy 886 on Dec 30, 2011 15:49:00 GMT -5
I really wish people would utilize this forum more. It would be a great way to keep up to date with everyone's thoughts on this series. Perhaps I would even feel more motivated to post these on time. But, I digress...
Online Survivor 12 was a great game. Unlike the chaos that was the previous game's alias frenzy, this game only had two aliases in Jakey (Buffy) and Tim (Iam). There were quite a lot of returning players, and not many new ones. Keep an eye on VB, as he'll be a MAJOR part of Online Survivor for years to come. Other than that, not many people made an impact, and many people were just plain inactive. So, with all the ejections, why was this season so great?
The game itself brought so much to the table that the inactives kind of took a back seat. You didn't care that no voting was going on because there were just so many twists to distract you from it. The most obvious twist was the return of Isolation Isle from Season 10. This time, it would become a permanent mainstay for seasons to come, as the losers of Reward Challenges would not only have to travel there, but also miss the Immunity Challenge. Unlike the lame twist of the real Survivor, Isolation really made a major impact.
In addition to Isolation Isle, the other major twists revolved around the fact there were four tribes, divided by age and experience. With four tribes inevitably came dissolves, but I tried to postpone them to the absolute last moment, and thus this game had spurts of 4, 3, and eventually 2 tribes, instead of just ignoring what could be a cool twist to the entire game and reducing everyone to two tribes on day 4.
Lastly, I would be remiss to not mention the Hidden Immunity Idol. You'll immediately notice that the rules for it are not the same as the real Survivor. This has become a topic of great debate recently, but the reasons for this are twofold. First, since when does OLS blatantly copy the real Survivor's twist? Second, though you may deny it for whatever reason, the real Survivor's twist does not reflect the true essence of Survivor. No one should be controlling the game, and then get picked off by a minority of the votes because someone played an idol. That's just not right.
To explain the OLS idol rules again for those who are confused, if you play an idol and it turns out you have the most votes, then ALL votes are canceled out. You return to camp, along with everyone who did not vote against you. The voting block that attempted to eliminate you must then vote one of their own out of the game. It is actually a very simple concept that stays true to the principles of Survivor. It even accomplishes the task of mixing up the game better, since the majority alliance must turn on each other prematurely.
As a side note, although the rules I just listed above are true for season 13 and beyond, season 12's rules are slightly different. The original concept was that all votes cast by those who returned to camp would still stay intact, meaning the majority alliance would begin their Tribal Council with votes already cast against people. Obviously, this kind of goes against my entire reasoning listed above, and leads to many complications, so it was dropped for this season.
On to the idol clues for this season. Everyone STILL asks me how the heck you solve the idol clues, so I suppose an explanation is in order. I'll list each set of two clues below, and then try to explain it...
CLUE #1: %#+2#%-1^ $!+1 ~-3%@: $$-1~-1! ^@! ~!^+3 @!#+3~ #^ ^$$
This was simply the first encryption you got. Honestly, I doubt there was any way you could have solved this unless you were an encryption mastermind.
CLUE #2: IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO START, HEED THIS RHYMING POEM. PUT A TOE IN THE MAJORITY, AND AVOID GOING HOME.
(CLUE #8: IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO START, HEED THIS RHYMING POEM. PUT THE LETTERS T, O, AND E IN PLACE OF THE MOST USED CHARACTERS, AND AVOID GOING HOME.)
As it says above, you were to simply insert T, O, and E into the encryption for the most used characters. If you counted all the characters, you'd see that !, $, and ^ appeared the most. If you substituted the characters in the order they appeared (T for ^, O for $, and E for !), you'd get the following: %#+2#%-1T OE+1 ~-3%@: OO-1~-1E T@E ~ET+3 @e#+3~ #T TOO. Obviously, this is still a little cryptic, so you may have needed another clue...
CLUE #3: ONCE YOU HAVE A TOE IN THE MAJORITY, THE LAST FEW WORDS SHOULD BE CLEAR. JUST WORK THE MATH IN THE REST OF THE PHRASE, AND IMMUNITY DRAWS NEAR.
(CLUE #9: ONCE YOU'VE PUT THE LETTERS T, O, AND E IN PLACE OF THE MOST USED CHARACTERS, THE LAST FEW WORDS SHOULD BE CLEAR. JUST WORK THE MATH IN THE REST OF THE PHRASE BY MOVING FORWARD OR BACKWARDS IN THE ALPHABET BY THE NUMBER INDICATED, AND IMMUNITY DRAWS NEAR.)
Working the math in the rest of the phrase meant noticing the little +1, -1, +3, etc. This was meant to show you that you should take the letter preceding it, and change it to whatever letter was forward or backward in the alphabet by the number indicated. For example, E+1 meant F and O-1 meant N. If you made these substitutions, you would get: %#+2#%-1T OF ~-3%@: ON~-1E T@E ~EW @e#+3~ #T TOO. At this point, you should be able to solve the entire encryption. Looking at #T you can easily tell # is I, T@E means @ is probably H, and there are only a few things that ~EW can be. After some experimentation you would see that ~ is D. Making these three substitutions gives you: %I+2I%-1T OF D-3%H: OND-1E THE DEW HEI+3D IT TOO, and working more of the math gives you almost the entire phrase: %KI%-1T OF A%H: ONCE THE DEW HELD IT TOO. Obviously, the % is an S, giving you the final conclusion of SKIRT OF ASH: ONCE THE DEW HELD IT TOO. Still, you probably would have been completely lost, so you'd need one more clue to solve it.
CLUE #4: IF YOU'VE COME THIS FAR, YOU'RE PROBABLY CONFUSED. SO GROUP THE WORDS IN THREES, AND SEE WHAT LETTERS YOU CAN USE.
(CLUE #10: IF YOU'VE COME THIS FAR, YOU'RE PROBABLY CONFUSED. SO GROUP THE WORDS IN THREES, AND SEE WHAT ANAGRAMS YOU CAN MAKE OUT OF THEM.)
At the time, the Da Vinci Code had just come out and was very popular, so I put a TON of anagrams into these idol clues. You had to group the words into threes: skirt of ash, once the dew, held it too, and then somehow make an anagram of each one. This was the hardest part of finding the idol. If you finally could figure it out, you'd see that skirt of ash is an anagram of "ask for this", once the dew is an anagram of "the new code", and held it too is an anagram of "to the idol". Your final deduction would read "Ask for this: The new code to the idol". When anyone asked me this, I would send them to a page that said: "THE CAT HEIRESS, THIRD OF LEO, HISSES UPWARDS TO FARMER'S HEN, BUTTE SHE DINED RATS /SHE DINED MOLES". (This page can still be viewed at olsurvivor.webs.com/ols12/challenges/elcodigoidolo.html) This was yet another anagram, and a MUCH harder one, so it was almost impossible until the next clue.
CLUE #6: TO DECIPHER THE CODE THAT LEADS TO THE IDOL, YOU PROBABLY HAVE A SMALL CLUE. TO HELP, HERE'S A SERIES OF DOTS AND DASHES; HOPEFULLY YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO: ------.---.---- ---.---.---- ---.----.-------- -----.---.------- --.---.-------
(CLUE #12: TO DECIPHER THE CODE THAT LEADS TO THE IDOL, I'VE ALREADY TOLD YOU HOW. TO HELP, HERE'S A SERIES OF DOTS AND DASHES TO HELP YOU DECIPHER HOW LONG EACH WORD IS AND NARROW DOWN THE ANAGRAMS.)
All this did was give you a basic idea of how many letters were in each word. In reality, you didn't need this if you already were good with anagrams. Like before, the cat heiress was an anagram of "Search the site", third of leo was an anagram of "for the idol", hisses upwards to was an anagram of "use this password", farmer's hen butte was an anagram of "after the numbers", and she dined rats was an anagram of "in the address". Putting it all together, you got: "Search the site for the idol, use this password after the numbers in the address: /shedinedmoles". If you were still lost, there was one final clue...
CLUE #7: FOR THOSE OF YOU IN THE LEAD, THIS IS YOUR FINAL CLUE. AFTER TODAY THE HINTS LOOP TO SHOW OTHERS WHAT TO DO. IF YOU SAW THE IDOL AND ENTERED THE CODE AND STILL HAVE HAD NO LUCK; COPY THE CODE, REMOVE THE SPACES, AND NOW YOU'RE NO LONGER STUCK.
(CLUE #13: FOR EVERYONE, THIS IS YOUR FINAL CLUE. THE FINAL INSTRUCTIONS TO FIND THE IDOL IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. SEARCH THE SITE FOR THE IDOL. ONCE YOU FIND IT, ENTER "/SHEDINEDMOLES" AFTER THE NUMBERS IN THE WEB ADDRESS FOR THAT PAGE)
And at that point, clue #13 pretty much tells you how to obtain it. Honestly, looking back, I have no idea how I came up with this contraption, and no idol will ever be as hard to find again. I still can't believe someone actually found it. I hope this explanation clears things up a little bit.
Finishing things up, as far as the episodes themselves, I've been keeping the same basic theme since Online Survivor 9, including color clashes, unfortunately -_-. I'll keep working on that, otherwise, there weren't really many changes to the page formats.
Unfortunately for me, I have one memory that sticks out, and that is everyone practically turning on me at the final Tribal Immunity Challenge. I really don't want to go over the circumstances again. If you're curious, feel free to check it, but let's just say the one thing I've always remembered from this season is Spider saying "This is bad, guy."
However, I still have one good memory. While planning this game, I recall going downstairs to my pool table and dividing the sixteen balls into four tribes and naming them after the Survivor 12 tribes. I then played around with them as if they were in a game of Survivor. Weird way to get the creative process going, I know, but it's a neat memory.
As for continuing traditions, this season used two equals signs (==) as the main character, mainly to represent the four tribes in the game. Lastly, the music theme for this season was Sonic The Hedgehog 1 and 2. For some reason the "colorfulness" of this season's flag and tribes reminded me of Sonic. I'm not sure why. Again, some music had become mainstays by this point and wouldn't be changed, but here's the recurring music in case you're wondering (by recurring, I mean plays in every episode except maybe 1)...
Main Page = Sonic The Hedgehog - Marble Zone (Remix)
Recap = Sonic The Hedgehog 2 - Mystic Cave Zone
Theme = Sonic The Hedgehog - Stage Completed
Tribal Council = Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - Final Night
Voting = Sonic The Hedgehog 2 - Oil Ocean Zone
Voteout = Sonic The Hedgehog 2 - Aquatic Ruin Zone (Slow Remix)
Preview = Sonic The Hedgehog - Marble Zone
Last Words = Sonic The Hedgehog 2 - Hidden Palace Zone
To sum everything up, Online Survivor 12 is probably one of the greatest games ever when it comes to implementing twists into the series. The inactive cast left something to be desired, but it's worth watching this game for the simple fact of how crazy some of the twists got. It's just a matter of if you take pleasure in the people or the formatting. It's up to you.
Online Survivor 12 was a great game. Unlike the chaos that was the previous game's alias frenzy, this game only had two aliases in Jakey (Buffy) and Tim (Iam). There were quite a lot of returning players, and not many new ones. Keep an eye on VB, as he'll be a MAJOR part of Online Survivor for years to come. Other than that, not many people made an impact, and many people were just plain inactive. So, with all the ejections, why was this season so great?
The game itself brought so much to the table that the inactives kind of took a back seat. You didn't care that no voting was going on because there were just so many twists to distract you from it. The most obvious twist was the return of Isolation Isle from Season 10. This time, it would become a permanent mainstay for seasons to come, as the losers of Reward Challenges would not only have to travel there, but also miss the Immunity Challenge. Unlike the lame twist of the real Survivor, Isolation really made a major impact.
In addition to Isolation Isle, the other major twists revolved around the fact there were four tribes, divided by age and experience. With four tribes inevitably came dissolves, but I tried to postpone them to the absolute last moment, and thus this game had spurts of 4, 3, and eventually 2 tribes, instead of just ignoring what could be a cool twist to the entire game and reducing everyone to two tribes on day 4.
Lastly, I would be remiss to not mention the Hidden Immunity Idol. You'll immediately notice that the rules for it are not the same as the real Survivor. This has become a topic of great debate recently, but the reasons for this are twofold. First, since when does OLS blatantly copy the real Survivor's twist? Second, though you may deny it for whatever reason, the real Survivor's twist does not reflect the true essence of Survivor. No one should be controlling the game, and then get picked off by a minority of the votes because someone played an idol. That's just not right.
To explain the OLS idol rules again for those who are confused, if you play an idol and it turns out you have the most votes, then ALL votes are canceled out. You return to camp, along with everyone who did not vote against you. The voting block that attempted to eliminate you must then vote one of their own out of the game. It is actually a very simple concept that stays true to the principles of Survivor. It even accomplishes the task of mixing up the game better, since the majority alliance must turn on each other prematurely.
As a side note, although the rules I just listed above are true for season 13 and beyond, season 12's rules are slightly different. The original concept was that all votes cast by those who returned to camp would still stay intact, meaning the majority alliance would begin their Tribal Council with votes already cast against people. Obviously, this kind of goes against my entire reasoning listed above, and leads to many complications, so it was dropped for this season.
On to the idol clues for this season. Everyone STILL asks me how the heck you solve the idol clues, so I suppose an explanation is in order. I'll list each set of two clues below, and then try to explain it...
CLUE #1: %#+2#%-1^ $!+1 ~-3%@: $$-1~-1! ^@! ~!^+3 @!#+3~ #^ ^$$
This was simply the first encryption you got. Honestly, I doubt there was any way you could have solved this unless you were an encryption mastermind.
CLUE #2: IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO START, HEED THIS RHYMING POEM. PUT A TOE IN THE MAJORITY, AND AVOID GOING HOME.
(CLUE #8: IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO START, HEED THIS RHYMING POEM. PUT THE LETTERS T, O, AND E IN PLACE OF THE MOST USED CHARACTERS, AND AVOID GOING HOME.)
As it says above, you were to simply insert T, O, and E into the encryption for the most used characters. If you counted all the characters, you'd see that !, $, and ^ appeared the most. If you substituted the characters in the order they appeared (T for ^, O for $, and E for !), you'd get the following: %#+2#%-1T OE+1 ~-3%@: OO-1~-1E T@E ~ET+3 @e#+3~ #T TOO. Obviously, this is still a little cryptic, so you may have needed another clue...
CLUE #3: ONCE YOU HAVE A TOE IN THE MAJORITY, THE LAST FEW WORDS SHOULD BE CLEAR. JUST WORK THE MATH IN THE REST OF THE PHRASE, AND IMMUNITY DRAWS NEAR.
(CLUE #9: ONCE YOU'VE PUT THE LETTERS T, O, AND E IN PLACE OF THE MOST USED CHARACTERS, THE LAST FEW WORDS SHOULD BE CLEAR. JUST WORK THE MATH IN THE REST OF THE PHRASE BY MOVING FORWARD OR BACKWARDS IN THE ALPHABET BY THE NUMBER INDICATED, AND IMMUNITY DRAWS NEAR.)
Working the math in the rest of the phrase meant noticing the little +1, -1, +3, etc. This was meant to show you that you should take the letter preceding it, and change it to whatever letter was forward or backward in the alphabet by the number indicated. For example, E+1 meant F and O-1 meant N. If you made these substitutions, you would get: %#+2#%-1T OF ~-3%@: ON~-1E T@E ~EW @e#+3~ #T TOO. At this point, you should be able to solve the entire encryption. Looking at #T you can easily tell # is I, T@E means @ is probably H, and there are only a few things that ~EW can be. After some experimentation you would see that ~ is D. Making these three substitutions gives you: %I+2I%-1T OF D-3%H: OND-1E THE DEW HEI+3D IT TOO, and working more of the math gives you almost the entire phrase: %KI%-1T OF A%H: ONCE THE DEW HELD IT TOO. Obviously, the % is an S, giving you the final conclusion of SKIRT OF ASH: ONCE THE DEW HELD IT TOO. Still, you probably would have been completely lost, so you'd need one more clue to solve it.
CLUE #4: IF YOU'VE COME THIS FAR, YOU'RE PROBABLY CONFUSED. SO GROUP THE WORDS IN THREES, AND SEE WHAT LETTERS YOU CAN USE.
(CLUE #10: IF YOU'VE COME THIS FAR, YOU'RE PROBABLY CONFUSED. SO GROUP THE WORDS IN THREES, AND SEE WHAT ANAGRAMS YOU CAN MAKE OUT OF THEM.)
At the time, the Da Vinci Code had just come out and was very popular, so I put a TON of anagrams into these idol clues. You had to group the words into threes: skirt of ash, once the dew, held it too, and then somehow make an anagram of each one. This was the hardest part of finding the idol. If you finally could figure it out, you'd see that skirt of ash is an anagram of "ask for this", once the dew is an anagram of "the new code", and held it too is an anagram of "to the idol". Your final deduction would read "Ask for this: The new code to the idol". When anyone asked me this, I would send them to a page that said: "THE CAT HEIRESS, THIRD OF LEO, HISSES UPWARDS TO FARMER'S HEN, BUTTE SHE DINED RATS /SHE DINED MOLES". (This page can still be viewed at olsurvivor.webs.com/ols12/challenges/elcodigoidolo.html) This was yet another anagram, and a MUCH harder one, so it was almost impossible until the next clue.
CLUE #6: TO DECIPHER THE CODE THAT LEADS TO THE IDOL, YOU PROBABLY HAVE A SMALL CLUE. TO HELP, HERE'S A SERIES OF DOTS AND DASHES; HOPEFULLY YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO: ------.---.---- ---.---.---- ---.----.-------- -----.---.------- --.---.-------
(CLUE #12: TO DECIPHER THE CODE THAT LEADS TO THE IDOL, I'VE ALREADY TOLD YOU HOW. TO HELP, HERE'S A SERIES OF DOTS AND DASHES TO HELP YOU DECIPHER HOW LONG EACH WORD IS AND NARROW DOWN THE ANAGRAMS.)
All this did was give you a basic idea of how many letters were in each word. In reality, you didn't need this if you already were good with anagrams. Like before, the cat heiress was an anagram of "Search the site", third of leo was an anagram of "for the idol", hisses upwards to was an anagram of "use this password", farmer's hen butte was an anagram of "after the numbers", and she dined rats was an anagram of "in the address". Putting it all together, you got: "Search the site for the idol, use this password after the numbers in the address: /shedinedmoles". If you were still lost, there was one final clue...
CLUE #7: FOR THOSE OF YOU IN THE LEAD, THIS IS YOUR FINAL CLUE. AFTER TODAY THE HINTS LOOP TO SHOW OTHERS WHAT TO DO. IF YOU SAW THE IDOL AND ENTERED THE CODE AND STILL HAVE HAD NO LUCK; COPY THE CODE, REMOVE THE SPACES, AND NOW YOU'RE NO LONGER STUCK.
(CLUE #13: FOR EVERYONE, THIS IS YOUR FINAL CLUE. THE FINAL INSTRUCTIONS TO FIND THE IDOL IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. SEARCH THE SITE FOR THE IDOL. ONCE YOU FIND IT, ENTER "/SHEDINEDMOLES" AFTER THE NUMBERS IN THE WEB ADDRESS FOR THAT PAGE)
And at that point, clue #13 pretty much tells you how to obtain it. Honestly, looking back, I have no idea how I came up with this contraption, and no idol will ever be as hard to find again. I still can't believe someone actually found it. I hope this explanation clears things up a little bit.
Finishing things up, as far as the episodes themselves, I've been keeping the same basic theme since Online Survivor 9, including color clashes, unfortunately -_-. I'll keep working on that, otherwise, there weren't really many changes to the page formats.
Unfortunately for me, I have one memory that sticks out, and that is everyone practically turning on me at the final Tribal Immunity Challenge. I really don't want to go over the circumstances again. If you're curious, feel free to check it, but let's just say the one thing I've always remembered from this season is Spider saying "This is bad, guy."
However, I still have one good memory. While planning this game, I recall going downstairs to my pool table and dividing the sixteen balls into four tribes and naming them after the Survivor 12 tribes. I then played around with them as if they were in a game of Survivor. Weird way to get the creative process going, I know, but it's a neat memory.
As for continuing traditions, this season used two equals signs (==) as the main character, mainly to represent the four tribes in the game. Lastly, the music theme for this season was Sonic The Hedgehog 1 and 2. For some reason the "colorfulness" of this season's flag and tribes reminded me of Sonic. I'm not sure why. Again, some music had become mainstays by this point and wouldn't be changed, but here's the recurring music in case you're wondering (by recurring, I mean plays in every episode except maybe 1)...
Main Page = Sonic The Hedgehog - Marble Zone (Remix)
Recap = Sonic The Hedgehog 2 - Mystic Cave Zone
Theme = Sonic The Hedgehog - Stage Completed
Tribal Council = Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - Final Night
Voting = Sonic The Hedgehog 2 - Oil Ocean Zone
Voteout = Sonic The Hedgehog 2 - Aquatic Ruin Zone (Slow Remix)
Preview = Sonic The Hedgehog - Marble Zone
Last Words = Sonic The Hedgehog 2 - Hidden Palace Zone
To sum everything up, Online Survivor 12 is probably one of the greatest games ever when it comes to implementing twists into the series. The inactive cast left something to be desired, but it's worth watching this game for the simple fact of how crazy some of the twists got. It's just a matter of if you take pleasure in the people or the formatting. It's up to you.