#granted to be fair the game isnt balanced

[single-malt-scotch]

i have watched bdubs and scar and so im gonna talk abt SL again like i did before. obvs spoilers!

i keep my posts pretty meta/only about the game, its mechanics, balance etc so i have no bias on players own actions. but i do want to talk about players and the final moments for a minute here!

obvs i like bdubs a lot and hes been very good at getting to almost the finals in all the series. hope ppl realize that more. if he had more hearts like scar did im sure he could of have gotten further too. etho's ep isnt out but i saw him die in scar's and scar's ep was wild for sure. i mean damn, there was hardly a way etho could have escaped scar when he landed right on top of him, insane. obvs i dont have a view on the others i havent watched but it was interesting to see how they ganged up in this series for the end. scar winning made me happy too, hes a really good player!!

bbut onto the gameplay. i dont wanna repeat myself so im kinda using this as an overall conclusion + specific thoughts about the finale.

its been established clearly that mods assign specific tasks to people at times. and the warden/wither + bogey were not something i enjoyed. this season felt way too "directed" as it went on... and i also think the tasks ability to grant you so much good stuff (a LOT of hearts) is what kept everyone out of being red so easily! which is probably why they did the bogey zombies. which is really just poor balance that no one clearly tested (i recall grian implying before that they dont really test anything but dont quote me on that). maybe a way to have improved that would have been reds were the only ones to gain hearts, and yellow/greens could not. i knew from the start that the heart giving mechanics this season were kind of pointless or overpowered. gifting one heart? really...? that doesnt add up to much of anything in the long run imo unless you manage to get hearts from multiple people. and then on top of that you get hearts back from the secret keeper too. i would have loved if this season was simply "no regen and thats it!" like a sorta UHC deal where you only can heal with specific items (and not 30 hearts prob? bc i understand the tasks were kind of a way to possibly make them die).

on big forced tasks it only made sense with this episode, since everyone is red, so i dont mind that. but again.... they had to force this to happen which is annoying to me. also in terms of balance i really wished they bring back strict rules on enchantments because that also gets frustrating to watch. but perhaps i just like fairness in combat due to watching so much UHC, which also is a death game.

the other issues i had were with reds and red tasks. as pointed out they forced reds in the previous sessions but no one had any time to do red tasks?? and admittedly it was kind of boring bc people couldnt interact about it without failing. but they could not team up properly and i think that is what red life is all about. all the reds coming together because they *need* to face yellows and greens, and hunt people down. but instead the few reds there had to be alone to do their traps, another social issue with this series where tasks often pulled people away from others and left them with videos where they were very alone. there being no space for greens and yellows to exist and get hunted is something i think is great in previous seasons too and it just didnt happen. all that getting forced in that one session just didnt flow well to me.

really even trying to look back at episodes, i cant recall any notable interactions between people i enjoyed minus some brief pauses when they were traveling to do their tasks. there just wasnt a lot of typical socializing! and thats what i didnt like with this series. this plus the balance issues of lives just made this series feel messy, and the length of the episodes due to tasks could be kind of boring if the task was boring or even felt too stressful to force them into places where they could just die (these kinds of dangerous tasks given to greens or yellows felt unfair, as if it was trying to force them to die, and as a viewer i wouldnt want the game make my fave die!).

and as i mentioned in a different post, the lack of fixing some issues in multiple seasons is wild to me. this season faced the same issue as limlife where deaths were not in chat. the episode after, they fixed it (still with some bugs). and then it happened again last session.... and they didnt fix it! this is also annoying bc people dont react to the deaths at all which you kind of wanna see you know? actually im not even sure why they still did it this way. i imagined the clock running out made it more complicated for the system of fying to work. but why this season....? seemed like pretty forward deaths. idk the tech side, but they had 3 solid lives like all the other season, and there were never issues with the death messages happening at all.

but anyways. theres multiple parts of this i mentioned above that just made this gimmick feel so messy and unbalanced, and sometimes not super interesting to watch. it was way too complicated some times. i know theyll likely never do a repeat of the old versions but man idk if i cant find myself liking future seasons if they start stacking so much on top of what is a simple concept. it has started to feel like the three lives havent mattered at all/arent really the focus-- the anxiety of having three times. and the stakes become less and less due to some of these new gimmicks (the ability to gain lives in so many easy ways- limlife and secret life- is why imo) makes death feel less of a problem especially when we know how buddy buddy everyone is now. people need to be limited like before, and be more anxious. 3L, LL, and DL had people quickly establishing their friends bc they knew right from the get go that the series really depended on them being alive and nothing else. the only focus was to stay alive and not die. DL was where ppl kinda chilled a bit on alliances bc they knew each other more but, death was still right around the door with health being tied, it still brought a similar kind of anxiety for players.

i do hope people like grian can recognize these issues behind the scenes bc genuine critique for this series/season is important. like i hope they dont brush off the fact "hall monitors" were an issue-- they can ignore them openly in their videos.... but there is a reason why its a problem that started at all. the concept was way too subjective and hard to judge! so id hate for them to decide "eh, lets not listen to them, im gonna keep doing this and not consider the issue for a new season" right? and hour long episodes? thats crazy, and i dont think it was good for a lot of cc imo, because it made me way less likely to watch or even finish others' episodes. i hope that makes sense... stakes need to be raised, and i think limlife still achieved that to some degree because time was still very sensitive and risky to take. but then SL comes in bringing way too many things that keep them alive far too easily, leaving very little concern as long as they got their task in.

and last thing is from the outside pov i get concerned about this season happening only 6 months after the last one. because that would very very easily cause a burn out/inability to make more gimmicks real quick. i find this particularly odd bc this season too place through multiple holidays...! not sure if they thought this one through very well. considering how much limlife changed things in a way that was a bit more complicated, and then have SL with even more going on.... id just be worried about how much new stuff would even be made after this.

before this season started i was thinking to myself that i would be fine if this was the last one (it was speculation off some posting 3L compilations that was being me think itd be 'over' bc that was the first season). and truly i would be fine if they stopped forever for for a long time. i dont want to start disliking this series if they keep going in this direction... i will ALWAYS enjoy seeing these people play together and it will no doubt keep me watching but, i would hope that i will enjoy what they do for the next seasons and not fall down this path of convoluted, unbalanced and complicated concepts.