Post by Prince Edward on Sept 8, 2019 0:49:51 GMT -5
Ok, so I owe the mods and spectators (if there are any left) a confessional. Sorry for going silent there.
First off:
can you rank some more people for me? from 1-6 again with one being the best (thanks you're the best!!)
Boris Johnson
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Massimo Bottura
Samin Nosrat
Alex Costa
Spike Lee
Boris Johnson
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Massimo Bottura
Samin Nosrat
Alex Costa
Spike Lee
1. Arnold Schwarzenegger
2. Samin Nosrat (I almost got her book!)
3. Massimo Bottura
4. Alex Costa
5. Spike Lee
6. Boris Johnson
Now, back to the game:
Round 3
I forgot to mention this in my round 3 confessional, but I was very happy with the wall-e elimination. I associated him with Megara since they were on the same team during the first round and because she followed him. I didn't think he was that active, but his name never got brought up. So for him to leave without me needing to suggest it was great.
I last left off during round 3, in the middle of the Darth Maul vote. He was targeted, probably because he did so well with buzzy's flash games, combined with maybe not having the most connections. That spooked me though, especially after Stephen's elimination when he did well in buzzy's game. I was sitting on a score of about 50K and decided not to submit it.
A couple of other things happened during that round. First, Maul promised $100 to anyone who kept him. I was a little tempted, but $100 isn't that much, and Reepicheep was giving me $500. And Maul didn't say who he wanted to target, which I think was a big mistake. If he says "I'll give you money if you vote for Rapunzel. She's barely here" or something, I think he has a shot. Maybe it doesn't work, but he has a shot. But if he just says "here's money if you don't vote for me", then he's still the name with the most momentum.
I got into a 1 on 1 chat with Doofenshmirtz. I've been trying to grab 1 on 1 chats because they're the most intimate, and it's the easiest to get to know someone there. I ranked him #2 out of everyone because he didn't press the button during round 2, he was good in challenges, and because I wanted to make new connections, and he and I had just shared that round 2 chat, where we bonded over hating cable companies.
But initially, I wasn't feeling like the chat was going great. He got busy towards the end of the round and didn't reply until right before the deadline. And we had talked about the vote, but it didn't feel like we really bonded. He did ask me where I had heard darth maul's name from, which I thought was an interesting question and maybe indicated that he wasn't totally happy with the vote. I took a chance and expressed what I was feeling, which was that targets kept being decided on and then I heard about it second hand. He said he was feeling the same way, and we left it at that. But I think it was a key reason why he picked me for his team later on in the game and why he eventually became such a good connection.
I was also with reepicheep and the queen of hearts. I hadn't met the queen of hearts before then, but it was super easy to talk with her. Reepicheep had clearly met her before and I guess that made it easier for us to talk, but we easily started talking about the vote, and targets for the future. I left the chat feeling very good about the queen. And I had already had a 1 on 1 with Reepicheep and I was working with him, so I left feeling good about him too.
But I was also a little wary. Reepicheep had been in the cyan decryptors chat, a chat neither Yzma or naveen picked me for. They had already discussed the vote, so, once again, I was being informed of the vote rather than being an active participant in deciding where it went. But in addition to telling us of the target on Darth Maul, Reepicheep mentioned that he had gotten a code that he was in danger.
He said this on August 27th at 11:37 AM. On August 27th at 8:56 AM, Prince Naveen had posted "Jupiter is in ascendancy" in a thread that hadn't been active in nine days. I saw that Reepicheep had liked that post and then, mysteriously, the like disappeared. Naveen and Reepicheep were also in the same decryptor chat.
This just furthered my feelings that Reepicheep was more connected than I was. I still wanted to work with him, but I saw him as a threat. It also made me want to target Naveen. He hadn't picked me for his team and then he sent codes to someone else. I didn't want to target Reepicheep, especially after he sent me money, but weakening him sounded appealing.
Finally, in the Reepicheep/Queen chat, it was mentioned that Hank wanted to vote for Sphero to make it easier to vote for him in the future. I was imagining Sphero as this scary threat that I hadn't met yet, but both Hank and Sphero got eliminated and that storyline went nowhere.
Round 4
In round 4, my bid of $2 got me a position as captain! I'm still kind of shocked that these low bids are winning. If I'm reading the challenge post right, it was the third highest bid. I made my picks mostly off of availability, with part of it being who I wanted to talk to. Pua was #1 because we were available at the same times, and because I was close with Reepicheep, who was close with Pua, and that I had met Pua in the Pua/Reepicheep/Nick chat and liked him, but hadn't talked with him since. I put Air Bud pretty high since we were available at the same times and because we hadn't talked since round 1. I complained about him, but he wasn't that bad. Pooh I hadn't met at all, I think he was ranked in the middle-ish because we were available at sort of the same times.
Unfortunately, I didn't think about who would actually be good at the challenge. Pua was good: he got our practice running and knew what he was doing, Pooh was okay: he seemed to get the obvious moves but didn't really take the lead. Air Bud, though, oh boy. He didn't really seem to know what he was doing. One time I asked him to swap back a card that I traded with him, he agrees, and then he trades with Pooh. After he did that, I realized that we could win by Pua's turn if Pooh made the right move...but he didn't, and it wasn't my turn so I couldn't use a question to coordinate. Then it gets back to my turn, we're going to win by Pua's turn again, but I don't have any good moves I can make or blanks I can swap, so I swap me and Air Bud's middle card. This completely messes up our order, there's no logical reason for me to do this, and I had just asked Air Bud about swapping cards back and forth. So obviously, he's supposed to swap those cards back with me, then Pooh goes and then Pua finishes it for us. I wait for him to do the obvious move, and keep waiting. The minutes tick by. We're about to win, and if he does anything else, it might become very hard to get rid of the cards I just traded.
Then, he finally posts the move that I wanted him to make, and we finish on Pua's turn. The results come back, and we get last place by a wide margin. Even if I had told my team how to win it the round before, we would have still come in last on the tiebreaker. So, lesson learned. In the future, take into account challenge strength on the team bids. And Air Bud seems like he might be a sheep, so I should try to get him with me in a vote chat but avoid him in a team challenge. Two teams did it in only 5 moves, which I still don't understand.
So yeah, that challenge was a bust and we're onto the elimination challenge. And here's where I made a big mistake: I choose to pay up. I had the time to do the challenge, but I was feeling kind of shitty that day, and then I had to leave the apartment in the evening. I kept putting it off, and then it was suddenly kind of close to when I had to go, and I wasn't sure if there was enough time. So I decide to pay up and guarantee that I survive the elimination.
I would have done well on that challenge too. There were a couple of people who made mistakes, and all you had to do was not have any colors next to each other, which, come on. Just use a spreadsheet! So I lost out on $900 due to my own fault.
Hank leaves in the elimination, which I was a little sad about. I hadn't met him but he was targeting someone who wasn't me, and we had interacted a little bit in public. I thought there might be potential for a connection but I kept being outbid when I tried to end up with him. But Sphero didn't turn out to be that threatening, I hadn't met Hank, and his plan to vote Sphero to get him out later might have meant that he was a little schemy. So maybe that was good.
During the elimination, I'm in a random chat with Sphero, Buzzy, and Pooh. Right off the bat, we get this post from Sphero
Alright. Let's get this started.
Buzzy: Do you think the Darth Maul vote was justified?
Prince Edward: What do you think about Rapunzel?
Winnie the Pooh: Are you planning to buy a chat this phase?
Buzzy: Do you think the Darth Maul vote was justified?
Prince Edward: What do you think about Rapunzel?
Winnie the Pooh: Are you planning to buy a chat this phase?
At the time, I was pretty taken aback. It was so blunt, and this is coming from someone who I hadn't even met. At least get to know me and at least try to look like you're not fishing for information!
However, after thinking about it, I feel like Sphero is a newbie who isn't used to how people in social games talk to each other. Maybe he thought it would be like mafia, where I hear people ask a bunch of questions to get the game rolling.
Sphero, if you are a newbie, and you're reading this long post, I'm sorry.
Unsurprisingly, the chat dies. Everyone answers the question Sphero asked them, but that's it.
For the vote, I make my signature $2 bid and try to get into a chat with Lamp, Pua or Anne. I get none of them, but I do get my 4th and 5th choices (with Hank out): Pooh and Queen of Hearts. Reepicheep signals that he is in the 6 player chat, with Sphero, Doofenshmirtz, Lamp, Rapunzel, and Ralph. So I've had chats with Pooh during the whole round. Queen was also someone who I was feeling good about who I wanted to get to talk to more. Pooh says that he didn't appreciate the chat that we had with Sphero, and we all agree to vote that way. Pua signals to vote Sphero. Megara signals to me to vote for sphero. I agree by saying that I like tacos (our codename for sphero), but I think she either misunderstood me or wasn't sure if I was saying whether I wanted to vote him or whether I liked him, so she says that she wants to devour a taco. We might have to change up our code. It's getting kind of obvious, but maybe that's just because I know it.
Overall, though, I was a little disappointed with the chat. We agreed on the vote, but that was it. I was hoping for more, especially from the Queen of Hearts.
Sphero goes, but the votes are a little closer. He receives only 8/23 votes, but that's enough. Maybe the game is heating up more now.
Round 5
The picks for the challenge were interesting. Pua picked Reepicheep, which was expected, and confirms that Pua feels closer to Reepicheep than me (though I already suspected that). Buzzy picks Zack and Cody. They were in the olive decryptor chat together. Megara picks Pixar Lamp, who she's told me she was close to. Pepe picked Queen. I don't know a lot about Pepe. Rapunzel picked Dog with a Blog, and the other half of the olive decryptors, yzma and nick, made up the last team.
Doofenshmirtz picks me, which I was pretty happy about. He was somebody I had a one on one with but kind of wanted to get closer with, and we do that. We do a very stressful challenge together (thanks Mickey), and then he starts to open up. He says Ralph sucks, which is interesting since nobody ever mentions Ralph, either in a good way or a bad way. I decide to expand more on what we mentioned during the last one on one: that it seems like votes keep getting decided based on "what the majority wants" and that there has to be a decision maker. He agrees, and we start discussing who has power. He brings up Reepicheep and Megara (I agree but I feel like they want to work with me, though I don't say that) and Queen of Hearts (I hadn't thought about her like that but it makes sense), and I tell him about the code that I think Naveen sent to Reepicheep.
During this phase, he tells me that he'll send me $100 if I grab a chat for the two of us for the next phase. This immediately strikes me as odd: $200 isn't a lot to pay. We could have just had one of us agree to make it, but he proposed it with the idea that I'm the one who has to request the chat. Either he's trying to stiff me (unlikely), or he wants me to choose him so he can pick somebody else. Later on, he tells me that he's in a chat with Sorsha. I don't really like it, but it isn't worth arguing over with a potential ally, so I agree.
Then the results come in and we get second! Which, wow. I thought I bombed the challenge. I recognized only a couple pictures in my part so I had to reverse image search pretty much everything, and it took a while. And then I got some things wrong and reverse image searching failed me on others, so doofenshmirtz had to help me. By the end of the challenge, I had come around to the idea that taking over an hour wasn't bad since this was a hard challenge. But 2nd place! I was blown away to see we did that well.
I pick Doofenshmirtz as promised, and Pua picks me. It feels nice to be picked by somebody after nobody picked me in round 2. Both chats go pretty well: it's nice to finally get a chance to talk to Pua 1-on-1. He's easy to talk to and close to reepicheep, neither of which is really a surprise. He mentions that Buzzy is talkative, which is a surprise since I heard from Queen that Buzzy is hard to talk to. Reepicheep, who had left the chat with him and the queen wanting to target buzzy, didn't want to do that anymore. More importantly, Pua asks me to join a trio with him and Reepicheep. This is great since I'm working with Reepicheep and want to work with Pua! The thing though, is that I feel like I'm the third wheel in this alliance. Pua bid the most and picked Reepicheep for his team, not me. They discussed an alliance with me and then Pua informed me of it. And I get the feeling that Reepicheep is closer to Pua than to me. But it's much better to be in this alliance than not, so I'll go along with it for now.
The chat with Doofenshmirtz goes well, too, though he's very busy during the second phase and I only get to talk to him during the vote phase. We discuss trying to get Naveen out, and I float it in my Sorsha/Kristoff/Buzzy/Zack&Cody chat. But right after I do that, Zack & Cody says that he heard via code that Kristoff is in danger, so everyone in that chat decides to vote for Pooh. Meanwhile, Doofenshmirtz is telling me that his chat (him/Reepicheep/Pepe/Air Bud/Anne/Dog with a Blog) are going for Kristoff.
I don't feel great about either of those options. Kristoff is in my chat and not much of a threat, though I do worry that him and Sorsha are close, especially when Sorsha vehemently defends him. Sorsha and Zack & Cody have done the most talking in that chat though. Pooh seems like a slightly better player but not really anything special (and other people have said that he's just kind of there), and we shared chats together in all three phases last round. I don't feel too close to him but I don't want him to go. Then there's Anne, who Megara tells me to vote for. We haven't had any chats since I betrayed her in round 2, but I don't want to give up on that connection.
So it's between Kristoff and Pooh for me, and I'm not really thrilled with either of them. Doofenshmirtz says he prefers a Pooh vote since the "powerful people" in his chat want to vote out Kristoff, Pua says he liked Pooh in our team chat and sort of wants to keep him. And I'm feeling conflicted. Heart says to vote for Kristoff, but my heart also feels bad voting for someone I'm in a chat with. Head isn't sure. Pooh's probably the better player but I don't think either of them are that connected.
Eventually, I decide to vote for Kristoff. He hasn't really talked except for saying hello and for saying that Pooh came up with a code based around foods. Which, by the way, is hilarious since me and Megara also have a separate code around foods. But anyway, I feel like Pooh is someone who would be at least open to working with me in the future and it doesn't seem like he really has anyone. I think the votes are there for Pooh and I'm just casting a protest vote. And a big reason, embarrassingly, is that at the start of the vote chat he says
Omg I finally get to meet the queen herself
Also hi Edward you’re amazing
Also hi Edward you’re amazing
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't mean much but it's more than I felt I was getting from Kristoff.
I end up kind of convincing Doofenshmirtz to vote for Kristoff too, and Pua says he'll go for him. I still expect Pooh to go but the votes go 8 for Kristoff, 5 for Pooh, 4 for Anne and 3 for Sorsha. So if me and Doofenshmirtz go for Pooh, Pooh leaves. After feeling like I didn't hold power during votes 2 and 3, it's nice to (inadvertently) be the swing vote!
Oh yeah, and Yzma went, which I was very happy about. Sorsha, Queen and Anne all seem to mourn Yzma in the shoutbox, and I was a little threatened by her. She seemed to be popular, good in challenges, and the olive decryptors seemed to be close.
Round 6
So now we're finally caught up. I have a three person alliance with Pua and Reepicheep, and I'm working with Doofenshmirtz and Megara and supposedly Anne. And I haven't talked with Alex, Pepe, Dog with a Blog, Rapunzel, Naveen or Ralph. I feel like I have some deep connections but there's probably a lot of people who would be okay voting for me if my name came up. And with how chaotic these votes are, you don't need a majority.
Of those players, I feel the best about Doofenshmirtz. He seems to be strong in challenges, and we both want to undermine the power players (and feel comfortable sharing it with each other!)
I again become team captain with a bid of $2 and pick Doofenshmirtz, Megara, Lamp and Queen. I had wanted Anne and Pepe but Sorsha picked them first. I put Anne #3, so Sorsha must have put her even higher. I was trying to go for people I think are active and would be strong in challenges (as well as finally establish a connection with Lamp). But this challenge has nothing to do with strength at all.
Doofenshmirtz suggests that we all split the money, which we agree with, but we don't decide who the banker is going to be. I vote for Doofenshmirtz, since he's my #1, but Megara ends up as the banker! I think Doofenshmirtz voted for me since he's threatened by Megara (though if everyone really was going to split the money) then it's not bad to not be the banker so maybe he wanted to raise her threat level. But if he voted for me, then Lamp and Queen must have voted for Megara. Lamp I expected but Queen is interesting. I think I have to watch out for her.
Hopefully Megara really did split the money. I think she did, it really doesn't seem worth it to publicly betray people. At least with the button challenge, nobody saw that I pushed the button. I won't find out until next round though.
During that challenge, the team talked about voting for pooh (not happening now) or rapunzel. Alex and Sorsha's names come up, and I throw out Naveen but that doesn't get traction. So right now, I'd guess Rapunzel is the target Lamp/Queen are most likely thinking, though she seems to be targeted every round and survives.
During this phase we're also given the option to pay $3500 to get into a permanent chat. That seems really valuable: in other games permanent chats like that were a hot commodity, and this is in survivor, when everyone is going to get to pm everyone else at the merge. In a game where you can only talk to a few people at a time, I think that's easily worth the cost. I have $3677, just barely enough to pay for it. But then I'd be left with almost no money, and I was scared about running into an elimination challenge that I couldn't skip. I'm only getting $760 from this cash grab at the most, so I would be forced to compete in the round 6 and 7 elimination challenges.
It sucks though, because I'm sure whoever ended up in that chat is going to be working together. There's no reason not to. Hopefully someone I'm close to got in that chat, and they'll tell me who else is in it. And then I kind of want to target the people in that chat just because it's such a big advantage.
I want to keep the money that I have, though, so I have the option to either pay up or get more cool things in the future. I go into the elimination challenge planning on competing, and then I see that it's a flash game. I'm not great at those so I'm second guessing myself but the flash game itself doesn't look that hard. Just put shapes on other shapes and make them balance. Cool.
Only it's not that easy. The first couple levels go smoothly, then I have trouble figuring out what the solution to each level is. I'm able to get it by trial and error but then I run into another problem. On the levels with the "heavy" shapes, the game seriously lags and it's difficult to put the shapes down. Finally, I get to level 11. I'm almost there! Except level 11 is hell. The solution I came up with is the wrong one, only it takes a while for me to figure it out because those damn plus shaped blocks are so tricky to place correctly. Sometimes they lock into place, and sometimes they start moving and I have to retry. I guess if they're not placed in the exact correct spot it's not good enough, but it really sucks.
Finally, I complete it and post my screenshot. It took me 35 minutes, and Mickey joked in the challenge thread that if it took an hour then I've definitely lost. I didn't do that bad but I did pretty bad and unlike the other torture challenges, I don't feel like this one is that bad, I just sucked. I'm ready to go, but it's Pooh that is eliminated!
All I have to say is that I'm really happy that I chose to eliminate Kristoff. Maybe I just underestimated myself, but I think there's a good chance I did the second worst. If Pooh isn't in the game, maybe I'm out.
So I think I'm caught up now. For this round, my chat is discussing Rapunzel, which I'm fine with. It's not a threat, but I still haven't met her, and after she sent me $5 and I sent her $10, I was wondering if she'd send me back $5, and she didn't. And yeah, $5 is nothing in this game, but it actually does bother me a little bit.