hey hey! here’s my question for both of you. what was the best move you think you made this game/ what one move (if you can pinpoint it) do you think was the most important in getting to you to the final 2?
Finished Big Brother 7: Sweet Sabotage - Hosted by VioletValkyrie
- Thread starter VioletValkyrie
- Start date
- Status
For Al’s question:
I’ve talked about how I focused a lot on my social connections this game, so I guess my main regret is not building those connections sooner.
Since I was new, for the first 2 or so weeks I didn’t reach out to people in the house, only relying on those who talked to me (basically Cel and Mirdo).
I realized soon after that I needed more connections in this game, and reached out, but if I’d reached out earlier, my connections and social game could have been much stronger. Not that I think my connections are bad, but I could have cemented them more.
About my low-key plays - Flour might expect me to say that these were a mistake, or a regret, but to be blunt, I don’t regret any of the plays I made.
Simply being low-key doesn’t mean that my actions weren’t major - my flip caused Cel to lose momentum, after all.
And although Flour does deserve credit for staying alive despite being an outspoken player, I feel like my ability to keep myself from being a target is also worth credit. I mean, I did have many connections - I just didn’t broadcast that, and thus kept my strength hidden. Why paint an unnecessary target on my back?
Each of the plays I made were the right move at the time, and kept me alive and not a big target.
When the house got smaller, I had strength with my connections, and kept that as a card up my sleeve for the opportune moment.
Sadly, the perfect moment to turn on a side never came, but I don’t regret my choice.
Overall, I don’t regret my plays, but I do regret not starting sooner. I’d have liked an opportunity to act boldly, but the right time never came, and being bold without momentum would be a bad move.
I’ve talked about how I focused a lot on my social connections this game, so I guess my main regret is not building those connections sooner.
Since I was new, for the first 2 or so weeks I didn’t reach out to people in the house, only relying on those who talked to me (basically Cel and Mirdo).
I realized soon after that I needed more connections in this game, and reached out, but if I’d reached out earlier, my connections and social game could have been much stronger. Not that I think my connections are bad, but I could have cemented them more.
About my low-key plays - Flour might expect me to say that these were a mistake, or a regret, but to be blunt, I don’t regret any of the plays I made.
Simply being low-key doesn’t mean that my actions weren’t major - my flip caused Cel to lose momentum, after all.
And although Flour does deserve credit for staying alive despite being an outspoken player, I feel like my ability to keep myself from being a target is also worth credit. I mean, I did have many connections - I just didn’t broadcast that, and thus kept my strength hidden. Why paint an unnecessary target on my back?
Each of the plays I made were the right move at the time, and kept me alive and not a big target.
When the house got smaller, I had strength with my connections, and kept that as a card up my sleeve for the opportune moment.
Sadly, the perfect moment to turn on a side never came, but I don’t regret my choice.
Overall, I don’t regret my plays, but I do regret not starting sooner. I’d have liked an opportunity to act boldly, but the right time never came, and being bold without momentum would be a bad move.
For Jade’s question:
I believe that Flour was much too straightforward in his playing. His intentions and targets were quite clear, to his allies and to his enemies.
Being direct with your goals isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but with a rep like Flour’s and his bad relationship with the house prior to his eviction, being clear about everything wasn’t the best move.
After returning to the house, Flour was less transparent, which was an improvement, but he still thought too much in black and white. Cel referred to Flour’s social play as closed-circle, and I think that’s apt, with Flour being less flexible, having little contact with what he saw as the other side of the house.
Essentially, Flour didn’t have a great social game, being too straightforward and open for the situation in the house.
I believe that Flour was much too straightforward in his playing. His intentions and targets were quite clear, to his allies and to his enemies.
Being direct with your goals isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but with a rep like Flour’s and his bad relationship with the house prior to his eviction, being clear about everything wasn’t the best move.
After returning to the house, Flour was less transparent, which was an improvement, but he still thought too much in black and white. Cel referred to Flour’s social play as closed-circle, and I think that’s apt, with Flour being less flexible, having little contact with what he saw as the other side of the house.
Essentially, Flour didn’t have a great social game, being too straightforward and open for the situation in the house.
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For Lily’s question:
I said in my response to Mirdo that the best part of my game was coming back after Vom’s eviction, and my lack of allies and solid connections in the house.
There are two specific plays that got me from there to final 2.
The first, which is the play I would give if I had to choose only one, is winning HoH immediately after Vom got evicted. From my bad position, I found myself to be completely safe for the week, and free to rebuild ties with other houseguests - especially due to nominations: people wanted to connect with me to suggest their nominees, which gave me the opportunity I needed to talk and solidify my place in the house.
The second move I made was connecting with Flour and Jade, at least superficially. We formed an alliance against Cel and his allies, the success of which got me through the last few weeks, until I was able to beat Jade in the showdown. (You were a great opponent, Jade!)
Of course, I had backup plans in case Cel got power - I rebuilt my connection with him, ensuring Flour and Jade were better nominees than me. However, that didn’t occur, and my alliance with Flour and Jade was the one bringing the three of us to the finale.
Thanks for the great (and interesting) questions!
I said in my response to Mirdo that the best part of my game was coming back after Vom’s eviction, and my lack of allies and solid connections in the house.
There are two specific plays that got me from there to final 2.
The first, which is the play I would give if I had to choose only one, is winning HoH immediately after Vom got evicted. From my bad position, I found myself to be completely safe for the week, and free to rebuild ties with other houseguests - especially due to nominations: people wanted to connect with me to suggest their nominees, which gave me the opportunity I needed to talk and solidify my place in the house.
The second move I made was connecting with Flour and Jade, at least superficially. We formed an alliance against Cel and his allies, the success of which got me through the last few weeks, until I was able to beat Jade in the showdown. (You were a great opponent, Jade!)
Of course, I had backup plans in case Cel got power - I rebuilt my connection with him, ensuring Flour and Jade were better nominees than me. However, that didn’t occur, and my alliance with Flour and Jade was the one bringing the three of us to the finale.
Thanks for the great (and interesting) questions!
Finale Night - Endgame
Deadline has been met and all the votes are in! Tonight is the night, the game is now over! But who won?
Before we go over jury votes, let's take one last look at the houseguests who have managed to prove themselves this far.
Ephemera, the New Kid: At the start of the game, Ephemera was an interesting case, being one of the newcomers to the game and the one who proved to pull the most weight during the last weeks of the game. Holding interesting alliances and placing his power between different hands across the table, Ephemera proved to stay on the right side and out of danger. But will his lack of experience with the game pave his road to victory?Deadline has been met and all the votes are in! Tonight is the night, the game is now over! But who won?
Before we go over jury votes, let's take one last look at the houseguests who have managed to prove themselves this far.
Flour, the Comeback King: Flour entered the game as a returning seat from BB6, being a player the audience deemed having potential. While being constantly kicked down on the opposing side of powerful players like Celever, Flour found his way through the game by eventually overturning his enemy, and eventually beating out his own ally Jade in the Showdown for Supremacy Promotion challenge. But how much of that matters as someone who had to fight their way back into the game?
The two of you have fought through eleven daunting weeks, but now the time has come to end this game.
Let's count the votes.
@Jadethepokemontrainer voted for Flour
@Alfze voted for Ephemera
@Celever voted for Ephemera
@mirdo voted for Ephemera
@Fiery_Lugia voted for Ephemera
@Vom voted for Ephemera
@TeamAqua4Life #HEYNICK voted for Flour
by a final vote of 5-2, the winner of Big Brother: Sweet Sabotage is...
Ephemera!
Congratulations!
The following post will be a long post by the hostess explaining thoughts throughout the game, knowledge you may have missed, and an overall ending post. Please refrain from posting in-thread until after that post has been made.
Let's count the votes.
@Jadethepokemontrainer voted for Flour
@Alfze voted for Ephemera
@Celever voted for Ephemera
@mirdo voted for Ephemera
@Fiery_Lugia voted for Ephemera
@Vom voted for Ephemera
@TeamAqua4Life #HEYNICK voted for Flour
by a final vote of 5-2, the winner of Big Brother: Sweet Sabotage is...
Ephemera!
Congratulations!
The following post will be a long post by the hostess explaining thoughts throughout the game, knowledge you may have missed, and an overall ending post. Please refrain from posting in-thread until after that post has been made.
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Hi! Your hostess VioletValkyrie here. I once again just want to really say a big thank you because the biggest thing I have to say right off the bat about this game is that it was so close to just never happening. At the beginning it was difficult and scary to get the game off the ground, as I faced quite a lot of difficulties during production, as well as the fact that I was unable to get enough committed applications at the beginning of the game. You'll notice that every single person who applied for this game was allowed in and this is because the amount of applications I received was the bare minimum of the amount of houseguests I needed to fill this game. I've mentioned it a couple times talking to some of you, but your commitment and willingness to sign up and continue playing is the reason this game even happened. Thank you.
Now, as someone here was actually crazy enough to let me host a second BB game, let's go over things like general concept, twists and mechanics, and my overall closing thoughts.
> General Concept and Production
So first thing's first. Very unusual to have a forum game with a maid café theme of all things. Production for this game began on December 10th 2018. As funny of a story it is, I was just walking home one day and I thought "Wouldn't it be fun to have a maid café game?" and at that point I didn't think of it as BB, but since it was the only kind of game I had hosted on the forums before and it was what I felt comfortable with, the concept was set very quickly, and I went to work. The day production started I had thought of several interesting ideas or mechanics that could fit the strange setting of the game. With BB4, these ideas came fairly naturally, though I had to do more thinking here. Some of the ideas were giving the houseguests a menu at the beginning of the game, that would detail every single twist the game had, and when it would be happening. End of Week was set to make its return as well, as just like BB4, this game had a theme all the elements followed. While BB4's was a false sense of security, BB7's was the idea of bringing in people who had played BB6 or were new to the series, and treating them to strange twists or ideas you'd never think to see in a game.
As a hostess, myself and other people would probably describe me as chaotic. I had so much fun whenever someone would ask me a question I couldn't answer out of the nature of being a hostess. Instead of just saying "I can't tell you", I'd say things like "I wonder if you could" or "Yeah, what will happen next?" and it's simply something I carried over from the way I built BB4, where anything new could happen at any time, and catch you off guard. As a hostess, I found it fun whenever someone would try to predict what would happen next, or overthinking the way I hosted things to come to a conclusion themselves. There were those moments in this game. However, one thing was always consistent with my hosting between both games, and it's that I would never purposely lie. While there is a method to my madness, it's something people don't often figure out, and allowed me to drop shocking information very casually including things like "There were always jury comebacks, and I would have told you if you had ever asked". As players who have either played a game hosted by me before, or this was your first time, I wanted to be entertaining, welcoming, and above all else, have fun.
As I drew inspiration from things in BB4, I did as well with BB7. This game's inspiration was clearly taken from anime, the theme being reminiscent of shows such as Is The Order a Rabbit?, Blend S (that one was caught pretty quickly) and the idol anime I've grown to enjoy over the past year, while the advantages were mainly either conceived from existing BB twists or were original concepts.
With all these comparisons to BB4, I need to mention something that I held close to my heart throughout production and hosting of this game. This game was never built or hosted with the intent of being better than BB4. Besides a few errors, I see BB4 as something I did incredibly well, and my intention was never to best it, but to create something completely different from it. This is why the flavour of the game is toned back quite often, End of Week doesn't include as much depth, and while a host character was conceived, I never used them, and opted to simply host without flavour.
> Twists and Mechanics
The biggest thing someone would probably ask about was reputation. I've been asked things like "Why does reputation impact the game so heavily?" and honestly my response is... I wrote it as a major mechanic that the game centers around. Of course it's going to impact the game so heavily. Reputation was created as an idea that would allow players who weren't strong competitively to still win competitions at crucial moments, and allow players to strategize more within competitions. Is a player more threatening because of their reputation? How likely are you to lose this crucial competition? It was all conceived as a way to make competitions more tense and more interesting. While I believe opinions of the idea have been very mixed, it did what I wanted it to do perfectly, making it something that worked out well in my eyes.
The full effects of reputation have been posted publicly, but are as follows:
The Exile wasn't that huge. It was just a fun way for me to release special information about the game before it released, and then turn it into a Week 1 punishment when it happened.
Diary Rooms were never a planned thing, nor were they meant to be opened. The thing was handled sloppily by myself because of the fact that it was never supposed to happen, and "open DRs" were never a thing. I simply had to respond the best to what houseguests were saying, which was difficult and was the most stressful thing to come from this game.
In the late-game upon asking for feedback, one thing that came up was people saying End of Week was a lot less involved in the game as it was in BB4, which I agree with. I might even consider it a fault of this game. Some attempts were made at a story or plot, though the fact that it was dropped and only vague mentions were made to it was due to a decision I made throughout the game to scrap it, and the fact that I honestly felt at voting deadlines that I just wanted to continue to keep the game running, and not bother with spending half an hour writing EoW scripts on the spot. However one thing that made people surprisingly angry was taking away reputation through the use of End of Week. I gave you reputation in one week, and I'm surprised that nobody caught onto the fact that I wasn't just going to feed you +1 reputation every week, and even more surprised that people were angered over it.
The Veto Menu was one of my favourite mechanics, probably in the entire series, just because of the emphasis it places on my favourite competition. It allows for another layer of depth with choosing which veto you want, when you want it, and if you're simply claiming it so your opposition can't. A small idea from the menu that not a lot of people noticed was that it was impossible to discard vetos, usually something huge that you want to do if you win the veto as HoH. The only possible way for this to happen was to pick the Tricky Veto and have the vetoed houseguest fail the task. However, it had a secret up its sleeve that never saw the light of day, the Blood Veto.
The Ribbon Trophy was actually the Blood Veto in disguise, and allowed the holder to completely ignore the results of the vote of that week, and send either nominee home if they so chose. As Alfze was the holder of it and didn't choose to use it, the perk was kept disguised, to set up for this very late-game reveal.
Something I hope people caught onto was that the King's Crown was a fake the entire time. Its entire purpose was to be completely worthless, but confuse people about it having special power, and make people fight over it, spilling as much blood over nothing as possible. It was noticed by some houseguests, though others seemed to be confused about it the whole time, even after the reveal. It was quite fun telling people "The crown has no hidden secrets. It does exactly what it says in the post", when the post said in a cryptic way that the thing had no worth.
> Closing Thoughts
This game was quite interesting to host. There were a lot of words from the audience about how the houseguests were playing, and the game reached both up and down points for everyone involved. I'm sure the audience has a lot to say on that front, but I was hoping for this to be an engaging game that really delivered for everyone. The hostess, houseguests, audience, and jury all had important roles to play.
I want to give a special thank you to the people who really helped me behind the scenes. There were several times I went to you all for guidance or ideas on what to do next, and your support and help throughout the weeks really helped make the game easier on me. I want to thank @NinjaPenguin for giving advice and being the person to play jury roundtable, and @Lorde for so much help with concepts, ideas before the game started, help with Diary Rooms, overall just managing houseguests, managing myself, and taking over for me when I was unable to host this game myself. You're like a second host and a best friend to me, and I'm thankful I could receive so much of your help over the past few months.
I want to also thank all of my houseguests who continued to play this game, and especially those of you who said encouraging or kind words. I actually had some of you ask when I plan to host BB again, or that you loved this game, and that really made me smile. To answer that question, I'll give the only thing I can really say right now, just that I have an idea for a concept that may work, but I don't see myself hosting this game again any time soon.
I'll still remain an involved person in this community, and I'm very happy to see what happens in BB8, which should be happening fairly shortly, hosted by NP.
Now, as someone here was actually crazy enough to let me host a second BB game, let's go over things like general concept, twists and mechanics, and my overall closing thoughts.
> General Concept and Production
So first thing's first. Very unusual to have a forum game with a maid café theme of all things. Production for this game began on December 10th 2018. As funny of a story it is, I was just walking home one day and I thought "Wouldn't it be fun to have a maid café game?" and at that point I didn't think of it as BB, but since it was the only kind of game I had hosted on the forums before and it was what I felt comfortable with, the concept was set very quickly, and I went to work. The day production started I had thought of several interesting ideas or mechanics that could fit the strange setting of the game. With BB4, these ideas came fairly naturally, though I had to do more thinking here. Some of the ideas were giving the houseguests a menu at the beginning of the game, that would detail every single twist the game had, and when it would be happening. End of Week was set to make its return as well, as just like BB4, this game had a theme all the elements followed. While BB4's was a false sense of security, BB7's was the idea of bringing in people who had played BB6 or were new to the series, and treating them to strange twists or ideas you'd never think to see in a game.
As a hostess, myself and other people would probably describe me as chaotic. I had so much fun whenever someone would ask me a question I couldn't answer out of the nature of being a hostess. Instead of just saying "I can't tell you", I'd say things like "I wonder if you could" or "Yeah, what will happen next?" and it's simply something I carried over from the way I built BB4, where anything new could happen at any time, and catch you off guard. As a hostess, I found it fun whenever someone would try to predict what would happen next, or overthinking the way I hosted things to come to a conclusion themselves. There were those moments in this game. However, one thing was always consistent with my hosting between both games, and it's that I would never purposely lie. While there is a method to my madness, it's something people don't often figure out, and allowed me to drop shocking information very casually including things like "There were always jury comebacks, and I would have told you if you had ever asked". As players who have either played a game hosted by me before, or this was your first time, I wanted to be entertaining, welcoming, and above all else, have fun.
As I drew inspiration from things in BB4, I did as well with BB7. This game's inspiration was clearly taken from anime, the theme being reminiscent of shows such as Is The Order a Rabbit?, Blend S (that one was caught pretty quickly) and the idol anime I've grown to enjoy over the past year, while the advantages were mainly either conceived from existing BB twists or were original concepts.
With all these comparisons to BB4, I need to mention something that I held close to my heart throughout production and hosting of this game. This game was never built or hosted with the intent of being better than BB4. Besides a few errors, I see BB4 as something I did incredibly well, and my intention was never to best it, but to create something completely different from it. This is why the flavour of the game is toned back quite often, End of Week doesn't include as much depth, and while a host character was conceived, I never used them, and opted to simply host without flavour.
> Twists and Mechanics
The biggest thing someone would probably ask about was reputation. I've been asked things like "Why does reputation impact the game so heavily?" and honestly my response is... I wrote it as a major mechanic that the game centers around. Of course it's going to impact the game so heavily. Reputation was created as an idea that would allow players who weren't strong competitively to still win competitions at crucial moments, and allow players to strategize more within competitions. Is a player more threatening because of their reputation? How likely are you to lose this crucial competition? It was all conceived as a way to make competitions more tense and more interesting. While I believe opinions of the idea have been very mixed, it did what I wanted it to do perfectly, making it something that worked out well in my eyes.
The full effects of reputation have been posted publicly, but are as follows:
- Double Vote: If a player reached +5 reputation or higher, they would be granted a double vote, allowing them to vote twice at an eviction of their choosing.
- Immunity: If a player reached +10 reputation, they would be granted immunity for the week, making them unable to be nominated or evicted for that week. This advantage cannot be earned multiple times.
- Vote Loss: If a player reached -5 reputation or lower, they would lose their vote until they managed to get their reputation to -4 or higher.
- Instant Eviction: If a player reached -10 reputation, they would be evicted from the house immediately.
The Exile wasn't that huge. It was just a fun way for me to release special information about the game before it released, and then turn it into a Week 1 punishment when it happened.
Diary Rooms were never a planned thing, nor were they meant to be opened. The thing was handled sloppily by myself because of the fact that it was never supposed to happen, and "open DRs" were never a thing. I simply had to respond the best to what houseguests were saying, which was difficult and was the most stressful thing to come from this game.
In the late-game upon asking for feedback, one thing that came up was people saying End of Week was a lot less involved in the game as it was in BB4, which I agree with. I might even consider it a fault of this game. Some attempts were made at a story or plot, though the fact that it was dropped and only vague mentions were made to it was due to a decision I made throughout the game to scrap it, and the fact that I honestly felt at voting deadlines that I just wanted to continue to keep the game running, and not bother with spending half an hour writing EoW scripts on the spot. However one thing that made people surprisingly angry was taking away reputation through the use of End of Week. I gave you reputation in one week, and I'm surprised that nobody caught onto the fact that I wasn't just going to feed you +1 reputation every week, and even more surprised that people were angered over it.
The Veto Menu was one of my favourite mechanics, probably in the entire series, just because of the emphasis it places on my favourite competition. It allows for another layer of depth with choosing which veto you want, when you want it, and if you're simply claiming it so your opposition can't. A small idea from the menu that not a lot of people noticed was that it was impossible to discard vetos, usually something huge that you want to do if you win the veto as HoH. The only possible way for this to happen was to pick the Tricky Veto and have the vetoed houseguest fail the task. However, it had a secret up its sleeve that never saw the light of day, the Blood Veto.
The Ribbon Trophy was actually the Blood Veto in disguise, and allowed the holder to completely ignore the results of the vote of that week, and send either nominee home if they so chose. As Alfze was the holder of it and didn't choose to use it, the perk was kept disguised, to set up for this very late-game reveal.
Something I hope people caught onto was that the King's Crown was a fake the entire time. Its entire purpose was to be completely worthless, but confuse people about it having special power, and make people fight over it, spilling as much blood over nothing as possible. It was noticed by some houseguests, though others seemed to be confused about it the whole time, even after the reveal. It was quite fun telling people "The crown has no hidden secrets. It does exactly what it says in the post", when the post said in a cryptic way that the thing had no worth.
> Closing Thoughts
This game was quite interesting to host. There were a lot of words from the audience about how the houseguests were playing, and the game reached both up and down points for everyone involved. I'm sure the audience has a lot to say on that front, but I was hoping for this to be an engaging game that really delivered for everyone. The hostess, houseguests, audience, and jury all had important roles to play.
I want to give a special thank you to the people who really helped me behind the scenes. There were several times I went to you all for guidance or ideas on what to do next, and your support and help throughout the weeks really helped make the game easier on me. I want to thank @NinjaPenguin for giving advice and being the person to play jury roundtable, and @Lorde for so much help with concepts, ideas before the game started, help with Diary Rooms, overall just managing houseguests, managing myself, and taking over for me when I was unable to host this game myself. You're like a second host and a best friend to me, and I'm thankful I could receive so much of your help over the past few months.
I want to also thank all of my houseguests who continued to play this game, and especially those of you who said encouraging or kind words. I actually had some of you ask when I plan to host BB again, or that you loved this game, and that really made me smile. To answer that question, I'll give the only thing I can really say right now, just that I have an idea for a concept that may work, but I don't see myself hosting this game again any time soon.
I'll still remain an involved person in this community, and I'm very happy to see what happens in BB8, which should be happening fairly shortly, hosted by NP.
Who knows, you might see me there.
- Status