To Morganhost

[liam]

I think this is by far the worst challenge I have ever participated in. Since you're the host, I am prepared to give you a tremendous amount of leeway in the structure of this game. You get to decide when merges happen, when twists happen, where hidden immunity idols happen.

I get that. You are allowed a tremendous amount of power over the structure of the game. However, it is not right to intentionally mislead people on the rules of a challenge. You can make challenges as hard or as easy as you want. All I ask is that you are clear about the rules.

I think it was an especially poor decision on your part to have a puzzle challenge with a misleading description the challenge after you made a puzzle that was impossible to solve (the navigation one).

In plague 1, you said, " The only things that will be revealed are the order in which everyone placed in the challenge. ". You did not reveal the order everyone placed, only the top 8.

In plague 2, you made an impossible puzzle.

In plague 3, you made a puzzle with an accidentally duplicated piece.

Given your occasional errors, I decided that instead of reading your instructions literally and being a smart alec, I was trying to follow the obvious interpretation of you post.

I feel that you wasted all of our time by intentionally misleading us as to the rules of this challenge and that you owe us all an apology.

[ingrid]

It said in the plague 3 instructions that it looked like a slider puzzle but you would be switching the pics or whatever.

As far as plague 2 , ya there was a mistake but he fixed it as soon as it was brought to his attention. It wasn't something that affected the results either .

I wasn't gonna respond to this at first but I just feel like it may be a little harsh especially when the host is putting alot of effort into this game whether you think so or not .

[liam]

I understand that the host puts a lot of effort into this game. I put a ton of effort into this challenge though, and I am extremely frustrated with Justin. I feel the challenge was intentionally misleading, which is something that a host should not be.

[Host]

This was, in my opinion, out of frustration and anger due to how much work Liam put into the challenge. Knowing the leadership you put into your tribe Liam, I would be angry and frustrated too given the current situation.

Now, having said that- your points about the first two challenges will be overlooked. I will not strive for perfection when I am not a perfect being. I will do the best I can.

I will say that the purpose of having a 'fake out' stretches beyond the scope of me wanting an 'lol' or me wanting to have a fake-out challenge for the sake of it. Regardless of how you feel Liam, it put your tribe into gear when you realized the difficulty of it- and it put your team into HIGHER gear when you realized its simplicity. This was nothing short of intentional. I don't take pride in my challenge management or ingenuity, as it is my weakest link, but I do consider myself to be great at molding groupthink in a game.

I do not owe you an apology for "misleading" you in a challenge, because the difference in frustration would not have been much different. Take a step back and look at what exactly caused the frustration. If you realized a puzzle was impossible and continued to try to solve it, I consider this a blunder on your part, because "doing the same thing and expecting different results" has a quality definition. This challenge should set a precedent for the type of critical thinking that I'd like to happen for the remainder of the challenges.

It was not perfect, due to my inexperience with this kind of experiment before, and I do apologize that it caused you this much frustration. I'm certainly not around enough as I'd like to be or as much as I planned to be in the pre-production phase of this game, but we can't control our destinies.

I can assure you that the rest of the game will require no such 'hell' as this challenge and should be a breeze. I would also like to encourage you to present any issues you have with my hosting in your confessional from now on, however do so in a more respectful manner because, as you said, you realize how much effort I put into this game.

And thank you Ingrid for your defense.

[liam]

I thank you for your very reasonable response. I must admit I was afraid of a more knee-jerk reaction so I am glad we can have a civil discussion about this.

I assure you that I did not continue to attempt to solve puzzles after I determined them to be impossible.

My points about your previous errors were not meant as criticism. My point was if you do not strive to be extremely precise in your descriptions of your average challenges, then when I see something that looks like a loophole I could either say, "Oh look you never said that we had to move like a slider puzzle!" or "Oh look, he wasn't 100% clear, but he's clearly talking about a slider puzzle".

I only brought up the previous issues because I felt they were relevant in how I interpreted this challenge (i.e. not being a smart alec).

The issue with being misleading is because you specifically mentioned slider puzzles twice in your description. If you had not and simply mentioned switching pieces, I would be less upset with you.

Also, I do not feel it put our tribe into "higher gear" at the end. It just made me frustrated and wanting to get it over with.

Finally, I feel it is much more respectful to tell someone all the issues you have with them and give them the opportunity to respond then to remain quiet.

If that's harsh, it's only because I am telling you exactly what issues I have with how you ran this challenge and how upset I am with it. This is the most upset I've been in at least 3 months and I assure you this is no exaggeration

[liam]

This will pass, especially since you acknowledged some of my concerns and gave thoughtful replies, as opposed to blowing them off.

Feel free to respond if you would wish, but I feel I have said what I've wanted to say.

Edit: I'm also an INTP (personality type). One of our traits is that we tend to be on/off in terms of showing emotions. You get it all at once or not at all.

[Host]

I'd prefer it all at once <3. Write nastier confessionals.

I'm an iNTJ. So close!