I am curious about the particular tasks that felt too much for you, if you remember any on the spot.
I haven't seen the episode, where four people were playing tag, but that does isolate them..? Also Pearl's goose chase task was definitely lacking, but Lizzie finding it was fun. I did like Pearl's butler task, and the whole dragon fight. Cleo's pig task was funny, but painful. I probably forgot all the more boring ones, and well, the red name tasks were kinda lacking a lot and took more trouble than reward. With them repeating constantly and limiting players as to what they can do.
I liked most of wildcards, but it did feel like all the server was always running around in two big groups or there were huge people events, where multiple people have the same exact footage. The reaction to snails was mostly screaming, and even the superpowers, which were individual for every player, you could still watch one person and see most of the powers and the person's first reaction to it. It's just my pet peeve, because I genuinely want to watch other people's POVs, but I don't like rewatching things and it feels like a lot of other videos had similar things.
It's not actually that big of a problem and doesn't include all the POVs, mostly a big difference from the Secret Life, and other seasons had some sort of scheming or accidental things that happened as everyone were against everyone, so you couldn't know where the other hit will come from. Like, I'm talking about the 5Gs and Matren(?), and Family and Bamboozers and kinda Tuff guys(?), idk where Spanners were on the chart. But yeah, it felt sometimes like the server had 2 and a half teams. Not saying it's true, they all had inner betrayals and fights. More of a personal expression it made on me as I was watching.
I'm just curious what you liked about Wild Life, because a lot of people weren't as invested in it (even purely based on a few CC's view counts being less than usual for life series). And at the time of Secret Life coming out, there were a lot of people criticizing tasks and there was a problem of backsitting and insisting that someone actually succeeded or failed the task, because of one little thing. It did feel kinda shitty to hear people hate on something that affected you a lot. But I do get the points of how some things might have been not thought out properly, just like snails being maybe a tad too fast and preventing people from focusing on doing anything else. It feels frustrating, when your death feels so unwarranted, you weren't given a chance to fight back. If you starved to death, because you couldn't find the thing to eat it's better, like, you understand that you should have tried more things or didn't pay attention to your food and health bar.
Honestly, I donāt have a ton of opinions on many of the tasks themselves, sorry. I did think that they were sometimes imbalanced, such as Scottās āI love youā task feeling WAY too easy, especially for someone like Scott, and that others were kind of unclear. One task that I wasnāt really a fan of was Ethoās weeping angel task, since it was pretty much impossible for Etho to know when someone was looking at him. It was a really fun idea; it just wasnāt a great task in practice when Etho also had to make an interesting video. There were lots of times when Etho moved, even if only a little bit, when he didnāt realize someone was looking at him or when someone very suddenly turned to look at him. It was all ruled as fine, of course, but the wording of the task meant that Etho technically failed the task, which just wouldnāt have felt fair in the context of the Life Series. I think Iām personally more forgiving about many of the less interesting tasks because I cannot for the life of me imagine coming up with I believe over 200 tasks, since there had to be a hard task prepared for each player in case everyone rerolled for a hard task in the same session, and manage to make them all interesting, possible, difficult enough, and socially focused. Even with the audienceās help, sorting through all of those suggestions weekly must have been stressful and difficult. However, my main concern is the fact that everyone had to keep their tasks secret from everyone unless otherwise specified, which kept the teams really divided. I do think that the gimmick was really cool. It was just unfortunate that we got such unique teams who often couldnāt really communicate as to what they planned to do that session or sometimes even how their teammates could help. During Secret Life, BigB teamed up with Tango, who he had never teamed with before, and Skizz, who he never really interacted with while Skizz was in less of a lackey role. Impulse and Scott had never teamed before, and Iām pretty sure that was Impulseās first time teaming with someone outside of his typical social circle on a more intimately sized team. It was Gemās first time as a main cast player, and Mumbo and Lizzie were main cast players for the first time in a while. For Lizzie, it wouldnāt have really mattered, because she was by herself. However, I wouldāve liked to have seen the others be allowed to be a little more free with their teammates. I did really like Secret Life, especially because the ending had so many parallels to past seasons, but the social aspect was different in a way that didnāt click with my personal tastes quite as much as I mightāve liked, which is fine. I know other people really loved Secret Life, and Iām happy for them.
For me, Wild Life was fantastic, but I liked it so much out of personal taste, not necessarily because I thought it was perfect (though it is MY perfect baby. personally). Every episode other than the finale felt like the opening episode of a new series, where everyoneās just trying to figure out how to use the new gimmick to their advantage or at least how to survive it, and that was really exciting for me. I love that kind of stuff.
I hadnāt thought too much about it before, but I do see what you mean about people tending to be in large groups throughout each session. I can definitely understand how that would be frustrating for you, seeing as, yeah, a lot of the content in different POVs ended up being repetitive. This probably was one of the contributors to lower view counts for some creators. I really liked it, because it was nice to see everyone interacting in such big groups. I feel like we donāt get to see that too often, and it made following the series a little easier for me, who was really busy throughout Wild Life and just didnāt have much time to watch every episode every Saturday and had to spread them out throughout the week, which was like a little treat everyday! š„°š¦ Of course, spacing the episodes out made them less repetitive to me, since I just had more time between episodes and a lot of other things going on between episodes.
Seeing the server divide itself into like two and a half teams was really funny to me. š I understand how that might seem less interesting, but it made me laugh and cheer every time someone joined the Gs, even if it was only temporary. I just wanted to see how big of a team we could get. There were like 9 people allied with the Gs in total, excluding finale zombies of course, and I imagine them having awkward extended-family dinner together. I think that part of the reason why the alliances were kind of confusing in Wild Life was a distinct lack of communication or trust between some of the teams. The Spanners, the Tuff Guys, and InTheLittleMound (Lake?) in particular had difficulty communicating amongst themselves who they were allied with and who they were enemies with, especially when some episodes were particularly dense with action.
A lot of the deaths feeling unfair makes sense. I can totally see that. Plus, having a brand new thing every session is bound to cause some deaths just from not knowing whatās going on, especially if the session gimmick is inherently dangerous, such as the snails (even though they were SO CUTE and could never do wrong in my eyes). Pearlās first death in particular was unfair in my eyes, just cause, though it made so much sense logistically, almost no one in the moment wouldāve thought of the shrinking player hit box affecting shifting, such a trusted and well-worn mechanic in the vanilla game. However, I think that Grian giving everyone 6 lives, giving the fallen players a way to participate in some episodes, and providing a way for players to get their lives back during the early and middle sessions was a pretty good balance.
Another thing I liked about Wild Life was the teams. I know some people were upset by some of the teams, but the Gs were a long time coming anyway. It was nice to see Scott, Cleo, and Pearl finally get to be all on the same team, and Impulse (and BigB. And Etho. And eventually Ren. And technically Mumbo and Skizz at least at one point) was a fantastic addition. I enjoyed seeing Ren and Martyn together again, and isolated, at that. I know theyāve been wanting to spend more time together, and seeing them be silly and free made me smile. The Bamboozlers were obviously a fan favorite, and for good reason. I hadnāt realized how much fun Lizzie and Scar would be on the same team. The Spanners made me happy, because it was the first time Skizz wasnāt on a team with anyone in his typical Life Series circle in 5 seasons (4 if you exclude Double Life, since he wasnāt in it). I had also been hoping for Mumbo to team with Skizz just so that Mumbo could see up close that Scar actually does have competition amongst the players who tend to die faster than others. š The Tuff Guys was fun for me because the DRAMA. Those three men could not get along for five seconds. The HORSE DRAMA. Tango having to deal with the HORSE DRAMA. Thatās cinema to me. And then, of course, there was the Family. My goodness was it awesome to see Gem and Joel on a team together. They work so well together, and Iām so proud of them.
Wild Life kept the players on their toes every episode, and I have full faith that Grian would have made changes accordingly if someone involved was genuinely upset by something in their episode, especially with how he, Impulse, and Skizz were talking about how Grian checked in with the group after every single session. If the players had a lot of fun and feel well looked after in their social space, then I have a hard time complaining about it. Seeing them excited made me really happy. When Grian talked about how āWild Life was like Christmas every week, because I got to show off these gifts I worked so hard on to all of my friendsā, it really struck a chord with me. Working hard on something for your friends and seeing them react excitedly to it is one of my favorite feelings in the world. Going into each episode knowing that Grian felt that way is a huge part of what made Wild Life so wonderful to me.
It breaks my heart when I see people saying that Wild Life was boring or that the gimmicks were awful (not your criticisms, anon. I mean people who barely gave the season a chance and had nothing constructive to say). I know that Grian put so much work into each mechanic, often to the point where it would consume almost his whole week. Heās fine, I know, but I do wish that these almost mini-gimmicks that Grian and his wonderful team put so much love into had been received a little kinder, especially when they only had so much time to prepare for the more impromptu mechanics and still managed to craft some, in my opinion, pretty impressive results for the circumstances.
A lot of peopleās criticisms concerning Wild Life are completely valid in my eyes. It just so happened to have hit a lot of my favorite tropes, and the parts that people take issue with just so happen to be things that Iām not personally too concerned with. Do I think itās the best season ever? Not particularly. If I had to spend a lot of time considering what the best season is, I would probably say Limited Life, which was my favorite season before Wild Life. Wild Life just happens to be almost fine tuned to my taste, though I understand other people not liking it so much. Wild Life was a season of wonder and play and holding on to each other during uncertain times. Thatās really important to me.
