Wishlist for future Survivor seasons
 

Since the fire tokens and Edge of Extinction are pretty much hated by the whole Survivor fandom, let's establish a wishlist for future Survivor seasons.

I will share mine first:

A "back to basics" season including:
-Obviously no returnee. Ever, ever.
-18 contestants at most.
-No idols, no tokens, no advantages. NOTHING. Just pure gameplay and social strategy. Let's see how the "new school" players get to the end on their own.
-Jeff shutting his mouth during the challenges.
-No giveway of fire on the first or second episode. And only a bag of rice. Make them WORK for their survival. Nowadays they look as good as their first day in. The shelters look like luxury palaces in Seychelles.
-Hide the water source a little better. This is insane that it's just standing there as obvious as Big Ben sitting next to the Thames.
-Rewards challenge every episode.
-Final 2 obviously. Whoever invented a FTC with 3 people needs to be fired.
-Rewards should be simple and useful for camp life, basic stuff. Also, a visit to local people would be nice.
-Harder challenges where the contestants really struggle/push themselves. Enough of the useless puzzles.
-No switched tribes. Let them develop characters and stories and fight it out when they merge.
-No whispers at tribal council or Jeff enforces a penalty vote against the person who started it.
-Some direct immunity challenges. If you finish last, you're out. Or at least you get a vote against you at tribal council (this is so good in the French version, the losers are so pissed everytime)

I would also love a runners-up season where the second place constestants come back to fight.

I agree with the majority of your suggestions, except I wouldn't be a fan of using challenges to determine eliminations (because then the Crystal Coxes of the world wouldn't stand a chance, not that they even get cast in the first place these days) and I think tribe switches and idols work in moderation, i.e. one idol at each starting tribe and one switch at the final 12. I would also add:

1) Jeff is fired and replaced with Abi-Maria Gomes
2) Chaos reigns however she sees fit

I'd scrap reward challenges in favour of character development

The direct elimination challenges are interesting because the challenges are made for everyone to win, and surprisingly some big physical threats have finished last in the French version. It adds some fuel to people like Michele who were about to be voted off. We always love an underdog win.

Also, Survivor is lacking on the physical aspect, the challenges aren't that tough anymore. It's part of the experience to go beyond your limits, so to me that aspect should determine one elimination at least. They're lazy af today.

(we stan Crystal Cox, always lol)

Oh and last item on the wishlist: bring back the food challenge in which they taste local delicacies such as spiders, scorpios, worms, fish eyes etc. They are so fun to watch, and it's part of survival too.

Yeah I feel like "pure gameplay and social strategy" and "if you finish last your out" are diametrically opposed but other than that your list largely.

That being said, we're past the point of no return and I'm coming to accept that.

Back to basics.

My personal wishlist would be a F2, simple endurance for F3 IC, a regular F4 round without fire, a Rites of Passage, the original FTC format, a minimal number of Idols and no dumb double vote/vote steal/vote cancel/whatever the **** advantages, and a 16 person cast.

Pretty much everything that made the show good in the first place, basically.

OH and a proper title sequence.

What I meant is "pure gameplay" without all those idols and advantages.
Without losing the essence of doing well in challenges too, that's why I would like to have that type of challenge in there. Because having winners who didn't even win a single immunity challenge is always weird to me.

Or maybe not direct elimination, but at least one vote against them in the next tribal council. It's always fun to see the big physical dude fighting for his life for once or only to end up blindsided by the bitches sunbathing all day <3
Obviously it should not happen every immunity challenge.
So really it's not that opposed, it's just two original components of the game.

Opening titles too <3

I'll never understand the rationale behind them getting rid of the opening titles because they were too expensive/took too much effort to make when they could afford to write, record, produce an entire original Broadway ****ing cast album's worth of music for Winners at War

Non-beach location with strong focus on the culture/land/history ingrained into challenges (similar to The Amazing Race)
Bring back rewards where they deliver school goods to local communities
Bring back the Survivor auction
HIIs only and then just one major power
Heavily storyline focused as opposed to the editors trying to blindside us

1. Adam Klein
2. Kelley Wentworth

Also I would love an international season with winners from all around the world who speak English really well.
It would be very interesting because Survivor is not completely played the same in different countries and having different cultures in the same environment is always good.