Wesley: You had it on your list of things that needed to be "attended to" regarding googling.

If anyone is suggesting that THIS site should be able to block me from any other sites besides this one, then there are privacy and legal issues at stake.

I fully agree that harder questions should be in the "upper levels" of KO. I do not agree that there should be increased time penalties piled on TOP of that.

Re: the encyclopaedia... I have nothing against any active member of this site to NOT have access to this information, ALL the time (not just when they are playing hourly games). I agree that it's a good way to attract interest from outside folks though, otherwise I'd suggest not having it at ALL. It is likely that many people who have a busride badge accessed the encyclopaedia at LEAST once. And I really don't like the idea that folks can get 10/10 on two of my "impossible" (I didn't mean for them to be that hard when I wrote them! lol) quizzes simply because they are now in the "database". Personally I think that removing access to the encyclopaedia would eliminate almost all the "google" issues for any game, without any further restrictions.

Knockout is like the easiest game in terms of the speed demons plowing through because of familiarity. That is not looking for more penalties, which would only hurt the slower players, or more difficulty, it is what it is. But that is what it has become. And further time penalties will just hurt everyone but the long-term speed demons. I don't get the reasoning.

I'm in exactly the same boat as flopsy describes, and I don't see how increasing time penalties makes it harder for speed merchants, really I don't. What I have seen in other games that have the higher penalty is that I can lose with a perfect score to someone who gets one or two wrong in a quicker time. I pretty much don't play those games any more, unless I'm feeling masochistic. Increase the difficulty by all means, but please don't increase the time penalty.

I don't get the reasoning, either.

Time penalties won't really help. Right now, 19 in 50 seconds beats a score of 20 in 151 seconds. Now double that, 19 in 50 seconds will beat the time of 20 in 151 seconds, BUT, if you double that, that means now 18 in 50 seconds would ALSO beat the perfect game with a slow time.

Like Bubblesfun says, it makes it easier for the speed demonds, because now, they need even less right to beat the slower players. Not fair, in my opinion.


Also, I agree with Jakeroo about basically everything s/he said.

It won't let me delete this, so I'll just edit it.

<< and I don't see how increasing time penalties makes it harder for speed merchants, really I don't. >>

I have already tried to explain it, but you're all ignoring what I'm saying, seeing the words TIME PENALTY and freaking out.

Again:

"Speed merchants" are enabled by EASY QUESTIONS. If you instantly know all the answers because the questions are too easy, whoever scrolls and clicks fastest wins every time. The ONLY way to slow them down is by MORE DIFFICULT questions.

When you have MORE DIFFICULT QUESTIONS, it is to your advantage to try to CHEAT by GOOGLING. The only way to ENCOURAGE THINKING OVER GOOGLING is to RAISE THE TIME PENALTIES.

Although the time penalties are higher, slower players have AN ADVANTAGE over memorization speed demons because now speed demons have to actually KNOW something.


It looks like people on this thread would much rather this be a game that rewards "who can click and scroll fastest". Doesn't sound very fun to me, but if that's what you find exciting then we can keep it that way. Personally I'll never be in the top levels myself, so it doesn't matter one way or the other to me.

No, I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting that it would be possible to implement something that would prevent you from using the information gathered from any other site to improve your quiz score unless you wish to use a completely different computer for it. The problem with it that it would require a largely revamped quiz script and would make it necessary to use JavaScript or Flash as a prerequisite for playing. Besides, it would have a higher potential for accidentally losing a score. So this would definitely not be something to implement for all games, but it could be done for a small number of games, especially those played quickly if there is a large amount of popular demand. (I personally would implement it only for one new game designed to be 100% googleproof.)

Terry and Wesley, the people are speaking. Their voices are loud and clear on this one. You are going too far with this one and it creating more harm than good.

"Primum non nocere"

"First, do no harm."

I see what you are saying, Terry. Speed demons who rely on memorization will definitely struggle with more difficult questions. Those who rely on memory will have to stop and think, and they will have slower times, too, and it should be about even with the slower players.

Sorry for not seeing your point earlier.

Cubs, the whole discussion has been sparked by (some of) the people speaking. I am sure what Terry would prefer would be to implement cool new challenges and features instead of dealing with this

Wes

Terry, I think everyone saw what your point was. However, it is not only "easy versus hard" that enables the speed demons. It is familarity. And there is nothing to say that adding the difficulty changes anything about that familiarity. At a certain level of play, many have seen both the easy and the harder questions before, based on from where Knockout draws its questions. So, by both increasing the difficulty and adding time penalties, you are not addressing the Googling, you are penalizing the slower players on both counts. Just adding difficulty makes a bit of sense, but by also increasing the time penalties, you are enabling the speed demons the opportunity of simply skipping the rare unfamiliar question while boosting their opportunity to win with fewer correct answers.

Wesley: Did I suggest that YOU suggested that? No, I did not.

The name is Dave atually.

I don't disagree with the idea of implementing new challenges, etc. I've been trying to steer this discussion that way for the last two days. However, with this faux issue out in the open, I'm talking about this now. The fact still remains a very small minority of the people are on this anti-googling crusade when the vast majority could care less. That's my position. Period.

bubbles: I agree. Something should be done, either difficulty or time penalty, but NOT both on top of each other. Seems extreme to me. Especially since googling (while it may have been a huge problem in the past) doesn't usually seem to give you any real rewards since changes implemented over the last year.

I think this whole thing is blown way out of proportion. I definitely think that the encyclopedia should be blocked.

But, think of the slow players who are some of the best on the site. JMElston often says he is a slower player, yet he gets immortal every Global Challenge. He has millions of points. He has loads of badges. Certainly speed demons do not always rule the roost. One misstep from them and they are toast.


MY SUGGESTION:

If there is a way to create a system, Terry, where the hourlies double or even triple your time when you Google, that would be great. Something that detects if people use Google, and say that they use Google for a question, lose some points. Google for a few answers, lose a lot of points. Google all of them, lose even more points.

If there was any way to make that sort of system, even FAST Googlers are penalized.



Edited to add:

Besides, this is FUNtrivia. Shouldn't we all just have fun, and if we lose, big deal? If we win, GREAT! New badge! But if we lose, so what? We're having fun, right?

Actually, I stopped listening to you months ago. Posts like this are simply obnoxious.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with discussing games, problems in them, and potential fixes. In fact, we'd be negligent if we didn't periodically discuss the state of our games.

Correct, and people are far more familiar with easy questions because we have far fewer of them, and they come up over and over and over again. Therefore the more difficult the questions get, the more unfamiliar in general players are with them.

This is fact, not something I am inventing. Look at times in the easy game vs smartest, or intro vs impossible. It's night and day.

If you want to discourage "speed demons", you *have* to make the questions more difficult.

If you want to stop that from then turning into a googling game, you *have* to raise time penalties.

So the only question is: do you or do you not want to discourage speedy click and scrolling from being a major determinant in KO? Personally, I don't care. But if your answer is, "yes, let's add some more mental skill to this game", then we need to do both of the steps above.

True, but now they only need to know 18/20 things without googling to beat my 20/20 in a slower time. How is that fair?

The part of the world I live in has freedoms attached to it. How dare anyone suggest that I or anyone else in my household cannot access ANY site (in another window) while linked to this one. What if my husband, who also uses this same IP happens to be googling ANYTHING while I'm playing a game on another computer? (note: he does NOT play funtrivia and couldn't be LESS interested in doing so and doesn't understand in the least why I spent so much time here lol). And what if he (or because he is terribly lax in preventing popups) gets sent to a p-orn site in error (or even NOT lol). Frankly, it is NOBODY'S business what people do offsite and if you make it so, I'm leaving.

And as far as java/flash is concerned.. go ahead. You have trouble enough getting folks to be GM's, yet you also expect them to update their systems to the superduperbestest as well? Give me a break.

This whole topic has gone from the sublime to the redonkulous

(sorry for that last, we just watched Shrek the Final lol)

How about a two level fix. Could you start by increasing the difficulty, but hold off on the time penalties? Then, if it seems as if Googling is affecting the game, then add in time penalties as necessary? It should be fairly obvious pretty quickly just based on the results of top few brackets. I am not disputing that there is a huge disparity between intro versus impossible, etc. However, I think you are not taking into account the upper echelon of players (many of them long-timers) in the top few brackets that will be familiar with many of the more difficult level questions as well, which will put a tremendous disadvantage on those in the upper levels who have not been around as long or played as many varied games as of now.

I don't understand.... with 20/20 you have a base score of 2000.

At 18/20 they have 1800.

At 2/second penalty, you would need to take 100 more seconds than them to lose. If you're taking 100 more seconds than an opponent who scores reasonably well to answer a quiz, then yes, you should lose.

None of this applies to you though:

Your average time last KO was 111 seconds.
The average for all players in your tournament was 84 seconds.

This means that even with a 2/second penalty, you'd win with 20/20 over the average player scoring even 19/20.

No matter what new system is implemented, the bigger brains and the more nimble-fingered will still find ways to win most of the time, in hourlies, KO or whatever. The rest of us mere mortals will still plod along, looking for a victory or two, and enjoy what we get.
Many of the best players don't play that often and others have moved on. You don't see Schoonie or Triviaballer etc playing the hourlies anymore. daBomb and Prison don't win ALL the time in KO. There are always new 'good ones' coming up and they pay their dues before rising to the top. Leave things the way they are. Just keep offering new challenges. That's what captures the interest of the FT 'nation'.

I bow to your knowledge, Terry, but suspect that Knockout might be another game I stop playing, which would be a shame.

"Here, here", ssabreman

It sounds like even the people (like you) who are most damaged and put at disadvantage by "speed click-and-scroll players" are completely happy with the game being a speed-click-and-scroll player game. I'm certainly not going to waste my time changing it!

I will be blocking this too. I just checked out server logs. A lot of people (including some people in this thread) appear to routinely do precisely that. Load the quiz page, hit submit, search for answer.

We can't prevent players from googling on the web, but we can sure take our own FunTrivia "answer sheets" offline!

As proof to Alex's point. I just got a 10/10 in 36 seconds in WTS. The reason why I got a good score was because I had seen all the questions before. Memorization will ALWAYS trump any advantage gained by googling.

Dave

It definitely will always trump, so a higher difficulty level will prevent memorization, too. Now, the smart but slow players will trump both memorization AND googling. I think the time penalty and added difficulty in KO is a good idea.

We must be careful when we generalize. Most of the people in this thread represent the top 0.5% of players.

While googling to you in WTS may offer no advantage, it does offer a massive advantage to newer players.

What's good for competition to higher level / experienced players is a lot different than what's good for competition for newer players.

Hmmm, that's a good point. I forget how different divisions are!