Added lev 100 mini-badge: The Centurion Champs

Congrats to those who already are eligible for it

I managed to be the first player to pick up this one. Thanks!

Happy New Badgelet Trivia!

This is a tough one. I have 3 champion divisions and 1 with over 1600. Darn it!

And there is NO way I will be getting 1600+ in Fill Me In...

Is this a gold member challenge? There is no gold star but it's saying I'm not eligible unless I sign up.

No, it's not a GM challenge. I've removed the check dr89.

I forgot about expert champ division!

Does Gold Madness not count as one of the champ badges?

Ohh, neat! Thanks very much!

Thanks! I've got it now.

Gold madness does not have a champion division.

That is true... I forget that just because there is a monthly does not mean there is a champion division.

Another surprise click-and-it's-yours badgelet. Thanks!

Added the level 150 big daddy: "Master Champion"

Ooh, I am only 4 away from that one. Oh, and 10 levels, of course.

Phew, one that didn't need any work! This compensates a bit for the ones I'm still struggling with.

Terry - Is the regular "free" Centurion part of the five to be placed at the level or is it outside the count?

5 was really just a rough number. I think over time we'll end up with a lot more than 5 at each range...

Just choose 5 of your choice to use as part of your little project. It doesn't matter to me. So you can include centurion if you want as one of them.

"Master Champion"

You mean all a guy has to do is win a champs division 7 times? For example, a certain somebody named me could win FMI 7 times in one day at level 150 and get it?

Oh, and thanks for the free badgelet earlier.

No -- you need to be in champion divisions in 7 different games.

I already am... but I have to wait to be level 150! Oh the suspense, the agony of waiting... I'm not very patient you know, I shall no fingernails left and my computer may get flung across the room! I may sue!

Only 15 levels to go

I'd rather not use it there. Nothing's for free in life

So in other words I just need to get to level 150 then? Well, 25 more levels to go!

Thanks for the badge only another 20 levels to go before I get two 150 level badges as I already qualify for both.

Upon further consideration, I have changed "Master Champion" from level 150 requirement to level 125.

Scoring monthly badges in 7 games is impressive enough -- this award doesn't need the extra challenge of 150. I think 125 is a lot more reasonable.

After reading this I claimed my Master Champion badge and I received my level upgrade but there is no new badge in my profile thanks for lowering the requirement by the way

Me ditto. I have a picture of the badge in my messages, a new level, and... no badge.

You probably realise that the badge needs re-doing by the way, maybe it should be renamed "7 Champs" or something like that?

I'm glad you lowered the requirement as well. 150 seems like a level that VERY few, if any, will ever attain.
I too have received notification of the badge, and extra level, but no badge appears. But it shows as 150 in the announcement. Probably still being altered at the tailors.
Thanks again.

Same for me. Also FYI, it has a graphic of a mega badge, says you go up one level, but lower in the writeup it says "mini-badge awarded."

I suspect patience will be a vurtue here.

Heh... please change the name then. It was so nice with all the 150s including "Master".

My suggestion would be "Grand Champion", using "Grand" as the 125 designator.


See my PM on the titles - I have an idea with those

Also a note to anyone SOBbing - you can safely discard those 3 letters and pick up new ones. And no, they won't remain valid for anything.

Cool, timed it right to be the first one. Though you could have left the level at, say, 145. ;-)

Or... maybe not. :-(

It said I won it, but no badge were awarded.

Darn. I was looking forward to earning that many champ badges, then being one of the first to cross 150 to earn it. But now that's it's at 125, I can't get it yet, as I only have 3 champs divisions. Haha. Oh well, gives me something more to shoot for. Haha.

Several issues.

1) got the email indicating I'd won the badge (OK)
2) points until next level indication at top right shows correct "next" level (OK)
but...
3) challenge page shows "Complete! Challenge finished and mini-badge awarded!" but it appears it's supposed to NOT be a "mini"
4) Check mark missing in menu on left side
5) No badge on profile
6) No credit to anyone on the badge page: http://www.funtrivia.com/badge_winners.cfm?bid=412

edit:
7) badge icon in email shows "150"

Why isn't Who Am I? credited towards the Master Champion badge and Who's The Expert is? Shouldn't it be the other way around when all you have to in Expert is win one little topic?

Apologies if I'm being dense, but I have a question about the Master Champion challenge. It shows as a non-gold badge, but since Who Am I? isn't being counted I only see 6 other non-gold games with a champions division. What am I missing?

Partially fixed, but it may have awarded a couple of badges based on incorrect reqs.

Will go through it all in a couple of hrs, gotta run right now.

Looks like it is (mostly) cleared up. (Had to do a hard refresh to load the new graphic)

Thanks!

I have credit for Obscure, but not for Gold Member? I have fully completed them both.

The problem is that the badge is counting stuff that shouldn't be. In fact, I'm confused myself as to what it should be counting.

It should be including the games with Champion Divisions.

Those are:

Mixed Game
Who's Smartest
Easy Game
Word Wizard
Fill Me In
Who am I

"Obscurity" and "Who's the Expert" are not champion divisions and do not count.

Therefore this badge should only count the 6 above.... correct?

I think that's right.

Expert has a Champion's Division but that doesn't count because it's done by category.
GM Madness and Obscurity both have Monthly badges but no Champions Division.

Which leaves the ones you've listed.

Technically, you could say Obscure doesn't have a Champs division. It's all thrown together, and there isn't a separation between winners and non-winners of the Obscure monthly badge. It does have an ELO page, via the link on the game page. WAI has a Champs division, but it's a daily, not an hourly. Expert has a Champs division. Much of this has to do with what is the definition of a Champs division. GMM doesn't have a Champ division, but it has a monthly badge. An idea might be to go by how many mothly badges somebody has. There are 9 I believe. WTS, Mixed, Speed Demon, (I hate the P of C name) GMM, Obscure, WW, WAI, Melt, and of course my fave--FMI. Then again, that could be different badge or badgelet.

"There is a Champs division in Obscure"

No -- every player gets an ELO in obscure. Clearly it has nothing to do with champions.

Ditto Expert, where all you need is a single victory to get an ELO. Completely different animal than the "Big 6".

It does however leave Who Am I? which I had forgotten earlier. This one has been a bit anomalous since it went from hourly to daily... it has sets for champions but no ELO.

( And yes, I'm unfortunately going to have to roll back those badges awarded in that hour window that it was open... it was awarding them based on bad data... )

I was editing my original response while you replied Terry. I realized there wasn't a champs division in Obscure, just an ELO because there was no separate division for monthly badge winners. If you could, please re-read. Thanks.

Are you awarding them now only to people who have all six? Or five out of six? I have all of them so it makes no difference to me... phew!

Maybe for simplicity sake we drop the "champion" stuff entirely and change it to consider monthly badges.

To allow non GMs, we exclude the gold GM games and make it:

Monthly Winner: Fill Me In
Monthly Winner: Mind Melt
Monthly Winner: Word Wizard
Monthly Winner: Who Am I?
Monthly Winner: Hard Game
Monthly Winner: Mixed Game
Monthly Winner: Easy Game

So we're back to 7 badges.

I like that a lot better, it's much cleaner.

Edit to add:

And we'd make the requirement to be 6 of those 7, to give people the chance to ignore one game they particularly hate.

On that basis I think that only one person who got the Master Champion's badge earlier would be affected, all the others have enough monthlies to count. Not sure how you feel about leaving badges with people who got them by mistake but no fault of their own... but it is Christmas.

If we bumped it up to requiring all 7, would everyone -1 person currently with it still comply with the requirement?

Hmm it looks like a few get tripped up on not having Mind Melt.

No, I'll keep it 6 of 7.

ssabreman and cubswin are the only ones short.

I'll leave things as they are if you two promise to earn 1 more monthly in the new year!

I just tried to claim the badge, but the page is telling me I don't have the monthly badge for Who Am I? or Mind Melt, both of which I do have...

I despise Mind Melt. The game would be greatly improved if the last 10 ?'s would be cut. A 20 question game of 10 syn.and 10 ant. would be a good game. There is already a monthly vocab game anyway. Word Wizard. The site is already on the arty side anyway.

I believe hourlies should be limited at 10 ?'s and dailies limited to 15. I would agree with keeping KO at 20 though. That's head-to-head.

I wouldn't mind a badge or badgelet for WTS division winners in a certain number of different categories. We have Movies, TV, Humanities, Animals, Religion, Sports, World, General, People, Sci & Tech, Music, Hobbies, Geography, History, and Lit. It's one thing to have good average score in WTS or to have a nice ELO. It's quite another to win a division in multiple categories in WTS. It's a real test to a person's ELO rating to try and win a category that may not be a person's specialty. Maybe we could call it the Da Vinci Badge/Badgelet or something.

No problems now -- thanks, Terry!

The badge will be a nice New Years Day gift. If I hadn't have missed playing a WAI day, I would have had it last month. It's been a thorn in my side for a while now. As long as I don't skip a day, I should get it.

Actually while you were typing that, I've come up with the solution to all our problems.

The requirements. The FINAL requirements are:

"Own any 7 monthly badges." (of the 9 available, including GM monthlies)

This:
a) fits those who have had it awarded so far
b) gives some flexibility
c) makes it a little tougher -- 6 was a little light
d) makes it POSSIBLE for non GMs, but more flexible for GMs, which fits into our model nicely.

Ok, level 125's "Legendary Champion" has been fixed and is open for business.

Well, okay. Yay! I won the badge. Thank you.

For the record, I wasn't trying to lobby to influence the rules to my advantage with the monthly badge wrinkle. It's just that the Champs division definition was a little murky. I was more than willing to wait until after the getting the WAI monthly first. I appreciate the badge though.

Thanks Terry, that means that I have now qualified for it and don't have to worry about WTS or mixed - thank goodness, I has dreading having to do those ones - they are in the 'someday' list
I now also have my first 'mega' badge. woo hoo!

The "champions division" thing actually bothered me because it didn't feel complete.

These "big badges" award completeness... accomplishing a great range of things over a period of time. I feel much better about the "7 monthly badges" requirement.

Super! My first Mega-Badge. I love it.

Happy Mega-Badge Trivia!

That is a much better fix, Terry (and now I'm MUCH closer than I was.

Well, okay. I do greatly appreciate the badge though. I would like to highlight what I mentioned earlier up the thread though. I do believe the multi-category win badge/badgelet idea in WTS is a good one. I'm not sure if you caught it in the criss-cross, but here's the idea:

I wouldn't mind a badge or badgelet for WTS division winners in a certain number of different categories. Maybe a badgelet for non-champs division, a full badge for champs division. We have Movies, TV, Humanities, Animals, Religion, Sports, World, General, People, Sci & Tech, Music, Hobbies, Geography, History, and Lit. Fifteen different categories. Maybe 12? It's one thing to have good average score in WTS or to have a nice ELO. It's quite another to win a division in multiple categories in WTS. It's a real test to a person's ELO rating to try and win a category that may not be a person's specialty. I think the ELO's in these divisions are skewed to specialists. This could encourage more WTS participation I believe. Maybe we could call it the Da Vinci Badge/Badgelet or something. If it's 11, maybe the Magnificent 11.

Thanks for the badge Terry.

Thanks for the last change Terry! Just made it. Glad since Mindmelt and WAI are the only two I am missing! Love the mega badge!

I'm glad you worked it out like that, Terry, that's a good solution. I like the idea of giving GMs a bit more wriggle room while still making the badge available to non-GMs.

Now, can I interest you in a mega-mega badge for the sad people who have all nine? No? I thought not.

Ooooh, this was an exciting thread to read! The last time I looked the criteria for the Champion badge was 7 categories with champions divisions - and I was short 'Fill Me In' (though I'm working on that this month, so just under three weeks away I thought ...).

Then, reading this thread and Terry's developing thought processes, I was thinking 'yes I've got it already' ... 'no, I haven't' ... yes ... no ... maybe .... YES YES!

Only (minor)thing is it seems the badge isn't awarded automatically to qualifying players, you have to go to the Challenges area and click on the badge to actually get it. Since there are a lot of changes recently on the site and not everyone follows the discussions on the Froums, could it be awarded automatically?

It looks swell by the way!

Hopefully my 7 Monthly badges will now be sufficient to remove me from the 'doghouse'.

Two things:

1. Of course the ELO ratings are skewed towards specialists. We all have our specialties that we enjoy and we play them. We do well, we go up in rating.

2. Your idea of this new badge will only encourage more Googling in the WTS game. I, and most of the others who have a high ELO rating in WTS have earned it fairly without the use of Google. As you are already one of the ones who do use Google, I can see why you have no problem with this.


A friend of mine once told me that the hourlies have gone from "Who is the best?" to "Who Googles the fastest?" Expert has been that way for a while (I still don't see what pride there is in using Google in the hourlies. I tried when Expert was first created and it wasn't worth it.), but I keep going along earning my wins the fair way without the use of a search engine. But, I refused to agree with him on the other games. If this badge gets created, then he will be 100% right. If this badge does get implemented, I will stop playing WTS. I will not go against a bunch of Googlers in WTS.

The ELO is of minor importance to me. The ELO is there for entertainment purposes. The thing I'm concentrating on is an idea for a new badge/badgelet. To create something that makes FT better. My vision is clear on this.

Your "vision" does not make Funtrivia better. Refer back to my second point in my last post, and if the ELO rating was of minor importance to you, you wouldn't have mentioned it so many times. In fact, you wouldn't have mentioned it at all. You could have made the same point about a new badge without bringing up ELOs.

I honestly don't get this reasoning. Why is your win more fair because you may have taken a geography course or lived in more countries while I "fairly" beat you using google? The time element is the great equalizer in a game like WTS. I have to weigh whether taking extra time may beat guessing at times. Why should someone have more "pride" from getting an answer they guessed, while I took the risk to burn time to get the correct answer? So, it isn't worth it to you to Google, maybe that isn't in your skillset. If someone can google and still win the time test in a game like WTS, why are you more righteous? It really baffles me. And, yes, I am one of the higher rated WTS players and I occasionally google. So, you are already against a bunch of "Googlers". I guess that means I might move up the ranks as you will be stopping your play?

Why am I more righteous? Because I lived and died by my own knowledge. There are some games here where Googling is encouraged, but WTS is not one of them. Why do you think the time penalty was bumped up from one point per second to two points per second? It certainly wasn't to encourage looking up answers.


EDIT: No, I do not play against a bunch of Googlers now. There are a handful here and there, but if this badge that is being talked about gets created, a lot more will come out. When that happens, we might as well get rid of the hourlies as the people who do not Google in the hourlies, like myself, will be at a severe disadvantage. Either that or bump the time penalty to five points per second like I originally called for. That will stop any and all Googling in the hourlies.

Well, fight for more bumping, but as I am leading in TV right now with a 39 -- and I googled -- not sure what you are expecting. So, yes, you play against a bunch of googlers right now. That is what makes it, for some, FUN trivia! For the record, did you refuse to take open book tests in college? Or was that not letting you live and die by your own knowledge?

It's funny that you bring that up. I did refuse to use books and/or legal cheat sheets. I may not have received the best grades, but I earned what I got. I sure could have used one in Accounting, but I enjoy earning what I get when I am being timed and tested.

Hmmmmmm, but you didn't refuse to take classes where open books were allowed although others scored better through their legal methods? Are you getting the conundrum yet? Why not let everyone play with their strengths? You enjoy being timed and tested, others enjoy the thrill of the timing with Google help.

How would I know what teachers allow open book tests? That isn't something they tell you when you are registering. That makes no sense.

Anyway, I guess earning what you get on your own merit and fair play mean nothing to you. That's your prerogative. Just know that everything I have done in the hourlies was by my own brain. If I want to Google, I'll go do the Bus Ride.

Actually, we just disagree about what fair play means. And you can make snotty comment after snotty comment -- that doesn't change for me. I will still be just as educated, still have a great life, still enjoy the site immensely, and still think Google is fair play. Agree to disagree.

And maybe it is different in different colleges, but every course I took I knew exactly the kinds of exams I would have going in. That is called research. Like the kind that can be found on Google! Maybe the East Coast is different, lol. And if I want to Google? I guess I will just have to win another WTS in 39 seconds.

And in the process, cheat other players who didn't Google out of a win, bonus points, and/or a badge.

Great, find me the cheating rule?

In Ontario (thanks to the government), universities are required to outline an exact structure of marking and expectations on the first day of lectures including each assignment/test grade weighting. Any changes made to the syllabus after the fact must be done well in advance, otherwise students can demand the specifications listed from day 1.

Off-topic, but true!

From Terry:

Another addendum:

Players who accuse other players of cheating will be removed from this website with no warning. We simply cannot tolerate players being nasty to one another.

If you have a specific concern with another player, contact an administrator.


So, let's hear it? I have a specific concern.

Love Canada! My research was just asking other students who had taken the class, and now they have websites devoted to outlining class structures, but I like the idea!

"Cheating is defined as any action undertaken by a FunTrivia user to unfairly inflate or manipulate game scores, challenge scores, tournament scores, or quiz rankings in any manner. This is usually done through collusion (sharing information with someone else), or through multiple accounts (play a game with player A, then use that knowledge to help player B)."

http://www.funtrivia.com/cheating.cfm


Googling is manipulating the scores.

So would asking the person next to you if that's the case. :s



Neither of these refer to Googling.


If either of you have issues with cheating, please consult the administrators as they are the ones who would be apt to deal with such a situation. As it says in the Cheating post at the top of this forum (at http://www.funtrivia.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/310340#Post310340):



and



and

Kyle, it says "usually."

Terry? Is using Google "manipulating" the score? Has it been banned from this site? Not in the rules as of now. If not, please explain again the cheating accusation rules. Or this is all just false. Can these accusations and snotty comments just go on for hours? This is really ridiculous.

Since there is at least a 75% chance you wouldn't have got that 10/10 and you used to Google to achieve that 10/10, it is manipulating the score.

And you get the 75 percent from where? You have no clue how many I Googled. Arguing with you is worthless. All accusations, and name-calling with no facts. I will end this by waiting for Terry's response.

Four options with one right answer. 75% of getting it wrong by guessing.

More than one question being Googled makes it more than 75%


EDIT: And I didn't call you any names.

I'm an English major with a penchant to be bad at math, but if you have ten questions with four answers each, and each question has one right answer, technically isn't it always a 75% chance of getting it wrong by guessing? If not, I am math-illiterate and will succumb to my lack of knowledge.

Or I'll Google it.

Or not.

One question has four possibilities. A, B, C, or D. Factor in another question and there are many more answer possibilities to choose from. A and B, A and C, A and D, even A and A. B and C, B and B, etc. This is why getting 10/10 by just guessing is as close to impossible as impossible gets.

Googled two. Want to change your math?

1/4 answer options correct is the same as 10/40 answer options in terms of ratios. I'm getting myself screwed up.

This is why I don't do math.
No more off-topic for me; I'm overtired. :P

It doesn't work that way, Kyle. lol



AA, AB, AC, AD, BB, BC, BD, CC, CD, DD. Ten possibilities to guess correctly on two questions. Divide by two and we are now at least 80% chance of you guessing incorrectly on one of them. Sure, I'll change my math.


EDIT: Sorry. 80% chance of guessing incorrectly on both of them. Or is it one of them? Either way, that's a lot of combinations and that's a big number.

EDIT: I got it! There's a 10% chance of guessing them both right. ten combinations and only one is right.

Math stopped being my strong suit when they started adding letters into it.
So I took their letters and departed for the world of English.

"Who is the best?" to "Who Googles the fastest?"

"If someone can google and still win the time test in a game like WTS, why are you more righteous?"

"Why is your win more fair because you may have taken a geography course or lived in more countries while I "fairly" beat you using google? The time element is the great equalizer in a game like WTS."

etc. etc. etc.

I have a couple of questions. Being a player that will never be in either the 'elite' ELO raters or a fast googler, is it really necessary to argue what type of strategy deserves, merits or earns a badge? Just observe the recent times it takes to win most of the hourly games at the higher level. Does it come down to google fast or true knowledge? Or does it come down to having played so many times, you don't have to read the questions, just the answers. Is the "skill" of being a fast clicker really a rewarding venture?

As for zipping out a 10/10 score in WTS in 39 seconds is outstanding, then adding in the cut/paste/search factor while googling two questions......whatever.

My motto is simple: Live and let live.

Exactly, Leelee. Live and let live. Let the people play as they want. No argument SHOULD be necessary. Yet some have different rules.

All I wanted was fair play by everybody here. No open books, no cheat sheets, no search engines while we are in direct competition with each other. But, you know what? You're right. Who am I to dictate how other people play? I'll openly say that I was wrong here, and if Terry wants to give me the boot, that's his right. I'll abide by his decision. I'm sorry Bubbles, and everybody else who read this.

You should not get the boot, and I appreciate your comments. Again, we all have a different definition of "fair play".

I'm still in awe of the 39 second perfect score while googling two questions. I mean really? How can others compete with that talent? Not to mention the talent of having played so much, you don't even need a question - just the answers. That was more my point.

Hopefully, this puts this thing to bed once and for all. Good night everybody.

Peace,

Dave

I am in awe of 'fast googling' - I cannot read the questions and answers, pick one, scroll to the next question any faster than an average of about 4 seconds a question, coming down to 3 in the Easiest game. Even without taking time to google, I am not competitive for speed! And I bet I have a lot of company.

If I were omnipotent and could prevent it, yes, I would prohibit googling from many of our games. I personally believe that these games should be a challenge of knowledge and memory -- not answer lookup.

That said, it cannot be policed. It is absolutely impossible for us to ever determine whether someone is googling or not, and therefore even debating whether it's right or wrong is completely pointless. I think it's against the spirit of the game, but some people don't.

We must accept that this is something that some people choose to do, and as such create disincentives in games (usually time penalties) to discourage such use.

What I'd like to know is, what precisely do you google when seeking answers to questions?

What % of the time when you google a question do you get the answer from a Funtrivia.com page?

And what % of the time do you find your answer on a site unrelated to FunTrivia?

I'm with Bubblesfun on this. I rarely google in Hourly games - I'm not quick enough to make it effective, and I've a good memory anyway - but I'm doing it a bit in FMI at the moment. I think there's a skill - as well as a lot of luck - to fast googling, and I don't really see any value difference between that and someone who's played the questions so many times that they know the answers by rote.

When I do google it's no better than 50:50 whether anything useful will come up in time. I bang in two or three key words, hope that the google page will load without a delay, and THEN hope I can read something helpful from the two-line summary associated with the top couple of pages without having to actually open a page up (which I've no time to do). They're never FunTrivia pages because you'd need to open them up to get any info. Sometimes messing about with google badly backfires and I'm left with a low score and a slow time - ah well!

What I do know is that googling at speed mentally reinforces the answer for the future, so if the objective of quizzing is to learn then actually it's a pretty effective method.

If I could work out a method for googling all 15 questions for Obscurity in 300 seconds I'd be well chuffed! How DO people win the Obscure Researcher badge?

Personally I don't have an issue with googling speed is still awarded over research with time penalties but if you really want to prevent at least a good portion of googling why not just get rid of the Funtrivia Encyclopedia page? That is just a giant answer sheet right there, I can find half the answers to my authored quizzes alone on there.

I presume the Encyclopedia page on cheating is supposed to cover this.

http://www.funtrivia.com/en/cheating.cfm

You learn something every day. I've been on this site over a year and, till just now, have never come across this Encylopedia. Whee!

I agree with many others that the best way to control googling is the time penalty on the games. Googling answers under pressure is one of the ways many players build their knowledge base, so it surely should not be eliminated entirely, but it shouldn't be possible to win a Smartest, Expert or Daily Mix by googling half of the answers.

On the other hand, there are slower players around who need more time to play a quiz without google than someone who looks up two or three out of fifteen. However, we have a tool just for this and it's called "levels".

Now what I am proposing may be a bit tough to implement, but ultimately it may lead to better gameplay: On those games where googling should be discouraged, two scores are kept - one is the standard score we use for the monthly average and the FT points (which is calculated the same for all players regardless of level), the other is used for ranking within a division (which is not).

So, for example, Smartest could use

1/second on levels 1-20
1.5/sec on 21-40
2/sec for 41-53
3/sec for 54-67
4/sec for 68+
and 6/sec for Champions.

(Note: It might be easier to code this by not varying the time penalty but by changing the question value for intra-division ranking. In this case, a correct question could be 200, 125, 100, 65, 50 and 30 points respectively with the time penalty always being 2.)

Since inherently slower players tend to stay at lower to medium levels, they will not have their fun negatively be affected by this progression while at the top levels and at champion level, knowledge and memorization will more and more trump even the fastest googling and also add a signficant feeling of playing at a truly higher level in the top tourneys.

This may also require one additional change to be made to expert (which might in general be a good one): When winning any level division but the top one, you are not immediately placed into Champion where a lower level player will be completely out of their depth (in many cases, the winner of the 1-20 division has far less a score than the 10th in 76+ or champ) but only raised to the next higher group for that topic. So a level 34 with 2 wins in Physics would be playing that topic with the 47-60 group and the level display for that person would show something like "34 (+2)".

Wes

The encyclopedia exposes data to google in order to give us deep indexing. We receive LOTS of traffic, and lots of new players through people googling stuff in Google and coming to FunTrivia because of it. While quiz "play" pages are googled, all of the interesting info is hidden. By sharing this info with Google, Google sends us a lot of love.

So it does serve a very important role in keeping FunTrivia a high visibility website.

There are things that I could do to severely impair its use. For example, whenever you click play on a game, your IP address is put on a "temporary encyclopedia block list". Then, for the duration of that game, you will be blocked from viewing the encyclopedia. This would prevent a great majority of its use from active players. Perhaps I'll implement this some day, but it hasn't seemed to be a huge problem to me.

I had no clue about it until now either! I have come across some of the "fun facts" pages along the way, but I thought they were just something random, not an organized encyclopedia.

It is organized, but it doesn't cover everything. If a person were to memorize it would help a ton. Googling can help yes, but its benefits can only take a person so far. For me, repetition has always been the most beneficial for me. If anybody here knows how much I have benefitted from doing things over and over and over again, it's you Alex. And over and over aaaaand over! FMI and Speed Demon in particular favors the obsessive type! lol

Now to get BACK to the discussion I wanted to talk about originally back on Friday. I am proposing a badge or badgelet which covers those who have won a WTS division in mulitple categories. My vision is STILL clear on this, and I think I merits a discussion. There are 15 categories in WTS, I like the idea of 10-12. Something bigger for all 15 maybe. It's like Expert badges for Jack of Many or All Trades. I believe WTS is THE signature game of the hourlies, and I find it puzzling WW has had more new stuff done for it than WTS. Perhaps something similar could be done for P of C. I think it would be really neat Terry. I really like the Da Vinci idea. It's a strong vision I have, and I think folks will like it.

I think Googling defeats the purpose of taking competitive quizzes.

That said, it isn't "cheating" to Google answers. I just think its not that fair to those who play from their mind, but thats just my opinion.

Several people have compared remembering questions from previous games by a few key words, and not reading the questions or answers, to Googling - as in both of them aren't educational.

But there have been efforts to crack down on this. Why do you think we have a Question Quest game? Why do you think we have so many authoring badges to encourage people to submit more quizzes? So we're fighting against THAT problem, just as we should fight against this one.

One thing that people seem to have overlooked:

Internet connection. It is extremely hard for me to score the best in timed games because my computer spend 5-10 seconds each game loading the page or submitting my answers. 5-10 seconds is quite important when you get to the top-three scores.

But I don't think it should be made even harder for me to do well because of my internet connection. I simply CAN'T google it (it would take to long) if I want to get one of the top scores - and neither can all of those who perhaps don't have enough money to upgrade our computers to the fastest modern ones.

Therefore, if there aren't increased efforts to crack down on Googling, its just discriminating against slower-internet connections, and in a round-about way, poorer people.

Now to get BACK to the discussion I wanted to talk about ORIGINALLY back on Friday. I am proposing a badge or badgelet which covers those who have won a WTS division in mulitple categories. My vision is STILL clear on this, and I think I merits a discussion. There are 15 categories in WTS, I like the idea of 10-12. Something bigger for all 15 maybe. It's like Expert badges for Jack of Many or All Trades. I believe WTS is THE signature game of the hourlies, and I find it puzzling WW has had more new stuff done for it than WTS. Perhaps something similar could be done for P of C. I think it would be really neat Terry. I really like the Da Vinci idea. It's a strong vision I have, and I think folks will like it.

I WILL talk about this again and again until it gets the discussion it merits. Period. The other discussion is SETTLED!

Perhaps WTS can get a mini-game of its own like Word Wizard and KO at some point in the future. Right now thought it's a fairly straightforward hourly game.

<< Therefore, if there aren't increased efforts to crack down on Googling, its just discriminating against slower-internet connections, and in a round-about way, poorer people. >>

You have no idea what discrimination is, do you?

Lol, I'll admit discrimination isn't exactly the word I was looking for. But anyone who knows what discrimination means gets what I mean.

You're great value, Portgleep - love it!

Perhaps I need to create a "poor people assistance" squad, which will appear at the doors of "poor people" and help them cheat more effectively.

I'll get right on it.

Terry, I really don't think that portgleep meant to say that FT was discriminatory.

I believe he was still responding to Anton, and trying to say that onerous time penalties would hurt people who are slow, but not because they Google... just because they have real-life issues that make them slow.

Okay, so we all must have the same computer speed, server speed, instant recall ability, click-speed etc. And at the end of the game, we are all tied with the same score. Yippee!

You can't please everyone all the time. Not every game is going to be 100% 'fair' to everyone, nor should every game be... they'd get awfully monotonous if the structure and rules were the same for every game on site. Some games have huge time penalties, others have none. Some games require a lot of typing, some more scrolling. Find the ones that work for you and your situation and play them. That doesn't mean don't try the other ones, but just realize it's not likely that you're going to win all of them. Most people are NOT going to win every badge on the site, ever. Or at least definitely not in the first couple of years they're a member. Maybe this time next year you'll have a faster computer/internet connection and can make a real play for some of the speed badges. Or maybe you'll have developed carpal tunnel and will be slower, who knows! Just have fun! There's definitely something on the site for everyone.

What I have never understood is how some people believe they have a "right" to win every game on FunTrivia, and that if it's not possible for them to come 1st in something that something must be broken.

Like life, there are some things on FunTrivia that you will never have any chance of winning. It's all about playing to your strengths, avoiding your weaknesses. Me personally? I probably couldn't win most of our games. I just don't play much trivia nor do I retain much. That's life.

The central design goal is that knowledge should beat googling in ANY game. If you have the knowledge, you shouldn't be beatable by someone with less knowledge who is googling. Perhaps that's a little slimmer in some games than others, but this is our goal.

If you are not winning and don't know the knowledge, then you have no right to complain about not winning.

Hooray!


See, my plan is to write enough questions where I don't need to memorize other peoples'. One day, all of the questions in the hourlies will be mine and no one will stop me! BWA HA HA!

There are games (and badges/badgelets) that I 'know' I will never get, but every so often, I get one I would never really want to be no. 1, even though that is what I am trying to be

Let's face it, everyone comes here to FT for different reasons. Some come to learn a little each day by taking a quiz or two. Some come to play FT games like they are a type of arcade game. Others come for a mixture of both. That's me. I enjoy adding to my knowledge, but I enjoy the competition against others, some who are half my age, in the hourly games. I applaud the many who can complete PoC in under 14 seconds. That's my rare best. I play WtS topics that I know well and disregard topics like TV that hold no interest for me.
If I can beat one of the best in a certain game, I take that as a victory. But I accept my many 11th place finishes as par for the course. I look for any edge I can to stay close to the leaders, but I don't expect to win every game. I may google, or refer to an info card that I wrote to help me remember some fact or spelling demon or whatever. For me to compete against the photographic brains on FT takes a bit of strategy. This is not steroids, it's strategy to compete in the GAMES. That's what they are. If you just want to learn things, stay with the quizzes. Otherwise, bring your best to the games.

Hmmmmmmmmm. Steroids. Now there is an avenue I have not yet explored! Watch out!

I am editing this from what I said earlier.

Daryl, you, me and Alex have competed very hard in the past against each other in FMI. I never have recalled it EVER being about methodology. It was always about making the fewest mistakes and typing as accurate and as fast as we could...and beating the robots!

...and getting rid of those devil Phantom and Les Mis questions! Ugh! lol

Exactly. I'm not disputing your stance. I'm saying 'do what you have to do' to compete. But NO steroids!

Criss-cross there. I edited while you were responding. I didn't real it all in full Daryl. My bad. I had to be there for my fam.

I am ALL about the flaxseed oil though! lol

"Flaxseed oil--it makes the cranium big!"

That should be right up there with the "Milk--It does the body good" ads! HA!

lol at Kyle.. there's the spirit!

Sigh on the rest. I'm never going to win certain games, because I'm slow. Not slow as in stupid, just a slow reader and a terrible decision maker lol. I don't blame the games, or their setup, or my arthritis or my internet connection. I don't think it's "unfair" that many people are more skilled than I am at whatever it takes to get the job done. If I don't win something it's entirely MY fault. I'm not a good "googler" either, and if anyone is using wiki lately, they are crazy since with the new "ads" asking for financial support, the site takes about an extra 45 seconds to fully load!

I've played competitive soccer for 15 years now. I've scored one goal (as a goalie) 12 as a sweeper and 15 as a midfielder. Not bad for an old f-art, but does that mean I think I have the "right" to go to the Olympics and win gold? Get real lol.

I'm just here for the fun, am happy (and continually surprised) to get whatever badges come along. And because I'm here for the fun, am getting really really tired of people who can't find anything better to do than complain about minor details and who can't seem to appreciate what a great "gift" we have been given here.

Thankfully 98% of the folks here are not in that category (even though it may SEEM like more since the squeaky wheel is usually the loudest lol). Perhaps the people who ARE perfectly happy with the site should speak up more in public and the people who have "gripes" with certain others could conduct their "differences of opinion" in PM's.

Apologies, as usual, for going on so long that nobody reads it lol

I sure hope you're not talking about me. Cause I completely agree with almost everything people have said. I don't complain about the games being to hard or whatever either. I have no chance of beating so many of the FTs - especially because of my age. Just saying that I think we should try to stop Googling as much as possible, for a few reasons including that only some have the privilege of being able to Google.

I'm testing an interesting cheat-prevent modification...

What are the top 5 games where googling is an issue, in your opinions?

Obviously not Piece-of-Cake - the questions are quite easy there, so that game is more about speed than needing to look up answers.

Definitely word wizard, because its so easy to look up.

Terry, your encyclopedia block works fine

One step of many to come.

It may be working TOO well at the moment. I have played nothing whatsoever in the last 7 hours due to sleep and see only blank pages.

As to your question which games need protection the most, here's my list:

Word Wizard, Smartest, Expert, Piece of Cake, Who am I, Hourly Mixed, New Question should all have full protection - whatever you can think of.

Daily, World Quiz, Pot of Gold, Fill Me In, Knockout, Global Challenge, Gold Madness, Mind Melt - all of these seem to be working well and complaint-free with the current "controlled by time penalty" setup. Maybe increase the time penalty on Knockout to 2/sec and revise the penalty structure a bit on the GC to better cope with its scoring model based on 100s, but all of these could IMO remain under the existing rules.

Obscurity, Team Heroes, Team v Team - should be explicitly allowing/encouraging research. In Obscurity, we have the researcher badge and in the team games, encouraging people to play well for their team should be key.

As to your question which games need protection the most, here's my list:

Word Wizard, Smartest, Expert, Piece of Cake, Who am I, Hourly Mixed, New Question should all have full protection - whatever you can think of.

Daily, World Quiz, Pot of Gold, Fill Me In, Knockout, Global Challenge, Gold Madness, Mind Melt - all of these seem to be working well and complaint-free with the current "controlled by time penalty" setup. Maybe increase the time penalty on Knockout to 2/sec and revise the penalty structure a bit on the GC to better cope with its scoring model based on 100s, but all of these could IMO remain under the existing rules.

Obscurity, Team Heroes, Team v Team - should be explicitly allowing/encouraging research. In Obscurity, we have the researcher badge and in the team games, encouraging people to play well for their team should be key.

[/quote]

One problem with that is most of the games have a team element now, it's not just TvT and Heroes anymore.

And while I have everyone's attention: Could we have an official, sticky "Propose a challenge" thread? As it is right now, we often see new badge ideas taking over a thread or a good idea stuck on page 7 of something else.

I'd volunteer to moderate / maintain such a thread if it were created.

cubs, I know that. However, there is a severe difference between the two games actually labeled "team" and the rest of the bunch and that is that for the two "team" games, there is no individual competition. There are only the achievement badges and the ones based on team points. The incentive to play well on these games solely comes from helping your team.

On the other games, the team points are a side effect of individual play. These games are not so much decided by a joint team effort, but by the number of individual players in the top ranks. The team score is a nice side statistic, but at the end of the next month, it is forgotten.

So I would say there is still quite a difference and that should be reflected in the rules - the two team games are about participating and giving your best for a common cause, the individual games with a team score are just that and when you win those, it's usually "yay, I won", not "Whee, I just scored a 200 for the team".

Wes

As far as I'm concerned, and I don't think I'm alone, I only play some of the hourlies for the sake of the points my team gets... and I usually go on playing them until I've got a score that I think will get reasonable points for the team, not 200 necessarily but as good as I can manage, given that I'm not a fast player. If I get a good score in the first game I play that's good enough and I don't play any more during the day but if I don't, then I go on playing.

I am getting fed up, again, with the constant paranoia that assumes that people with slow times must be googling and calls for the imposition of yet more penalties based on time. Sure, it's fine to block the encyclopaedia - the idea that using Google presents you with the answer provided on the same site that's setting the question is a bit odd, lol - but please, can't we just get off the "they must be googling" bandwagon? There are clearly a lot of people with slow times who don't google, and some with fast times who do, so lumping all slow players into the same pot won't solve the problem. Assuming it is a problem in the first place. And making things so bad for slow players that they can't ever win will simply drive people away.

Some people are so desperate to win the same games time and time again that they want to introduce every penalty and preventative device they can think of; I don't think that makes them any better than people who google.

On the subject of the new badges, particularly the Legendary Champion, whilst it is open to non-GMs I fear it is all but out of reach. I already have the 7 required monthly badges, but I am only at level 105. The 20 more levels required would take many years to complete now. Points bonuses get further apart at higher levels and I seem to average about 1 million points per year. The remaining badges (including the elusive duck and editor's picks) would require authoring many quizzes, volunteering and leaving my team and becoming a leader, many of which I don't have the time nor the inclination to pursue. Someone with better actuarial skills than mine could probably tell me if I would ever achieve it in my lifetime.

Likewise the Challenge Crusher (and its big brother) is open to non-GMs, but as most mini challenges are GM only it isn't possible to attain.

I applaud Terry's work and continued innovation with new badges and challenges, but having a "carrot on a stick" that is unobtainable is a bit demoralising.

May I suggest that they are made GM only and then they are not taunting the non-GMs.
(Of course any lapsed GM with a cache of badges could attain these).

Mark

Me too. I'd especially hate to see increased time penalties on Knockout where I quite often lose on day one despite getting all questions correct, but in 100+ seconds (without using Google, I might add). It's one of the few games I play on a regular basis any longer.

Sometimes it's just plain, ol', crippling indecisiveness. :p

(Repost:) Terry, it seems your Encyclopedia block works too well. I can't view it (all topic pages come up entirely blank) even while not playing any games or quizzes. Shouldn't a submit reset the block?

<< Shouldn't a submit reset the block? >>

No, but there was a bug... fixed.

<< Word Wizard >>

I'm not sure there is anything that can be done to stop someone from looking up something in word wizard. They could be playing with a big paper dictionary next to them for all we know.

Or they could be on a Mac. If you type any word into the search bar on a Mac it comes up with the definition.

Testing again...

logged out - did not work yet.
logged back in - did (obviously you had just fixed it).

started hourly mix - blocked as it should be (although there's a variable #session.login# instead of the name)

submitted for 0 - still blocked.
logged out and back in - still blocked.

9 minutes after game - still blocked.

Edit: 16 minutes, still blocked.

Edit again: 29 mins, hourly has ended and scored, block still there.

Wesley: I don't see how Word Wizard can be "helped" by increased penalties or trying to block people from accessing the hundreds of dictionary websites out there. I also don't think it's a big problem in that game. If you take the time to google, you're not going to get a very good score - certainly not good enough to win the monthly badge at any rate.

Word Wizard has been "helped" immensely (as far as play quantity goes) by the "side games". Why mess with a good thing?

Terry: your new program is working fine re: the encyclopaedia

Flopsy/SpanishLiz: I agree with most of your posts. I would argue that googling is NOT a big issue ever since time penalties were initiated (take, for instance, Gold Member Madness - I think putting in SOME sort of penalty was a "good thing" but perhaps it went a tad far). Just because certain "elite" players on this site want everything THEIR way, doesn't necessarily mean it's "right" or, more importantly "ENJOYABLE". I applaud their expertise, but if the only way you can win MOST badges around here is by being the FASTEST, then you WILL lose the interest of most of the general public on many games. Not that the elitists would care of course lol.

Kyle: perzactly

To nobody in particular: I realise most people in this world don't have alot of expendable income, and while I sympathise, I also think if they can afford internet access (and please don't try to tell me that the non GM folks who are on here 12-24 hours per day are doing it from a public library), then they should be able to afford a membership. It's under $40 for a WHOLE YEAR. That's less than it would cost to take your family out for dinner ONCE. That's less than it would cost to take your family to a movie, with snacks, ONCE. It's nearly impossible to run a site like this with no income at all, unless the owner is a millionaire with a heart of gold lol.

And while I'm on this subject, are there any plans to allow folks to sign up for MORE than one year at a time? I for one, would appreciate it.

Wesley: I agree about the sticky thread. It is difficult to wade through many seemingly non-related pages. "Gems" can be missed easily without a specific vault to put them in.

I agree with Flopsy and Liz. People who google tend to get slower times, and it doesn't usually pay off. And seriously, how many people haven't googled at least one question to make sure that last question is correct so you can get 100% on an hourly?

Jakeroo, I never suggested WW to have a higher penalty. This is a game where googling would need to prevented by different means if it is to be done (a fast googler can get the result in 3-4 seconds on a simple definition). I suggested it possibly for knockout (because it's the last 20-question daily running on 1/sec where all others use 2) and to make the existing penalty more effective in the GC (where currently 50 secs and 136 secs yield the same advancement - having a step around 100 would be better than the current one at 50 that only benefits the very few fastest games).

Wesley: that's fine. It's being very conservative right now. If it knows you are playing hourly/daily games, it will be unavailable pretty much all the time.

Someone kindly gave me some gift certificates recently... if you add them to your account one at a time then it extends your membership period. So if you want to get more than a year's membership, maybe buy yourself a certificate?

In general I have been reluctant to do more than 1 year, because frankly I don't like being obligated to people for X years from now. I have no idea what things will be like in 2013!

Let's not forget questions 18-20 in KO are QQ . Also, Mixed and New Questions are ALL QQ. They can't be found anyway. On the new ideas thread, I think it's a good idea. Also, I'm with flopsy. My opinion is this is a case of overcorrection. I don't a whole lot of benefit in changing something only a small few have an issue with.

Wouldn't simply blocking for 5 to 10 minutes after your last "start game" click do the job just as well? The only situation I see where this would not work is Expert where the pages for any particular topic (and only that topic) essentially would need to be blocked from 6 hours before the game so you can't call them up beforehand?

Edit: Besides, anyone who truly wants to cheat by preloading encyclopedia pages will simply download the whole thing using some web spider (most likely from a different IP too) and then have them once and for all. Not that THAT is a likely scenario...

I can not imagine why more time penalties would be needed in Knockout. It is already a crazy fast game where I can consistently get a 20/20 with no googling and still lose based on speed. For me, it feels almost like the easy game, with more questions, in terms of speed. It is already such a race, at least in the higher levels, that I don't see where time penalties would be necessary. I have to sympathize with some earlier posters in that not every game needs to be a pure speed game. It is not about googling, it is just the fact that not everyone is creepy fast. At that point, you are simply giving a pure advantage to those that play the same games over and over, with no chance for anyone else.

Ok, so we've got looking up via the encyclopedia. Clearly something that can be prevented.

I notice that many question queries in google lead to the source quiz.

Is it ever time-efficient to click through to one of those quizzes, click submit, and try to find the answer in the answer page? Is this something that needs to be blocked too, or does that sequence take too long to pose a problem?

Anything can be done, but statistically speaking, zero FunTrivia players use the encyclopedia (it is for google guest benefit, which is a little ironic since we're trying to stop googlers... haha). It's far easier to place broad blocks.

I takes long, besides you could easily detect it if someone does it a lot. I would not go as far as blocking that.

I'll probably tweak knockout a bit to make questions in the higher tournaments more difficult than those in the lower tournaments, and crank up penalties a tad.

I think it's a bad idea. Once again, it just benefits those have been playing KO forever. I'd like to restate questions 18-20 are QQ. I have found that has made KO much more difficult now. Again, I think googling is something only a very few have an issue with.

Actually, I just checked... when I originally built knockout I designed it so that different tournaments could use different difficulty questions, so I can easily turn that feature on. I'll do that this week.

I think going to 2 sec / question is reasonable too.

If people are saying that it is just like the "easiest game", and it does appear to be that way in the top few tournaments, then we're getting away from the point of this game -- to award the player who has more knowledge than the others, not who can scroll and click the best.

I'm curious -- what do you want access to the encyclopedia for?

In fact, my wife (Lwaxy) is using it occasionally to read up about things because it nicely puts information in one place.

I personally don't use it.

My "I would not go as far" also referred to quizzes only - you could detect quickly if someone regularly submits low scores (0s) on quizzes shortly after starting a timed game.

I am working on a far more air-tight approach, where it will allow access to anyone, but will simply not display any questions that are active in any game.

I don't think the KO game is like the easy game at all! I find it extremely difficult, and I hardly ever advance, let alone with the week.

Terry, what about the questions in the Obscure game? They are so obscure that it would be really difficult to win those badges without the Encyclopedia for help.

Sorry to disagree, boss, but I don't, if what you mean is 2 pts/sec (as suggested by someone earlier). This only encourages the quick "scroll and click" players, and lets us slow old codgers out again. Like I said, I frequently lose with 20/20 even now, why make it even harder?

I went up to the higher divisions in KO some months ago, since when I've rarely won and barely scraped a point or two each month because the speed merchants rule. So now it's going to be even harder? I can't win against the speed merchants because they're too fast and now there will be bigger penalties for the slow players. Pretty soon there will be a long list of games I simply won't want to play, even for the sake of my team.

That's perfect - keeps people as honest as we can unless we want to censor the internet

No -- the entire point is to make it HARDER for the speed merchants.

To do this we need to increase difficulty a bit (move difficulty a step or two away from the "easiest" game, more towards the "mixed" game), and at the same time penalize googling a bit, since increased difficulty encourages googling.

So what we need is a balance of +difficulty, +time penalty. The net effect, in theory, is that the game becomes more balanced to knowledge vs speed.

We want the game to be:

- easy enough that it doesn't put players off.

- difficult enough that every single question isn't identifiable by a single keyword, like the easy game.

- penalized enough that it is not time effective to attempt to look up answers.

flopsy, remember that 1, 2 or 5 points per second does not make any difference if you both play 20s! It could be 0.01 and you'd still lose.

It only matters if you have more correct than your opponent but are much slower. Now even at 2 points per second, this still means you will win with one question more unless you're more than 50 seconds slower - a pretty long time on a game where the average times are in the low 100s. Also, higher difficulties for top levels will also mean that correctness will be more important again.

Again, very few have an issue with it, and it punishes the members at large. Why implement $50,000 worth of corrections for a $5 issue? I think the common will of the people is being thwarted here.

"Vox populi, vox Dei"

"The voice of the people [is] the voice of God"

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!

To be perfectly honest, I have used search engines on here such as ask.com which happens to be my favrote. I have used it for searching information for the Buzzy Bee and some of the badgelets such as the one that asked for a specific quiz date. I did use the answer sheets that came up because I was allowed to use them. Those have been the only instances that I can recall which leads to my next point.

Memorization is a good thing and should be rewarded. The one game that I have had repeated success on is Who's the Expert. At the present time, I am in the high 50's as far as categories won. I know that number pales in comparison to many above me. I refuse to use any search engine on this game for the simple reason that I am there to prove that I am the expert in that particular subject. I have gotten lucky on some of my category wins on subjects dealing with Canadian History and Canadian Music. I would like to see this game as a search engine free game because after all the name of the game is Who's the Expert not Who's the Googler.

A few years back I was involved in a road safety campaign in my neighbourhood to get speed reduction humps installed on local roads to make illegal joyriding at breakneck speed more difficult.

After a long campaign the authorities agreed, but the ramps they proposed were pretty gentle 'bumps' that wouldn't actually slow down joyriders. All they did was slow down legal drivers concerned not to damage the suspension on their cars. When we protested to the authorities we were told that road safety measures weren't meant to be targeted at deliberate lawbreakers (joyriders) but at improving the safe driving of the majority of law-abiding drivers.

Where's this anecdote going? Well, so much of this thread seems to be about tackling 'speedy googlers' on the basis they're 'breaking the law' of good gaming. Actually, like joyriders, this is a very small minority of players overall - and like some others have said I really don't think most people are that bothered by whether they google or not (of course SOME are). Reading this thread I can see however that a lot of people ARE concerned about the structure of games being significantly changed to deal with this minority - at the possible expense to the enjoyment of a larger majority.

I'd agree therefore with the idea of making questions harder for upper divisions of KO - not primarily to deal with the 'speed demon' minority, but because it seems a sensible thing to do for the overall enjoyment of the game by more experienced players. And I wouldn't (personally!) impose harsher time penalties as I don't imagine most people google during KO (I wouldn't have time ) and it seems like a big change to make to deal with this very small group of people.

[quote=kyleisalive Sometimes it's just plain, ol', crippling indecisiveness. :p[/quote]

LOL, yes. Many is the time I have clicked on all four answers.

The people who regard themselves as slow players have to take into consideration that KO is a timed game. Whether it's arthritis, or a slow internet connection, or whatever, you have to realize that you will be at a disadvantage for any timed game. That's just the way it is. There are plenty of other things on this website to have fun with. I doubt I'll ever get any of the Monthly badges for hourly games - this shouldn't be changed so that I have a bigger chance of getting them! If you're slow, you expect that you can't waltz in and win every timed game. People are complaining about Knockout and then complaining at the solutions proposed - Terry can't please everyone. I think the proposed solutions are a good idea (though I don't mind the game as it is).

dsimpy? I think I like you lately (not that you/anyone should care what I think LOL)

dsimpy's example is interesting - it shows what happens when (big) government (or the webmaster) tries to essentially legislate behavior. Often, most of the pain is borne by those whom it was trying to help.

reeshy: how true. If I was paralysed, I wouldn't expect funtrivia to provide me with a trained monkey/caregiver to play the game for me so that I could win EVERY time.

Not sure what the gripe is about KO, other than perhaps the difficulty of the questions at the high end. I've gotten 20/20 on several occasions and have still lost because folks were faster than me. And that's fine, they're probably smarter than me as well. But do I want to see time penalties in ADDITION to higher difficulty re: the questions. Nope. Can we try one measure at a time?

Actually, I have seen very few complaints about KO as it stands, in fact I believe at least one poster called it "complaint free". I think that is why there were many more complaints about proposed changes.

Actually, his example shows what happens when dealing with speed bumps in his personal experience. Maybe there are some lessons to be learned from it, but it's a logical fallacy to jump from an anecdote about traffic enforcement to grandiose sweeping generalizations about "big government" or "webmasters trying to legislate behavior".

Perhaps you want me to go back to giving everyone identical questions in every game, and letting everyone have 10 accounts each. That way if people wanted to behave by playing a game, writing down the answers, and playing again, we could all get 100%. After all, what I'm doing is legislating against that behavior. Big evil webmaster hurting the poor masses!

Heaven forbid we have rules and enforce them!

I completely agree with Reeshy. I appreciate that he mentioned it shouldn't be changed to make it easier for HIM personally to get the monthlies. LIke he said, those with slower times go in EXPECTING they will not beat speed demons.

Either way, someone will not be pleased. Right now, slower players do not like things the way they are now. BUT, even if speed demons win more often, slow players still get their fair shot at many badges. They still win hourlies, especially in the more difficult categories, and I think it's all pretty even the way it is now (apart from the KO difficulty in higher levels, that is a good idea). But, if we implement ways to make it "fairer" for slower players, suddenly the speed demons get upset. You cannot please anybody, as Reeshy said.

In my opinion, change the difficulty in KO, and keep everything else as it is. If the slower players want to complain, let them complain. People usually stop complaining when they win the badge, and beating speed demons make them feel like they accomplished more. If they beat them because the speed demons are "penalized", it's not as thrilling of a win.

You'll notice throughout many years of threads that people no longer complain when they have won the badges. Most complaints are "petty" issues, and they're all about "me, myself, and I". Someone will say "but I can't win it, I have no chance". But when they win it, they stop complaining about it.

There are almost 200 badges on the site. Surely if people have a problem with ONE badge, they can go for any of the other 200?

Thanks, Salami and Jakeroo. I just don't understand - if you're slow, by all means have a go at hourly games and stuff, but don't expect to be able to win if speed is not your forte. Try other things. As Salami says there are plenty of badges to win, and in that, plenty of badges that some speed demons don't have a hope to achieve. Everyone has different weaknesses and strengths in different areas of the site.

When I said people complaining about the KO, obviously there are some people who are not happy that the KO is too easy for these speedy players, who just come in, see one word, click the answer, submit, and YAY, perfect score. But people are complaining yet when measures are put into place that would only impact the very very slowest of players (who shouldn't necessarily expect to do amazingly in timed games anyway).

It's not all about badges or winning anyway. I'll be lucky if I can get a 10 in Obscurity once every 6 months - this doesn't stop me from enjoying the game. As I've said, there are badges I don't see myself ever getting - and tough luck to me! :P

I hope whatever Terry chooses helps the KO become a better game for all.

Richard

I think you misunderstood my meaning - of course there should be rules, but trying to equalize everything or prevent ALL bad behavior is not without risks to the playability of the games. What might seem an "obvious" solution to some, may have unintended and severe consequences. I think you (Terry) have been more than accommodating and diligent in your "tweaks".

Absolutely -- there is a very careful balance. It's also a balance that shifts and changes based on a player's time and experience on the site.

You are very right, Reeshy. For instance, I have no shot in heck to win the easy game monthly, though I do consider myself a "speed demon" in that game. In that game, accuracy is better than speed. I tend to get a lot of 8 and 9s in under 20 seconds, but there is no way that is going to win my the monthly. Slower players can win this game by playing a lot of games for getting a high total points, and 10 in a minute still gives an average of 940! It's definitely not a site dominated by speed demons. In some instances, yes, it is. In others, no, the slower players dominate.

I think the site is perfect, and whatever Terry decides to do will be a good decision, and we should all be happy with whatever he does. I cannot stress this enough...

This is FUNtrivia. As reeshy said, he said he rarely gets 10 in obscurity, but it doesn't stop him from ENJOYING the game. If you have a problem with certain people winning hourlies, don't play them, or feel ultra-super proud when you beat them. You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

Terry's not perfect. He is doing is best to make everyone happy, but whatever he does, someone else complains. He has added many challenges designed for slower players to win, because they have talked about speed winning all the time in the past. We have the monster game, the "my daily quiz" game, we have the quick quiz, the international games, the quiz of the hour, and the non-timed mindmelt. He has done his best to please as many as he can, but alas, some people do not appreciate all his hard work.

I think Terry is doing great, and we (including myself at times) need to realize he is only human, and so are all of us on the site. We can't bother Terry with every little problem we have, otherwise this site would no longer be fun for the majority who don't have a problem with things as they are now.

Actually I don't mind if the difficulty is increased a bit in the upper levels of KO, maybe to the level of the Mixed Game? Sure, increasing the difficulty will encourage some people to google, but at least some of the speed only merchants would have to pause for thought a little. There doesn't seem much point in extra penalties in KO anyway, at least not in the higher levels which would be the ones affected, as the chances are still good that someone who takes a longish time will get beaten.

I just think it's ironic that this whole debate has been sparked by someone complaining that he is being cheated out of wins at WTS or Expert by people who are googling. It's not the first time that pot has been stirred and once again what happens is that unsupported allegations make people jump through hoops to rectify a problem that might not actually exist while the rest of us get aerated. And as is shown by the people who openly google AND get very fast times, the penalties are never going to catch them.

I think the time penalties in most of the games are about right and this site enforces its rules very well. It's just a question of tweaking this KO rule so that it can be enforced without alienating too large a proportion of the audience.

They didn't change the format and rules of golf or tennis when Tiger Woods and Roger Federer came along. Everyone else had to dig a little deeper to compete. These other players will have their day in the sun, or maybe they won't. Such is life. Likewise, top FT players will come and go. Good players who have been around for awhile and/or have better abilities should NOT be knocked down or have their hands tied because others can't keep up. They worked their way to the top over a period of time.
It took me three tries to finally get some monthly badges. I'm still trying for the Who Am I. Once I got up to 170 points in KO, the competition became tougher. I knew that would happen. So it's been slow going for quite a while, but I get my points every so often. These are GAMES. Not everyone can win. Some win more than others. Again, that's life.

I've always thought that the words FUN and GAMES belonged together.

Ssabreman, you're right. I'm at 125 KOs, and I knew going in it would be tougher. I haven't won any weeks for a long time, but I don't particularly care. I know it will be a long haul for me to reach 200, but those players who finally reach the divisions where it is tougher to win already have all the badges except the 200 points badge anyway, so it really doesn't even make SENSE to complain. The 50,000 points badges are LONG HAUL badges, so is the 200 points badges. It really doesn't need to be changed so a complaining player gets what they want.

Very drole, Terry. :smilee I didn't mention big government or big bad webmasters of course, but it was - as you know - meant to be illustrative of this topic and not in the slightest, at the moment, about speed bumps. The illustration was simply to make the point that, IMO, games should be tweaked to improve them for the playing experience of the majority, rather than focusing too much on the disputed googling of a small minority of speed demons.

You are of course the webmaster (big, bad or otherwise :)), and you do legislate, and I'll happily play the games quite frankly whatever changes are made to them.

With KO, why not make it tougher then use the GC penalties? Make it if you go over a certain allotted time (maybe two minutes or so - 2m30s at max), then every second over that threshold get penalized at a stiffer time penalty. Maybe hae three different thresholds on how many KOs a player has. If a player has over 250 (or whatever Terry decides), then they move to a tougher question group. Once a player hits double the first, then make it even tougher. I don't know how much that would take to write, and I don't want to make Terry do an exorbitant amount of work, but would that be feasible?

Liz, how much time do you take on KO? At 20 questions, 2½ minutes would be 7½ seconds per question.

Terry, thoughts?

Why not just leave KO as it is and all stop whining when you can't go fast enough to beat that week's opponent? It's taken me however long it's been since KO started to get within sight of the 200 badge, and I will get there eventually by plodding away - some weeks I win (maybe 1 in 4 or 5), some weeks (about 2/4) I go out on the first day, but I don't immediately assume that the person who beat me has googled/memorised every.single.question on the site/has a trained keyboard marmoset/has a voodoo Rowena dolly with a pin in it's typing hand/has a team of highly trained hackers to fix things/is an alien who can influence my answer choices with the power of their enormous brain. I just move on and wait for the next week.
I am certain I've said this before, and no doubt will again, and my opinion is worth just what you pay me for it but Terry could give everyone all the badges the day they register, and nobody would have anything to complain about... OR we can all go and do whatever it is that needs doing to WIN the badges, and accept that some of them take more time/effort/input/dedication than others. Some of them just need a bit of dumb luck.

Hear, hear, Rowena! I have been playing for a long time, too, and hope to get the 200 badge some time in the New Year. I would hate all my efforts so far to be 'diluted' because of the impatience of a few people.

I haven't contributed to this either, but I'm happy to agree with Rowena and oz. I've been stuck on 197 KO points for weeks because I'm now in the higher divisions. That's a product of past success, and now I don't win very often - last week I got 20/20 & still got knocked out in round one by a better player. It's not a problem to me - there's always another week. When I do eventually get the badge it will seem even sweeter.

I have been lurking round the forums for a while now enjoying the banter and camaraderie but never quite having the courage to inflict my opinions on the rest of the site. However, reading this thread has made me take a deep breath, grab courage in both hands and share a story with you for my first posting. Apologies in advance if I am not quite au-fait with the etiquette.

This week, I am one of those lucky/unlucky souls whose tournament has been chosen for the Fantasy K/O. In my little form guide, it says that the last time I won a K/O was against Traveler56. What it doesn't tell you is that we both ended up with the same score in the final and I won on tie-break, this despite Traveler not getting a single question wrong all week and me being, shall we say, less consistent. On Saturday morning I logged on to find not only had I won but to a lovely little note from Traveler congratulating me and wishing me luck for the next week. This note meant far more to me than the little gold cup and the points ever could. Surely this is the spirit in which FT should be played and which keeps us coming back day after day. I know who I felt was a true champion that Saturday morning. Please don't let us spoil what, after all, is supossed to be FUN, with bickering.

Good luck to everyone playing this week and I hope that you all enjoy your games.

That's not actually my beef. Oddly enough, I care little about badges and count any that I receive as a bonus for being around a long time. My beef is with it being assumed that because I'm slow I must be googling, and every time it comes up I sit back for awhile and then get annoyed again. It's a moot point for me this week in any case - I was both slow and dismal...

Aha! So you're not completely ruling these possibilities out then?

I have no problems with time penalties but PLEASE don't commence them after you go over 2 seconds a question.

I personally cant make 2 seconds a question if I just press start and randomly pick answers as fast as I can without reading questions - believe me I've tried to see what I need to do to get down to to make these times that win. Now I know I can't do it I just play the best I can to get the best score I can.

My absolute best time which I can only do on a subject that I know backwards and have immediate 'question recognition' on is 3 secs a question.

I have a reasonable PC, a good internet connection and no physical limitations - that is just my limit so I imagine a lot of others are much worse of.

Knowing that time penalties will click in after 2 seconds just makes it seem more impossible - it may only be a perception but perceptions are quite poweful!

I long ago realised that my team would be in bad shape if they had to use my score in the Easiest game - a time under 3 seconds per question is a triumph for me, 2.5 seconds per question if I get a set that I don't have to read past the first word. In games that require me to actually read the question and possibly also choose an answer rather than knowing what it is and finding it, 4 seconds a question is my personal target, and I give myself a pat on the back. I already find the time penalties pretty vicious, and any increase would make the chore of trying to play the games for the possible team points even less attractive.

Amid all the debate over the legitimacy of googling, I feel frustrated that there seems to be an assumption that anyone who takes any kind of time must be researching as they go. Some of us just aren't that fast!

Nothing at all would surprise me anymore regarding people I "meet" on the internet dsimpy I'd be obliged if said alien could let me know the lottery numbers for this week though