mehaul, though I am very much in favor of opening up the Heroes games to many categories, I agree with Kyle's fears of people not playing due to the niche topics. Your example assumes a team of 1000 players, which is unrealistic. Your example has 10% playing and states that even that figure is probably high. Think of smaller teams, like mine, which often barely scrapes up the five players to play. We don't need so many niche categories in a row that no one would do well on. That would probably sound the death toll for us, and I don't think we are alone.

I fully agree that small teams don't fit my examp-le. But, the tactic is still viable for larger teams (as CmdrK noted the potential size of the total answer arrangements), small team might only get one or two top finishers in a day. And I'm f8igfuring that my viable tactic by the site to avert those tactics (1 ea F-I-t-B/game) won't happen because iPhone and Tablet playing would be discouraged due to lack of a keybord (tho that can be overcome by an app download but that would tie up memory...)

I'm usually the only player on my team that does the Team Games, and I don't care what subject comes up for Heroes (TvT is fine being a mixture of categories). Seeing the Harry Potter there (they used to show up often, have they been outlawed?) I was persuaded to get the Potter set of films and watch them. If niche are removed, fine. If niche are added, also fine.I only wanted to point out a tactic that large teams could employ facing niche categories without saying niche categories are good or bad. Did I fail once more to relate my opinion?

Some players cannot avoid using a tablet or phone to play on. It is all they have. Terry has been working to make FunTrivia more available for tablet and phone users not less. Besides, tablets and phone come with keyboards included, no app needed.

The hourly Fill in the Blank game is not very popular among players. The goal is have more team members play the Team Heroes and Team vs. Team games. To add a fill in the blank question to the Team Hero game would discourage rather than encourage people to play it.

Since there are more teams with lower than 100 active players than teams with 100 active players, whatever tactic you are proposing would exclude most of the teams. Actually, it would exclude every team since even the teams with 100 or more active players never come close to having 100 people play either of the Team games.

Like I said, I won't be holding my breath for it (a F-I-t-B Q/game) to happen. 2 players out of fifty earning 14/15 in 15 seconds would certainly be a boon to a team's finish number.

Please, you're making this into an argument with just me and ignoring the topic of adding new niche categories or not. My point was that new niche topics could hurt honest play and not really give a team that has a player (1) that knows the historic results of Finnish wife carrying competitions any advantage.

The significant majority of teams have nowhere near fifty players.
Besides, having the same two players dominate all the time certainly diminishes the team aspect, doesn't it?

I would be in support of more niche subjects being added in to Heroes. Just for some variety. And it would be nice to have some people get to shine in categories that are not generally seen. For many, the preponderance of Bible categories that appear in Heroes (OT, NT, and at least 12 other related categories that seem to appear constantly) are a definite niche, just one deemed acceptable. It also seems like Heroes is the perfect place for it, as not all scores are automatically counted. I find the often incredibly niche questions in TvT much more frustrating as your score can absolutely hurt your team.

I have never been on a team that has used a planned set of answers (abab or whatever), and I have been on quite a few that have tried various ways to be competitive, so I am just not sure how big an issue that would be.

Pointing out the flaws of your side issue is not arguing it's .... pointing out the flaws. It is sad that you see it as "arguing".

Since the post of yours that I replied to did not mention niche topics being added to the rotation of the Team Hero game there was nothing for me to comment on.

I'm in favor of more variety for the team heroes. To avoid the dreadful niche weeks Kyle suggests, maybe Terry could program something like the limits for FT Duel?

A possible coding would be: for each week three top categories (for instance Geography, Video Games, Sports) and four subcategories, with the additional limit that every category comes maximum once a week.

So that could make in an elaborate example
Monday: Harry Potter (For Children)
Tuesday: Sports
Wednesday: Video Games
Thursday: UK History
Friday: WWE (Entertainment)
Saturday: Geography
Sunday: Classic Movies

and the next week
Monday: Place of Origin (Celebrities)
Tuesday: Pool and Snooker (Sports)
Wednesday: Literature
Thursday: Wild Birds (Animals)
Friday: States F-L (Geography)
Saturday: Music (top category)
Sunday: Religion

I agree with bubblesfun on both points she makes. More niche categories in Team heroes would open the door for people to do well on perhaps less well known subjects without the "faster finger first" race that happens with some of the more regular subjects. Non-specialists in a particular subject can also happily play without the fear of hurting their team score.

I've also noticed that there are more questions appearing in TvT which are far more "niche" than some of the subjects rejected for Team Heroes. I understand that the TvT questions are pulled from the single question pool and that people are now writing much more specific questions as they try to find something that hasn't already been asked, but it is seriously frustrating to come across them in a game such as TvT where all scores count.

I don't really play the TvT game competitively half the time as the categories they have are too niche for my tastes at times. Way too many religion categories pop up. That's not to say religion isn't a viable category. But what makes it "general knowledge" and things likes sports and video games "Niche"?

I mean it doesn't really matter to me, I play whatever is in front of me, but there are days when I know I can't help the team unless I happen to guess well.

The main problem with Sports and Video games is that we have very few general, pub trivia style, questions in these. The vast majority of Sports questions is about a specific sport (and often about a specific player or match) - easy for a fan of that specific sport, impossible for everyone else. With Video Games, it's even more pronounced - a question that is ridiculously easy even for someone who has played the specific game for 10 minutes many years ago is still impossible for the majority of players (who never played that game).

Thus these two (along with Television which has similar "fandom" bias) tend to show up less in Team Heroes than their quiz counts would promise. They're also by far the least (and least successfully) played categories in the Global Challenge.

I personally wouldn't mind a wider variety of topics showing up in the Team Heroes. I get tired of seeing the same topics coming up. I know there are people that might not play because a given topic is not to their liking, but I feel that already happens anyway. So long as the niche topics aren't appearing too often, then I don't think it would affect overall participation significantly.

I try all the topics that come up, and if I don't know the answer then I just guess and hope for good luck. I hate when anything Celebrities comes up, or anything on musicals because I don't do well in those categories and I don't care for them at all. As much as I hate them, though, there are players out there that love them and do well in them. So, it would be nice for a topic to come up once in a while that I enjoy playing and am more interested in, even if I don't know everything about it.

I would love the opportunity to play more games on topics like Video Games or manga because they interest me. I play a lot of video games, read a lot of manga, and watch a lot of anime. That being said, I agree with Wesley's point about the questions being very specific. I don't really play a lot of quizzes in those categories either because the games I play (or the manga I read) don't have quizzes, or it has been so long since I've played the game (or read the manga) that I don't remember enough details to do well in the quizzes. Well, and I don't play quizzes as often as I used to, and when I do, it is usually for a specific badge or challenge that calls for me to play other types of quizzes.

Also, I know that Video Games doesn't have very many general questions like Wesley mentioned, but some of the topics that come up now are very specific. We already get categories for something like MLB Players S-Z or Authors Q-S where questions are very specific and if you haven't read the books by those authors or you know nothing about baseball, then you have no chance of doing well. So, would adding in a Video Games category or two be so different from those?

From what Kyle has told me, it'd be worse. When I was writing a quiz in the category*, he and I discussed the apathy toward it. While there are some avid gamers, they're in the distinct minority on FT. In the Chat Boards an informal poll once asked people's "least-favorite category," and "Video Games" made up easily 3/4 of the answers—which were pretty well split between "don't know anything about it," "don't care about it," "don't care to know anything about it" and "all of the above."

* Said quiz has roughly fifteen plays and a rating of Impossible.

I don't even play them when they get that crazy. They don't appeal to me. Fortunately, Team Heroes has something for everybody.

Unless it's Video Games.

Actually the only root category that should still have alphabetic subcategories in Team Heroes (or Expert for that matter) should be Celebrities in which the alphabeticals pretty much play the same as the root category.

All others (should) have been excluded when the new general/specific Expert system has been made.

There are right now two Heroes-eligible Video Games subcategories by the way: Nintendo Games mixture and Video Games mixture. Those are the only two "General" level Expert categories from that particular category.

And to all those Video Games loving authors among you, here's my offer: If you can create 8 more quizzes in Arcade Mixture (bringing the count from currently 22 to 30), I'll upgrade that one to General and thus increase VG's exposure in Heroes by 50%. Oh yeah, the same applies to Playstation mixture (3 needed, currently 27) and PC games mixture (6 needed, currently 24). A 150% boost for just 17 quizzes written!

Has there actually been a single musical recently? I can't recall one. The eligible list from Humanities should be:

Alphabetical Words
Art
Beasts of Myth
Etymology
Idioms and Proverbs
Language Use
Linguistics
Lyrics Mixture *
Musicals Mixture *
Mythology & Legends
Mythology Mixture
Performing Arts
Philosophy
Social Sciences
Song Mixture *
Spelling Bee
Varieties of English
Vocabulary

Three musicals categories (*), but none of them specific to a single show.

I think you're right, Wes. I remember the mixture categories and I actually enjoy them. Where I do see the individual musicals pop up (like Wicked and Les Miserables) is in the Duel. maybe that is what others are thinking of.

Yes, duel does use a 4-tiered system for determining categories and pretty much everything can appear there. The daily duel mix is composed of:

1 daily editor pick
4 root categories
5 general expert topics
5 specific expert topics

The daily pick can be a general, specific or even non-Expert category. Today's Geology for example is not in the Expert rotation at all (Expert uses the broader "Earth Sciences" one instead).

"Has there actually been a single musical recently? I can't recall one."

9th of November we played 'Rent'.

Wouldn't the number of possible combinations in a 15 question quiz be 4 to the 15th power or a little over 1,000,000,000? Terry would love it if we had that many members on one team :-)

But then we'd only have 6 teams... (yes, there's 7 billion people, but those under 13 can't join)

4 *15 = 1073741824


But each question stands alone. It doesn't matter to Q 13 what the arrangement was in Q 3. The result is determined by ADDING the possibilities for each individual Question (4^3 = 64 possible arrangements for each question). So, it's 64(1) + 64(2)... + 64(n) = 64 x 15(n) = 1024 possible combinations.

And if a few extra seconds are spent to see "All of the above" as an answer (which is correct almost all the time, you'll need that many fewer arrangements.


The calculation on independent rates is the same as calculating a Total Failure rate for a device that has 15 components. Each component has a failure rate of 0.5/yr. so, the stream of calculable items is Device(D)1 + D2 + D3... + D15. By the x^y (0.5^15) the failure rate would be 0.00003 fails per year or 100,000 years for 3 failures. It is actually an addition calculation of Rate1 + Rate2... + Rate(n) = Rate x n = 0.5 x 15 = 7.5 failures per year. IOW, The more components with a high failure rate (0.5/yr is high) you have, the sooner a failure will be experienced. If the rate was 1/year for a 15 component device, you could expect 15 failures per year or the device failing repeatedly every 24 days.

And here I though 4*15 = 60.

Time for me to check out of this thread. Thought it was about categories in Team Heroes; apparently it's about math. Which is a TH category I don't play.

mehaul meant 4 to the power of 15. Maybe it would have been clearer if written as
4^15 = 1,073,741,824