I've written some on Survivor and none on reality stars.

Sorry, Kyle. A Daily Challenge sent me to some reality show quizzes not long ago, all written by you. I looked up some more reality shows and was surprised at large variety of shows you have written Wuizzes on. Given the how rapidly a person can stop being a star in the reality show world, because there is always another new reality show idea on our TV screens, a quiz on Reality show stars would become dated rapidly.

I'm honestly not sure where these quizzes would have been besides the Reality TV section of Television because outside of the sections for specific shows, I haven't written any about people from them.

http://www.funtrivia.com/ql.cfm?cat=13767
http://www.funtrivia.com/ql.cfm?cat=13970


For the most part, our TV-specific subcats based on Reality TV are not part of our caches. Reality TV Mixture isn't even a subcat of WTE. The Celebs section about TV Celebs is, but I've never contributed to it.
As for the rest of my reality TV quizzes, I've written a bunch (TAR, Survivor, ANTM, The Mole, and some one-offs), but only in their respective categories which, by and large, are not used in most of our games (except, maybe, the GC in the higher levels/impossible).




Reasonably, this can be said about any TV show though. Some are more timeless than others. There's also an issue with frequency; Richard Hatch was on more episodes of 'Survivor' than Nathan Fillion was in 'Firefly', for instance.

Again, it comes down to niche topics. Reality TV isn't for everyone in the same way that VG isn't for everyone or 'Bible People' isn't for everyone. Apparently, we draw the line somewhere in there though.

I must say, if there is one category that is worth throwing out, it would be Rent.

I am not a complainer by nature and this is, I believe, the first time that I have given negative feedback. The team heroes categories have become so obscure that they are no longer fun or even a matter of knowledge for the average player. FT members who want to test themselves on narrow topics can play the experts game or do specific quizzes. I have always seen the two team games as a way that team members can have friendly competition with one another. Until recently, there used to be the odd quiz dealing with a specific book, play, or aspect of history mixed in with more general quizzes drawing from a range of topics within a category such as history or literature or science. Recently it seems to be just the opposite.

Pitegny --

Glad you brought this up. I did tweak the algorithm recently in an attempt to REDUCE the number of obscure categories. It appears that a few of the tweaks went the other way though.

I just put in a fix, and in theory things should become more general in nature, which is the goal of the game. We want category differentiation that will allow certain players to excel over a niche over others, but not so much that players in general are typically shut out because of its obscurity.

Let's see how it goes...

I like Rent though, and score well everytime it comes up.

Thank you Terry for your quick response! You do an amazing job with an amazing site!

Am I the only one thinking how refreshing it was to see different topics?

Sure I've never seen Rent or read a Dean Koontz book but some people have and that day is their chance to shine. Scottish Geography came up for the first time ever and I saw Scotland the Brains at the top of the list (not sure if they stayed there all day but it was nice to see).

I guess the majority want speed contests most days? Such as today when over half of my team has 15 correct so it just depends how fast your players are.... I do well, but it's not very interesting.

A balance would be nice Terry, maybe let the algorithm select an obscure one once or twice a week?

"A balance would be nice Terry, maybe let the algorithm select an obscure one once or twice a week?"

The problem is that "Rent" or "Dean Koontz" locks out a very large % of players from even participating.

While I can see that it does help those with niche knowledge shine and this is a nice thing, the negative side-effect of locking out large numbers of people overwhelms the positives.

We can still get "niche knowledge" shining through by generalizing topics a bit more but still having diversity. So instead of "Rent", do "Musicals" instead. Whereas say 10% of people may be able to have any shot at "Rent", a much larger percent have a better chance at "Musicals", AND Musical inclined people still get to shine.

Yeah, I understand what you meant I was just disappointed by it. Nobody is ever prevented from participating, they can try!

It doesn't matter. Perhaps you can reassure me that the initial post of this thread will be addressed in that there will now be some "generalised" sport thrown in now from time to time?

Edit: I'm glad that you have looked at the game by the way, don't want to appear ungrateful.

I personally also like an occasional obscure topic - it gives players who normally never make the top 5 or 7 a chance at excelling with niche knowledge.

It should probably not be quite as frequent as in Expert (where it's 1 in 4 for a specialized topic) but anywhere between 1 in 5 and 1 in 8 seems a good ratio. Probably not exactly once a week as that would interfere with Everything Challenge attempts by players favoring a specific day. So 1 in 5 or 1 in 6 looks best.

I think really obscure topics are a good thing as part of the mix, but I find it really frustrating when the same utterly obscure category comes up again and again. Seems to me that it would be good if categories could be removed from the pool of possible categories for a time after being selected, the time being dependent on the level of obscurity.

I think this is fair enough and a reasonable compromise. Surely the whole point of a team game is to get as many team members playing as possible. I play Team Heroes every day but when I saw "Dean Koontz" come up, my first thought was "What's the point in playing today?"

I have had that sinking feeling too, but then I play, and sometimes I've surprised myself. I also know that someone somewhere is very happy to see that category come up, even if it is only once.

I had a different reaction to those categories - I was so happy to see something a little different.

I've read two Dean Koontz books, one about ten years ago, one about five - and did reasonably well. Two or three questions I remembered enough to be able to make an educated guess - "That was the book about a dog, I think, so I'll pick "Dog" as my answer" - some had incorrect option choices that meant I could, again, make a pretty good guess, and the rest I just went with "Pick option C".

Same with "Rent" - I saw the movie they made about the play back when it came out, about ten years ago, and have a hazy memory. Very hazy - I remember the name of the character that died, and that's about it. Again, a mixture of educated and blind guesses meant a reasonably good score.

But both "Rent" and Dean Koontz are far from obscure topics - millions of people have at least as much experience of them as I do.

What was obvious from looking at the scores of those two days was that the same old teams were not at the top - the teams with a lot of fast good players that tend to dominate because, yes, they are good at trivia, but also because they know the kind of questions that tend to come up in tournaments by heart. Instead, other people got a chance to shine, because they actually know the topic - and that's what I thought Heroes was supposed to be about.

Niche topics all the time is probably not feasible, but I'd love there to be something about as niche as these two - that is, a topic that has a wide fan base, a reasonably good profile in the general culture to the point that most people at least know what it is, but which is not just general knowledge - maybe every ten days or so?

A lot of people here love answering questions they have already answered many times before. Me, I prefer that once I have answered a question I never see it again. I know I'm not alone - it would be nice if both types of player were accommodated in a game that is specifically designed to let Heroes shine.

Maybe we could have "Obscure Sunday"s or something. A day where everyone KNOWS that a niche category will be selected.

I think part of the disappointment is expecting to see a category you can deal with and then finding something that's out there. Perhaps if we had a specific day where everyone know what to expect it would lessen such angst.

Sure - second and fourth Sunday of the month, something like that.

And I think I really have to stress - these two topics were not *really* niche. They are highly successful bestselling pop culture, but perhaps not general knowledge.

Niche would be ..... Years ago, ArleneRimmer and I wrote a whole bunch of quizzes on books written by a favourite author of ours. All of her books are out of print, and most of the ones we wrote quizzes on were written in the forties, and have been out of print for fifty years or more. There are enough quizzes in that category for it to work as a Heroes topic, but THAT would be niche. The ten people still on FT who have read the books would be delighted, any everyone else would get a score of about 250.

If you do have a 'niche' day, would it possible to set the system so that it doesn't award other challenges which depend on a good performance in Heroes on those days?

ie. my score in Religion TH picks.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but in order for a topic to be chosen for the heroes game, it needs to have a certain number of quizzes written about it. So the ones that some are saying is "truly niche" because they are about a particular author or book that few have ever read would never be part of the mix here. As Kyle says, Religion is niche for him and Manga would be niche for me, but both have enough people interested in them to write a body of quizzes. I think that any topic with a big enough body of work should be fair game for Heroes. Including different Sports and VG (both of which I stink at).

Sue is right in saying that "niche" can be interpreted subjectively. But the number of quizzes written on a certain subject is not necessarily a criterion on the widespread knowledge.
For instance, there are some categories in which one or two authors have each written a dozen quizzes. If no one else has contributed, chances are that most people think this subcategory still is quite obscure.
On the whole, I fancy a grand variety. If Team Heroes comes up with one of my poor categories, so what? I'll play anyway.

I'm wondering what are considered the Obscure and Niche topics for the Team Heros game. The discussion of what is a niche topic and what isn't has been beaten to death here, revived, beaten down again, and revived again.

Rent has appeared as a Duel topic often enough that Gold players that play all 15 topics should have picked up enough knowledge to play that topic in Heros and get at least half correct. Dean Koontz has even appeared a few times in the Duels.

If it is ever decided what the niche or obscure topics are to be for the team hero game, I vote for once a week.

It is also useful to remind yourself, when you know nothing on the say's topic, that some days you don't have to get a really high score to do well in terms of the player rankings. I actually find it easier to achieve the Be a Team Hero challenge on those days, since others on my team are much faster than me in answering questions in the kind of category we see all the time, and feel comfortable with. On guessing days, the playing field is more level.