Team Heroes is too easy because too many players are scoring a '15' in ridiculously fast times. I would like to see different topics or newer or different questions. Those who have been playing this game for years recognize the questions immediately.

I would prefer a knowledge, not a speed contest, in this game. We are not parrots and should not be expected to react like them!

We will get to that game soon enough... working through them all one at a time right now to update and correct existing issues.

So a player playing on the site for over 15 years with more than 13 million points has not seen some of these questions before? There are all kinds of topics on Team Heroes including Star Wars Books and Plants and yes speed topics. There are over 100,000 quizzes on the site if you want to learn and not play for speed.

But that may not be the case for all teams, and in actual fact seems very unlikely. Yes, in certain subjects the majority of my team may get 15 but there's definitely days when the high scores aren't above 7 or 8. And the mix of topics seems quite varied already, from Islam to Kids Literature to Mathematics.

It's perfect the way it is. You win some and you lose some. Nothing needs to be changed.

I agree. I play every day. I am not a speed demon. This game is fine as it is because it highlights some truly horrible niche topics that allow some to shine and others to look on in awe, some days, and then other more popular topics where everyone has a chance to beat their teammates.

Speaking with my player hat on, I've got to agree with those who see no problem with the game as it is. Maybe for the teams that are competing fiercely for first place there is some mad speed demon action, but for most teams, it seems that things are working just the way they should.

We compete for first place (don't often get it but hey) but I don't hear complaints about it. Well, apart from the fact that if you get the Daily Challenge to be one of your team's Heroes you know that at least five other Joli Llamas will trot along and spoil your fun.

Isn't that the truth, flopsy! I keep telling our boys to slow down but will they listen? Noooooo....

I absolutely know when I get that challenge that some Llama or other is going to do their best for the team, and beat my score. It would be nice to get the challenge on a day when I really knew the topic, but hey, life's too short to hold your breath.

I only play on days when my specialized topics come up because I’m not really interested in the game but I’m happy to help my team. I wouldn’t be surprised if others did the same, so if you see high scores that may very well be what’s happening. In some games I score in under forty seconds consistently, sometimes because the questions showing up are ones I’ve written about in the past.

Every topic not in my wheelhouse is going to get a lousy score.

If we increase the difficulty I’m still going to knock out my specialized categories, but I’m going to continue to be lousy— worse, actually— in the topics I don’t know.

The rich get richer.

I could live with a moderate increase in difficulty on categories that have very high scores (I think we do have the data to determine that). An occasional game with most teams scoring 1430 and above is fun, but this kind shouldn't make up more than once a week or so. I'm not sure how much effort it would be to make the difficulty dynamic based on past hero averages, but if that is possible, it would be a cool thing to do so, slightly increasing it on topics that scored above 1400 the previous round and decreasing it on those that scored below 1150 or so.

I agree with you for the most part. I do think that a mixture is good, it should be easy some day and hard on other days though.

This was discussed a little while back, sorry don't have time right now to find and link the thread, when a couple of us were asking the question 'why are there no sports quizzes in Heroes?'

What ensued was a discussion over how the majority of posters disliked all of the obscure topics that kept cropping up in Heroes so as a result Terry changed it somehow so that only fairly general topics could be chosen. For example, we have seen Biology appear something like four or five times over the past three months (repetition is something I'd like eliminating from the Heroes game but that's a different discussion). Now Biology is a subset that is maybe one deep into Sci/Tech (sorry if that's inaccurate but don't have time to check right now) so is allowed to appear in the game. The subsets within Biology are no longer selected for the Heroes game.

Triviaballer mentions all this variety? But I beg the question, when was the last time you actually saw Star Wars Books or have as a topic a specific author such as Tolkien? Probably a long time ago because the game no longer picks those.

A couple of us asked for more variety back then, I.e. the inclusion of sports and maybe video games. What actually happened was less variety because majority opinion was so much against obscure topics in Heroes that Terry made the change to make it more generic! I ended up wishing I'd never asked!

So, humanist, that is why we only see fairly general topics now and why the scores are almost always really high every day and if the majority are happy with that then I doubt it will change....

What if the Team Heroes category is taken randomly from the 24 Who's the Expert? topics the previous day (or maybe exclude the categories marked as "cannot be changed" when trying to change the future)? That would increase the breadth of categories that show up while also encouraging people to play Who's the Expert to prepare for the next day's Heroes.

Another thing that gets messed up with this kind of change to the Heroes game is the Team Record Book. Our team looks at who holds the record for the topic of the day in Heroes and tries to beat it. If the game is going to get harder, that will become a fruitless exercise. It is actually fun when we try to regain a title from someone holding the record who is no longer on the team. I don't mind adding new and harder topics to the mix, but changing the ones for which there are already very high bars set would make the game less fun for those of us trying to beat those records.

Great point, Sue! If it has to get harder, then at the very least any records held by someone who has since left the team should be wiped out.

Another option would be to exclude a few topics, the very easy one which generate high scores all around (alphabetics springs to mind). On the other hand, why do that - it is a competition after all.

I disagree. The high scores are more reflective of the skill of the top players on the best team. My opinion is that some categories are too obscure, categories like Star Wars, Fantasy, and some specific literary categories like authors or book series. I think general categories are perfectly suitable to such a game as Heroes and should constitute a majority of such categories offered. Occasionally I admit there will be categories that are for more specific expertise levels but these by no means should predominate.

But the term "Heroes" almost indicates something out of the ordinary, something not everyone can do (be good at).

Looking at today's scores does not bear out the claim made in the OP. Only 2 teams out of 27 have an average above 1400 in large teams and in small teams none of the 15 teams that have made 5 players have over a 1400 average. How much harder would you like this game to be? I suppose we could delve deeper into impossible Canadian trivia where the average would fall around a 400 to reflect the 1/4 probability of getting a question right due to chance and maybe a few Canadian players will get a 1300 or 1400.

If you would like, I would invite you to compile such data as you believe will prove your contention but as it is, I don't see any evidence that the game is too easy on most days. Simply saying that according to your recollection you remember it such and such a way, that's fine but others of us don't. And when I look at the data today, I would not call today's category an easy category. I suppose we can look at tomorrow's and the next day's and the next day's and see what the data show but right now I see nothing convincing to me that too many days the questions are too easy. And who is to determine what is too easy or how many days a certain score should be made? What is the basis for making that determination?

So the answer is to put obscure categories like Star Wars Fiction on there that people will just research? That doesn't test knowledge and the only thing it shows anyone is good at is using Google to find the answers. Some people seem to want to make it where every day good teams only average 800 points, I guess because they think they will have a better chance of making the top of the list for that day? Why else would they be complaining about it?

"indicates something out of the ordinary"

I think being able to answer 15 questions in 30 seconds is out of the ordinary, and that's a fine measure to take if you want to measure it like that. Some days will be about speed, some days will be about smarts (or how quickly you can find the answers on Google). I suspect that the people who don't like the current paradigm are people who find it hard to win. The answer to that is to not change and possibly wreck the game so that individual can win once in a while. The answer is that person should find what it is they are good at and work on becoming better at that. We all have different skills. I for the life of me cannot seem to win in Word Wizard, Fill in the Blank and some other games. My solution isn't to ask that the game be changed so that I can trounce the other players. My solution is to work on the games that I know I can win at and try to be the best I can be at those games. I'll play WW for the word game or FITB in the hopes that one day I become better but I don't ask that the entire platform be changed so that I personally can benefit from it.

I personally am happy with the game as it currently is, but I would not like to see all general categories or all obscure ones. A mix works well.

I think we (myself included) got away from the original post. Be that as it may, if difficulty increases (not by categories, but by scoring, time penalty, etc), that's fine too - I would just like the record book scores of people who have left a particular time deleted if they will become impossible to beat.

Please don't misinterpret my, or others, motives.

You make some assumptions about those of us that would like to see the game given a little more variety. If the game remains as it is that means I continue to fire off scores over 1460 regularly and sometimes even above 1470. I own over fifty of my teams individual records in Team Heroes. I often feature in the top seven. It's not about that at all.

The games on this site are always fluid, adaptable, subject to change, usually for the better as Terry makes changes based on either what he believes is needed or based on popular opinion. The games evolve and change as they need to. What I'm talking about here is RESTORING Heroes back to how it used to be with more variety before Terry limited the categories somewhat about a year and a half ago. I'd like a balance. I like general categories with high scoring and I also like to see something crazy like Led Zeppelin appear sometimes. It's nothing to do with winning it's to do with being entertained.

My favourite game on site is Who's the Expert and I don't love that game just because there are some topics that I am able to get 15/15 in 25 seconds. I love it because there are all sorts of different challenging categories. In my eyes Team Heroes should be the team version of Expert. We already have a team game that is for general questions, it's called Team vs Team and I personally don't care for it much.

I totally accept, though, that I am in the minority. Based on the replies in this thread so far the overwhelming majority prefer a Heroes game as it has been for the past 18 months or so with no obscure and specific topics coming up. So with that being the case, the opinion of the majority should be account. I wouldn't want to see anything altered for the sake of a vocal minority even if it is me.

It's just sad that I don't enjoy the game as much as it used to. I used to love it, I used to post about it daily on my team message boards. But, you know, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I still think it's worth having the discussion and preferably having the discussion without being accused of being a bad loser!

Dagny:

All records are unbeatable at some point. If not in reality then in principle. That is the de facto definition of what a record is, one which hasn't been beaten (and may never be beaten). I play on a team that used to have arguably the best Heroes player who ever played the game, probably the best FT player of all time. He put up scores that will never be beaten although there are some players who might come close or who might even be able to beat them if they joined our team but I would never want those removed. They are records for a reason.

I never read your post. I only read the first few posts in the thread. It would be very difficult for me to misinterpret your motives when I never even read your post. Maybe you are misinterpreting mine.

Actually, I agree with you that the game was probably better before so many restrictions were made about which categories can come up. Every time I look up it seems it's UK, UK History, Mixed UK, Canada, Canadian History, Invertebrates and a few others that crop up incessantly. Fine as they are, it's just they come up too frequently, often once a month or more a single topic is displayed. It lacks diversity. But for every category that comes up one too many times, I still prefer it to the Star Wars Books category and Fantasy and some of the others. I miss Mixed 5, Mixed 15, Mixed 20, and Mixed 25 categories.

I agree with the above completely. One of my old teams was USS Enterprise and on that team I played with incognito101, to my mind the most amazing player that ever played the site. I would hate to think of her records disappearing, despite the fact that many of them must be almost unbeatable. There's also another set of records on every teams list that will never be beaten. The ones that are in topics that never come up anymore! Haha!

About the misinterpreting the misinterpretation, I was simply trying to make the point in my usual hamfisted way that not everyone who would like some change in the game wants it simply to have more chance of getting into the team's Heroes for the day. That's all.