Obscurity Updated

- Updated to division system: 3 divisions, all hours of day

- Lengthened to 2 hours -- it's now on same schedule as Fifty-Fifty

- Added winner points & badges. The progression will be slower here.

- Points increased slightly: 200 for at least 5+ correct. For consistency with other games I'm also adding 1/10th of score in points.

- New badge "Obscurity: Winner", may be upgraded like the other winner badges.

- Question pool looks pretty decent for me -- it appears we are using the single question DB entirely in that game. How's it working out? Good mix of questions? Fun? Are there too few and is it becoming a memorizing game, or are there too many for that?

It's not a memorizing game, Terry. I don't think it needs fixed.

Actually, that was the standard before, no??

I think it would be fun to pull obscure/difficult questions from quizzes, too, in addition to the single question DB. There are so many quizzes with so many tough/difficult/obscure questions that I don't think that repetition/memorization should be a problem, as long as you keep the pool size large, and maybe rotate questions, too.

No.

The catch here is striking the balance between "what did this character do in a scene from this TV show?" and rated questions that are seen as interesting after being voted for by single question game players. The great catch with the single question cache is knowing that they're well-received, but if we pull obscure-rated questions from quizzes, we risk some unreasonably unrefined minutiae leaning towards 2000s-era 'Impossible'.

It was 200 for Obscurity and 100 for Gold Member Madness before the change. I'm sure of it, Terry. I know you're the boss, but I would often use these games to get needed points for challenges or just to get Brains, and I noted that Obscurity used to give 200 while Gold Member Madness gave 100.

Well, I think this would be doable. Terry could avoid TV shows and video games, perhaps, or not go too deep in subcats there. There would be a mix of questions from quizzes and single questions. There ought to be some impossible questions in there some of the time, not all of the time, just some of the time. The name of the game is "Obscurity".

Ouch-- another game that keeps VG out. Someday I'll get the game I want to play. :p

It was indeed 200 plus a very small amount based on your score. Now it's 200 plus a higher percentage of score

By the way, homepage timer for the game always shows 60 min instead of the current time left.

Isn't that what the Impossible does? Why have two such games?

There has always been 200 points. Before a bonus was generated based on a player's finishing spot. Now it's based on score / 10. It is different.

Actually it shows either 60 min or 120 min, depending on whether 0-60 minutes are left or 61-120 minutes are left.

There are some comparisons between Obscurity and Gold Madness that are worthy of mention.
Both are fairly difficult but ther questions come from different placed. The GM come from recent quizzes and while there is some repetition it does not last long as the question set continually changes. Memory can play a minor part in achieving good results.
Obscurity's greatest strength is it pulls in questions from the single question pool. While VG and BT are not represented, we know the questioned have been vetted by the New Question game and they have been tested. The difficulty with this game is you rarely see the same question more than once so memory plays little part in getting a good score.
It is one of my favourite games and I would prefer to see the question source stay as is. I also would have preffered this to stay a one hour game but acknowledge is was not played as much as other hourly games

Also VG can be represented in Obscurity. All it takes is for everyone to submit VG singles which are perfectly acceptable in Entertainment for that purpose.

If a good VG representation in Obscurity is what we want, let's take 100 authors and each submit 3 to 5 VG questions.

Keep them coming!

Yes please.

I just bought a challenge to "Score a cumulative total of at least 3778 points in the Obscurity hourly game today." This is a Medium level challenge.

Given the changes to a 2 hour game, there will only be 4 opportunities rather than 8 to reach this total (actually, 3 because I'll likely be asleep before the last hour - but that's my issue). I'm thinking that it might make sense to lower the totals for the cumulative daily challenges for Obscurity. Probably not by cutting them in half because that would probably be too easy but maybe drop them by 25% so this one would be 2834 which would still likely require at least 3 plays (over at least a 5 hour period) rather than 4 or 5 plays (over a 7 or 9 hour period) like the current target requires.

Same query as last entry as my difficult challenge today is

Score a cumulative total of at least 6122 points in the Obscurity hourly game today.

This seems a very high total now it's a 2 hourly game. Even if you average 1000 points a game it will take 7 games to meet this target.

My difficult is 5901--wish I hadn't used my mulligan!

Played three games so far today and still not halfway there, normally if I had played 6/7 games today would have completed it.

Never even got close to half the total.

Thanks pmarney, I've removed obscurity from that daily challenge.

Saturday 23 may 2020
Difficult challenge cumulative total 6017 pts obscurity
Last message of Terry I have removed obscurity from that daily
Challenge mars 4 2019
Maybe removed in March 2019
But still exist in May 2020

That's a doable challenge. I completed it today with a higher total than 6017. I did several with a set just ending and played the new set ten minutes later. Try asking for a possible lower goal in the thread dedicated to Daily Challenges:

https://www.funtrivia.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/1230216#Post1230216