The entire Team vs Team system is getting revised, based in large part on Wesley's "team of the year" system.

We will be closing this month's TvT rankings on the 25rd of this month instead of the last day.

This will give us time to switch over, test stuff out, and get the new system in place for September.

Will the Team vs. Team and Team Heroes games still be available to play during the last week of August and just not counting for anything or will these games be down those days?

yes

Here’s a more provocative question: does the TVT game serve a purpose at all? Does it cause more delight or grief for players & teams?

If we have a meta-game ranking system like Wesley’s team of the year system, is it time to retire the TVT game? Component tvt rankings effectively have turned EVERY game into tvt games. The TVT game existed because it was the only tvt game in town... that isn’t the case these days.

If you think about it, the only difference between the daily game’s tvt stats and the TVT game is that the daily game scores like heroes and TVT does not. The TVT game really offers nothing unique in my eyes, and perhaps has a less desirable scoring system than daily game/tvt stats

And please do not take into account personal “team points” in answering this. We can award them for new things, like, playing each of the games that are scoring as components in the tvt rankings, or for participating on team boards, etc. we can kill TVT and keep that alive.

Personally for me, TvT is one of the least enjoyable games on the site.

Agree! TVT = grief

Our team is so small that we rarely have enough players to record a score. I wouldn't miss it if it went.

I'll drink to that.

Totally agree with this!

Grief... Despite assurances that we are a team, and rise and fall as a team, and that everyone has bad days, once or twice a year a team member will apologize for a low score. That's not in the spirit of 'fun', if members feel personal pressure to 'perform'.

All the other games are designed for participants to add to their team's success. The TvT seems designed to be punitive.

Oh I've been saying for a long time that Team vs Team is just about the worst game left on the site. I just didn't realise that anyone else felt the same about certain aspects of it until I read the above! I've made similar comments repeatedly on the forums or in the chats over the years only to feel like I am a lone dissenting voice.

At the moment TVT doesn't actually cause me (or I think my team) any grief because of the way our team works. Nor does it provide me (or my team, I assume) much in the way of delight either. I can say, however, that I was on a team once when the TvT game was the direct cause of horrible divisiveness which resulted in the team breaking apart completely!

From that day forward I promised that I would never play for a team that wanted to put any focus on team performance in the games. That is not because I am not a competitive person but simply because I cannot stand to see players feel like they have to sit out a game out of fear of getting a low score. Particularly on a site calling itself Funtrivia.

If TvT is causing any grief, then it is being taken way too seriously.

I'd be happy if "Team of the year" was scrapped completely, it is of zero interest to me. Maybe others like it though.

I generally favor the Team Heroes over TVT game. The game is very similar to the Daily game and that one has a better scoring system more aligned with the other games on the site. Maybe in its place team points can be awarded for stuff like Knockout participation, team quizzes, etc.

I like TVT, because it is a mixed game that gives 100 points, even on an off day.

The above are great suggestions

I disagree about using Fill Me In. Since it's all typing, it could really be a problem for players on some devices in addition to penalizing those who aren't touch typists. (I'm a touch typist on a laptop, so none of that is a factor for me, but thinking of others I've heard mention it.)

I'd like to suggest a limit on the number of team games. Ten was a reasonable number but expecting lots of people to play more than that, day in day out, is a bit too much to ask. If you allow for an average of three minutes per game, including clicking from one to another, ten games is thirty minutes. Asking people to devote 45-60 minutes on team games when they also have other things to do on FT is a lot. This may not be a problem for large teams but small teams might find it impossible.

I don't understand the reasoning for replacing World and WAI, especially if you're going to include Expert (which is the same as Heroes) and Obscurity (which many newbies find too difficult even though it's much easier than it was). Including Word Wizard and Mind Melt seems a little odd as both are word games - if you want to mix up skill sets then include one of those and leave WAI in the mix. But please don't include Fill Me In, it's the one game most people loathe playing and it does disadvantage players using some devices as Dagny says.

As for the TvT, I have mixed feelings about it. The difficulty level can be very varied and the scoring system is a little odd. However, I've never objected to the tactical element - playing as a team is not the same thing as playing as a bunch of individuals and it was certainly a factor in turning the old Revenge of the Llamas into a team so I have fond memories of it. But I shan't cry too much if I no longer have to message people late at night reminding them to play which can be a nightmare for small teams.

I agree with flopsymopsy that the number of team games shouldn't get really high. I certainly hope Fill Me In is not included as a team game. I also feel Who's the Expert and Word Wizard don't really belong either. Maybe only have one of either Obscurity or Gold Madness? I prefer Gold Madness as a team game over Obscurity.

I would like to see a Triathlon-based scoring game be added as a team game, I think that would be interesting.

Certainly limit the number of team games. I'd also prefer *not* to see Gold Member games included in the team games.

"I see you've added Gold Member Madness. Same problem there today as Obscurity yesterday, no results for Ranks - Top 200 - My Team."

Yeah don't worry about that -- this is all still being built.

"I'm a little disappointed to see you've changed the format on GMM to match the other games."

Need to be consistent. Exceptions, different scoring methods, etc is confusing. At least now everything will be straightforward and the same.

"I'd like to suggest before things are set in stone that you use Fill Me In in place of Who's the Expert or Word Wizard as a team game."

I plan on adding FITB as a team game. All games will be team games. See my next response below this post for details.

"Because of the wildly varying range of difficulty in Expert, you could end up with all ten of the top scores for the day coming from just one topic, like Colors, for example."

Correct. Who's the Expert is an advantage to larger, more active teams. See below post.

"Meanwhile, Word Wizard gets lots of play already because of the built in word game, and the variation among scores is small, i.e., all very fast. "

Yep, Word wizard is a good team game.

"Fill Me In is tougher, is more equal from hour to hour, has more score variation, and doesn't get a lot of play already."

Fill also works. All games work to some degree. Our plan is to make TVT more interesting and dynamic.

"If you're going to do away with TvT entirely, I'd like to suggest some alternative format scoring just to have one other game besides Heroes that isn't exactly the same as all the others."

If someone can think of a cool replacement team-centric game that is fun, fresh, and exciting, I'm all ears. I'm not going to add another game though just for the sake of adding a new game.

"Alternative 1: Use Triathlon scores for the day as a "game". The top five or top seven scores for the day for the team get counted as a score."

Not a big fan of this as it duplicates the triathlon games, which are already potential components.

"Alternative 2: Use an average over several games as a score, like the Daily Game, Mind Melt, New Question, and Who Am I scores would be averaged for each player and then ranked, then the top five or top seven scores for the day would be counted as the team's score. (Mind Melt would count three times as much as New Question, but then maybe it should.)"

Same as above. Just mixing up data that is already potentially considered.

"Alternative 3: Use an average of the five Duel games played for the day as a score for each player, rank, top five or top seven scores counted as the team's score."

This is a more interesting idea as duel does not have TVT scoring yet.

Pretty much, the new TVT system will allow us to add "new ranking components" however we wish, and for whatever game we want. These will be able to be added at any time, even after the initial release.

Absolutely.

Here's an extremely brief overview of the new system. Inspired by Wesley's "Team of the Year", modified by him, then modified by me:


There are 4 leagues. Top performing teams are in league A, next tier are league B, casuals league C, super casuals league D. At the end of every month, the top teams in each league move up to the next highest league, the lowest 5 ranked teams move down a league. The higher the league, the more players are counted for each TVT game ranking. So, even smaller highly scoring active teams will be up in league A. More players gives you more chances to score well, but ultimately this system awards quality over quantity.

Each month, different games will be chosen as the "scoring TVT games" for each league. The higher the league, the more games that will be considered. This is because in general the higher leagues have larger teams or have more dedicated players.

Your team's score is the SUM OF RANKS for the scoring games in your league. Lower the sum the better.

League A will score 9 chosen games. (2 GM)
League B will score 8 chosen games. (1 GM)
League C will score 6 chosen games. (1 GM)
League D will score 5 chosen games. (0 GM)

These "scoring games" will change each month. So FITB may be a scoring component in League A one month, Word Wizard the next month another, etc. League D will always see "Easy game" as an option. League A will always see "Smartest", etc. Some games will always appear in a league, and others will be random. League D will never see Expert or FITB as they are more specialty, for example.

It will stay fresh and dynamic and each month there will be a different mix of "scoring games" for each league. As you can see, I can add 40 new "TVT games", add them to the random-rotation, and we're still capped at a max of 9 per month in League A. And if even 9 is too much we can reduce it. Super simple in the new system.

I need to include GM games in a limited fashion to encourage GM signups. No way around that unfortunately.

Each "Team Info" page will have the "TVT League" scoreboard for your current league (A,B,C,or D) at the very top, showing which games are being counted this month, what your rank is in each game vs those in your league, and what the total ranking is for your league.

Make sense?

[ And yes... I am going to kill off "The TVT game". It is now obsolete, has unfun scoring, duplicates the daily game, and it's time for it to bid adieu. It will run for one more month in the background while we remove dependencies from challenges / games, and give people a last chance to get the badges before they are retired. It will not be a part of the new "TVT League System" ]

I think this will be an interesting system and it'll be exciting to see which games are set for each month.

For the revolving games, it may be good to have Team Heroes as a permanent game for all divisions. That game seems to be most team oriented game we have, and it would feel weird without it.

This question kinda relates to the last edit, but regarding challenges like the everything challenge and it's tiers, would that missing point gap from losing TvT be replaced with something equal?

Yep, already done! We also choose Daily game for all leagues, and there are some other "fixed games" for each division.


Yes. Wesley has that worked out.