I agree with CoachLamb - it can be difficult to get six people to play the current TvT, especially at some times of the year when people are away. Then someone gets sick, someone can't log on for technical reasons, and occasionally people have to work! So getting ten people to post scores across eight-ten games... for a small team that's going to be extremely difficult if not impossible, we just don't have a large enough pool of people.

As for the number of games, I'd rather there were eight or nine, for similar reasons. If you have sixty active players, that doesn't mean that all sixty will be online on the same day, just once in the month is enough to count. So let's say that 30 are active on any one day, you may still only have twenty willing to play the team games - they won't play them all but getting ten scores that count is possible. However, a small team may have, say twenty-five active players in a month but only fifteen on any one day... getting them all to play ten games every day is too difficult already. Reducing the number would help a lot.

I am also concerned that using the top 10 scores will be tough for teams with only around 15-20 truly active players (as opposed to occasional ones who play once or twice a week, and are counted as active by the system). The pressure on them to play all however-many games every day to keep the team competitive could be tough. It seems to me that the handful of really big teams have a decided advantage.

How about something like this?

League A: 8 games/day/month, top 8 scores per team per game count
League B: 7 games/day/month, top 6 scores per team per game count
League C: 6 games/day/month, top 5 scores per team per game count
League D: 5 games/day/month, top 4 scores per team per game count

The way I'd really like it would be for most teams to be in a situation where everyone DOESN'T have to play all games every day. I'd much rather people just play the games they want to play.

I think that looks good. We can always come back and moan if it proves unmanageable but I'd go with that as a good target to aim for. We probably won't achieve it on all games all of the time but we live with that already.

That looks really good from our team's POV. No more than 8 games and no TvT!

Now, please consider leaving the Mixed and Piece of Cake hourly games in the rotation for all levels. This rationale from one of our team members CycleGrandma:

"A librarian (media specialist) once said that she told her elementary students that books marked “E” were for Everyone, not just Easier reading. She also didn’t like the Accelerated Reading program because it discouraged children from reading what interested them and encouraged books from a particular level. Sometimes what is labeled one way (easier or “smarter “) is the opposite for challenge to a player. I would prefer that all levels of quizzes count in team play, since we are playing FUN Trivia."

I had thought the idea was that Mixed and Piece of Cake would be in the rotation for all levels but that Smartest would be a permanent game in division 1 and PoC would be permanent in division 4.

"I had thought the idea was that Mixed and Piece of Cake would be in the rotation for all levels but that Smartest would be a permanent game in division 1 and PoC would be permanent in division 4."

No promises are being made about rotations... we'll change things up as it makes sense and as we go... be prepared for anything, particularly in the top leagues.

And to balance the reduction in # of games, the # of GM games in TVT competition is capped at one per month for leagues A,B,C. None for D.

I've spotted several odd calculations for totalling the ranks. Some examples:
- Worldwide Wizards: seven games with rank 1 and one game with rank 2, total 9 in stead of the listed 14
- Quiz Makers Guild: 14+9+21+23+23+23+12 = 125 in stead of the listed 126
- Trivia Geeks: 76+74+56+107+41 is way beyond the maximum of 250, but is listed as 246

I suppose these odd calculations are because they use data from the old division system, and will be disappearing when the new system is going live.

What rank is attributed to a team if not enough people play a certain game? I suppose here will be used the number of teams in the division?

The Easier game is actually not as entry-level for competition purposes than it seems because it's a lot about top speed. It can actually take significantly longer to reach good ranks in it compared to Smartest where 10 correct with an even halfway decent time can be quite a good result.

It's still a great game for the lower league divisions simply because a lot of people play it anyway and will get scores even without actively trying to play for the team!

Terry/Wes, just a head's up that the scores shown on the Team page under the heading for Rank Yest. in the Gold Madness game are actually a duplicate of the scores for Obscurity. I was able to access the actual GM scores through the My Team link on the game page. Thanks!

Yeah you just viewed it while it was inconsistent. Ignore all data for now, it's being used for all sorts of tests.

Note in the Trivia Geek example, rank "points" for a game are capped at 50... which will only ever happen in League D.

A monthly surprise?

As mentioned earlier, we are using this final week of the month for testing.

So for those who care...


Final Team vs Team stats for August:

https://www.funtrivia.com/templates/augstats.html


For this final week I will be transitioning us to "TVT Leagues".

Ok, the system is now mostly up and running. Data collection for it started yesterday. I'll probably reset it a few times before the end of the month to test things out.

https://www.funtrivia.com/templates/teamlist.cfm

I'm really looking forward to the new format. I have a few minor questions which are really just curiosities.

1) Is there going to be a link or will this data show up on the team page so people can look at the daily rankings without having to go all the way to the forums each time?

2)In the case of two teams having the same amount points, what happens then?

3) Why are there 33 teams in Division 3? Seems like a odd amount. Would make more sense at 25 teams (same as Division 2) or 35 teams.

Another question:

For the hourly games, if the same person plays multiple times how is the team ranking calculated? (Is it the best score by each team member who played? Or an average?)

In the prior format it was your best score. Given Terry's comment that playing more will never hurt your team going forward (unlike in the TvT game), I'm sure it will be your best score.

An example:

https://www.funtrivia.com/intro/tvt_yesterdayinfo.cfm?gid=6496


I am trying to structure things so all of the data makes sense and can be SEEN. No black-box TVT scoring any more. You can go in and see all the individual component scores to make easy sense of things.

First night of automated stat keeping was a success. Two days of data now:

https://www.funtrivia.com/templates/teamlist.cfm

Got a feeling Mossbacks and Wizards will be an epic rivalry for a while to come...

And to answer an earlier question, Team Heroes rank breaks total score ties.

Some more information about game scoring: Since the number of possible scoring players per league is less than 200 now (A has a max of 160, B has 150 and C has 165) and we want to make sure that quality trumps quantity, the points assignment has been changed a bit, primarily using a top 100 scale:

- The top 10 players for each game (per division) receive a bonus score for their team that is slightly increased from a linear "1 to 100" progression:

1st - 120 points
2nd - 117 points
3rd - 114 points
4th - 111 points
5th - 108 points
6th - 105 points
7th - 102 points
8th - 99 points
9th - 96 points
10th - 93 points.

- From 11th to 100th place, the progression is one point per rank. 11th is worth 90, 12th is 89, 13th is 88, and so on down to 100th which is worth 1 point.

- Everyone else who makes the "Heroes" ranks for their team (top 4, 5, 6 or 8, depending on division) but ranks 101st and beyond still contributes 1 point towards the team standings.

Thus:

- It is ALWAYS strictly better to play than not to play. Using up your full scoring allocation will increase your points, even if only by 1 per player.
- The bonus points available at the top make outstanding performances worth going for but not dominant. Compared to a linear allocation up to 100, the extras only make about 2% of the total available daily points. But in a tight race, every point counts, so you want your best players to give it all!
- There are NO more games where playing and having a low score can bring your team's scores down. Any such fears (and any "withdraw from the game instead of submitting" strategies) are a thing of the past. We want players to play, enjoy the games and contribute.

Also, with regard to "Team Points", my currently submitted idea is that

- Heroes as the primary team game will continue to contribute the Hero average raw score for all players who submit a score (even if you finish outside the Heroes). Thus, for building team points, the game will remain a dominant factor.

- All other games will add team points equivalent to a flat award for having played at all plus the number of points you personally contribute via the rankings. Again, even if you finish outside the Heroes for your team, you will still get the base score. The base points points will be set approximately such that playing three to four games beyond Heroes and getting a few rank points will yield a number of team points comparable to what the old TvT game did (around 1000 to 1100), so it's likely that the base will be in the area of 250 to 300 per game. This also means that highly active players in the top leagues should see a chance to increase their totals towards tier 7 a bit faster than before.

If I'm understanding this correctly, it will now be much easier for players on smaller teams to acquire team points. Before joining my current team, I was on a team that for the prior year we rarely if ever had enough players play to qualify for heroes and definitely not enough for TvT. If my understanding of Wesley's post is correct, players scoring in the top 100 in their division of a game that is part of their division's team competition will earn team points even if they are the only one on their team to play. If that's the case, it will be a benefit to smaller teams rather than a disadvantage as some on the chat boards thread are worried about.

That's a correct interpretation - note however that this was just my suggestion to Terry on how to handle team points. Nothing is final on that front yet - our priority is to make sure all core league functionality is in place and well documented by the Sept 1 launch date.