Sounds like a good idea, Wes. One addition I would suggest is a "pass" button so you can skip questions you have absolutely no idea on rather than guess and get a penalty.

I like this idea. An option could be to tier it for certain times. For example T1 being to get 200 correct in 10 minutes and T7 to get 200 correct in 3 minutes with a certain % correct. If somehow questions over four lines of text can be removed from this game that'd be helpful. This definitely favors those that blitz questions and have seen many of the questions in the Quick Quiz pool already. Even so, it's all about recall for a speed game like this. I really like not having the II screen. It's pure Q and A for speed.

GC related:
Perfect Star - in either regular or hardcore mode score 15/15 in a combination of the four special ** categories and the broad * categories.

T1 15/15 in any combination of five * or ** categories at division l2 or higher in 130 seconds or less
T2 "" "" division level 3 or higher in 120 or less
T3 "" "" division level 5 or higher in 110 or less
T4 15/15 in all four ** categories and one * category in 100 seconds or less division 7 or higher
T5 "" "" in 90 seconds or less division 8 or higher
T6 "" "" in 75 seconds or less division 9 or higher
T7 "" "" in 60 seconds or less in division 10.

I'm trying to think of a way to incorporate Impossible into T7 but the only thing that's coming to mind is to require four ** categories, one * category and Impossible to reach a certain score (8,400 for example).

Easy game (could be expanded to a lot of the hourly games):
Fast and Steady - It seems that a lot of the games reward one excellent play for a day but I think it's much more difficult to average 980 over 10 plays than to blitz a 984 at some point but the 984 gets all of the props in the TvT standings and whatnot.

T1: Easy Game 8 plays in a day averaging at least 960
T2: Easy Game 10 plays in a day averaging at least 964
T3: Easy Game 12 plays in a day averaging at least 968
T4: Easy Game 14 plays in a day averaging at least 972
T5: Easy Game 16 plays in a day averaging at least 974
T6: Easy Game 18 plays in a day averaging at least 976
T7: Easy Game 20 plays in a day averaging at least 978

A separate new question game with only fill in the blank. It would be the same submission process as MC Single Questions but have strict requirements (i.e. no more than five words in an answer). The question pool would have to be created over time but I think this would be awesome. As the questions are rated and assigned a difficulty then they could be added to the FITB game and other games that use FITB questions.

The Halloween challenges that Wes does are always a blast so more stuff throughout the year(s) granting limited time mini badges would be cool. I'm sure it's a ton of work so maybe not make it annually but something around the Olympics or other major world events (for some reason equinoxes, solstices and Jan 1st are coming to mind).

I know the Chat Rooms didn't work out but we've seen through our Phoenix Rising Cool Zoom quizzes that we host weekly and typically show through PowerPoint how fun live trivia is. It'd be really interesting if an established quiz writer wrote up 20-50 questions (heck I'd throw my hand up for the first one) and then live hosted them somehow on FT. Whenever I've hosted the Cool Zooms I've had teammates private message me their answers and then based on the speed of their answers I assign points to them and plug them into Excel. If somehow on FT a system could assign a point value automatically (correctly typed FITB or correctly answered MC) based on how fast the players answer that'd be really fun. This is totally different than anything on the site. At least one other trivia website has something similar but their question database is poor and their userbase is tiny compared to FT.

I like both of your ideas in principle, but your dedication levels seem a bit high.

20 plays in a day means getting very little sleep and even 16 is feasible only if you can spend the whole day playing (i.e. no work or other commitments). Plus, with your thresholds, you'd have zero tolerance for a single misclick or wrong answer. Imagine ruining a whole day's work with one error on the 20th game at 4am.

I could see using a progression similar to Symposium (4 to 10) with targets based on the respective achievement scale, but with a slower progression:

T1: Get four T1 achievement scores
T2: Get five scores meeting a target halfway between T1 and T2
T3: Get six T2 achievement scores

etc. up to T7 which requires ten T4 results.

Given that you quickly need weaker categories (and those that simply require more reading), I would suspect that not very many players could get half their games to T4 level (and that's again assuming you play 20 of them!)

For the GC, I'd absolutely want to get rid of the division requirement. You shouldn't have to spend 2, 3 or 4 months going through the divisions before you can even TRY a difficult task. Imagine missing T6 or T7 and then being told you need to wait (and play) months before you can even try again! Not fun.

I'd say make it Div 3 to qualify and then base the requirement on score over all six sets, with the requirement to also get nine stars (so you must play four ** and one * to log a valid score). Since for many players, having this limitation would go against their main progress goals, it would be a badge you can focus on when you either don't want to do a full GC or you find you are going to miss your goal anyway. The division requirement does not really change much here anyway as neither the **s nor Impossible scale with divisions and you will usually be able to find one decent * set even at highest levels.

I guess it should start in the 6000 to 7000 range depending on how hard we want to make it and then go up into 8200-8400 range for tops.

(This check also makes the infrastructure much easier - we already have the point score for the set leaders, so all we need to do is to ensure the nine stars.)

How about upgrades to The World Quiz Major Challenge, awarded to the player with the highest score in each Daily World Quiz question set?
Win your set 500 times = Tier 7

This would be very similar to an upgrade for the 50,000 badge series in what you need to do, so it would have to be one or the other. However whichever one we don't choose could be used for a daily version of Winningest.

So which one would be the preference among players:

(A) Have upgrades to the 50,0000 Geo / Melt / Whozit / Daily point / Coins badges and a single tiered badge that tracks division wins across all daily games (going from maybe 10 to 1000 or higher)?

(B) Have upgrades to each of the winner badges and a single tiered badge that tracks points across all daily games (starting at 250k and ranging up to 5m or so)?

Note that, like Winningest, the overarching badge would have very high T6 and T7 requirements.

I'd vote for A. Outright winning a daily game is tough so tiering each based on points seems better to me.

I'd be happy with A.

I think A sounds best too.

How about something similar to the Bus Ride, a leisurely trip through some aspect of the site? Just as an example, every day play a selected quiz on an Academy Award winning movie. And when you've played say ten Best Picture winners you get a little star or something, and another when you've played ten Best Actress, etc. Get stars for the five main categories of award and that gets you the badge or badgelet. It would have to be curated the way Bus Ride is, so fairly labour intensive, but some people like the quizzes that have no speed involved, you just have to plug away and play.

Would encourage people to write quizzes for the movies that are missing, too, and to write better ones than what we've got, much the way Bus Ride has....

I would like more Badges like the France badge. Countries such as Greece, Norway, Canada, Germany, and Japan would be good candidate. The United States would be a bad candidate. You would have to program for America, American, United States, and United States of America. That is too much to do. I also nominate Wales and Bhutan. Why? I like dragons on flags.

I would also like at least one new badge or mini badge for non-gold members. Yes, I know more badges for the goldies is to lure in more of us. But I like badges for those without stars by their names.

I’m also requesting more Champ divisions for Who Am I? There are typically twice as many players in a Champ division as a regular one. It is probably true for Mind Melt too but I’ve never played Champ in Mind Melt.

My final request is something I suspect it’s already in the planning stages. I would like to see tiers for the Champion Mega Badge. To win that badge a player needs to win seven monthly badges. Since there are now more monthly badges being introduced, it makes sense that tiers are introduced to the Champion Mega Badge.

I second this idea. It could be a lot of fun.

This has my vote too

I had an idea last night, an extension of Wesley's idea, not sure if I like it quite as much this morning but I'll throw it out there.

It's a collaborative team game, maybe a replacement for TvT, which has nothing to do with competing with other teams. Every week there's a different category of questions and teams work together to answer as many questions on that topic as possible.
At the start of the week, the team leader discusses with the group how many questions they think they can get correct collaboratively in that category. Maybe these are presented as targets. A bronze target could be 250 questions for example, silver 500, gold 1000 etc. (maybe scaled down or up for different team sizes) As soon as the team leader selects a target the team answer as many questions in that category as possible on their own time, earning individual points per question as usual. If the team hit their target before the end of the week they earn a points bonus, which at the end of the week is split evenly between all participants in the group. Some weeks you'll be able to contribute 20 questions, some weeks 200. It doesn't matter. These could be team points, FT points etc. Or there could just be badges for hitting the different targets.

"How about something similar to the Bus Ride, a leisurely trip through some aspect of the site? Just as an example, every day play a selected quiz on an Academy Award winning movie. And when you've played say ten Best Picture winners you get a little star or something, and another when you've played ten Best Actress, etc. Get stars for the five main categories of award and that gets you the badge or badgelet. It would have to be curated the way Bus Ride is, so fairly labour intensive, but some people like the quizzes that have no speed involved, you just have to plug away and play."


I really like this idea. The idea of a low-stress "complete a list of quizzes over a longer period of time". So many ways this concept could be turned into a bunch of new minis.

The idea about this bus ride seems very interesting. I had an idea the other day about the team competitions. The current team leagues are very competitive, and it feels awesome to contribute to the team ranks.

Thus, I was thinking, what if whenever one comes in the top 165 for any of the hourly or daily games counted in the respective team league on any given hour/day, one star or something is given to them (or it is just counted and shown at someplace).

Finally, when one accumulates a certain number of such stars/counts, then they receive a badge or badglet, which can be upgradeable. This would make individual contributions to the team leagues individually rewarding.

In the current scenario, no motivation is needed to participate in team leagues for most of the members. Also, the motivation to give the best to give a rank boost to the team is there as well. However, I just felt that if there is a possibility of getting a badge for trying to get one's team to the top, then it might increase extrinsic motivation to participate in the team leagues.

However, I might be completely off the hook here, and this idea of mine might be bad ... Anyway, I shared my lingering thoughts with you, and I will be happy to hear your thoughts!

You do get a reward for playing in team games, team points which lead to a badge and upgrades. As far as extra rewards for finishing at the top of your team, that rewards players on smaller teams since it is easier to finish near the top. Looking at Division A, team sizes range from 19 to 130 active participants. Obviously it is much harder to make the top 8 out of 130 than out of 19.

[/quote]

You do get a reward for playing in team games, team points which lead to a badge and upgrades. As far as extra rewards for finishing at the top of your team, that rewards players on smaller teams since it is easier to finish near the top. Looking at Division A, team sizes range from 19 to 130 active participants. Obviously it is much harder to make the top 8 out of 130 than out of 19.[/quote]

The two top teams in League A have less than 30 active players. In most games it's probably harder to get into the top 8 on those teams than a larger team. I agree that it shouldn't be based on ranking in the top 8/6/5/4 of your team but rather on participation which there's already tiered badges for.

Some Expert related mini ideas.

Successful Mulligan:
T1 - use your expert mulligan and win your division via the mulligan once
T2 - "" "" 3 times
T3 - "" "" 7 times
T4 - "" "" 15 times
T5 - "" "" 25 times
T6 - "" "" 50 times
T7 - "" "" 100 times

Successful Change the Future:
T1 - use your change the future and win your selected category in your division once
T2 - "" "" 3 times
T3 - "" "" 7 times
T4 - "" "" 15 times
T5 - "" "" 25 times
T6 - "" "" 50 times
T7 - "" "" 100 times

Two very interesting ideas. It would probably be a bit of a tracking hassle with the Change the Future perk, but the mulligan one seems easy enough to implement - just set a flag that it was used this hour and check for a win. Good thinking!

A few more Expert related mini ideas:

The first was inspired by the Tie mini in Duel. It can be frustrating to have a monster score in an expert game only to see that four people played in your division and thus no win is counted. Possibly these two expert mini ideas (and the prior two) could track by category as well so you could only do each of the four once per category.

Small Field Win:
T1 - win an expert game in which less than the required five players play in your division
T2 - "" "" 3 times
T3 - "" "" 7 times
T4 - "" "" 15 times
T5 - "" "" 25 times
T6 - "" "" 50 times
T7 - "" "" 100 times

Sniping at the last few minutes of expert games has been brought up as poor form before on the forums so this is the anti-sniping mini. I could see this as being disheartening when there's a bunch of 1470 scores early on to anyone playing later in the hour but I think it'd be fun to see those scores so early in the Expert hour.

Wire to Wire Win:
T1 - win an expert game 5 times in which your play is submitted within the first 120 seconds of the hourly game
T2 - "" "" 12 times
T3 - "" "" 25 times
T4 - "" "" 50 times
T5 - "" "" 100 times
T6 - "" "" 200 times
T7 - "" "" 300 times

I’m fed up with these “discussions “ about what has been labeled as sniping. Yes, it is frustrating to be in the lead of a game, any game, only to come in second place when a better player plays in the last few minutes. For some reason the Expert game stirs up more emotions than Piece of Cake and Who’s the Smartest? for example.

I’ll admit to winning at least one Expert topic when I played it in the last three minutes. Maybe it was more than one, I don’t remember. I don’t pay that much attention to when I play. If I log onto FunTrivia and there are only three minutes left to play the Expert game and it is a topic I like, I’ll play it. I don’t clock watch so I can swoop in and win a game in the last few minutes. For one thing I’m not a good enough player to guarantee a win in any game I play. Secondly, I’ve got better things to do with my time.

I think my second reason applies to most of the people accused of that horrible behavior defined as “sniping” around here.

I have to agree. For me, it's "Oh, I can play this one *and* the next one without having to wait around for an hour. Great!" I very seldom check the scores, instead I check my own record every few days to see if I've won anything lately. I doubt if most players put that much thought into their play.

I'm going to weigh in on this sniping business. Don't like it and never have.

The reason Expert is the game most people complain about with regards to this is quite obvious: it is the *only* game that keeps track (permanently) of winners (those who finish #1 in a category). In any other game, if you finish #1, there is no listing of that in a designated section of your profile page as there is with "Expert". But the flip side of making #1 so prominent for that game is #2 is basically useless (except for some bonus FT points). There is no doubt why Expert is unique in that regard.

Now I am not nearly as perturbed by sniping now as I was five or six years ago. By now, most of the Expert categories I am capable of winning I have already won years ago. In fact, most of the categories I am capable of winning I have already won at Champion Division (and usually several times). For the past three or four years, I go months between the unexpected win in some category I played as a lark that I had not won and had no expectation of winning, but somehow surprisingly won anyway.

Nevertheless,. I still despise sniping and try very hard not to do it to other people. I don't expect other people to follow my example, but I don't generally bother to even play Expert after :15 minutes into the hour because I like to play in the first half hour of the game set to give others a chance if I do take the lead.

However, I don't like "begging for new badges" either. In all my time on FT, I have never once requested a new badge be created and I don't plan to in the future, either. Enough new ones get created anyway despite my view on the issue, which is that it promotes badge inflation. But the idea of creating a badge for "anti-sniping" is just irritating to me, despite my dislike of sniping. The stats are just not set up to recall when exactly a player played a particular game. A whole lot of extra coding would be required for such a thing for no real substantive benefit anyway. Snipers gonna keep sniping.

It doesn't bother me to hear people complain about sniping and I don't play at random times myself. I am quite cognizant of the times because it helps me play efficiently. I suspect most high-level players are also quite aware of times as well and aren't just playing because -oh look! - I just saw a game that looked interesting - that's newbie stuff there.

So complain on! Just don't expect anything to be done about it. Frequently the proposed "cure" is worse than the "disease". Sniping is real, not imagined, and it is going to be with us. Patience is the key. After enough years, it's not as aggravating as it used to be. I am reminded of the old man who told a young man that he didn't have an enemy in the world: "Yep, I've outlived them all."

For me, it's not "I just saw this game!" but seeing that I'll have two chances while I've got a little time to play games, to play something for my team. I drop in to the games page a few times a day, play some hourlies, and leave again. If one game is just ending, that means I'll have two opportunities to shave a couple seconds off my time, rather than just one. I might not get back again for six or seven hours, or at all, so I want to get as much game play as possible in, in the ten minutes or so I have to spend.

I don't think that's unusual.