If it were up to me, it'd be using Expert categories for at least a month now. Unfortunately I don't have code access :P

'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' 'Stargate Universe', and 'NCAA Football'. How emetic!
Sounds like the game is about to be ruined

That's cool with me.

But I do want to remind people that the reason all those topics were removed to begin with is that players were complaining that nobody on their teams wanted to play topics like "Manga" or "Lost" because they didn't know anything about those more specialized subjects.

If you have all the different topics in Heroes, they complain. If they are removed, they complain.

So which way does everyone want it?

This is probably a situation where we cannot please everyone. We also need to keep in mind that the vast majority of players are not commenting here, and we have no idea if they are blissfully happy, or miserable, with the way things are.

The restaurateur's maxim is that for every complaint, there are ten unhappy customers. So one complaint is something to pay attention to. It's not necessarily basis for a change, though - in general, people who are happy with something tend not to go out of their way to find a place to say "It's fine".

That's always the problem. We don't want to ignore those who feel strongly enough to bring their complaints to our attention, but we also don't want to make changes that actually only please one or two complainers! It's why this stuff is difficult.

Actually, the more I read here, the more I want those Expert categories in because they would be a way to relatively easily address the two conflicting desires.

Some players want mostly, if not entirely, accessible topics.
Others want more variety, with some more difficult topics in the mix.

This means there must be an optimum ratio of easy to harder topics. It's not 0% hard, it's certainly not 100% hard.

As the Expert system already has those two groupings (general and specific), those groupings could be used to tweak the game with a single parameter - until we find the setup that best pleases the majority of players.

Or, of course - but that would be much more difficult to code - we could restructure the game entirely. Instead of one topic per day, we'd get two. One general and one specific, from the same root category. And then, in leagues A to C, we'd have a split of what needs to be played. In A, two players (from 8) would have to choose specific. In B and C, one. (Scores would still be compared on the same table - no split).

As Heroes has (apart from achievements and the occasional stage game requirement) no personal score incentives, it would give the game a special "team" vibe. Does the team have someone really knowledgeable? Or do you just want to fill the "easier" roster with decent first and then have everyone remaining try their luck at the difficult one?

I would be okay with a game like Wes or eyhung is describing if we could also keep the current Heroes as is, as there are many people who are perfectly happy with the game and so don't go on the Forum to say that. (Usually people only go on the Forum when they have a problem or a complaint etc.)

Here's my idea for a second (or revamped) version of Team Heroes:

Every day, pick semi-randomly (can't repeat a topic two days in a row) 3 top-level topics to score.

One topic is pop culture, chosen from Movies, Television, Music, Sports, and Celebrities.

One topic is academic, chosen from Sci/Tech, History, Geography, Literature, People, and Humanities.

One topic is miscellaneous, chosen from Animals, General, Hobbies, Religion, and World.



Then each team members' best score on that day out of any of the Easy (x1.2 to provide a simple baseline), Smartest (x1.55, so that the top performances in that game are commensurate with top performances in Expert), or Expert games that fall under one of the chosen topics counts toward the team score. But only one hero per topic. So for example, if player A's Music [Pop Culture topic] performance is used for their team, you can't use their score for Academic or Miscellaneous. You compute a team's score by taking the top player in the category with the biggest margin of victory over their teammates, then, excluding that winner, the top player for category with the second-largest margin of victory, then the top player for the last category excluding the two winners.

Currently Smartest and Easy don't show their schedule, but it shouldn't be hard to expose it, so players know what hours to show up to play the category they're hoping to help their team in. Or you could leave it as is to encourage people to hang around the site checking for a favorable Smartest or Easy game.

Something like that, at least, would certainly be different and give people a variety of ways to help their team. For example, if Sports is a category of the day, it doesn't matter if they score points using Smartest - Sports, Baseball, Martial Arts, or Australian Rules, just so long as they're good at what they play. Similarly, if Hobbies is the category, you can help with Food/Drink or Collectibles or Games/Toys if those expert categories show up, or just go for the general top-level topic in Smartest or Easy.

Any second game would be aimed at supplementing the current (maybe slightly but not massively modified) Heroes, not replace it. That's the whole point - give both those who want the current Hero experience and those who'd want a more varied and more difficult setup something to do.

Don't we have to include Entertainment in the pop culture? And I personally would swap Religion to "academic" and People to "miscellaneous". I feel there is more variety in the People category than in the Religion category (and not because of the vast difference in number of quizzes).

We're still dodging VG too.

If the Heroes game is expanded to more niche subjects and/or to more categories, then we need to include Entertainment and For Children, and possibly Video Games too. It depends on how much niche categories could be included. This is not because I'm good in Entertainment or Video Games - far more to the contrary.

Brain Teasers tend to have more quizzes that need to be taken as a whole, so it's not quite practical to lift single questions from these quizzes.