Dante wrote:
zog741 wrote:
I have yet to score fewer than 10,200 points on a full Countdown game under the new format after 21 games. Under the old format, I would say my average solo score was about 10,500 and scores in the 8000s occurred more than occasionally. With the new format, my average score should increase by at least 1000. I consider fewer obscure pop-culture questions as a major reason for the increased scores.
People would get fixated on "pop culture," but ignore that a lot of the crap questions were just "crap" from a different era. It looks like both have been removed, and, really, that makes me happy, since the older folks seemed to think it was unforgivable to ask about Britney Spears, but completely forgivable to 4 Cary Grant questions in the same game, or to ask about a movie no one has seen since 1975, forgetting that it was, in fact, just "pop culture" from their era they were remembering (yes, most of those "classics" are actually really bad movies with no redeeming value).
I enjoyed the games I played, except the first Countdown from Saturday, which I almost left when it was a higher % of entertainment than before. I went, "This is even worse!" and almost left. Glad I stuck it out.
I carried these over from another thread to prevent a hijack and because it looks like something folks are going to start wanting to discuss.
The new CD games seem easier. There is no other way to describe it.
Every game seems to have either a perfect or near perfect score.
Is it due to the perceived lack of pop culture, regardless of era?
I, for one, never felt that CD over the last few years was particularly infected by an overwheming influx of PC. There have been categories that have come and gone in swarms over short periods to be sure, but that has been the case with CD since I can remember. And I can remember a long way.
The 15 or so games I've played so far (an admittedly small sample) seem slightly lighter on one PC category only: TV. What I am noticing is that it feels like I'm getting less PC content because the BT games, which were usually heavier on it, have been removed from the equation. The CD games feel about the same.
It doesn't feel like PC has been reduced so much as all of the other categories have been reduced to mostly history and geography questions. This is consistent with CDs from before the BT era. It seems that most good trivia players cut their teeth with these two categories from earlier in the learning process. So it stands to reason that these two categories would benefit people who have a desire to show what they've learned over the years. I've always assumed this was the main reason behind most trivia players' preference for CD. I also think it's the main reason for increased scoring.
I've also noticed more repeats, especially older ones from as far back as four years or so. Did NTN dust off an old CD question file to accommodate the game airing twice as often?
BT actually gave us a tool to fill in some of the blanks: shiny new badges.
The best thing about these badges is that they give a measuring stick for the categories in play among those that play almost nothing except afternoon CDs like myself.
A quick inspection of my 200 or so early badges conforms to my initial impressions of content percentage during actual gameplay.
I'm curious to see how these categories break down over an extended period of time.
So far I only have one real beef about the new CD.
Rankings. Or lack thereof.
I know there are bigger fish to fry right now, but it's hard to believe that this topic has only been mentioned twice in all of these threads and barely at that.
How can BT not manage to air both sets of rankings twice? Given that the second set occasionally pops up briefly, clearly they didn't intend for it to not show at all. Someone over there needs to find the eight seconds or so for the second set to air like they intended.
Here's an idea: GET RID OF THE IN-GAME CONGRATULATORY SCREENS!
Barring isolated technical issues, there was never a problem getting two sets of rankings before the introduction of these unnecessary pieces of puffery. Never.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
My fingers hurt.
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