The crisis in TDs

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floridagator
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The crisis in TDs

Post by floridagator »

I know I am not the only person who has noticed that interest in our board's Think Different games has declined severely in just the past few months.

These games are great fun, and as a frequent author, I don't understand why participation has dropped. Are we making the games too tough? Too easy? Too esoteric?

Please let me know what we as TD hosts can do to bring the games back to life.
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by twelvefootboy »

floridagator wrote: Sat Dec 01, 2018 8:53 pm I know I am not the only person who has noticed that interest in our board's Think Different games has declined severely in just the past few months.

These games are great fun, and as a frequent author, I don't understand why participation has dropped. Are we making the games too tough? Too easy? Too esoteric?

Please let me know what we as TD hosts can do to bring the games back to life.
As a boardie in my sophomore year I don't have a long perspective on this, but the best I can tell these have been going weekly for many years (since 2011, or so?). There's bound to be TD fatigue but I would expect most players to take a hiatus and come back for another cycle.

As a freshman, I can't say when I realized the TD message thread was something I could lurk in, and then participate in, but it was a few months. Newbies aren't going to fix the malaise, but it might not hurt to caption the thread title with (Newbies welcome) after the edition and title. I also didn't catch on to the weekly poll for a while. It's easy to be bashful in somebody else's house.

There's been a lot of evolution in the games. The earliest ones were specific knowledge questions without multiple choice formats and would be challenging for me. A boardie commented a while back that they passed on a TD because it was too much like a test.

New variables - many boardies have added other time sumps like HD Trivia and may have lost focus of their priorities, lol. Give the kids some cereal and send them to school!

If it helps, I will start a list of reasons/objectives from the player viewpoint. Others can pile on new ones or disagree:

MOJO:
Having fun.
Learn something well known by others that I didn't know and MIGHT retain.
Learn something esoteric and interesting, retention not required (so it isn't learning?).
Blunder into a few singletons or doubletons.
Enter early, complete quickly, and forget about until the reveal so it's new surprises.
Avoid using the drop feature - not playing for podium position anyway :).
Avoid wrong answers (there's a reason this is last priority)

Not MOJO:
Podium position or ranking - but I enjoy the trash talking.
Be high maintenance with trick answers and/or complain about rulings (the middle child in me). (I'm fine with re-education by other players if a disputed answer has alternate wrinkles)
Studying early and entering later and hand wringing over the perfect answer and thinking about it for days, etc..
Hand wringing over ANY answer in hope of guessing a correct one and avoiding the drop/sheep.

I may edit this in response to other ideas, etc..

For Test format and subjects,

Themes are fun. But not the same niche for all ten questions - it is more interesting to throw in tangentially related material.
Multiple bail-out freebie answers - enough to hurt, but not go full sheep.
I personally struggle with facial recognition, but think the gallery formats are an improvement over the straight question format of the early TDs.
I found Morbeedo's Mini TD's very much fun, especially the way they squeezed the leaders into a sheep pen at the end.

Thanks for the hard work you've put in. Your ring series was a blast, and is the benchmark for variety and interest imho.
Disclaimer - repeated exposure to author's musings may cause befuddlement.
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by MattKnowles »

I’ve been skipping a lot of TDs recently because I’ve been very busy with things and haven’t had any time.

I think the quality of TDs has been great and I wouldn’t change anything. The TDs you host are especially good. I wasn’t a huge fan of Morbeedo’s mini-TDs because I would miss one question and get disqualified and then there was no reason to have any interest.

One recommendation for your TDs is to repeat the questions with the answers during the reveal. I typically don’t know half the responses to any given question and a motivation for playing TDs is to learn new things. When the answers and questions are paired together during the reveal I learn the answers to the questions I didn’t know. Obviously I could google the questions and the answers after I submit my answers but that takes up a lot more time.
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by spell4yr »

Recently I’ve been trying to play every week, partially since the counts have been down. I must say that the amount of multiple choice has made it more difficult for me to be able to answer a TD as a (relatively) quick aside, for example while I’m pulling a series of reports at work. While the authors are doing phenomenal work with writing the equivalent of up to 140-160 questions for one TD, at the same time it sometimes makes the games overwhelming. JMHO.

I’m hoping to finish writing a follow up to 322 (didn’t mean to let two years pass), but we’ll see if I’m able to practice what I preach.
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by Vintsanity »

I participated (initially under a different account) in nearly every single TD from roughly the end of 2015 to a few months ago when I stopped frequenting this board multiple times per week. Now I usually just stop by once a week to see the FJ poll.

For me it was simple a matter of getting trivia fatigue. With this board, LearnedLeague, AlpacaFarm, Fleetwit, HQ Trivia, TriviaHub, and DVR'd episodes of J! and Millionaire, trivial pursuits were just taking up too much of my time. Something had to give, and that something was this board and the TDs. For me, TDs took more time and/or effort than the other things I mentioned, so they got the ax.

The quality of the TDs is fine; I really can't think of any structural changes that would make me more likely to participate. I find that the quantity is overwhelming. I would probably make it a point to play TDs if they were once a month or something. As is, it is easier to just cut them out completely than to pick and choose a few to participate in.
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by Wpwells »

I’ll say that I’ve stopped playing any TDs that require me to listen to music clips. I play on my work computer, and that ends up being a hassle that I just don’t want to deal with.
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by heppm01 »

I'm relatively new around here and have entered perhaps a couple dozen TDs. I play to have fun and while it's exciting to be among the leaders for a handful of questions it usually doesn't last.

To keep this post from being a list of negatives, I want to say Thank You to all that have put together a TD. It must be a tremendous amount of work and I appreciate the effort you put into it. Please keep it up.

That said, some of the things I dislike:
- Audio clues. I don't have time to listen to ten 30 second clips, or to hunt around the progress bar trying to find the start of the next song.
- Image clues. I'm borderline on these. If it is just a collection of obscure things then it becomes YEKIOYD on sight. I would prefer if these had some textual TOM to assist (sometimes the theme is good enough). Oftentimes I've heard of the thing but do not know what it looks like.
- Huge endgame bonuses. If the last one or two bonus questions offer -15 points I think it upsets the balance of the game. It just doesn't seem right that someone who is leading after carefully crafting ten responses can get blown out of the game at the very end because some people can name 26 pro football mascots. One, two or three point bonuses are fine; perhaps cap it at five if accompanied by a truly difficult question.
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by triviawayne »

I didn’t even do the SHC this year, I’ve become too busy with other things and trying not to spend so much time online
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by CasketRomance »

Wpwells wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 9:43 am I’ll say that I’ve stopped playing any TDs that require me to listen to music clips. I play on my work computer, and that ends up being a hassle that I just don’t want to deal with.
totally agree with that...especially the ones with tons of "old" obscure clips like in this currently open TD...that will be the first TD i will be passing on in months...the whole game is boring imo...i like the idea of using an actor/actress' movies as the theme, but this current one is just so dry
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by CasketRomance »

Vintsanity wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 12:14 am I participated (initially under a different account) in nearly every single TD from roughly the end of 2015 to a few months ago when I stopped frequenting this board multiple times per week. Now I usually just stop by once a week to see the FJ poll.

For me it was simple a matter of getting trivia fatigue. With this board, LearnedLeague, AlpacaFarm, Fleetwit, HQ Trivia, TriviaHub, and DVR'd episodes of J! and Millionaire, trivial pursuits were just taking up too much of my time. Something had to give, and that something was this board and the TDs. For me, TDs took more time and/or effort than the other things I mentioned, so they got the ax.

The quality of the TDs is fine; I really can't think of any structural changes that would make me more likely to participate. I find that the quantity is overwhelming. I would probably make it a point to play TDs if they were once a month or something. As is, it is easier to just cut them out completely than to pick and choose a few to participate in.

no jetpunk?
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by morbeedo »

I need to be more disciplined about entering every TD, but too many sports questions and I don't bother

I've stopped hosting for now, only because it takes too much time to write and score
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by CasketRomance »

morbeedo wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 12:11 pm I need to be more disciplined about entering every TD, but too many sports questions and I don't bother

I've stopped hosting for now, only because it takes too much time to write and score
you should still do them...with your limited sports knowledge you most likely will give low answered responses...seeing this board is more sports knowledgeable than one might have thought
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by AFRET CMS »

floridagator wrote: Sat Dec 01, 2018 8:53 pm I know I am not the only person who has noticed that interest in our board's Think Different games has declined severely in just the past few months.

These games are great fun, and as a frequent author, I don't understand why participation has dropped. Are we making the games too tough? Too easy? Too esoteric?

Please let me know what we as TD hosts can do to bring the games back to life.
I'm an ORF, so I usually have enough time on my hands to visit the board for half an hour at least three or four times a week, so I'm probably an atypical respondent.

I'm usually OK with audio clues, though there have been a couple where the theme was so narrow I had to drop it, not recognizing any of the selections. A wide variety is helpful -- we curmudgeons may not know a single clip in a selection of hip-hop and rappers, while millennials would throw up their hands to hear 10 clips from 1930s Sons of the Pioneers albums.

I tend to like the simpler rule sets; some of the recent bonus options of "you can choose A by doing these three things for 7 points or choose B by doing these four things for 9 points or choose C by doing either of these things for either 4 or 6 points" make me wish I were playing Fizzbin instead.

I also tend not to be a huge fan of multiple choice questions. Simple "name something that...." are fun; it makes the strategy of choosing a response as important as the knowledge of having several responses to choose from. Second favorite are lists of ten or twelve single-answer questions like a question topic of "Board Moderators: 1. Which board moderator was an only child, 2. Which board moderator was adopted, 3. Which board moderator broke a leg in a skiing accident, 4. Which board moderator graduated high school at age eleven" and so on. The more convoluted the answering process, the less patient I tend to be.

Finally, if I can do a TD in around 10-15 minutes or less, I'm very likely to enter; if it looks like it will take longer than 15 minutes my chances of entering decline precipitously.

That said -- I find TDs hugely fun and entertaining, and have boundless respect and appreciation for the TD authors who put in the time and effort to do something fun for the rest of us.

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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by CasketRomance »

Vintsanity wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 12:14 am I participated (initially under a different account) in nearly every single TD from roughly the end of 2015 to a few months ago when I stopped frequenting this board multiple times per week. Now I usually just stop by once a week to see the FJ poll.

For me it was simple a matter of getting trivia fatigue. With this board, LearnedLeague, AlpacaFarm, Fleetwit, HQ Trivia, TriviaHub, and DVR'd episodes of J! and Millionaire, trivial pursuits were just taking up too much of my time. Something had to give, and that something was this board and the TDs. For me, TDs took more time and/or effort than the other things I mentioned, so they got the ax.

The quality of the TDs is fine; I really can't think of any structural changes that would make me more likely to participate. I find that the quantity is overwhelming. I would probably make it a point to play TDs if they were once a month or something. As is, it is easier to just cut them out completely than to pick and choose a few to participate in.
i had never heard of that site before...so it is a trivia gambling site? seems decent, but the rake is really high on that site
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by clprez »

I try to enter most of them, but the last couple of weeks have been too "hard" for me. I personally like the TDs that try to have a one or two choices that are reachable for most people, but when I read the questions and I don't know any answer for the first few, I just give up. I'm okay with that, as I'm sure others would like to enter more challenging ones.
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by threearruda »

Having hosted one TD and mostly written a second, I try to enter all of them out of appreciation for the host and because they're fun to play. When I don't (as was the case three/four weeks ago), it usually has to do with me forgetting/not being able to sit down for 20 minutes over the course of the week and do some deep thinking. Virtually every time out, TDs are well constructed and well run.

Thing is, though, part of me wonders if the "TD Crisis" has to do with something completely out of our collective control. I have a hard time believing that something suddenly happened to TDs over the last month that started driving people away. Convenience and saving time is the name of the game these days; several of you have mentioned this already within your posts in this very thread. Visiting a message board takes time. It takes time to think about and play a game such as TD, it takes time to log in and read through a well thought out post, a series of game discussions, and so on. It is more convenient for people to visit Reddit, Facebook/Twitter to discuss J!, trivia and/or anything else because it's all neatly in one place and caters to their short attention spans/limited free time. If that happens, you get fewer people on our boards, and in turn fewer people playing these games. I think this "crisis" is simply a byproduct of a cultural pattern affecting our board and others, nothing inherently wrong with anyone's hosting. Just my $0.02 though so take it or leave it as you wish...
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by econgator »

AFRET CMS wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 2:38 pm
I tend to like the simpler rule sets; some of the recent bonus options of "you can choose A by doing these three things for 7 points or choose B by doing these four things for 9 points or choose C by doing either of these things for either 4 or 6 points" make me wish I were playing Fizzbin instead.
That.

When the bonus section requires more reading than the quiz itself, that's too much.

Also, the game is "Think Different", not "Think Different and also answer some questions".
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by RJRouge »

clprez wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 8:02 pm I personally like the TDs that try to have a one or two choices that are reachable for most people, but when I read the questions and I don't know any answer for the first few, I just give up.
This is precisely why I skipped the one that was all sports.
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by Saturnalia »

I haven't been playing lately largely because my Masters program has been pretty fatiguing; I've had to let go of some of my trivia energy, because I only have so much mental capacity. But I have found most of them well-constructed.

That said, what I look for in a TD, above all, is the proper difficulty level. If the questions are all basic enough that a decent Jeopardy contestant could provide most answers to most questions without even thinking too much about it, that's a problem. If it's so difficult that I'm unable to answer multiple questions, or only provide one answer to a number of questions (which does limit the fun / strategy), that's a problem. Material that's the equivalent of questions from the bottom boxes in DJ, maybe a little tougher than that, is what I'm hoping for. The Area Codes were generally really good in that regard; maybe a couple of them were a little on the tough side.

I have drafted, or partially drafted, a couple of TDs, both of them general-knowledge but organized loosely around a theme (one is Grateful Dead-themed; the other, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney themed). I haven't signed up to host because I know it would be a lot of work and I'd have trouble following through and scoring in a proper amount of time.
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Re: The crisis in TDs

Post by merica »

CasketRomance wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 12:06 pm
Wpwells wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 9:43 am I’ll say that I’ve stopped playing any TDs that require me to listen to music clips. I play on my work computer, and that ends up being a hassle that I just don’t want to deal with.
totally agree with that...especially the ones with tons of "old" obscure clips like in this currently open TD...that will be the first TD i will be passing on in months...the whole game is boring imo...i like the idea of using an actor/actress' movies as the theme, but this current one is just so dry
I also often play in a location where I don't have the ability to listen to audio clues, so I either use my drop or sheep on those questions. Otherwise, just short on time to play. I ended up getting in TD404 on the last day, after originally thinking it was not to my liking. Turns out I rather enjoyed it!
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