New Scaratings

I agree that this should happen, however we all understand if this change is implemented for even one week the damage will be irreversible. We absolutely cannot let it get that far.

BO

Could Liljol be right? Is it possible that NTN is doing this type of thing to steadily drive away the
"Old Guard" and try to replace them with the demographic they have been unsuccessfully chasing these last few years? If so, I do not understand that type of logic at all. I wish they knew how much money I have spent in bars the last 9-10 years playing trivia. That multiplied by a significant number of "old-timers" can never be replaced by the short attention spanned face book generation that has no intrinsic interest in trivia as it is. Dumb, dumb, dumb...............

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liljol, still residing in a humble lil abode in Buzztime's Backyard, San Diego County, in The Horribly Site-Poor Golden State, California...

<--805 NTN Buzztime sites visited as of 11/13/2018...

F CUBS!!!!! FBOSOX!!!!!

FPDRES!!!!! FCHGRS!!!!!

I'm blindsided by this. Does anybody think anything can be done to prevent this? The model I'm thinking of is netflix. They announced a stupid business plan, were stunned by the outrage and quickly scuttled the idea.

Is BT committed to this no matter what?

What a sad sad thing.

Duff
(aka Fred s.)

I wonder if the demographic that BT is trying to attract ever played Trivial Pursuit.

If BT ever introduced a shooter POV game where you have to "snipe" the correct answer, I'd probably never be able to find a PM to use at my site.

EGADS!!! Now I've done it...

Netflix had 10's of thousands of users complain or cancel their accounts. It affected their pocketbook directly

Buzztime can write off the couple of hundred people who will write them to complain as cranks. If the sites keep their contracts, the money continues to roll in
The only hope of getting BT to change their minds a mass threat by sites saying they will unplug if this goes forward.

My wife and I are pretty much the team. BWW in Willowbrook doesn't have enough regular players to make a go at team play. (Not to mention that on UFC Saturday nights, nearly every television is tuned into the fights with the volume as loud as it can go which kind of makes Playback a little difficult.) We are pretty much the only players at Mr. Mo's as well, unless the group from the Grove comes on a field trip. So we are pretty much solo play also. That being said, as a lover of old-school, I think I'm going to hate these changes as much as the rest of you.

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Malort. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

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liljol, still residing in a humble lil abode in Buzztime's Backyard, San Diego County, in The Horribly Site-Poor Golden State, California...

<--805 NTN Buzztime sites visited as of 11/13/2018...

F CUBS!!!!! FBOSOX!!!!!

FPDRES!!!!! FCHGRS!!!!!

I understand Buzztime's desire to try new things. I generally only play Playback on Saturday nights. We used to play on both Friday and Saturday nights. But then they moved Triviaoke and Jukebox to Saturday night as a lead in to Playback, so we stopped going out on Friday nights. Then they got rid of Jukebox and Triviaoke, so now we only play Tuned In and Playback. We do an occasional Friday night when the choices for Headliner in Playback suck.

I read Rockin Robin's reports on Playback and since they changed to the new version of Playback there has been a fairly steady downward spiral in numbers of players of that game. What Buzztime doesn't seem to understand is that change for the sake of change isn't necessarily a good thing. So, despite the drop in play, they refuse to admit a mistake and go back. I still believe that the 15 minute games were designed to bring in more casual players. But still, those players won't sit there for 15 minutes and play a game, let alone 3 hours at a crack like we would formerly do on Friday and Saturday nights, and like many of you do during the week as well.

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but just wanted to get that off of my chest. (Speaking of chest, I love your avatar Toots!)

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Malort. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

Far too kind, Lewser. Now the first TWO drinks are on me.

I've actually been around a couple hundred Buzztime sites by now, I suppose, between my extensive business travel 2000-2004 and my cross-country road trips every summer since then. I've been leading the charge at drinking dinner.

I've seen how much the Scaratings group enjoys head-to-head national competition. But you're the cream of the crop, and you compete in powerful teams assembled in fairly large cities over years. I don't for a moment dispute that this would be terrible for you.

I do think that it would be best financially for Buzztime. I think that I'd enjoy it more. If I had a local top 50 Showdown Team it would be different. I don't.

But I'm not trying to convince ANY of you of my position being better for you. You're the elite players to whom I referred. For you as a community, this sucks.

***

May I offer a suggestion? Come back to Buzztime as a united front asking for two games to remain national:

1) Showdown

2) ONE night of Six.

Splitting the Six nights into National Six and Network Six would show Buzztime how good or bad their decision was. You could all, with all of your friends, boycott Network Six. That might change their minds, if you're correct.

You obviously have never been to Streetsboro. We'd love to have you play with us, though, if you are ever in the area.



This idea has a lot of merit, with the added benefit of giving BT the opportunity back off (of what I still think is an egregiously bad decision) while still saving some face. If there is a disproportionate amount of play between Wednesday and Thursday SIX, they may be forced to reconsider.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

WB TANAKA, tell me what you think of this hypothesis:

Casual players play regardless of content, when premium games air, and rankings. Serious players do not, they play only if the content is good and get to compete against the nation. Without both, the serious player quits.







Disagree vehemently, while it's better than nothing, if this idea is implemented we might as well go home for good.

And I for one am sick of taking change after change right up the ass while watching player count dwindle to nothing.

BO

While I agree it would provide the answer to the debate, we know it has a no chance of happening. Buzztime doesn't "test" its ideas on the network. (And you can see why this test on the network won't work, it would confuse the hell out of the Mountain/West player on why they have to show up at 8:30pm one night for SIX and 5:30pm the next night for it).

As BO says, the only way to solve the problem is to get them to stop it before it launches on the network. If the change gets implemented, you can't stop the wheels at that point.

I actually agree with BO on this more than it appears. The thing is, the wheels are already in motion and I'm afraid it is unlikely that BT will stop the rollout at this point. They they have already made the announcement and started promoting it to their customers, who I probably do not need to remind you are not us, but the bar owners. If a sufficient number of them requested this, I doubt they are going to kill the change without at least trying it for a while. Believe me, I would like to be totally wrong about this, but given past experience with this company, I think this is the reality.

If that is the operating premise, then, holding out Showdown and one of the SIXes might be the best we can hope for, and I am frankly pessimistic that even this is going to happen. On the other hand, when they dumbed-down Showdown in the spring of 2008, players rose enough of a stink about it that after about two months they "swung the lever back" to more challenging games (as I believe one of the Buzzies put it). Thus, there is a past precedent for "stopping the wheels" after a change was implemented.

I don't want to be a defeatist here, but given the way BT has worked in the past I have little reason to be otherwise regarding this. Like I said, I hope BT proves me spectacularly wrong.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

Thank you for the very kind invitation. Perhaps I could find a way to drop by on a non-tournament Tuesday this summer, if that would be acceptable.

Streetsboro looks to be a beautiful town, roughly twice the size of Farmville. But you're part of the Akron MSA, with a population of 703,200 in just two counties. If you look at your champoinship-caliber team, which I believe to be descended from the old Damon's Stow team, you have players from Twinsburg, Aurora, Northfield, Oxford, Brookpark, and Akron all coming together with Streetsboro in one powerhouse team. The two counties next to Farmville have a combined population of 33,400. Farmville, population 6,845, is the biggest city or town between Lynchburg and suburban Richmond, and it's roughly fifty miles from either. Contrasted to Farmville, the Akron MSA really is a "fairly large city."

But Anon, your kindness in inviting me to drop by parallels the kindness you always showed in our previous correspondence. I'll try to see you this summer.

Although I agree that keeping one night of Six (and Showdown) on the national network would be a reasonable compromise, I think BO's point here is probably the most important one. Another important thing to think about is, how did we all transition from casual players to serious/regular players? I would imagine very few of us jumped right in to playing multiple times a week with the intent of competing nationally each and every time. For me personally, I became a serious player when I met and starting playing regularly with other serious players (namely LEWSER, his wife, and EGGMAN). If they implement these changes and many serious players quit, in addition to BO's point, very few casual players will become serious players, because there will be no serious players left to convert them.

Did the facepalm screw up the blog? Can't seem to find the comment button now.

As a rule, yes. Entirely, no.

I would submit that the reason that there's no growth in Buzztime may be the excellence of the excellent, yourself included. I think that there's a middle ground of players who would LIKE to compete nationally but who CAN'T compete nationally, not understanding that the competition is, for example, using Google to play Showdown, but also not understanding the diversity and excellence of the major teams, and concepts such as keeping twelve (or thirty) boxes in the game for a final split to save the site score.

I would hate to see you leave the community, BO. Candidly, it seems to me that serious players have remained with Buzztime through previous issues, so maybe you, or most excellent players like you, wouldn't leave if Network Premium Games are introduced. But from a Buzztime perspective, if you and the top hundred-odd teams were all to leave at once, that would leave most Buzztime sites unaffected and would create an exciting vacuum to fill the new leadership spots in the nation...er, two networks.

What you're threatening to do - have all the best players quit - would be an opportunity for Buzztime, not a loss.




Your call. ANON has conceded, too, that it might not work. I merely wish to offer a constructive proposal that might demonstrate clearly, at the bottom line, how much you and the network of Buzztime superstars mean financially to the corporation.

As I suggested earlier, the definition of "serious player" would be dropped by an order of magnitude. It would be like NFL football during the Player's Strike: still exciting, with some really good play here and there, and with no way to tell the difference unless the pros were to come back.

So you're saying you'd be more likely to play if there was less or no competition? Why don't you just go to the park and play basketball with some 6 year olds?

Your "big city" argument doesn't make sense either. Where do you think everyone lives? I don't think cornering the one stop light towns is going to increase the player count.

From what I seen at most sites with new players is that a person that has been playing as a PP+ or established player tends to draw other players. I maybe have seen maybe once out of fifteen or so times that if no regular player plays then no one new logs in at a site. If a regular player is logged in then others tend to get intrested and ask about the games. Then they may or may not grab a box. Most of the time if they do have the time they will get one. Strange thing is most people ask as they are leaving. Then most of the time even as a vistor you have to help them log in. So if the old players get chased off as what I think will happen then I find it unlikely other new players will log in or play.
Also I tend to leave right after the hour long games as happy hour is over. I do not eat at places and play BT. I just drink do the game and leave.
That being said that I have not played except twice in the last two month because of several diffrent things mostly my health and taking care of my dad. Also all the entertament stuff I could care less about. Anyway I will not be going out to play any time soon with the changes once things get better for myself. I see no point in doing so.

I have my limits. For me it was Lunchtime Trivia in the Mountain Time Zone.

(For those of you who've ever played LT there, you know what I mean.)

Seriously, a game is fun if victory is, at least, within reach. Want a good example? I liked BrainBusters. I hated Showdown; we were regularly about 100th in the nation, but never really within reach of the leaders. In BrainBusters we often broke top twenty as a site, against substantially the same group about to play Showdown, probably because the nature of the game was better for a smaller team. We never won. One doesn't have to win frequently to enjoy a game. One must be within reach of winning, though, or it tends to be less fun.



I hear you: you don't give a damn about the challenges I face enjoying Buzztime in my small town.

I think that 25% of the nation lives in rural sites, and I know that a surprising number of Buzztime locations are rural. They're not leading sites; the only one in the top 200 is Farmville. They do pay into the network; they might be a growth opportunity.

Everybody competes nationally, not everybody has the ability to make the boards. But remember, this is a competition, not some kids game where everybody receives trophies. If one wants to make the boards, one needs to work to improve. See, this is the problem these days, everybody wants something for free, nobody wants to work for it.

The reasons there's negative BT growth is because the serious players are leaving in droves because of the asinine changes implemented over the last few years. The casual player population has and will remain constant, because it's simply something to do to pass the time while eating and drinking.

And I've mostly already left the BT community, I used to play 5-7 days a week for hours at a time. Now I play Tuesday night, some SIQ games on Monday but as little as BTT as possible, and a rare game of Six or Spotlight. That's it. And many, many serious players have quit completely or barely play. ULF, VISHNU, N JUNG, etc. Those names ring a bell perhaps?

See, you're thinking along the same lines as the suits at BT. In theory, it seems like it could work. In the reality of BT and it's players, your logic fails miserably. And this failure has been proven over the years. I don't think you can argue that player count has almost been cut in half the last few years, and each and every change the last few years has catered to the casual player. It's not working.

Regardless of your thoughts towards this one topic, just admit two things if you would. 1, player count has dropped significantly the last few years. 2, the changes made during that time have favored the casual player.

BO

BUD made a comment on their blog mentioning that something similar was tried in the early 2000s and did not work. I was not playing back then; anybody on here who was have more information to share about that? What were the details and how did they go about reverting it/after how long?

Think it was only on Tuesday nights, although it did apply to SIQ during NFL season.

Basically the specialty games prior to SD aired after SD in the Mountain and Pacific time zones. SIQ aired after QB1 on Mondays. That's 90%+ of the info I believe. Seems like this was actually the case for a few years perhaps.

BO