New Scaratings

Lots of other information here on new games and games leaving as well...
http://www.buzztime.com/blog-buzztime/916-readysetnew-schedule.html

Times, they are a changing. The trivia train is moving. We're moving on up (beyond the east side!). Last week we talked about how we will be splitting Buzztime into an East and West Network to give players from coast to coast convenient times to play their favorite games. This week we would like to share with you the new schedule of games!

Buzztime 2012 Schedule Changes
We recognize that the Buzztime Nation is a versatile and diverse group of people. Some of you are early risers and some are insomniacs. Some are married with kids, while others are single and looking for their Buzztime lover. Some of you are over 60, some are younger than 25. When making our new schedule, we wanted to break it apart to accommodate the different kinds of players that we have.

First things first...

Our schedule will be broken into four groups: lunchtime, afternoon, primetime and late night. Each of these will be changed in a way that will enhance your Buzztime trivia experience.

Lunchtime: You are now going to get an extra hour of Lunchtime Trivia. From now on, you can get your bite-sized trivia from 11am to 2pm local time. We are also making Lunchtime Trivia a bit easier. It's your lunch break, and you don't need to be racking your brain. You're welcome!

Afternoon: Countdown, Countdown, Countdown. This was not only voted the Buzztime Nation’s favorite game, it was also voted the #1 game to introduce new members of the Buzztime Nation to. HEADS UP! Countdown is going to get a little harder, with less pop culture. If you're looking for a general trivia game that will make you work for your points (and more... stay tuned) then Countdown will be the game for you in the afternoon.

Primetime: Primetime is when you get to play all of your favorite premium games! During this chunk of time you’ll see Glory Daze, Sports IQ, Showdown, Sci Files, SIX, BrainBuster, Pastimes, Lexitopia, Topix, Spotlight, Trendalicious Trivia, Immortal Words, Playback, Tuned In and Speed Freaks. If you’re playing in Canada you’ll also see Canada, Eh? and Showdown Canada.

Late Night: Night Owls, it's your time to shine. If you like to close down your local watering hole you’ll be seeing The Late Shift from 10pm until closing every night!

That's right folks, we've got a new game: The Late Shift! Due to the time of day that this new game will play (10pm-closing local time), you can expect it to be a bit easier and more pop culture oriented. Studies have shown that on a tired brain, after a couple of drinks it's easier to remember facts about television than about economics. (no citation)

Wait! There’s more...

To bring in the new, we had to make some room by removing some of our low-gameplay games. You can say good-bye to Speed, Nth Degree and Buzztime Trivia. (moment of silence).

All in all, the new Buzztime schedule is going to have your brain buzzing in 2012. Enjoy!

If you have questions, the "2012 Changes" FAQ has been updated with information on the new schedule.

Until next time... Good luck and good fun!

Ugh. I can't stand a constant influx of 15 minute games. I could at least tolerate the 30 min - 15 min - 15 min - 30 min rotation, but I hated how the pre-Topix/Speed Freaks Saturdays had six 15 minute games in a row. Now anything after 10:00pm is 15 minutes until the cows come home. At least I know when I'm leaving now...

Playback at 7:00. Time will tell if that is a good thing or not.

_________________
Malort. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

I was secretly hoping for Wipeout to sneak back in, but the death of the BT 10q/15m games is a good start.

_________________
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!!!!!

Those of us in the west are so fucked. Why even have a west feed? Here is a post from KK in the comments of the blog:

"Answers will be randomized, which we know will help thwart cheating but not solve the problem. We will have more eyes out there to watch for cheating and will be more diligent about getting rid of accounts. Sure, they can still play but they won't get points or be able to see their stats online/leaderboards, etc. "

In other words, as we feared, any good score we in the west put up will not be taken seriously by anybody.

PLEASE, Scar or Don Denton, can we have rankings where those of us who commit to playing fairly can be included in rankings with people in the east?

I was trying to figure out if there is ever the chance for national play under the new schedule. This is the best I can figure out:

LTT will never be played across the nation at the same time (Eastern time goes into Countdown when Pacific time starts LTT).

Countdown will only be truly national from 5pm-6:30pm Eastern and 8:30pm-9:30pm Eastern. At other times, at least one of the time zones is in another game.

Late Shift will only be truly national from 1am Eastern until close.

Christina/HEELAX/COGNAC

Maybe someone who knows the inner workings of the Buzztime system can answer this question for me: would it be possible for a bar in the Western US to somehow get on the eastern feed? In other words, can we have a choice of when we get the games?

Almost certainly yes.

For example, there are a few locations in Colorado and Arizona that are on a different feed than the rest of the state. Back in the late 90's when we played at Hoffbrau, for a while we were on the Canadian feed. Only affected 1 or 2 games a day, same questions as the rest of the network, only difference was the national leaderboard was all Canadian, except for us.

By the way, brilliant suggestion to this on the BT blog. You remind me of the kid in the taco shell commercial who suggests flat bottoms for the shells, then the village picks him up and carries him around on their shoulders!

BO

Do I detect a "loophole"? Very niice!!

BT will never put a west bar on the east feed, they will assume someone will head down the street to the next bar with answers in hand. They won't do it. They have enough trouble in AZ with their F'ed up daylight savings crap putting some bars an hour off and some on time so the ROUGE can play his games. But I'm sure a few west bars will end up on the east in the beginning.

So is 5pm to 630pm eastern really the only time we'll see the west bars here in the east? (not counting after 1am eastern)

The east won't start premium games till 730.

_________________
BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Orioles and the 9 and 5!!

There may be some room for cautious lack of pessimism on this particular change. (I'd say cautious optimism, but that may be too much. <g>)

Showdown now only runs one hour from first question to last. The delay in getting network results has been well over ten minutes from the final question. If the shortening comes from taking that delay out, I won't complain.

(In fact, I wonder if the fact that Speed is dying reflects that delay. There's currently a long delay between the last question in Showdown, and the first question in Speed--about 15 minutes. If they had less time between questions, perhaps fewer people would have been logging out.)

--Rick Magnus

I disagree. If they don't care about someone getting the answers ahead of time from somewhere on the other side of the country, they also wouldn't care about getting them from across the street. It might be "easier" to cheat if two close bars are on different feeds, but the problem exists either way, so caring about one scenario but not the other makes no sense. Also, this would essentially allow for the freedom Buzztime wanted when they originally introduced repeat games a few years ago. If I want to play Six on the national feed and can get out early enough for it, I can go to my home bar (which would elect to be on the east feed). If I am working late, I can go across town to BWW to play the west feed.

In the interest of saying *something* positive about this whole steaming pile of crap that Buzztime is unleashing upon us with split schedules and so on, I do like the notion of having only 30-minute games from 2 until prime time. Especially if they really do make them "harder" as they assert they're going to do with less pop culture. Like most other serious players, I always just tolerated the 10-question games waiting for the next 15-question game.

That's something. I guess.

I think the non-premium/specialty schedule is awesome. It's exactly like a few of us suggested to them several years ago. Serious trivia during the day for the old farts, teeny-bopper trivia late night for the kiddos.

Might encourage me to play a bit during the day again when possible.

BO

Random thoughts in no particular order:

1. I'm absolutely stunned that for once they listened to the player community and not only reverted back to half hour only games from 2-10 pm but also are reducing the pop culture content. Good job Buzztime.

2. I'd still rather have national rankings and not have to worry about west coast cheaters, but having said that I kinda like the new premium game schedule. As an east coaster I like having the premium games start at 8 instead of 8:30 or 9.

3. Two hour of lunch time trivia seems like enough to me. I'd rather have countdown start at 1:00 pm instead of an extra hour of lunch time trivia. I know people who start playing at 11 or 12 and play all afternoon. Two or three straight hours of 7 question 15 minute games is going to get pretty monotonous for them.

4. The whole gold medal system needs to be rethought. With 3 hours of lunch time trivia (now easier, no less) and pop culture centric 10 question games from 10 pm onward, earning a gold medal in these games is going to be far easier than during the countdown/premium block from 2-10 pm.

Lunchtime Trivia gets easier? Thats like saying liljol will now be grumpier.


Works for me also.

_________________

/```\
(o\_!_/o)

I don't play Lunchtime games much but I'd rather not have it extended for an extra hour. It seems ironic that they post a screen before every game that purports it is "Fast paced to fit your busy schedule!" while, in fact, a seven question/fifteen minute game is the slowest paced of anything in their inventory.

I'm truly excited that the afternoon games will not only all be 30 minute games but they are making a concious effort to cut out the pop kulture krap. Wow. Somebody must be listening.

And the decision to dumb down the late night games may actually be the first thing I've ever seen them attempt that might actually draw the young demographic they covet so fiercely. Won't affect me as I'm gonna be too blitzed by boozing my way through the great afternoon games to care.

Still, I lament the passing of continent-wide Showdown games, but what the hell?

I always though the left coast cheated anyway.

While I, too, detest pop culture trivia, that fits into Buzztime's quest for the less-frequent player. Their current core player base gets the center of the afternoon/evening tailored to them. Lunchtime Trivia is revamped to encourage play by younger folks at business lunches and to discourage the retiree crowd now dominating it in many sites. The late-night games are Buzztime's attempt to tap the drunk youth crowd.

I promise to hold nothing against eastern players for begrudgingly starting to see the silver lining.

Just understand and agree that the west has been written off and left behind in your favor. East and west used to compete together in games played in common throughout the day. Now NTN has set the east against the west in a different regard, to compete instead for who gets to have the better competitive play experience and who gets to have the shaft.

Take a moment to mourn in your own way for us, and if you have to move on and feel free to explore the new playground, we salute you. Take good care of the forest, Dewey. Boom.

If this part is true, it could go a long way in proving my theory that most of the kiddos just log onto a board, answer a few questions, and ignore it until there is a lull in whatever else they were doing.

_________________
Malort. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

Please re-state that the Eastern and Central timezones have the game tailored to them. The Mountain and Pacific get to play repeats or against 1/2 the country for a majority of every day.

I do like the CD games all day and after premiums, but I am not going to go play repeat premiums. If you are on the West Coast (like me) we don't get national competition until after midnight Eastern, still a stupid schedule. They will never convince me that this will work, as soon as the leader boards are slammed with perfects on all premiums maybe they will re-think this garbage, but that will be too late for me and I am guessing many others.

New West Feed Schedule: 11-2 Lunchtime Repeats; 2-4:30 CD against the nation (but we are at work); 4:30-7:30 playing against 1/2 the country; 7:30-9:30 playing repeats; 9:30 til close playing against the ~whole country (how many good Eastern teams continue playing after midnight?). Sounds like an awesome schedule. There is no convincing anyone can do to make this not stink like shit.

I now think we know why TomD went on vacation (or whatever), he didn't want to be around when this shit hit the fan.

_________________
Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

+1. I always laugh at the same thing, given that 7 questions/15 minutes is the slowest game they offer. Frankly, I'd prefer if they moved good old 10 question BT trivia into the lunch spot, and axed the 7 question game.

I'm also not thrilled about extending the lunch game to 2pm, especially as it precludes that timezone from the national rankings for an even longer period. As someone else posted, there's now VERY little of the day that everyone is playing against each other live across the whole nation.

yes i do feel sorry for what has been done to the left coast. you are now left with 25 to 30% of the competition you used to have. maybe that will make some places that never had a chance to crack the leaderboard before happy, but especially for players like you that can compete against the best this is lamentable.

rest assured though none of us will ever question your scores when we see 'em.