Hi,
Let's make it so we can play quiz party alone, or with those dark racing bots.
It would be good for practicing and increasing general knowledge, which is still quite fun

Hello,
it would indeed be really nice to have some kind of a solo Quiz party mode.

I was even thinking it could be made even more interesting than just a generic game with a bot that answers at random.
Something like time attack in Magic blocks.
Let's imagine you start with 3 minutes on the clock, and a correct answer could add 15 seconds. Maybe there could be some combo bonus as well, for example 3 correct answers in a row adding a minute instead of 45 seconds.
Of course, once you run out of time, your final score is reported and the game ends. Perhaps in statistics a ranking of best solo players?

That being said, these are just ideas, and if there is a lack of time to develop something like this, just being able to play with bots would also be appreciated.

I have said in the past that Quiz party should be played individually but I do not think it would be good with bots.

I suggested at the time statistics should be based on consecutive correct answers. However, I do like Nikola's suggestion that you gain extra time when answering more questions correctly. 3 minutes is a good starting base, but I do suggest that the clock stops when you answer your question and the clock starts again after you have chosen your next category. A system for time and extra points would make the Quiz even better.

Of course, if this was implemented the way I suggested, the clock needs to stop while choosing a category.
In fact, just like in games with 2 or more players, the clock is going only while a question is being displayed.

The solo mode looks like a good idea. I would also like, if it was possible to play (and receive questions) only from some selected categories, or even from a single one. Then we could also have a different leaderboard for each category, and quite likely with different players at top places.

Just answering from one subject would not be a good idea as some categories such as Games and Hobbies have 838 questions and if someone uses that category a lot then they will soon get familiar with that category as a lot of those questions they would answer more than once. The other issue is there is no subcategories in Quiz Party. If there was subcategories in say sport: Football, Cricket, Swimming or for geography: capitals, mountains, rivers... then those categories that have enough questions would have enabled people to choose from those subcategories. To start this now would take a lot of work.

Actually I don't think having "only" something over 800 questions in one category is a problem, because:

1. It's still quite a lot. One would have to be nolifer to see many of them several times.
2. One would have to have perfect memorisation to actually remember all the questions and their answers.
3. If the above mentioned conditions actually applied, one would probably get bored and go do something else.

As for subcategories, I actually also thought of it some time ago, but that would indeed be very laborous, as someone would have to go through every single pre-existing question to asign the subcategory. But I think the topics were never meant to be equal to start with.

But this actually brings me to another suggestion: how about letting the players decide which topics they want to play with at the beginning of the whole game? The idea is, that people could choose only the topics they actually are interested in, and then only those selected topics would appear in the whole game. To make it fair, the selection could happen in a similar way as selection of characters in citadels - each player chooses a category until a certain number of selected categories is reached.

We started off with 0 questions for the English language part of Quiz party and we had to reach 3,000questions before it came available to play (officially) and maybe the same would be needed if you are to create a further 15 Quiz parties in theory. As you can see we do not have 3,000 questions for any category! If each Quiz party had each 15 categories, then you require a further 225 categories. Remember there is French, English, Italian and Spanish and the categories have to work for everybody. Logistically that is too much of an issue. Merlin and I had to scrape the barrel to ensure that a number of categories have as much as they are now. Getting to 3,000 would be highly unlikely.

How many categories would people choose up to? 12? I think I know what those categories would be!

Hello,

I haven't yet come with an interesting concept to play in solo. Of course we can think about scoring the most of consecutive correct answers, or the most correct answers in a given time, obtain time bonuses or penalties, etc.
But I would like to come with something more unique and/or that would offer better replayability and/or more fun, if I could. There are a lot of other quiz games out there.

Given the number of questions we have today, it slowly starts to become possible to think about making a solo game. However, certainly not for a single or a selection of categories only. 20K questions for each category would be needed.
Several people are perfectly capable and ready to learn a lot of answers by heart, and it would ruin multiplayer games when they play with other people. This musn't happen.

You shouldn't be able to play alone over and over again without limit when you could play together, given that replayability is limited by the size of the database.

Additionally, having 15 different rankings for the same game is a little too many, don't you think?

Creating subcategories isn't only huge work, but it in fact won't solve the problem. 20K questions for each of the top level categories are still needed, and we have anyway another problem: categories aren't well balanced: the most filled category has 3000 questions while the least has only 500.
This isn't good either, and changing categorization won't help, whatever the categories.

Having more categories and subcategories would also probably create a new problem: too specialized questions.
For example, I could ask thousends of very precise questions about computers and programming, while other people could do the same for football or films.
I'm not a big fan of football, still more or less follow major competitions, but don't care much about precise rules or player statistics.
I enjoy watching films, like several genres and actors, but don't care more than that in precisely knowing who has played in every single film or when exactly it has been released.
The game must always remain enjoyable for everybody, and it means that you must have a little of everything, and things that people have chances to know about and might remember if not, even if the topic isn't part of their primary interests.

I have an idea for an individual quiz for the PR that I believe would work.

CLIMB THE MOUNTAIN

You have 16 tricky steps to get to the top of the mountain, will you climb to the top or roll back to the bottom? There are different routes to get there but your objective is to get to the top. Each step contains a question, the question and the category will be drawn randomly but once a question has been answered in a said category then that category has gone until the final step. If you answer your question correctly you will move to step 2 where you will have a random question drawn randomly from one of 14 categories that are left. This process will be repeated so when on step 15 you will have a random question from the category that you have not answered a correct question to yet. Step 16 will give you a random question from any of the 15 random categories, answer this question correctly then you will have climbed the mountain.

LIFE LINES

You have 3 lives, if you get your question wrong you will lose a life. If you lose a life a different question will be asked from a different category. If you lose a life on step 1 there will be a further question asked from any of the remaining 14 categories drawn randomly just like the question. If 2 lives gone on step 1 then there would be 13 categories for the computer to choose from for the next question. If you lose a life On step 2 there would be 13 categories left, as you can't get a question from a category you answered correctly or a category you answered wrongly just for that step and if 2 lives lost it would go down to 12 categories just for that step etc. If on step 15 you would only have 1 category to answer from even if you lost 1, 2 or 3 lives. To make things clear any category removed from a step when a question is wrong will be asked again on a different step.

The questions will still be multiple choice like Quiz party and there will be a time limit for each question as you wouldn't want to freeze on the mountain would you!

Modifications can be added to add extra steps or different life lines can be added but this is the basic idea.

Hello,

As for the too specialized questions I completely agree with Aminiel. As a biologist I could ask tons of advanced questions about plant biology, but I guess that's pointless, so I try to upload only some general questions that even people, who never heard of it, might find interesting (and not necessarily only about biology).

But here we actually have another problem, that's already present - some categories already are full of too specialized questions (or at least were some time ago, but I don't think this actually changed). As an example, in category about TV there were questions asking for when a certain tv show aired for the first time, with answers being four consencutive years. Like:
When "blabla" first aired?
1965
1966
1967
1968

where "blabla" stands for a name of a tv show and the years might obviously be different. The problem is, that barely anyone actually knows that this tv show even exist (sometimes maybe only the question creator himself) and with answers being like this it's not even entertaining to find out, what the correct answer was, since it's just pure guessing.

Honestly, I wouldn't remember it even if I saw such question frequently and exactly such questions are the reason, why I have no motivation to play this game and why I am sometimes trying to suggest some workarounds to improve the game experience. It was always nearly impossible to finish the game in several hours with more than 2 players (if the winning score was set to like 20 or more), since such questions simply popped up too frequently. I am actually tempted to try, if this is better on the french side (I guess it is), but I'd probably hit my poor vocabulary knowledge in there.

P.S. I think I am not the only one feeling this way.

I feel this is slightly off topic and I don't want to digress too much, but I echo the previous post regarding specialized questions. Many times I'm feeling the same way after playing a couple of games with friends. Needless to say, this isn't really me ranting about questions being too difficult. Of course, not everyone can know everything and it's only good if you can pick up some new interesting facts and expand your knowledge, that's what quiz games are for. The problem is, however, that some of the questions that are here aren't suitable for this type of international quiz, if I may say so. There's really little likelyhood that anyone other than someone from the UK who loves watching TV series will know the answer to such questions as when a specific BBC sitcom or show was aired. Not only will he or she not know the right answer, but frankly often has no interest in remembering any of them in the future. At least that's my view and I believe @Dracula Vampira's view as well. If it were a set of questions for a more isolated language that is limited to one country ( Czech for instance, if the pr ever gets translated), it would probably be less distracting, although even then I wouldn't be enjoying such questions as I don't watch TV series much, but that's my problem only. :) On the other hand I love radiodramas and radio in general, but it still wouldn't feel right for me to see many questions like in which year was this BBC radiodrama first broadcasted and the choice being 4 consecutive years, unless it's something unique and interesting. The English section of the playroom is obviously huge, and questions like these just aren't entirely fair in my opinion. Please consider this just a feedback. Thank you for working on Quiz Party.

We have had this debate before and I tried to reduce the film/television categories to 2 but there was no general consensus. If you remove one category, who is going to do the sorting for the new category? Would you have to Suspend Quiz party and use a different set of Questions from the French section? If say 500 television questions were removed then what would replace them and who is going to take on that extra work? It is easy to sit there and say I don't like this question or category but nobody is going to change say 500 questions tomorrow and have a fantastic 500 ready with no errors in them the next day.

You may not be able to avoid Television questions for Duck racing but you can when you play Quiz Party, if nobody selects them then nobody will have the problem of trying to answer those questions.

One of the other major issues is the condition Quiz questions are in when we first receive them. It takes an unbelievable amount of time to correct many of them and make them suitable for Quiz party/Duck racing. People prefer to translate questions from their own language knowing there will be many errors in them instead of trying to find good questions, many are freely available on the internet. It is not so bad if someone sends in 1 or 2 but when it is done in multiples then the work can become draining. Many forget that a Quiz validator's job is voluntary and they should do more to help when sending in their questions or reduce the load if they know there could be problems.

We Have Duck racing, Quiz party and perhaps an individual quiz game in 6, 12 months or maybe a bit longer. We will be using the 19,000 question database for 3 games. As Aminiel has already suggested it needs to be more. In my opinion we are 6,000 (roughly 400 per category short.) This is another reason why Quiz party questions needs to be at a much higher standard as it will enable more questions to be validated more efficiently.

Short message. The point is not reducing questions. The point is you were refusing to take questions related to some non speaking English countries. Never had to happen.

Factually speaking I have not been adding that many Television Questions. If you read through the forum you will find a post by Aminiel that I am not obliged to accept television Questions specifically relating to just one country such as The Czech Republic.

Hello,

In fact, the english quiz has an additional problem that we don't have in french, spanish or italian: english is the international language.
So there is a choice to make: do we want english quiz to be an international quiz, or a quiz for english speaking countries only ?

If going for the first, there should be only questions that may be known everywhere. Exit questions about specific BBC sendings, unless they have become famous enough to be known world-wide.
Same for czech republik questions, they would have their place only if they have become famous enough to be known outside of czesch republik.
The drawbacks are that the questions eventually stay very general, and some of the categories become real problems to fill: TV, cinema, litteratur for example, because you can only ask questions about things that are internationally known. This may make the quiz too easy, and there is less room for discovering interesting facts.
Fortunately, some categories like science and geography don't have this problem, or at least much less.

If going for the second, then there is no problem in adding questions about more specific BBC sendings.
Although US players may not know the BBC, they can do the same with ABC and CNN. This is the same in the french quiz where we have questions about France, Quebec, Belgium and Switzerland channels. Of course it's hard when it's about something outside of your country, but since there are only 3 or 4, it's acceptable.
In an english speaking countries quiz, of course, then czesch republik questions don't have their place at all.

I don't know which one has been chosen, if ever one has been really chosen.
Given the state of the english language, both are legitimate. Native english speakers certainly want to play just like we play in french, italian or spanish. Non-native english speakers would want to play the international version, because they don't care about british or american very specific things while would like to have the pleasure of, from time to time, have an easy question about something in their country.

Hello,

That's actually a good point, Aminiel. I am not sure myself, if this was ever decided, but quite likely not. Yet I have a feeling that either of the variants would make certain group of people quite unhappy. So I have the following suggestion(s):

How about making it possible to choose which variant to play before each game? This would definitely require some update of the game code, but it might not be that complicated. It's clear, that some categories suffer from national stuff more than others, especially the TV category.

In my opinion the cinema or literature is not that bad, books as well as movies are frequently translated or sometimes it's even possible to legally get to the original version of the book/movie. For example here we have a tv channel called TV art, where it's possible to see various movies or other stuff in their original language, so one time I watched japaneese Zatoichi, other time french Brand New Testament (I loved that one) and other time ukrainian Numbers.

So I will dust my suggestion from few posts above. How about making it possible to play without these topics that suffer from these too national stuff? This would be the easy variant, in the simplest version we might end up playing only without the tv category, while the natives could still "enjoy" their BBC focused questions. And at the same time we should not have any big trouble with low question numbers.

In the more advanced version, however, it would be necessary to check all the questions and see, if they are suitable for the international version, or not. I guess the main database of questions could still be shared among both versions, while questions too specific for English speaking countries would have some kind of a tag, and they would appear only if the "Quiz for natives" variant was selected.

In any case I would still suggest to do some revision of already uploaded questions, especially (but not limited to) those in the TV category and somehow filter/reduce/update the completely uninteresting questions, even at the cost of temporary reduction of question number - quallity should be preferred over quantity and I think that certain questions are not interesting even for natives. I feel it might be a good idea to actually discuss this directly with the quiz validator(s) in some more private thread. There might even be enough volunteers to help with the work, as well as with the creation of new, better questions, but it requires a certain level of cooperation and understanding.

Last but not least, I am not entierly against questions about foreign stuff I never heard about, as long, as they are interesting and they do not appear too frequently, so we do not have to be that strict with the international quiz. Yet to make a question interesting, it requires to ask something else than a year when something first aired (and especially with the answers like in my above mentioned example).

For example, I recently uploaded some questions about anime (in the box category), which originate from japan, but it's popular worldwide (even if it's without english dubbing), yet I try to make them at least interesting even for those who didn't see that specific anime and I didn't ask for a year when it aired yet, because I honestly don't remember and don't think that's what matters. We want this to be fun, and not about who's better at googling.

And by the way, is it just me, or the displayed quiz party statistics is somewhat frozen? Even after I uploaded several questions and waited several days, it displays still the same numbers.

I don't have a problem if people are given the option to opt out of Television related categories. It doesn't fit the narrative that some categories such as Cooking And Gastronomy or Arts and Creations are more International than British/American and that is where some of the Balance is lost.

I do recommend that Quiz party should be available as an individual game until a suitable alternative is found so people can play whatever version they like without waiting for others.

I would also reluctantly accept an English Language version which I would be responsible for as well as an international version that someone else can run. Maybe people would find it more interesting to have 2 different versions as you would get more variety. There should be a button where both parties could send questions from one version to the other as I know people will send questions to the wrong version. It happens where we get questions that are in Portuguese and other languages. Maybe it would ease the issues with some of the questions I receive for validation. I don't suggest validated questions are sent from one to the other as there could be issues with the standards in validation and who is to say if one version wants the others version, hence the suggestion for change.

It is very convenient for a few people to wait then benefit from so many already validated questions after doing very little work and come out and say oh yes we will take all the lovely new questions that you keep adding and bin the rest we don't before you have even got your hands dirty. This why I say if there is a split you must be prepared to do your own work and not take others you like officially or unofficially. This is why I would be more supportive of an opt-out.

I might as well say it now you have put it out in public Dracula-Vampira about Anime, The problem is not only are you expecting me to correct issues, such as wording of the question but also I would have to make sure that the Japanese wording is correct and I feel the tariff on that question is far too high for a volunteer that does not know any Japanese apart from some Judo words. I had to delete one of those questions as the question related to a previous question that Quiz party players wouldn't know about unless they had those questions to hand.

If you look on the forum Dracula-Vampira you will have seen an article by me saying that Quiz party is no-longer live/syncing when a question is added.

Hello,

Optionally removing TV questions is easier then creating two completely separate versions, but I had a question: is TV the only concerned category ?

@Aminiel
I am Ashish Chhetri from Nepal. I want to submit some questions and I want to help for validating quiz questions.
Can you give me a chans?
Thank you.

Hello,

Aminiel, here I am not sure anymore, since I'd need to either have access to the question database, or play this a lot, to have an idea what kind of questions are in each category. I personally feel, that there will certainly be some specific questions among other categories as well, but it depends a lot on how many of them (and which) are there compared to the total amount. If there are only few of them (and they are not completely uninteresting), they can probably be tolerated, or they might be dilluted by adding more different questions in that category. I can try to play this a little bit to see, but maybe people who play more often could report on this more accurately.

Other story is, that I don't know almost anything about a lot of stuff (such as sports), but there probably are many other people who do. I guess that's what the game is supposed to be about, no one knows everything.

YNVA, I think I saw something like that some time ago, but was not sure if it was solved yet or not.

I can submit sports catagory's questions but, my questions is validate or not I can't know that. Its the main problem

I feel my work and other Validators work on Quiz party is being disrespected. Remember not all the Validators were British/American. It is not as if i have pocketed thousands of pounds for doing this difficult job. I have spent hours and hours working on Quiz party so other blind/partially sighted people can have a lot of fun playing these games. I can tell you during the first year or 2 I worked on Quiz party 10 hours a day, 7 days a week many times, if not more. If my work is so undervalued then it is time to go.

Losing Merlin was a bigger loss than you can imagine. If you want high standards, which we have had in terms of quality and quantity then you will have to pay to find others at the same level. The other validators also put in a lot of work, some of them had families, work or were in education as well as being Quiz party Validators. They gave everything to Quiz party and look what they get back in return... people do have other things in their life than the PR and you can't keep good people forever for free and replacing them is extremely difficult.

It is all very well saying I can validate but can you do it without errors? or will I have to go over your work again to see where you went wrong and I don't want to keep doing that. Dracula-Vampira have you already got a team in mind who would help you Validate an International Quiz party? Once they see what is involved in Quiz Validating will they stay for the long-term? Would your group maintain the quality in terms of grammar and spelling? or will it have more errors than Aminiel's work which is much better than many of the questions that I have received?

I think it will be wrong if you pick and choose what questions of mine you decide to keep and if you feel that way then I would like all my questions to be removed from Quiz party and that should be the same for Merlin as he is not here to answer for himself, removing many of his questions would be disrespecting his memory. You should do this out of respect for what we have done for Quiz party.

I will not work on Quiz party until everything is sorted out one way or another, so I ask people not to send further questions at the moment.

I am prepared to work on Quiz party if people have the option to opt out of television questions but if you go further than that then I feel that makes my job untenable.

Hi al
I have just read YNWa's message and I am agree with him
I have just finished my See exam and I am free now. I want to learn many things as possible in my holidays. I want to learn from all. I like quiz game. I had participated many times in quiz game from my school. I had been searching accessible quiz game and when I joined in here, when I found quiz party game in here I was very happy at that time. I like sports too.
I want to say thank you, who developed this nice game and I want to say thank you, who did help to improve this game. I am saying that what you have done is bad. I always respect to your work.
I want this game to be even better and I want to help as much as I can from my place to make this game even better by learning things you don't know through you.
Thank you.

I have worked on Quiz party for over 5 years now, I know there have been issues and perhaps will always be issues especially when you are trying to create a Quiz party for 2 different groups of people who have totally different requirements. I have said there is no perfect solution but I have done my very best. I have always felt that this section doesn't need both a Box sets & Cartoon category plus a Television & Media category. I have said in the past a Television & Media category would be enough. Natives would still get the same television questions, non-natives would avoid having both Television categories and another bad categories in their choice of 3 categories. Validators would not face the difficulty of trying to get enough quality questions for both categories. I feel this is a better solution than the beginning of a second Quiz party in the English language section.

Yes there are some issues with some Quiz party questions, and that will always be the case when people insist on creating their own questions from their own knowledge rather than try to find interesting multiple choice questions which are available on the internet. You only have to go through questions and you can work out the nationality/hobbies of a number of the users that have sent in some questions. It appears people prefer to send in questions that are of an interest to them rather than the English PR as a whole. I am also concerned that a small amount of users may send in questions as a means of practising their English.

Another issue has been people have sent in a number of what I call "listing questions"? A couple are ok but when you list for example:

Who has won the Cricket world cup in... (several questions on).

In which year was disney's ... released? (several questions on).

There is no limit to how many questions people can send in for validation or what condition those questions are in. I can tell you if there are too many questions then validators will validate questions that are easier to validate and leave the ones with problems to another day. If this happens over a long time then you can imagine what will be left in the end. Having no limitations on the number of questions awaiting validation can harm Quiz party for the English section and doesn't help validators at all. How would Quiz party change if say 3 or 4 native people sent in many questions which were mostly about their country? I have a responsibility to everybody as I work on Quiz party but this is not the case for a casual player.

In the past we have had many issues with multiple questions when they have come at once. One example is when one person sent a batch of around 100 questions, around 30 of them were questions on knives. A couple would be ok but as validators a couple of us did not feel comfortable going through them if you excuse the pun. Another example was when a person selected between 20 and 30 questions for the language section. As those questions clearly fitted into different categories it meant that we as validators had to go and find new options for all of those questions that were moved to the correct category.

In my opinion there has to be a maximum number of say 10 questions that people can have awaiting validation. Most people send between 1 and 3 questions so most people would not reach this limit. If there was a limit it would make people think about what they are sending before they send it.

Hello,
I'm also happy to help with submitting more questions.
I did try to submit some in the past, but they might never have been approved since I think they were wrong.
With that said, I'm more than happy to help in expanding the playroom quiz game in any way I can, and you can be assured that all questions I submit for validation will be correct and free of any errors.
Also, thanks to all who help with the game, from the developers, helpers, and validators, and more.

We all make mistakes that is natural. The problem is people sending DIY questions instead of finding some on the internet. Even suggestions from Microsoft produces some good quiz questions.

... is the Spanish word for which day of the week? I may take a question like that and find another day or change the Spanish and change to German etc but I am not going to write a huge amount of questions from my own knowledge because there is a greater chance of errors.

Most of the best questions for Quiz party have been from players personal collection or they have found good ones on the internet. Again there can be errors but much fewer. It is about reducing risk hence asking Aminiel for a limit on what people can send to QP waiting for validation.

Maybe now is the time to change the team. Its not fair you’ve done it for 5 years and still continuing. If this isn’t fun no more and stressful, you should have the option of not doing it. There are a lot of us who are free and have nothing to do so got a lot of free time. I suggest recruitment at least to help you out may be needed.

I have spent a huge amount of time putting Quiz party questions right due to problems in the past. I do not want to repeat those mistakes again in the future and that is why I have made the suggestions to Aminiel to make things for future validators better.

Remember questions that are validated enter the public domain and should be near publishing quality in English and that is what I would expect to see when playing Quiz party and that is what a validator should be capable of doing.

Hello,

sorry for maybe late reaction, as I was busy with real life business. I also hope that certain things with YNWA were already settled in private discussion and we hopefully avoided the worst scenario of public drama.

I had a chance to play a few rounds of the quiz party for investigation purposes and most of the questions appeared to be quite okay - even if I was guessing the answers most of the time, I guess there are people around here, who actually know the right answers, since the statistics often showed something close to 50% of right answers. The only question, from which I had an impression, that basically everyone is guessing it, was from the TV category (23% right answers) and was asking for a year a certain person participated in Brittish x-factor, with 4 consecutive years as possible answers.

So from my perspective the possibility to hide only the TV category would be actually enough. There also was a suggestion to merge the tv and the box categories into one - personally I wouldn't mind that either, but I guess it depends on what is actually acceptable by public and the developer.

I also noticed that if I check someone's statistics, scroll down to quiz party and open the ranking, it now displays the percentage of right answers for each category (actually in 3 cases the statistics of 2 categories are merged into one). Not sure for how long it is there (it's partly in French), but I kind of like it - I can check my percentage in certain category and then compare with someone else.

By the way, since the answers are actually often guessed, maybe it would be worth thinking about some alternative scoring system that would not punish that much for not knowing an answer - it's not a problem with only 2 players, but with 3 and more it may often happen that someone is lucky on the questions and earns quite some points and few moments later these may be gone and someone else is the lucky one. This could actually be a game option while keeping the current system as well, but I don't really have any specific idea on my mind.