Worst scoring flaw?

[aaron sica]

DoorNumberFour's facebook post about the flawed scoring of NYSI74 got me thinking. Was that the worst scoring flaw in a game show? If not, what was?

[TLEberle]

In terms of game balance, having the first two questions worth a point and the third worth twenty on The Cheap Show has to set the pace.

[Jeremy Nelson]

Prize Puzzle. Since Wheel seems to be stripping away non-cash prizes little by little (apparently bonus round cars are the latest casualty), we might as well make the Wheel prize and the Prize Puzzle bonuses that don't count towards a player's score.

Also, I don't like that a family on Feud who has a strong showing on the first two boards gets sandbagged by an anemic double point round by design. We did the work to get 172 points and now the Double round is only worth 110? Nah, give me a chance to win in 3 boards or just revert the scoring to S-S-S-D-T.

[Ian Wallis]

Super Password's $100 puzzle is the first thing that comes to mind.

[SuperSweeper]

Body Language is what came to mind for me.

[Jeremy Nelson]

Super Password's $100 puzzle is the first thing that comes to mind.

Body Language is what came to mind for me.

Y'know, I thought about both of these, Body Language specifically. But I argued against them if only because in both instances, it's paid practice until you get to the money that matters, which is still a very fair best 2 out of 3.

[TLEberle]

Also, I don't like that a family on Feud who has a strong showing on the first two boards gets sandbagged by an anemic double point round by design. We did the work to get 172 points and now the Double round is only worth 110? Nah, give me a chance to win in 3 boards or just revert the scoring to S-S-S-D-T.

Much like how The $10,000 Pyramid settled into a pattern of two front games and two WC tries, it appears that Family Feud was willing to follow the pattern of Match Game and a game just ends when it does. A game where every question is at regular value could take a while to get to $200, but the double boards seemed to be heavier and have more obvious answers.

I'm not sure how long it would be tenable, and I think Hollywood Squares was the last show that was ok with "we ran out of time, here's what the board looks like" but Feud is not served well by the ramp-up to where you can win the match with just round four and sudden death.

Is it a flaw to where Canadian Reaction would have words in the fifth chain worth quintuple points or a way to keep games close? Is that more or less of a flaw than on Double Talk where you can win the $10,000 end game but lose out because your opponent won the $10,000 end game and also the $500 run-a-board jackpot?

[Jeremy Nelson]

I'm not sure how long it would be tenable, and I think Hollywood Squares was the last show that was ok with "we ran out of time, here's what the board looks like" but Feud is not served well by the ramp-up to where you can win the match with just round four and sudden death.

The problem is in the change to the timing of the show. The format worked for a long time because they only played one board before the first commercial. By front loading the game, you render the second act completely useless. but if you went back to single/commercial/single/commercial/double-triple-sudden death, you can still have a winner in the double round, and you periodically bank content.

I'm sure what they're doing is down to a science- it just doesn't always make sense.

[rebelwrest]

I'm not sure how long it would be tenable, and I think Hollywood Squares was the last show that was ok with "we ran out of time, here's what the board looks like" but Feud is not served well by the ramp-up to where you can win the match with just round four and sudden death.

The problem is in the change to the timing of the show. The format worked for a long time because they only played one board before the first commercial. By front loading the game, you render the second act completely useless. but if you went back to single/commercial/single/commercial/double-triple-sudden death, you can still have a winner in the double round, and you periodically bank content.

I'm sure what they're doing is down to a science- it just doesn't always make sense.

I've argued that if Harvey Feud wants two single questions in act 1, they should raise the win condition to 400 points.  This would A) make the double question not pointless (no pun intended) B) not have to switch out the question so a family doesn't go over 300 in act 2 (which has always rubbed me the wrong way). 

[Otm Shank]

Adding a criteria to the flaw with Body Language is all the scoring has nothing to do with the pantomime, the core element of the show implied by the title. The tiebreaker completely dispensed of the pantomime. (But that show really needed a restructure to take advantage of its positive attributes; the bonus round, for instance, was solid.)

I'm going to add Name That Tune/'80s with the 10/10/20/1 scoring system. It is possible for a contestant to name one tune in the all the front games of the episode and advance to the Golden Medley. If one contestant runs the table in the first two rounds, they have 20 points. In Bid-a-Note, that contestant gets boxed in on the auctioneering and winds up answering 3 tunes incorrectly. Now it's tied 20-20. Our slacker contestant finally rings in with "Zorba the Greek" or whatever oft-repeated tune and sends the other contestant browsing through the "lovely prizes offstage" with the host's warm sentiment "come back again sometime." Now, it never happened quite to that level, and I get that there was a desire to keep a trailing contestant in the game even if it was a runaway.

[Jeremy Nelson]

I'm going to add Name That Tune/'80s with the 10/10/20/1 scoring system. It is possible for a contestant to name one tune in the all the front games of the episode and advance to the Golden Medley. If one contestant runs the table in the first two rounds, they have 20 points. In Bid-a-Note, that contestant gets boxed in on the auctioneering and winds up answering 3 tunes incorrectly. Now it's tied 20-20. Our slacker contestant finally rings in with "Zorba the Greek" or whatever oft-repeated tune and sends the other contestant browsing through the "lovely prizes offstage" with the host's warm sentiment "come back again sometime." Now, it never happened quite to that level, and I get that there was a desire to keep a trailing contestant in the game even if it was a runaway.

Which is to say, while I hated that the Golden Medley Showdown stopped the clock more often than the last two minutes of a basketball game, it made the scoring much more fair in that regard. In '84 you could have used that for Round 3, then made the bonus round the $10,000 Mystery Tune.

Also, creepy disco dancers aside, the 1978 revival is still the best NTT iteration.

[Kevin Prather]

The fact that you had to lose twice in order to achieve the top prize on $20,000 Pyramid always rubbed me the wrong way.

[BrandonFG]

You could answer a question correctly on Your Number's Up, then lock yourself out of the next riddle because that's just the way the wheel spins. I realize the same could happen on Wheel or PYL with a Bankrupt/LAT/Whammy, but you could also voluntarily stop on those shows.

It took a good five or six years, but the current run of Feud finally fixed the one-strike Triple round from the first several seasons. You could clean up as Jeremy said, then lose it all because the other family got hot at the right time.

Also, the Spoilers element of Merv Griffin's Crosswords was a clever concept but terribly broken, as you could fill in most of the puzzle only for someone else to steal a win at the last second after doing nothing for 10 minutes. Not to mention the bonus round never had a consistent number of blanks to fill. If it's my show to do, make the bonus round its own independent crossword and ditch the Spoilers.

[TimK2003]

Wordplay had a very quirky scoring system, as I recall. The connecting dollar values for correct guesses, if applicable, was a different way to build one's score, but not knowing what the hidden values were before the reveal seemed like a crap shoot, especially in the later rounds.  They should have had a standard money amount for each of the 3 rounds (i.e. first round values are $100, second round $200, third round $300).
If tied after the 3rd round, Tom could give a toss-up double definition and the first to buzz-in correctly wins the game, with each player keeping their winnings.

It didn't seem like the dollar values for each word were based on a word's difficulty level, either.

[BrandonFG]

Forgot about Wordplay, and to me it has the same issue as M.G.’s Crosswords: I could miss my first two words then clean up on my last guess because that word is linked to all the other money words.