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Author Topic: It's Broke, so Fix It!  (Read 7450 times)

Fedya

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It's Broke, so Fix It!
« Reply #30 on: September 24, 2004, 11:09:18 PM »
Nobody's mentioned the biggest Pyramid flaw to be fixed: The WC was originally supposed to have ten categories, not six; Bob Stewart concluded that nobody would be able to get 10 categories in 60 seconds and so covered up the bottom row.

As for the 6-in-20 versus 7-in-30, I think something easier like 7-in-30 is better.  I'm not a producer, but I think if you have celebrities playing, you don't want to insult them by making them look like terrible players.  At the same time, you don't want to make it too easy to win the big money.  7-in-30 made it easier for celebrities to look good (as well as helping out new civilian players by letting them ease into the game).  Not only that, but too many times on the Osmond Pyramid we saw teams getting only 2 or 3 answers because there was a difficult word in the middle on which the team spent too much time.  Not only that, but there were far too many games that ended after only five categories were played.

But Osmond's 6-in-20 has a bigger flaw, I think: the producers effectively switched the difficulty level between the two parts of the game.  Their front game was hard, but it seemed far too easy to win the money in the WC, which seems a very bad thing to me.  

(Some here denigrate the front game of the Clark Pyramid by saying it's too easy, but I think the front game is underrated, and is almost as good as the WC minus the tension.  The Clark-era front game wasn't easy; it was deceptively simple.  Of course, Bob Stewart was helped by having a small group of celebs who seemed to enjoy playing Pyramid precisely because it's challenging, not in spite of the challenge.)
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Robert Hutchinson

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« Reply #31 on: September 25, 2004, 01:11:41 AM »
Just to throw this out there: for Pyramid, "as many as you can get in 20/30 seconds" would require more careful selection of categories. You definitely wouldn't want a bunch of items that could all be mimed quickly, for example.
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TheInquisitiveOne

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« Reply #32 on: September 25, 2004, 01:26:40 AM »
Just to (once again) answer my own question...

One flaw correction was carried out between two different versions of the same show: Password Plus and Super Password.

The flaw, if you can call it one, was in the bonus round. In Alphabetics, an illegal clue just meant that $1,000 was going to be taken from the jackpot for each infraction. However, in Super Password, an illegal clue meant a forfeiture of the cash jackpot entirely, which meant that one mistake makes the difference between what could be $30,000 and $900; this allowed for some tighter gameplay and more proficient clue-giving.

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pyrfan

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« Reply #33 on: September 25, 2004, 02:02:36 AM »
While we're speaking of "Password Plus," one improvement they made about six months into their run was to have the team that guessed the password keep the option for the next password (if that team didn't guess the puzzle's answer correctly).


Brendan

Don Howard

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It's Broke, so Fix It!
« Reply #34 on: September 25, 2004, 11:38:59 AM »
[quote name=\'pyrfan\' date=\'Sep 25 2004, 01:02 AM\'] While we're speaking of "Password Plus," one improvement they made about six months into their run was to have the team that guessed the password keep the option for the next password (if that team didn't guess the puzzle's answer correctly).


 [/quote]
 I also liked the disallowing of opposites. Those players really would have to be on their toes to come up with a clue for "out" if "in" was a no-no.

Jay Temple

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« Reply #35 on: September 25, 2004, 10:11:50 PM »
The biggest improvement for Pyramid came in the New York era and stayed through the Davidson version, when they gave the players the choice of giving or receiving in their third turn.

On the 6-in-20 vs 7-in-30, I have two reasons for preferring 7-in-30:  As Fedya pointed out, it was too often very costly to get stuck on a difficult one when you had only 20 seconds.  The other is that, even without that happening, 7-in-30 rewards you for giving "good" clues, while 6-in-20 rewards you for giving brief ones.
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Robert Hutchinson

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« Reply #36 on: September 26, 2004, 01:04:38 AM »
The thread about changes to Wheel of Fortune reminded me of its bonus round, which desperately needed to move beyond the RSTLNE trap, and did. Putting up those letters and then letting more be called gave the bonus round some actual strategy, and was more rewarding for very good players.
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Don Howard

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« Reply #37 on: September 26, 2004, 10:23:51 AM »
Would you consider The Joker's Wild getting rid of the Joker's Jackpot and therefore eliminating the "do you want to risk the money you've won so far" element fixing something that was broken?

Ian Wallis

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« Reply #38 on: September 26, 2004, 04:06:24 PM »
Quote
Would you consider The Joker's Wild getting rid of the Joker's Jackpot and therefore eliminating the "do you want to risk the money you've won so far" element fixing something that was broken?


I would.  I never liked that rule...I think if a contestant won a game, the money they won should be safe.  Maybe the rule could have been changed to having any contestant who won five games get the Joker's Jackpot as a bonus.  It could still increase the amount that any contestant won, but they wouldn't be risking their winnings.
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ChuckNet

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« Reply #39 on: September 26, 2004, 09:15:21 PM »
Quote
Barbara had $484 in her bank as of her next-to-last win, $26 away from the cash jackpot on her last day IIRC. SHe managed to get enough maingame cash to win the lot on the last question of the maingame(in the days where the final FG was followed by three more questions).

And therein lies another successfully corrected flaw...the "final 3 questions" format was basically irrelevant about 95% of the time, which is why the producers dumped it and added the Speed Round to end the game in early 1984.

Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious "Chuckie Baby")

Adam Nedeff

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« Reply #40 on: September 26, 2004, 09:57:12 PM »
Quote
QUOTE 
Would you consider The Joker's Wild getting rid of the Joker's Jackpot and therefore eliminating the "do you want to risk the money you've won so far" element fixing something that was broken?




I would. I never liked that rule...I think if a contestant won a game, the money they won should be safe. Maybe the rule could have been changed to having any contestant who won five games get the Joker's Jackpot as a bonus. It could still increase the amount that any contestant won, but they wouldn't be risking their winnings.

I always thought giving it as the fifve-day prize would make more sense without risk, also. The issue then lies in "how would the jackpot grow?" and I thought, if I had any say at B&E I would have suggested putting the loser's score (since they didn't receive it anyway) into the jackpot after each game, but I never like making these kinds of proposals because I think there's probably an obvious flaw that I'm not noticing.

Ian Wallis

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« Reply #41 on: September 27, 2004, 09:06:09 AM »
Quote
I always thought giving it as the fifve-day prize would make more sense without risk, also. The issue then lies in "how would the jackpot grow?" and I thought, if I had any say at B&E I would have suggested putting the loser's score (since they didn't receive it anyway) into the jackpot after each game, but I never like making these kinds of proposals because I think there's probably an obvious flaw that I'm not noticing.


Interesting idea.  The only flaw I could see in that is that the loser's score is usually low and the jackpot wouldn't grow as fast, but it would depend on how long you went between Joker's Jackpot winners as to how big it actually got.  The first big winner took quite a while and the jackpot was high, but after that they occurred much more frequently.  Back then, the rule was for three straight games.  I think if you're going to offer it without risk, it should definately be five.
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