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Pyramid tournament format suggestion

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JayC:
This is how the tournament is formatted on my AIM netgame, AIM Pyramid.

The contestants standings are based on points.  Whoever gets more points goes to the WC of course.  In the WC, for every one you get, you get an extra point.  At the end of the game, the person with the most points goes on to the finals.  That person plays the winner from the other game.  The WC  money values are untouched throughout the championship.  Whoever has the most combined points from their semifinal and final wins the $100,000.  Same celebrities thoughout the tournament.

Any thoughts?

tommycharles:
It's an interesting thought, but you really just sucked whatever tension is left out of an already drained winners circle. Can you imagine Dick saying "For 6 points, here is your first subject..."? It just isn't the same. Plus, the reason that the original $100k show worked so well is that the winners circle was played for ....$100,000. In :60, someone could win it. That made for one minute of dang intense television. Deciding who wins the big money after all the wc's have been played gives me very little reason to watch the show.

www.46664.com

JayC:
[quote name=\'tommycharles\' date=\'Dec 1 2003, 12:22 PM\'] It's an interesting thought, but you really just sucked whatever tension is left out of an already drained winners circle. Can you imagine Dick saying "For 6 points, here is your first subject..."? It just isn't the same. Plus, the reason that the original $100k show worked so well is that the winners circle was played for ....$100,000. In :60, someone could win it. That made for one minute of dang intense television. Deciding who wins the big money after all the wc's have been played gives me very little reason to watch the show.

www.46664.com [/quote]
 the contestant does win whatever WC money s/he gets.  This way does add a little bit of suspence to it.  I forgot one thing, in case of tie, a normal tiebreaker from the front game is played.

clemon79:
[quote name=\'JayC\' date=\'Dec 1 2003, 10:26 AM\'] This way does add a little bit of suspence to it. [/quote]
 Not nearly as much as Oh-My-God-This-Could-Be-Over-Inna-Minute, or the even more exciting Oh-My-God-They-Still-Have-A-Solid-20-Seconds-For-The-Final-Box...

pyrfan:
One advantage the old "Pyramid" tournaments had over the new ones is that they could end on any day; it didn't have to all be over on Wednesday. Hell, as we've seen, the tournament sometimes ended halfway through the episode.

I think the producers are trying to find a way to have a tournament end on a specific day. However, when you have a game show whose end game is so integral to its success, like "Pyramid," it's really hard to force an ending to a tournament. Notice how the format of the lone "Super Password" tournament of champions didn't really work either, while "Password All-Stars" -- which wasn't as dependent on an end game -- worked better. Tournaments that end on pre-determined days tend to work much better on shows like "Jeopardy!"

From a ratings standpoint, the 3-day limit to the tournament probably hurts them, too, because if I'm a casual viewer and I know the tournament will end on Wednesday, why should I watch on Monday and Tuesday? With the old tournaments, every end game was played for $50,000 or $100,000, so it kept the viewers glued to their sets every day because they didn't want to miss the big win.

The only way I could see a 3-day tournament working (working better, anyway) is to have the elimination rounds on Monday and Tuesday and narrow it down to two contestants who will play on Wednesday. On Wednesday, only four subjects are played in the front round -- two with the celebs giving and two with the contestants giving. (The reason there should be no fifth and sixth categories in the front game is to allow more time for extra games.) After two rounds, whoever has the higher score goes to the winner's circle to try for $10,000. Whatever the contestant wins in the circle is added to his/her score for the day. They then switch partners and play four more categories, and the winning contestant tries to add to his score. This keeps going on for as many games as they can fit into their 20 or 21 minutes, until a "time's up" signal rings. At that point, whoever has the higher score wins the $100,000. The other contestant gets to keep whatever score money they accumulated that day. This way, they could have the tournament end on a specific day and still guarantee a $100,000 winner.


Brendan

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