Greetings. The little exam is a great game, especially when playing with friends and using voicechat. Here I have a small suggestion which can hopefully be implemented to enhance the game. When choosing a difficulty, ad a custom option. When this option is activated, you would be presented with a list of categories available, where you could check or uncheck the categories you want. Normally we play on hard, however there are 2 or 3 quite weird categories which are not so necessary in my opinion. Now, the game would be even more powerful if in here you could add your own categories as well, however if you don't have enough time to develop that at this moment I would be happy with just unchecking specific categories for now.

That would be quite useful for cheaters, they would uncheck every category except two or three so there you go.

Which cheaters? Why would you play with anybody who does that in the first place? Moreover, there can always be a protection for that, which is to not allow less categories than the easy difficulty, and the problem is solved.

They do say this time of the year is known as the silly season. The idea is to be tested on what you know and what you don't. Just because you are not good at certain things doesn't mean you can cherry pick what you are good at. If some categories are too difficult for you then choose a lower level next time.

Maybe like Quiz party people can choose from 3 given categories and that could add tactics to the game, but that is up to Aminiel to decide.

If you feel some things should not be included then say what they are and what you would choose to replace them. You may be right on those but as you have not said what they are I can't say if I agree or not.

This is not QP and I do not want categories being replaced for everybody.

I should clarify something, you would have 7 questions and not 5 and select 2 you do not want. You would have a choice like Quiz Party as I said earlier. That would allow for tactics and add a little extra spice to the game.

Let's first say that when you play the little exam live, you first write down all categories you both agree to use. The most used are Country, City, River, Mountain, Actor, Name, plants. All of them are used every round until the end of a game and then your count your points. Also, you use one letter per round, it means you randomly take a letter, then in that round all words should be starting on a chosen letter.
I find using different letters for different words is more fun, but checking categories you want to use is even more fun, after all having extra option if you want to use all categories or select what you like can not damage any side, right?

Nah leave it out, there's enough cheats in Little Exam as it is with the manual points option, which I personally feel should be removed.

if you really want to include that obtion, at least make it so that each participant in the game choose the same number of categories so that everyone has a saying on what should be included and not only the table master. But I agree, I can't really see the point of including such rule

I also never play this game with random people, thus I don't face any cheaters. Yes, no problem if people really find it necessary for all players to first agree on the categories selected.

With up to 100 categories for the highest level that would mean a lot of check boxes to tick for every game you play. The PR does not have a preferences setting for games so the table master could not save their preferences once they have chosen. Maybe that is a future option but not now.

I mean, unchecking a category takes a second...

I think cherry picking categories is not good, if you are not good enough then take time out and learn more about them. I feel the truth is and others do the same and that is you only want categories that you know something about as you stand more chance of winning the game.

TBH in both little exam and quiz party I could not care less if I will win or not. Point of both games is to have fun and this is the only reason I suggested this.

This seems like a reasonable suggestion to me. Honestly guys, if you're so worried about people cheating in little exam, either play only with people you trust or don't play the game. Every judge is different, it's not like other games where the playroom decides who takes a trick, or which combination is worth the highest number of points. For example, some judges will accept the word Potter, Harry, for a movie character starting with P, and some won't because they say it needs to be the first name rather than the last. The course of the game is determined almost entirely by humans, barring the fact that you don't get to see who proposed which answer.

Point being, if people want to cheat, they will cheat. all it takes is shift+p, or communicating with your friends and only accepting answers from them and leaving the strangers in the dust. Freedom of choice is what makes this game great. In Nikola's starting post, he specifically mentioned this would be an option. It would be there for the people who want to play with it. It would not replace the existing difficulty levels by any means, so those who don't feel like ticking check boxes can still enjoy the game like they always did.

The rules already state that you are supposed to use the ssurname and not the Christian name again another example of people taking liberties with the game as it makes it easier for players to score points.

Quote: The judge Is free whether to accept or not the familiar or vulgar terms, to be strict with spelling, or to accept original and fanciful ideas. He/ she might resort to dictionaries to check answers. The best thing is that the players establish an agreement of what is accepted and what is not, before starting the game. In general terms, we try to maintain a more or less correct spelling without considering the accentuated letters, and for famous people categories, players are asked to give the first letter of the first letter of the last name of the person, and not their first name or pseudonym, in order not to make of the game a too easy one.
As you see, nothing super strict, nothing telling you you have to do this or that, it's a friendly game where people agree on the rules and what they want and don't want to accept. I'm not playing for money so I try to make the rules as easy as possible because I want to win so badly. Rules are in a way recommendations on how the game is most often played, not a definite guide on what you must and must not do, especially as I said when playing with friends. Pay attention especially to the part saying that the judge is free to accept original ideas.

It is called the little exam not the little fix. In exams you do not cherry pick your subjects.

So? What exactly prevents you from not doing it if you don't like it that way? Also, what does that have to do with my previous reply? Does it work like if I'm not right I'll switch to criticizing something else?
Edit: Also, if we go by these stupid comparations, you pick what you want to study before the exams, so there you go.

If you read the rules properly as you clearly did not you will see I am right. Some things as it says are open for interpretation as not everybody has a dictionary and cannot keep googling every answer. Some people might not know what a Jackfruit is which can be googled but they may not want to do it every time or be able to spell ‎Tillakaratne Dilshan so makes it tougher to google quickly if they don't know about cricket.

From what you have said you want to be able to choose categories that you want. That means only choose categories you are strong at because it will give you a better chance of winning. It is like entering an exam where you have prepared the answers before hand as you know what questions are likely to be in the little exam, to me this is against the spirit of the game and is not what the PR is about. Once again you have failed to say what categories should not be part of the little exam.

Tillakaratne Dilshan

There is no reason for me to say that, because a group of us might disagree on a category, while yet another group will find this category great. It's not about not knowing something, being intelligent or no, it's about the category sometimes just being boring. I give an example: Let's say that a group of us likes technology, but isn't too interested in cartoons. The game is much more interesting if you submit unique and new words, rather then just something generic to get points. Whenever I played it I didn't even care about the score all that much, but it seems you do since you keep mentioning that somebody wants to win so badly despite me telling you so many times that it has nothing to do with that. If you can't read messages properly, that's really not my fault. Again, you have failed to tell me if it breaks the spirit of the game, why not just continue playing as you do now? Also, yes I have read the rules properly, and even though I did not understand them as you say, you fail to tell me which parts exactly I did not understand correctly. It's funny how you keep switching from topic to topic for no reason. Categories selection does not break the randomness of the game. Letters will always remain random, and so will the categories you selected. It's not like you are selecting 5 categories for each round, you select at the start and that's all. Between 100 categories I'm sure that picking categories wont make any player too disadvantaged. That's my last post on this matter, since we're just going around in circles with nothing significant said. I would just like to conclude by saying thanks to Aminiel for making a great game, and in fact I wish it was more popular since it provides a lot of entertainment, which is the whole point of games.

if you read and if you read and if you read. all the stuff you said YNWA stated that you disagree with this option being added so why you go on more.
The next suggestion comes if YNWA won't disagree we'll have to celebrate. Or perhaps you intend to make your posts number increases

Tough luck if you don't like the category that is just the game, nobody is expected to like everything but you just play on.

If you dont like the game then don't play it, I like the game that way

I thought the suggestions and comments category was to talk about things you don't like, but I guess we moved on to if you don't like it shut up.

I find the suggestion interesting.
I don't see the problem with choosing categories as long as everybody accept.

Like it or not, but the little exam is anyway a game to play with sufficiently trustworthy people. It doesn't work with random people without a minimum of agreements. That's something we already know, and warned about it, when the game has been released. At that time, we didn't know if a so highly human-driven game would work.

You must agree on the exact rules like how to write the name of an artist, how you will count answers that differ only by the spelling, as well as the categories which to play with of course. Computers can't do everything automatically, that's why the manual points feature is there and can't be removed.

Alt+Tab and quickly asking Google is also a risk when playing with a long timer. Like all the rest and in all other games, if you play with honnest people, nobody will cheat.

Back to choosing categories, it's quite different in Quiz Party. Here it would be cheat if you could say I exclude sport because I'm bad at sport, and everyone would so remove his personal worst one. At the end there would remain the 4 or 5 everybody wants.
Note that you always have three options so that you can have a little strategy, for example when someone is about to win, choosing a category you know he/she's bad at.

well it would be nice, though, if all of the players at least had the same amount of influence on which categories are being chosen. otherwise the table master could just choose categories that they are good at, whereas the others might not know anything about it.

I agree with the raven and that was one of my reasons for objecting as the table master would just choose what they liked. Also in theory they could reduce the categories to 10 or even lower if they wanted to.

My suggestion is you have a choice at the beginning of each round just like quiz party. You are given say 7 categories instead of the usual 5, (could be more) then pick 2 you do not want, this way each person will get a choice when it is their turn.

Aminiel it is possible to keep a database of some common answers to some categories and it is possible some answers could be given to some questions to help people in the future. Lists of people of course is very difficult to keep as there are many possible answers but Fruit and vegetables don't really change so it is possible to keep some of those listed.

I know you don't like making games individual but I was wondering if people could play this game against themselves, it would encourage more people to play. If people could practise on their own and come up with their own answers by themselves within a time limit they would get better before they played against real people.

No. Solving the problem of choosing only 10 categories is really easy. As I said, just limit the minimum number of categories to the same number of categories easy difficulty offers. This way you cannot choose any small amount. I do also agree with offering players to agree or disagree on the customizations made by the table master, even though you can easily do this in chat. Quiz party and the little exam are quite different and comparing then is I believe not going to work.

lol, ok I will say cribbage if it makes you feel happier. You have a choice of cards in cribbage and discard cards that will help you the least. Why not do that for the little exam. normally you have a choice of 5 that already selected so why not 7 or 8? You can choose easier cards that are easier or harder depending on how well you are performing in the game. everybody has the same oportunity this way.