Let’s take a look at some scoring changes for this upcoming War of the Worlds 2 season! As analyzed from last season, about twenty percent of our overall points came from BONUS points. Keeping in mind that we doubled “challenge” and “survival” points — and it’s a one season sample size — I thought we should re-think bonus points as well.
The overall goal is to streamline bonus points but also make them more impactful. In addition, we can’t forget that bonus points are for rewarding the things we cheer for when watching the show. MTV Challenge is America’s fifth major sport and we care about the competition but it’s just as important to cheer for the drama! Toward that end we are going to add a new bonus scoring category, adjust scoring for the old categories, and eliminate three cats.
Methodology: I went back all the way to the beginning of 2015 and looked over the last eight seasons — minus Champs vs Pros -- to assess which bonus categories were most used. Yes, I went all the way back to Exes 2 when Zach was paired up with Jonna and Jenna was with Jay. This Exes 2 season was also Diem’s last appearance on the Challenge I believe. RIP Diem!
See below for the short explainer and then way down below for very detailed analysis which I assume most of you will skip, probably for good reason. But first, a change to COMPETITION points outlined below.
Changes to COMPETITION points:
• Elimination and Survival are now worth +4 points each (they were +1 and +2 before). So if you go in and win an elimination, that’s +8 total. It’s such a big deal to hit the elimination floor that our scoring should reflect that accordingly.
• Making the finals is now worth +5 for each finalist while the overall winner is now worth +10 points. However, if it's a team victory, only +5 for each member -- barring if it's a pairs challenge. (This is to balance out the fact that multiple winners is different.)
• I’m assuming MTV is done with the redemption house stuff, but if not, it’s +2 for a redemption win.
New BONUS Points and Scoring
New Category
+ TJ Lavin Rule: There are two parts to this rule. Either (1) Making TJ verbally express his disappointment in your behavior or performance or (2) If TJ says “you killed it” to someone. This has to be said directly to an individual so if it’s just a general TJ being disappointed, that won’t score. TJ must say your name and express either disappointment or "you killed it" specifically.
Returning Categories
• Crying (+2 pts)
• Kissing (+2)
• Puke (+4)
• Medical (+4)
• Sex (+4)
• Booted (+6)
• Tirade / Fight (+6)
Eliminated Categories
- Blurcle
- Clue
- Hookup Team Bonus
BONUS Category Analysis and Reasoning
• Crying & Kissing (Average 17.4 and 16.3 instances per season, respectively)
These reliably score every season, with the narrow edge going to crying. Our highest season of crying was twenty-nine instances in War Worlds, and the lowest was Vendettas with only four.
As for kissing, the only dud season for make outs was Rivals 3 when there were only six kissing instances, it’s been about seventeen times per season otherwise. We like the hookups!
• Puke (5.6 avg)
A very high variance category. Some seasons we get ten-plus pukes but often we hover around two or three times a season. Must be the extreme food challenges?
• Medical (3.3 avg)
When they bring on the medics or someone goes to the hospital, we cheer! Recently that’s been much more often than usual as we’ve had two of our highest instances in the last three seasons — War Worlds with six and Vendettas with five. We like it when someone collapses, we want to reward this category accordingly.
• Sex (2.5 avg)
Outside of Final Reckoning, where it was sex city with ten instances, this actually has been quite a low scoring category. In all the other seasons, it’s been a paltry 1.5 instances of sex per season. Yes, that means at most we’ve been shown just one sex pairing per season.
I had thoughts of just eliminating this category entirely and rolling it into "kissing," but having our players go all the way is exciting, so we should keep this category around. We will push it to be more impactful though and up the points.
• Booted (1.9 avg)
Remember this includes having to leave due to injury. Six of the past eight seasons have featured someone booted off the show. While the six instances of booting during Final Reckoning were an outlier, it’s fun when people get kicked off the show. Let’s reward them for that! And now we're adding quitting, aka Smashley’s favorite move, to this category. So if you leave via producers or voluntarily, that's points!
• Tirade / Fight (0.9 and 0.8 avg)
While we’ve had disputes about what constitutes a verbal tirade or physical fight — and even an instance of a one-way physical fight once (hi Nelson!) — we like people who go off on someone or instigate confrontation. Aside from Vendettas, this category has only given us roughly two instances a season. I’m combining these two categories back into one though because there’s never been any time we’ve given both Tirade and Fight points to the same player. It’s usually a tirade that leads to a fight, or just one or the other.
Eliminated Categories
We’re tossing these because they were only +1 and rarely happened, or in the case of hookup bonus, a pain to score on my spreadsheet. Generally these only happened zero to three instances per season.
• Blurcle (5.9 avg)
Five of eight seasons had zero to four instances, and barring a wild flurry of blurcles in Rivals 3 (21 times) and Invasion (12 times), this was mostly a dud category. Plus it’s sometimes hard to score.
• Clue (3.8 avg)
This one actually scores every season but has gone from being a thing MTV is keen to show us — average of 4.5 instances for the first four seasons, only 3.0 the last four — to being something that’s mostly used during the finals episodes. Toss!
• Hookup Bonus/Team (0.9 avg)
In six of the eight seasons, this scored a zero or one, and only added a tiny number of points. Also it messes with my spreadsheet to score.
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