X Factor
The very same, DMAC. May not have been historically well-played but has clearly been added to a few players' itineraries which, combined with our occasional snaffling of money on (albeit separate) games means I won't be returning to it anytime soon...!dmac wrote:Ah, the place that doesn't take coins?grecian wrote:In fact it's my local machine (and that of one other member of this board, I believe). That said, this certainly wasn't my doing, and I know the other member specialises in other games, so I doubt it was his either. This machine was utterly spent, by the way - the wife and I invested a tenner for about four quid return, which is about as bad as it gets for me on an ItBox (albeit we were having a few drinks and not playing *that* seriously).
It's not a well played machine for some reason, and INCA and HULLHULL have both been in there in the last few weeks.
I was there on Thursday but didn't touch any of your games.
[quote="""]Got the last question right for DOND ready to go onto cash round. All of a sudden my game disappears and INSERT COINS comes up on the screen! Hard to know what you could claim back from the bar if I coud be bothered. (I couldn't) All these trends are very worrying.[/quote
Ive played FFQ a few times where after about 30 games the whole machine resets and reloads. Bank memory stays but game is gone. Its like the titbox is ringing up the base for help...!
Ive played FFQ a few times where after about 30 games the whole machine resets and reloads. Bank memory stays but game is gone. Its like the titbox is ringing up the base for help...!
How insane!
Had a big gripe with Cowell and X Factor earlier, when getting this as my 4th endgame question:
Which of the following sports DOES NOT involve water:
a) Surfing
b) Ski-ing
c) Ice Skating
Cheers for that Simon. Second chance wasted as the inevitable pick of ski-ing proved to be wrong. Only ended up getting £3 from the game too.
Where are vbob and Ernest? This was on a gamesnet in the Robin Hood in Cherry Hinton. I'm a quiz amateur compared to you two and potted DOND in there a while back. X Factor only wanted 7/10 and 8/12 off me, with 5 after for £1. If its that ready do some damage!

Had a big gripe with Cowell and X Factor earlier, when getting this as my 4th endgame question:
Which of the following sports DOES NOT involve water:
a) Surfing
b) Ski-ing
c) Ice Skating
Cheers for that Simon. Second chance wasted as the inevitable pick of ski-ing proved to be wrong. Only ended up getting £3 from the game too.
Where are vbob and Ernest? This was on a gamesnet in the Robin Hood in Cherry Hinton. I'm a quiz amateur compared to you two and potted DOND in there a while back. X Factor only wanted 7/10 and 8/12 off me, with 5 after for £1. If its that ready do some damage!

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The £1 prize setting is now very common in my part of the universe, what has gone on?grecian wrote:Spotted three £1 prize only X Factors in about twenty minutes last night in central London. Has someone suddenly been getting very good at this or have they changed the game to make £1 mode a more common occurrence?

Money goes in, has it all come out?
I think you are confusing two issues here. The reprogramming had three main features:cool wrote:stops the players who I intensely dislike-not content with a big win or jackpot they nibble away and make the game redundant.people like this are morons and I am completely behind the reprogramming if it protects the game in the long term.
(a) fewer questions on the first round (12 maximum not 15)
(b) an easier question set on the prize round - no more sequences of spoilers after the first £1
(c) the Second Chance bonus now gives you two chances at the same question rather than another chance at a different (usually impossible) question
According to QuizMaster he was able, through a lot of hard work and some financial loss, to learn enough of the spoilers to make the first version a real payer, particularly as it was very hard for anyone else to win much on it. The second version is much easier and hence it has opened the game up to a lot more people to win on it, which is why people are seeing more of the '£1 Jackpot' setting. This will of course kill the game for good on each box when it occurs as no one will play for that low reward (although as an aside the questions themselves don't get any harder on that setting - I won the £1 Jackpot the other night as an exercise to see what happens and no major spoilers appeared).
I suspect the reprogramming hasn't actually included the ability for the game to switch to £1 Jackpot mode - I'm pretty sure that was already there as I saw this on the original version of the game when it first came out at a pub in central London.
The more general question you are raising is an interesting one, namely do we as players decide to 'kill' a game by taking multiple big wins on the rare occasions when such a game appears. i.e. one where we realise we have the ability to do so? Obviously it's a personal choice and relies very much on location and how often you play - if you are in a strange town that you won't be returning to for ages then there doesn't seem to be any point in not going for multiple wins, whereas most people would see the sense in 'protecting' a machine which is on your regular route so that you can go back several times. Are you really saying you have never taken a multiple win on any game on a point of principle?
good point my territory ranges over much of the south coast /sw/se and I can say that I do not take multiple jackpots however rarely I visit. Sometimes I do not take a single jackpot even when I am capable of getting it (not elaborating), the only exceptions to this is when a publican says make it your last visit. I'm a vegetarian I wouldnt want to kill the golden goose!
Interesting thoughts. Personally I do wonder whether there has recently been a third (perhaps emergency) re-programming of TXF which has made it easier for the game to switch into £1JP mode to protect itself. I say that as, although I did see one £1JP a while back (which I began this thread by posting about), I didn't see any more until the last ten days or so, where I've seen it five or six times. I think that's too much of a rise to be coincidental so I think either they've re-jigged the programming or one of the big boys has significantly increased their level of play and is going about hammering these things until they're absolutely spent. If the latter, that's impressive, because to win a JP (or anything much north of £4 or £5) when the timer is on the speed setting would be a serious feat of high-speed accurate recall. (I'm impressed that NS JPed a £1JP version, as I've always thought it does raise the endgame difficulty a bit when it's in that mode.)
For me the issue about multiple wins doesn't really raise its head, as I don't have the ability to brute-force games in that manner. I've taken multiple large prizes from the same machine on TXF a fair few times - but that was because in all instances the game kept "paying" i.e. kept the timer on slow and didn't start upping the question difficulty noticeably. I presume the machine was very frequently (and badly) played in all such locations. If I felt I was able to JP some game that no-one else had spotted any potential on at all, I imagine that might be different and I'd think seriously about holding off from repeat-JPing it right, left and centre. But I'm not sure such a situation will ever arise!
For me the issue about multiple wins doesn't really raise its head, as I don't have the ability to brute-force games in that manner. I've taken multiple large prizes from the same machine on TXF a fair few times - but that was because in all instances the game kept "paying" i.e. kept the timer on slow and didn't start upping the question difficulty noticeably. I presume the machine was very frequently (and badly) played in all such locations. If I felt I was able to JP some game that no-one else had spotted any potential on at all, I imagine that might be different and I'd think seriously about holding off from repeat-JPing it right, left and centre. But I'm not sure such a situation will ever arise!