great escape

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Wed May 30, 2007 12:19 pm

It's basically a fruit machine with questions - avoid at all costs!

SWP · Post by **SWP** » Wed May 30, 2007 7:00 pm

It's basically a fruit machine with questions - avoid at all costs!

This is so true.

Played it for the first (and last) time today without checking the forum first. I came here to report it is so obviously an AWP feature board - but Nils has beat me to it!

Broke even on it, but that's not the point. Quid in - Quid out is so boring and "Caught" so obvious.

The only credit I can give it is the tricky True/False Q's they've stuck on it - got caught 4 times and never managed to do all 3

Just out of curiousity what's the highest anyone's seen the cashpot (as I'm wondering is this it's mood meter?). Just working on the notion that you'll never get a prize past the cashpot without getting caught/QQQ.

£1.40 was the highest for me.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Thu May 31, 2007 9:45 am

Yes, on reflection I understated how nasty this game is - NS and others are entirely right to say that some of the features on it represent a new and dangerous incursion into AWP territory. Let's hope this is a one-off. Whilst I think boycotts are a bit silly, let's just say it's one game I'll certainly not be playing.

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Thu May 31, 2007 9:54 am

grecian wrote: Whilst I think boycotts are a bit silly, let's just say it's one game I'll certainly not be playing.

that sounds like a boycott from Grecian then

also to clarify, my own boycott of dimwitboxes is in part coincidental due to the (poor) quality of beer in pubs near me which have that terminal. there are still a couple of pubs i go to with an itbox and well-conditioned beer. in these i still play WU for recreation. not that anyone could have given a tinker's cuss.

Hexpert · Post by **Hexpert** » Thu May 31, 2007 11:28 am

Have seen £3.10 in the Cash Pot but it wasn't in a good mood

"Caught" and Game Over!!

rogerthymes · Post by **rogerthymes** » Thu May 31, 2007 11:51 am

Nil Satis wrote:It's basically a fruit machine with questions - avoid at all costs!

I was just thinking that about ELW last night! I know people here have jackpotted it a bit but personally I have found it to be a couple of easy rounds and then some random spoiler on the £1 round. Therefore i'm just putting in 50p to give myself a one-in-three chance of a quid. Hardly worth it at all. Don't know about boycotting itboxes forever but I've totally weaned myself off DOND as its become almost impossible so there's not much left for me on this 'issue'. They need some new games desperately

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Thu May 31, 2007 12:29 pm

step7 wrote:Just out of curiousity what's the highest anyone's seen the cashpot (as I'm wondering is this it's mood meter?). Just working on the notion that you'll never get a prize past the cashpot without getting caught/QQQ.

£1.40 was the highest for me.

I'm sure you're right in one sense, namely that the size of the cashpot will be a good indication of how many games have been played, but given how this one seems to have no natural customer base - if you want to play a fruit machine, surely there are lots of better ones out there! - I'd be amazed to see any cashpot above about £2 before this one gets pulled, hopefully as early as the next iteration. I then hope it's Colditz for whoever put the game on the market in the first place!

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Thu May 31, 2007 1:01 pm

rogerthymes wrote:I was just thinking that about ELW last night! I know people here have jackpotted it a bit but personally I have found it to be a couple of easy rounds and then some random spoiler on the £1 round. Therefore i'm just putting in 50p to give myself a one-in-three chance of a quid. Hardly worth it at all. Don't know about boycotting itboxes forever but I've totally weaned myself off DOND as its become almost impossible so there's not much left for me on this 'issue'. They need some new games desperately

Sadly this is the way things are going. Deal or No Deal at least has the ability to give you games without any obvious spoilers, and hence decent wins are possible, but virtually all the other new games where reasonable wins are even theoretically available have inbuilt spoilers to ensure that you won't get above £1 or so - Deals on Wheels has a few supporters on here but I have never found one in a mood where you don't start getting "When was some guy you've never heard of born?" with the three answers "1804, 1805 and 1806" (i.e. too close together to make any sort of educated guess) at anything over about £1. OK, you can make a lucky guess once or twice but those sort of questions will soon bring you down every time.

To see this most starkly, if you are lucky enough to find an old edition of Millionaire anywhere, compare the standard of questions you got on that around say 500-4000 points to those you get on Millionaire 2006 (the one on the ItBox). The difference is stark and explains why winning big on that one has become a rare and unexpected joy as compared to a common pleasure.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Thu May 31, 2007 3:35 pm

Nil Satis wrote: To see this most starkly, if you are lucky enough to find an old edition of Millionaire anywhere, compare the standard of questions you got on that around say 500-4000 points to those you get on Millionaire 2006 (the one on the ItBox). The difference is stark and explains why winning big on that one has become a rare and unexpected joy as compared to a common pleasure.

That's true, but in new WWTBAM's partial defence, the questions usually get a bit easier again after the brute it usually chucks in somewhere around the 1,000 points mark. That said, it's clearly a lot harder to win any kind of prize, big or small, on new WWTBAM as compared with old WWTBAM. I used to JP the old one regularly and take £1 or £2 in a majority of games - on the new, I've JPed it once, over a year ago, and take any cash prize maybe one go in six or seven.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Thu May 31, 2007 6:31 pm

I'm the same - I have Jackpotted it once in the circa 15 months since it came out, and maybe got to £10 two or three times more. All those times basically involved getting lucky on complete gambles at least twice on the stack.

On the old versions, either the standalones or when it was on the ItBoxes and Gamesnets, I could easily be looking at three or so Jackpots A WEEK depending on how many places I could get to that had them. Basically unless it was still in 'smarting from a Jackpot' mode (= no guaranteed win on the stack) you could rely on getting at least one prize of £3 to £5 from a few goes, thereby paying for a few games on other things as a minimum.

And before anyone queries how the game had money to pay out so regularly - it was fun to play, the Ask the Audience bonus actually helped sometimes, it didn't rip you off with ludicrous questions early on, an average group of punters could get to a reasonable prize with a bit of luck and the big prizes were attainable - even if you couldn't win yourself you might see someone else do it. All these things meant that the throughput of cash was much higher. How many average punters are going to keep playing Millionaire 2006 after the third consecutive go of losing on "Which of these four comics did some character you've never heard of appear in?" while still miles off winning even £1?

rogerthymes · Post by **rogerthymes** » Thu May 31, 2007 10:33 pm

totally agree with Nil Statis there....the million dollar question is:

Are these itboxes and gamesnet machines going to totally dry up because they were too greedy to let people like us win even a couple of quid or so on a machine?
Losing when:
1 you've got absolutely nowhere near the prizes,
2 are asked questions which you've no idea who/why/what they're on about
3 have to go through too many rounds/sets of questions

just doesn't make people want to put more money in. Actually I should be pleased as I think its making my 'addiction' fade away...

ops:

cool · Post by **cool** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 12:42 am

as long as there are muppets (the general populace) to fill them there will be no incentive to change anything.

QuizMaster · Post by **QuizMaster** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 9:39 am

I agree with Cool. If you watch punters play DOND (I do as I am waiting to get on machines a lot of the time), you will notice:

1/ They get nowhere near the prizes (anything above 30,000 is too much for them)
2/ They get questions of which they have no idea who/why/where/what (example from the other day: Who was John F. Kennedy (they pressed American author)
3/ They had to answer too many questions (they actually got about 20 right with this level of brainpower, but were still 37,000 points from qualifying)

Oh, and the 3 of them put £16 in between them, although they only played DOND.

itBox and Gamesnet want this sort of punter, not our sort. We win sometimes.

And well done Mr. Satis for being able to do 3-4 jackpots a week on old Millionaires. By my usual scale of your ability, this would mean that were other players around who could do 10-15 jackpots per day. Maybe that's why it got changed, not just to spoil your fun.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 10:51 am

Well, given that I have never played the machines full-time I think I can take that childish insult like a man. To win 10-15 jackpots on the same game a day would mean even the cleverest person needing to have access to at least 20 separate standalones or machines with that game on it every day which given realistic travelling time and the time needed to get between pubs and to wait for punters to finish would I reckon mean a 12+ hour day every day. Much as I love playing a good game I've never fancied devoting that much of my waking hours to the pursuit.

Oh, and as usual you are missing the point entirely. Millionaire was only capable of paying out a Jackpot regularly because punters filled it up regularly, and that only happened because it gave them some sense of achievement in that prizes were possible occasionally. Deal or No Deal is one of the few decent games out there and I don't dispute that it is both attractive to punters, as they get a decent length of game and an occasional go at the money round, and to serious players, as it's a moneyspinner. The question is - What happens when that game goes? What the **** will you have left worth playing?

QuizMaster · Post by **QuizMaster** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:21 am

Sorry for any offence, it wasn't intended as an insult.

I don't play DOND - there are far better games on the platforms for worthwhile cash rewards.

And you have taken me too literally about Millionaires. 10-15 jackpot a day for the top boys was about 8 hours. Mainly because they were doing 2 jackpots per box, and it took about 30 mins at the most to do.

Not everything is as black and white as you think.