I know this has been touched on before on another thread but I can't remember which thread that was so I thought I'd start a new one. People have been going on about the huge amount of questions concerning 2010 but what's blown my mind is the sheer length of some of the questions. It's like you have to read a whole paragraph to get to the point of the bloody question, really annoying. I mean, for nutters like us with our bizarrely trained eyes it's just about feasible to quickly get the gist and have a decent shot at the answer, but surely joe public will go into rabbit-in-headlights phase and think 'F**k that for a game of soldiers!'.
Also, I recently had something along the lines of 'Which of these was the earlier leader of the Isle of Man?' (It was another term that some folk on here will no doubt know..) It was quite early in the game too.
Just seems odd to me that they haven't scrapped the game instead of asking ludicrous spoilers so early on.
Last moan: if you get the 'Easy Questions' bonus they don't seem particularly easy to me. I mean, I can get most of them but Joe Public's unlikely to think that knowing the name of The Script's 2007 album is particularly easy.
Pity, as it's been a decent game.
New By Any Means questions
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QuizMaster
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It was easily one of the best Q&A games of the last few years, admittedly against some pretty weak opposition, which makes GWHL's decision to kill it by adding a quite ludicrous question bank all the more puzzling. I can't think of a better example of a game that has been ruined in quite this way, i.e. simply by adding a new bank rather than changing the basic gameplay - ruined for players but also (far more importantly) for punters. It's mystifying.
I'm coming round to this way of thinking. I think the game that really has been rendered ludicrously hard is YHW20. I was pretty good at this pre-update: not brilliant, but not at all bad either. Post-update I've barely won a bean. Who is meant to win anything at this game? What is the payout rate post-update? I'd be surprised if it's more than about 10%, and even then only if one of the very few real boys is in town.
PS Have any real boys been in Hemel Hempstead lately? Played it yesterday and nearly all the machines showed signs of having been nailed.
PS Have any real boys been in Hemel Hempstead lately? Played it yesterday and nearly all the machines showed signs of having been nailed.
You're absolutely right. Before the update it was an odd game anyway as I would guarantee that no punter EVER won a single penny through 'standard' means, i.e. by getting through all the questions. The only way it paid out to them was via the Bonus and Take It or Leave It options. For better players you were reliant on how many of the spoilers it chose to gave you, using any bonuses wisely and good old fashioned random guessing. And before anyone comes on and says that they (or other players) were able to 'conquer' that original version, explain why a game that had the '£20 or Lose' setting as protection was never in that state in all the obvious, easy-to-find pubs in any one of 100 towns in the South East.grecian wrote:I think the game that really has been rendered ludicrously hard is YHW20. I was pretty good at this pre-update: not brilliant, but not at all bad either. Post-update I've barely won a bean. Who is meant to win anything at this game? What is the payout rate post-update? I'd be surprised if it's more than about 10%, and even then only if one of the very few real boys is in town.
The updated game however is just comically difficult - quite possibly the hardest Q&A game I've ever seen. The payout must be less than 10% as you say, and even that would be from the giveaways (Bonus and Take It or Leave It). No punter will be remotely tempted to waste more than the odd 50p on such a game.
I've been tempted to say many times since the post-HMRC Paragons appeared that GWHL (in the words of the football song) don't know what they are doing. Now I'm coming to believe however that maybe they do know what they are doing, in the sense that they have actively chosen this strategy - release lots of skill-based trivial nonsense, often for amusement only so with 0% payout, and either remove or kill all their decent Q&A games. The machines will take very little - ask yourselves how little punter play you see on Paragons now - but will pay out even less.
If on the other hand they don't know what they are doing, the first thing they should do is commission a new question bank from someone who has actually ever done a quiz themselves, which appears not to be the case with the recent bank. As anyone who has ever set e.g. a pub quiz will know, it is a very tricky art to try to ensure that the questions are not trivially easy or too difficult for the audience. But if you judge it wrong, as has happened so spectacularly across the Paragon suite of games, the ordinary punters are very soon going to give up on your quizzes.
In fairness Nil I have seen a few London cabinets in £20-0 state, and a few more in £20-£1-0 - I've even put a couple in that state myself. I agree it's not usual though, at least in the south.Nil Satis wrote:You're absolutely right. Before the update it was an odd game anyway as I would guarantee that no punter EVER won a single penny through 'standard' means, i.e. by getting through all the questions. The only way it paid out to them was via the Bonus and Take It or Leave It options. For better players you were reliant on how many of the spoilers it chose to gave you, using any bonuses wisely and good old fashioned random guessing. And before anyone comes on and says that they (or other players) were able to 'conquer' that original version, explain why a game that had the '£20 or Lose' setting as protection was never in that state in all the obvious, easy-to-find pubs in any one of 100 towns in the South East.grecian wrote:I think the game that really has been rendered ludicrously hard is YHW20. I was pretty good at this pre-update: not brilliant, but not at all bad either. Post-update I've barely won a bean. Who is meant to win anything at this game? What is the payout rate post-update? I'd be surprised if it's more than about 10%, and even then only if one of the very few real boys is in town.
Indeed, and I am the same, but the point is - if someone was able to consistently 'beat' that game in its original version, as opposed to pick up a decent win by the methods I described, they would surely then go round all the pubs in obvious locations with the game and do the same. I think we'd all agree that the number of people likely to be able to get to that standard on such a difficult game is tiny, and that such people would surely visit the sort of geographical area I 'cover' at some point.
All I was trying to do really was preempt the Walter Mitty characters coming on and saying "I could win on that one every time"...
All I was trying to do really was preempt the Walter Mitty characters coming on and saying "I could win on that one every time"...