limited games on machines

[Nil Satis]

With that I'd say you have just hit the very m of the h of the n. ;-)

[paragoon]

Another 'development' that haven't helped are - removing the volume control. Why?
a couple of pubs I go into have the volume so high it drowns out the jukebox on certain games! Makes you feel an absolute tit playing on it.

[cp999]

A few incidental observations:

- faulty coin mechanisms are common, and it's not just the general issue that none of them have been updated to accept the newer design of 10ps and 5ps

True, re the update it's unprofessional but personally I regard it as pretty much irrelevant.

- payout failures - anywhere over £20 and I now expect a failure to occur on each subsequent attempt to collect, and as we know with Sceptre machines that £20 figure is often deliberately set as the maximum, independent of how much is actually available to pay out.

I'm not prepared to risk running up significant sums; I'll almost always collect sectionally. In context, last time I checked only 3% of my sessions (on non-Sceptre machines, and over a period of about a year as sample size) ended in a payout failure; while this isn't acceptable, it's not a disaster. I question the legality of Sceptre's behaviour on the basis that many machines floated to a £20 maximum have Foxy Bingo or whatever it is, which offers a £50 max win - thus they are knowingly advertising a prize that cannot be paid out.

I see that GWHL have, instead of addressing these issues, introduced a new line of defence (against what? - who knows...) in that rebooting some of their machines now kicks off an alarm loud enough to wake the dead. I would usually try to reboot a machine if it has failed to pay out a few quid, with the aim of losing the remaining credits deliberately so that at least the machine is back available again for someone else to start playing, but that now seems less worthwhile. Similarly the standard response of landlords and bar staff in such circumstances is usually to try to reboot; presumably they have now been warned not to. Rebooting is also the most reliable method of trying to get a coin mechanism that refuses to accept any coins to start working again. The net result? - more machines left unplayable and more punters left to find somewhere else to put their spare change...

It was certainly the case that GW payouts which had failed but not blanked the bank (eg generating hopper error screen) could often be collected successfully after a reboot (that development followed the reboot clears the bank programming which had been a consequence of Casino Royale, I couldn't say offhand from which issue it applied). It's my opinion that there is a hardware fault in the payout mechanism: this is not responsible for all payout failures, but it is for some, and these varying errors have been present within both the software and hardware for a very long time now, and handled in differing ways, with differing (lack of) success. Also, the coin mech "failure" is in some cases the result of a failed payout. If it blanks the bank, but generates no error message, the machine will appear as normal, but it won't take coins.

[Nil Satis]

I'm not prepared to risk running up significant sums]

I do collect sectionally, as you say - I don't wait for a bank of £20 to build up and then start to collect smaller prizes, although sometimes of course a £20 win on a single game is still possible, e.g. on Battleships. Given that, I would assume that your 3% non-Sceptre failure rate would mean Paragons form a reasonably small subset of your machines; either that or you have some relatively low limit you stop playing any particular machine at, with the intention of returning later, or you have some way of telling exactly how much money is available to collect. In the areas I play the failure rate is easily around the 50% mark on Paragons. It is considerably lower on other cabinets, although some of them are barely worth playing anyway - I felt a right idiot the other night when I forgot the bug that I had seen before (and which has been mentioned on here) whereby any winnings on WWTBAM on that newish iQuest cabinet do not get added to the bank, right up to the point when I realised that the unexpected £20 I had just won had simply disappeared into the ether...

It was certainly the case that GW payouts which had failed but not blanked the bank (eg generating hopper error screen) could often be collected successfully after a reboot.

That was the case as you say but the error message I get virtually every time now is simply the one that says something like 'You are owed £x.00, please speak to the manager' and that nearly always seems to mean that there just isn't the money physically there to pay out.

Also, the coin mech "failure" is in some cases the result of a failed payout. If it blanks the bank, but generates no error message, the machine will appear as normal, but it won't take coins.

True, but it is common to have coin mech problems during a session on a Paragon - it will suddenly decide not to accept any coins, after being quite happy to do so up to that point, but will start doing so again after a reboot. I do use their one useful recent innovation to try to prevent this, by using Transfer to put a quid or two back in the credits before collecting the remainder - this wasn't possible on the previous version where you could only collect when there was less than 50p left in the credits.

[paragoon]

Am I right that the machines with the 'Casino' bit are more likely to pay out than the ones without it? I saw someone win £30 on one the other day and it paid straight out. It's the way forward imo though it's probably too late.

One other thing that's killed stuff - the lack of variation in the question banks. At least three games on the machines use the same actor's films or whatever. It's not hard to 'brush up' on your David Schwimmer films or Annette Benning..seems bizarre to bring out new games with the same answer-base.

[streakseims]

Depends if they have updated the hopper as standard only holds £150 max, can be upped to £350 which is a must when adding casino games but most don't even bother. then they get notey off and never refilled. it is mainly beer change put in a quizzer as in shrapnel not £1 coins

[Nil Satis]

If I ever found a quiz machine these days with £150 available for winnings, I would think I had died and gone to heaven! The one I 'emptied' last night had precisely £24 available to collect...

[cp999]

In the areas I play the failure rate is easily around the 50% mark on Paragons.

Extraordinary.

[muddle]

Slightly,drifting between threads here,but to follow on from both this thread,and Topical's drippy couple post,in the last three to four days,I've come across the machine being in use quite frequently,which is a mixture of annoying and encouraging.What has been particularly encouraging,is that it was mostly by people who can't have been much older than 18.What has been discouraging though is all this has happened in the last three to four days:The cash door was open on a machine,another's screen wasn't responding which I didn't realise until I had put a quid in,one machine's screen stopped responding halfway through a game,one machine took my quid then didn't award any credits.I came across a machine with £14 showing in the bank - I tentatively pressed it,it came up with the IOU £14 message,I wonder if some poor fool had put a twenty pound note in and had been unable to collect their change.What else - oh yes,a couple of machines had their screens offset,and one machine crashed as I was about to win.Oh,and a few five pences and ten pences masquerading as quids in the money I collected.And of course,if you're collecting on a Games Net,you often have to stick your finger up the chute so to speak.Also,there were a couple of machines that weren't accepting coins or notes,and some were simply switched off.Now,we meet all this with a weary shrug,but the point I've taken a long time in making is that I don't think the new pub-going generation,who are used to slick hand-held devices,will.Maybe after just one or two of those things happening,they'll think that the quiz machine isn't worth bothering with.Like Topical said,I reckon that there's still a potential cake out there where everyone can have a slice.I actually think the content is good,but the companies really need to sharpen up their act when it comes to the machines themselves.

[cool]

As Ive said before my solution for the SWP industry is to go back to the one game either per unit or section and with the question based games only have a game that is current through media (not just TV) or be instantly recognisable historical favourites and be on a rolling programme e.g every 6 weeks it changes (unless scammed) to another familiar formatted game. Games with value for money should be targeted in terms of length of game play and games should be a £1 to increase take and helping to generate jackpots / small wins more quickly.

Do gaming companies ever take notice. If there are any machine companies that would like my input contact me via PM !

[muddle]

I'm starting to see more and more of those Paragons that only have a few games on (Beat the Landlord,Whack a Wabbit,Battleships and others).I find this utterly extraordinary and baffling.Maybe games like 1vs100,Million Pound Drop,Match of the Day pay out more often than they like and that's why they're not on,but to have none of the more recent games on that have just been developed? I'm thinking here of Pointless,Pixel This,Trivia Tube and #Words.None of these games can take a big hit as the jackpot goes below £1,meaning you can never collect it as any 'winnings' go straight into credits,and also Pointless is without a doubt one of the more popular games with the punters.Anybody make any sense of that? I'm starting to wonder if the industry is trying to commit hara-kiri.

[Topical2009]

I've seen two cabinets this week which had 8 (eight) games in the Quiz Zone. I have no explanation either.

There was a machine in a pub quite close to home which I attempted to play regularly last year. Three visits in a row, I found it switched off (no idea if this was because staff had forgotten to turn it on in the first place, or I'd just been unlucky and called at the exact moment when it was briefly out of action through mechanical or software failure, or because it was knackered and nobody could be bothered reporting it). The fourth visit, it was gone, and I wondered if the manager or the manager's boss had said "We should ditch that machine, nobody ever plays it" without asking why the hell that might be?

Symptoms of the same problem, I fear.

[JG]

Staff apathy - it's bloomin' annoying isn't it?

[Sloach]

I think this is what the end feels like

[7-10-2-7-LOSE]

I just want to play the games.