@keefer, now I understand better. That fish bonus strategy is not as popular on our local location machine because the plunger to advance it only registers about 1 in 4 times with a perfect hard hit. But if that registered the way it should and I’ve seen on other machines, I can see that becoming an all-day strategy.
Doesn’t that 500K time-down to 250K then 100K, i.e. if you don’t collect it fast enough it reduces in value? If not, then perhaps that’s the solution; once you raise it to 500K, you have 5 seconds to collect, then value reduces. If it already times down, then perhaps make it time-down faster? Another option is to timeout the 10K. Right now, once you go down right inlane, it lights it till collected. If time or any switch reset that, it requires a ramp-trashcan combo to collect, which is also more difficult. Combine that with a value that times down, and I think this would be on par with other strategies like looping ramp.
There is no setting to time out the 10x collect, only if it stays lit on next ball or not. Also, the Bone-Us timer can be set from 4-99s, and the default is 20 (so quite a bit of time to collect). A fair, challenging setting might be 10s. FYI the progression is 500K-100K-75K-50K-25K, so quite a penalty for missing the 5M.
Having both the 10x and vari-target time down is probably pretty brutal.
Well, the jackpot value can certainly be changed to ANYTHING. There’s so many game where if you do “the thing” you’re going to win, and bad cats looks like it might have a couple of “things”. I didn’t touch the 10x bonus because that sounds like it’s skillful; if yours doesn’t register changing the software to kneecap it is not the way to fix that. A 20m jackpot might make more sense (Isn’t the Jokerz fixed value like 20 mililon or 16 in contest mode?) and still having the 20m ramp shot available on the last ball (speaking of which… how about letting the 20m be collectable EVERY BALL? It’s like Bats on BSD but with more skill).
There so many ways to go with changing stuff… the only thing that doesn’t seem ‘fair’ in a tournament situation is anything that’s collect progressive jackpot @ 20m, and next player… it’s 1m. As long as all players have the equal opportunity to collect something, that’s the way it should be.
I guess the fish-bone-us is a pretty “safe” grind-y strat?
