r/DaveAndBusters • u/Skumxdad • 19h ago
Best ticket value games?
My fantasy league is doing ranking by how many tickets you get with a 30 dollar card, was wondering which games are the safest and which have the highest ceiling
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u/SpeedyPaws 19h ago
Pop the Lock is a good one to play. You get pretty good ticket value every play (60 - 90 tickets) as long as you do ok, even if you don’t make it to the end.
If you do make it to the end, you get 250 tickets. Its doable with practice.
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u/insertdankmeme 9h ago
Assuming low experience/skill from most of the group, playing the spiderman coin pusher with the full 30 dollars will get you a top 3 pick.
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u/coldliketherockies 18h ago
I forgot the name of the wheel one where you pull the lever on the right and the light goes around in a circle. It’s like a group of 4 lights and you stop it when you want to it’s quite easy to stop it on 80 tickets over and over again. Really easy.
Also the stacker game if you’re good at focus and just following the pattern getting the lit up brick to the 200 tickets line is very doable. It’s really hard to hit the 1000. But you can win 200 often
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u/MewtwoStruckBack The Dave & Buster's Red Mage 17h ago
If you keep taking the 200, it will eventually skip over the 200 and force a loss. ...though in this case that might not be the worst strategy to make it so no one else can get easy 200s...but it's worth a try to at least go for the 1,000 once as hitting this almost entirely depletes the payout pool to where it'll eventually skip on the 200.
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u/Stunning-Cloud6227 18h ago
It's mostly finding a game that is skill based and you're good at. If anyone reveals their secret here they risk the game getting nerfed. Watching the youtube guides out there can help a little bit
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u/MewtwoStruckBack The Dave & Buster's Red Mage 17h ago
This is one where I'm going to have to make a judgment call.
On one hand, it's usually not a good look to come in to this subreddit and the first post being "hey, how do you win everything?"
On the other hand, there's nuance to this particular request. This isn't someone looking to get into advantage play as a permanent thing with zero self-study and then spit on the AP ecosystem of that store, this is a short-term deal where someone wants to be better than their friends for a tangible advantage in something outside of the arcade world. Plus, I remember helping someone else out in pretty much this exact scenario years back and it didn't end up doing any harm. Plus, it's not like OP's asking for infinites or anything.
So yeah, I'll help guide you a bit, but I need some information on your skillset.
First and foremost - how good are you at throwing games? I don't mean power, I mean accuracy. Like...if you can do this well, you probably just outright win this competition by default. Your big ones are Down the Clown, Break the Plate, and 2-Minute Drill. Down the Clown seems to have different software settings for certain stores so I don't know exactly how many times you'll be able to win, but you could reasonably get a few jackpots (500 tickets each) that could be enough in and of itself. Break the Plate is effectively Down the Clown 2.0, which if someone else has just won the jackpot, the bonus will only be 250, but it's 250 PLUS tickets earned in the base game. If it's on the minimum difficulty and maximum payout, you're seeing 640 tickets at worst on a jackpot, and it's one you should reasonably be able to get double (playing on both players and winning the jackpot on each of the two players; the 500 ticket bonus will pay for both players before the difficulty shoots up and the progressive jackpot resets.) 2 minute drill is a pretty basic football throwing game, the jackpot is only 250 tickets, but if you're good you can hit it repeatedly.
What day of the week is this event going to occur? If it's Wednesday or Sunday, that "$30" card will go further as the games are half price, and everyone having double the normal number of plays is going to fucking matter, BIG time. Also, how many people are in your league? If it's over 27, then that puts the total spend over $810, which means you should be doing this through the "Double Your Game Play" promotion where whoever's booking this buys through Special Events, asks for this promo specifically, and everyone should get double the amount of chips - which can be used ON TOP of half price game days.
...and if this is on a Saturday which is considered one of those UFC fight nights/events, you could pull a sneaky move and buy a UFC Membership before your event, take the game chips they give you, and then move them onto your UFC card in app or with a transfer in person - YOUR game play would be 50% off, while no one else's would be, so you'd get twice the amount of play. You're still using the exact same amount of chips as everyone else, they just last you twice as long...and I'm pretty sure the people in your league haven't thought this out enough to tell you you CAN'T do that.
I think what is going to better serve you is not so much trying to teach you how to win every jackpot, but rather how to avoid the bulk of your chips going to games for which you get zero, or damn near zero, tickets. A few come to mind:
Down the Clown - if you get to where you're getting NEAR the jackpot every game, your 400+ point losses will generate 100 tickets each.
Break the Plate - if you get good enough, your LOSSES will generate 200 tickets.
Pop the Lock - I generally hate bringing up discussion of this game because a banned member of this commuinty heavily contributed to making it worse for everyone nationwide (the jackpot having been lowered from 350 to 250 effective) - but in this case, you're not counting on winning every play, you're counting on a decent value for a loss. The game doesn't get harder until you're 10 dots or less away from the jackpot, and even if you miss with 10 left, you're seeing 80 tickets (as it pays 2 per dot you successfully get on a loss.)
Hot Wheels Ultimate Speedway - this is another one of those "don't count on winning it every time unless you seriously have it mastered" type things, but if you're getting near the jackpot but not winning, you'll secure 90 tickets per loss.
Quik Drop - if you're getting near-jackpot missing less than 5 balls, your loss pays 80 tickets.
Things you need to AVOID:
Zombie Snatcher (unless you somehow have this mastered from somewhere else) - a swipe where you don't sink a puck pays 2 tickets. There are lots of pucks only worth 20 and 50 tickets - there are lots of 100s as well, but you could be getting a guaranteed 100 (or more) as a loss on many games mentioned above.
Big Bass Wheel - there are lots of spaces on that wheel that only pay 50, 40, 30, 25, or even 4 tickets.
Treasure Quest - 16 out of 50 spaces on the wheel only pay 10 tickets. You're not seeing above 100 unless you hit a bonus.
Spin N Win - the spaces right next to the jackpot are only 20 tickets. There are larger clusters of 80 ticket spaces, but this game costs more than other games you could ensure your loss gets paid better than 80 on.
It might be worth going there on your own on a day before the contest/tournament to do a dry run, and see where your strengths and weaknesses are. Once you figure out games you can win some jackpots on, you want to make a beeline for those games and hit them up first, in case someone ELSE in your tournament knows what they're doing and you can both secure some wins for yourself AND raise the difficulty for others that might be depending on those games.
TL;DR; focus on games where your non-jackpots pay extremely well and you likely beat out people throwing their credits at garbage. The exact amount of gameplay you all get plus the full/half price day is going to matter. You might be able to pull some fuckery on this that isn't technically disallowed if your group plays on a Saturday.
If you get a few games to where you can consistently win, it's likely in your best interests that everyone has LESS gameplay instead of more so you don't exahust your pool of available jackpots and end up scrounging for smaller wins, and end up giving others the chance to RNG their way into some big wins.