Quoted from CarShark:The second is that the Gears multiball is so easy to get. It seemed like every man, woman or child who stepped up was getting there. That's a couple of minutes right there. It got to the point that I would spend most of my ball save time going for the drops.
I'm fairly certain this is by design, to allow novice / first-time players to have a gift-wrapped multiball. But it's not very lucrative.
Keep in mind that there are two different versions of Gear Shift MB -- the Drag Race version, and the full GSMB.
The pin defaults to the Drag Race as a player's first mode, so if they don't flip before plunging, everyone starts on DR. DR MB (callout and DMD say "Gear Shift Multiball!") is very different from full GSMB.
Based on putting some games on it at TPF....
DRMB: Every individual drop target advances a gear, and once you hit 5th, DRMB immediately starts. You can practically start DRMB before the ball-save goes out.
Details are... 2-ball. Drop target JP = 300K. and the SJP (ramp) = 600K.
GSMB: Every drop target >>bank completion<< advances one gear. Once you get to 3rd gear, you can start GSMB at the scoop. You can also opt to go for 4th or 5th Gear, which provides more balls to your GSMB and higher JP values. Risk/reward trade-off. I don't believe you can advance gears during GSMB.
Details:
- 3-ball, but can go to more if you defer your multiball start until you get to 4th/5th gear.
- Drop target JP is very low --- in the tens of thousands.
- JP to orbits when lit is in hundreds of thousands.
- SJP is where it's at: I think it's a function of your gear X 1,000,000 plus some points that I'm guessing are a function of how many JP's you hit before you claim your SJP. So 3rd gear SJP is around 3M. 5th gear is around 5M.
I believe you can also stack full GSMB onto a non-DR mode. So another big difference between the easily-attained DRMB from GSMB.
Hope this helps.
Oh, and the callouts are awful. Too cheesy for my taste.