I think this has been a good year for DOND in terms of the new innovations of Box 23 and the offer button, but surprisingly given the number of times that Box 23 has saved people from going home with a blue, this has been the lowest payout year ever (as of 17/12/14 at least!) . This is despite Roop's 250K win in February, and Pat's 170K in March. The Celebrity DOND's have been good, but I do miss the Sunday shows. I don't believe that the new features introduced into the show have contributed to the relatively low payout or that people are playing any more cautiously than they have done since the recession hit in 2008. The boxes just haven't worked out so well in a random game. The banker has saved himself some money, maybe the £500,000 winner will come, although would anyone ever be as reckless as gambling 250K? Given that a contestant once turned down a sum of over £80,000 to win 1p, it can't be ruled out!

Rico, what was the total payout for 2013? I'm 99% certain that this year's payout is VERY close to surpassing it.

Anyway, I think this year was pretty good. The first half of the year some of stingiest offers in the history of the show and lots of cases where it led to forced blue wins but a few cases in which it totally backfired on the Banker (Roop, Annalyn, Rod and Gill mainly). The second half of the year saw the Banker permanently adopt the Fair Deal as his primary benchmark for making offers, with varying results (though usually more moderate ones than the first half of the year).

I'll put it this way: this year was FAR better than 2013, but FAR worse than 2006/2007.

I think 2014 was a good year, not the best year of the show, but I think we had more variety this year, unlike 90% of 2013 which was just dull cautious deals over and over again

This.

I'm not sure, really. It was alright. Nothing to write home about. Rather staged - not fixed, but staged. Meh.

Every television show is staged, Dan!

With the lack of Sunday shows in 2014, the average payout per show would need to be compared

I haven't seen a game yet due to shifts (1-10pm) but frequent the commentries and read through the game that way. It certainly provides a better level-headed assessment when posting as most of the heat in people's posts probably comes from the frustration generated from actually watching the show. There are many frustration inducing mechanics in the game, including annoying contestants and annoying Noelisms.

There were maybe five or six good moments. The rest was just kind of meh .

Not overly keen on the offer button to be fair - we waste around 15 minutes on the intro, opening round and break, and in some cases to then NOT get said gadget for the game makes all the previous faffing around rather pointless.