oh yeah, dat 48c is horrific lol - only played The Deal a couple of times with the last of my FTP (points), and wasn't fortunate enough to share in the Jackpot.
But it seemed like everybody's share of half the payout used to be around $20 pretty often? So 48c is *a lot* lower
Before the $160 paid out, the Jackpot hadn't been hit in something like 9 months, with how slow traffic had gotten. But guess people had worked out the variance for how often a Jackpot should be hit, and apparently it should have been due sometime around $250k, so people in the FTP thread were starting to play again? And then it didn't wind up hitting until after the Jackpot was over $500k, but guess once people start investing starscoins/ftp, then people had to keep playing to get their coins plus bonus back ...
Maybe the prize got so big because a lot of people stopped playing, so everybody's share was a lot bigger? Maybe less chance of that happening on Stars where traffic is so much higher?