Depends if you asked for your refund after playing any games or not. Most arcades have a posted no refunds all sales final policy. Personally I would have given you a refund and politely suggested not to enter future events, as you would not be happy. Not sure why they wouldn’t want a league, maybe the over heard comment was just wrong or out of context. Unless your group causes trouble, like swearing loudly or messing with or turning off games when YOU think they are broken, etc
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I’m glad this post was made, because I have fielded multiple questions from people in my own scene asking about events where TDs deviated from the advertised tournament format after the tournament had already started. I think experienced TDs running high level competitive tournaments understand the issues to consider before making changes and, as many have said, don’t make the choice lightly. However, newer TDs, TDs not well versed in the IFPA rules or in broader competitive event management, or just TDs who aren’t thinking things through, might not realize that making late-term changes isn’t a good look.
I’m curious if there are certain changes that are generally better received. While my ultimate goal is no changes, I understand that time constraints can occur, and I personally am more okay with, like, realizing the number of qualifying rounds you advertised was overly optimistic and announcing that there will be fewer rounds, than I am with someone adding rounds or extending qualifying after the fact, which can look like they’re trying to benefit certain players at the expense of the current qualifiers.
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I’ve played in a couple to where time became an issue and the TD changed the format to where the remaining 3/4 games are played simultaneously vs just making it a one game only situation. They did it at Texas SCS side tournament as well as a local match play event.
Basically what they did was created a bank of games and had each person start their game and after draining your ball you moved to the next game and so on. It made for some interesting strategy differences and made you pay more attention as you were keeping track of multiple games. Not desirable but it was also fun for the one I participated in. Something like this may not be doable in an arcade environment that is also open to the public. I can see it also creating a bottle neck if the era of games are drastically different but it is a possible solution I don’t see used much.
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The Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show has done this during the semis and finals in past years. I played on a bank that was Frontier, Tommy, and Metallica. The ratio of standing around to playing was less than desirable, and it bugs me as a competitive player to change how I approach a competitive match (I really value the ability to watch and understand my opponents’ strategies and game progress), but it’s definitely an inventive change!
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I feel the same way. I’m generally okay with changes that make the tournament shorter (if they are needed!). I’m generally not okay with changes that make the tournament longer (respect my time, please).
I’m never okay with putting proposed changes to a vote amongst finalists. The TD should make their decision, then inform the players. Otherwise there are too many issues with group pressure and collusion.
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Oh and I’m almost always okay with format changes made before the tournament starts due to more or fewer players showing up than anticipated, though I would encourage the TD to advertise all format variations ahead of time. Like “With fewer than 16 players we will play 4 strikes; with 16 players or more we will play 3 strikes”
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Right. Like, I can imagine someone being annoyed and saying “if I had known this format would be this, I wouldn’t have come” but that’s different from making an in-tournament change that is likely to impact ongoing results.
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100% agree. At least you know beforehand the rules. Much better than getting half way through and things get changed on you.
For this tournament they ended qualifying late was to stop at 9:30 and ended at 10:15 because they wanted to play all 5 qualifying rounds vs just 4. So, they preferred another qualifying round and cutting finals short games vs keeping finals as is and ending qualifying at the advertised time but just 1 round short due to starting nearly an hour late.
Hey, so we opened a place called Pinballz. We put a bunch of pinball machines in. Our entire business model is based around people playing pinball. But if you could please do us a favor and not come around so often that you actually get good at pinball that would be great. Perhaps you could just look at the games and maybe buy some nachos.
Respectfully,
Pinballz Management
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You’re joking, but this is actually the situation.
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Part of the business model is not hiring enough techs to keep everything running but at the same time expand into two other locations.
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There’s no point in trying to guess the reason, or the urgency, the TD left.
The fact that he didn’t ask one of you to help on the night suggests that there is little to no relationship between the management and the ‘players’.
Have any of you gone in and spoke to the manager, not on a competition night? That goes a long way to building a relationship and preparing for the competition night.
I run a monthly league in a bar, and it could only have happened with a lot of communication away from tournament nights with the owner - not always perfectly amicable.
EXACTLY this.
Why should their priorities be the same as yours, or anybody else’s own agenda? Their priority has got to be to make money - it’s their business, and your hobby/pastime. They must feel that it’s more hassle than it’s worth to cater to, what they see, as every whim from the competition players. Let’s face it, we all know that arcades would go out of business pretty quickly if the only people playing pinball were up to the standard of the majority of players on here.
(Just last night me and a friend played BM66 (for the first time ever, so had to learn the quirks of the machine as we played and paid) for over 4hrs on just an initial £2/3 Credits. We walked away from the machine with 4 credits on)
You say there are better options.
It seems the simple solution, which pleases both parties, is to find another location, and/or run your own tournament.
True. But that’s the point @85vett was making: on a weeknight such as the Tuesday league night (run by players – not the mgmt), the league players make up the majority of the location clientele aka the majority of the $$ being spent on that night of the week.
However, @85vett and others, we have to also keep in mind that Pinballz aggregate coin drop over a month is likely 2/3 - 3/4 of it coming from their kiddie gambling devices (redemption games). So their focus on pinball is having them there as part of their namesake, and a potential draw for parents… and thus, their tech time spent on pins is predominantly to keep the coin mechs working flawlessly.
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Oh good lord you just busted my gut. I may just have to print that off and tape it somewhere next Tuesday.
Only halfway kidding about that 
Let’s remember to give Pinballz credit for having the event. They are trying to support the local pinball scene. If they truly didn’t care they wouldn’t put on events at all. We would have been there playing league anyway, they did extra work for our benefit.
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Pinballz is an amazing place no doubt. Even if half of the games stopped working, there would still be 30-40 other games still playing. I just remember the glory days when pinballz was new and everything worked or was fixed promptly when something broke. We are incredibly lucky to have a place like pinballz when there are plenty of other cities that have no games on location.
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I’d advise caution when deciding to lower your standards for what you will accept for location pinball. Very quickly you will come to accept “has some problems but still plays” and then your location will no longer have an incentive to fix them up because they are still earning.
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As an op I can say there is little to no profit in operating a Pinball period. While broken games suck, perfection is also not really possible ether and the crap that stern is building with cabs that split, flipper buttons that do not last a year, etc really isn’t helping. Flipperz looks to have wisely diversified its coin drop. Ideally we like to see an avg game time of 3mins on our games, good Pinball players well exceed this, and if you have free games its far worse.
That’s fine but don’t get upset at someone because they are good at a sport. If their are to many replays then adjust them. Or better yet, set them to systemically adjust. Forget the setting but you can put it on to where it increases as they become frequent and decrease if nobody is hitting them.
Im not upset, its just the reality of operators, this is why you don’t see pins at most FECs. We have removed replays.