Does anyone like tilt warnings lasting through the game?

General
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You can argue semantics all you want, but it doesn’t change either mine or Josh’s (yes I’m speaking for him) position that you are in effect getting an extra ball. The ball would have been gone and out of play, and now it isn’t.

It’s always a balancing act. No one setting is right for everybody or every location, that’s why we have the settings in a menu so that people can optimize their experience, whatever they want that to be. There was an IJ at expo last year or the year before that was like 25s ballsaver and 4 score award extra balls. To me, that is an absurd setup, but you can do it.

Our goal is to get the game out to be most fair to everyone by default. Beyond that, we can’t do anything else to help people setup their game “properly.” And we can’t magically know what the best formula is for every place the game will be.

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Keith, I really appreciate your chiming in here. Everything you’ve said has been a really great way of looking at it, and I hadn’t thought about it that way. I really like the idea of being able to make some skill moves, but keeping ball time down by carrying over warnings.

It would then of course be frustrating to play a JJP in competition with the traditionally tight tilt, but it is an easy fix, TDs can keep making other difficulty adjustments, just don’t tighten the tilt as much.

As you said, I bet this will work itself out. Even your comments here will be seen by many TDs who can then try playing with tilt tightness, hopefully to good results!

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Its not my taste for it to be per-game. From a game design standpoint I think its an annoying verb to leverage for tuning difficulty.

Tilt warnings are a wonderful piece of game design that works really well on a lot of different levels. As is the “fresh start” mentality with each new ball that is served up.

There are plenty of modern games that have been designed where there is little urge to make tilt warnings per game. I’d much rather see pinball designers look to their playfield layouts and rules to tune difficulty into the sweetspot of their liking.

…I find de-bounce a much more interesting knob to be more finely tuned on a per game basis.

-cAyle

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While I appreciate the idea of closing the gap between noobs and experienced players, I’m not sure this is the best way to do it. In the past we’ve had pity multiballs and pity extra balls. That helped the noobs, but didn’t punish the experienced players.

Another consideration is that many JJP games have long ball times on default settings. When Jack started the company, he said he was building games for operators, like he used to be. Somewhere along the way that went out the window and now games are aimed at the collector market. Making the games tougher (shorter ball times) would help close the gap between noobs and experienced players. DI (not a wide body) was a good start. Not building wide bodies could also decrease costs, which could lead to lower prices and more games on location.

The Wonka on location near me is operated by the most veteran operator in the area. Decades of experience. He set the game to two tilt warning per ball, but found another way to discourage experienced players from camping on the game. He turned off replays. All the other games at this location have replays turned on. His settings have worked. I play the Stern’s and WMS games more now, despite Wonka having long ball times. No replay is a huge turnoff to me.

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Do you think you’d be playing it if it was tilts per game, with replays left on?

Side rant: As an operator, it really annoys me that pinball is “stuck” giving away free games to the best players…the ones who already get the most value for their dollar (at per game prices which have been continually falling relative to inflation). I’m hoping that more newbies will get hooked…so I want them to have longer ball times. Pros camping out on machines for an hour on their initial dollar is bad for pinball.

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This is a separate topic but replays in my opinion are crucial to pinball’s success as it gives a tangible goal for people to strive for when first starting to discover the game. I know that was a MAJOR factor in me getting in to pinball when I leaned you could get free games.

Sure once people get good they will be paying less per game, but IMO this is well eclipsed by the dollars earned from the up and comers who are just getting hooked and dumping quarters left and right.

#replaysforlife

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That’s not the fault of the replay, it’s its just poor etiquette from the player. Always offer your free credits to kids or casuals before clogging up a game yourself.

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I disagree. We can do whatever we want with software.

Replay is 200m. You got it, here is a free credit. Instead of making it 400m on the next game, just turn off the replay (and matches, and specials).

Make matches smarter and adjust to the player. If they earned a replay through points or via a lit special, turn off match for that game, and the game after.

For multiplayer games, eliminate the possibility of double, triple, or quadruple matches.

Back in the day replays were fixed, and we’ve all heard stories of kids racking up 10 credits with their nickel and then selling off the rest to other players. We’re not stuck in that world now.

I’m not trying to be cheap here…I’m just suggesting that help needs to be given to the lessor skilled players, not the better ones.

(Though @raydaypinball makes an interesting point. Maybe the future is an app that tracks your scores so it can smartly adjust the replay based on your past performance).

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One thing to add to my rant…if replays were smarter (meaning there was no way the game could pay out 3,4,5+ replays off one credit), I would consider lowering them. As it is, I feel as though I need to set the game to defend against that.

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Curious: what are your audits for most recent period of score-based replays given out, vs total games played?

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Well, it’s up to me to set that. For Bally/Williams games, defaults were 10% replay and 10% match. Those stack, so the default was to give away 20% of free games (though it’s worth noting that the 20% is not spread evenly amongst players…it mostly goes to the best players and those who are smart enough to notice the existing credits left on the machine by people who were awarded them but didn’t realize it).

The Stern defaults are slightly lower. I just looked at my Ghostbusters and factory settings are 10% Replay percentage and 9% Match percentage, lol.

I’ve generally gone by the rule of setting mine to be about 10% free games total…so 5% replay and 5% match. But I’d be okay trying something else. I’d love to get rid of match entirely and lower replays. But…again, if I cut them in half, now I’ve just increased the chance of good players popping off replay after replay after replay.

The game awards based on what the settings are at, so my actual audits should be so close to the settings that it’s not really relevant. (Example: 10% replay means that the game adjusts the replay score so that the top 10% of scores played on the machine will get it. The number goes up or down based on how well people are playing. I’ve heard it takes an initial 100 or so games for it to start kicking in and becoming accurate).

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I operated games for 10 years and I avoided making software changes as much as possible. Physical changes are (usually) much more subtle. You want the player to think the game is on default settings. There were exceptions, but not many.

What game made in the last 30 years is this happening on? Camping happens when the game isn’t set up properly. Rather than seeing someone rack up a bunch of credits, more often I’ll see someone taking advantage of long playing games. You can’t get mad at someone if they’re on ball 2 forty minutes into a game. Do you check your ball time audits?

Going from 5 balls to 3 was big. Changing tilt settings is big. Messing with replay and match is huge IMO. I’m not going to ask the Wonka operator to increase the weak-ass default flipper power, but I will ask him to bring back the replay at a fixed higher level. Maybe 2-3M. That would get me playing it more.

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Sidebar time -

I mean I would, every single one of them I have played feels like dog poop in molasses to flip.

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The “I disagree” was about it being necessary for us to rely on “player etiquette” (to walk away from games if you’ve earned to many credits) as our only means. “We can do whatever we want with software” was meant to convey that Stern and JJP can make smarter decisions about how replays are awarded and what the defaults are.

This is a reasonable opinion. If I took the outlane posts out of games, I’m pretty sure I’d hear about it more quickly than if I lowered the replay percentage. But I could be wrong.

You argued to leave software settings untouched. Two months ago, I went to a place I’ve never played pinball before, on an operator who sets everything up factory (to the point that the bubble levels are perfect centered, regardless of how flat the game is). I played one game of Beatles. Got a replay, and Grand Champ, and a Special. Either I play out those credits (which is poor form, as suggested above), or I walk away. I walked away and another player immediately stepped up and started playing through them, earning more replays and matches as he did.

With modern code, that could be prevented.

Averages for my games are between 40 and 65 seconds. 65 is on the longer side (Maiden, and maybe LOTR, which had outlane posts all the way up and no rubbers), and perhaps I should do something about those.

I’m certain that my opinions are biased because I’m toward the far right side of the bell curve in terms of player skill. Myself and the people I most often play pinball with are mostly just leaving a trail of credits for others to nab when we move onto the next game. I’m in leagues where half of the games aren’t being paid for because the machine is giving out 20% of games free to a group of players with average skill, but league & tournament scores are higher so it’s just replays on replays on replays.

Sterns only award replays for Grand Champion now, but my Twilight Zone awards one for each of the top four scores, and two for Grand Champion. That’s on top of the 20% free games for replays and matches. There are venues that reset their high scores every month. The first week or so is mostly free games to the decent players.

I’m not saying we need to get rid of free games, I’m just suggesting that with some clever coding, modern games could smartly limit how they give out freebies.

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I agree with @cayle… when I know the operator, or the op has left contact info on the pin, I will always message them to let them know about fixes or mechanical issues with the game, such as a weak/malfunctioning flipper. I would encourage everyone to do that.

I think I’ve ever messaged an op about replay levels… maybe once?

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@jdelz I agree with him here on etiquette I’d say. I have no problem letting someone “buy” me out on credits or if I see someone new/don’t know I’ll 99% of the time move games. I want to promote my local operators so they get more pins that I get to play! We should know better and in the long run I don’t mind losing a replay or two. I did my job. I’m sure I’ll earn them back one day.

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    • not a fan.

Bonus was invented to keep players from smashing the machine, angered by a ball loss IIRC.
The accompanying ingredient here, of course, is the classic per-ball tilt (introduced earlier).

On my Dialed In!, when I’ve had a warning or two and I know the current ball’s bonus is low, I give the machine a good kick to reset the tilt warnings counter.

Definitely not something you want on location.

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Actual chance of Match is seen lowered on games based on various stuff. Like if free games were already awarded this game and number of players.

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I definitely prefer warnings to be per-ball, but I can understand the reasoning behind per-game warnings. The real issue, as I see it, is that not every danger results in an “extra ball” (especially among mid-level players that are still figuring out the nuances of nudging). I’d be much more open to per-game tilt warnings if there was some sort of “refund” system in place that, at end-of-ball, restored/nullified any dangers had been triggered immediately before the drain.

e.g. if I try to rattle the ball out of the outlane on ball 1 and receive 2 dangers only to discover that the rubbers are totally dead and the ball drains anyway, it really sucks to have to face the rest of the game with no dangers available despite having gained no real benefit from the dangers I “spent” (aside from knowledge that I can no longer use). It’d be pretty cool if the game refunded those dangers since I drained within ~5 seconds of triggering them.

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