Are we completely sure the LE won’t have normal kickers?
I’m a little uncomfortable with the amount of speculation and assumption going on in this thread. Can’t we wait until we actually get to see and play this before declaring it to be The Worst Thing Ever?
Yes. Well, they’ve announced their nonexistence, at least.
Slightly less annoying than the sling into the outlane I suppose.
Hi, you must be new to the internet 
Thank you for saying this before I did. Too often the ‘herd mentality’ kicks in on these types of things.
Yeah, we’re sure.
As an LE buyer, I’m pretty happy about that.
I don’t think that the video did Stern any favors, to be honest. If you want a feature on a pinball machine to look the most pedestrian possible, show it off in test mode. That’s essentially what they did here, so the magnets were just doing continuous short pulses. We didn’t get to see what happens with a quick hard pulse, a long pulse (stop the ball, drop to the flipper), or what it will look like to see the ball moving at full game speed, which is probably 10 times faster than what they could do rolling the ball around.
I think it’s going to be a really fun feature. Yeah, it will be less predictable than standard slings, but we don’t know in how many different ways quite yet. For all we know it could act a lot like a typical sling with a single hard pulse.
Or… it could just stop the ball. The possibilities are endless!!! 
Here’s an exercise for the reader: See how well magnagoalie works without holding the flipper up.
I think different is interesting. If it ends up being a bit of a failure of an idea in the end at least they tried something. Stern is so boring and conservative with what they’ll allow usually, we shouldn’t complain when they actually innovate. (Complaining if it sucks after trying it is different, but maybe we ought to actually try it first?)
If they’re just stopping the ball though … I dunno, I have a Shadow, I know what Sanctum wear looks like. Not sure that’s really an attractive idea.
The magnaslings will be awesome!
Now that a real video is out, what does everyone think?
To me, the magnaslings looked to behave more like dead bumpers most of the time and the game seemed to play a fair bit easier with less sling > outlane drains. I wonder if a tighter switch adjustment and a larger rubber ring will help up the responsiveness.
I haven’t seen the video yet. Does it look like the switches themselves are less sensitive? Or are the slings throwing the ball around less violently?
I agree. What I saw on Deadflip yesterday was promising though. It looked like the magnaslings flung the ball in somewhat similar fashion to a traditional sling (albeit not as consistently). I was also encouraged to hear that the slings have at least three different mode/states to them, depending on the game situation.
Even if the magnaslings aren’t as deadly as traditional slings (on tight & strong settings), it looks like having the dual Avatar-ing outlanes already led to lots of outlane drains. Not to mention the extra drains from jumping the flippers and lane guides. 
I think both actually. With the one switch in the middle, a ball that didn’t hit the sling right in the middle didn’t seem to activate the magnets, so a lot of dead bumper behavior resulted from off center hits. it also seemed to throw the ball less violently often times but then occasionally action seemed almost exactly like a mechanical sling.
I was too quick to dismiss the Magnaslings after the lame Stern video.
On Dead Flip, I agree that they behaved like very gentle traditional slings. Not to mention that it has the ability to do some weird things with the ball. I now think that these could end up being very fun. If they help avoid sling-sling-outlane drains, I think that’s a good thing. How is that a test of skill, anyway? I’m actually leaning toward the Premium, even though I like the Pro translite and cabinet art best.
I watched about 10min and saw very little action from the slings. I wonder if they turned the sensitivity down because of our frothing response to the previous video.
Funny shape for stern slings as well; seems the action surface is more vertical. Could account for lack of activity.
It WAS weird just having a video where they flick the ball over anyway. It doesn’t look as interesting as regular gameplay. Were they intending to avoid having to show the rest of the playfield?
Good to know that in practice, however, the slingshots work pretty closely to regular slingshots. But is the magnet’s range that small? I thought the magnet was supposed to go off and affect the ball’s trajectory each time it triggers a slingshot switch.
I had a deposit down for a premium, but was very pessimistic that I’d follow through once I read about the magna slings.
Then I played the local pro model here in Seattle and I borderline can’t stand it. I’m not saying it’s a bad game, but I prefer to play in control, and it’s really just seemed like the game has far too much chance built into it. The captive balls on the left are murder. I’d almost rather try and light SFM via luck in the pops. And this particular model (hopefully not all) had major airball issues over the low-profile lanes.
I’ve watched quite a few “regular folk” get excited about the theme when they see it, play for an astoundingly short time, get frustrated, and leave.
All that said, the Dead Flip LE stream was the most playable I’ve seen the game, and the magna slings actually looked kinda fun. I plan on waiting till an LE/Prem shows up in town before putting down the cash.
Correction: I just came across the video of @sk8ball playing it at Expo:
Keith has a way of making things look easy, but this is like a different game than the one here in Seattle.
Meh, I’ll give it more time.
The flippers on the 8 Bit one came set low from Stern. They were talking about adjusting them up a little to help with some more ball traps.
The inlane guide airball thing just needs a hardware fix, I’m interested to see if something comes out to address it.