I should also add that I can very much appreciate a smooth death save. I once saw Neil Shatz death save a game with a slight tennis shoe kick to a left leg. Smooth AF. Didnt even leave a scuff on the leg. Marc Connant’s death saves are a thing of beauty. Words alone can’t describe them. Has to be seen.
So, people are actually entering their initials in your location while using death saves? In Sweden (at least in Stockholm) this is unheard of, more or less.
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This would work for most games, but there are a few with outlane save mechanisms like JJPOTC Locker. How would those apply?
I don’t think people getting high scores by doing death saves is really something to worry about. If people want to cheat their way to high scores, they’ll find a way. For example, you could jack up the front legs to make the game play slower. At least death saves require skill to execute.
I saw at locations in Denver this weekend they had placed little stick on furniture pad things, the clear type, just below the flippers to prevent death saves.
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Skill, yes. Not much though. Perhaps The Times They Are A-changin’ (I saw Escher Lekoff do some cheatin’ on Iron Maiden on twitch) since I’ve seen discussions regarding this in Sweden where at least one player are seriously considering entering his initials while using Death Saves.
“Back in the days” !!! 
(early 2000s, I’ve had a 10 year long break from pinball) noone would even consider doing this, as far as I know.
In general: if you’re a really good player you’ll beat the cheaters that use Death Saves. I find it hard to believe that the, so called, “top players” would do this (in Sweden, at least) in the foreseeable future.
I don’t do them, but I don’t care if anyone else does. Seems like an odd thing to get worked up about.
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Well… Most people (including the pinball designers) consider it cheating. I guess. If you don’t even get tilt warnings when doing it your game could potentially last forever. In theory. 
That’s no good for the operator’s earnings. Especially if “everyone” was doing it. Constantly. I care if oyher people do it. It sucks, in so many ways.
Also, I guess the machines might take some damage. In the long run. Them Death Saves can be sort of rough sometimes.
This player should be on ball 3 . . . but they’re still on ball 1 with all of their tilt warnings in tact 
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Now you’re thinking like Keefer! There’s no difference between a death save and normal slide save except where/when it occurs during the game. However, I will concede that bangbacks are another thing entirely. (I even wrote this before I saw @pinwizj’s response.)
First, because Multimorphic patented it (and incidentally Stern has been trying to snipe it back from him for 7 years). Second, we found it hard to discern nudges from coil fires and subwoofer thumps, at least in our implementation of it.
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an easy way to eliminate death saves (and bang backs) is just to remove outlanes. problem solved. don’t know why this solution hasn’t been suggested yet.
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We need a new thread: “It’s time to eliminate bangbacks” - or rename this one to “It’s time to eliminate death saves/bangbacks”
As far as I know it’s not really possible to do bangbacks on modern (STERN, possibly other manufacturer’s?) pinball machines?! But I don’t know for sure. I haven’t tried much. Once or thrice.
However, I recall (…vaguely… 
) doing bangbacks (for fun, more or less) on High Roller Casino. Even during multiballs. Hmmm… But I wouldn’t even consider entering a high score entry doing that.
No skill there.
Cheating makes Baby Jesus cry!
I only started this thread because I think it’s so easy to fix. A slight modification to the apron and death saves are a thing of the past. Online scoring will never be 100% legit, but with death saves, they will be meaningless. Others in this thread are mentioning how ops in their area are doing mods to discourage death saves, so operators are definetly thinking about death saves.
Plastic aprons make bangbacks nearly impossible, but make death saves easier. Rick Stetta is the only person I know that still does bangbacks. He can smoothly do a bangback on most any game with a metal apron. I believe HRC has a metal apron.
Would be great if those mentioning mods to discourage death saves would post a pic of those mods. Hard to picture it from the descriptions.
Online scoring will always be meaningless regardless of bang backs.
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Very, very true! Isn’t there something to be said for discouraging death saves/bang backs in the context of local machine high scores though?
You and I and most everyone here likely couldn’t care less about chasing a GC, but they mean something to some people. I think about it in the context of new players, I imagine it can be discouraging to see a bunch of huge death save inflated high scores that are nowhere in reach. It may be clear to a seasoned player that they are just death savers, but new folks may not even know that’s a thing 
I couldn’t care less about playing in mediocre (poorly organized) tournaments, in tournament mode (where you don’t play the game “fully” with all its features) to chase ifpa-points, or whatever the reason is? All-in chasing of GCs, getting difficult Wizard Modes, exploring features/rules in the game is, by far, the most fun way of playing pinball for me.
You absolutely don’t need to care about tournament play to post on this forum, but the level of condescension in this comment does come across as insulting to those of us who do.
Edit: on second thought, perhaps you were feeling slighted by this comment?
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