Overly brutal set-ups on tournament games

Hahahaha. You must have not gotten the pleasure of the >50% chance of a moonwalk from the R ramp habittrail. That made it even more “fun.”
@Funtorium: weren’t you one of its many victims?

You also forgot to mention: no kickback lit at ball-start (skill shot of LOCK rollover buttons feeds the L outlane – doh!), and also the outlanes wide with no rubbers.

It was definitely more on the end of the “just survive” side of the brutality spectrum. I had two games on it: the first where I had a good game, relatively speaking, but then in the semis tie-break I was simply fortunate to survive longer than @dbs.

I played one game on it and apparently got very lucky haha

I don’t know if this is what you’re calling a moonwalk, but twice I had the ball fly completely off the habitrail after hitting a ramp, drained once because of it. It felt like the flipper strength was too high.

Moonwalk: https://youtu.be/-HyWKU6YwxY?t=1m5s

Aerosmith has the debounce adjustment as well, it was noted in the update log for the new code.

Some games can actually be more fun on brutal settings. My BSD came with upgraded flipper coils. I discovered that if I jacked it up to 7 degrees, you could still easily make ramp shots and the returns would come screaming back to the flippers. It was more fun to play with increased pitch, even though ball times were shorter. Of all the games I brought to CAX over the years, I got more compliments for that game. People would swear at it, then step up and play it again. Very hard, but still fun.

Most all of us remember going to a familiar location where the operator has just cleaned all the games and slathered them with slippery wax. It was like playing a brand new game. Ball times were shorter, but because we had beaten the game before, we kept playing and it was fun. I don’t recommend slathering all tournament games with wax, but hard games can still be fun.

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The tilt on the GOTG pro near me mysteriously tightened after the last update and the operator at this location rarely adjusts tilts. Anyone else seeing this? Could default debounce times be getting shortened on all games? I haven’t ruled out the manual sliding over into the tilt bob, but curious if anyone else is seeing this.

I was there. This is fact. I was lucky enough to be in group 10, so we got all the “leftovers” in Round 1. This meant playing Freefall, Catacomb, Meteor, and Galaxy. Solid States are NOT my forte! I came in 3rd, 1st, 1st, 1st. Now in Round 2 I was taken to two of the bastardized modern games. Games which ARE my forte. I was 4th, 4th on BM66 and Guardians and 4th, 2nd on the solid states. I scored a whopping 1.4M on Guardians!

On the modern Sterns, the tilts were not overly tight. But every modern had ALL inlane/outlane posts removed and no ball save, and some of the MB’s set to hard. Like others have said, this would be fine for Herb style qualifying, but just not ideal for matchplay. Especially matchplay that will be streamed and people want to see players showcase their skills. Granted there were some nice performances later on BM66 by the likes of Grabowski, Elwin, Ray Ray. But for the most part the modern Sterns were just too nerfed to be enjoyable.

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Aren’t your leftovers the same machines selected by the #1 seed, only in a different order :slight_smile:

Ah, you are correct sir! Trentaur know what he be doing!

Most brutal game I’ve ever seen was WOF at MPE. Sensitive tilt, ALL outlane posts removed and half the center posts removed and no ball save. Almost ALL the shots on a ramp would moon walk and drain – including missed skill shot plunges. If I remember correctly, I was around 10th in qualifying with 3 skill shots and no flips.

It was the last year I went to MPE. F that tournament.

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One thing to consider about brutal setups is that as TD, you probably wont be able to change game setup after the tournament starts. If I was setting up games for something like PAPA A div, I’d probably air on the side of brutal. I’d hate to find out what I thought was fair or brutal enough turned into marathon games of LOTR and a crazy long queue.

Yes. Changing game setup during a tournament is obviously a no-no. We had a league comp last night with 59 people. One of the machines was LotR. Qualifying had to stop at 9 pm. All evening, to minimise delays, one of the TDs was shepherding people in groups of four onto the machine for qualifying once it became obvious that there was a timing problem. The final group of four started their qualifying game at 8:58 pm…

The machine had no rubbers on the inlane/outlane dividers, but was otherwise unmodified. Probably would have been wise to set it to two balls, instead of three. We did this at a recent flip frenzy, and it kept play times to something more reasonable (even though it was still playing long).

Right or wrong, a TD can change whatever they damn well please. It’s in good taste to make sure that everyone gets some practice time in on the new setup though.

Also if you set games to 2-ball, if you’re honest in reporting event specifics then you should only get 2/3 wpprs.

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Just like how 3 player games get 150% of 2 players? :smiley:

Can 5 ball EMs count extra too?

As long as they can cope with a wave of hateful forum posts :wink:

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I don’t think it would kosher to change game setup halfway through qualifying, when some people have played the machine already though (if qualifying is via overall points instead of match play).

I don’t follow here. If everyone in the tournament plays two balls on LotR, five balls on, say, Trident, and three balls on all the other machines, what’s wrong with that?

Not for me to decide. Like most ifpa decisions, I’m sure it’s somehow tied to the whims of Amanda Sharpe.

Also, I don’t think it’s kosher to change game setups halfway through qualifying either. It was more a sarcastic jab at some tds who don’t follow that principle.

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:slight_smile:

Is there something in the IFPA rules about number of balls? I don’t recall anything.

To me, setting a machine such as LotR to two balls is actually a better option than gimping the machine to the point where it doesn’t play anything like it was intended to.

“The TGP will now include games played that are fewer than 3 balls, including timed formats where players are attempting to reach a score or objective as quickly as possible. Any game where it’s possible for the player to finish on the first ball in play, will be calculated at 33% value for TGP purposes. For example, if players have a goal of reaching a certain feature in a game as a way of winning that game or match, the fact that it is POSSIBLE for the player to reach that objective on ball 1 means this will count as 1/3rd of a game played towards TGP. The exception to this rule will be the Pin-Golf format, which will have it’s own set of grading rules (see next bullet points).”

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