Papa 20

So back in 1998 at PAPA 6, PAPA took it’s PAPA Champions division and decided to try a new experimental format. Prior to this there had not been an attempt to normalize scores across games that didn’t score similarly. The 5-game run was always just raw score, which of course led to some games being more important within that run than others.

The PAPA Champions division was a one-time entry for anyone that had previously won a PAPA tournament or league at any level (thanks Juniors!). Nobody else was allowed to compete.

See some of that discussion here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.games.pinball/papa$20champions$20division|sort:relevance/rec.games.pinball/CFbST62R_Wg/ImEgSKqWH04J

Qualifying results from the tournament can be found here:

http://legacy.papa.org/papa6/results/Hqual.html

I vote for the return of the PAPA Champions division! In all seriousness it was just kind of cool to jump in the wayback machine and read that old thread, and see what my dad and Steve had to go through back in the day with a passionate and ungrateful player base that felt they had all the answers (j/k) :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thanks for sharing Joshua

It’s cool to see who all was playing back then

Amazing stuff! There are so many gems in here.

I wasn’t not for a moment criticizing PAPA’s scorekeeping, and I apologize if my statements were confusing and thus got misinterpreted that way. PAPA has some of the best scorekeeper management anywhere in this country.

My reply was in response to timballs statement related to his experience in the Buffalo Pinball Open: …

I disagree with a couple of statements there. I don’t think the competency of the scorekeeper needs to be any different with DTM whether you use virtual queuing or not. And I don’t agree that virtual queues make you lose track easier, because the scorekeeper only cares about a single person, which is who is at the machine currently. Whether that name was entered manually or got there via virtual queue is pretty much the same step, the scorekeeper verifying the player at the machine before they start their game (which PAPA does). Thus my response to timballs was providing a case study of an event relatively same size as Buffallo Pinball Open, in defense of DTM’s virtual queuing that it did not make scorekeeping more difficult than if it was not used.

Man I don’t even remember playing in that that year, nor that it was the prototype for current PAPA/old Pinburgh. My memory sucks.

If I may address @mhs, @PAPA_Doug, @chesh, and any other PAPA staff/volunteers: I get the impression from having read (now) the initial facebook outburst that this wound up being slightly prematurely announced with no context available to make a more informed opinion as to what was going on. I think you guys know that (particularly on this forum) generally everyone loves and respects what you guys do, and that it was more the context-free shock of the change rather than a reflection of your abilities to put together quality events.

Clearly, if PAPA is not paying its own bills, then something has to be done, I don’t think anyone would deny that; can’t rely on benefactors forever… It’s a path that leads nowhere good certainly.

It’s kind of like the Hobbit reveal we had at expo 2 years ago. Everyone screamed and how shitty the art was and how stupid we were for thinking it was good. The contextual version of that is that a) there was absolutely no allowed material of Smaug other than what was on that playfield (i.e. the distance shot of him over the mountain) and b) the previous artist’s artwork (yes there was someone else working on it before JP did) was SO FUCKING HORRIBLE that JP’s stuff looked like the Sistine Chapel compared to my kid’s watercolor drawings. (There is only slight hyperbole in this statement.)

As I’m sure you guys are hurt/bothered/irritated/pissed at the reaction to the change, also we could hardly understand the reaction to the Hobbit pf at first. In fact, we kind of lived it again via the Echo Chamber of Piss after the Dialed In reveal, despite the nearly unanimous rave reviews of everyone at Expo in person. But,without any context of how we got to where we were, yeah it looks kind of bland and unappealing, but it was light years beyond what we had. Someday, I’ll find the old files and post them somewhere.

So, don’t take the general negative bad reaction of a beloved format as a reflection on your worth. I’m sure if it had been announced properly and framed with “this is how things need to be to continue to be a viable event,” etc. etc., it wouldn’t have been nearly as bad as it seems.

Also, I don’t think there’s a bad signal-to-noise ratio here. You may not LIKE the signal, but it’s not noise. Try to see it from the people in this thread’s perspective: A cool thing is being lost, and that kind of sucks. That’s all that people are lamenting (for the most part, queues and crap aside). The community is lucky to have PAPA and you guys, and I think most people actually believe that and will go back to realizing that when the shock has worn off.

People just want the best, whether it’s a tournament format or good pinball artwork or whatever. Context is really important, I know that all too well.

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New PAPA tutorial… Advanced strategy if you blow it on Hand of the King: Re-boot game and get back in line :wink:

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Do I need to introduce you to my friend, the spinner? :slight_smile: I’ve been up to 2.2M/spin, I’m sure others have beaten that.

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Once you play wall the spinner always orbits. So avoid wall and you’re good. Avg hotk hurry up @ 5 bil so divide that by 2.2 mil and sharpen that axe :wink:

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Oh I thought the ridiculous hotk awards were bugs. That’s not the case? Or it is, and it’s still not fixed? :fearful:

I would say the signal to noise ratio is much better here than some other places. The opinions and feelings are not all positive about the change clearly, but I would say the vast majority of people are at least supporting their thoughts with data, experiences, etc instead of slinging mud.

Personally I don’t understand quite enough (and am not talented enough) to have a real horse in the race. To me it would seem that whichever form of entry is most difficult for players to achieve would be the way to go for PAPA. It’s supposed to be the best of the best players, so entry should be harder too. I think in this situation that means consistency across 5 games in a ticket. But I plan to watch the stream, and watch the VODs dozens of times anyway. And like I said, I’m not of the caliber to be attempting to qualify, so maybe my opinion just doesn’t matter here :slight_smile:

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at such a high number for your average HOTK. :smirk:
But I’m with keefer: how did you make this happen? Is 5B your un-multiplied value, or is that the value after it’s been multiplied by the PFx?

If only Expo was broadcasted :wink:

It’s not broken; just a bit unbalanced if you play it right.

Ridiculous stark bonus awards were the bug. Those are gone to my knowledge but I’ve never been to stark bonus rounds after the first hurry up.

Basically depending on what you bring into HOTK it can make that hurry up more valuable because it takes more shots to get there.

For me I take an easier route to the hurry up, but I only get 2-3 billion for the hurry up, if I even make it that far. Haha

So I will chop the spinner wood when it’s available. 5x playfield with 2-3 million a spin is my friend.

Playing as Greyjoy? Throw us a bone here…

So few got to witness the moment Zach’s heart broke :slight_smile:

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Nah, plenty of people GOT (pun intended) to witness thathttps://youtu.be/F9d953PH5FE?t=15526

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So: I shouldn’t be responding to anything, ever, at 5AM. I’ve read a lot of complaints in the last 42 hours about the lack of a queue at PAPA, and I jumped on you. At 5am. I’m sorry.

Having said that, Tim’s right. Players vanish. Players walk away from and step up to machines without the scorekeeper knowing (which is the big reason I haven’t set up a queue at PAPA yet). I have witnessed players at other tournaments just walk all over volunteers who are newer or meeker. Would Virginia and Mike and Erik in Classics stand for that? No. Do players try it anyway? Yes.

So I’m trying my best to work a middle ground where we can implement a queue and also not cause nervous breakdowns in more novice scorekeepers (or me). Part of that is adding more machines to the divisions. I’m working on boosting and extending the network. It’s not 100% yet, and I’m not going to commit to having queues at PAPA 20 until I’m ready. Please feel free to copy and paste this to any jerkface you see complaining about queues.

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Liz & Karl,

My observation of people bailing at the end of a game rather than waiting for the void to be entered is that it’s often caused by the player having to wait longer than they want to (YMMV) for a scorekeeper to come over and or the next player being anxious to start (especially near closing time). This is usually due to having too few scorekeepers, scorekeepers who get chatty with players, or the wifi going wonky for a while, delaying entering scores. When in a situation where the qualifying window is short, e.g. PAPA Classics, there’s also some urgency to getting back in line for your next game. I realize that neither of you is in a position to completely cure this, but to the extent that any of these can be reduced, it will help. Part of it is also modern society’s “do it instantly” fixation. We need to remind players that this is a privilege and they should be patient, that it’s rude to just bail the moment your game ends, even if you’re really p*ssed about how it went; remind scorekeepers that their primary duty is to keep score, and that once they have entered a score, the should look for their next customer before doing anything else; and have a “long attract cycle” plan for machines that take waaay too long to redisplay the score after a game ends.

I know you mean well here, but let’s not excuse/explain why people don’t follow the rules. If we are going to auto-queuing it will be more important that the player on the game matches the one in the system. Talk about adding time to the process, taking a game down while scores get fixed is a much longer delay than waiting to be removed/placed on a game. A scorekeeper’s job is to put a player on a machine and get their score when they are done. A player’s job is to wait to be placed on a machine, play their game and verify their score.

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