We don’t know for certain what adjustments we will be making to the machines. However, as with any other tournament that includes many of the world’s best players, do expect the machines to be more challenging than your typical arcade setup. However, there are also many novices who play the tournament, so we want to ensure they enjoy it too. Thus challenging but not impossible. Unlikely that we’ll be pulling posts, but it is quite likely that posts will be at their hard settings on most of the machines. For some known longer-playing machines, possibly also a rubber or two removed from the outlane posts. Also expect some easy multiballs to be set to hard settings (e.g. Spidey doc ock) and multiball ball-savers reduced to be at their minimum time setting on machines where that is adjustable (e.g. newest Sterns).However, we do expect to keep a short ball-saver on most machines where such a ball saver is typical.
With regards to glo-balls, there’s never a plan to use them, but they are a tool we have at our disposal. The tournament machines are all selected sight unseen. They belong to private collectors, and the first time any TD sees the machine, it is already setup in the tournament bank, and that’s in a room totally separate from the main expo hall. Swapping out machines is difficult and not something we have time for during the hectic setup. However, what do you do if one or more of those machines have weak or sluggish flippers, such that you can’t hit one of the ramps, or in a classic machine can’t get the ball all the way back to the top lanes? We don’t have time to rebuild flippers, and don’t have an easy option to replace the machine. In general, that’s when we choose to swap the balls and use glo-balls. For example, last year we had a pristine SF II, except that it was impossible to make the right ramp from the left flipper. With glo-balls in that machine, however, a good shot to the ramp was easily doable. In one of the classic machines, the flippers were so weak that the ball could only go half-way up the playfield, but with glo-balls it brought life back into the game and made it so much more enjoyable to play.
The one other time we might use a glo-ball is if a machine has an exploit, and use of such a ball eliminates or makes using that exploit significantly more difficult or dangerous. That’s the one time the glo-balls might be used to increase the difficulty of the machine. Otherwise, they are used to improve the playability of the machine.