I enjoy the act of discovery. I don’t want the game to tell me everything in great detail. Take Trex multiball for example. The game doesn’t need to explain what shooting the red shots does. I will eventually hit a red shot either trying to figure out what they do, or by accident. What it needs to do is make it clear what it did when I hit it.
It is a hard line to find between explaining things too much and having things too obscure to discover.
I have also watched causal players.tilt the machine when they do into a mode start selection screen because they thought the ball was stuck.
having a giant LED screen looks nice and can convey a ton of info to the player-if the player stops watching the ball. There’s a good reason the lights on the playfield should be telling you what to do. That’s where the focus should be.
As tournament players we’ve all become conditioned to “do the thing” in competition. Why learn an entire ruleset if only 10% of it is important to winning in most situations? But why were games like that for so long? Historically there have been very few programmers and designers who are also serious players, so I have to imagine it just wasn’t their main focus. And of course when pinball hit peaks in popularity they had short deadlines to crank out games and it was more important to have a new theme on the backglass and cabinet in the arcade than thoughtful rules inside of it. That leaves us with hundreds of games that have either one worthwhile strat or some cheap exploit or a simple ruleset that can be reduced to a few Pin Tips for a win. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, it just reflects the times in which they were made.
With the explosion of the tournament scene and streaming over the last 5-10 years, more players are making their way into the industry with designers listening to player feedback, and as a result we’re getting much better score balancing and dynamic rulesets featuring more width rather than one true path. Isn’t that what we wanted? Or is it just what people said they wanted? I think it’s a great step forward for the game, where they can be played differently and have multiple routes to success, not just in the present day, but to discover new strats and refine them for decades to come.
Today’s games are being made in a completely different world than those of 15-20 years ago, so it doesn’t feel fair to expect them to be made the same, or to continue to tread water in the same “sweet spot” of complexity which is completely subjective anyway. The way we access, process and store information today is so wildly different than just a short time ago on the pinball timeline. It’s no surprise that the younger generation of top players are completely dismantling and maximizing the rulesets of games like JP and AIQ while much of the older generation is just trying to learn enough to avoid embarrassment.
Do I have some mental dread when I need to rush to learn some complicated new release game that I don’t have any local access to? Definitely, and it’s always frustrating to lose a match based on lack of information rather than performance, but that’s part of the challenge I signed up for. At the end of the day I’d rather have the uphill climb of learning complex new games that will stay interesting over time rather than burning through some rinse-and-repeat snoozefests that I’ll probably avoid until I have to play them and “do the thing”.
Well said, John! I agree with you 110% and you articulated all of the salient points so very well so thanks for that.
We’ll stay off your lawn, old man Matthews, but don’t you go ruining all our fun discovering all the new possibilities that modern pinball has to offer.
I think what Bob is ultimately getting at is that for pinball to continue to be successful on location the information delivery system needs to either advance to be able to better deliver the game state to the end user, or the rules need to regress to accommodate the end user.
To use an example from the tournament this weekend, according to The Plague™ I had some sort of “super ball saver” on a game of Avengers. This is supposedly indicated by the ball save lamp pulsing. Not knowing this, and the game not explicitly telling me this, I would never in a million years associate a pulsing ball save light, that I’m really never even looking at closely, with an extra long or unlimited ball save. This is where the information delivery does not match the game state. It’s probably the most sensible way to deliver this information without a very distinct call out interrupting all the other important stuff the game is trying to tell me while I’m in two stacked multiballs, but still… it’s not really getting the job done. And if this is all wrong because The Plague™ was wrong, then consider it a hypothetical.
Continuing, I’m not sure location pinball is the future anyway so this probably doesn’t end up mattering all that much. I hope I’m wrong but it feels like we’ve reached peak location pinball and that the market and industry is currently in the middle of a shift to home collecting being the thing. And if home collecting is ultimately where pinball ends up, it makes sense to build deeper games unfortunately (for me).
There’s a distinct “super ball saver” callout on that game when you get that active, I thought. Although I could imagine in a crowded tournament it gets very tough to recognize.
Not directed at anybody, so don’t take personal offence.
I have encountered a growing number of people who use their perceived lack of knowledge as an excuse as to why they are beaten by somebody they think they should beat.
Having depth in the rules is what gives machines lastability in my collection, alongside the actual fun of playing them. I have just sold my AIQ after less than 8 months because I didn’t feel I had anything to discover on it, but people say it is too complicated for them to play. That’s simply not the case, it doesn’t take long in either a home environment or in an arcade to learn the vast majority of the rules and develop a strategy that works for your skill level. Add to that the numerous gameplay videos and rules threads and there isn’t really much excuse.
What is not able to be done is to develop these strategies while also playing the machine in competition where you want an instant fix.
Nothing is more boring in comp, for the viewer, if everyone just plays the same safe strategy that also happens to be high scoring. It’s not showing off the full rule set, or in a lot of cases, even the full range of shots available.
There certainly was a time when games were such that if you didn’t know ‘the thing’ you were completely hampered and had significantly less chance of winning compared to someone who did know the thing, and there was really only 1 strategy. I would say that even on the most recent releases that this isn’t the case. I played LZ at Pinfest and it took me less than half a dozen games to come up with a strategy that meant I could hold my own in any game - and even set the highest score of the weekend (over 3 times anybody elses) having never seen the game before or reading any rules.
What has made this worse is that during Covid and lockdowns, there have been 8 (ish) games released which people have not been able to play on site or at shows and Pinfest was the first time many people had ever seen these games in the flesh, let alone play them.
I’ll add that one of the problems with putting pinball on TV is this exact complexity issue. The ESPN featurette had to be a “one goal at a time only” set of matches because if they’d shown a whole game of AIQ, 99% of the casual players and even a fair portion of the tournament players would have had little clue what was going on or what the players needed to or were likely to do next. The other “odd ball” sports aired during the Ocho series were much easier for non-participants to follow.
I think this is a primary “limiting variable” on the size of the pinball community. A billion people can watch Golf in the Olympics and have a pretty good idea what’s going on from shot to shot. Can’t say that about pinball. If people want to try playing themselves, they can pick up the basics of most other activities rapidly and understand their shortfalls readily. Improvement is more in execution than in activity comprehension. Can’t say that about pinball as much now either.
It’s good that we have some games with complex rules sets for those that want them. It took a while for the technology to get to the point where this could be done, but for those who enjoy it, it’s great to finally reach this stage, and I totally get how psyched you are to finally have machines like this available. I just don’t think it’s good that this is becoming the default. The comment from the UK fest seems to nail it based on who replied how here - - the top players have tended to support the rules complexity far more than the broader player base. To requote, rules have become too complicated and unintuitive, that they are written by top players for other top players. We have coding “by the 1% for the 1%”. That’s pretty much the definition of elitist behavior. So no, Adam, I don’t want to spoil your fun, but I do want to look out for the interests of the other 99%. And you’ll be old one day.
That’s not why it was shown that way. It’s been discussed before. The matches have to be short. Whether it’s an EM or AIQ, no casuals want to watch a 30 min pinball match.
Disagree. I have multiple very fresh newbie pinball friends that love Elwins games and have never once said how they are too complex. They can’t stop talking about how fun they are to shoot however.
See, this is why I respectfully disagree with the claims about this being elitism. Top players and players who enjoy rules-heavy games aren’t mutually exclusive - I know some top players who aren’t familiar with the newer games but still have fun regardless, and some people in lower divisions that like studying up on rules - I should know, I’m nowhere near the top but I enjoy studying rules and coming up with strategy. As for the interest of the silent majority, I haven’t been noticing a serious decline in pinball popularity and we already know why the pinball recordings on Ocho were cut down, so while I get the concerns that rules might be getting too complex for them, there’s demand for complex rules.
Pinball on TV is only going to be a thing tens of thousands will want to watch if you dumb it WAY down. You can’t even compare to a simple sport like racing because there is no danger involved and flipping a ball isn’t something most of the world does every day and the simple goal of finish first is obvious and well defined.
The essence of pinball is every table is different. That makes it inherently complex- there is no standard signal to tell the world ‘do the thing now for a huge advantage’. because there is no standard thing to do.
It’s one of the attractive things about pinball that you can go and play at an arcade for hours and never get bored because you’re doing something different every ball.
I can envision a “broadcast” mode where a table shouts SHOOT THE RAMP!!! until the ramp is shot, then goes bonkers when it happens. Fastest time wins. Might play for TV audiences but it won’t be pinball as we know it.
I guess I’ve just been wasting my time with my Classics Guide trying to “level the playing field” with respect to game knowledge since the new thing is to make games so complex that only people willing to invest a huge number of person-hours in studying a game are worthy of top scores.
All those poor people who “get bored” with a game when they’ve “figured it all out.” Gee, I guess Tiger Woods must be sick of playing The Masters. He knows all the fairways, bunkers, water hazards and greens. They’re the same every year. Only the pin placements and weather change, sort of like the sling liveliness and exact pitch vary on pinball machines. There’s little left to figure out, merely execution of stuff you already know. What’s the point?
Some of the other events on Ocho took about the same amount of time that a one-game pinball match would, but I’ll agree that there’s more to it than that and it’s best left for other threads.
Point is, people like those at that show aren’t here to represent themselves and aren’t likely to get in touch with anyone at Stern, JJP, AP or wherever to say anything. We have mostly harder core enthusiasts here. I think those show people have a valid concern and I wanted to pass it along with some degree of support for them and understanding of their situation. If speaking up for these people makes me persona non grata with a bunch of you, which seems to have transpired, so be it. I’ve pissed off some of you before trying to advocate for things I think are good for the game. We’ll never all see eye to eye, but I love pinball and I want it to be a welcoming activity for more people. Just “old man Matthews” trying to do that.
P.S. I should have patented that “stand-up targets behind drop targets” idea I had 50 years ago.
I can’t speak for anyone at any other manufacturers – heck, I don’t even really speak for any manufacturer for whom I’ve worked – but I can at least say that this comment is not correct. I’ve heard many, many, many comments about games I’ve worked on (and even games I haven’t worked on) – both good and bad – from players and owners. And personally, I love hearing every one of those comments. Even the comments that are way out in left field, or the ones that I disagree with. I really want as much information as I can get about what players like and don’t like.
I do think it’s important for games to provide a great entertainment experience to everyone, even players who don’t know that there are game-specific rules to pinball (there are many such people!) or players who do not wish to learn many/any of those rules. And I also think it’s important for games to appeal to players who want games that have many layers of depth, so there’s always something new to discover. And a large spectrum of players between those extremes. It is possible – indeed, ideal – to deliver a great experience to both extremes, and everyone in between. If a player only wishes to learn a small subset of a modern game’s ruleset, then they are effectively custom-crafting the limited ruleset that you espouse, and hopefully they still have a great time playing those rules.
I thanked you in person a few Pinburghs ago, but wanted to restate my appreciation for your EM guides. This hobby takes a massive investment upfront in skills and rules knowledge with very little financial reward. It’s this that makes pinball very difficult to get someone new into the hobby. I made a guide to every Pinburgh game two years ago. I spent more hours than I would like to admit researching games based on old tournament videos and even watching TNT amusement videos for rarely used games like Blackwater 100. Your guide was a big help with those EM’s, so thank you for taking the time to make it.
Your points are valid for drawing in new people, but you are speaking to the wrong audience. Most people on this forum have spent years and in many cases decades playing and learning about pinball. I enjoy every Elwin game because of the depth and the multiple scoring strategies. Each of his games have increased in complexity which plays to the tournament crowd. I would like to see pinball try to be more intuitive for the casual player who may struggle to find the start button. It’s a wonderful hobby, but the ROI in terms of incentives and ability will always keep it from attaining mainstream popularity.
Persona non grata? That’s a big leap from everyone having a discussion, and freedom to voice differing viewpoints and opinions. You said you wanted to generate a discussion, correct?
Contrary to other internet forums’ cultures, much of our modern society, and political discourse… please be assured that for me, disagreement does not equal estrangement. I believe most of the active users here on Tilt are of a similar mindset where discussion (and the inevitable disagreement) are encouraged.
You’ve known @Adam long enough to know his personality, and I hope, realize his comments about get off my lawn and old man are jokes and not personal attacks.
He was talking about accessibility for average players. Owning modern pinball machines requires the exact opposite, a lot of money and no skill. Hobby refers to competitive pinball. This is tilt forums, right?
– but I can at least say that this comment is not correct. I’ve heard many, many, many comments about games I’ve worked on (and even games I haven’t worked on) – both good and bad – from players and owners. And personally, I love hearing every one of those comments. Even the comments that are way out in left field, or the ones that I disagree with. I really want as much information as I can get about what players like and don’t like.