This is way over the top, and another example of your op intentionally eliminating skill from the game.
I play in a league with two Top 50 players, and no modifications are made. Games are generally factory. The top group in the league ends up staying longer than the rest, but it’s not that big of a deal.
I’ve played at Pinburgh last year. From what everyone said, I expected the games to be set up extremely difficult, but found that they didn’t feel that much worse than the games I’m normally playing on location. Outlanes were a bit wider, ball saves shorter, and they were freshly shopped and playing fast…but none of the BS you described.
About ball saves…ball save time helps new players significantly more than it helps good players (who generally aren’t going to lose the ball in the first 5 seconds anyway). As an operator, that’s my primary way to make sure newbies don’t feel like they’re getting ripped off.
I’m sure it helps new players (and confuses them, of course), but good players use ball save time to do dangerous stuff (hit the bell once or twice on AC/DC, for example) that they might not otherwise do.
Nah, Pinburgh settings are not super hard. Ball saves off and tighter tilts maybe, but playable. PAPA is where you get the mean machines. Also they always seem way harder when you’re in the tournament - funny how much easier they’re set up when you play them afterward!
Even then, PAPA has started veering away from insanely hard / deliberately gimped machines in recent years. Part of this is because watching people plunge drain on no ball save T2 doesn’t make for good broadcasts, but I think it’s also because with good planning games don’t need to be insanely unplayable to keep tournament length reasonable.
Agreed. It’s entirely possible (and realistic) to set a good balance between difficulty and the amount of time a game takes to finish without gimping the machine. I hope more tournament directors follow this mindset in the future.
Pinburgh saw a great variation on how the games played. The infamous “PAPA bastard” games are the ones setup for the PAPA tournament and in particular those used for A division I believe. With reason, as players can learn the games and have reattempts.
No reason for having all games play that hard in a tournament like Pinburgh where you play the game ones. Plus it take time for such a do over. It is not just tilt and posts.
I remember games like Indy500, Eight Ball Deluxe, Diner and Medieval Madness that played crazy fast, difficult and punishing. Where I thought that these had been treated for previous PAPA tourneys.
Pinball Magic was also rough. Partly due to no tilt warnings - now we are on the topic.
I am all for ball savers and wish they had “invented” it long before it became a standard feature. I like that players get a reasonable chance to have the ball on a flipper. And I like the strategic aspect of being able to take one dangerous shot without immediate risk of loosing the ball. To open up the game and play features that would otherwise be abandon. Like drones in IM.
There is however a couple of issues with ball saver. One is when ball hangs in pop bumpers as ball saver runs out. Which we have discussed previously where Josh Sharpe pointed out why they have ball saver turned off on certain games in IFPA.
Another issue is ball saver on multi-ball balls. Which might not be the best thing in high level competition.
That probably explains a lot. Seems like I read something recently about one outfit buying up all the loose pins in Japan and opening basically the only pinball arcade in Japan (Tokyo?). If this is that place, I’m not sure there’s much you can do. They’re literally the only game in town.
Assuming the games are on coin drop (ridiculously high replay scores), you could suggest an increase in price per game with a decrease in replay scores. The Riptide Arcade on pier 39 in SF (biggest tourist trap in a city full of tourist traps) used to get $1.50 a play for clean working pins with reasonable settings. And that was 7 or 8 years ago. If the games are on coin drop during tournament play also, an increase in price per game could also get the warnings up for both normal play (2) and tournament play (1).
If you must compete there, remember that other than turning off warnings, changing any other settings won’t affect ball times. If you’re putting up high scores without many warnings during the week, you should play well on tournament day. Scores will be lower and you’ll definitely have to adjust your strategy, but changing settings doesn’t make a game ‘harder’.
I’m glad you guys at least have clean working games available. If you’re gonna live in a town with only one pinball option, I imagine Tokyo wouldn’t be a bad choice.
The arcade in question is Silver Ball Planet in Osaka. It’s… huge. Like 80-100 games huge. I talked to their operator (for lack of a better word), and he said that he’s had to source most of the games from the US, through Molly, since he couldn’t find enough onshore, though he did clean out the excess stock at the other operators in the country before he resorted to that, which probably took a few games off the streets. God knows where all the games that came here over the decades have gotten to (US reimports?). SBP runs a monthly tournament series that’s all PAPA-style on the games-as-they-lie. They choose 12-16 games before the day starts and clean them up, but everything’s factory.
There’s two other spots in greater Tokyo worth stopping in to play at: There’s a place in Takadanobaba that has a 3-game lineup of Monster Bash, Medieval, and AFM, but no tournament scene, and another on Odaiba that has less-clean games that are mostly EMs and mini-DMD games (they have Hook and Batman).
Japan is not big on increasing prices. Every arcade game is ¥100, and has been since the 80s. Remember we have no inflation to speak of. The operator at Neverland says that the replay scores are high so that the excellent players don’t play many games in a row, but then the childhood “I can win free games?!” incentive is lost. He doesn’t seem to believe in the ‘reflexing’ feature, or the fact that replays draw players in, but then why does he have a replay score set at all?
Changing settings does make the game harder insofar as you have to spend more time in single ball play. If every multiball is harder to get to, you spend more time getting them.
No, this is neverland. SBP is the big place that bought all the machines. They have good techs, the games play fair, but they don’t understand software updates (WOZ is still runing like 1.something)
Silver Ball Planet opened just weeks after the last time the beau and I were in Japan; definitely want to visit there and/or Neverland next trip. Also the museum near Inuyama - would love to see some of these Japanese market games! (http://www.pinballnews.com/learn/japanesepinballs/) (Though I see the museum is closed for renovations - hope they come back to life!)
(WOZ is still runing like 1.something)