welcome to the world of competitive pinball when you haven’t made the right friends. enjoy your stay!
Well some of the rules talk about Best game / card based qualifying they may need some formatting to say that this part is for that format of even and not read like they are an basic rule
Not sure I agree, I haven’t found Josh to be unreasonable when I’ve addressed issues in the past, this just seems to be one of those issues that have too much history and can’t be moved out of gridlock, no matter what.
You ask the tournament director how they will handle it.
That’s exactly the issue I’m talking about. I’m not going to ask every TD at every tournament that same question, because that’s what default rules are there for. If you can’t trust the unified handling of default rules, because there’s some deadwood in there that’s sometimes going to be enforced and sometimes not, then those are not default rules.
I would show them the rule you’re referencing and see if they just overlooked it. Will help them learn for next time. It happens.
If you don’t ask them they are not going to tell you.
There are many reasons one participates in an event. Pinball is casual enough the rules as they exist today work well for the vast majority of cases. The TD has wide latitude to modify and interpret the rules as they see fit.
If there is a particular rule that concerns you, your tournament director is the final arbiter of that rule at their event. They are the person you should bring your concerns to.
If you are the TD use your best judgement. You will sometimes be wrong. Communicate to your player base that you’ll do the best you can, your ruling is final, you are willing to discuss future rule changes to better suit your players going forward.
It wasn’t so much advice as just an offhand comment about how I do things for the sake of, well, I would have said interest except evidently it wasn’t successful there. I don’t make amendments for “every little tournament” but rather I have one set that works at the venue I always use. I don’t think it’s particularly an American thing either since I don’t know anyone else who does. That actually bugs me because I’ve learned, like you, that there are a lot of unwritten rules that have emerged through custom at various other venues that aren’t actually part of IFPA/PAPA but also haven’t been explicitly laid out. Actually, I think a number of tournaments I go to don’t even pay lip service to the IFPA/PAPA rules but pretty much just do whatever the TD feels like, which I’m not a fan of, obviously.
Per IFPA, you play extra balls. I think plunging EBs is the most, not rule, rule there is.
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It’s possible to have this debate without being insulting. PAPA still exists, and ReplayFX stopped because of COVID.
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I’m not really sure whom I’ve insulted—PAPA, by saying they are mostly defunct?
I honestly don’t know the difference between PAPA and Replay, if that’s what you’re getting at. I have no idea what they are doing nowadays, I was judging their operational status by checking their website, which doesn’t seem to have been updated since the Special Announcement 3 years ago that said they won’t do events anymore, so I was assuming they still don’t.
I did say I was forever grateful to PAPA, in this very thread. If anyone at PAPA truly feels insulted by something I wrote here, please tell me, in public or in private. If you feel this way, I’d like to personally apologize to you.
Same goes for you, Bowen.
I think the insulting comment was that these people “either left or stopped caring.” Now, I’m no expert but I’d suspect that most, if not all, of the people involved with PAPA/ReplayFX/Pinburgh have neither left the pinball scene or stopped caring.
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I mean, that’s just reading wrong. What I said was this:
Clearly I’m talking about the droves of people who were vehemently opposed to this rule here in this forum thread in 2017, but now seem to have either left Tiltforums or have stopped caring about this rule.
Claiming I’m talking about PAPA here is absurd, it’s right there in the previous sentence who I’m talking about. So, if that’s actually what @bkerins meant, and now you, and then another guy who liked your post …
I’m not accusing anyone of maliciously quoting me out of context, I’m sure it’s just a careless mistake, but in the same vein, I would respectfully ask everybody to not accuse me of insulting anybody without actually reading what I wrote. I take this sort of thing seriously.
(But thanks @Shaub for trying to help me understand what the perceived issue might have been.)
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Yeah, sorry about that, it definitely reads differently in the full and proper context and does not disparage the PAPA folks the way I interpreted it from reading that one specific quote.
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As the OP I find it curiously gratifying that a seemingly simple rule question has generated so much discussion.
For my part, 6 years later, my personal solution for the index case and those similar is that I no longer have a “plunge extra balls” stipulation in any of the serious tournaments that I run. I would rather deal with the headache of longer tournaments than the headache of extra ball controversies.
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At least one early SS Stern title (Stars) actually does not count tilt as playfield validation. So a tilt through just means you plunge and play the same ball again. At least this is what happened to me during a one player game recently.
For my part, 6 years later, my personal solution for the index case and those similar is that I no longer have a “plunge extra balls” stipulation in any of the serious tournaments that I run.
My personal preference as both TD and player is set the games to novelty mode (extra balls and specials award points). But I realize sometimes this just isn’t an option.
I would rather deal with the headache of longer tournaments than the headache of extra ball controversies.
For at least one location I plan to run tournaments at, this flat out isn’t an option as extra balls are given out very liberally, with many games awarding three or four by score alone. On weeknights I could start right at 7pm (earliest realistic starting time around here) and with enough players and enough good players, still have four or more players left by midnight closing time even with a two-strike format.
Ha, without this rule everyone could start every ball of BIG GAME with a tilt if it isn’t heading towards the lane they want … but at the same time you can always argue you just were nudging it to try and get it to go down the proper lane … uhhh
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I really don’t care if people do this or tilt in the shooter lane to test it. But I get why there’s a rule against it.
I just want to allow it so there’s inevitably that dumby that tilts the game just after a ten point switch is registered up top. Haha
Big Game and Chuckwort. Two things that will forever go hand in hand
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