Wait - wasn’t it decided (and language added if I remember…) that these moves aren’t allowed?
Oh, I know. I’ve been through this before with regards to lock stealing games. If I recall, the consensus was “who cares, it all washes out in the end” or “feedback was negative on single player games” but it won’t change my mind. I really think lock stealing has no place in serious competition because it presents a different game state to some players vs. others. Obviously plenty of other players disagree. 
Confused yet? 
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Absolutely!
“Grab a pitchfork and come with me!”
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The player feedback was that it was a lot less fun, and less competitively balanced.
The competitive balance issue might be unique to Pinburgh with its “no practice” rule. Under single player only, P1 has to play out the entire game with no information, while P2-P4 are learning from it. The number of players reporting this as a negative issue was far more than the number of players who had commented on lock stealing and other interactions.
The less fun feedback came from the fact that in single player, players go up to the machine once, then walk away and wait. The single player games felt less friendly, with less back and forth battling, more like a qualifying format.
Not to say it is wrong to go single-player, but those are the reasons Pinburgh doesn’t.
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What about taking the tilt bob out on these goofy games? Would the games play that much longer?
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No. They just wouldn’t be eligible for play without a tilt.
I don’t understand the justification for keeping the rule, but I’d like to. I’m not trying to be a smart aleck here; I truly don’t understand.
I’m assuming that by “abusive” here, you mean physically abusive, in a way which might damage machines. (If that’s not what you mean, that could explain my lack of understanding.) Is the existing rule against “Abuse of Machines” insufficient? Could you describe a scenario where the “Abuse of Machines” rule is insufficient on its own but when combined with the rule against intentionally tilting, the rules are sufficient?
Here’s section III.3 for reference:
Abuse of Machines
Tilt sensors are employed to determine what constitutes unduly rough handling of each machine, within the parameters of normal play. Abusive handling such as punching, kicking, lifting, tipping, or rocking a machine, or hitting the glass in any way, is grounds for a warning and possible disqualification of game or ejection from the tournament, at the discretion of tournament officials.
I guess I should give context to what I mean:
I’m playing Game of Thrones and I make a clutch save so insane that I shoot the Mode Start ramp. I don’t want to take my mode; I want to light my 3rd Blackwater lock and go crazy in multiball! If I don’t take my mode, I’ll have to clear 3 sets of Lord of Light targets to light the shot again because let’s be honest, I don’t advance Barratheon like I should. If I start the mode, I’m wasting precious mode time as I fumble a ball to the left flipper, hit the lock, and go back to the rift. What am I to do?
Well, dear reader, I intentionally take a controlled danger! The ball comes popping out of the Sword, and my Mode Start is lit like nothing happened! I hit the lock shot and proceed to blow up the game, taking first in the Imaginary Flippin’ Pinball Aces finals, winning $$1,000,000 and a sick trophy!
Do I also get a huge bounty on my head placed by @pinwizj for an illegal move, leading to many shenanigans and a typhoon of destruction as I evade capture?
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I think this is a bad example because I’m 99.94% sure that GOT relights mode start on multiball ready.
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Yeah, it’s a small edge case where you can take a tilt warning to get a non-mechanical advantage. Situation may be exaggerated due to boredom.
It is never ok to abuse a machine.
Lock stealing is an employable strategy in multi-player games. Players can decide if they even want to lock balls because they might get stolen. Or take the risk and do it anyway.
It’s just another form of risk-reward in pinball.
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Sorry… wrong choice of words, of course it’s not okay to ever abuse the machine. What I meant was, for some reason it’s acceptable to essentially shake the machine with such force as to trigger something, but NOT okay to gently tilt out in order to free locked balls. Just does not make sense, they seem to be completely contradictory to each other.
I disagree… not with the employable strategy part, but with the risk/reward part. I really don’t think I should ever have to choose a different strategy in a game because some other player derived a benefit from someone else playing ahead of them.
For example, in a 4 player game, I’m playing 4th (because that’s the assigned order)… player one decides to try and lock balls for multiball so makes a few shots gets one lock then brick drains, player two steps up and houses out, player 3 steps up and makes a couple shots to start multiball, I step up (without having played a single ball yet) and have a game with different rules presented to me vs. what player two and three had. To use a golf analogy, lock stealing is like not raking the bunkers or fixing your divots. Or even worse, sending certain players in a group to an easier tee box based on where the previous player to tee off hit the ball.
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I’ve long advocated for a “thieves” tournament where stealing things is a feature of ALL the games. That said, the thieves format works best when it’s match play rather than [3- or] 4-player for exactly this reason. Head to head, you can choose to attack or defend. In group play, you’re at the mercy of other players’ decisions. I know I’ve been screwed at Pinburgh, among other places, by just this scenario where someone ahead of me set up someone else ahead of me who cashed in. One-on-one, if my opponent cashed in on me, that’s my bad for not using it myself and leaving them set up. In a group, it means someone else has an easier path to victory where I’m a helpless bystander. At Pinburgh, we accept it because that’s just part of how things there are run. But it does constitute a non-level playing field in group play.
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I really don’t like the ambiguity of the “as long as you make it look good” rule.
If you’re an honest player/good sport, you’re not going to fake tilt the end of your ball to “make it look good”. If you’re a poor sport, you will. That is giving a competitive advantage to those that are okay with poor sportsmanship and putting honest players at a disadvantage.
I don’t mean to judge. I’m sure in the heat of the moment in a competitive situation, even someone with good sportsmanship might fake the tilt (and regret doing it later).
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We’ve all seen plenty of these top level players giving the machine a shake at the end of a bad ball. “Oh, he’s just seeing how sensitive the tilt bob is” they say.
So there’s your excuse. “I was just seeing where the tilt was, but I accidentally overdid it”
I agree with the consensus - it’s a pretty crappy rule when enforcing it is impossible. Things like this fall under ‘game knowledge’ in my view. I had no idea about the bug in Game Of Thrones that was talked about, but if someone did that trick over me at a tournament, fair play. Similarly with any game mentioned here already (TAF and GREED targets, or physical locks that release on tilt etc)
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