I am having a tournament in June and there will be a GOT Pro and a ST Pro in it. especially since the remaining games in the lineup are relatively short playing games, I fear these two will be the causes of any round delays (Using a timed group matchplay format)
The other wrinkle is this will be a mix of relatively new players with more experienced players. Probably an average IFPA of over a thousand though easy.
So I want to shorten ball times but I don’t want to make them insanely hard. Here are my ideas for each, and I would be curious to see what others think too.
ST Pro
Keep ball save to factory
Turn off the outlane ball save
steep pitch
very tight tilt
wide outlanes
GOT Pro
Shortened ball save
Steep pitch
very tight tilt
wide outlanes (factory, but i will make sure)
Even if you can’t disable it, I believe you can make it so it doesn’t start lit - that way you have the risk reward of shooting those targets in order to light it.
You can make it more difficult to re-lite, but there is no software option to turn it off or have it start un-lit. Pretty sure removing the switch itself is the only option.
I would not disable Rescue or LOL since they are earned game features. I would turn off ball save however. Leave tilt reasonably tight and pull outlane rubbers if necessary.
I suggest putting red, yellow, or white rubbers on the flippers.
Adjust slingshot switches so they are ultra-sensitive.
Steep pitch might actually increase your game times on these games. Less side-to-side + easier to trap.
If ball-saver is on, experienced players are going to be playing a lot longer. They’ll spending more time short plunging and bashing ball lock targets, which will also result in a lot more multiballs played in the tournament.
Wide outlanes but keep the rubbers is the right idea IMO. Though if you keep “Rescue” at factory settings on ST, you might want to consider removing the rubber from that side.
As someone who has played a ST that @ClevelandPinball has set up to play quicker than usual for tournaments, his suggestions are spot on. There were some rounds where ST was finished before F14
I remember a fight club at PAPA last year getting prepared for Pinburgh we played some monster of a ST that was absolutely brutalizing everyone. People were having good games at 20m. Of course someone hit it for over 100m, but for the most part games were short. It also wasn’t very enjoyable.
It sucks to have to set up a machine so that the only way to keep it in a tourney is to also suck the fun out of it. Especially on a location game where you also want the games to be set up friendly enough so that newcomers won’t be discouraged!
This is one of the reasons I’ve been trying to figure out some time-based formats where long ball times aren’t necessary for measuring skilled play. Pingolf and pinbowling can be good for this too. /digression
Thanks everyone I have some things to consider. No ball save on GOT is probably a good idea, but I will say that probably 90-95% of the participants have no concept of the playfield validation opportunities on it. So taking that away would hurt them way more than the experienced players. I might just make it really short to combat house balls only.
Taking ball save away to newbies is too big a change imo so if I make other changes that newbies won’t notice (tight tilt, no outlane saves, etc) they won’t miss those cause they didn’t know they were there in the first place. Haha. At least that’s my thought process behind it.
Yup. One of the reasons I got rid of Star Trek. A lot of the fun comes from getting relatively deep in the game,
I don’t have a ton of GOT experience, but I was in a 4-player group at the Final Battle that played a reasonably difficult set up one in our 24th hour straight of playing pinball, and 2 people in my group got to HotK.
But what if there is a sign noting the changes to the defaults? Like LOL lights after three drop sets instead of the first one? Takes all 7 WIC hurry ups to get the winter has come multiball? Takes ten lane completions to get to wall MB?
