We’re having an IFPA tourney in GA this Saturday. For the format being used, we need six tie breaker games that don’t tend to play overly long. One of the games being considered is TSPP, but of course that game tends to play long. Disabling of the garage door is being considered as a way to make the game play shorter.
While doing this will take away some of the features and modes of the game, we’re hoping it will make the game times more in line with the other tie breaker games being used. There will only be four times that TSPP could potentially be used as a tie breaker game and there will always be at least two other games that the person driving the bus could choose.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Ray Smith
PS If you need more details about the tourney in order to give your feedback, you can find them here
Does that remove all chance of starting couch multiball? Itchy and scratchy still possible right? Guess that’s all people will really go for. Try playing like that and see how it plays.
You can potentially still get couch multiball using the tree house ramp. I’ve played about 10 practice games with the garage disabled so far and I’ve yet to start couch multiball. I&S multiball and the hurry-ups seem to be where my points are coming from.
Wow. Yes, that would certainly derail the two primary strategies used on TSPP: mode stacking and couch multiball. It doesn’t negate them entirely, but requires people to shoot the much more difficult side ramp. And for couch multiball in particular, makes the Super Jackpots extremely difficult because of the focus required on the upper-right main playfield flipper during multiball.
I’d say give it a try. I think that you can guarantee that it will significantly reduce game times.
Another way to reduce game times is to:
adjust the posts between the right outlane and shooter lane to make it impossible to nudge the ball from the outlane into the shooter lane.
combined with the above, remove the rubber from the right inlane/outlane divider. Punishment will ensue!
If the most the game is going to be used is a potential of four times throughout the day (as a two player game, no less) then I think it’s totally insane to bastardize the game that much. Even if the players both have blowout half-hour long games (which they won’t if you make the game hard enough otherwise), this only adds 2 hours to the length of the tournament if TSPP is picked all four times and the blowout games happen every single time. I would not compromise the game that much just for the sake of a theoretical two hours (which, let’s be realistic, is more likely to be an extra 15 minutes of total game time vs. disabling the garage). While it might seem like something that’s necessary to you, I wouldn’t be concerned about it taking into account the format of the event and the fact that it’s not something like PAPA or the IFPA World Champs.
Modifications can be fun or interesting in situations where a game is more enjoyable when an unbalancing element is removed, but I don’t think the garage sending the ball to the upper PF in TSPP is unbalanced so I would strongly urge you to let players play the game as it’s designed. If you really feel like you need to make the game hard, you can (in increasing order of insanity) make the tilt tighter, make the slingshots tighter, increase outlane sizes, and even throw lightning flippers on the game.
I appreciate the feedback guys. Kevin and Cayle are probably right that I’m being overly concerned about how long the game will play (especially since in its “gimped” form it would be used at most four times) and that I need to re-evaluate that. So far, at least one of the players coming to the tourney also didn’t like the idea, so I’ll call that three strikes and the disabled garage door gets a big
Yes, I saw the warning about bumping a thread that was 773 days old. However, I will still go ahead and thank Bryan Broyles and Chris Compton for making this suggested mod happen.
I love TSPP and it’s still my favorite game by far even 14 years after its release. However, to me it’s just not a good tourney game as designed. Maybe there are other mods/tweaks/etc. that can help with this, but taking the garage door out of play seemed to work well this past weekend. Love it, hate it, or don’t care, it definitely took the ball times down, made people think about the game in a new way, and most importantly gave people more chances to get a score in if they wanted to under the “unlimited” entry format.
Maybe now it’s time to take back-handing the right ramp out of WPT and I’m open to suggestions on Aerosmith. LOL However, those two may be just because I needed more attempts g
Ray
Thanks to Bryan and his crew for an enjoyable weekend.
Literally just setup the TSPP like at Pinburgh and you will have NO problems. That game can be set HARD. No outlane rubber, close off the shooter lane, install extra hard, sensitive slings and tilt, you’re good to go
I preferred the no-garage to the tight tilt version, having played both. No-garage changes strategy, but that’s better than reducing player control with super tightness and no rubber. I’d rather change what I play for a bit than how I play.
Echoing @BMU here. Disabling the garage made all of us think in other ways on how to score points; Treehouse features, Otto/Mystery Spot, CBG/Secret Stash, going for modes/couch locks the hard way, Daredevil, and I&S were all useful strategies on their own; the best scores (as seen by The Weatherman in quarterfinals - maybe in other games too) used a combination of those together.
Tightening up the tilt is what leads to Ali in Classics: frustrated players getting rung up for heavy flips and light nudges. Better to give the game a tight-but-slacking leash and work the other features if the game has major tournament issues.
If you’re trying to invite different strategies, (which I’m still unsure if I agree with…), why not just manually set locks super super hard, start with TV mode unlit, make mode timers shorter, whatever it takes. Generally I don’t like modifying software settings like that, but honestly in my opinion it’s better than just removing a shot from the game…
Just to clarify, the garage door would still register hits in any modes that involved that shot. It just wouldn’t open. It didn’t matter much to me as I simply hate that game!
It was more to cut down game times than to change strategies per se. But to cut down the times without using p*ss-people-off tight tilts in the process I think.
IKR? It’s an interesting solution. I probably prefer it to software difficulty modification (which I generally ALWAYS hate except in certain circumstances). Mostly enjoying watching people discuss the merits or lack thereof.
