You are thinking of a bang bank, the chances of injuring yourself on a deathsave are the same as injuring yourself nudging a machine.
You mean “bang back”, but suing for injury after attempting a save on a drained ball could be deemed a “bang bank” 
How did I not even notice that typo
I see the guy track it and bump it, in my book that is totally a Death Save.
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Yeah once it was ruled that way, it’s not a death save. I’d say since the video isn’t conclusive evidence this is all speculating, but the very mild player action seems to be unintentional and looks like a Lazarus. He barely did anything.
With regards to “death save” like behaviors, I was playing a practice game of AC/DC recently where I know shots half way up the left ramp are deadly down the middle. I went to make a move on the game, but I missed. It seemed that on the return from the move (the game rocked to the side) the game “hit” the ball up onto the playfield from the apron. I didn’t attempt to make a death save of the situation, but in my attempt to make a normal save one was induced. How would you rule that?
I believe that’s a Death Slam™ . . . it’s legal but you owe Leo Daniels $5 for executing it.
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To avoid copyright, I’ll coin it a Precordial Thump. I guess I’ll have to buy a copy of Chasing Ghosts as penance.
I don’t think you can use the player cam to determine exact nudge moment. Looks like the playfield was nudged but its hard to prove intent, I’ve often nudged well after the ball is gone because I’m too slow in tracking the ball. IMHO warning is appropriate here.
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“The object of the game is to score points”
Words of wisdom from a world champion.
At twitch, you can set playback speed. When you look at it at 1x, it looks very much like a death save. If you look at it at 0.5x or 0.25x speed, it is obvious that the machine doesn’t move until the ball is level with the tips of the flippers, clearly after contact with the apron. Lazarus.
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Yes indeed. Good catch!
Now it became obvious how many refereeing errors and pain for the affected players that means.
The solution is the electronic tilt (at least when you’re not in multiball). The outlane switch signals the e-tilt to set the sensitivity to the lowest level and the state of zero tilt warnings approx. 1/2 sec after passing the switch and after an additional sec to go back to the setting the game was started with incl. restoring the players state of tilt warnings. In this way any attempt of nudging / banging back wold result in a full tilt.
I haven’t experienced an e-tilt so far. I can only speculate if these times will work. A problem might occur when an e-tilt had been set to low sensitivity, a player executes an Andy Rosa power nudge which doesn’t tilt but makes the playfield after-swing for a fraction of a sec and the accelerometer of the e-tilt gets still affected. So a delay of tilt sensitivity change command is the way to go.
There is a couple of problems with what you suggest.
Switches on a pinball machine can usually be trusted. But not always.
If a ball is hopping back on the playfield, why would a pinball manufacture bother force draining this. It will only bring angry players, abuse of equipment and complaints.
Yes, you can say competition is different. And the game knows when it is used for competition. But again, historically, manufactures have not been keen on making the changed for this adjustment state too advanced. More work, more testing, more stuff that can go wrong, will the efford pay for it self…
How do you trust an electronic tilt device? Everyone can understand a mech tilt. It must ship with a marvelous calibration and adjustment support in settings.
Pinball is a mechnical game. With some gray area that calls for evaluation on rulings. Deliberate death saves being one of them.
I also ask myself. Why is it so damn easy to do on Sterns? Maybe their bottom arch is the problem.
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Most things you explained yourself. At least on modern games such an adjustment can be done with a snap of the finger - a simple code thing. Tons of money is spent on video animations alone.
How do you trust any electronic device? Everything could break theoretically. An accelerometer is a tiny device which costs only pennies in manufacturing. So a pinball machine could come with a spare device if wanted. But as I said, I have no personal experience so far. Ofc it has to be reliable. But honestly it would be really ridiculous if the electronics of an accelerometer weren’t shock resistant. In the case of an outlane switch counting ghost contacts it would add undeserved points and in a tournament that’d mean deactivation.
“Pinball is a mechnical game. With some gray area that calls for evaluation on rulings. Deliberate death saves being one of them.”
Like cars also pinballs evolve. So no, I don’t share your views here at all. I don’t think a tournament player considers it as an untouchable matter if his score is falsely zeroed or he even gets DQed.
A mechanical tilt means shortcomings like ghost tilts by a possibly escalating pendulum, needs cleaning of the bob & ring once in a while and can’t be set to a certain level on a standardized sensitivity level. So it should be replaced with new technique anyway.
Obviously there’s a communication problem between players and pinball manufacturers. Can’t be so hard to make the bottom arch a bit movable so that it acts as a tiny shock absorber.
Definetly. How many times have I tried to convince TDs that they should consider this BS tilt mech a malfunction.
But I will say, that tilt through is 100% avoidable per software. If the game designers would bother. In competition play there is no minimum drain-to-next-player-up time constraint as in coin play. So - make it longer.
JJP has a new design meeting this issue. AFAIK.
Well, I’d assume that tilt throughs occur in the high 90s% bc the tilt pendulum keeps swinging and not bc of a late anger nudge when technically it’s already the next players turn. But ok fine, to eliminate also that a few sec should be sufficient. Would take less time than the usual bonus count.
I consider a tilt warning or a full tilt also a ghost tilt when during normal game play the pendulum has escalated and is triggered by a secondary nudge which wasn’t hard at all. This happens when the pendulum is coming at you from back to front and by nudging forward you push the ring backwards and boom you get punished for nothing.
This I consider the most important issue as it happens all the time.
Wow cool! I have nothing against Stern. I just appreciate competition in general as usually improvements are the result.
“Countermeasures” might be a more appropriate word/phrase.
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I wouldn’t have ruled it as a death save. I death save my machines all the time and you can ask the grooves in my carpet if you want proof. 
Unless you’re really, really good at it, there wasn’t enough movement of the machine and he didn’t hold up the left flipper. Just looked like a late “ah crap there goes the ball” nudge to me.
Plastic apron that doesn’t have a mounting point anywhere near the area the ball hits for the save. Basically acts like a trampoline. I find death saves on LE machines (with the metal apron) basically the same difficulty as older Bally/Williams type games. Thus why I blame the ease on pro and pre games to be the apron itself.
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