I know it was discussed in the past but never pursued it - have the 100k be collectable once on skateball and then reset. That seems to be the prevailing strategy to playing skateball in a tourney, since it’s a repeatable relatively safe shot. Don’t know how much of a fan I’d be of something that changes a game not because of randomness (desirable for leveling purposes) but instead to eliminate a strategy.
Also, I think any tournament that uses non-standard romsets should post the changes either on the machine or in a notes section of the rules/website so people know what they’re getting into.
You don’t need a modified rom set to remove the 100k exploit from SB. You just need to set EBs to “easy”, which lights the EB after the second set of skate drops. That way, you only get a single 100k collect before the scoop resets back to 20k. Now you can still grind 50k scoops all day, but that’s less desirable, especially if you have your 20k light on with multipliers. I believe that @sk8ball suggested this setup, but the papa folks decided not to do it that way. I don’t think they intended to have EBs actually award extra balls, lol, but it did add an interesting risk reward decision: would you risk an extra set of skate drops to light the EB, but then reset your saucer back to 20k from 100k. I think most players would rather have the repeatable 100k lit than an extra ball and 20k saucer. Now this thinking would change once you had 20,40, or 60 locked in with 4x or 5x play field. The game certainly played challenging enough and even the 100k exploit was difficult to master for very long.
Ah, did not know that. It also opens up the discussion to having the bally ‘super’ bonuses “set back” a step each ball - i.e. you got 60, next ball, you get 40. These are just ideas that were bounced off me a couple years ago that I’m only rethinking about since the PAPA broadcast - although after they fixed the loose upper flipper it certainly was a lot harder to do that little drop maneuver coming out of the eject.
Other things suggested were to allow EB, but only ONE per ball in play, or to make the specials pay points (which they really already could do with the novelty settings on most bally machines).
I had a skateball for awhile and pretty much what Adam said was how I would play it… 100k until I accidentally knocked down too many drops to light EB and then if the bonus got high enough, switch to going for X and collects. I actually think the game is fairly well balanced IF set up so the saucer provides a difficult enough return feed. But then I’m also the type of player who loves to find the one shot that’s repeatable and valuable, shoot it a bunch of times, and then shoot it some more still. Other things I might try on Skateball to make it harder… raise the flippers up so the scoop is tougher or remove the one way left lane gate so soft drops from the upper flipper to the lower left are more dangerous. I kinda wish I had one here now to try that last one… I bet it would be hard and super fun.
I just found out last night that the one way gate was a hair from being removed right before finals, but that the decision was made to leave it in, fearing that it wouldn’t be picked at all without the gate. It didn’t seem to matter though, the feed from the scoop seemed slightly less controllable and as a result the ball seemed to get loose pretty quickly. Certainly nobody crushed 100k’s the way that Bowen and Eric did in qualifying.
This happened because of a change made to the flipper during / before / after Josh and Raymond’s tiebreaker. It definitely threw a wrench into my plans! In the end I thought I could get good control, but did not put up a strong score in any of the three rounds I played it.
I saw that upper flipper was sticking up a little sometimes after flipping. It happened right after Josh’s ball (thankfully they cut to it on stream because that was the best save I saw all day!). It happened right before Raymond drained his final ball, and I wonder if it didn’t alter the trajectory?