The first place I tell people to start nudging is when the ball is coming down to the top of the slingshots. To start, just give the lockdown bar a sharp nudge right as the ball hits the rubber. The goal is to send the ball up and away. Doing this before the ball hits the slingshot won’t do anything, you need to time it so that you’re pushing back into the ball the moment it hits.
The next step, being able to determine when the ball is going to hit the outer edge of the slingshot and head toward the outlane. This is bad! Here you want to nudge diagonally up and toward the outlane you’re afraid of. The goal is to have the ball instead hits the direct top or inner edge of the slingshot, so that it cannot bounce over towards the outlane.
For me, the next thing I worked on with nudging was when the ball was heading directly into the outlane. For many months, I was nudging in the wrong direction. Your goal should be to move the divider between the inlane and outlane into the path of the ball, which means nudging the machine toward the affected outlane. Instead of going straight into the outlane, you hope that it hits this divider (which in many games has a rubber ring on a post) and bounces up and away, and then back into play.
I’ll say one last thing because you said “doesn’t seem like the ball’s trajectory changes in any way”. I think it’s common for beginning nudgers to think their goal is to change the path of the ball. A ball is going STDM, and the instinct is to shake the machine to change the trajectory, but there isn’t enough friction between the playfield and the ball for that.
The path of the ball relative to the room/floor will stay the same, but you’re going to be moving elements of the playfield into the path of the ball. You want to move posts into the path of the ball so they can’t go into the outlane. You want to slide the tip of the flipper into the path of the ball as it is coming STDM (although this is much more difficult to pull off).
It doesn’t happen overnight though. Just knowing what to do isn’t enough…you’ll have to learn when to do it, and then practice with the “how”. Good luck!
The way I think about nudging is that there are basically two types of nudges. Type 1 is simply imparting a force to the ball via part of the playfield. This could be anything really, a side wall, a rubber, a flipper. You are using the force of moving the cabinet to transfer energy to the ball from something attached to the cabinet. The point is to influence the speed and direction of the ball in your favor. The second type of nudge is about moving part of the playfield into the path of the ball. You aren’t transferring a force to the ball, you’re sliding the playfield under it so a flipper or post will intersect its trajectory. That’s what a slap save or a slide save is all about, but there are a lot of other uses.
Outlane nudges are difficult because in general you’re trying to do both types of nudges at the same time. You want to move the inlane post under the ball, but you are also trying to give it some force to hopefully pop the ball out of the area completely. That’s a really basic description, and there are a million different minute variations depending on ball speed, angle, spin, post positions, rubbers, and playfield angle. You have to take all that into account and make a move in a split second.
The point is that nudging is difficult, and outlane nudging doubly so. There isn’t one technique that works on all saves. It takes a lot of guesswork, reflexes, instinct, intuition, and luck. Mostly it just takes a lot experience and experimentation. You have to fail a lot trying to make saves, and eventually you’ll do something that saves a ball from certain doom, and it’ll be awesome. And the next time that happens you’ll try to do it again.
Also, study a lot of videos to watch how the pros do it. Hopefully you’ll gain nudging voodoo skills through osmosis
yeah also for nudging one thing I’ve learned is as you get better you’ll notice you know when a ball is heading straight for an outlane. Especially bouncing off a wall or slingshot top and arc-ing towards the outlane - reading the ball is key and as you can kind of predict how the ball may bounce, you want to limit how it may go towards and outlane and prevent that by nudging it. Not sure if this makes sense in writing?
That makes sense. A good example might be: on a particular game, the ball comes down the orbit and hits the slingshot right in the center, which puts it in danger of launching toward the outlane. Slap the side of the cabinet as it comes down to give it enough force to miss the slingshot and land of the flipper.
You just start seeing the same stuff happen over and over until the seemingly random stuff becomes inevitable stuff, that’s when you’re able to consciously get in there and push fate off balance.
Ah, so the reason for nudging is NOT to change where the ball will go, but, more accurately, to move the playfield instead. That actually makes a lot more sense to me, considering I was always confused not only that the ball’s path never actually changes, but because the machine just bends back into place (unless it’s a ridiculously strong nudge) making it feel pointless. That explains why when I watch these videos, the nudges are literally at the very last instant.
I’ll definitely keep this in mind for the future–nudging is not to affect the ball, but to affect the playfield. I hope this leads to an improvement in my playing. I can usually tell when the ball is about to zoom down the middle, but I haven’t been able to nudge as a reflex. As for outlanes, that’s still very difficult for me to determine (and it’s really different on a per-machine basis).
Every machine is different, for sure. It usually takes me a couple games to figure out how a machine is working, where certain ramps are sending the ball. Something you can proactively check for is the placement of the outlane rubbers, which are adjustable - are the outlanes crazy open, or nice and tight? This can help a lot when you’re jiggling the table like crazy to get a ball out from there (watch some outlane save videos, such as this one, which is pretty standard - the table is bumped up, which sends the ball into the upper rubber and down away from the outlane).
Watching PAPA tutorials and gameplay videos has helped me a lot because you get to see these really super terrific players doing these incredible moves that, like, you’d never even thought of, and then you go and try them out and you fail nine times out of ten but that tenth time it’s like, wow! And then you just work on getting that ratio down to something more reliable through practice.
Those are incredible, and I’ve seen similar outlane saves. I have no idea how they impart enough energy into the ball to get them out from there.
Rarely do I see a machine on location with the outlanes at their minimum width though, and when I do see one and it’s been there for long enough, the outlanes get wider. A few, most of them Simpsons Pinball Parties, have their outlane posts completely removed (and all of THOSE are in terrible working order).
To practice nudging to get the ball out of the outlanes, is there any configuration for those outlane posts that would be better for practicing with than others?
Don’t try to do what Bowen does in those tutorial videos! You don’t have to have crazy good games every time.
To rephrase, context is everything and do what you need to in that situation to win, not to get to the wizard mode or beat the GC.
A lot of the newer players I play with get into watching tutorials and then always try to go for some optimized strategy even if it doesn’t really make sense and they might not have the skills to pull it off. Stuff like ignoring jackpots and going for picks during multiball on Metallica when you’re only down by 5 Million or trying to open the coffin on BSD before going for bat ramps when they’re already on ball 3 and the pity mist is sitting there. This can also be applied to specific games - if the kickout or a feed on some game is whack and drains 90% of the time, you need to revisit strategy.
It doesn’t take a ton of strength to do a wicked shimmy. I’m five feet nothing, a hundred and nothing and I can do a wicked shimmy on any game smaller than Hurc. Timing is the most important thing.
White post rubbers are a huge help in the outlanes. Much more bouncier. In the video above, Bowen is on a TAF, which should have a post rubber between the inlane and outlane. In qualifying, that post rubber is often removed in A division. But in the playoffs, games aren’t setup as hard. Judging by the video, I’m guessing there was a black rubber on that post.
Certain games are easier to save than others. TAF, with its center post rubber, is a good one. Games with unconventional in/ outlanes like WOF or Genie are good games to practice on. And old school games with only outlanes, like in the P101 video, are good too.
If you mostly play on location, pick on any game with a loose tilt. If there’s any post at all around the outlane, shake the hell out of it see if you can dig it out. Once you get the hang of outlane saves, death save aren’t far behind. And they don’t take much more strength than wicked shimmys.
I’ve always found death saves much easier than outlane shakes due to reaction time—that extra second or two for the ball to make it through the outlane is really helpful. It’s also the same every time, while there’s decision paralysis on an outlane. I far too often try to get clever and read where the ball is going off a post, rather than taking the good advice of ‘don’t care, get it out of there’.
@SunsetShimmer: the one time you’re really moving the ball relative to the playfield is when you slide the machine to close the distance between an object and the ball. (Famous @pinwizj gif here). You’re still moving the machine relative to the ball, which is a Newtonian free object: shove the machine right and you move the ball “left” relative to it. In the arcade I used to play at the floor was very smooth, so this was super easy to do (and the machines were thus always all crooked). It requires a lot less timing than a more subtle nudge does, since you’re actually altering the flight of the ball, but requires either a slippery floor or quite a lot of oomph.
Stern outlanes seem to be getting bigger, but with a generous tilt, you can still shake a ball out of most newer games. My succes rate is directly proportional to how tight the tilt is. Loose tilt outlane saves are often more shove than shimmy, but it’s the same principle. Loose tilt outlane saves are great for learning. Once you do it a few times, then you start working on getting it smooth.
I don’t death save much mainly because I’m not very good at it. I can do it, but it’s loud and not smooth. The current apron configuration definitely encourages them, and Lazarus balls are way up, which is nice. On GOT, more than once lately I’ve had a ball drain down the lit right outlane (new ball autoplunged), then the drained ball has Lazarused back onto the playfield. Instant unannounced multiball. Sweet.
Reflecting after day 1 of pinburgh this year, I feel I really need to work on plunging better. I have other issues, but I missed my goal of seeding A by 1 point and looking back the lowest hanging fruit was plunging better. Don’t get me wrong, I could have got that point with more accuracy or better choices, but I am talking about low hanging fruit (hopefully)
Warning I am about to write too much.
On EMs (or anything with gates) I tend to plunge hard to get it bouncing on the rollovers and let the nudging take over. This works on the machines I know, but in an event like pinburgh I tend to get worried about tilts and don’t play my usual game. Crap just realised I never tilted yesterday, probably too cautious.
I noticed other plays can walk up and plunge perfectly into the desired lane. I don’t even have a clue now to build feel. And my plunges seem really inconsistent. I think my finger technique is wrong, and I have no intuition of spring tension to how far the ball will go.
On modern machines I think I need to practice plunging without qualifying the playfield. Needed to resort to this on many machines yesterday, but I was only about 1 in 3, which made it more dangerous than just a hard plunge in some cases.
I’m far from a master plunger but I do pay attention to it a lot and practice it a lot. First I would use the plunger meter thing to help you make a point of reference of where you need to pull the plunger back.
Also, remember your release can affect the ball too. Make sure your release is consistent to get consistent results. I do this from feel.
I short plunge on almost every newer DMD where I think I can get to the flippers and the playfield won’t be validated. Also, if the game is new to me and I’m trying a specific plunge, I will short plunge to the shooter lane a few times to get a sense of how strong the plunger is then go from there.
