WOZ CB penalty - unknown to anyone present

Games
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So, last night at league I played WOZ and ran into an interesting situation.

I was in RESCUE multiball, got two trapped on the left flipper and backhanded the Crystal Ball 3 times in a row. Of course, my flippers became no-flip (as I found out this morning, because that was something added to the code). I drained out of Multiball at that point and managed to lock a ball on the ramp towards EC Multiball. The game had physical locks, so I called a TD over to make a ruling. I showed him that my flippers wouldn’t hold. NOBODY KNEW THE CODE CHANGE. The ruling was - I could force a new game, play-on (but play a new game if it happened to the next player) or drain immediately and get a compensation ball if the issue fixed itself or play a new game if it didn’t.

[The screen should say No-Flip Penalty to avoid people not knowing what is going on. Had I seen that I wouldn’t even have needed a ruling.] I chose poorly and picked option 3 - knowing that if the flippers fixed themselves I would be at a big disadvantage, but feeling that was the fairest option. Of course the flippers fixed themselves and I came up just short on a compensation ball with 0 progress. In hindsight I should have played on - taken the skill shot staring me in the face and dealt with the no-hold flippers.

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I assume by no-flip, you mean no hold. What code was added to give NHF in single ball play? I was watching your game, as we were next in line, but admittedly don’t know the ruleset deep enough to have said anything.

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I’m honestly not sure whether to feel bad or LMAO.

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This is why all of us need to read tiltforums and listen to podcasts.

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No-hold was instituted a few revisions back. Made it too easy to game that.

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Even better would be the witch chiding you: “Don’t try that trick again” on the 2nd time, and then cackling at you (or audio of @keefer laughing at you) on the 3rd time, capped by a “You asked for it.”

I’d do it just for fun (not in competition) just to hear that. :slight_smile:

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There IS stuff like that in the game already, though!

I was going to guess, but, fine, I’ll just look it up.

After the second time, she says “I’m watching you, child!”

After the third time (penalty incurred), she says “You don’t have the power to control my balls!”

So, there you go. I’ll consider recording something.

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Nice. But she says those lines for other stuff, too, right?

:slight_smile:

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I understand there are audio cues in the game to tell you what is going on as you play. I was always going to miss those. It is what it is. I doubt I would have known what they meant had I heard them, but I don’t listen to audio. I am not an owner of the game and I rarely get to play it, so this is the first time I had heard of/seen this change. As a player, it just seemed like no hold was happening when it shouldn’t. We had 24 people present, and none of them knew about this. The TD agreed it was a bug. Therefore - the situation required a ruling. If there was something on the screen (“penalty” or whatever), this wouldn’t be an issue.

Edit - this is not to say it is your responsibility to do anything, just saying that if you care - the audio cues didn’t help the TD make the correct decision.

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Yeah, audio cues can easily get lost during a competition game. A video notification would be useful.

Also, I would totally buy t-shirts with most of the witch’s callouts. :slight_smile:

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If it’s been around for more than six months, experienced players should know this. Noobs are likely playing at home or a quiet place and will hear the warnings.

Yes, games coded by Keith require a little more homework. That’s homework I don’t mind doing. Keep up the awesome work.

Now I really want to see an otherwise experienced player wearing headphones hit this. That would be hilarious.

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Haven’t watched the video in a while but from I remember I incurred the penalty without hitting the CB 3X in at row like is suppose to happen.

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Yeah but this didn’t come up until much later so it’s not like we had special lines recorded for it.

There are several issues. One, this is so rare in general it almost wasn’t worth my time doing it, but, if people were going to actively game it if I DIDN’T do something, it pretty much forced my hand. Two, if it happens to someone multiple times, they’ll eventually put the pieces together that they shouldn’t keep doing what they’re doing. Three, the people MOST LIKELY to exploit this are probably on this forum, or pinside, or something similar where that info gets disseminated.

The most fascinating thing to me seems to be that no one’s figured out you can do this on most MMs during Multiball Madness with the Catapult.

:blush:

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Now I really want to see an otherwise experienced player wearing headphones hit this. That would be hilarious.

You mean like @G_Money?

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@ErinK, I think he means like @G_Money. You don’t end up being a dancing man in a chair kick GIF by not qualifying in a circuit event. :wink:

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Update - you can get this penalty in single ball play too. With B(lit)-A(lit)-L(lit)-L(unlit), I wanted to light the top L at little risk. Much like Whitewater, I was aiming mostly for the spinner shot, trying to graze the top L. And I hit the crystal ball shot 3 times in a row and she gave me no hold flippers. I thought the exploit fix only applied to multiball, but that is incorrect. Just as a heads up. I probably play this game once in a blue moon.