Nudging - digital versus analog

So guys, how do you nudge on the xbox? Digital with the cross or analog stick?

Pros for digital cross:
- always nudging as hard as possible
- nudges immediately (no travel way like the analog stick)
- you can nudge quicker multiple times

Pros for analog stick:
- you can nudge softer
- more realistic
- feels more natural (at least for me)

I wasn't even aware that you could control how much you nudge on the analogue stick

Yes you can. Found out last week.

That I knew, what I didn't know was D-pad nudged as well

That said, Ill stick to analogue. Not only do I nudge to save from a drain, I also often softly nudge to position the ball. Like steering it just past a slingshot or change the angle slightly so I can trap or bounce pass better, or to steer it towards a certain rollover.

I've always used the analog stick, because it allows much more fine control. Sometimes a series of well-timed barely-perceptible bumps is better than one hard shove, especially when guiding an indecisive ball to select the inlane instead of the outlane.

I voted "depends", because... whilst waiting for the DLC, I played just a TON of games on my PS3, and if you don't know, the PS3 left analog stick is where the direction pad is on the XBOX controller. I prefer to use the analog stick for the control it gives you, but have found myself using the direction pad in panic situations, because that's where my thumb has learnt where to go to nudge. Mind you, in panic situations I generally want to the table to nudge a LOT to avoid SDTM's or Power drains down the outlanes from slingshots etc, so control be damned, just MOVE...

I use the analog stick, but I slam it as if it was digital.

There's no penalty for using the full swing so I don't really see the point in being careful with the analogue stick.

Carl Spiby said:

There's no penalty for using the full swing so I don't really see the point in being careful with the analogue stick.

Click to expand...

To position the ball exactly where you want, smaller nudge(s) might be more effective than a big shove.

There's TILT, I would consider that a penalty.

Analog for me all the time.

You can't TILT on one full nudge tho, you get a single warning if you do a full nudge 2 or 3 times in a row.

One thing I don't like is, no matter how hard you nudge, you can't pull off a death save or bang back. True, they're controversial, and illegal in tournaments, but the guys in the PAPA videos do them all the time in their tutorial videos.

Well you can't nudge up on Android or iOS anyway.

Richard B said:

you can't pull off a death save

Click to expand...

glad you posted this, I thought it was just my rubbish technique.

Carl Spiby said:

There's no penalty for using the full swing so I don't really see the point in being careful with the analogue stick.

Click to expand...

As best I can tell, the virtual tilt bob is represented in-game by a value. I have no idea what the value range actually is, but let's say it ranges from 0 (bob is perfectly still) to 100 (bob has touched ring and caused a tilt warning or actual tilt). This value increases sharply when you nudge, which represents you physically moving the table and setting the tilt bob in motion. It also decreases slowly over time if you don't nudge further, which represents the tilt bob settling back down.

A small nudge might only raise the value by 10 or 15, whereas a large shove might increase it by 60. Say for the sake of simplicity the tilt value decreases linearly by 5 each second (it should actually decrease according to an exponential decay function, but to hell with that for now). You can see then that you can get a lot of little nudges in without getting a warning, but the second full nudge without waiting a few seconds will push the tilt value over 100 and issue a warning (or an actual tilt).

On the iPad, where all nudges are full power, you can only nudge once; the second always issues a warning until you wait several seconds. Hence you can't do multiple nudges to save a ball that is insisting on finding the outlane. Sometimes on a real machine it takes 4 or 5 shakes to save a ball, and you currently just can't do that on iPad. (Or at least I can't - if someone reading this knows a way, please let me know.) That's why you want to be able to use more subtle nudging.

Of course, regardless of tilt warnings, you also commonly encounter situations where a full nudge is not desirable. Easy case: You have hit the Ringmaster in CV and the ball is falling down the middle, slightly right of center. A small nudge will land it nicely on the flipper, but a big nudge might send it into the slingshot and through the left outlane.

Richard B said:

One thing I don't like is, no matter how hard you nudge, you can't pull off a death save or bang back. True, they're controversial, and illegal in tournaments, but the guys in the PAPA videos do them all the time in their tutorial videos.

Click to expand...

I am sorry but this is simply not true, while extremly difficult to do within the construct of the game you can pull off death saves. I personally have pulled off many bang backs on Black hole, and I am sure I have done about 2 or 3 on ToM. If you would like to attempt it I find it the eaisest to do on Black Hole. I apologise if my comment came off as rude but it wasn't intended to

12 Oz Mouse said:

I am sorry but this is simply not true, while extremly difficult to do within the construct of the game you can pull off death saves. I personally have pulled off many bang backs on Black hole, and I am sure I have done about 2 or 3 on ToM. If you would like to attempt it I find it the eaisest to do on Black Hole. I apologise if my comment came off as rude but it wasn't intended to

Click to expand...

I'm not meaning to be rude either, but I'd like to see a video if possible. I'm not all that great at either technique in real life (and out of respect for the owner of the machines local to me, I do not attempt to perform either technique on his tables), but I can't even get remotely close to doing either in TPA.

Normaly I use the analog stick to nudge but there is one situation I prefer the digital. In multiball while having trapped two or three balls with one flipper, I try to separate them by two good timed digital nudges.

Serenseven said:

I'm not meaning to be rude either, but I'd like to see a video if possible. I'm not all that great at either technique in real life (and out of respect for the owner of the machines local to me, I do not attempt to perform either technique on his tables), but I can't even get remotely close to doing either in TPA.

Click to expand...

I completely understand and agree I share the same respect for the owner of the table as I would imagine if not careful the technique could cause some serious damage to a fine table.

Also I was able to get a recording of me pulling off some bang backs on Black Hole, please excuse the quality of the video as I don't own any video capture equipment or a tripod and all the recording was done on my phone. There are three saves total in my video and I did them in about a 15 minute span of playing but don't worry the video is edited down for viewing purposes. Also to keep with the spirit of the thread I was using the analog stick.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLt-q2ofglE

Wow! That's pretty impressive! You know, you're gonna ruin your copy of TPA if you keep doing that.