Request Any chances to see more Stern tables in TPA?

[ER777]

I can't wait to hear complaints about how it's too easy to tour the mansion. To sleep perchance to dream.

This is a good point, its not even that hard to do it on the real machine. You know its going to be pretty easy in TPA.. I'm sure somebody would top 10 billion on the first day its released.

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

This is a good point, its not even that hard to do it on the real machine. You know its going to be pretty easy in TPA.. I'm sure somebody would top 10 billion on the first day its released.

Problem is, you can Tour only once on each ball. Resets after each drain, so multiball becomes #2 strategy. If you're on your last ball and you get Tour, you're screwed in hopes of getting another Tour.

 

[ER777]

Problem is, you can Tour only once on each ball. Resets after each drain, so multiball becomes #2 strategy. If you're on your last ball and you get Tour, you're screwed in hopes of getting another Tour.

Fair enough. I'm not quite good enough on the real machine where touring more than once on the same ball has become an issue for me yet.

 

[Zaphod77]

Well that's what the extra ball on the mansion is for.

The game could be tuned kitten level easy like twilight zone, or it could actually be tuned hard. as I said, i want to get in on the tuning. The train wreck should risk a left outlane drain right off the swamp millions standups. you shouldn't always be able to loop the bear kick ramp, and failed bear kick shots should drain SDTM some of the time. And chair/vault bricks should be brutal, with the vault a very difficult shot. And of course The Power can screw you over at any time, being string enough to deflect a flipper shot and catch lazy balls and fling them into the outlanes (but it also will sometimes slam a ball right back into the chair for you).

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

As long as that isn't the default setting. The Addmas Family will bring a bunch of people into The Pinball Arcade, and that sort of brutal difficulty would make a terrible first impression.

 

[Richard B]

As long as that isn't the default setting. The Addmas Family will bring a bunch of people into The Pinball Arcade, and that sort of brutal difficulty would make a terrible first impression.

That level of difficulty would not be in keeping with most of the real machines out there that aren't used in PAPA tournaments. Ever since STTNG, the tuning has been fairly close to the real machines. I'd like them to keep it that way.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

I think it should be made as an option.

The Addams Family will bring in a lot of people who would otherwise never even play The Pinball Arcade, let alone pinball. While this sort of difficulty is good for people used to pinball and in want of a challenge, beginners are not looking for a challenge. They're looking for a way to have some fun, and it won't be fun if everything seems to result in a rapid drain.

The biggest turnoff I'm seeing to people who would otherwise get into pinball is that they drain quickly, get frustrated, and leave. That's why machines like South Park and Spider-Man appeal so much to beginners: These machines have long ball times, so they feel like they've played something. Something like The Simpsons Pinball Party, however, I watch people walk up to it because of its theme, they play for less than a minute, and walk off in a bad mood because they couldn't reach 1 million.

AC/DC is a perfect example of this crevasse between the beginners and the experienced: The veterans love AC/DC, but beginners hate it. That's because if you're unskilled and/or inaccurate, you will drain quickly. That isn't fun.

On the other hand, Blizzard Entertainment is very good at making a game beginner-friendly. Blizzard's games can be as easy or as difficult as they want them to be. The only rule is that at the beginning, the gameplay must allow the player to feel like a champion. In World of Warcraft, for example, you will rapidly gain levels, learn new skills, and obtain better weaponry when you start playing. It becomes much slower later, and the difficulty increases rapidly after that, but by then, you've felt like you're good at the game and you've made some progress you don't want to destroy by quitting. Capcom, by contrast, has shrunk into a niche company making niche games because it does not want to do any player empowerment. Its games start off hard and become even harder. Only diehard fans buy Capcom's games nowadays that ins't Street Fighter IV or a variant thereof.

Thus, I think that if The Addams Family was set to its highest difficulty, it's going to get a lot of people who were otherwise on the fence to hate pinball. They'll see it as a bland, frustrating experience that is out of their reach, and they'll give up. If there's any table that should be set to allow a beginner to feel empowered, it's this one.

 

[rob3d]

The thing is digital pinball is already easier by default, because of the lack of true randomness and mechanical elements. Making a table even easier on top of that makes the game pointless. Twilight Zone suffers from this. I'm a terrible pinball player and I've LITZ'ed twice a game on multiple occasions and placed 11th in the TZ backers tourney. Deliberately making a table easier is overkill, is gonna be easier simply because of the nature of digital pinball.

The Addams Family will bring in a lot of people who would otherwise never even play The Pinball Arcade, let alone pinball. While this sort of difficulty is good for people used to pinball and in want of a challenge, beginners are not looking for a challenge. They're looking for a way to have some fun, and it won't be fun if everything seems to result in a rapid drain.

Addams family does not have the type of draw that Star Trek or terminator do. It will not bring in people who have never heard of pinball, quite the opposite. The only people clamoring for this table are already pinball enthusiasts, or perhaps one or two people who have happened to like the movie.

Thus, I think that if The Addams Family was set to its highest difficulty, it's going to get a lot of people who were otherwise on the fence to hate pinball. They'll see it as a bland, frustrating experience that is out of their reach, and they'll give up. If there's any table that should be set to allow a beginner to feel empowered, it's this one.

You don't need to pander to beginners to make a table like this approachable. Tuning it the way an out of the box machine would play is just fine. No one is saying tune it to papa tourney standards.

I think it should be made as an option.

We've asked for this repeatedly and have been told no. It requires doubling the workload and they are a small company. The best we've gotten was the possibilty of activating tourney settings in the rom, but that only amounts to things like disabling extra balls and lowering jackpots etc.

 

[DokkenRokken]

Addams family does not have the type of draw that Star Trek or terminator do. It will not bring in people who have never heard of pinball, quite the opposite. The only people clamoring for this table are already pinball enthusiasts, or perhaps one or two people who have happened to like the movie.

I agree.

If any Premium table is gonna have a huge draw to non pinball players, it's "The Simpsons Pinball Party".

 

[canuck]

What gives with the lack of kick starters? Surely they could get the Simpsons licence.

 

[Crawley]

What gives with the lack of kick starters? Surely they could get the Simpsons licence.

If Addams Family isn't the next Kickstarter there is going to be a lot of negativity and a slew of temper tantrums. That being the case if the Simpsons is the next Kickstarter it would still be a slam dunk as long as the costs are not astronomical. But of course we don't know what it would take to get the license or if Fox is even interested.

I think Rob3D is right about Addams not having the same draw as other licenses - particularly from newer pinball players who weren't around when Addams Family was a thing. But the game has been built up by the community so much that I think most TPA players know the name. Every table release you see at least a few people post to the Facebook page "Addams Family" or "When's Addams Family coming?". So regardless if people are familiar with the table I think most know its highly coveted just via word of mouth.

 

[DokkenRokken]

What gives with the lack of kick starters? Surely they could get the Simpsons license.

I think they just wanted to focus on a lot of the popular, unlicensed tables for a bit. I think they tried to make up for no Kickstarter this season by letting us choose one of the tables.

I think the odds of us getting a Premium, kickstarter table next season are pretty high.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

The thing is digital pinball is already easier by default, because of the lack of true randomness and mechanical elements. Making a table even easier on top of that makes the game pointless. Twilight Zone suffers from this. I'm a terrible pinball player and I've LITZ'ed twice a game on multiple occasions and placed 11th in the TZ backers tourney. Deliberately making a table easier is overkill, is gonna be easier simply because of the nature of digital pinball.

Addams family does not have the type of draw that Star Trek or terminator do. It will not bring in people who have never heard of pinball, quite the opposite. The only people clamoring for this table are already pinball enthusiasts, or perhaps one or two people who have happened to like the movie.

All right, fair enough. I always had the impression that The Addams Family was the one machine that the mainstream has heard of. Certainly, it was the only one I had heard of before getting into pinball.

I do feel that if there is an aim to get the mainstream into The Pinball Arcade, there HAS to be a table made to be easy but not proclaimed as such (as it'd sound insulting and condescending otherwise), and the simplest way to do it is to pick a table that non-pinball people would likely go for and turn down the difficulty in such a way that they can feel rewarded. Time and again when I watch non-pinbal people play, they try, they play, they drain, they give up, and they stop playing pinball. That, I feel, is a major problem that needs to be addressed. Video and computer games have addressed this problem long ago with the techniques I described above. Though if what you say is true and The Addams Family has little mainstream appeal, I suppose that's not the right table to do it to.

 

[vikingerik]

Addams family does not have the type of draw that Star Trek or terminator do. It will not bring in people who have never heard of pinball, quite the opposite. The only people clamoring for this table are already pinball enthusiasts, or perhaps one or two people who have happened to like the movie.

What draws casual gamers into TPA is whatever table they happen to remember from their childhood pizza joint or Time Out in the mall or college rec center. Addams is this for quite a few people, just because there were so many produced and on location forever. It will sell fine to mainstream gamers.

If Addams Family isn't the next Kickstarter there is going to be a lot of negativity and a slew of temper tantrums.

This is quite possibly true, but that sentiment would be off base IMO. Addams isn't a question of just Kickstarting up enough money, it's a question of whether the studio and the actors and their estates are willing to do any deal at all and if Farsight can talk them into it.

Simpsons is much more likely just a money question for which Kickstarter can be the answer. Fox licenses out those characters anywhere and everywhere. A Kickstarter for TSPP makes total sense and we can only hope the whining for not doing Addams instead is minimal.

 

[rob3d]

All right, fair enough. I always had the impression that The Addams Family was the one machine that the mainstream has heard of. Certainly, it was the only one I had heard of before getting into pinball.

I do feel that if there is an aim to get the mainstream into The Pinball Arcade, there HAS to be a table made to be easy but not proclaimed as such (as it'd sound insulting and condescending otherwise), and the simplest way to do it is to pick a table that non-pinball people would likely go for and turn down the difficulty in such a way that they can feel rewarded. Time and again when I watch non-pinbal people play, they try, they play, they drain, they give up, and they stop playing pinball. That, I feel, is a major problem that needs to be addressed. Video and computer games have addressed this problem long ago with the techniques I described above. Though if what you say is true and The Addams Family has little mainstream appeal, I suppose that's not the right table to do it to.

Pinball is not easy, it was never meant to be. It requires timing, skill, and luck to keep the ball from draining. Even if you made a table where every shot has the "magical can't miss vortex effect" that the catapult shot on medieval madness has, you still have to contend with rules memorization, situational awareness, and effective point strategy. To ask thousands of pinball arcade veterans to back a kickstarter where a high profile table is gimped to please an uncertain number of newcomer customers is kickstarter suicide.

These tables are meant to recreate actual existing machines. I get what your saying about approach-ability for new comers but that kind of thing can be left for when farsight begins developing their own original tables.

The only reason I was ever interested in TPA was because of the then unlikely possibility of a TZ release (it was literally the only pin I can remember playing as a kid, and I am fanatical about all things TZ), but it was TOTAN that cemented the fact that I needed to have every table FS releases. I knew nothing of pinball, I was a keep flipping till the ball drains kind of player. I didn't even know there were actual rules to a pinball game till I saw the ruleset in TOTAN. It is a fairly easy table to get into, the modes are clearly accessible through a single easily repeatable shot, and the dmd tells you exactly what to do to complete a mode. That coupled with the amazing rulebook FS includes is the winning combo that has made me by all 3 seasons on 3 separate devices like a crazy person.

As it stands TOTAN is the free table when someone first gets TPA. I believe that to be the perfect intro to TPA, add to that the free monthly table and anyone who can have even a remote interest in pinball will latch on.



Again I understand where your coming from and your heart is in the right place, but its a disservice to TPA customers and the tables themselves to nerf them beyond playability just to appease a new customer who may or may not like pinball at all.

 

[soundwave106]

From what I remember the real life TAF was relatively beginner friendly. Sure a beginner wouldn't tour the mansion, but they wouldn't insta-drain either. This is part of why it sold well. TAF was never an impossible table for beginners like, say, TZ tended to be.

We have a few others that play decently easy already (just point intro players to a table like "Scared Stiff" for instance). So we don't need to cater something to intro players, tuning as is should be fine. Most recent tables have been tuned to be closer to the actual table, I think -- usually slightly easier, but actually a couple have been tuned slightly harder (Fish Tales IMHO is, and Champion's Pub appears to be as well).

I'm sure no matter what happens, we'll have simultaneous complaints about how it's both too easy and too hard -- ya can't please everyone.

 

[rob3d]

From what I remember the real life TAF was relatively beginner friendly. Sure a beginner wouldn't tour the mansion, but they wouldn't insta-drain either. This is part of why it sold well. TAF was never an impossible table for beginners like, say, TZ tended to be.

We have a few others that play decently easy already (just point intro players to a table like "Scared Stiff" for instance). So we don't need to cater something to intro players, tuning as is should be fine. Most recent tables have been tuned to be closer to the actual table, I think -- usually slightly easier, but actually a couple have been tuned slightly harder (Fish Tales IMHO is, and Champion's Pub appears to be as well).

I'm sure no matter what happens, we'll have simultaneous complaints about how it's both too easy and too hard -- ya can't please everyone.

This man speaks truth

 

[mmmagnetic]

Monopoly needs to go in. It just went into my local arcade, and I love it. It actually feels more like a Williams than a Stern. Has all the Lawlor signatures - two sets of bumpers, balls locking in bottom-left, two ramps right next to each other... you can basically just point at various features and exclaim "Whirlwind! Ripleys! Twilight Zone!" I really love it.

That description makes it sound really, really good. I've seen this name pop up a lot lately, so fingers crossed!

 

[DokkenRokken]

That description makes it sound really, really good. I've seen this name pop up a lot lately, so fingers crossed!

It's very fun, but also very, very hard... at least our local one is.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Pinball is not easy, it was never meant to be. It requires timing, skill, and luck to keep the ball from draining. Even if you made a table where every shot has the "magical can't miss vortex effect" that the catapult shot on medieval madness has, you still have to contend with rules memorization, situational awareness, and effective point strategy. To ask thousands of pinball arcade veterans to back a kickstarter where a high profile table is gimped to please an uncertain number of newcomer customers is kickstarter suicide.

These tables are meant to recreate actual existing machines. I get what your saying about approach-ability for new comers but that kind of thing can be left for when farsight begins developing their own original tables.

The only reason I was ever interested in TPA was because of the then unlikely possibility of a TZ release (it was literally the only pin I can remember playing as a kid, and I am fanatical about all things TZ), but it was TOTAN that cemented the fact that I needed to have every table FS releases. I knew nothing of pinball, I was a keep flipping till the ball drains kind of player. I didn't even know there were actual rules to a pinball game till I saw the ruleset in TOTAN. It is a fairly easy table to get into, the modes are clearly accessible through a single easily repeatable shot, and the dmd tells you exactly what to do to complete a mode. That coupled with the amazing rulebook FS includes is the winning combo that has made me by all 3 seasons on 3 separate devices like a crazy person.

As it stands TOTAN is the free table when someone first gets TPA. I believe that to be the perfect intro to TPA, add to that the free monthly table and anyone who can have even a remote interest in pinball will latch on.

Again I understand where your coming from and your heart is in the right place, but its a disservice to TPA customers and the tables themselves to nerf them beyond playability just to appease a new customer who may or may not like pinball at all.

Hmm, perhaps then it's time for a paradigm shift in the way the businesses are run. Pinball got its start by being out in public for people to drop coins into and play, and its balls-to-the-walls difficulty was a result of trying to get as much money out of people as they could get away with. Whereas video games transitioned to the home, where their design evolved to bring in newcomers and provide content for the money paid to buy the game, the very nature of pinball makes such a transition difficult, if not impossible, and thus pinball has retained its arcade-style difficulty roots.

The problem, then, lies not in changing gameplay, but its lack thereof: Audience tastes change with time, and something that remains the same is doomed to remain a niche. There are still video games being released with arcade-like difficulty, but they are, with a few exceptions like the New Super Mario Bros. series, niche titles with a small, core group of players and little else. Same goes with re-releases of arcade games. If the goal is to keep the difficulty of pinball machines the way they are for real (and I understand that viewpoint too, and I would definitely support it for most tables), their arcade-style gameplay would keep The Pinball Arcade a niche title too.

But I suppose you're right. The best way to expand interest in pinball is not through the digital conversions of old tables, which were never meant for audiences of the 2010s, but through brand-new ones. It wouldn't make sense to re-release Pac-Man such that you could get to Stage 15 or so in one try without having ever played it before without calling it an update or an evolution.