Hardest Table in TPA

[Kratos3]

This will be an interesting poll after the tournament level difficulty is implemented.

 

[Rafie]

I'm still surprised at how many said Firepower. Seriously that table is easy! I'm surpsied not to see Flight 2000 on this list. As far as goals are concerned, that table is kind of difficult. For Genie, the only reason why it's considered tough is because of that 3 million point goal. Other than that, it's a great table with only moderate difficulty. In my opinion of course.

 

[Johni3w6]

I went with FP.

 

[fantsu]

What are these replies!?! Haunted House is really easy table! Why doesn't anyone consider Lights Camera Action hard? It is the only really hard table to me. And I'm not even good at this game...

 

[Robert Misner]

I think theres not enough context for "hardest"
Hardest to get all wizard goals?
Hardest to get to top 40 on leaderboard?
Feels like you can't beat the table Hardest(my personal favorite)

So
For tables I really like, it would have to be High Roller Casino
For tables I really Want to like, it would be Phantom of the Opera
For tables I don't' like, probably Black Knight

 

[invitro]

This is a very good question and I agree with almost all of the answers. Could difficulty be objectively measured by play time? Or is objective a bad way of measuring difficulty?

I think the hardest is Scared Stiff, because the game-ending bug or bugs make getting a high score really hard (I haven't played it in some time, apologies if bugs have been squashed).

My shortest play time is probably Goin Nuts. I see a backhand tip up there... I will try that and look for more as I'm tired of it staring at me from the bottom of my rankings.

My non-bug hardest by leaderboard is Central Park... I'm #551 and I have tried that table a lot. I think I've even gotten max EBs.

Cactus Canyon is impossible to score on, and I know to go for Bonus X, I just haven't done it yet... or maybe the shots and sound of the other things are too much fun to resist...

Haunted House is way hard, but I love it and I felt I was getting close to understanding parts of it during my last run on it.

Harley Davidson is incredibly hard... to stand.

P.S. this is a very nice list of choices, too. I don't think Gorgar is hard but I love that table and have given it more than its share of attention... I got a good Fish Tales score at 1.495B which is #47, but I am pretty sure I just got lucky with that game. I haven't played FT since then mainly because I played the thing so much in real life.

 

[Storm Chaser]

Yeah, it's all in what to determine a hard table. If it comes to "ball time" no one could say anything else than Central Park! There are fewer tables in which you get so little "flipper time" as that one, it's hardly even a pinball table! Still, those extra balls makes it "easy" in a way so the games themselves could last long.

Obviously, the 3M Genie goal is the hardest but does that make the table itself hard? Naaah. It's definetely not easy though.

POTO, Champion Pub, El Dorado, Cactus Canyon and High Roller are all super drainy...

When it comes to "hard" as getting a good leaderboard score I think it is usually a matter of how much a table is played. All the popular ones have really tough leaderboard scores. My 900M on MM gets me a meager #170 something I think...I wouldn't say that MM is a hard table though.

When it comes to "Beating the game" I would probably say Medieval Madness and the Battle for the Kingdom and winning in Champion Pub (incredibly difficult!) together with a few others that I probably forgot about.

 

[invitro]

My 900M on MM gets me a meager #170 something I think...I wouldn't say that MM is a hard table though.

Do you play the (regular) MB over and over to rack up extra balls from the super jackpot? I got that from vikingerik awhile back and it makes the table too easy, the little door you shoot to light lock and lock balls seems to be "on rails" and it is very easy to loop it six times in a row and start MB. That's why the scores are so high. I have #20 on MM btw.

When it comes to "Beating the game" I would probably say Medieval Madness and the Battle for the Kingdom and winning in Champion Pub (incredibly difficult!) together with a few others that I probably forgot about.

Yes this is another criterion for difficulty... how hard it is to do everything in the game. I haven't got the last wizard goal in CPub, winning the wizard mode I think, and I've won only a few prize fights where you bet your score and where the big points are. On the other hand, for many of these tables that are considered hard, like El Dorado and Cactus Canyon, we've done everything on them (not talking about wizard goals here).

 

[Storm Chaser]

Do you play the (regular) MB over and over to rack up extra balls from the super jackpot?

What? That only gives you an EB the first time. I am 99% sure (I have played it 500+ times)! Or, have I missed something significant here?

 

[invitro]

What? That only gives you an EB the first time. I am 99% sure (I have played it 500+ times)! Or, have I missed something significant here?

I think it's every time you complete all Super Jackpots ("all three stages"), but there may be a max of one EB per ball in play? Anyway, here's a link to [MENTION=896]Slam23[/MENTION] who talks about this (apparently the TPA rules are wrong?) with excellent Castle MB and other info.

http://digitalpinballfans.com/showt...and-Strategies?p=130161&viewfull=1#post130161

Good luck and let me know what you find...

 

[Slam23]

Although TPA often does a good job on the rules, they sometimes miss (little) things. Haven't found them to be wrong often though. Rulesheets that were made for IRL tables - back in the time when there were no virtual recreations - and which can be found on the internet in ASCII-style text files are also sometimes incomplete too. Probably TPA uses those as reference.
Anyway, thanks [MENTION=446]invitro[/MENTION] for linking to that particular strategy thead, I forgot that I wrote that... I remember it as being correct and I can't imagine anything changed by updates because that setting would be ROM-based and probably factory also.

 

[EccentricFlower]

I'm a pretty bad pinball player, real or virtual, although I can usually bluff my way through some of the table goals if I try often enough. I've unlocked the Wizard goals on about half the tables in Seasons 1-3. But I picked "something else" because if we're going by goals completed (or not completed), Black Knight is the only table where I've only got one star (and yes I mean the standard, not wizard, goals). (Going Nuts doesn't count. It's not a real pinball table, it's an experiment that justifiably never left the lab, and I played it maybe twice before saying "never again.")

Actually, that fits my real-world experience pretty closely; I remember playing Black Knight as a kid in arcades and I never could last more than a few seconds at that table. Something about the way it spits balls right back in your face when you're not ready for them, I dunno. I haven't even managed to activate multiball in the darned thing, although it's also one of my least favorite tables so I don't work at it very much.

 

[Punisher]

Don't get mad at me, but I'm not the best at TPA, by a longshot. But in my second game on BSD, I managed to start all three multiballs at the same time. I probably got all the wizard goals, too, and I didn't even clear all of the standard goals.

 

[mikehg]

Hold the top right flipper up when you're launching a ball in BK, then shoot straight round the pop bumper into the ball lock from the top left flipper.

It's no pussycat, but if you can do that 4 times out of 5 you'll get a good game out of it.

 

[EnergyOne]

Surprised Phantom of the Opera isn't on this list.

 

[Storm Chaser]

Cool, thanks! I may exploit that one day but it seems so complicated so it won't really revolutionize my scores I believe.

 

[David T. Melnick]

BSD is great; challenging & fun. Don't change a thing.
----
The Party Zone is too hard. That is, the flippers won't work (when needed). It will be a much better game if they will work eh.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

I hasten to add that this list was put together by me and is my own personal opinion, based mostly on my playing experience but also on what I've read in various forum threads. Quite a lot has to do with the Wizard Goals, though.

It was a while back, but here's my reasons for the tables that are on the list, being on the list:
Genie - for that 3M Wizard Goal. I've since scratched it off, finally, but Genie stays on the list
Big Shot - for the 250K Wizard Goal. I've softened a bit on Big Shot, but it's still a tough game because of those outlanes and the flippers are too strong for this game.
Central Park - because of the flippers and the 1000-point-ball Wizard Goal.
Haunted House - because it always busts my rear end, and that stupid gap between the right flippers.
Gorgar - I'll take a mulligan on this; it's not that bad, really.
Firepower - OUTLANES!!
Fish Tales - for having the cheek to be as difficult in TPA as it is in real life.
BSD - see Fish Tales.
Champion Pub - because Ultimate Challenge, otherwise I could care less because I don't like this table.
Something else? - because you people will never agree with me.

 

[Kratos3]

The hardest to get a decent score for me is FP. You can't just play a casual game batting the ball around either.

 

[invitro]

Most pro tip ever

Regarding Goin Nits, there is a way to backhand the captive ball. It's tough, but doable. It'll go right inbetween the pop bumpers, and missed shots will come right back to a trap on the left flipper. So if you can get it within 50 seconds every time, you could theoretically go for forever.

So before reading this, I had given Goin' Nuts a pretty good try, but maxed out at 3.6M (leaderboard #413), and only 2 of the 5 wizard goals. And I actually like Goin' Nuts a fair bit, more than a few tables in TPA. I don't think I've read its forum, as I like to try to figure tables out myself (which rarely works) or at least give them a full try.

I read Extork's tip a couple of days ago, and tried it tonight. On the third game, I completed all wizard goals, EASILY, got up to 989 on the timer:

(I was afraid to try to roll the timer over in case the thousand didn't carry), and wound up with:

This is #10 on the leaderboard, my second-highest rank after FH.

I could make the backhand about 30% of the time, which is plenty enough. Thanks, [MENTION=2241]Extork[/MENTION], for what I'll nominate for MOST PRO TIP EVER!