Has this game become more difficult recently?

[Storm Chaser]

I just went through my leaderboard scores and I am on top 1.000 on all of the but one: TOTAN. It was the same case for Cactus Canyon (which I have completely ignored since the start) but that was quickly "fixed". I have an old high-score of 500M on Totan that was erased by some bug some 1-1.5 years ago. My current high score is about 340 which places me on #1.300.

I thought that would be quite easily fixed since I have had no problem with no other table but I can barely make a 100M. I remember this as quite an easy table and one I really liked but this has turned really difficult, in my eyes. How is that 1.000 people have reached 500M+ on this game? Even if there are Harem/BattleTheGenie-loopholes, I wouldn't expect 1.000 people knowing of it.

It IS one of the oldest one, and also one of the most popular one, as well as a free one (I think) for a long time. I guess that have made it the most played one, which in turn creates high highscores...but is that the only reason? Or, has the game been adjusted to be more difficult in some update?

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

I just went through my leaderboard scores and I am on top 1.000 on all of the but one: TOTAN. It was the same case for Cactus Canyon (which I have completely ignored since the start) but that was quickly "fixed". I have an old high-score of 500M on Totan that was erased by some bug some 1-1.5 years ago. My current high score is about 340 which places me on #1.300.

I thought that would be quite easily fixed since I have had no problem with no other table but I can barely make a 100M. I remember this as quite an easy table and one I really liked but this has turned really difficult, in my eyes. How is that 1.000 people have reached 500M+ on this game? Even if there are Harem/BattleTheGenie-loopholes, I wouldn't expect 1.000 people knowing of it.

It IS one of the oldest one, and also one of the most popular one, as well as a free one (I think) for a long time. I guess that have made it the most played one, which in turn creates high highscores...but is that the only reason? Or, has the game been adjusted to be more difficult in some update?

Hmmmm...I never really got a score of 1 billion. Don't know how that popped up. Must be a bug; I hope Farsight fixes this and/or resets the leaderboard for this table.

 

[Storm Chaser]

Oh, so there is a glitch in the leaderboard?

Still, I have managed to get 300M & 500M before (but only those times) and I can't imagine how I did that. I mean, I have improved quite a lot the last 6 months and most of the time when I go back to old tables I tend to improve my high-scores drastically but not for TOTAN.

I really hadn't played this consistently for a long time so I can't really say what could be the difference, but usually it is that it drains more often. It is, nonetheless, one of the best balanced table in terms of randomness, physics etc. Many tables you can quite easily control, cradle, learn how to shoot certain shots, rinse & repeat...but this one, I always tend to get into a flip-fest more often than I am comfortable with. I don't know any table that has more sideway movement of the ball!

 

[Storm Chaser]

Getting back to this thread. Is it a bug causing so many scores above 500M or why are there so many good scores on this one?

 

[Tann]

Getting back to this thread. Is it a bug causing so many scores above 500M or why are there so many good scores on this one?

Not really a bug, but there was a way to stack harem and genie multiball, or something like that (that makes score gazillion points), when ToTAN was released. It seems to not be possible anymore, as FS updated the table.
But the insane highscores thanks to this "exploit" are still in the leaderboards.

 

[vikingerik]

We're fairly sure the TOTAN leaderboard is polluted with scores for other tables that erroneously posted to TOTAN instead. TOTAN is table index number 0, so there's lots of ways for corrupted or deliberately hacked data to have a missing table number and land here.

I don't think all those scores are from the Harem/Genie stack. It's difficult to pull off even if you know about it. There's no way several hundred players all did it.

The Harem/Genie stack was fixed in a ROM revision, which TPA didn't have at first but patched in later. I've done the same procedure as seen in a Youtube video and it didn't happen for me on TPA.

The remaining score exploit for TOTAN is stacking 3x Lightning Lamp into Genie Battle. This can score a few hundred million and still easily trumps everything else on the table.

 

[Zaphod77]

The other trick that still works is just playing harem over and over. eventually the points per target will be high enough to be worthwhile. this is why that left orbit is more difficult then it has any right to be.

 

[workshed]

For anyone interested here's a vimeo video from PAPA explaining the Harem/Genie stack. I'm pretty sure that it is Mark Steinman explaining it for us. I hadn't realized this was ever fixed in a code update, but I guess I was wrong. I never got around to trying in on TPA. This video never seemed to make to it Youtube when PAPA did the switch over from Vimeo.

edit: embedded Vimeo vids don't seem to work on mobile. Here's a hard link. https://vimeo.com/19343131

 

[vikingerik]

The other trick that still works is just playing harem over and over. eventually the points per target will be high enough to be worthwhile. this is why that left orbit is more difficult then it has any right to be.

I've tried that and never get anywhere with it on TPA. The Harem value resets on draining. And long strings of bumper hits to raise the value aren't exactly easy accessible, either in or out of Harem. I can start Harem maybe three times on a ball and get the value to 150k or so, but that doesn't really cash in for very much. TOTAN doesn't have any grindable railroads to keep Harem going for very long. Am I missing something? How much have you gotten out of Harem grinding?

 

[Zaphod77]

i haven't really been able to get it that high either, but that's only because that orbit is so hard to shoot it should be as easy as the same one on theater of magic with those droopy flippers, and yet it's unreasonably difficult. it works a lot better in real life. you just keep putting balls back in the bumpers.

 

[Tann]

For anyone interested here's a vimeo video from PAPA explaining the Harem/Genie stack. I'm pretty sure that it is Mark Steinman explaining it for us. I hadn't realized this was ever fixed in a code update, but I guess I was wrong. I never got around to trying in on TPA.

Nice finding. I'm too lazy to try this (and manage to do it ^^), and see if the exploit has been fixed in TPA (given that FS doesn't have the rights to modify a table or a ROM, I assume the exploit is still possible? )

An other way is simply to check the weekly and monthly leaderboards and see how high are the scores, compared to the all-time ones...

 

[vikingerik]

An other way is simply to check the weekly and monthly leaderboards and see how high are the scores, compared to the all-time ones...

invitro did this in our discussions about the top 40 players list. Scores over a billion still hit TOTAN frequently, a couple times a month. Often enough that it's wildly implausible that that many players are good enough to pull off the intricate Harem/Genie stack without finding these forums to say anything. Much more likely that it's scores or hack attempts leaking from other tables onto TOTAN as table ID 0.