How some people can achieve such ridiculous scores?

[soundwave106]

so the question is how?

There are some tables that I know that it is possible to play a really long time. I don't tend to play them if I don't have that time. My top Twilight Zone took forever; something like 6-8 LITZs I think (lost count). You get one extra ball per Zone plus a few other extra balls here and there so if you aren't draining a lot you get a bunch of leeway. Funhouse is the same way (one extra ball per cycle). Scared Stiff just plays easy (which I've heard unlike the others is pretty realistic).

 

[Trever Chalmers]

I got two balls "stuck" in the crate during Crate Multiball in Scared Stiff. It was continuously spamming jackpots. I think I scored 40m+ before realizing what was going on and killing the game. Theoretically I could've left the game in that state overnight and come down to a stupid score.

It was a "Challenge" game and those scores don't count on the leaderboards, but glitches like that can and do happen and if you can easily set them up, you can get huge scores without even sitting in front of your console/PC.

I had something similar happen to me on Black Hole where the ball got stuck between the bumper and slingshot. I could have sat there forever but that would have been boring, so I nudged it lol.

 

[Dumpstar]

I wish I had those kinds of skills. In a good game I complete royal madness once.

If you can do the castle multiball shot consistently, then you actually only ever need to go for that shot. It will spot you every other shot required. You just need to clear out the trolls first.

EDIT: For those following at home, when you do the castle multiball shot, after it throws the ball back down the left orbit, if you let it bounce off the left flipper it will be trapable on the right flipper. Rinse and repeat the shot.

 

[brakel]

If you can do the castle multiball shot consistently, then you actually only ever need to go for that shot. It will spot you every other shot required. You just need to clear out the trolls first.

EDIT: For those following at home, when you do the castle multiball shot, after it throws the ball back down the left orbit, if you let it bounce off the left flipper it will be trapable on the right flipper. Rinse and repeat the shot.

Many people call that a dead flipper pass. Very helpful non-skill to have. When you're first learning it you may find it actually hard to do nothing!

 

[Mark W**a]

I wonder if they achieve such a high score by simply hacking into TPA and changing their numbers on the leaderboard? It could be a thought.

If they were, people would be mad and it would be obvious.

Even that "Failsight" guy who is a hacker/*******, that ruined the one poll, don't have any top scores. He's high on some tables, but if he were truly hacking he'd just be #1 on everything.

The top players , many of them post here so we know that most if not all the top scores are legit.

There was a bug in the past but it was fixed. And Monster Bash had an exploit that was also fixed.

I never understood the fun or/and fascination in playing a game for a high score?

I always just played for fun or to beat the game. In this case, it's to complete objectives.

Really? That's what pinball is all about! Though with newer stuff, starting in 86 with High Speed, it did become about going through a story for some tables. To each his own , though, you play the game for your own reason and enjoyment, whatever that may be.

I got two balls "stuck" in the crate during Crate Multiball in Scared Stiff. It was continuously spamming jackpots. I think I scored 40m+ before realizing what was going on and killing the game. Theoretically I could've left the game in that state overnight and come down to a stupid score.

It was a "Challenge" game and those scores don't count on the leaderboards, but glitches like that can and do happen and if you can easily set them up, you can get huge scores without even sitting in front of your console/PC.

That would explain some of the SS scores that truly are redicilous and would constitute an insane time investment...

I wish I had those kinds of skills. In a good game I complete royal madness once.

It just comes with a ton of practice and playing. 800 million used to be an insane score for me. Before that just reaching the wizard goal was an amazing accomplishment to me. Let alone finishing it.

I just got better as time went on, when it first came out in 2012 I was not good, being a top a leaderboard was a pipe dream. I was just happy beating some of my friends at the time on Xbox live.

Well, recheck your doubting. The scores really do take 10 hours. Some folks zone out on video games playing Candy Crush or some such. Some do it with pinball.

Medieval Madness gives out extra balls not just for Royal Madness, but also every time you complete Castle Multiball by collecting all 7 super jackpots. I find that even easier than Royal Madness, so going infinite on MM is very easy. It's not even true here that the best players screw up eventually. Even if you drain a couple balls in a row, any one ball can earn any number of EBs back from Castle Multiball and keep going forever.

AFM has high scores reachable in the shortest time duration because there are no repeatable extra balls except the random video mode, so eventually there are no more EBs and the game has to end. My #1 score there took a bit over three hours.

The only table I've ever seen an unlimited score glitch is Black Hole, where a ball can get stuck repeatedly triggering the left slingshot. But this only scores about 50 points per second, so each million would take over 5 hours and a top leaderboard score would take 750, so folks don't seem to abuse that one.

That's probably why I warm up to it. For me 2 hours is absolute tops, I may try to push myself to 3, but I like tables with a limit. I look at Medieval Madness and just go, holy Fing **** lol... But I love madness so much I'm making a push for at least top 20.

If you can do the castle multiball shot consistently, then you actually only ever need to go for that shot. It will spot you every other shot required. You just need to clear out the trolls first.

EDIT: For those following at home, when you do the castle multiball shot, after it throws the ball back down the left orbit, if you let it bounce off the left flipper it will be trapable on the right flipper. Rinse and repeat the shot.

A lot of tables have that.

Funhouse, Madness, Theatre, T2, AFM... Orbit shots almost always in pin arcade let you do what's called a loop pass basically but without actually doing a loop pass which is very hard in real life.

Not going to lie, you take advantage of every single skill and any kind of leeway the game gives you to reach a super crazy score. Fish Tales is another, you just let the ball dead flipper bounce off of a plunge, hit the left, bounce to right, post pass to the left, hit the lock and repeat.

Like AFM I really like Fish Tales because there's very few extra balls. The high score right now could probably be taken out in less than 2 hours easily, if you can survive that long...

 

[smbhax]

If they were, people would be mad and it would be obvious.

Even that "Failsight" guy who is a hacker/*******, that ruined the one poll, don't have any top scores. He's high on some tables, but if he were truly hacking he'd just be #1 on everything.

The top players , many of them post here so we know that most if not all the top scores are legit.

There was a bug in the past but it was fixed. And Monster Bash had an exploit that was also fixed.

If all the leaderboard hacks *have* been fixed, which I don't think we can be sure of by any means, then we need the crazy good players to get some more competition going on Victory--that current top score being x200 higher than second place sure sticks out!

 

[Mark W**a]

If all the leaderboard hacks *have* been fixed, which I don't think we can be sure of by any means, then we need the crazy good players to get some more competition going on Victory--that current top score being x200 higher than second place sure sticks out!

Yeah that looks like a hack.

I don't play Victory at all so I never noticed.

Could have been a one-off, accidental glitch, like many talked about encountering here. I doubt someone's going to go through the trouble of hacking Victory of all tables. If it were easy to hack tables, than people would be going for the big ones.

And I am not familiar with Victory so I have no idea what it would take to pull of a score like that. Maybe he's just that good lol.

 

[vikingerik]

I'm not even sure it's possible to have actually accumulated 73 billion on Victory in the time since the table was released.

BTW, Mark Wyda, while we're talking about hacking, that just happened to be your post number 1337.

 

[Espy]

Yeah that looks like a hack.

I don't play Victory at all so I never noticed.

Could have been a one-off, accidental glitch, like many talked about encountering here. I doubt someone's going to go through the trouble of hacking Victory of all tables. If it were easy to hack tables, than people would be going for the big ones.

And I am not familiar with Victory so I have no idea what it would take to pull of a score like that. Maybe he's just that good lol.

There's no real score exploit on the table itself that I know of - just hit the checkpoints as quickly as possible. Which would be too risky to have such a high scoring game with. So it's probably a hack.

I remember when Central Park's high score was in the billions. I calculated, if the player was scoring as efficiently as possible, it would have taken him several millenia to reach that score.

 

[Zaphod77]

The main thing with victory is a) you can go infinite if you get the extra ball shot down, and b) maxing the playfield multiplier gets you a million or so per spinner shot until the checkpoint times out.

 

[kinggo]

well, 73B divided with 1M is still 73 thousands spins.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Could have been a one-off, accidental glitch, like many talked about encountering here. I doubt someone's going to go through the trouble of hacking Victory of all tables. If it were easy to hack tables, than people would be going for the big ones.

It really depends on the individual doing the hack. Hacked leaderboard scores are always done to call attention to themselves (or to troll the other people trying to compete normally), but their attitude and intelligence will determine what they will try for. For those who want a lot of attention quickly but don't mind that their scores have a good chance of getting erased, they'll go for the most popular leaderboards in a game. For those who prefer a slower attention-hogging approach, they'll pick something not quite as popular so it stays on longer. The smartest ones will create a record that's just slightly better than the best one so no one suspects it's fake. These are the hardest ones to catch, but they risk getting their record legitimately beaten, and they must check up on it every now and then.

As I don't really look at the leaderboards, this Victory score may be a third type: One who just hacks to get to the top of every leaderboard. These guys just put up a fake record and never look back, so as long as they're caught, they're no longer a problem. The idea is that someone who puts in that large amount of hacked records prefers to leav an impact via sheer quantity and has most likely moved on to another game to screw up the leaderboards for.

 

[superballs]

Really? That's what pinball is all about! Though with newer stuff, starting in 86 with High Speed, it did become about going through a story for some tables. To each his own , though, you play the game for your own reason and enjoyment, whatever that may be.

Other than this, great post, and even this is mostly in the park logically. Except that playing pinball for high score, you are only competing with a local machine high score, the high scores of people you know, potentially, and your own personal best. This is in a situation where people would run out of money and have to not play anymore (some with more money to spend on a single pinball table than others, plus replays). Where in TPA, you can restart after a bad first ball and it doesn't cost you a thing, you can play a number of games limited only by time as well.

All told, it's still an even playfield, mostly (some find the game easier on mobile and others find it easier on console) so if someone can obtain a score, it's possible for anyone, in theory.

 

[Zaphod77]

It's totally not even. compare monster bash on IOS, where you can't trap the scoop kickout, to PC where you can.

Or IOS, where teed off locks up if you don't plunge fast enough, to PC where it's not a problem.

 

[ER777]

There's definitely still some bogus scores on the leaderboards. Scores made up of consecutive digits or that just happen to be slightly above a legitimate high score are good examples of semi-obvious hacks. They probably do that so it can easily be confirmed as a hack in their circles but not so obvious that it would get a lot of attention and get deleted.

 

[brakel]

There's definitely still some bogus scores on the leaderboards. Scores made up of consecutive digits or that just happen to be slightly above a legitimate high score are good examples of semi-obvious hacks. They probably do that so it can easily be confirmed as a hack in their circles but not so obvious that it would get a lot of attention and get deleted.

Wouldn't slightly above a legitimate score also be a legitimate score?

 

[ER777]

Wouldn't slightly above a legitimate score also be a legitimate score?

These are the top 5 Genie scores, when you see a name that has had suspicious scores in the past get exactly 10 points (minimum scoring increment) higher than an established top player I think some skepticism is warranted. I think there are other instances that are less obvious and harder to detect. Let's just say there are a handful of names on the leaderboards that I'm skeptical about every score from.

1. Rob 17,639,850
2. Tarek Oberdieck 17,639,840
3. Tomakin 12,714,870
4. roma 7,663,400
5. -SVB- 6,868,410

 

[JPelter]

This along with platform differences is the main reason I'm still waiting for the steam friend leaderboards to become fully working. I mean having friended someone is no guarantee of anything, but I'm about 50 times more likely to trust the scores of people posting on these forums than random duders on the leaderboards.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

It's totally not even. compare monster bash on IOS, where you can't trap the scoop kickout, to PC where you can.

Or IOS, where teed off locks up if you don't plunge fast enough, to PC where it's not a problem.

I can say that you cannot trap the ball from the right scoop in Monster Bash on Android either. You can with the left scoop though.

These are the top 5 Genie scores, when you see a name that has had suspicious scores in the past get exactly 10 points (minimum scoring increment) higher than an established top player I think some skepticism is warranted. I think there are other instances that are less obvious and harder to detect. Let's just say there are a handful of names on the leaderboards that I'm skeptical about every score from.

1. Rob 17,639,850
2. Tarek Oberdieck 17,639,840
3. Tomakin 12,714,870
4. roma 7,663,400
5. -SVB- 6,868,410

Yeah, that's a bit TOO close. That looks suspicious.

 

[Gus]

Rob has set 15 mill+ on Big Shot as well. That can't be legit, right? Two guys have set 60 mill+ on BS which seems as likely as someone jumping to the moon.