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Farsight Studios
The Pinball Arcade / Farsight Studios
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<blockquote data-quote="mmmagnetic" data-source="post: 8989" data-attributes="member: 558"><p>You know, this really got me thinking...</p><p></p><p>In many genres there are discussion about what is "authentic" and what´s not, often intertwined with discussions about what´s fun and what´s not.</p><p></p><p>Take racing sims for example: Some have a rewind feature, where after a crash or a bad corner you can just rewind and try again. Now, some people say: "Well, that´s not realistic at all! You can´t just rewind in real life either." For these people, the constant looming threat of a fatal crash adds to the excitement of the game. Others just had a hard day at work, want to relax a bit with their racing sim videogame, and after doing great for 19 laps their cat jumps in their face and the race is over.</p><p></p><p>I`m really new to pinball in general. I started with Zen Pinball on my 3DS and then moved up to TPA on my iPad (quite a big jump!). I absolutely love the dynamics of these tables - long looping shots, trapping the ball, aiming, deadpassing, multiball juggling... but I hate outlane drains. I always have the feeling I got them through no fault of my own (which probably isn´t really true, but at this stage I´m just not experiences enough to always remember that shooting the ball at such and such angle here and there might result in it bouncing off the slingshots and straight into the outlane).</p><p></p><p>The tables I enjoyed the most on TPA so far are the ones where I can keep the ball going for at least a reasonable amount of time - Funhouse, RBION, (pre-update) CV or ToM (thanks, Magnasave!). In contrast, I really love to get more time with TotAN (it looks so gorgeous!), but for some reason the game just hates me and I get outlane drains all the time. </p><p></p><p>Now, maybe that´s realistic, I wouldn´t doubt it. I´ve been playing a lot of shootemups in the past, another arcade game genre. I know these games can be over extremely fast if you´re not careful. But when I take a little break from work, sit down with TPA and the first three balls end after a minute due to the ball just racing to the outlanes it can get quite frustrating. Arcade operators surely love to see that the average novice player is done with his or her credit after just a couple of minutes (pro players obviously can get going way longer, but I bet that even during the heydays of pinball these were rare enough to not be a threat to the arcade owners bottom line), but I´m not at an arcade, nobody is making more money because I drain more often.</p><p></p><p>So, this is already getting much longer than I planned, so how about this:</p><p></p><p>Add a baby mode. </p><p></p><p>Let me choose to just seal these outlanes shut. Will this make the tables almost stupidly easy? Probably. Experienced players won´t touch that with a ten foot pole. But it would give novice players like me a chance to concentrate on the table objectives, on the actual flipper techniques, and not worry about the outlane drains all the time. Add a seperate score board, or maybe only do local scorekeeping, I wouldn´t mind. I´m no programmer, but I can´t imagine this being anything tough to do, and it would be just another feature that pro players can happily ignore.</p><p>I mean, it´s even worse on iOS where I just completely ignore nudging because by the time I shook my iPad or do whatever weird swipes the game wants me to do, the ball is already gone.</p><p></p><p>In the end, as much as TPA is a simulation, it´s also a videogame - it´s always good to have options. I´m fully willing to learn to play pinball properly, so far it´s been a blast, and doing loop combos on ToM or nailing shots in RBION or Funhouse is such a great feeling, but having a baby mode (easy mode, novice mode, whatever you wanna call it) option would be great for some more relaxed rounds of pinball. And as I said, veterans could completely ignore it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="mmmagnetic, post: 8989, member: 558"] You know, this really got me thinking... In many genres there are discussion about what is "authentic" and what´s not, often intertwined with discussions about what´s fun and what´s not. Take racing sims for example: Some have a rewind feature, where after a crash or a bad corner you can just rewind and try again. Now, some people say: "Well, that´s not realistic at all! You can´t just rewind in real life either." For these people, the constant looming threat of a fatal crash adds to the excitement of the game. Others just had a hard day at work, want to relax a bit with their racing sim videogame, and after doing great for 19 laps their cat jumps in their face and the race is over. I`m really new to pinball in general. I started with Zen Pinball on my 3DS and then moved up to TPA on my iPad (quite a big jump!). I absolutely love the dynamics of these tables - long looping shots, trapping the ball, aiming, deadpassing, multiball juggling... but I hate outlane drains. I always have the feeling I got them through no fault of my own (which probably isn´t really true, but at this stage I´m just not experiences enough to always remember that shooting the ball at such and such angle here and there might result in it bouncing off the slingshots and straight into the outlane). The tables I enjoyed the most on TPA so far are the ones where I can keep the ball going for at least a reasonable amount of time - Funhouse, RBION, (pre-update) CV or ToM (thanks, Magnasave!). In contrast, I really love to get more time with TotAN (it looks so gorgeous!), but for some reason the game just hates me and I get outlane drains all the time. Now, maybe that´s realistic, I wouldn´t doubt it. I´ve been playing a lot of shootemups in the past, another arcade game genre. I know these games can be over extremely fast if you´re not careful. But when I take a little break from work, sit down with TPA and the first three balls end after a minute due to the ball just racing to the outlanes it can get quite frustrating. Arcade operators surely love to see that the average novice player is done with his or her credit after just a couple of minutes (pro players obviously can get going way longer, but I bet that even during the heydays of pinball these were rare enough to not be a threat to the arcade owners bottom line), but I´m not at an arcade, nobody is making more money because I drain more often. So, this is already getting much longer than I planned, so how about this: Add a baby mode. Let me choose to just seal these outlanes shut. Will this make the tables almost stupidly easy? Probably. Experienced players won´t touch that with a ten foot pole. But it would give novice players like me a chance to concentrate on the table objectives, on the actual flipper techniques, and not worry about the outlane drains all the time. Add a seperate score board, or maybe only do local scorekeeping, I wouldn´t mind. I´m no programmer, but I can´t imagine this being anything tough to do, and it would be just another feature that pro players can happily ignore. I mean, it´s even worse on iOS where I just completely ignore nudging because by the time I shook my iPad or do whatever weird swipes the game wants me to do, the ball is already gone. In the end, as much as TPA is a simulation, it´s also a videogame - it´s always good to have options. I´m fully willing to learn to play pinball properly, so far it´s been a blast, and doing loop combos on ToM or nailing shots in RBION or Funhouse is such a great feeling, but having a baby mode (easy mode, novice mode, whatever you wanna call it) option would be great for some more relaxed rounds of pinball. And as I said, veterans could completely ignore it. [/QUOTE]
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The Pinball Arcade / Farsight Studios
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The Pinball Arcade / Farsight Studios
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iOS v1.1.2 changes
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