Request Suggestion for the Table Difficulty Issues

[Sean DonCarlos]

Reading back through some of these posts, I've realized I'm sort of coming off as some sort of elitist prick. That's not my intent at all...anyone at CP Pinball knows I've had my fair share of lapses and stupidities. I've even gotten the Dracula here to exclaim "I feel like a blundering novice!" (which it will do if you have a really pathetic game...and I mean it has to be really bad).

Kolchak: If you have regular access to a real TZ, keep trying for LITZ. No video game will ever be able to adequately capture the light show that opens it (although the PC version makes a worthy try), nor the feeling of accomplishment - followed by overwhelming insanity! - the first time you play it. And no fair cheating your way there if the machine has the V9.4H ROMs!

EDIT: (I'm trying to have too many conversations at once!)

On a table set up like that yea. But on a factory set board you can get away with quite a bit, which is welcoming for non expert players. Only the top 1% of even digital players can really keep the ball away from the outlanes, for everyone else they need the help.

For the record, the TZ at CP Pinball is set up as follows: V9.4H ROM, medium settings, no ball saver, outlane posts about halfway up, no barrier in bumpers, no buy-in, limit 4 extra balls at once, sensitive yet manageable tilt, replay score = special = nothing (table's on free play). The replay score wanders between 195M and 245M, which theoretically means 90% of the scores are under that value.

But I'm sensing on the overall issue we agree: the current table should be left alone, and a harder/untuned table should be in place for those who want it.

MORE EDIT: CV's outlanes only act that way on the mobile devices, where making the appropriate nudge (either diagonally up to clear the sling wall or a soft nudge horizontally to hopefully find the inlane) is difficult because of the control scheme. On the 360 I find CV's outlanes only slightly hungrier than "normal" outlanes.

 

[Craig Booth]

+1 for normal/real/authentic mode.

 

[Mark W**a]

We're definitely in agreement there. Nothing wrong with this being an option.

About CV though. The problem I have is that see, nudging on digital isn't scientific. I mean well actually it is, when you nudge on digital it reacts the exact same way every single time. So on CV's outlanes, and I mean this on Xbox, nudging will more often than not actually KILL you, not save you. It's just the nature of those weird outlanes and how they are setup, and how PBA nudges work. So the strategy is to stay away from them completely and don't mess up shots to begin with. If your ball does go in one of those lanes you should just not touch the controller, and just pray it doesn't drain. And on this particular table moreso than the others Farsight have it setup to take bad drains.

And the scores on CV really back up my claim. I think top score was like 1 billion? It takes me about 20-30 minutes to crack 450 million. I hate the table and find it uber frustrating, so I can only imagine what the more casual players think of it.

But yeah like I said, as an option, sure why not. It's just that when I see 90% of the players on the leaderboards on both platforms with such low scores AS IS, I question whether a higher difficulty is needed. That's all I'm really saying.

 

[Kolchak357]

Kolchak: If you have regular access to a real TZ, keep trying for LITZ. No video game will ever be able to adequately capture the light show that opens it (although the PC version makes a worthy try), nor the feeling of accomplishment - followed by overwhelming insanity! - the first time you play it. And no fair cheating your way there if the machine has the V9.4H ROMs!

I go to a place once a month that has 50 pins on free play. So I will definitely keep playing TZ and shooting for LITZ. I usually get in 5 or 6 games until I hear the siren song of another pin. Busted - yeah I sometimes take the extra ball at the end if nobody is lookin'. Who knows, maybe the TPA version will help my skills with the real monster.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

I go to a place once a month that has 50 pins on free play. So I will definitely keep playing TZ and shooting for LITZ. I usually get in 5 or 6 games until I hear the siren song of another pin. Busted - yeah I sometimes take the extra ball at the end if nobody is lookin'. Who knows, maybe the TPA version will help my skills with the real monster.

Oh, I wasn't referring to the buy-in. On the V9.4H ROMs there's a way to enable LITZ to start immediately on the next shot to piano or slot machine. (Of course, it zeroes your entire score after LITZ completes and disqualifies you for LITZ Champion to keep it fair, but the LITZ round itself looks and acts just like the real thing.)

 

[Kolchak357]

Never tried that. Never even heard of it before. Hmmmmm

 

[Fuseball]

About CV though. The problem I have is that see, nudging on digital isn't scientific. I mean well actually it is, when you nudge on digital it reacts the exact same way every single time. So on CV's outlanes, and I mean this on Xbox, nudging will more often than not actually KILL you, not save you. It's just the nature of those weird outlanes and how they are setup, and how PBA nudges work. So the strategy is to stay away from them completely and don't mess up shots to begin with. If your ball does go in one of those lanes you should just not touch the controller, and just pray it doesn't drain. And on this particular table moreso than the others Farsight have it setup to take bad drains.

On a real CV it's rare to get the ball entering the left out/inlane area at much speed. The menagerie ball tends to slow things down, whereas in TPA the menagerie ball has way too much mass and influence over the player's ball, if anything accelerating and bouncing it into the outlane. I think that is why the left outlane is so evil in TPA CV. When the player's ball hits the menagerie ball it should bounce around in it's cage without affecting the steel ball that much.

 

[jaredmorgs]

As most of us are aware by now, the tables are tuned before they reach us to reduce their difficulty. While on most tables this difficulty decrease has been moderate and not (imo) detrimental to gameplay, Scared Stiff and especially Twilight Zone are far, far easier than the corresponding physical machines. TZ in particular has been declawed to the point that it's a mere shadow of itself; it should be at least as difficult as the TPA version of RBION. I realize that video game pinball will always be easier than the real thing - the act of translating nudging from the physical realm to an analog stick or touch controls in itself makes things considerably easier - but I think we're starting to go too far.

<huuuuge snip>

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving TZ even in its overly cuddly state. My coworkers will soon have the TZ music burned into their brains during lunch hour whether they like it or not! But having invested so much time in the real table, I think Twilight Zone deserves to have more of its unique challenge captured in TPA, and I think future tables deserve it as well.

Twilight Zone should be ball breakingly hard. It is the game's nature. Even on pinmame with 5 balls this game is no walk in the park.

Turbo drains are a feature, not a bug. ;-)

 

[brakel]

How much of the difference between real and TPA is the physics tweaks and how much is just inherent in the digital world? In real life there are an infinite number of points on the rounded edge of the end of a flipper. Each one is going to give you a slightly different combination of power and trajectory. Same thing with posts and anything else you hit. In the digital world there are, by definition, a finite number of points on the end of a flipper and therefore a finite number of outcomes when shooting the ball at the end of the flipper.

I'm not arguing against making a harder mode that is closer to a real table's difficulty, but I'm curious how close they can get. I can see a time when there are perhaps a billion points on that rounded edge at the end of the flipper and on every other round thing on the table, but today the CPUs don't have the ability to calculate things that closely to reality. Once we get to the point of having billions of points on objects I think we will be much closer to simulating the real life results of those objects.

Given those limitations how much better can they do? Or a better question is what do you think that they change to make the tables easier for the average player?

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Given those limitations how much better can they do? Or a better question is what do you think that they change to make the tables easier for the average player?

I don't really know. What I do know is that FarSight tunes the tables and that part of this tuning specifically involves reducing the difficulty of the table to make the shots easier for casual players. I'm assuming that means that the collision meshes are subtly adjusted so that balls are encouraged to travel up ramps instead of bouncing around in them and falling back down, that when ramps do reject they don't head for the center drain quite so often (TZ's left ramp in particular often rejects-to-drain on the real machine), etc.

I assume that the decrease in difficulty is fairly significant, otherwise it wouldn't be worth FarSight's time and effort to do that part of the tuning. So I think an "untuned" table (untuned for difficulty only...I'd still want any physics weirdness to be adjusted) would be a good starting point for a "hard mode" table.

 

[tcvpin]

I'm very new to TPA and even newer to Pinball, the game, so take my comments lightly, please. I am also playing exclusively on iOS.

I saw that TZ was available and knew that it was supposed to be a good game. I tried the free version a few times and felt that the ball was very, very slow. Now, keep in mind that I have been playing TPA TOTAN nearly exclusively for about the past three weeks. (I was obsessed with rescuing the princess and -- much, much, much cursing and fist slams later -- I finally did it on Friday night. It wasn't my highest score on the table, but I finally got the damned goal. (Aside: It's kind of underwhelming to have the princess get trapped immediately thereafter. WTF? Is this Princess Peach?)) After playing TOTAN and losing control of the ball quickly, it seemed like TZ was stuck in some kind of low-gear.

Anyway, I decided to buy the "Pro" version of the table. I'm not a pro, natch, but I had been wanting to play with the options to move the ball around freely and explore the table. I played a few more games, but don't recall my recollection of the ball speed. Got stuck in the Operator Menu somehow and forced-quit the game.

On Saturday I played a few more games. I noticed:

1. The game was considerably faster.
2. A particular angle off the right flipper would often result in a quick center drain. (I don't know the terms well enough to describe what happens.)
3. There was no ball-save.
4. An animated Rod Serling flipped me off and erased all my progress on other TPA tables.

In light of the discussion here, the questions I have are:

1. Is there some sort of hard mode that comes with buying the Pro version?
2. Is the free version extra slow?
3. Am I insane (Just in case the therapist is a member) or is there a speed difference when you buy Pro?

Cheers.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Hopefully Gord doesn't mind, but I'm going to move this back to General Disscussion since it's not just a TZ issue.

 

[Mayuh]

1. The game was considerably faster.
...
3. Am I insane (Just in case the therapist is a member) or is there a speed difference when you buy Pro?

Well, you're not insane it happens to me all the time. After playing eg. Taxi most of the other tables run in slomo for me. While after playing bigshot all the others are on steroids... I think you need a minute or two to let you brain adjust.

Either that or I'm insane too ;-)

 

[sharkbear]

The price for the operators menu would make sense if it came with a re-tuned version of the game. I could see paying $3.99 for a second "pro" edition of a table that includes both the operator's menu and a harder version of each table (not necessary for Big Shot, thanks, I'm not a masochist).

Given what we've heard from Farsight about how much time it takes to tune each table, I don't expect them to be able to add difficulty options for free. Make a separate, kick-your-ass "pro edition" with its own leaderboard. That's worth 4 bucks to me.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

The price for the operators menu would make sense if it came with a re-tuned version of the game. I could see paying $3.99 for a second "pro" edition of a table that includes both the operator's menu and a harder version of each table (not necessary for Big Shot, thanks, I'm not a masochist).

Given what we've heard from Farsight about how much time it takes to tune each table, I don't expect them to be able to add difficulty options for free. Make a separate, kick-your-ass "pro edition" with its own leaderboard. That's worth 4 bucks to me.

It shouldn't take them much more time, if the tuning for physics weirdness is done before the tuning for reduced difficulty. Simply save the table collision mesh and other relevant physical properties between the two tunings and use that as the hard version. (Although if they stuck the hard table in with the Pro Mode stuff, I would have incentive to buy the Pro Mode for more tables than I otherwise would.)

And yeah, the older tables probably wouldn't get much harder relative to their current versions...which is fine with me, because the older tables are closer in difficulty to their real counterparts already.

 

[rob3d]

(Although if they stuck the hard table in with the Pro Mode stuff, I would have incentive to buy the Pro Mode for more tables than I otherwise would.)

I feel like this might be the only way we would get a "hard mode" version of the table, and I would be glad to buy Pro versions of more tables if they included it.

 

[151120]

This has been stated before, but I think there are two major problems to making "hard" modes for the games (or making them exactly like the real game).

Flipper Control: You just can't preform a lot of the same flipper moves that you can on a real machine, for example, dead catching (hitting the ball as it comes down at just the right time to stop it on the flipper)

Nudging: I haven't played other platforms, but on the iphone version, when you touch the screen to nudge, you nudge the same amount every time. There's no way to vary how much force you can nudge the machine like on a real pinball. Maybe they could make the shake nudging better, but currently it's not that great either.

I don't know if there's a way to ever make those exactly like a real machine--probably not. But virtual pinball is still great. I wish finding a real machine was easier where I live!

 

[brakel]

This has been stated before, but I think there are two major problems to making "hard" modes for the games (or making them exactly like the real game).

Flipper Control: You just can't preform a lot of the same flipper moves that you can on a real machine, for example, dead catching (hitting the ball as it comes down at just the right time to stop it on the flipper)

Nudging: I haven't played other platforms, but on the iphone version, when you touch the screen to nudge, you nudge the same amount every time. There's no way to vary how much force you can nudge the machine like on a real pinball. Maybe they could make the shake nudging better, but currently it's not that great either.

I don't know if there's a way to ever make those exactly like a real machine--probably not. But virtual pinball is still great. I wish finding a real machine was easier where I live!

I don't even understand how people nudge a table in real life. I started playing pinball as a kid in the '70s and couldn't nudge at all then. I'm a pretty big guy and I can nudge a little by leaning into the table which gives me an up and down nudge. I have no luck in nudging side to side on a real table. So for me TPA nudging is way easier than in real life. I can protect out lane drains and SDTM drains quite efficiently in TPA...as long as I can think fast enough!

 

[151120]

I don't even understand how people nudge a table in real life. I started playing pinball as a kid in the '70s and couldn't nudge at all then. I'm a pretty big guy and I can nudge a little by leaning into the table which gives me an up and down nudge. I have no luck in nudging side to side on a real table. So for me TPA nudging is way easier than in real life. I can protect out lane drains and SDTM drains quite efficiently in TPA...as long as I can think fast enough!

On a real machine, you can use nudging for a lot of different things. One thing I do often is, if the ball is coming at a slingshot, it's possible to increase or decrease the force it will hit with with a nudge on one side or the other. Also, depending on how much you want to increase or decrease the ball speed, you nudge harder or softer. Another example would be keeping the ball in the pop bumpers with nudges if you want it to be there longer. And of course preventing out lane drains (or attempting to) with a side nudge. The new Wizard of Oz machine even has a toy at the bottom of the left out lane (or a bumper I think, hard to tell) that by nudging the machine you can make it spit the ball back out into the playfield.

Nudging from the bottom like you mentioned is also a great way to influence the ball--but not possible on TPA.


Sometimes you can find a machine with a very generous or even non-working tilt mechanism. I recently found a fairly beat to hell Roller Coaster Tycoon at a St. Louis pizza place with a broken tilt. Good fun

 

[brakel]

On a real machine, you can use nudging for a lot of different things. One thing I do often is, if the ball is coming at a slingshot, it's possible to increase or decrease the force it will hit with with a nudge on one side or the other. Also, depending on how much you want to increase or decrease the ball speed, you nudge harder or softer. Another example would be keeping the ball in the pop bumpers with nudges if you want it to be there longer. And of course preventing out lane drains (or attempting to) with a side nudge. The new Wizard of Oz machine even has a toy at the bottom of the left out lane (or a bumper I think, hard to tell) that by nudging the machine you can make it spit the ball back out into the playfield.

Nudging from the bottom like you mentioned is also a great way to influence the ball--but not possible on TPA.


Sometimes you can find a machine with a very generous or even non-working tilt mechanism. I recently found a fairly beat to hell Roller Coaster Tycoon at a St. Louis pizza place with a broken tilt. Good fun

You misread my post. I know why you would nudge in real life, I just don't know how to effectively nudge side to side in real life. I try pushing and pulling and most tables don't even move.

Also my main TPA device is the PS3 so I nudge up and down as much as side to side to get the ball to bounce more or less off of something. Up and down nudging is indeed possible in TPA.