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The "what does machine build quality mean to you?" thread
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<blockquote data-quote="Zombie Aladdin" data-source="post: 145257" data-attributes="member: 4242"><p>Wow, I played on a WEIRD <em>Austin Powers</em> then. The artwork was incredibly worn down, with the wood visible on about half of the playfield (probably why I was not bothered by the art--there wasn't much of it left), the sounds were at full blast and could be heard from 250 feet away (which would be annoying with most tables anyway), all of the inserts were turned off (so I had no idea what was going on or what to shoot for), but the Mini-me spinner kept spinning and spinning and spinning each time I shot the left orbit. It would keep going for like 15 seconds before finally stopping.</p><p></p><p>I know <em>Gilligan's Island</em>'s scoring is incredibly unbalanced (I figured as such when I was new to pinball and was getting scores of around 2 million and saw the leaderboards started at 500 million), and definitely, I've observed that as a big reason for appeal to experts on a pinball machine. I discovered similar things in arcade fighting games, for instance--the hardcore would cry foul if any character has anything worse than a 40% to 60% matchup against any other character on the roster. But with pinball and fighting games alike, beginners don't care if the game is balanced or not--they want to be able to push buttons and see stuff happen.</p><p></p><p>About the only thing beginners and experts in pinball seem to agree is very good to have (besides the table functioning at 100%) is multiball, and even then, they like multiball for different reasons.</p><p></p><p>With me and most people I've seen who wanted to try out pinball for the first time, the one thing they want to do the most is the same: Survive. Even if there is a relatively easy goal for beginners, it means nothing if all three of their balls drain before they can reach it. I've watched beginners go at games from the Golden Age. Nine times out of ten, their games are over within 60 seconds. They do not achieve any goals, not even the easy ones. They launch the ball, get a lucky shot in maybe, then drain. Repeat twice more. They get frustrated and leave. (Most Sterns are no different, by the way.)</p><p></p><p>I think people nowadays also get frustrated more easily. We're raised on video games where, for the first hour or so, it's very hard to lose, and you feel like a champ for the first third of the game, if not the entire game. Older video games, from the '90s and earlier, still had their roots in the quarter-munching arcade environment, and gamers then, I feel, were used to getting beaten silly and were more driven to keep trying at something they were initially bad at. Pinball still has that arcade type difficulty, which I think is too much for people nowadays, who, if they cannot feel like a champ within the first 5 minutes, will give up, with the exception of those tables that were either designed with beginners in mind (<em>Gilligan's Island</em>, <em>South Park</em>) or the truly rare design that can appeal to beginners and experts alike (<em>Spider-Man (Stern)</em>). (I don't think any less of modern gamers as previous generations though. Just that as game design has changed, so have the gamers, and pinball, which cannot change, would have little hope of getting these people even with Golden Age machines.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Zombie Aladdin, post: 145257, member: 4242"] Wow, I played on a WEIRD [i]Austin Powers[/i] then. The artwork was incredibly worn down, with the wood visible on about half of the playfield (probably why I was not bothered by the art--there wasn't much of it left), the sounds were at full blast and could be heard from 250 feet away (which would be annoying with most tables anyway), all of the inserts were turned off (so I had no idea what was going on or what to shoot for), but the Mini-me spinner kept spinning and spinning and spinning each time I shot the left orbit. It would keep going for like 15 seconds before finally stopping. I know [i]Gilligan's Island[/i]'s scoring is incredibly unbalanced (I figured as such when I was new to pinball and was getting scores of around 2 million and saw the leaderboards started at 500 million), and definitely, I've observed that as a big reason for appeal to experts on a pinball machine. I discovered similar things in arcade fighting games, for instance--the hardcore would cry foul if any character has anything worse than a 40% to 60% matchup against any other character on the roster. But with pinball and fighting games alike, beginners don't care if the game is balanced or not--they want to be able to push buttons and see stuff happen. About the only thing beginners and experts in pinball seem to agree is very good to have (besides the table functioning at 100%) is multiball, and even then, they like multiball for different reasons. With me and most people I've seen who wanted to try out pinball for the first time, the one thing they want to do the most is the same: Survive. Even if there is a relatively easy goal for beginners, it means nothing if all three of their balls drain before they can reach it. I've watched beginners go at games from the Golden Age. Nine times out of ten, their games are over within 60 seconds. They do not achieve any goals, not even the easy ones. They launch the ball, get a lucky shot in maybe, then drain. Repeat twice more. They get frustrated and leave. (Most Sterns are no different, by the way.) I think people nowadays also get frustrated more easily. We're raised on video games where, for the first hour or so, it's very hard to lose, and you feel like a champ for the first third of the game, if not the entire game. Older video games, from the '90s and earlier, still had their roots in the quarter-munching arcade environment, and gamers then, I feel, were used to getting beaten silly and were more driven to keep trying at something they were initially bad at. Pinball still has that arcade type difficulty, which I think is too much for people nowadays, who, if they cannot feel like a champ within the first 5 minutes, will give up, with the exception of those tables that were either designed with beginners in mind ([i]Gilligan's Island[/i], [i]South Park[/i]) or the truly rare design that can appeal to beginners and experts alike ([i]Spider-Man (Stern)[/i]). (I don't think any less of modern gamers as previous generations though. Just that as game design has changed, so have the gamers, and pinball, which cannot change, would have little hope of getting these people even with Golden Age machines.) [/QUOTE]
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