Top 5-10 Pinballs every made - Pro talk

[vikingerik]

And in contrast to Cirqus Voltaire, I need to talk down Theatre of Magic.

- The illusions are just a terrible design overall. There's not a single one of them you actually want to play. You just time out all of them and wait for the next one. The illusions sorely need some actual incentive. Williams had already solved that years ago, with STTNG and Road Show feeding the missions into escalated scoring for the wizard mode. There's no excuse for Williams to get this so badly wrong. It was Popadiuk's first game, but Williams had plenty of other veterans that should have been able to set him straight.

- TOM allows some stacking, but in a weird and unsatisfying way. There's far too much conflict between shooting the trunk for other purposes and locking for multiball. You lose your progress towards starting an illusion not even when you start multiball, but just when you lock ball two! And there's a lot of weird cases around interactions with Tiger Saw, Midnight Madness, and certain illusions. It's probably the next worst game after Medieval Madness in an errant shot ruining what you're trying to stack up. Again, I might give a pass for such rough edges in an earlier game like Whitewater, but by 1995 Williams knew how to design these things.

- As we know, the scoring is wildly unbalanced in favor of bonus. Even real machines often see 50% of a game's score coming from the bonus. And with TPA's long games, that bonus really skews every sort of tournament competition.

- And that wizard mode. Grand Finale is anything but. You do all that work to get there, then a single drain with the single ball evaporates all your hard effort. The wizard mode itself also gets badly unbalanced and ten times easier with the right stack (Midnight Madness.) This is not a good game for skill testing.

I think Theatre's popularity comes almost entirely from the theme and voice package. The sultry female voice really does sell otherwise lackluster tables, call it the Xenon effect. I really can't see where I'd ever want to play this for serious competition over one of Williams' more polished efforts. It's fun for casual play, but there's no more substance beyond the casual surface.

 

[Crooker]

Man. I just got clubbed by a Viking. Lol. Excellent insight v.e. Always love to read your opinions and thoughts. Cheers man..

 

[invitro]

Ok, here's some more opinions. First, Cirqus Voltaire, which I like more than most and probably makes my own top 5.

- The progression towards the wizard mode works well. It's obviously cut from the same "complete N tasks" cloth as the likes of AFM or Whitewater. And some of the tasks aren't all that exciting, particularly Ringmaster Frenzie that's a strict subset of defeating all Ringmasters, or Spin which is just four shots that you never otherwise need to make. But I feel the design comes to more than the sum of its parts. You'll usually have several marvels take care of themselves while working on the ringmasters, but there's usually one or two outlying marvels that tend to be different each time.

- Like all the best pinball games, CV allows a good amount of stacking but doesn't require it. The scoring for stacked multiballs is helpful and balanced but not dominating.

It seems like I always need the Acrobats (the right orbit) to start wizard mode. And on WWater it's always the 3rd lock, after the 1st Vacation Jackpot. I think AFM is much better in this regard.

Maybe I haven't read everything in its forum, but I still don't understand what stacking gets you in CV in points.

 

[invitro]

It was Popadiuk's first game, but Williams had plenty of other veterans that should have been able to set him straight.

Second, after WCS. But WCS has Larry DeMar listed as co-designer on IPDB; that's new to me. The ToM software was done by Jeff Johnson, whose previous credits are the Trudeau games CftBL, JD, and Flintstones.

 

[vikingerik]

Agreed that AFM is better, but CV is still good. I get Acrobats by happenstance sometimes, not always last. The Acrobats are roughly like AFM's 5-way combo, sometimes happens by itself, sometimes you need to deliberately chase it. That's good variety.

Yes, stacking doesn't do much for points in CV. The jackpot shots between the different multiballs don't coincide, and there's no multiplier or anything. But that's the point. What the stacking yields is not direct reward, but indirect enablers that allow you to do more. You use Juggler or Highwire or Strike-an-Arc to get the Ringmaster hits, then the Ringmaster MB relaunches more balls into the already-running MB. And a Juggler-Ringmaster stack allows you to park balls in the Juggler locks to clear the board for better control. I think this is great design, where the synergy from stacking is emergent properties that work to the player's favor in a fun and balanced and natural way.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

And on WWater it's always the 3rd lock, after the 1st Vacation Jackpot.

That's the way it's designed to work - I think it's okay in that it's far less of a jolt than suddenly completing the final component and having the machine go dead and flash up all that stuff on the DMD at you. That would seriously freak people out the first time it happened. The third lock is a natural break in the action when the player is expecting a quick animation and then back to the action. It's just annoying because lighting the locks after the third or fourth multiball is a real pain.

Note that the other logical alternative in WH20 - allowing the Vacation Jackpot to be awarded when the final Whirlpool Award is collected - can have issues if the Bigfoot diverter is stuck in such a way balls are always diverted down the ramp, instead of into the Whirlpool.

 

[invitro]

That's the way it's designed to work - I think it's okay in that it's far less of a jolt than suddenly completing the final component and having the machine go dead and flash up all that stuff on the DMD at you. That would seriously freak people out the first time it happened.

I thought it's designed to freak people out. Well, it did a few people when I did it. In any case, it doesn't make this aspect of WWater as good as AFM, which is all I was saying. (In AFM, in TPA anyway, the last blue light seems to be all five with equal probability. Seriously. This is amazing to me. In real life, well I don't remember that well... probably 5-Way and Super Jackpot a pretty good deal more than Martian Attack and Totan Annh, and never Super Jets. But I don't think I ever got more than 3 RTU's in one game on the real thing.)

Just in case anyone gets the wrong idea... I love both WWater and CV as much as my unborn children.

 

[invitro]

I think Theatre's popularity comes almost entirely from the theme and voice package.

I think it's the Trunk, then the sound. The Trunk really was an amazing toy back in 1995.

And I think the awesome sound is mostly the music and effects, which I think are both in best of all time territory. The voice is interesting maybe just female voices are so rare in pinball... I don't think she's all that sultry, or has great lines. She is wonderfully dramatic, though.

I think my biggest problem with ToM (around the same as the mode scoring) is limiting the Bonus X lanes to Multiball or luck. (On the ones I played, either the post was stuck up, or something else was awry back there that made the ball drop into the lanes almost always, though people from other parts of the world didn't report this. IIRC.)

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

In real life, well I don't remember that well... probably 5-Way and Super Jackpot a pretty good deal more than Martian Attack and Totan Annh, and never Super Jets. But I don't think I ever got more than 3 RTU's in one game on the real thing.)

I'm ashamed to admit, I never, ever, once, managed to Conquer Mars on a real AFM - and that's not for lack of trying. I pumped a small fortune into that table, and Mars is still as red and shiny as the day it coalesced into a spheroid shape and cooled down sufficiently to maintain a stable surface.

 

[vikingerik]

Don't worry Eldar, I've gotten the broccoli-heads for you. I've Conquered Mars about six times on real machines, and also Ruled the Universe twice.

Also done it on Revenge from Mars too, which is always thoroughly overlooked around here, for understandable reasons. But I think that's a fine machine too, would make my personal top 10 overall and maybe even top five.

 

[PET3R]

Once again, some very great stuff there vikingerik. I really like your long detailed posts about each table. Wish there would be little more players defending/bashing tables in this way.

I have been playing tables mentioned in the posts recently while concentrating on their weaknesses to understand bit more.

MM - it seems that if you make trolls your no.1 priority at the very beginning of the game you should not have a problem with early Merlin's shot. Even if it happens, are you not able to start the trolls and play them as normal (hit each 3x to get 2 trolls), or do you have to finish royal madness before being able to play trolls again? The more I play this table the more I am starting to understand why it is high in the rankings. When it comes to tables where you bashing 1 target, this one actually seems to be the one that is done really well as you will prioritize bashing the castle even during the multi balls, which is probably the most fun, not saying after beating the castle you are going straight to the next one. It still forces you to do all shots on the table as you need them for you BFTK. There is similarity here to CV - once you are done with the castles (ringmasters) , you check what shots are left to do and you concentrate on them. If you are not seeking the variety on the table like MB then this is really solid table.

CV - I have forgotten about the wizard mode that is not timed and being able to play with just one ball. I am trying to figure out whether not loosing wizard mode after draining is a good thing. As mentioned by vikingerik this wizard mode is all about skill which is great, but you are not scoring any points apart from the shots you are supposed to do. or are you ? For example yesterday I managed to get to wizard mode on my first ball and I still had 1 extra ball. In the first run where you need to spell cirqus I had problem hitting the multi-ball ramp. If the drain would end the wizard mode, I would start again hitting ringmasters, play multiballs and be getting lot of points in my next 3 balls. Instead I drained all 3 balls on that ramp not gaining any score. In a way I wished I would never reach the wizard mode as I feel I would score many more points. Of course I have not played this table in months and even before never played it much, as I have beaten wizard mode quite quickly and never felt doing it again, but I think after giving it a second chance it is really growing on me. It really seems to be well balanced and well thought table. Not to forget the point - if you know how to shoot that multiball ramp, you will probably never think the way I am thinking above.

WW - few plays reminded me that appart from 3x jackpot and vacation jackpot, this table also contains random 5x playfield award and overboard which is dependent on your current flashing arrows.

I know these tables do not belong to top 10 but was just wandering, if we strip the theme and concentrate on rules and layout, what is it that stops Roadshow and Junkyard being there ? Compared to TAF and TZ, roadshow encourages you to play the modes well and there is even variety as you are not always following the same path. And after collecting items in Junkyard, it encourages you to play the modes well to receive more fireworks which not only score later but also gets you more time in outer space. Is there any other table that extends your time in wizard mode, depending how well you played during the game ? I am aware of the stupid dog video and quite bad layout.

 

[vikingerik]

MM - it seems that if you make trolls your no.1 priority at the very beginning of the game you should not have a problem with early Merlin's shot. Even if it happens, are you not able to start the trolls and play them as normal (hit each 3x to get 2 trolls), or do you have to finish royal madness before being able to play trolls again?

The rules here are confusing, and this confusion is why I think the rules are badly designed. Trolls and Troll Madness are not the same thing. If you hit Merlin's early, yes you can still start and play Trolls. But that's not good enough. To reach the wizard mode, you need to kill 10 trolls. The Trolls mode only lets you kill 2. So you need to play Troll Madness. And an early Merlin shot locks out Troll Madness until you play (not necessarily finish) Royal Madness. And then you're still just back at the beginning all over again, where you still have to light and play and win Trolls before you accidentally start any other Madnesses.

It is possible to reach 10 trolls without Troll Madness, but very difficult. You either need to win Trolls three times plus Royal Madness twice (you can kill two trolls in Royal), or get lucky with Merlin randomly giving you the Smack-a-Troll round.

I know these tables do not belong to top 10 but was just wandering, if we strip the theme and concentrate on rules and layout, what is it that stops Roadshow and Junkyard being there ?

Road Show might make a top 10 list. Although it has the same problem as Theatre of Magic that the scoring is enormously skewed towards bonus and almost nothing else matters.

Junkyard is just dull. The modes are interesting once but then just dull as you play the same four over and over. The fireworks aren't enough to matter.

Is there any other table that extends your time in wizard mode, depending how well you played during the game ?

Cactus Canyon does this.

Champion Pub also makes the wizard mode easier if you play well during the game, by accumulating Smart Punches to use in the wizard mode.

 

[PET3R]

The rules here are confusing, and this confusion is why I think the rules are badly designed. Trolls and Troll Madness are not the same thing. ....or get lucky with Merlin randomly giving you the Smack-a-Troll round.

I did my research, played a few games, the different troll modes are clear to me now. I still don't see it that big of a problem. When you start the game all you need is 8 shots to light the trolls. After that, the best strategy seems to be to light at least one of the madnesses so you can start it at the same time with trolls. When you finish the trolls during the madness the troll madness automatically starts along the madness you already playing, I think this is very well thought part. Yes you will need to go through the royal madness if you don't manage to score additional 6 trolls needed but - for the BFTK you need to complete each ramp 3 times (3x 4 shots) anyway. So you will just concentrate on the remaining lights that are needed to start the Royal Madness. At the end of the Royal Madness you have completed 1 round of your ramps (1x 4 shots into each ramp) and can again apply the same strategy as you did at the beginning (light trolls 8 targets and light some madnesses before shooting Merlin's). As you still need 2 more rounds of the ramps (2x 4 shots each ramp), you will have another 3 attemps to complete the trolls - this should be more than enough. Strategy in short: light trolls - light few madnesses - shoot Merlin's - try to complete trolls. If failed - complete remaining lights to finish first round of the ramps to start royal madness. 2nd and 3rd round is the same to start 2nd and 3rd royal madness and after the 3rd round when you have completed all your ramps you have yet another chance of starting and completing the trolls combined with some madnesses. Only at this point - if you fail for the 4th time you will have to do shots that you would not otherwise need to start Royal madness and have yet another chance.

The question I have - once you played the trolls and you are progressing towards Royal madness - does the troll targets register towards counting the 8 hits ? Example: I failed the trolls and already played the madness. I have 3 more lights unlit for Royal Madness. If I hit troll targets 8 times and then finish the 3 lights and play Royal Madness - will my trolls be ready to play or do I have to hit the targets 8 times after the Royal Madness. If the first scenario is true then it would be even easier. Strategy: light trolls - light few madnesses - shoot Merlin's - try to complete trolls. If failed - TRY TO SHOOT 8 TROLL TARGETS and complete remaining lights to finish first round of the ramps to start royal madness. Once you finish Royal Madness your trolls are ready.

PAPA said in one of his videos that Merlin is very clever and will always try to give you what you need. So even if you finish all the goals for BFTK and are still missing the trolls, wouldn't she keep awarding you with smack-a-troll ?

Start of the wizard mode - do you start it by shooting a castle ? If yes this is one thing that MM does better compared to AFM as you are hitting that castle throughout the whole game. I was playing the AFM on my ios today and ruled the universe - NOT ! After conquering Mars I still had to complete my Super Jackpot and 5-way combo. The 2 hardest goals on AFM in my opinion. So I played mutliball and managed to hit that Super. I was on my last ball so took a big breath and tried to do quickly these 5 shots. Success !!! All goals completed, but wait ! Oh no, I forgot I have to hit that small saucer to actually start the wizard mode. In the entire game I did not really have to shoot that target. I played AFM long time ago, what do I do now ? Do I shoot it with left flipper or right ? Where about should the ball be when I flip. Here it comes, I take a big breath when I take a chance from the left flipper. Miss ! Oh noooo - drain. What a pain, I was soooo close. Did all my hard bit and then this. Really wished that the big saucer would be the one to start the wizard mode.
This made me thinking - in every table we have to actually start the wizard mode after finishing all the goals. Wouldn't you prefer if the wizard mode started automatically after completing the last goal ? Would it take anything away from the experience ? Why it has never been done before, or has it ?

Regarding CC. I always forget about it.

 

[PET3R]

Can we maybe concentrate for a little while and comment a lot on each table's weaknesses ? Let's try to see how serious are they and how much they affect gameplay and scoring.

We are commenting on :

MB - none found yet

TAF - magnets, timing out of the modes ?

STTNG - none found yet

SS - looping the left ramp during the wizard mode

TZ - timing out of the modes, less interesting modes or modes that are not needed - skill shot mode, repetitive 2x clock modes, cluttered playfield

CC - importance of the bonus

MM - early Merlin's shot, repetitive shooting of the castle

TOM - timing out of modes/not interesting modes, bonus importance, left ramp importance, repetitive shooting of the trunk

RBION - 2x scoring, strategy of skipping the second round and going straight for another continent scoring

CV - staying in the wizard mode after draining/ not scoring during wizard mode. Middle ramp - drainer

CFTBL - looping ramps/multiplyers.

AFM - goals - Super Jackpot, 5-way combo

WW - overboard, 5x playfield, 3x Jackpot, Vacation Jackpot (Class 6 river + 3 Locks)

Roadshow - importance of the bonus


Please note: CV wizard and AFM 5-way combo and superj are not random features and need a skill to complete therefore someone might object that these are not really weaknesses. As I feel that they can cause lot of frustration I have listed them here so we can have a proper discussion and find out whether they actually cause a harm to the table or not.

Please add more weaknesses if you are aware of any !

 

[PET3R]

OK. CFTBL is out of rankings. I have not played it in ages and today on my very first game I have scored my highest ever total of 952 million without shooting 1 single jackpot, just by looping the left ramp and earning these 16 million combos. If I had nerves of steel I would just practice that loop to be 100% to earn insane scores. That ramp is not a hazard at all. If you shoot too early, worst that happens is you will hit the middle ramp and score early. If you hit bit too late it will go to left lane. Because you looping that left lamp you are progressing towards "move your car" which is very high scoring mode and every time you score your combo you are advancing your bonus multiplier and increasing your jackpot should you decide to score it later in the game (on my last ball base value of my jackpot was above 300 million). Once you reach your 10x bonus multiplier it will start awarding you 5 millions every time you spell all the multiplier targets. It is super easy to catch the ball when it is falling down from the multipliers and also should you hit any other targets like snackbar, kiss and video, the ball will always exit near the right flipper, ready for you to again loop that left ramp. All you need for this game is the right flipper. Even if the ball falling down on the left flipper you can just ignore it as it usually just off bounces from it to the right flipper.

 

[Gorgar]

A problem with the digital recreation of Monster Bash: the toys (especially Frankenstein's Monster) are laughably bad and look nothing like how they look like on the actual table.

 

[vikingerik]

The question I have - once you played the trolls and you are progressing towards Royal madness - does the troll targets register towards counting the 8 hits ?

If you are asking this question, you are still not clear on the troll modes (and it's poor design that understanding the rules needs so many questions.) You must win Trolls to qualify the Troll Madness light towards Royal Madness. You can't play Royal until after you win Trolls. And you get ONE chance at doing Trolls the easy way (stacked with Multiball Madness). If you fail to set that up properly or fail during the multiball, then you have to light Trolls all over again and win it with only a single ball, which is considerably harder.

As long as you have not yet won Trolls, the troll targets register towards the 8 hits. Once you have won Trolls, they don't do anything until after Royal Madness. (They might still count towards a troll bomb, not sure.)

Yes, it is very cool to complete Trolls during Multiball Madness to add Troll Madness to the stack. But the game is so centered around making that happen and just doesn't care if you get screwed over if it doesn't.

At the end of the Royal Madness you have completed 1 round of your ramps (1x 4 shots into each ramp)

This is also not correct. Your first shot to each of the catapult/orbits/ramps during Royal counts as one completion towards BFTK. So you can reach 2 completions of each by the end of Royal Madness, and you can reach 3 to qualify for BFTK without even needing to reach Royal a second time. IF you did the Troll Madness stack right and got your 10 trolls already.

If you're trying to reach BFTK on a real machine, this is the way you have to do it. You can't take the risk of playing Trolls and Royal over and over, your balls won't last long enough to do that and also get through all the castles. Realistically, reaching BFTK means getting the Trolls-Madness stack correct the first time and there's no margin for error if you don't.

PAPA said in one of his videos that Merlin is very clever and will always try to give you what you need. So even if you finish all the goals for BFTK and are still missing the trolls, wouldn't she keep awarding you with smack-a-troll ?

I'm not sure. I've never seen Smack-a-Troll happen more than once in a game. But even if it can, this is still poor design to make it dependent on a random award. If Smack-a-Troll is meant to be a tool used to qualify towards BFTK, then it should be available to the player to start through skillful play, not dependent on a random award.

This made me thinking - in every table we have to actually start the wizard mode after finishing all the goals. Wouldn't you prefer if the wizard mode started automatically after completing the last goal ? Would it take anything away from the experience ? Why it has never been done before, or has it ?

Because the machines need to hold the ball in order to give you a big video show and explain the rules for the wizard mode.

Yes, BFTK is started by shooting the castle, and yes AFM would be better if RTU started from the saucer too.

Once again, Monster Bash is the game to get this right. If you stack other monster modes into Monster Bash, and complete them while Bash is running, the Bash multiball immediately changes to Monsters of Rock.

 

[vikingerik]

Can we maybe concentrate for a little while and comment a lot on each table's weaknesses ?

STTNG - the slingshots and outlanes. Any ball that comes near the top of the slingshots will probably fall down the outlane, and there's not much you can do about it, on both a real machine and TPA.

Also in TPA, how Borg Multiball jackpots dominate the scoring over everything else. This isn't so much an issue on a real table where you might get Borg MB three times in a game, but in TPA you can get it 20 or more times with the jackpot value over a billion.

WW - overboard, 5x playfield, 3x Jackpot, Vacation Jackpot (Class 6 river + 3 Locks)

Whitewater is an interesting case, because it's unbalanced in completely different ways on the real machine and in TPA.

Real machine - the 3x jackpots do dominate everything. It does take some skill to complete some rafts to increase the jackpot value to something worthwhile for tripling. But then nothing else (not even a 2x jackpot multiball) can score the hundreds of millions that you can get in a 3x jackpot multiball.

TPA - actually what dominates is the whirlpool awards. It's easy to get that extra ball over and over again and play infinitely. But the unbalanced scoring comes from Whirlpool Challenge, where it's easy to hold a ball on the left flipper and shoot the whirlpool over and over with the right flipper, just like CFTBL. Seriously, I have had one Whirlpool Challenge last for 40 minutes and 8 billion points.

On both the real machine and TPA, the 5x playfield isn't as unbalancing as people think it is. It only lasts for a short time, three jackpots at most. If you can keep multiball going for ten 3x jackpots, that adds up to way more than three 5x jackpots.

 

[vikingerik]

MB - none found yet

The only one I can think of is that when you stack multiple running monsters, you get no indication of the time remaining for any other than the most recently started mode. It can be a bit tricky to know if you need to hurry up for Creature or Wolfman when the display is showing Bride instead. This is still an element of skill as a good player can approximate the time in his head, but the game could be a bit more helpful here.

 

[PET3R]

Crooker - can you please comment bit more on that RBION 2x scoring. How easy/difficult it is to make the ball go through that right lane ? Is it something you can learn to make the ball go always to the right and not through the middle ? How much effort it takes to turn on that 2x multiplier for a pro player ? Is it easy once you learn it or do you always feel a hard times doing it ?

vikingerik -

MM - thank you for making the rules clear to me now. I have played a few games to experience it. I think the biggest problem is that you have to score 10 trolls. I think this could easily be corrected if goal was to score only 2 or maybe 4 trolls. Or they shouldn't ask to hit each troll 3 times to score 1 troll. Is there any option in the settings where you could tweak the trolls to lower the goal or to score them after single hit ? Easy difficulty maybe ?

MB - you said once you complete monster modes during the Monster Bash it immediately switches to monsters of rock. Even though this is very cool, I am thinking whether it is good as it stops you from playing the Monster Bash where you could have earn extra score. Question I have - I know if you play Monsters of Rock before Monster Bash you will get 50 million bonus, but after you finish Monsters of Rock the Monster Bash is not lit any more, is this correct ? I think the 50 million bonus works well, but imagine a scenario where you are about to finish your last monster for Monsters of Rock and you accidentally hit the scoop to start Monster Bash. You loose 50 million bonus and if you finish that monster on the first hit you even lost Monster Bash multi ball. I know each shot in Monster Bash is 2m so we are probably not talking about a big loss and if you happened to have a good multi ball then you will be more happy that it was during the Monsters of Rock rather than Monster Bash. Another big + is you do not have to worry if you going to hit that scoop to start Monsters of Rock where the really big points are, so I think this outweighs everything.

STTNG - slingshots and outlanes. "Karl" previously mentioned that this game would be much better if it was narrow body. When you look at STTNG this is all about hitting the ramps and accuracy. I think this is probably one of the best tables if not the one to show really who is better player. Narrow body would make it easier to hit the ramps and you would not need such a great skill. Therefore I think wide body works really well for what this game is all about. As I have mentioned previously, if you hit ramp you will never drain, therefore I think the slingshots and hungry outlanes really works in favour of this table. They are very punishing which I think is excellent. You missed the ramp, the core goal of this game so you are punished by draining the ball. I would not worry about Borg multiball as we ranking tables as they are in real, not in TPA.

WW - thank you for highlighting the importance of 3x Jackpot, I knew this makes the game unbalanced but was not sure how serious this can be.

MB - I will add indication of time into weakness

------------------------------------------------------------

AFM - so I have played yet another game where I missed the wizard mode by one goal - Super jackpot - even thought I had 5 multiballs in that game - plenty of chances to make it happen. Very big frustration. But thanks to that I think I have discovered a new weakness for AFM.
Linear scoring - please don't get me wrong here as this table is amazing and when it comes to story and journey, it provides one of the best experiences in pinball. Probably with MM, LOTR and SPP (haven't played the other to so can't really comment) these are the best 4 tables of pinball you can find. However, there is a problem when it comes to scoring. When you cover my display in TAF or MB I can only very hardly guess what is my final score in each of the games. But because you trying to tick your goals and achieve that wizard mode in AFM there are 3 possibilities of your end score.

1. You did not play a good game and missed a lot or few goals - your score will be below 15 Billion
2. You had a very good game but either Super Jackpot or 5-way combo stopped you from playing wizard mode. Your score is likely to be 15-17 Billion
3 .You managed to play the wizard mode - If you ruled the universe you will be at about 20 - 25 Billion and only at this point the score starts to be a little bit diverse.

When I played TAF I have many times ended up with a huge score or even high score without touring the mansion. Also in MB your final score will differ no matter whether
you have reached and played Monsters of Rock or not. I had once very long and good multiball in Monster Bash and my score was higher then when I reached Monsters or Rock and drained quite quickly. AFM is a good example as to why tables with easier wizard modes can be better. Specially the ones where you can reach the wizard even 2-3 times in the game just like Tour the Mansion. It gives bigger variety to scores and you don't feel like there is only one way to beat your score.