TZ: Too easy = fail

[rob3d]

In fact, I did so several hours after your post. Nice wizard mode.

(I do think the claims that newbies are LITZ-ing immediately after encountering the game are exaggerated: they may be newbies to Twilight Zone but they're probably pretty experienced at pinball, or at least video pinball. Getting LITZ even in TPA's Twilight Zone is not as hard as on the real table, but it's far from trivial, and I do think it's still harder to get to than, say, the genie battle in ToTAN or Grand Finale in Theatre of Magic.)

That I would have to disagree with completely. Iv'e only battled the genie 3 times since TPA was released, and I played that table exclusively for a month. In my 1st week of TZ I hit LITZ 3 times in the same game. And 80% of the time I'm guaranteed to hit litz when I play the table. And I definitely consider myself a just below average player. An option for less forgiving physics would be welcomed.

 

[151120]

That I would have to disagree with completely. Iv'e only battled the genie 3 times since TPA was released, and I played that table exclusively for a month. In my 1st week of TZ I hit LITZ 3 times in the same game. And 80% of the time I'm guaranteed to hit litz when I play the table. And I definitely consider myself a just below average player. An option for less forgiving physics would be welcomed.

Secret to getting to the TotAN wiz mode is always selecting the jewels from the Bazaar Make a Wish. Especially when the ruby is lit--and you only need 7.

I think TotAN in general is a lot more forgiving table. Make a bad shot in TZ and you usually get a drain. IMO TotAN is an easier table. But both tables require multi-hour sessions for me to beat a high score, especially TotAN with its badly coded wiz mode scoring anomaly. And that's really the issue with the easy tables. Sit down, shut the door and tell everyone to leave you alone. You're in for a LONG game!

BTW, TotAN would be a MUCH better table if wiz mode had a time limit to beat the genie. TZ got that right! But I digress...

 

[Jeff Strong]

Secret to getting to the TotAN wiz mode is always selecting the jewels from the Bazaar Make a Wish. Especially when the ruby is lite--and you only need 7.

I think TotAN in general is a lot more forgiving table. Make a bad shot in TZ and you usually get a drain. IMO TotAN is an easier table. But both tables require multi-hour sessions for me to beat a high score, especially TotAN with its badly coded wiz mode scoring anomaly. TotAN would be a MUCH better table if wiz mode had a time limit to beat the genie. TZ got that right! But I digress...

In TPA, I find TOTAN to be much less forgiving than TZ mainly because TOTAN's faster and the lamp ricochets make it more unpredictable. Balls can go flying down the outlanes quicker than you can blink.

Also, if you really want a highscore on TOTAN, don't use Make a Wish for jewels. Go for 3X lamp scoring and keep whacking the lamp.

 

[151120]

In TPA, I find TOTAN to be much less forgiving than TZ mainly because TOTAN's faster and the lamp ricochets make it more unpredictable. Balls can go flying down the outlanes quicker than you can blink.

Also, if you really want a highscore on TOTAN, don't use Make a Wish for jewels. Go for 3X lamp scoring and keep whacking the lamp.

True, but like you said, the lamp is a pretty big drain hazard. I usually try and ignore it and get in the wiz mode and try to not win or lose for as long as possible. Even without stacking Harem multiball with the genie battle (VERY hard to do imo), you can rack up major points, but it's a pretty boring way to score.

 

[rob3d]

Secret to getting to the TotAN wiz mode is always selecting the jewels from the Bazaar Make a Wish. Especially when the ruby is lite--and you only need 7.

I think TotAN in general is a lot more forgiving table. Make a bad shot in TZ and you usually get a drain. IMO TotAN is an easier table. But both tables require multi-hour sessions for me to beat a high score, especially TotAN with its badly coded wiz mode scoring anomaly. TotAN would be a MUCH better table if wiz mode had a time limit to beat the genie. TZ got that right! But I digress...

Your right, I always select the jewels. My problem is for some reason I can't consistently hit the orbits. And typically I get stuck having to complete those missions without a wish. Again that's just my poor playing. Still one of my favorite tables tables on TPA though. Its the first pinball game where I learned the rules, thanks to FS for including them.

I think what makes TZ so much easier for me is that I can hit every shot needed to complete a mode. Easier still if you ignore the modes and just Run gumball combos for an hour. Some other tables have a shot that I cant do very well so I keep playing them in an effort to get better.

Either way a selectable hard mode would only make the game better, throw it in the pro menu and they'd get more money out of me.

 

[Kolchak357]

In fact, I did so several hours after your post. Nice wizard mode.

(I do think the claims that newbies are LITZ-ing immediately after encountering the game are exaggerated: they may be newbies to Twilight Zone but they're probably pretty experienced at pinball, or at least video pinball. Getting LITZ even in TPA's Twilight Zone is not as hard as on the real table, but it's far from trivial, and I do think it's still harder to get to than, say, the genie battle in ToTAN or Grand Finale in Theatre of Magic.)

I find TOTAN much easier than TZ. But I find TZ easier than the Grand Finale in ToM.

 

[Mark W**a]

Because, as Sean said a few times, TZ is one of the hardest pinball machines known to man, and yet it's one of the easiest in TPA.

I'd much rather them focus on this than adding the Pro Menu stuff to every table, but if they were to include this as part of Pro Mode, then I'd definitely buy it.

Never played a real one, but I can tell in real life a missed ramp is an SDTM drain, outlanes look unforgiving, gumball shot is hard, and the lock shot has design flaws and often rejects (according to Bowen Kerrins tutorial) etc. etc.

SDTM simply doesn't come into play on console where you can perfectly nudge the ball to safety without fear of tilt. So they may as well tweak that tbh. It would make it way harder on iOS though since nudging is a crap shoot.

Still what's a hard game on TPA? Which one? Any of them? They are all varying degrees of easy. Cirqus Voiltaire (the unpatched, ancient 360 code) is the only table I can really think of that is "hard" on TPA. Mostly because the outlanes are programmed to drain instead of save and nudging does not work, in fact it will most likely kill you instead. Also, glitches. Lots and lots and lots of glitches.

 

[Mark W**a]

True, but like you said, the lamp is a pretty big drain hazard. I usually try and ignore it and get in the wiz mode and try to not win or lose for as long as possible. Even without stacking Harem multiball with the genie battle (VERY hard to do imo), you can rack up major points, but it's a pretty boring way to score.

Jeff is totally right about that.

If you are afraid of draining, then stack in a regular multiball.

As for the HAREM glitch, I'm sorry but that's about as lame as the Monster Bash glitch on 360. Setting it up is tricky, but once you do a 5 year old could score billions. It's not possible in later rom revisions, and should be banned from serious competition play otherwise.

 

[Richard B]

Still what's a hard game on TPA? Which one? Any of them? They are all varying degrees of easy. Cirqus Voiltaire (the unpatched, ancient 360 code) is the only table I can really think of that is "hard" on TPA.

That is a big problem. It's like the Konami games in the days of the SNES. I'd love the arcade version of, say, Ninja Turtles in Time, so I'd buy the home version, and the hard fought battles in the arcade became snoozer sleepwalks at home. A lot of what I loved about the arcade version would be missing. TPA is becoming the same way.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Still what's a hard game on TPA? Which one? Any of them? They are all varying degrees of easy. Cirqus Voiltaire (the unpatched, ancient 360 code) is the only table I can really think of that is "hard" on TPA. Mostly because the outlanes are programmed to drain instead of save and nudging does not work, in fact it will most likely kill you instead. Also, glitches. Lots and lots and lots of glitches.

I've rated them all (except TZ and ST:TNG) here and here.

And CV plays quite well on a 360 - I think I've had it glitch on me once - and the outlanes are escapable if you don't panic and nudge correctly. If you want to see what really killer outlanes are like, wait for ST:TNG.

As for the HAREM glitch, I'm sorry but that's about as lame as the Monster Bash glitch on 360. Setting it up is tricky, but once you do a 5 year old could score billions. It's not possible in later rom revisions, and should be banned from serious competition play otherwise.

None of the official ROM revisions fix the Harem Multiball / Genie Battle exploit.

 

[androidlove]

I used to go to the arcade and get consecutive free games. However, I don't remember playing until I got bored like I do on these virtual tables. I had no idea the tables are rigged. I thought my skills had greatly improved

 

[Jim O'Brien]

Found this and thought I would share.

 

[Fungi]

That's funny. Even though his intention was to show TZ too easy, and he did accomplish LITZ in under ten minutes, he was tanking so bad, it still looked more difficult than it is.

 

[fenderbendr]

I can get LITZ about one out of three games and I'm not very good. My highest score on TZ is only 3.9 billion.

 

[Advalle]

I have found the earlier tables difficult indeed. TOTAN and TOM are really difficult ones to me.

 

[Sumez]

Really? Maybe it's because I'm playing on console, but those two tables are clearly among the easiest TPA tables to me. Especially TOM seems impossible to drain as long as you're being careful and always nudging when the ball is going towards the middle after a box shot. That said, my TOM score still isn't too good because I never played it much (and I'm generally not very good ), but I did manage to save quite a few princesses in the same game on TOTAN.

 

[androidlove]

Really? Maybe it's because I'm playing on console, but those two tables are clearly among the easiest TPA tables to me. Especially TOM seems impossible to drain as long as you're being careful and always nudging when the ball is going towards the middle after a box shot.

I didn't buy TOM for my Kindle because it seemed boring. Since it came with an Xbox table pack, I decided to give it another chance. I found it both boring and easy. I had to quit, or I would have been on the same game all night.

 

[SlamCitySkates]

It seems to me that the trick to making TZ just a bit harder would be to tweek just 2 things. One, make the ramps shots require a little more oomph to get up. Two, remove the little rubber bands in Townsquare.

I personally hate powerdrains so I love those little rubber bands there. Kinda the reason I hate CV so much. Powerdrains.

Well exactly.

It seems to me that the solution to the easiness of TZ is to encourage cheap drains - Im not sure that this is the right way to go. Video pinball is different to arcade pinball, and if the opportunity to increase the fun of a table arises then I see no reason why Farsight shouldnt take it. One person mentioned that their average Funhouse game IRL lasts 5 minutes. Why would you want to emulate that? Youd only experience a fraction of the table.

I see TPA as a trainer for the real thing. You get the chance in your own home to learn rulesets for tables - and experience the wizard modes. Its like using Gran Turismo to test drive real cars. Sure it easier to race in GT than in real life - but thats the point. Its a game.

I will admit that LITZ is now the easiest Wizard Mode in TPA.

Im also confused by the statement that TZ is one of the hardest games ever, IRL. I suppose that depends on your definition of hardest. One of reasons that this and TAF were so popular at the time is that you could pretty much guarantee plenty of ball time on both machines. There are a whole raft of tables that came out after these that seemed determined to minimise your play time - IMHO, they are much 'harder than TZ.TZ would not have gained its notoriety if it only offered 5 minute games. It may be different in tournaments where the machine has been toughened up to reduce its game time, but thats a man made ploy to make the game less easy. There is definitely some rewriting of history here - TZ was never the hardest game of its era.

 

[Jeff Strong]

One person mentioned that their average Funhouse game IRL lasts 5 minutes. Why would you want to emulate that? Youd only experience a fraction of the table.

Sometimes a person only has 5 minutes to spare and wants to get a quick game in. As it is now, I don't even fire up Funhouse on TPA unless I have at least 30 minutes to burn, and that's usually not even enough since it's so easy to get extra balls on the TPA version.

And once you've seen every mode a table has to offer, it can become a chore to sit through a marathon session every time you play it. I'm tired of that style of play. I just want quicker, more challenging games...only as an option though. The current difficulty is fine for a default difficulty setting, but I'm dying for a harder setting as well. Honestly, the lack of that setting has lead to me playing TPA less lately.

 

[Mark Miwurdz]

What's your gamer tag and PSN id, Jeff?