What tables did you play today?

[smbhax]

I want to try that on a rainy day as well!

And I agree, the large variety of tables we have right now makes me MUCH more forgiving with each tables quirks. It's also fun doing little rounds of Big Shot or Gorgar between bigger sessions of more bombastic tables.

It's been working well for me so far. : )

 

[McGuirk]

I'm playing a little more Elvira and the Party Monsters; it came out around the time I went on vacation last year, and it's coming up again now. Got in some Bride of Pinbot too (say what you will about the scoring on this table, I love the Pinbot series).

 

[smbhax]

I played a little Bride yesterday too; it *does* feel like nothing is worth doing except the billion point shot, and it probably gives out too many extra balls, but I love the design of all those lower shooting lanes. Really looking forward to seeing Jack*Bot in TPA; and then I thought hey, just like Jack*Bot is Pin*Bot with new rules, wouldn't it have been great if they'd have done a fourth in the series, a Bride with new rules? : )

 

[Korven]

New pb's today on; Dr Dude , SS & BS (243k) :banghead: and TO

 

[Espy]

Is that REALLY an achievement?

It's a pretty tough table regardless of being good or not, so yeah

 

[Sumez]

Participated in the, supposedly, biggest pinball event in Denmark last Saturday. At least four players were among the top 10 IFPA ranked, and Zach Sharpe took the victory.

Final results here, I'm #33: http://dpo.pinlab.dk/2013/results/
- not impressive, and disappointing considering the terrible games I lost through, but better than I had initially hoped:



Played qualifications on Spider-Man, Avatar, Dirty Harry and Addams Family. Did a decent job, but failed miserably on TAF - as a side note, TAF was also in the A-division finals, and in that game, two of the finalists actually got an even worse score than I did in the qualifications. I think that says a little about how mean and random that table can be.

For the B-division games, I suffered an embarassing loss at Avatar (even if I only played the table once before this tournament), but managed to keep going a bit further through a tight victory in TAF and a pretty convincing one on Twilight Zone (playing against a guy who had no idea about the rules, which means a lot on TZ), only to lose my most embarassing game ever on WCS94. I play WCS94 almost every single week, as it's the only DMD table in the local arcade, and usually get at least half a billion, which isn't amazing, but would be more than enough to beat my opponent last Saturday. Instead I ended up having one of the worst games ever, and ended my streak there.

On the other hand, I managed to have one of my best games on STTNG (around 1.5 bil) late that night when playing for fun on the remaining tables, despite being really tired, my right arm hurting, and having had enough beer at that point to be considerably intoxicated, if not drunk.

 

[netizen]

I am always curious about how much **** talking TPA takes during the tournaments?

 

[Sumez]

Usually people don't mention it. But when it does come up among pinball fans, people tend to be generally positive or at worst indifferent about it.

 

[Pinballfan69]

Cactus Canyon. I really Like the table but those times when the balls trickles down the left/right orbits and mysteriously careen towards the middle is so frustrating. That happens in Attack from Mars as well. Is that a glitch/Bug? and has it been addressed on the mobile platforms? I only play on the PS3.

 

[smbhax]

Participated in the, supposedly, biggest pinball event in Denmark last Saturday. At least four players were among the top 10 IFPA ranked, and Zach Sharpe took the victory. [...]

Sounds like a cool event! Kudos to you for participating!

Cactus Canyon. I really Like the table but those times when the balls trickles down the left/right orbits and mysteriously careen towards the middle is so frustrating. That happens in Attack from Mars as well. Is that a glitch/Bug? and has it been addressed on the mobile platforms? I only play on the PS3.

It was Bobby King's way to make the tables more difficult--ie done on purpose. >_< The AFM one was removed on mobiles.

 

[smbhax]

Still been playing through all the tables in order, one game each (unless the first game just totally bombs so fast it wasn't even fun), but the problem that's come out of that is that I'm really only playing on breaks, for the most part, and I don't have time to play a marathon round on one of the too-easy tables, like eh the Elvira tables, Harley Davidson, or Bride of Pinbot--I'm not even that good at them but they still last forever.

So I finally decided to take the plunge and join the Pro Club--that is, to drain any extra balls picked up during the game--except I suppose on Central Park, where extra balls are the whole point. I erased my PS3 save file so I can start my local high score lists over, since I probably won't be matching a lot of my old scores. Doesn't it just figure then that I had a pretty darn long Scared Stiff 3-ball game immediately after that (I tried a Pro Mode upgrade for the first time with that table to turn off extra balls; so nice to be able to turn off the match sequence, too!), and then I went and set a new all-time high score for myself in just three balls on Space Shuttle. Huh! Anyway hopefully I won't have too many really long games this way, and if it seems to be working out then I'll probably get all the Pro upgrades once the PS4 version comes along so I can turn off extra balls on as many tables as possible.

I also turned on Tournament Mode in Scared Stiff (and turned off Family Mode, of course : p) but it didn't turn off Extra Balls or Match, so I have no idea what it actually does. : o

 

[netizen]

IIRC, tournament mode makes the distribution of awards more fair. So it will always award the same things to all players or award the things in the same order, or what the 1st player gets all players will get. Things like that, it depends on the programming.

 

[Sumez]

Yeah extra ball and tournament mode is often two different settings, even though both settings are typically used in tournaments.

 

[smbhax]

Ah, I see!

 

[Man-Machine]

Haunted House. But it' is hard and I haven't even hit a million yet. Must be something I haven't figured out correctly. Great table anyway.

 

[smbhax]

Played strict 3-ball on Whirlwind, drained out of multiball instantly on balls 1 AND 2, still got an all-time personal high score because I somehow nailed like four or five jackpot shots almost consecutively in a multiball on ball 3. Usually I'm useless at that shot but I was somehow locked in on it for a minute or two there!

 

[JefferyD]

Finally, I took the time and figured out how to mess with the Pro settings. I love Attack From Mars but it just lasts too long; now that I know how to set the difficulty to Extra Hard, it’s much more reasonable. Total drag that you have to reset it after closing out every time, tho. I wish it would save the settings.

I’m not getting to Rule the Universe twice a game any more but I’m seeing more of my family and getting to work on time. My high-score is 14 billion-ish as opposed to 100 billion-ish, but it's for the best. Right? Right!?

Also, I don’t think I’ve played more than 10 games on Whirlwind. Up to this point I haven’t seen the appeal, but today I gave it more than a one-and-done chance. I played three games and the final one lasted more than 45 seconds. I don’t yet understand why it gave me two extra balls, and two surprising but short-lived multi-balls, but I was grateful as my personal high score bubbled up to over 17,000,000-- nearly triple the best of my previous disinterested efforts. I’ll give it a few more tries before taking another cold-blooded beating from Genie.

 

[smbhax]

Finally, I took the time and figured out how to mess with the Pro settings. I love Attack From Mars but it just lasts too long; now that I know how to set the difficulty to Extra Hard, it’s much more reasonable. Total drag that you have to reset it after closing out every time, tho. I wish it would save the settings.

I've been thinking of raising the difficulty level on the one pro mode table I have, Scared Stiff, even though I'm not really sure how it works, does it make it harder to earn multiball or something?

I've turned off extra balls so far, which does save, at least on PS3. It seems odd that the difficulty setting wouldn't as well, that would be really inconvenient! Heck, it even bugs me quite a bit that I still have to turn Pro Mode on each time I visit the table.

 

[netizen]

Finally, I took the time and figured out how to mess with the Pro settings. I love Attack From Mars but it just lasts too long; now that I know how to set the difficulty to Extra Hard, it’s much more reasonable. Total drag that you have to reset it after closing out every time, tho. I wish it would save the settings.

press the back button instead of reset after adjusting the settings to how you want them, and the settings will be saved for every pro mode game, of that table, so long as you turn on the operators mode prior to beginning.

I wrote a blog post to help familiarize player with the operators menu settings in pro mode if you want to have a look.

 

[JefferyD]

Thank you, Mr. netizen! Excellence.