Williams' Collection Volume 5 guesses

[Citizen]

I said it in the podcast, I’ll say it here...the people that would raise hell over the leaderboards being affected are the main reason Zen is being slow to implement flipper physics on Vol 1-3. They have to put in an ‘archived’ leaderboard since the new physics might make high scores more difficult to achieve. THAT is what will take the most effort for very little return. So blame the leaderboard whores.

"We might lose sales on future packs from the tiny handful of people who already own all of our current content and have high enough scores for physics changes to be relevant to them who are also childish enough to get salty over this."

Sounds like a reasonable concern to prevent improving their game.

Vocal minorities are really taking a toll on gaming.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Toddler agree. It really is ridiculous. I followed that comment up with "Zen can do anything really, screw the vocal minority" (paraphrasing)

Sent from my VOG-L29 using Tapatalk

 

[wilbers]

Its 2 out of the 6 leaderboards only that would have the potential to be affected (on 10 tables) - classic single player and tournament leaderboards, but not the 3 challenges and single player with the Zen physics.

I'll happily forfeit my 3rd places on those 2 leaderboards on Champion Pub (not close to the top on the other tables) for an improvement in the game, I'd have thought the majority at the sharp end of most leaderboards would feel the same way - give it time and Tarek will likely be no.1 again anyway! Anyone not at the sharp end of them it seems a bit of a moot point if you are at position 700 or 750.

One thing they could do if they change the flipper physics is make sure no tournaments are active on the affected tables over the transition, or at least no Zen tournaments if its not possible to restrict user made tournaments.

 

[Cloda]

Zen had an infamous incident during FX2 time when they accidentally wiped a leaderboard and their community manager received a death threat. I can't remember which table it was for and I think it was Barbie who was still the community manager so it must have been around 2011 - 2012 or something like that.

I didn't play the game for a couple of years so I was very disappointed that all my scores "disappeared" from the perspective if you don't have a Xbox 360 anymore, you can't see the scores anywhere. I managed to get hold of one the other day, and took the opportunity to take photos of my scores across all the tables. I put a serious amount of time into FX2 during the years that I played intensely. I have petitioned Zen before to do an online leaderboard - like TPA's - where we can see all the scores from all the different platforms and game versions, but they basically said it is just too much work - sad. I'm thus glad to hear that they will archive the leaderboards when they replace it and hopefully the archived version will still be available somewhere for reference.

In addition to the flipper physics update, I can't imagine that they won't also change The Party Zone's nudging as it is much too powerful. It is easy to do bangbacks on classic arcade and nudge passes are also very easy - it plays more similar to a Zen original. Ironically, it is not easy at all to do a bangback on Classic Single Player on the same table. Apparently, it is the same on Black Rose, but I haven't played that yet.

On a separate front - has anybody noticed that Fish Tales have been updated? A friend of mine noticed that the survival mode scoring on PS4 has been updated over the last week or so and he also feels that the notch on the right hand side has been altered. I played a quick game on my Xbox One and it seems that the ball is being kicked out further but I'm not certain (here is a video link showing the kick from the notch) but the multiball glitch still happened when the ball lock mechanism messes up.

 

[shogun00]

Zen had an infamous incident during FX2 time when they accidentally wiped a leaderboard and their community manager received a death threat. I can't remember which table it was for and I think it was Barbie who was still the community manager so it must have been around 2011 - 2012 or something like that.

It was Plants vs Zombies and it happened in 2013 IIRC. They did some changes to rule set to make game a bit harder and wiped the leaderboards. It wasn't just a single death threat though but several.

 

[Cloda]

It was Plants vs Zombies and it happened in 2013 IIRC. They did some changes to rule set to make game a bit harder and wiped the leaderboards. It wasn't just a single death threat though but several.

Thanks for the details shogun00! Zen understandably thus does not take leaderboard wipes lightly.

 

[shutyertrap]

When Stern puts out a code update, do any in the pinball community raise a fuss over their high scores? Of course not. They hunker down and play another round of pinball.

This is what frustrates me with leaderboards for digital pinball. I have no sympathy for anyone's 5 hour marathon that they don't wish to repeat. Suck it up, buttercup, and do it again if it's so damn important to you. Why the entire fanbase should suffer with older physics in order to avoid backlash from a VERY small but unfortunately vocal minority is sheer stupidity. Pinball is meant to be played over and over, not a climb to the peak and never do it again experience. A prize fighter doesn't win the title to never defend it again, every sports team starts at square one at the beginning of a season, but for some insane reason leaderboards need to be forever.

Yep, this is my soapbox and I've been on it since 2013.

 

[kimkom]

When Stern puts out a code update, do any in the pinball community raise a fuss over their high scores? Of course not. They hunker down and play another round of pinball.

This is what frustrates me with leaderboards for digital pinball. I have no sympathy for anyone's 5 hour marathon that they don't wish to repeat. Suck it up, buttercup, and do it again if it's so damn important to you. Why the entire fanbase should suffer with older physics in order to avoid backlash from a VERY small but unfortunately vocal minority is sheer stupidity. Pinball is meant to be played over and over, not a climb to the peak and never do it again experience. A prize fighter doesn't win the title to never defend it again, every sports team starts at square one at the beginning of a season, but for some insane reason leaderboards need to be forever.

Agreed. And high scores are meant (made) to be reset. It's a fundamental part of pinball.

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

20 leaderboards aren't enough to phase me. It's like what everyone else above said. Not to mention that in order to master pinball, you need not just the knowledge of rules. You need to be able to perform on all different kinds of machines.

No two machines are the same, and Zen's iterations are no different when they go through with the flipper physics update.

 

[Cloda]

Unfortunately (for me) I lost my fervour for Zen's original tables, exactly because they take forever to get a good score on the leaderboards. My longest single game to date was over 15 hours on Paranormal and I basically played to a score, where after I cut the game short. There is not a chance in hell that I'll try that ever again. That is why the Williams tables for me, as somebody that loves Zen's tables but have outgrown them in a way, is such a breath of fresh air. I have no nostalgic attachment to them or anything as I unfortunately never had access to them in real life, so I'm just as excited about them as I used to get over Zen's own releases. The main reason why I enjoy them so much is much shorter game time, which makes what you guys have been talking about possible, the ability to reach for the top time and time again. Many of Zen's tables never made it possible and I just don't have it in me anymore to ever chase the high scores again. I'll leave that be to the guys that still have that hunger (and time) to go for the top scores.

I'm thus super keen for Zen to apply the improved physics to the Williams tables and hope that we find that the Universal Monsters is even more refined so that it's flipper physics can be applied to all the previous Volumes. I'll be super happy to chase down top scores again and if they improve the physics even more in future, I'll also hope then that they'll update all their previous packs again.

 

[shogun00]

Agreed. And high scores are meant (made) to be reset. It's a fundamental part of pinball.

Very true! Looking at both of my alphanumeric machines (Rollergames and Robocop), the ROM resets the high scores after every 200 games.

 

[HighFive]

When Stern puts out a code update, do any in the pinball community raise a fuss over their high scores? Of course not. They hunker down and play another round of pinball.

This is what frustrates me with leaderboards for digital pinball. I have no sympathy for anyone's 5 hour marathon that they don't wish to repeat. Suck it up, buttercup, and do it again if it's so damn important to you. Why the entire fanbase should suffer with older physics in order to avoid backlash from a VERY small but unfortunately vocal minority is sheer stupidity. Pinball is meant to be played over and over, not a climb to the peak and never do it again experience. A prize fighter doesn't win the title to never defend it again, every sports team starts at square one at the beginning of a season, but for some insane reason leaderboards need to be forever.

Yep, this is my soapbox and I've been on it since 2013.

Agree with you here. Dont understand the panic over a leaderboard reset if new physics get implemented.

 

[Benny Baroni]

Is zen actually so worried about empty threats and the wrath of the "leaderboard whores" that they would let it delay game development? If true then they also need to suck it up/toughen up. Five months ago, now, or five months from now, whats the difference? if there has to be some kind of leaderboard reset the same people will be salty either way so I don't see what further delaying it accomplishes. Anyway I have a hard time believing this is such a big factor, I think implementing the newer physics simply isn't as high priority as they like you to think it is.

 

[shutyertrap]

Is zen actually so worried about empty threats and the wrath of the "leaderboard whores" that they would let it delay game development? If true then they also need to suck it up/toughen up. Five months ago, now, or five months from now, whats the difference? if there has to be some kind of leaderboard reset the same people will be salty either way so I don't see what further delaying it accomplishes. Anyway I have a hard time believing this is such a big factor, I think implementing the newer physics simply isn't as high priority as they like you to think it is.

I never believed it was a big factor until I talked in depth to one of the guys up at FarSight and heard how much weight is put into decisions that affect leaderboards. And then either Akos or Jeno over at Zen stated they'd need to create an additional leaderboard for Vol 1-3 to accommodate any changes, and it's not as easy as just adding a column to a spreadsheet. There's where your low priority factor comes in, because Deep has already said he's tested the flipper physics on those tables (as well as on some Zen originals) and says it needs some fine tuning, but mostly it works right out the box.

 

[wilbers]

Very true! Looking at both of my alphanumeric machines (Rollergames and Robocop), the ROM resets the high scores after every 200 games.

I never knew that some machines did that. Explains how I managed to set a high score on Robocop after about 3 games at a pinball show in May, likely was just a top 5 score in the 2 hours it had been on that morning.

 

[yespage]

Ultimately, the loudest voices get heard the most by other people that might not have given a game a chance. Personally, I'd like to know what my previous high score was with a percentage of how I was ranked. I wouldn't care to see the entire list. No one would.

I never believed it was a big factor until I talked in depth to one of the guys up at FarSight and heard how much weight is put into decisions that affect leaderboards. And then either Akos or Jeno over at Zen stated they'd need to create an additional leaderboard for Vol 1-3 to accommodate any changes, and it's not as easy as just adding a column to a spreadsheet.

I'm not certain why this can't be built into the system for anticipated changes down the road or simply archive the top 10. Granted, you'd only want to do this once as having multiple archived scores would make it difficult to actually display.

 

[Gorgias32]

I'm not certain why this can't be built into the system for anticipated changes down the road or simply archive the top 10. Granted, you'd only want to do this once as having multiple archived scores would make it difficult to actually display.

Absolutely - honestly, I know it's been proposed before, but just put up an "official" web page on the public website that has the "legacy leaderboards pre-version xyz" and pull over the top 10, 20, 100 whatever. That should be a lot less work.than supporting multiple leaderboards in-app.

 

[jrolson]

I just downloaded the new patch on PS4 and only pack 4 has the new flipper physics on classic mode still.. Did they give up on adding the new physics to all tables?

 

[Cloda]

I just downloaded the new patch on PS4 and only pack 4 has the new flipper physics on classic mode still.. Did they give up on adding the new physics to all tables?

Yeah... unfortunately it will still take a while. The whole preceding discussion in the couple of posts above this is about the leaderboards that need to be reset once the flipper physics update happens.

 

[gameaddict4life]

Speaking of scores and leaderboards why are there high scores for buy-ins? Is it even possible to get a buy-in score on FX3? The table resets after every game doesn't it? Also it's on free play so....................