Williams Pinball App Data Collection

[jaredmorgs]

By any chance, was the table Safe Cracker? That's happened to me too, but only on that table.

Not sure if XP scales to scores in a way. Safe Cracker is incredibly abnormal.

Yep it was. Must be the low scores on this table affecting what must be score based leveling.

 

[shutyertrap]

Here's the summary after playing the app for 7 days...

I started with 54 coins, 7 days later I had 99
My ticket count started at 15,195 and finished the week at 8505. In that time I upgraded two tables to 3 stars and lost a lot of tickets to Pro and Premium challenges
Level 23 to start, level 29 now

Table Parts

Theatre of Magic 14/100 for level 4 upgrade
Champion Pub 40/50 for level 3 upgrade
Safe Cracker 13/100 for level 4 upgrade

As you can see, in 7 days and only collecting parts for those 3 tables, I've come a long way. By next week I should have all 3 ready for max upgrade, coins being the only thing slowing me down.

The Value of Pro and Premium Challenges

I've been asked a couple times now if Premium challenge is worth the 200 coins. The short answer is no, not until you are only missing the full upgrade to 2 or 3 tables. Now for the long answer.

The Premium challenge has the highest goal scores needed of any challenge, as it should. I only completed the 15 star goal 1 day out of 7. I missed the 10 star goal 3 times. 5 minute challenge happened 4 times, 1 Ball twice, and Survival once. When it comes to rewards, the good is that you'll earn large parts packs. 5 parts was the norm, which is really nice. Ticket packs tended to be between 40 and 75, which while high in general is way low considering how much it costs to play. Pro challenge is 15 tickets for attempt, and Premium is an insane 25. What the hell did I spend 200 coins for if I then have to pay each game?!

I'm not kidding when I say these two challenges are ticket pits. Here's how many I lost on each day 625/790/580/30/185/45 I didn't play them on day 1, and I started limiting my attempts the last 3.

If you are looking for flipper and ball trail card flips, this is the place too. Equally annoying is on Premium challenge level 5 is always missing the far right card to flip.

Score Goal Increases

One question people had was if the goals needed were somehow getting harder as they leveled up. Two other people are collecting these scores with me, and both have had matching score values to mine even though we are on different levels. Point requirements do increase from Basic to Advanced to Pro to Premium. For example, if you are playing AFM in survival, here are the points needed at each level through Pro...

5 STAR 750/850/950 million
10 STAR 1.95/2.25/2.55 billion
15 STAR 2.3/4.2/4.8 billion

That's the only table I have that I can compare like that, but that's essentially going to happen across all of them. Some of the point increases between star levels are quite shocking though. On Getaway Premium 1 ball challenge, it was 40 million for 5 stars and then a whopping 128 million for 10. Meanwhile over on Safe Cracker in basic survival, for 10 stars you need 450,000 points and for 15 stars...450,000 points. I mean, what?

Where Are The Coins?

We all know coins are the most valuable of rewards. They seem to be distributed through all the challenges, and there doesn't seem to be a noticeable increase in the Pro or Premium challenge like there is in table parts. This might also be because I'm not getting to the 15 star goals. I also haven't flipped those cards that cost a coin, so maybe the good drops are hiding behind those? The best flip I've had was for 4 coins, and that was only once in Pro 15 star. Once I've secured all my upgrades, maybe I'll start burning through them to get those 15 star Premium rewards and see if there's an increase at all.

 

[jaredmorgs]

That is some seriously interesting data shutyertrap.

it's going to be interesting to see over time whether the pro challenge starts to become more of an attractive purchase after you get a little bit more data on it.

Or, perhaps, weather Zen decides to relax the ticket spend requirements after paying quite a large amount of coins to unlock the challenge tier.

 

[MBeeching]

Put in a lot of hours but took a much needed break yesterday, the grind has finally worn me out.
I currently possess no Grade 4 tables due to a lack of Zen coins so my Volume 3 progress is painfully slow.

Table Parts - Grade 2
ToM - 7/50
CP - 12/50
SC - 15/50

Zen needs to address this issue with part drops for maxed out tables, it's just going to get worse over time.
Comparing my collection with ShutYerTrap's those deficits currently stand at:

ToM - 57 less
CP - 78 less
SC - 48 less
Total - 183

I've also been tracking score targets and it has confirmed my suspicions regarding Basic Challenge rotation. Certain tables rarely make an appearance (Fish Tales / Attack From Mars / High Speed 2). I haven't seen Fish Tales in weeks, it has apparently disappeared off the face of the earth. More often than not I'm stuck with Junk Yard or Party Zone and often spend a fortune in tickets desperately trying to get a different table.

 

[shutyertrap]

This is why the data collecting can ultimately help us next time I have a conversation with Zen. For someone coming to the app fresh, they might very well be in an impossible situation to make any progression, thus dismissing the app. For someone that's been at it for a while with progress that has been slow, the addition of even more tables will feel like pushing a rock up a hill only for it to roll back down. In my situation, if I can prove that it's completely do-able, it might make sense for people to purchase a block of tables outright knowing that you'll then be able to grind to success.

I didn't think to list the tables I played, and that's certainly something to compare and track too. That being said...

Basic

Getaway
Safe Cracker
Black Rose
Champion Pub
Safe Cracker
Attack From Mars
Attack From Mars

Advanced

Party Zone
Attack From Mars
Junk Yard
Attack From Mars
Theatre of Magic
Champion Pub
Theatre of Magic

Pro

Fish Tales
Medieval Madness
Attack From Mars
Junk Yard
Attack From Mars
Party Zone
Safe Cracker

Premium

Medieval Madness
Black Rose
Fish Tales
Getaway
Getaway
Fish Tales
Junk Yard

 

[shutyertrap]

Hot damn!

For the first time, I finished all 15 star goals while actually gaining on my ticket count. It's also sorta weird, I gain phantom coins. From card flips I got 4 coins, but my count total shows I have 3 more coins than that. I didn't level up either, so it couldn't have come from there. I'll take 'em, but I have no idea why I got them. It's not the first time that's happened, but I was really paying attention this go around.

I'm averaging 7 coins a day, so that's about 14 days for every 100 coins. With 3 tables to upgrade, that's 45 days of collecting. New tables drop every 6-8 weeks? If we're on the short side of that, I'll upgrade my final table just as a new batch lands. If it's on the far side, I'll have an extra 100 coins waiting on stand-by. Or at least that's the theory I'm working on. I started all this with 54 coins in the bank, so I'm technically 7 days ahead of where I should be.

I swear this has all the fast paces excitement of watching paint dry!

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

Here are a selection of (approximate) scores needed to win the Level 3 League Play matches on Android. Top to bottom they are:

MM
BRose
ToM
PZone
FT

Not there yet:
JY
Safecracker
HS2
AFM
CPub


Scores vary slightly from game to game, but these are good enough as a guideline.

Sent from my SM-T710 using Tapatalk

 

[Gord Lacey]

Are you also keeping track of the time needed to unlock everything? How many hours will go into unlocking a table to 4 stars?

 

[shutyertrap]

Are you also keeping track of the time needed to unlock everything? How many hours will go into unlocking a table to 4 stars?

No, I'm not. A lot depends on the skill of the player, how quickly they can beat a challenge, how many challenges they can fully complete, etc. There have been days where I've cleared all 4 challenges in about an hour, other days where I've spent that much time on a single challenge. At my current rate of collection, I should have parts for 2 of the 3 tables to fully upgrade in 2 days. That means it will have taken me 13 challenge cycle days to earn that. The 3rd will probably complete a day or two after. I have 131 coins right now, so I'll be able to upgrade one of those fully. I'll have enough coins to upgrade the 2nd table within 7 days. The third will take 14 days time to collect after that, as I'm averaging 7 coins per day.

Keep in mind, I consider myself a better than average player and I'm earning from the Premium challenge always the 5 star reward, usually the 10 star, and rarely the 15 (that one is a beast to beat). The Pro 15 star goal reward has consistently given the best rewards, whether it be a large ticket pack or a +6 parts pack. The Premium 5 star rewards are rather crap considering the cost to play, and the 10 star reward is only +5 table parts and ticket packs that are medium to high in count. I did get a +4 coin today from it, but that is not the norm.

I would love to know what rewards people are getting from the Zen coin card flip. The flips tend to be fairly consistent to each goal reward level. When coins weren't so valuable, I was flipping them and getting a lot of table parts. If there were more coins hiding under them, it would totally be worth it. Maybe I'll flip some once I can upgrade everything. It'll be 12 coins to spend in one day, another 12 the following to see if there's any sort of regular pattern. You can see why I'm not doing that currently!

Taking all the guess work out of this, all the times it feels you're getting nowhere, and instead tracking all this hard data, it's making me see the path needed to earn these tables. It does require playing daily, it does require figuring out the best way to score with each table for each type of challenge, and it does require that you spend your assets wisely. As I keep mentioning, this is all being done under the best of circumstances.

I'd be very curious to see how long it'd take me to even get the Advanced challenge unlocked for all tables if I were starting with a brand new account today. From what I've tracked, Basic challenge consistently issues a total of 6 table parts if you complete to 15 stars; +1 for 5 stars, +2 for 10, and +3 for 15. That's at minimum, as I've had +4 pop up now and then too. But spread out over 10 tables, and needing 2 stars to play the Advanced challenge, that's gonna be a while until all tables are available. Once Advanced is opened though, it's +2/+3+5 parts daily on top of the 6 you earn from Basic (so a minimum of 16 daily), and the ticket count is much better. If I had to guess I'd say after a week you'd be able to play in Advanced more often than not. 2 weeks after that you'd maybe even have a table or two that could play the Pro challenge.

And yes the ads suck, but my new goal has been to try and finish all the Advanced challenges is 5 tries or less. I feel like I've beat the system when I do! Then there's days like today with 1 ball AFM and I had to suffer through ads A LOT.

 

[MBeeching]

I'm gonna send my data over to Chris later so we can compare results. Here are a few notes and observations:

Average coins per day: 6
It would take me around 17 days solid play to promote a table to 4 star - half a year for the tables released so far!
If you're grinding for coins I'm earning most of mine from 10 star (Basic)
I don't have access to Premium Challenges, though it looks like Chris was collecting quite a few coins at 5 stars.

Challenge Difficulty:
My success rate playing advanced challenges is appalling, Pro seem to be easier.
Basic challenges are fairly straightforward (15 stars) but there are definitely exceptions.

- Safe Cracker (5 min) is incredibly tough, Zen really need to disable the clock whilst playing the board game.
- Theatre of Magic (1 Ball) appears to use pro difficulty, the ball is really fast. 5 stars is easy but there's a huge score increase for 10+.
- Party Zone (1 Ball) Perhaps I'm terrible at this table but this challenge is tough!
- Junk Yard. I dislike this table and find it tiring to play. Very low success rate beyond 5 stars unless I get Mamushka time machine.

Table Parts
I'm trying to earn parts for volume 3 but the drop rate is terrible. I was awarded more parts for Junk Yard than those three tables combined. As it stands only 18.6% of the parts I'm earning are of any benefit.

Total parts earned: 113
Vol 3 parts: 21 (18.6%)
Junk Yard parts: 26 (23%)

Note: The above statistics are based upon daily refreshes and don't include basic grinding, I may expand my data collection.

Basic Challenge rewards
Tickets - 23.8%
Coins - 4.7%
Parts - 19%
Ball skin - 52.3%

It's not worth watching basic 5 star adverts if you've got a decent ticket horde, though there's a 35% chance you'll flip a part or coin at 10-15 stars.

 

[shutyertrap]

Here's the summary after playing the app for 14 days

Level 31 (+8)
Tickets 8780
Coins 53

Theatre of Magic: Fully upgraded (as of day 14)
Champion Pub: 77/100 parts
Safe Cracker: 86/100 parts

I only needed 2 more parts for ToM to start day 14, and I got them on the card flip of Basic 10 star challenge. With that out of the way, I collected 24 parts for CP in one day, 9 for SC. On any given day you can earn 35 parts, sometimes it's 36, but that's the max. I only need 37 more parts in total for those last 2, so I should have all the parts needed by day 16. I won't be able to upgrade the 2nd table until day 21, and the 3rd will have to wait for day 35. I'm hoping that maybe instead of table parts I'll get more coin drops, but it's doubtful.

Parts Drop Central

Curious to know where the parts are found? Here ya go...

Basic 5 Star: +1 part
Basic 10 Star: +2 parts
Basic 15 Star: +3 parts

Advanced 5 Star: +2 parts
Advanced 10 Star: +3 parts
Advanced 15 Star: +5 parts

Pro 5 Star: +3 parts
Pro 10 Star: +4 parts
Pro 15 Star: +6 parts

Premium 5 Star: no parts
Premium 10 Star: +5 parts (sometimes there's an additional +1 part card)
Premium 15 Star: +1 parts

As you can see, if you are on the hunt for parts then suffer through those ads on advanced and clear the 15 star goal, and you absolutely want to do the Pro challenge, difficult as it is. The Premium challenge is clearly not the place for parts, and sadly it isn't the place for coins either. It does drop a lot of tickets though. I've seen no discernible pattern for coins, but the majority of them tend to drop in the Basic and Advanced challenge. As I said before though, I'm averaging 7 coins a day and that's from playing Basic thru Pro to 15 stars, and Premium to 10.

Percentages So Far

I've heard some complaints about never seeing certain tables while always getting another. Here's what I've found up to this point...

Theatre of Magic
43% of all challenges
21% of Basic
14% of Advanced
0% of Pro
43% of Premium

Safe Cracker
29% of all challenges
21% of Basic
0% of Advanced
7% of Pro
0% of Premium

Champion Pub
14% of all challenges
7% of Basic
7% of Advanced
0% of Pro
0% of Premium

Medieval Madness
36% of all challenges
7% of Basic
0% of Advanced
7% of Pro
21% of Premium

Getaway
50% of all challenges
7% of Basic
14% of Advanced
0% of Pro
29% of Premium

Junk Yard
36% of all challenges
7% of Basic
7% of Advanced
0% of Pro
36% of Premium

Attack From Mars
71% of all challenges
14% of Basic
43% of Advanced
14% of Pro
0% of Premium

Black Rose
36% of all challenges
7% of Basic
7% of Advanced
14% of Pro
7% of Premium

Party Zone
29% of all challenges
7% of Basic
7% of Advanced
14% of Pro
0% of Premium

Fish Tales
57% of all challenges
0% of Basic
0% of Advanced
36% of Pro
21% of Premium

Here's how often the challenges are coming up:

Basic 5 minute: 36%
Basic 1 ball: 21%
Basic survival: 43%

Advanced 5 minute: 21%
Advanced 1 ball: 36%
Advanced survival: 43%

Pro 5 minute: 36%
Pro 1 ball: 36%
Pro survival: 29%

Premium 5 minute: 43%
Premium 1 ball: 29%
Premium survival: 29%

Obviously your results may vary, and I'll certainly keep an eye on this to see if I just don't have a large enough sample yet. Even after I've fully collected for my tables, I'm going to track this data until either a clear pattern emerges from people like MBeeching seeing similar, or the next pack drops.

I am continually surprised by the data I've pulled in such a short time already. To know exactly how many parts you can earn daily, how many days it'll take to earn 100 coins, those are facts that have nothing to do with what I've already maxed out and what is left. Those are universal to everyone. I and MBeeching have been tracking all the scores needed to beat every challenge, and once that chart is filled I'll share it so that people can approach a challenge knowing how in reach a goal is for them. Those Premium 15 star goals are going to be quite the victory to find out!

If there are any other stats you all want to know, just ask. If I've tracked it, I'll answer.

 

[Peter NYC]

Do we have any conclusions as to whether it is worth spending a coin to flip a reward as we go deeper into the difficulty ladder? Is the Premium 15 star reward worth flipping for, or do we get the same chance at receiving a ball trail as a Basic 5 star reward?

 

[shutyertrap]

No, I haven’t flipped a single one yet. Once I’m all maxed, I’ll flip them for a day and see. When I did it during the original go for the 1st seven, I seem to recall it just giving more parts. Unless it’s giving coins, not worth it since it’ll cost 12 coins per day to flip them all, but I’m only averaging 7 coins a day.

 

[shutyertrap]

I'm thinking of writing up a massive guide for posting on the BlahCade site as well as sending to This Week In Pinball about all I'm finding out with this app. I need some help though, as there is info I don't remember. I mainly need to know...

- When first downloading the app, what are the requirements for playing the Basic daily challenge? Are you only able to play the table you first selected until you've collected parts for others?

- What are the base number of stars needed for a table in order to play Advanced? What about for Pro?

- Can anyone answer what happens regarding 'limited time offer' when downloading for the first time now? Are all 3 Volumes offered or just the most recent?

I want to write this guide from the perspective of what to do if you are brand new to the app, as well as offer advice for those that want to spend as little money as possible. I don't have any additional mobile devices to start new with, but I'm hoping that some of you who maybe abandoned the app right away might be able to fill in these blanks for me.

 

[MBeeching]

Yeah it would be beneficial to include the starting values for new players (Tickets/Coins). Annoyingly I've lost access to my secondary Google account and don't fancy setting up another just to check.

- If I recall correctly Zen provide table parts for the first one you select, plus enough tickets to promote it to Level 1 (150).

- You are then stuck with one table for basic challenge mode, this is definitely an issue for players unfamiliar with the tables.

The following would be very bad first choices: Party Zone, Junk Yard, Safe Cracker, Black Rose. Easiest in my opinion would be Fish Tales, AFM or ToM. You're far more likely to get the 15 stars and speed up the grind process.

- Android players can try any table which appears in League mode, though it will cost 25 tickets per play. This has definitely changed as according to my records you originally needed Grade 2.

Table Promotions
Grade 1: Basic Challenge
Grade 2: Arcade Play / Advanced Challenge / Ball Skins
Grade 3: Pro Challenge / Flipper Skins / Visual Extras
Grade 4: Save Game / Play Offline / Ball Trails / Pro Difficulty / Pro Physics / Practice Play

 

[wilbers]

I'm thinking of writing up a massive guide for posting on the BlahCade site as well as sending to This Week In Pinball about all I'm finding out with this app. I need some help though, as there is info I don't remember. I mainly need to know...

- When first downloading the app, what are the requirements for playing the Basic daily challenge? Are you only able to play the table you first selected until you've collected parts for others?

- What are the base number of stars needed for a table in order to play Advanced? What about for Pro?

- Can anyone answer what happens regarding 'limited time offer' when downloading for the first time now? Are all 3 Volumes offered or just the most recent?

I want to write this guide from the perspective of what to do if you are brand new to the app, as well as offer advice for those that want to spend as little money as possible. I don't have any additional mobile devices to start new with, but I'm hoping that some of you who maybe abandoned the app right away might be able to fill in these blanks for me.

I haven't run it for a few weeks now - since before vol. 3 launched - if you want I can see if it gives me a time-limited upgrade option for vol. 3.

MB is right you start with a table of your choice at grade 1 (MM for me) and have everything you need to upgrade to grade 2 which I did immediately as I couldn't seem to be able to run anything without doing it. I got as far as unlocking Fish Tales at grade 1 and gave up on it a couple of days later since I can only run the app through emulation on my PC at present, and when on that why wouldn't I run FX3 instead.

Until I unlocked Fish Tales it was only giving me MM for the basic (&advanced??) challenge; with 2 tables unlocked it was giving me those as options for basic & advanced challenges - didn't attempt any pro challenges.

 

[shutyertrap]

1 star is 5 parts/150 tickets, and it sounds like you are confirming you need at least that to play in Basic, right Wilbers? And you're saying you had MM as the Basic daily challenge every day until you unlocked FT, and then it rotated between the two of them? That's at least better than what I thought might happen, which was random tables got picked for the daily challenge and if you didn't have a table upgraded, you just couldn't play at all that day. It also means putting a little more strategy into what tables you choose to unlock and in what order.

 

[wilbers]

Just launched it to see what it says. Gives option to buy Williams Pinball Legendary Collection, consisting of all 10 tables for £27.49, time limited to 3 days.

Daily challenges has Fish Tales 5 minute for basic (40M for 5 stars, 60M for 10 stars), MM 1 ball for advanced, and The Getaway for pro (which I haven't unlocked so can't play).


To start with a clean slate you could try https://www.bluestacks.com/blog/bluestacks-exclusives/how-to-install-bluestacks-windows-10.html - its what I've been using, but my google account is the same as my phone (which doesn't have enough storage to run it).

 

[Xanija]

Something about "strategies", if you are not like Chris, who likes to play the challenges not to be able to play the tables afterwards without paying them, but for completing them and never touch them again afterwards.

Level 3 of upgrading costs not only 50 table parts, but also 3000 tickets, which is the bigger hurdle. I don't know the cost of Lavel 4, but I don't care as I'm not going to upgrade to Level 3 anyway.

Level 3 would give

Pro-Challenges (I couldn't care less)
Flipper cosmetics (...even less the Pro-challenges)
Visual Extras (I would like to have that)

With level 4 you get:

Saving games (well, yes - It won't destroy my experience, if I can't do it)
Offline playing (I don't think I really need it a lot, as I can always use my Smartphone as Hotspot)
Ball trail customization (pfft...)
Tournament Setup (yes, please)
Pro physics (yes please)
Practicing game (eh, why?)

So, if I upgrade the tables to level 2, when I can play them in Acrace mode, and then buy the packs:

Visual Extras for all tables: 75 Zen Coins
Pro Physics for all tables: 150 Zen Coins
Tournament Setup for all tables (Zen, please explain me, why you call this "Pro difficulty" in the shop, but "Tournament setup" in the level 4 description - at least in the German version) 100 Zen Coins

I could get everything, which interests me, for 325 Zen Coins, which cost 10€.

I only would have to grind for level 2 on every table, which is not that hard. Of course, this will change, once we have 30 tables available, as I would get a lot of table parts for tables, I have already upgraded to Level 2. That's when the whole thing gets a longer grind again.

 

[shutyertrap]

Level 4 costs 100 parts and 100 coins. I average right around 600 tickets earned every day, but then I spend between 200 and 300 doing the Pro and Premium challenge (minimum is 120 for all 3 challenge levels, and then all the 2nd, 3rd, 10th attempts!). From just the Basic and Advanced challenges I am earning right around 200-275 per day depending on the drops. Call it 15 days to earn 3000 tickets. The ticket drops in Pro are nearly 200 per day, so there's a lot of value in having a table or two available to play that. the best bet according to my current rate of use stats is to select MM, Getaway, and FT as the first tables to upgrade as they are what has popped up in Pro challenge with greatest frequency. I'll have more to go on regarding that with a full month of data though.

So while Level 3 may not look like it offers things you'd want, the challenge rewards are entirely why you want it. You'll get an extra 13 table parts daily from it, and the above mentioned ticket drop (minus the 15 tickets per play cost). And then of course there's the visual extras.

It is an interesting approach though, buying the visual extras and buying the Pro physics. Unless mobile is your only platform for playing, I'd probably forgo the Tournament Setup unless you really hate extra balls and love vicious ball drains!

In the main app discussion thread I posted how many days it'll take to earn parts, and I'm thoroughly convinced the only thing that makes sense is to have the game recognize you've reached 170 parts for a table and then cap it. It's that or instituting a system that converts extra cards to tickets instead, or allowing people to trade extras between themselves.