Williams Pinball App Data Collection

[shutyertrap]

You're a much more patient man than I.

Not so much patience as madness!

I simply want to know how this all works, what the thinking is when setting up these freemium games. FarSight did this with their Stern VR app, offering the ability to earn tables for free. I don't have VR, so I had to rely on others to tell me that in the end, it was impossible to do. I was never able to check the validity of those statements but the numbers that were posted showed how laughably out of reach a free table was in reality. Couple that with FarSight's history of abandoning the regular Stern app, and disaster.

Zen has me in a sweet spot, in that reaching the goal had been tantalizingly close and within reach while making sure I was playing daily. When the app first got released, I met the goal in 16 days and promptly forgot all about playing until Volume 3 got released. Now they have it set to where the goal is going to continually pull away, and that's not good.

I do wonder how many people have given up on it completely. Had the option to be able to play Pro physics been at say star level 2, would that satisfy those that left? Or was the whole freemium nature destined to doom it from the start? As I've said, if it were pay to play only, I wouldn't be playing at all. I have all the TPA tables and prior to the Williams app, I hardly played those because nothing drove me to. These daily challenges are key to me, what makes me come back for more. Do the people that bought all the Williams tables play daily? Do they play using the Pro physics? Does anyone at all mess with the various skins?

There's also the factor that I do all this for the benefit of having an ongoing topic to cover in the podcast. It's not exactly investigative journalism, but it's fun to dig deep and discover all the dirty secrets!

 

[Gord Lacey]

These daily challenges are key to me, what makes me come back for more.

But you don't lose the ability to play the daily challenges if you buy the tables, do you? You can play the challenges and earn stuff to unlock other ball trails, pinballs, and flippers... you just can also play the actual tables whenever you want.

 

[jaredmorgs]

But you don't lose the ability to play the daily challenges if you buy the tables, do you? You can play the challenges and earn stuff to unlock other ball trails, pinballs, and flippers... you just can also play the actual tables whenever you want.

Correct

 

[MBeeching]

I'd be amazed if anyone has managed to earn a free table on that Stern VR app, though I thought their token play system was quite fair. I enjoyed the game and purchased four tables but the grind mechanism was poorly implemented and unfortunately never addressed.

I'm not sure whether Zen have shot themselves in the foot migrating offline play to Grade 2, dare I say overly generous? I've now lost the incentive to continue grinding and see little point in promoting future table releases beyond Grade 2, in my opinion they should have focused on the issues surrounding table parts and coins drops.

I unlocked Pro Physics a few days ago but I'm not impressed, they're just a novelty on mobile and fail to replicate Classic Arcade on PC. Combining them with Pro Difficulty doesn't improve matters either (equivalent to Classic: Tournament mode). I appreciate the touch controls and the inability to nudge effectively increase the difficulty on mobile platforms but the ball behaviour is nothing like PC.

 

[shutyertrap]

But you don't lose the ability to play the daily challenges if you buy the tables, do you? You can play the challenges and earn stuff to unlock other ball trails, pinballs, and flippers... you just can also play the actual tables whenever you want.

No, you just lose the obsession and need that fueled the daily addiction!

 

[Gorgias32]

Had the servers go down for maintenance for a short time on Saturday night, then after they came back online I noticed some definite improvements in the challenge awards - fewer timeouts after watching a video, seemed like it was giving away more coins and fewer parts for tables I had a lot of. For a few games I was only getting parts for Champion Pub and Safe Cracker, so I thought maybe they had implemented the 170 part cap behind the scenes. But then last night I got some parts for AFM from a challenge, and I have well over the max needed. Possibly there is some weighting going on though.

This is a small sample size, but it gave me some encouragement that Zen is listening and tweaking.

 

[shutyertrap]

Small update...I finally got my 100 coins to max out Safe Cracker!

With that, I no longer am collecting parts. I'll have to see if this carries through today, but I earned coins instead of parts. That is so a$$backwards to what it should be, and only makes sense if parts capped at 170, because then it would make total sense. You've gotten all the parts needed, now here comes the coins to help let you upgrade. I earned 14 yesterday after having paltry numbers the week prior (sorry Gorgias32, I don't think they've corrected anything).

If this is the case that I'll be earning coins instead of parts now, I'm going to absolutely hoard these up to the next table release. I'm wondering, can I shut off the auto update to the app that will add those tables? If so, I'd do that and collect all 300 coins prior to updating, that way once I have parts I can automatically max out and not worry about excessive run over.

In other news, Premium 1 ball on AFM is ridiculous. To get 15 stars, you need to score 8 billion. 8 billion on one ball! I burned through 2000 tickets just trying to beat this. I finally did, and will likely never bother again. Also Safe Cracker 5 minute challenges can burn in hell. When you barely survive getting to 5 stars in five minutes, you really have to wonder how getting to 10 stars is going to be even possible. Seriously, all SC get the 1 finger salute from me.

 

[MadScience2006]

I'm wondering, can I shut off the auto update to the app that will add those tables? If so, I'd do that and collect all 300 coins prior to updating, that way once I have parts I can automatically max out and not worry about excessive run over.

I seem to remember that the Williams app will not run (at least on iOS in online mode) if you’re running an older version than what is current. I frequently run the older version of apps or even reinstall older versions I’ve archived on the PC...you need to be running an older, specific version (12.6.5) of iTunes (that still allows App Store access) on the Mac or PC to do this since you can no longer transfer what is on the iDevice to iTunes on the Mac or PC.

 

[MBeeching]

Only earned 18 coins in the past 8-9 days, immensely irritating. I've also been having some unusual issues with XP recently, after a few games I seem to stop earning points and have to restart the app. Not the end of the world but wasn't an issue before.

Also getting cheesed off by some of these new adverts but I can't find a report button on Android. Some now automatically open the Play Store and take me to their download page and it's becoming a nuisance switching back. Others disable Poweramp so I have to manually resume my music, though perhaps there's a setting to prevent that.

Doubt I could achieve 8 billion with one ball on AFM, very well played Chris!

 

[MadScience2006]

Only earned 18 coins in the past 8-9 days, immensely irritating. I've also been having some unusual issues with XP recently, after a few games I seem to stop earning points and have to restart the app. Not the end of the world but wasn't an issue before.

I had a similar issue under iOS where Theatre Of Magic was giving me 90-99 XP no matter what score I got on it while other tables were giving a ridiculously low XP of 1 or 2 despite me earning a high score. This seemed to resolve itself after the servers were down, then were restarted a couple of weeks ago. Odd stuff

 

[MBeeching]

The XP system needs an overhaul, the points earned are a score percentage though most still seem like arbitrary placeholders. I'm surprised by the general lack of updates to the app, in many respects it still feels like a beta hangover. Hopefully bug reports are getting to the mobile developers and fixes will be pushed out in batches. I was originally posting issues on Zen's forum but it went eerily quiet, perhaps it's time to compile and send them a tiered list.

Edit: Just spent some time compiling a fairly exhaustive list and have sent to support.

 

[shutyertrap]

Here's the summary after playing the app for 42 days

Level 37 (+1)
Tickets 17,670
Coins 55 (+71)

Safe Cracker: upgraded to level 4 on day 39

It was a long slow slog, but I finally got the final 100 coins needed to upgrade Safe Cracker midweek. Then a funny thing happened. I no longer was earning parts, naturally, but now I was earning coins in every reward tier instead. I posed the question in an above post about seeing if there was a way to not update the game when the next pack arrives, but it seems that's not possible. Still, I'm earning 13-16 coins each day across the 4 challenges, so hoping to have at least 100 socked away by the time those arrive.


Next Time

One of the things I've been sticking to this entire experiment was not cycling any of the challenges, only doing what is available in a given 24 hour cycle. Yeah, screw that! I'm out to gather as many coins as possible now. Zen keeps changing the rules of the game (so to speak, strictly in terms of reward offerings), so my experiment actually got tossed back on day 28. It's also just become apparent that AFM had all it's scores nerfed for 1 ball, making it incredibly difficult even in the Basic challenge.

So I broke down and cycled a Basic challenge.

Low and behold, I got 4 coins between the 5, 10, and 15 goals. I cycled again, same thing! I looked at cycling the other 3 challenges, but they want 5 coins to do that? Let me get this straight, it costs 20 tickets (that you'll earn back either at the 5 or 10 goal reward) to play the easiest goals, and I'll earn the same amount of coins as I would the other challenges? Cycling four times costs 80 tickets. Playing Pro and Premium costs a minimum of 120 tickets. The past couple of days I've actually used more than 1000 tickets to complete them.

Uh huh, time to take a walk on easy street!

Just today, day one of the new week, I've already cycled 8 challenges AND played the regular 4. Except I didn't play the Pro challenge since it was Champion Pub 1 ball and that table can just go straight to hell. I earned 47 coins in one day so far, putting me at 102. I'm just gonna crush it the next few days and get over 300 in prep for the next pack. My ticket total has also gone up just shy 2500 in one day (actually less than 8 hours of elapsed time) so I'm gonna have a mad stockpile of coins and tickets just in case Zen changes anything else. I'll probably stop playing all but the Basic challenge unless I need a score goal that hasn't been filled in yet.

It's a glitch to exploit without it really being a glitch. It's my sweet revenge from being pissed off 2 weeks back at the change Zen put in. I keep saying all they really need to do is put in hard caps for parts, and the suck thing is you won't be able to exploit this yourself unless you've maxed all the tables. So that's something to consider when the next pack drops and the 'limited time offer' pops up, because if this isn't patched then and you do purchase all the tables, this exploit can be yours to use also.

 

[wilbers]

I think its now safe to say that nobody has more details about coin/ticket/part drops other than Zen themselves. As to patching it if its only you and half a dozen others reading your posts that do it they will probably just leave it as it is since it won't be possible to get to that stage without paying cash for anyone not already close to maxxing things out.

Curious, if you flip the last card by spending a coin is it likely you end up with a net gain of coins there as well since it can't be table parts from it?

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

I have a dilemma.

It seems, pretty much conclusively, that:
1. If you've maxed every table, you get coins instead of parts.
2. As long as you've not maxed even one table, you will continue to get part drops for that table ad infinitum.

I have deliberately not unlocked Safe Cracker. I want no part of it normally; let alone clogging up my Daily Challenges.

But as long as I'm not touching it, I will continue to get parts for it, even if I've collected the 170 I need to max it.

Decisions, decisions.

 

[shutyertrap]

I think its now safe to say that nobody has more details about coin/ticket/part drops other than Zen themselves. As to patching it if its only you and half a dozen others reading your posts that do it they will probably just leave it as it is since it won't be possible to get to that stage without paying cash for anyone not already close to maxxing things out.

Curious, if you flip the last card by spending a coin is it likely you end up with a net gain of coins there as well since it can't be table parts from it?

Every time I’ve flipped that last card, it’s either been a flipper or a ball trail. Unless someone tells me there’s 4 coins on the flip, I won’t bother.

I still want Zen to fix things with rewards. The app should seem workable or people will abandon it.

 

[jaredmorgs]

So I am closing in on enough coins to fully upgrade a table yesterday (100 coins). Today it is 250 coins. Sorry, moving the goal posts every month is ridiculous. I give up. Great tables but what is the point of grinding for the impossible. Thanks to all who put in the hard work. I’m done.

What tier is that on? ?

 

[shutyertrap]

So I am closing in on enough coins to fully upgrade a table yesterday (100 coins). Today it is 250 coins. Sorry, moving the goal posts every month is ridiculous. I give up. Great tables but what is the point of grinding for the impossible. Thanks to all who put in the hard work. I’m done.

I just double checked with another player, and it is still 100 coins for them to upgrade to level 4. The 250 coins unlock as seen in the 'store' is for a full unlock of the table regardless of how many tickets or parts you've earned. Can you tell us what that price is for you?

And just to fully customer support this (despite me not being employed by Zen)...

1. From the main menu, select Arcade Play.
2. Tables with upgrade available should have an animated 'up' arrow indicating they are ready.
3. Select a table that has been upgraded to level 3.
4. The parts needed should be 100, and the coins needed also being 100.

If this is not the case, can you please take a screen shot and post it in this thread?

Now to check the store...

1. On the lower right of the screen there is a shopping cart icon. Select that.
2. Scroll down to 'unlock tables' section.
3. The price listed should be 250 coins for any table you have not upgraded already to level 4.

Again if this is not the case, please take a screen shot and post here.

I know all this might seem basic, but we need to fully establish what you are experiencing, especially if no one else can corroborate. That after all is the whole point of this thread, to fully expose what is happening in the app by not making guesses but showing proof. For instance, we noticed a few weeks back that fewer parts were being issued in favor of more tickets, all while coin drops plummeted. Last week 1 ball AFM had it's scores for the basic challenge skyrocket. By having kept track of these things with charts, there's no doubt about the changes. So would go with a screenshot.

 

[shutyertrap]

I have a dilemma.

It seems, pretty much conclusively, that:
1. If you've maxed every table, you get coins instead of parts.
2. As long as you've not maxed even one table, you will continue to get part drops for that table ad infinitum.

I have deliberately not unlocked Safe Cracker. I want no part of it normally; let alone clogging up my Daily Challenges.

But as long as I'm not touching it, I will continue to get parts for it, even if I've collected the 170 I need to max it.

Decisions, decisions.

Is Safe Cracker the only table left for you to upgrade? If so, do you have the coins to do so? If you do, it's worth it. Here's why...

Now that I have maxed all the tables and am just earning coins willy nilly, I pick and choose the challenges. If I don't like the Basic challenge, I spend the 20 tickets and reset it since I'll earn those tickets back usually just by reaching the 5 star goal. So buh-bye Safe Cracker challenges, buh-bye AFM 1 ball after doing the 5 star goal (which is relatively pain free to achieve even with the new score goals). Depending on what the table is and how good I am at it, for the rest of the challenges I play it by ear. No more spending 500 tickets trying to 15 star a Premium goal for me! Instead I just keep cycling the Basic challenge. Since starting this 5 days ago, I've earned 175 coins by essentially playing 8 challenges worth a day. Typically you'll get 3 coins per challenge completed, but if you do play the Pro there's a chance of sometimes getting 4 coins in a single goal reward.

If you still have other tables to upgrade, just sit on Safe Cracker so you don't have to play it. There's no rhyme or reason as to which table earns parts to the best of my knowledge, but maybe you've noticed different, like all you are earning is SC parts since it hasn't been upgraded at all. When I was down to just needing it and CP parts, they tended to be distributed at an even clip.

 

[Ironmike]

My apologies. It is still 100 coins. I foolishly went to the wrong screen. Safecracker is the only table I have left to upgrade and I can’t bear to pay for coins for that particular table because it is by far my least favorite. I appreciate your responses and will delete my original post. Playing to win 50 challenges a day for a handful of coins is making me lightheaded I guess. Again, I apologize.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

Is Safe Cracker the only table left for you to upgrade? If so, do you have the coins to do so? If you do, it's worth it. Here's why...

Now that I have maxed all the tables and am just earning coins willy nilly, I pick and choose the challenges. If I don't like the Basic challenge, I spend the 20 tickets and reset it since I'll earn those tickets back usually just by reaching the 5 star goal. So buh-bye Safe Cracker challenges, buh-bye AFM 1 ball after doing the 5 star goal (which is relatively pain free to achieve even with the new score goals). Depending on what the table is and how good I am at it, for the rest of the challenges I play it by ear. No more spending 500 tickets trying to 15 star a Premium goal for me! Instead I just keep cycling the Basic challenge. Since starting this 5 days ago, I've earned 175 coins by essentially playing 8 challenges worth a day. Typically you'll get 3 coins per challenge completed, but if you do play the Pro there's a chance of sometimes getting 4 coins in a single goal reward.

If you still have other tables to upgrade, just sit on Safe Cracker so you don't have to play it. There's no rhyme or reason as to which table earns parts to the best of my knowledge, but maybe you've noticed different, like all you are earning is SC parts since it hasn't been upgraded at all. When I was down to just needing it and CP parts, they tended to be distributed at an even clip.

I haven't even unlocked Safe Cracker at 1*.

Other tables:
Owned: AFM, FT
3*: PZ, MM, HS2 (all at max parts), ToM (24 of 100)
2*: JY, BR (both available to upgrade), CPub (44 of 50 parts)

1960 tickets
9 coins
Lv 37

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