Thanks guys. Yeah...it's kind of -impossible- for me to make a case for myself at this point. I still believe my points are valid, there's probably other people in the situation I describe...they just aren't being HERE or vocal about it. I had a stronger choice of games last time I went (LOTR and Spiderman), and I believe I only spent about 80 bucks out of pocket this year, compared to over 200 last time! Want to say it was actually closer to 300, but not sure. The only way that's even explainable is that I'm just playing better than I have in a long, long time. I haven't felt this good about a tournament..pff...it's been a while. Maybe since I won Garage Gauntlet. Even my 2nd round of finals, I took 5 points on Lexi (2), Addams (2), and Embryon (1)....I'd never even PLAYED Embryon before! I also made an "accidental" 3-way combo on Addams that I'm pretty sure saved my butt in that first round. I had shot the center ramp, and the ball came down, I saw the +X lit on that stupid through-the-pops shot...I knew bonus was going to be important if I wanted to survive that game, so I went for it, not realizing the risk..it went clean through, made the left ramp, and then manually hit the swamp LOL. I had no intention at all of trying to get that 3-way, but damn that felt good. I did not play Addams at *all* during qualifying, and only like one or two games on Embryon. I feel like I did pretty bloody amazing considering I got stuck with both of those games and was not dialed in on them. The only reason I didn't make top 8 was because I tilted a BIG bonus on Addams, and then didn't beat Robert on Embryon. Taking the 4 on Addams instead of the 2 would've locked it for me, but Robert is Robert...and he proved he's still way better at classic Bally than I am LOL.

I had fun doing that early commentary (I know the video was freezing up but that was beyond my or Marcus' capability to resolve) and some early morning scorekeeping on Saturday....I haven't really volunteered to help with tournaments before because I always expect the need to play as much as possible, so this was quite a change for me. I'm not used to being able to stay that high in qualifying and then just go fix one or two scores! I think I'll probably be doing more of that in the future, because honestly I'm finding that I'm enjoying watching and talking as much if not more than playing.

Layout on the floor was MUCH better this year...unfortunately on Friday even that couldn't save the fact that it was like 102 degrees outside. It was hot in there. Saturday was much better as the temps were lower outside, and Sunday morning was relatively nice and cool by comparison. Moving the classics off to the the side definitely made things a lot roomier and feel more open, which was very appreciated, as was the fact that they put out water and cups. Registration and getting more entries all went super easy from my perspective, and issues on games were being taken care of quickly. It was an awesome tournament.

Lexi being in the tourney area was...uh....interesting? LOL... Scoring strategies on that game aren't very tourney friendly, and the ball times were just all OVER the place, from unbearably long to sub-30-seconds. I heard that at some point ball savers and whatnot were turned off (After qualifying AND the first round of finals....which was super awkward for me because I got stuck on that bank 2nd round also.) but yeah. Finals round 1 I put up nearly 12 million (I think my ball 2 was about 20 minutes long. I was playing so hard, I actually CHIPPED A TOOTH in the middle of playing!), and then round 2

So, for anyone interested....basically the only way you score squat on Lexi is to either go for large amounts of locks for your first Agent Multiball (Hit targets on sides to light locks then lock balls in the "spaceship" while praying you don't get a slingshot to lock with it unlit....because that starts your multiball!) as the jackpots are cranked up ala Mustang gears.......pray you get to Lights Out Multiball (Hit all the spot targets twice and then the roving target a few times..), or just play as many modes as you possibly can and get your bonus jacked WAY up. The modes I found to be fun and easy to understand, but some of them are "safe" (Target Range....a ton of balls trying to bash center spot targets with no-hold flippers), and some aren't (Warehouse comes to mind....hitting the pop up walls isn't fun. Ball just drops right down from it...but the concept of moving between rooms is cool with the two open scoops). I don't know how or if they intend to make more changes to the code (addition of a 'tournament mode') to make it more friendly for tourney use. I didn't have a lot of physical issues with the game personally aside from jamming up the spaceship during 6-ball multiball, which required Jesse to get a magnet stick out, pull out the balls, and then power cycle the game. Smart code to not burn up the motor, but not being able to recover and continue that game cost me literally MILLIONS of points in qualifying...and when 'good' scores are like 8-9 million and you're at 5 million shooting jackpots worth 750k+...that's big. Flippers felt strong to me all weekend, which is more than I can say for WOZ!

The only thing rule wise that I would actually change as a tournament player to make things a little more balanced would be the following:

1. Give me the option to cancel out of starting Agent Multiball. Don't force me to take a crappy 2-ball multiball with 10k jackpots when I want to continue lighting locks, just because the ball hit the shot on the side and HAPPENED to land on the slings and I never had any control whatsoever that it got pushed into the lock. The reason why this is important is because the lock difficulties go from extremely easy (1 hit per side) to difficult (2 hits per side and it has to be on each half of the targets LO CK BA LL or whatever..) to effectively impossible ( 4 hits per side, have to hit each letter individually... PER LOCK! That's 40 specific hits to get back to a 6 ball multiball if you get "accidental multiball" twice. Good luck with that.

2. Gerry will disagree with me here for sure, but this is my opinion...Lights Out Multiball is basically the equivalent of a "Midnight Madness", competitively. It's too many shots to qualify, and even *IF* you do, you can't start it while you're in Agent Multiball or a mode, and if you lose your ball....guess what...it's gone for the rest of the game. You can't re-qualify it *at all*, and it's 30k for everything on the playfield, per hit. I only got to really watch someone else play it twice (I lit it twice but couldn't collect it either time...) and they both had 200+ hits. That's like 6 million points. I don't know if you can get whole-playfield multipliers during LO the same way you can in Agent (shoot left orbit and the pops hit the spot targets above) but if you CAN....2x or 3x that 6 million. That's *huge*.....maybe the best possible scoring opportunity in the entire game as it sits right now. I really REALLY don't like that something that valuable is just removed from the game because you lose the ball.

If you screw up your Agent locks, and don't ever qualify or MISS getting Lights Out, your only option at that point is to just start hammering modes and aliens, and building bonus. And don't get me wrong...you can get points that way, but it's a looooong slog man.

Bat City 2017 was a fantastic event!

Congrats to Trent Augenstein on his victory! Congrats to Spraynard for his tremendous weekend. Phil finished 1st in Classics and 2nd in Main. He was on fire!

And a special thank you to Jesse Smith for making this PAPA event amazing. The layout was fantastic.

Low Lights:

Outside of failing to advance to the quarter finals of the A playoffs due to my inability to hit a ramp on WOZ to start multiball and seal a point or three more, and my inability to hit a maxed spinner shot on Meteor on ball 3 that would have put me in good position to take over 1st place, I had a tremendous time.

Highlights:
--The coolest part of the entire event was watching the live pinball playoff feed on a big screen television while sitting at a bar with a meal, drink and pinball players. Talking pinball and watching pinball in a sports bar environment should be a bucket list entry for competitive pinball players.

--Watching Eric Stone select Gottlieb North Star(my personal game) to the chagrin of his "A Classic" playoff group, with some lamenting the "luck box" choice. Eric then put up 900+ points, demonstrating plenty of skill and strategy.

--Hearing the oohs, ahhs and groans coming from a large crowd watching at the bar was an incredible experience.

--Watching Snailman put on a Bally Embryon clinic in the A Playoffs. And then watching all of these incredible players quickly adapt the spinner strategy was awe inspiring. So much so, that Zachary Palmer and I had to go immediately to the game after the playoffs to work on that strategy.

--Meeting Yoshihiro Fujiwasa, a pinball player from Japan that traveled to Austin, TX for a chance at a PAPA win. Yoshi is a fantastic player and he put up some great scores during qualifying.

--I'm glad Frax had such a strong showing.

--I'm proud of myself for scoring a point in all three games during my playoff round.

--Finishing in the top 24 against some of the biggest monsters in Pinball today.

--And finally, I'm happy that Bat City was such a success.

Looking forward to next year!

Marcus

WOW, I'm a complete putz. I thought this was next weekend so I missed a tournament that was in my home town....

I was wondering if you were out of town or something...GAH!!!

I read your full summary but didn't get a good feeling for what you think isn't friendly for tourney play. The scoring you described is pretty balanced and good risk/reward. The game can be set up easy or hard. At pinball shows, we enable ball save at the beginning of every mode so people can experience them and not get super frustrated by starting a new mode (each mode in LL-EE immerses you in a different part of the story) and draining right away. These mode ball saves were on throughout this tournament too. To make LL-EE like most other games out there, just turn off the mode ball saves. Moving forward, Respawns (quasi extra balls) can be disabled too. That's the one big change I've made to the code since the tournament.

Main 4 objectives:

1) Risk trying to lock as many balls as possible before starting a multiball. Each ball increases the jackpot base by 10k and increments a jackpot multiplier. Great multiball scores are usually around 3-5M.

2) LightsOutMB - Jackpots are 10k, not 30k, but just like everything else, you can multiply them up with 2x or 3x playfield multipliers. Good LOMB scores are usually 2-3M

3) Go for aliens (left ramp). Left ramp (when not in a mode or multiball) starts an alien. Shoot center targets to bash the alien. Combo right ramp to left ramp for easier insta-kill. Kill 4-5 aliens for 2-3M. Each insta-kill adds 100k base to your bonus.

4) Complete modes. Each mode completion is 500k (except for target practice and bar, which are 250k). Completing adds 50k base to your bonus. Complete 4 modes for 2M plus the points in the mode, which can be substantial.

I'm always open to suggestions, but that's pretty balanced I think.

We've identified and believe we've resolved this issue for all games going to customers. It's a mechanical tweak to the ship entrance so balls can't get stuck.

You've got the option to not start Agent Multiball with 2 balls. Don't shoot the shot that starts it. I watched a bunch of games, and the top level players almost never shot a ball into the ship accidentally.

I sincerely appreciate the feedback. Keep it coming!

- Gerry
http://www.multimorphic.com

I did tell you there that I think the fact that Lights Out is entirely unrecoverable isn't a good thing IMO. Your point was that it wasn't a ton a points... my point is that any 'free' points in a tournament setting is a big benefit. 2-3 million as you put it...that was enough to be the difference between a great qualifying score and a very mediocre one in most cases. I think as more people play the game and understand the rules better, your point will be stronger and mine will become weaker over time because 2-3 million WON'T mean as much as it did that weekend. It's mostly my personal preference. I'm okay with losing a mode and being forced to restart it, but to permanently lose access to something like a multiball, especially one that takes that much work to get to... I don't like that.

I wish they had video of that first round of finals when I was playing for like 10+ minutes. Most high level players would agree that the number of ball saves I had was ridiculous. I was extremely meticulous with rotating the inlane letters. I remember at least 4 times that I drained, the ball came back, and I was surprised it kept happening. This isn't really a 'bad thing' in the general sense of the game, because as I found out, this game is pretty freakin' DEEP in the modes! But in a tourney setting... I feel like the game was *fairly* forgiving as it was set up, tilt was fair and the outlane geometry isn't that punishing IMO. I can only speak for myself. Playing anything in a tourney environment of a PAPA circuit for 10+ minutes is bonkers.

But that's exactly what I mean about a "tournament mode".... disable at least all ADDITIONAL ball savers if not all of them, de-randomize anything that might be random.

Meh. I don't accept the implication that I was just being careless with my shots. You had to reset my game when I got the 7 ball multiball, I got 6 ball multiball the game after that....so it's not like you didn't see me intentionally go for that, but you're basically making the implication that I started 2 ball multiball on purpose (TBH, I did. *once*) or with bad shots. Those slings are strong enough, and just shooting the locks on the sides can lead to ricochets into the ship. I think you're probably used to seeing a lot of "control" players that will trap up, and that's usually not my MO. I'm more of a on the fly player, and most of the Austin guys, and even the Dallas guys are control players. Most people play control for a reason, and even I've had to develop a lot of those skills even though I personally think it makes most games boring to play that way....it works for more people than on the fly shooting does. I might have to learn to be less on the fly with Lexi if the multiball start remains as-is.

My only other idea aside from allowing people to 'flip out' of starting Multiball ala Mustang and Aerosmith, would be to have variable lock difficulty. Such as:

If you start a 2 ball multiball, for next attempt: Locks 1 and 2 are "hard" locks with +1 shots required to both banks. So you make 8 shots to lock 1+2. Locks 3/4/5/6/7/8 then require 1 shot each to each side.

If you start a 6 ball multiball, for next attempt: Locks 1-6 all require 4 hits each, 7/8 are still at 2 each.

These increases would stack as currently exists in the game, so if you start a 2 ball and then a 6 ball, you'd be at 6 for 1/2, 4 for 3/4/5/6, 2 for 7/8.

I feel like that's a good balance (maybe even better than being able to delay start) between the ever increasing lock difficulty across the board and the risk of the ball just winging a slingshot or ricocheting off the left side targets and starting the multiball. When you're having to make 20-30-40 whatever shots to try to get enough locks, it's GOING to fall in there.

I'm really super excited to see how things continue with Lexi. I feel like every time I've played it in the past I really didn't "get it", but I see a really fun game there now, both for casual and competitve play. In that long run, I *did* switch to modes specifically because I did biff my multiball the first time and was not sure about the risks of trying to go for it a second time. I had noticed that bonus could potentially be huge, so I started clearing modes and that worked out pretty well for me...that and the ball saves. That first finals round I took the top slot on Lexi with 20 million...considering my qualifying scores were around 6 million...pretty big difference. I love that the modes can be that lucrative! I think it encourages more skilled play versus just shooting ramps all day in multiball, but frankly...if you can get 6-8 locks and NOT start that damn thing prematurely, you've earned the right to a good chunk of points.

Please consider making a display for the game that can be read by other players. I think being unable to figure out what other players are doing is the main reason many are still confused by the rules.