Communication seems to be the big problem. I think it's understandable if they don't necessarily know a single cause for the problems.

That said, I wonder if the ghosting and chipping are unrelated. I've never seen a ball slam into edges as hard as I've seen in GB -- for example, screaming straight down the middle and bouncing back on the edge that's prone to chipping, the default trough strength slams the ball into the shooter lane, shots into the drop targets, etc.

On my GoT, my shooter lane Cliffy is now dented where the ball hits the lane. Pretty funny, actually, but there's no way to turn down the trough power on GoT. No clear coat can withstand that kind of abuse where there are certain angles of incidence on an edge.

So, maybe there is a problem with some playfields but maybe there's an inherent design flaw as well.

The games have changed. The latest games seem faster and have significantly more airball than any other games I've played. That might explain the dimpling, but not sure about the ghosting -- airballs certainly could be contributing to it.

Would be great if they just came out and publically said this. I can understand they don't want to do a massive playfield swap at one time for production reasons (keeping the lineup moving), but it also doesn't make sense to do them all and then still_ have problems. If the ghosting and chipping only manifests after play (airballs, vibration, who knows) then it's extremely hard to QC. Of course, from our side, so much of this is speculation because we really don't really know specifics about who's making the playfields and which are showing problems, but I'm sure Stern has this data.

While I wouldn't be happy if that were my playfield at only 200 plays, I tend to agree that it's a bit early for a replacement. That's not a no, but just a 'not yet'. The good news (bad news, depending on your point of view) is that it will likely get worse in which case you will qualify.

As for shooter lane -- I think nearly all newer Stern games suffer from the lane damage (not the clear cracking nearest to the VUK) because of the way to ball is ejected at mach-speed into the lane. I'm pretty anal about this stuff, and so I've watched and recorded (slow-motion) how balls enter the lane on multiple machines. The ball should essentially 'fall' or roll into the lane, or hit the side rail and fall into the lane, not be thrust so hard and have it hit nearly perpendicular to the edge, exactly where you see that damage. Even my cliffy on my GOT is getting bent in that spot. On GB, at least they added a setting to reduce the power. In short, shooter cliffys will fix/cover all that, at least.

For the drain, I have an opinion that it's a design issue and not a clearcoat issue. The ball occasionally screams down the middle and you can hear it bang into the edges. The cliffy will help here, too, and at least it's not in a visible area.

The big problem is with the ghosting. If I were you, I'd play the crap out of it, forget about the ghosting if you can, and simply check it after a month. If it gets worse, you'll be able to get a replacement. If not, you have no real problems to worry about.

Fair enough. What Stern should do is install protectors on the sensitive spots, like they started doing on the scoops on LE/Prem. Because of the way the game plays, I think some of this damage (not all, and certainly not ghosting) is unavoidable or at least more likely, and not necessarily because of a problem with the clearcoat.

But I agree with the meta points that Stern really needs to communicate more effectively here. It could be there are others with worse problems that need to be prioritized.

So, what's the possibility here that there's no problem with the playfield/clear, but a problem with the design, speed, airballs, etc. of the machine? I'd be curious if ghosting occurs without any usage, or are airballs/etc landing on the inserts causing it?