Lakeville, MN
Quoted from BriannaWu:Now that I have Godzilla Premium, I've had a chance to really try out their internet connected Stern Insider program. I know a lot of you had concerns about this initiative, concerns I overwhelmingly share. But, I was hoping we could have a discussion about why, in my opinion, it's not bringing enough features to make it worth entering your QR code in the machine.
Because the truth is, this feature is going to continue existing in Stern products, and I'd like them to make it better.
Right now the main problem is it's pretty much an achievement list. You only get half-credit for the achievement on your home machine, as it is "unverified." Destroy a building with Godzilla, destroy 5 buildings in a game with Godzilla, etc.
I don't think this is good motivation to use the service. It's certainly not worth spending $40 a year for.
I think if the service offered daily challenges with substantial rewards or unlocks, that would go a long way towards making it more interesting. Skins, new callouts, new artwork - all of this could make it worth logging in every day to play.
Another way the service could make it "worth it" would be backing up your settings and high scores to the cloud. I just updated my Godzilla code and lost all my high scores. Having to enter in Wifi all over again was a huge PITA.
The bottom line is, an achievement list is not compelling enough to use this service. Even as a v1.0 product, this is surprisingly bare bones.
Achievements are stupid to begin with. Some arbitrary goal to make you feel better. If getting some random thing accomplished in your game makes you feel better, then hell yeah. Fortunately there is a scoring system already in most machines called points. I will never purchase a qr reader for any of my Sterns. It kind of defeats the purpose of pinball.
