Quoted from goatdan:The problem in my opinion is honestly the "maturing" of the hobby. This isn't meant as an insult to anyone in particular, so if anyone takes offense to this, I think it's more your problem than mine, but...
For years, the people that were into pinball were highly technical people. The majority of the talk was about ways to fix the machines, get them going again, where to find them, where to find parts for them, and so on. People expected that their machines would lose value when they had them. If you put in $1000 worth of parts, it was expected to raise the value of your machine $400 or so, not $1400 or so. When new parts showed up, people were extremely grateful if they could get them. When Big Bang Bar went through TONS of delays, no one went nuts.
If you showed up on RGP and didn't have some sort of idea about what was going on, you'd be either ignored or shouted down until you watched and learned what was going on. I read RGP for over a year, just sucking up the information, before I worked up the nerve to post anything.
What has changed is that the hobby became flush with 'new blood' that has a different expectation. It is not hard to find people posting on these boards that Stern is a failure because most NIB machines have not gone up in price, or quoting the highest of the high end prices for machines, and then demanding that games are ridiculously perfect when they get them. No one 10 years ago complained that a playfield got dimples, and we have that conversation seemingly weekly now. I would bet the vast majority of people on here do not know how to repair things on their machines beyond the most minimal tweaks.
The new dogs outnumber the old dogs by probably 10 to 1 or more, and the level of conversation has been brought down because of it.
I miss that segment of the hobby. I wish there was still a place where you could go to and get the same sort of help that you could on RGP ten years ago, but I fear that time has passed. I still stop by to try to lend some help to people, but I have slowly discovered that a lot of them don't want it.
It seems like Stu has discovered the same thing. And that sucks. I was hoping to hear that Space Station backglass was up next, but it looks like at least for today, that isn't going to happen
Well said +1.