I am disappointed in you.... Have you EVER played a Pat Lawlor designed game before?

from expo, I am guessing ball times would be WAY to long without adjustments. It is a longer playing game already. if you want people to like a game enough to buy it then they need to feel like they accomplished something cool in short order. Most of the general public has zero clue or real desire to learn how to play pinball.

Granted, turning on a ball save is a good way to bring in new people and does not impact ball times much (good people rarely use ball save)

We have had Hobbit out for quite a while and no major issues. Plenty of up time and also a great earner relative to other games.

limited sample size (we have TH and not WOZ) but relative to all the Sterns we have bought in the past 3 years to route, TH has been lower total issues and leaps and bounds higher quality.

whoa whoa whoa ice... Wait a sec... You are talking about routed games with over 10k plays. Lets see this destroyed RRWOZLE and when it was built. That game has already more than paid for itself with that many plays. Sure we all know there were some issues to start when WoZ first came out but by and large JJP seems to have made major improvements and continues on the right trajectory.

Whatever OP you are quoting is also complaining about a shorted mosfet on a location game after11k plays, lol. Sorry but on route shit happens and that is normal wear and expected tear. The root cause assuredly being something got loose and was not caught in time which cause a downstream failure with symptom of bad mosfet. Anyone routing games deals with this. That is just pinball. If we want to compare apples lets look at off the shelf newly opened games. I could fill a book with shot that comes wrong from the factory on Stern games. Poor through connectors that cause constant issues and have to be repinned, improper drop bank set up and need to fix to work, ghosting inserts in <200 plays, chipped shooter and exit lane after <500 plays, blown node boards, coil stops disintegrating into dust in <500 plays, decals pealing off, mechs that just dont work without full teardown and cobble... Shall I go on? I have been routing games for about 4 years and Stern games by far have 10x the issue and lack of quality compared to ALL other options. As I said, JJP/ TH has been very solid for us. We had minor issues with troll mechs at start but aside from that it has been very nice (and well liked).

IMO Stern has only gotten away with inferior quality for this long because PRO used to be under 5k. Now with 5200 being the street price, the scrutiny should be turned up.

also, there are some things Stern does well (customer support has been fantastic aside from the recent issues and no reply on GB pf issues).

However, product base quality and QC out the door is not one of them and I would say their biggest area for potential improvement (followed closely by better PR/communication and clear commitment to delivering on code).

currently 7 (have had more but some left over time). Every single one has had some sort of issue out of the box or within the first 200 plays which took the game down and needed either parts or major tweaking and fixing to get it to play correctly.

4 of them have insert ghosting currently (KISS, SMVE, GB and minor on GOTprem).

I honestly think your reliablity perspective is a bit off based on your earlier WoZ experience (understandably), but my impression and experience is that TH (and the more recent built WoZ) are pretty damn solid with most issues addressed and TH has held up well with more plays than most Sterns and the plays are more steady also.

Trust me, I fought against getting a JJP due to price alone, but in my experience it has fewer issues and is played more. As Stern prices actually grow closer to JJP the dollars/maintenance/earnings/headache/reliability equation starts to look better and better for JJP. We still do this 100% for the fun factor and buy games we want to play and share, but the decision is getting easier to buy the higher quality JJP products while the risks get larger with buying the poor QC and quality Stern products.

You have to also factor in resale value and we have already seen the new Sterns taking bigger hits and buyer specifically avoiding GB with any ghosting...

possibly. I would like to, but have to get consensus (and find the $$$ for it, lol)

With over 10,000 plays,i would say it is doing pretty damn good for a prototype.

Assuming it is one of the first builds, that is the accurate #.

I LOL how everyone that goes there takes a photo of the magnet core now.

Too bad we dont have total game plays for each photo.

I was just told 2800 plays since the last update!!!! That is crazy!

Add on the shows it has been to, plus the time prior to the 257 update. That 10k plays I was told before must be real.

should I link more photos ad nauseum of Stern pfs with under 200 plays that are in some cases falling apart? production pfs at that.

We understand your continually guzzling of Stern, but you just look silly when you always neglect to acknowledge this is a P R O T O T Y P E game where they are monitoring and adjusting. It has 10k plus plays on it now with 2800 since the most recent code update.

This game has been built prior to expo, went to expo and other shows, and has been on active route at 257 in between shows and since. Basically 120 days of hard play. Averaging 80 plays per day or 4 hours of play time per day since being on route (seems both likely and reasonable; also as someone that puts my personal machines on route I would be stoked to have any game that has bascially half paid for itself in 4 months.) The game is actually holding up EXTREMELY well given those number of constant plays and that it is a P R O T O T Y P E.

If you are looking for SJW outrage, then you should be more focused on the person that took the photo while driving a car (assuming they are the driver of course).

That game is safely double strapped with padding between head and rails, and going less than 5 miles down the road.

video please!

my one and only thing I thus far dont like much with Woz and TH is the completely lack of worthwhile callouts to help the player. I hope DI has a few at the right times. It is just me personally and I know on location it is tough to hear anyway, but I like the verbal cues of what to shoot for on these complexly coded games.

Yeah, my comment was moreso in reference to TH. Woz does have some callouts to help the player along, but as others have said you still need the context of the storyline I think.

On TH I have found unless you are playing with a spotter it is very hard to learn what is going on or where to go next.