What does contribute to having a machine more or less difficult?

Here my list:

- steepness: by far the most important element. I recently played around with the steepness of my BSD and I realized how much the game become more or less difficult!! I also understand why often there is not much agreement on how hard a title is: it depends on how steep the playfield is in the specific machine you played! On another machine with a different steepness things can change, quite a lot.

- cleanliness of the playfield: similar to above. I recently properly cleaned and polished my TS (but didnt change the steepness). Before I could go up to 6/7 inner loops in a row. Now making three in a row is VERY hard. The ball is so much faster! Again, I read before people saying they can make 9 loops in a row, and others saying they cant go beyond 2 in a row. I initially thought about very different skills. Well, of course skills counts, but the speed of the ball is crucial.

- software version and adjustments: of course things change having different rules, hard/medium/easy setups, number of extra balls, etc. etc.....

- slingshots responsiveness: slingshots introduce an element of randomness. They are close to the outlanes, they can be setup in order to shoot immediately when the ball touches them, or only if the ball hits them strongly enough. I realized that having them not too sensitive helps a lot in order to keep control of the ball.

- outlanes wide/medium/narrow: obvious effect.

- playfield rubbers: when I got my TS it had white fresh bouncy rubbers. Nearly unplayable. Change to fresh new black rubbers, and started to control the ball and have fun!

- flippers rubbers: also big influence over how to game plays, how easy is to dead catch, to shoot stronger, etc...

- outholes setup: the direction in which the ball is kicked out influence if you can catch it or not, and in general how the geometries develop after the kickout

- slight differences (few degrees) in flippers orientation: it changes how you can direct the ball, make it to the ramps, hit targets, etc..

-post rubbers (thin or thick): it changes how wide (and easy) is a ramp, orbit, lane...

- flipper coil strenght: obvious effect

- tilt settings! : it can be adjusted in many ways and of course it has a big impact on how you play a game

- cabinet responsiveness to nudjing: inserting some thickness (like a carton) between the playfield and the cabinet changes (for the better) how sensitive the ball is to your nudges

- rubber feet on the legs: it changes the machine response to nudges and shakes. I really enjoy having rubbers on the feet, and play around with the tilt settings. Its like they complement each other.

This is my list. Can you think about something more?

..I thought about that when writing my list.. )