Question: how many of you would have bought the BM66 if we would not know who was the programmer or if the programmer would be someone else ?

All I read is that BM66 is rather ok, but it will be great because, well, Lyman. What if they fire him for some reason ?

I am seriously curious about this, not trying to troll or something. It just seems so odd to me that there are so many people spending so much money based on the assumption that one guy will make it ok.

Problem is..... I have never seen an overview from Stern or any other manufacturer that states what the gameplay of a machine eventually will be, so they do not need to get to a certain point with it. If they decide the machine is not worth any investment anymore, they can just abandon without any consequence.

After some years in this hobby I believe they don't even know themselves what the rules of a machine should be, they just make a basic ruleset, sell the machines and go from there. Everything after that is unknown. Nobody knows how long they will continue to support the game. Such a shame because there are so many titles that could benefit from some better code already out there.

Stern is a manufacturer. They make their money selling hardware. Software support is just overhead it seems.

Nobody should crap on the programmers. It is the fault of the organisation if someone needs to do his work in his own time. Nobody should have to do that. The organisation should notice that something does not go according to planning and deal with it appropriately. Especially when it concerns machines that sell for 10K+

But Stern fails to do so categorically wether it is about programming, quality control, communication, after sales etc.

If for one reason Lyman would say: enough is enough and just does not program in his own time, guess who are screwed ?? I surely do hope he does not but any man can only take on so much work. He is human also and he deserves his time off.

Just for your info: I just downloaded the update in 4 minutes and 12 seconds. Was happy about that because the previous update (on this same connection here) took me about 6 hours to download.

This update sure helped change my mind about the possibility of putting my BM66LE up for sale. That bat turn comes completely out of the blue. No way of knowing this would be in there. It sure seems that this will be Lymans baby for sure if he keeps this up.

It helps that he is a great player and therefore knows exactly what is already done and he is known for being creative, as he shows here. Also his love and knowledge of the BM66 series shines through in this update.

Very excited for what is coming.

If you would be honest, the fact is that GG told everyone on camera: updates every 14 days. He is in charge of that so as I do not consider him to be a liar I do think he is not the best in estimating/managing the development process properly.

I for one am very happy with the update, but when everybody would consider it to be ok that everything that should take two weeks takes more than twice as long, not much would be getting done in the world.

If GG would just tell everybody: code comes when it comes, this discussion would not exist.

edit: when I think of it: it seems to me that GG just wants to be the best he can for his customers and the pinball community, but he is not getting much help from the rest at Stern

Very interested in how many people here took that this way.

I do not know why you are so keen to defend GG on this. It is not like I or anybody else wants to go with pitchforks to him. It is just frustrating for a lot of people that Stern either says nothing or says something that it then does not do. That is just a fact and gets repeated every time with every issue.

When I say something to my customer, they do not have to assume anything different than what I said. I do it or if it is not going like it should I contact the customer that it is not going like planned. For me that is just being honest and decent.

To his defense: good communication/honesty does not seem to be widespread amongst any pinball manufacturer

It was with a big smiley attached ! They are all good at communicating good stuff, not so when it is a bad message they have to give. They almost behave like humans ( <- again a smiley)