arrogance and stubbornness is why

Well said, I often wondered this. Pinball players have great ideas.

Nonsense, stern has known for months that this game was getting pushed up and that the code is going to need to be expedited. If it's that important to keep the line going they should have made the code equally as important. Add resources, pull people off other projects, stay late, do what is needed to make a successful release. I'm not blaming Lonnie for this at all. He can only work within the confines and time that stern gives him.

I'm out

?

If you were Gary, would you open up a forum that would mirror Pinside feedback? That's what you'd get if you opened up a real feedback forum.

All the bitching moaning and complaining that goes on here - it's not productive at all - even the 'real' feedback.

Gary talks to distributors, that's who he sells to. There is plenty of player feedback out there for the team if they want it.

There is as much hubris here, if not more, as there is in Gary's office.

They could get the production line moving faster by selling older titles..... but, to really make us buy, we need games finished, polished, not 'nearly' finished or 'maybe' finished.

When they were the only game in town a decade ago, they could afford to be lax with code updates and just do it whenever they felt like it.

They can still do this but the difference is consumers are just moving to other product so their business model sure needs updating.

They seem to be spreading themselves too thin and constantly in a rush for whatever reason. The result is a half-baked product on release. They should focus on one or two projects at a time instead of four or five.

Possibly.

Ive had many long conversations with Stern Employees, and feel nothing but respect for them and their jobs.

I even asked about MODs for this...with regard to licensed, and non.

Only takes a minute to go through numbers and feasibility.

One that wouldnt be cost effective, but perhaps for the die hard fan was Rubber Front Leg covers for the Premium that
look like Groot Legs! Kinda silly, but a thought.

Exploring some new stuff not seen in the US but shown at IAAPA.

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Not feedback, suggestions....and one sided...input only.
Gary, and staff wouldnt be involved until a Top 10 discussion and then only for a short bit.

No reason for them to be involved in the bitching.

I would rather see something unique like that for the LE and have the rails the same way and maybe a groot topper that’s says I am groot at game start and we are groot at game end. Of course with a moving mouth.

Something like this would be a little more in line with what JJP did with Pirates.

I am going to try sterns approach on pins in my work setting this month. I am working on a huge project and I’m going to hand it in unfinished to my boss and say I will update and finish it in full later on. Is JJP games shipped with full code? I am asking just because it wouldn’t be fair only to target sterns code if they do the same I guess.

Thanks

I miss standard DMDs...

I was thinking the same thing. ColorDMD's impress me more than any Stern LCD so far.

So, after 50+ pages of posts, the general consensus from what I've read:

From those that have actually played GOTG in person: "This game is fantastic, the shots are smooth and fast, the sounds are great, it's a heck of a lot of fun, I can't wait to see where they take this game. I really liked playing it."

From those that watched pixels flicker on and off of a screen: "This game stinks! I'm mean, sure it has phenomenal art, a fantastic layout, fast shots, a drop target, a magnet(s), physical ball lock, real backglass (LE), and licensed songs we cried for, but what the hell, where are the callouts that we've been told are coming?"

The stream may have been a little underwhelming in the custom callout department and a lack of complete theme integration with lighting and video at this point, but I'm going to wait to reserve judgement until I play it first hand and get my own idea of the game and where it is going to go code wise.

Ps. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb. Augh.

I think it's more disappointment that stern is shipping a game with something that resembles code in it. The game has a ton of potential so to ship it out in that state is extremely disappointing. It might be amazing in a few weeks but people are going to be skeptical since this looks like BM66 launch code and BM66 is just now starting to get good. The art, layout and toys look great.

That doesn't seem very representative of what we've seen so far.

From the mouth of the first and only GotG owner to post about his (delivered) machine on Pinside, in this very thread:

Also, you don't need to play it to see that the audio, LCD and code are all in a terrible state.

I guess code may some day be acceptable, and audio almost certainly will be.

But the LCD? I really, really doubt it. It looks absolutely horrendous. Not just sins of omission. Terrible, flagellation worthy sins of commission.

IMO, this is a game that beyond the initial sales rush, its launch reputation and the cadence of Stern's subsequent releases will completely bury it.

A December 11th reveal and the resulting orders would't be enough lead for distros to place orders, get stock, and fulfill orders in time for Christmas. This was likely driven by a need to ship as many games as possible in 2017. "We" will still be buying (later) if the code is updated to be awesome anyway.

Maybe I'm an optimist (or don't need absolute perfection in my code), but other than BM66, the pins I've seen STERN release in the last five or so years have all been finished pretty well IMO. I know some of them could use a little more polish (GB, GOT, KISS, etc.) but the level they are at is still fantastic and light years ahead of where "finished" pins in the 90's were. In a perfect world we'd love to see a complete game ship with 1.0 code with no bugs or tweaks, but that's not reality. Besides, even if it shipped with complete code, there'd still be people on pinside whining about needing more (case in point the damn cities on KISS - if they never had those in there in the first place people wouldn't even know they were "missing" something). As for BM66, my heart goes out to those owners, but lets be honest - the game was poorly received from the start, has low sales, and as a result is going to have low focus for a very long time. If you want to avoid being in this predicament again, watch to see which games sell well because that's where my guess is you'll see the most/best code updates.

I said general consensus, not cherry pick one or two quotes. Besides, it was more of a general thought of those that have played versus those that have just watched someone play.

I think that in general when you play a Pinball machine with more people together it makes more fun. Also the stream does not allow much room for being negative about anything - understandably. You do not go complain about stuff when you are allowed to visit the manufacturer, that would almost instantly kill these streams.

Not really true, when stern has games in stock I can literally call my distro, wire the money, have the game in 2-3 days. I've done it a couple of different times. Different parts of the county might take 2-4 days longer but it can literally be that fast when they are already on pallets waiting for orders to come in. Most distro are drop shipping directly from stern so in most cases they never even touch the game.

I'm sure they are trying to get as many 2017 orders as possible, I don't think a rushed incomplete product accomplishes that though.

Lyman is by far the SLOWEST coder at Stern. The best, but the slowest. We will not have that problem here to get to 1.0 "complete" like BM 66. Will it have the super nuanced / detailed / complicated code? No because thats not really what Lonnie does. And by the way I think thats ok. Its good to have a variety of programmers just as good as it is to have a variety of designers. Sometime simple is refreshing.

If you've been on the Stern tour or seen their factory videos you see they have a very large workforce with assembly line workers, parts department, inspection, etc. When the line stops there will he a lot of people with nothing to do.

I agree the game shouldn't be shipping to customers with this level of code. My guess is they want to "fill the pipeline" so all the games are in distributors stock well before xmas. Then they can do a code drop before end of the year that hopefully gets the game where it needs to be.

Stern doesn't have room (or want) to stockpile games at the factory while they wait for code. They need to keep the lines humming to be profitable. Gary has said it himself multiple times at his talks, Stern is a manufacturing business not a pinball business.The product they manufacture just happens to be pinball games.

WTF does that even mean?

Anyone else notice the cool magnet effects? One thing that struck me as a really good/cool thing was the ball eject from Groot's mouth - it was nice to see the magnet pull them over to the left slightly and create some more randomness at the get go and not just 3 or 4 balls going SDTM. Can anyone who's played both the pro and premium comment on how well 1 magnet versus 3 plays?

There is something pure about them and the hand crafted artwork that had to be created to make the animations. I like the HD LCD displays, but I really love some of the 90's Williams DMD animations on a ColorDMD.

I had to look that up. Is that a joke?

On these new LCD games Stern has some kind of emulation for dot matrix stuff that kicks in if there's nothing developed, so that's a placeholder. You could see it last year at Expo on the prototype Batman 66 games too. I think someone had to reach under the velvet rope to power cycle them to get that to show up, but no idea who'd do something like that.

I've never spent serious time with one of the new LCD models, like going through menus etc, so I dunno how much of it stays on full production games.

I think Stern's problem with the LCDs is they really aren't using them very well. The displays just aren't that well designed. The stuff JJP does with the display is gorgeous. Stern's attempts so far are ... not. I'm no graphic designer, so I can't really speak to what they should do different -- just as an end user, what they've done so far is ... meh. If they were amazing, I think you'd have less of a 'I miss the DMD' feeling.

The game looks and plays awesome. Code will come through and it's a winner...put the pitchforks away.

That's interesting - I agree and disagree at the same time if that's possible?? I agree JJP's displays look fantastic and they seem to be really well integrated but for the life of me I have a hard time really seeing the content that I want to see. STERN's displays seem very generic so far and I agree definitely lack the "wow" factor in presentation, however I fully believe the important information and content right now on STERN's displays is much easier to read at a quick glance. Not sure if you can have a happy medium between the two because they seem a little bit mutually exclusive. I guess time will tell as both JJP and STERN advance their understanding of their own displays and leverage feedback from players/customers.

Using other games like BM66 and SW as a baseline, .65 is maybe a year away from 1.0?

Rob

did your pro arrive already also?

I think so too - but it would be woth wating till spring to see what they do with the code.

Noticed the deadflip youtube vid is down now..

I was prepared for code to be early stages, but that looked really early. My plan was to get one of the first waves of Premiums and ride out the code rollercoaster, done it before with X-men and I like getting code updates and seeing what has changed. Not sure now though. Will see how/if things progress over the next two or three weeks.

Up for me.

It's up for me too.

I'll be streaming mine today from unboxing to gameplay as soon as it's delivered. I'll report back. Prepare for me to ask for trade offers(now accepting them, PM ME!), cause you know, that's what I do.

PM, sent.

Odd, it tells me video not availible.. Ill try a different computer

blame (resized).png

I believe we also heard from an owner who was very disappointed in the code and stopped playing after a few games. So to say that the consensus is "This is game is fantastic" might be an overstatement.

Im sticking with mine, I personally dont care all that much its just money and I believe it will get better with updates..

Im not sure you older generations realize, but everything released these days are "alpha/beta's" and most of the time they charge for games in those stages. This is annoying yes, but this is the way of the future, everything is released early and you have to bet if its going to be good in the long run; I believe this is and im sticking with it, if you want it finished but it in a few years like some have suggested.

Is any new release 100% anymore or anything? I hardly say so.. Cars are recalled, video games are constantly updated, computers etc.. Anything electronic will be updated (hopefully soon) =)

I like all the constructive criticism and reading up tho!

My 2 Loonies anyways...

Here's my idea for where to put "hooked on a feeling":

At the end of Quill's quest or before you start escape the kyln. The song plays while making shots --- every shot is a hit with the shock baton on the LCD...there, thematic.

Or just use it as a wizard mode song.

Quote of the day

The question is whether Stern is catching up or falling further behind on code across all of their new releases. It seems to me that the trend is to release games more half-baked than ever. You can't keep falling behind and not have that problem accumulate to the point where you have a complete stinker or two of a game that are never done right because something has to give at some point. I love the GOTG theme (although I wish it could have included both movies) but after seeing the video, I'll certainly wait a year to see if it is ever finished right. The coding looks like crap at the moment and they didn't even seem to know what direction they were taking it in when answering questions.

Good idea. But please don't create 87 polls with your code ideas like another Pinsider did for Star Wars.

at least if he does, he owns the game, unlike the other guy who was making polls without even owning one lol.

Code will come, and it will be fine in all likelihood. HOWEVER, I wish people would stop buying games in this state. Stern doesn't care about the state of their games when they ship anymore. Anything to keep the assembly line moving. People really need to start sending a message that they're not going to buy until code is improved. We had people placing orders on Star Wars while the code was literally burning out node boards. Why? Why are we supporting such lazy product development? There's absolutely no reason to do this anymore.

Hold off on ordering until the code is more mature. Otherwise, this is how it's always going to be with Stern Pinball.

I think operators are the only ones that need to be buying this RIGHT now since the early bird gets a lot of coin drop. My friend is putting one on location in Atlanta in the next few days and I am excited to check it out.

Right. Let operators get the line moving and hang out a bit. It would surely cut down on the code angst posts.