All;

I received my Heist playfield a couple days ago. It arrived without any damage and with everything working perfectly. Gerry said that my playfield was the first to be shipped with a revised foam padding. The shipper did manage to poke a small hole in the box.

Here are my impressions after playing it for about 10 hours:

Playfield:

The 2 ramps and 3 orbits (1 for the upper flipper) are all very smooth, making for great flowing gameplay and lots of combo shots.

Every shot can stop or divert the ball, but the ball is only interrupted when a mode is started. It's nice that most of these mechanics are hidden inside the buildings.

The left ramp is easy, it can be backhanded and weak shots generally go to a flipper. The right ramp is more challenging, with weak shots often going between the flippers.

In addition to it's orbit, the upper flipper can hit an large number of shots, even the left ramp. Hitting the orbit once is pretty doable, but looping it with the ball at speed is quite a challenge.

The crane is great way to bring the action down the playfield. When in "bash" mode it registers even soft hits. It's fun to hit a ball off of it to start crane multi-ball. Because of the crane, Heist is *not* an "empty lower playfield game".

Rules:

*Lots* to do. An amateur will easily get some things going, just by keeping the ball in play. An expert can work their way towards mini-wizard and wizard modes.

A lot of the modes and multiballs stack. If you get a few things going at once (on purpose or not), it's quite a challenge.

Art:

I really like the 2D Motion Comic artwork. It' much cooler and more pleasing to the eye than 3D models.

Music and Sound Effects (when not in a mode):

The music is perfect background for heist (or spy) movie. The sound effects (ex: "coins") complement the music, not overwhelm it.

Music and Sound Effects (when in a mode):

Your now in an action scene, and the music and sound effects are cranked up appropriately.

Call Outs:

Top notch voice work. Lighthearted but (with the exception of Mr. Bigalow) not silly.

The only nit-pick that I could think of is that because I am 6'4", I can not see the spinner. It's too far inside a the right inner orbit's "building". I know it's there and can hit the shot, I would just like to see it. (It's used in both the Safecracker and Hacker modes.)

While the lower playfield is technically the same, the playfields and rules make each game so unique that it is like owning 3 separate games.

Heist is definitely Multimorphic's best game yet.

Lexy is way underrated. The more me and my friends play it, the more we like it. Lexy gets played at every pinball night. That's not true of all my games.

The original rule set for the CCR playfield didn't really click with me. CCR 2.0 is now in beta. While it uses the same playfield and characters, it is a completely new game with more traditional rules. I like what I see so far, but it is still a bit simple compared to the other titles. I'm hope that Multimorphic continues to flesh it out into a full-scale game.

- Mark

Agreed. It's much more fun. However, It's still rather simple when compared to Lexy or Heist.

I hope that Gerry and company continue to put more development time into the game. (Hint! Hint!)

To celebrate CCR 2.0: I made a rather simple mod:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cosmic-cart-racing-20-for-the-p3#post-5593310

- Mark

I stuck my answer under the CCR 2.0 Topic:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cosmic-cart-racing-20-for-the-p3#post-5594197

- Mark

For me, it's not quite second nature yet. I automatically reach for it during the skill shot and the side-jobs that use it. However, I have to think about it during normal gameplay.

However, that's exactly how I want it. I want the separate button just to make things a bit more challenging, and different from my other games with a third flipper.

I would not mind it if the lane rotation was moved to the yellow buttons...

- Mark

Aw man! Now I'm going to be that guy with the low-rent janky P3, because I'm too cheap for that particular upgrade.

- Mark

I want a back box display. Finance wise, I have to make some choices. So, I going to focus on playfield modules.

As long as I can afford to, I'll probably buy every traditional playfield module released for the P3, along with it's apron magnet and translight.

I save a little cash by using the "generic" P3 side art.

I have each translight mounted on it's own glass for easy swapping.

It's great that the P3 allows us to make these choices.

You have made the correct decision!

- Mark

Apron doesn't count, as I'd get that either way.

With translights at $50 and glass at $25 (purchased few at a time), break-even is 12 translights.

At the moment I have translights for Lexy and CCR. Heist is paid for and will be on the way after the printer finishes with the pandemic related stuff.

I'll look forward to the day that I'm the wrong end of this, $$$ wise.

- Mark

Assuming you mean my P3 set-up, not my whole basement...

Of course the P3 is at the end of row, for easy playfield swaps.

My basement has 3 closets next to the P3, where I'm stashing the playfield modules and translights.
Each time I get a new playfield module, I have to choose what stuff has to go to make room. :-s

I just installed artwork protectors. They reflect, making it difficult to get a good pic of the side art.

- Mark

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I have one of the early P3s that used magnetic paint. The attraction between the paint and the magnetic side art was not strong enough, so the side art would curl at the edges. I got the side art protectors to solve that issue.

Newer P3s should not have this issue as they have metal panels, rather than the magnetic paint.

- Mark

P.S.

I just took a close look at the generic P3 artwork shown on the Multimorphic website, and the "same" artwork on my P3.

The artwork I received is way better than shown online. It has a very stealth look with a dark red logo on a dark blue background in a mat finish.
Maybe it's do to printing variations, but the Multimorphic "m" in the background is not visible on my P3's side art.

When I installed the side art protectors: I lost the mat finish, but gained an armored look.

And those 3 cabinets are right next to to "The Fridge of Beer"!

My basement has a total of 11 of those cabinets, which I have almost filled with my various hobby crap.

I can't take any credit though, the cabinets were there when I bought the house.

- Mark

Actually, each cabinet can hold 2 playfields as is. 3 with a little fiddling.

Better get back to work!!!

- Mark

Fellow Heist Owners;

At the moment, Heist does not have enough reviews on ipdb.org to appear in it's rankings.

If you have owned the game for a month or more: Please submit your honest review to ipdb.org.

- Mark

I've copied my review to Pinside.

Unfortunately it will not count towards rankings, as I haven't reviewed at least 6 machines.

Pinside also requires that a machine receive at least 25 reviews for it to be included in the rankings.

I understand their reasoning, but that's a pretty high bar...

- Mark

Don't forget to add your review to ipdb.org!

- Mark

Kevin;

Thank you! I've ordered a roll.

Gerry;

Based on a sample size of 2 ( my relativly early P3 to Kevin's new P3): Perhaps this tape or something similar should be made standard equipment?

- Mark

Gerry;

Like I said: I only had a sample size of 2.

My P3 definitely has the rattles. If you recall, the back glass channel of the early machines was too wide.

I don't know if it's related, but my pins are on carpet, and I keep the leg bolts rather tight. So they are rather solidly planted.

I have my Heist Volume at 8, and bass gain at .75. (It does not rattle with these settings.)

- Mark

Kevin;

If you haven't already: Could/would you stream an under-the-hood look at the P3?

The build quality. (metal back box parts, plywood bottom, general over engineering)
The track system for playfield maintenance.
Removing the flipper module for maintenance.
The built-in GI and VUKs.

That might help people understand that the initial cost is a great long term investment (in fun).

- Mark

Understood, but those videos are how-to's for owners, not promotional.

- Mark

Agreed!

Now do it again. :-p

- Mark

Gerry;

Thank you and the Heist team for seriously considering my feedback on Heist, no matter how minor or nitpicky.

For example:

I found the original gold border indicating that a character had been recruited a bit to subtle and hard to see: The border is now larger and has rays.

I found the heartbeat sound for an unlit shot annoying: It has been replaced with a whosh. (Let's call it a wiff, as in "a swing and a miss". )

Giving serious consideration to even minor "issues" such as these, shows true dedication to your customers, and to makeing your games a great as they can possibly be.

- Mark

Here is something Multimorphic could do with a very small investment: Offer an option in existing games for one handed play. So people with use of only one hand could access every P3 game.

- Mark

I should have known that Gerry would beat me to that idea!

- Mark

In one of Gerry's Heist streams, I noticed that he could backhand the right ramp, something that I could not do with the default flipper strength setting.

I cranked my Heist lower flippers to 28.

This allowed me to make those backhands from a cradled ball.

- Mark

What do you guys think of the default high scores?

Are they motivation or just cruelty?

I play 5 ball and I didn't get on the high score table until my 649th game with a score of about 17,500,000.

- Mark

No 2 machines are exactly the same. For anyone who can't backhand both ramps, I recommend upping the flipper strength until you can.

- Mark

You definitely need to adjust the switch on your pop-bumper. I can usually complete that mode by sending the ball to the pop bumper 1 or 2 times.

(Pay no attention to the fact that the stand-up targets are not wired, and thus everything we know is a lie.)

- Mark

Welcome to the club!

- Mark

Heist Classic???

As everybody knows, the 1.0 release of Heist came with a lot of rule changes, designed to make the game easier.

Only two shots to recruit a member, easier jail breaks...

Thing is: I was just use to the original rules.

Is there a set of config changes I can make to get close to the original rule set, without going to an old version of the software?

- Mark

Thank you for your note. I knew that there were a bunch of settings available, but I did a bad job of asking my question. I guess what I really meant was:

Does anybody have a snapshot or list of the pre 1.0 settings?

- Mark

Good point!

However, I don't have a copy of the old software, and I just checked the Multimorphic Web Site, and they don't have older software versions available for download.

I don't want to stay on the old version of the software, as there are lots of additions and improvements that I do want to keep. I know that one change I want to make is to raise the shots require to recruit a character by 1. I don't know what other values I'd like to change, as I don't know what the old values were.

Anybody got a Heist V0.8.1 laying around that they could upload to a dropbox or google drive?

- Mark

Awesome! Thank you.

BTW: Your priorities are correct.

- Mark

Only the added content is tied to specific P3s.

Each Playfield's primary game can be installed on any P3. It's just not going to do you any good unless you have the playfield module.

So if you pick-up WAM right away. But you have a buddy who has a P3, but wants to try WAM before buying it: You can take your module over to your buddies house and plug it into his P3, install the software and let him play.

- Mark

Thank you!

- Mark