I'd say most of us have never played a p3

My Heist should be here in the next few months. Excited to join the club!

Outside of a show. Sadly true. I wish there were more out there. Collections and on location. It would help sales.

LTG : )

Love my Heist the voice talent is amazing all the characters from big boss on down all amazing that is why I was a little dissatisfied with the voice actor they chosen in the sorcerer apprentice! Oh we’ll Heist is a very good game and my favorite of all there modules.

I have admitted more than once that P3 doesn't really do it for me, but instead of getting mad at me I'd love to hear why people enjoy it. The last time I remember playing it was when Lexy was new, so it's been a while.

What is it about Heist that feels fun? I mean, all pinball can be fun, but specifically the P3 part, how does the screen add to the game for you? I think I can play a Weird Al on location with a bit of a drive, but the chances of me seeing a Heist any time soon are pretty low I think.

Love to hear first hand impressions from owners so I can understand what attracts you.

I just received this module a few weeks ago. I’m still learning the game but as stated above, the missions are clear. The flow is good. The game is enjoyable and I want to play it again.

Once I have time, I’ll try to find a ruleset or find better direction. But I think I may just learn it by playing.

I also have Weird Al which is also very well done. But I feel like I need a perfect flip from the top left flipper to make the loop ramp shot. (I tweaked and improved the settings for my pitch and set up.) With Heist, I am able to make all shots comfortably. For me, I like that.

I also have Cannon Lagoon. I am waiting for Lexi and cosmic cart racing. I bought all the software. I feel once I get all the play fields, I’ll have a really nice mix of games that will make my smaller Gameroom (Room for 6 games rather than previously 15) have the variation I am looking for.

I love my Stern game. I love my Bally and Williams games. I even picked up a Gottlieb (system 3) lights..camera…action which is pretty nice and enjoyable. I feel the P3 adds to my Gameroom and I look forward to my future options.

Have you set up a profile and been saving your progression? You can have several saved spots. I have one where I start with one shot away from starting the Big Heist Wizard Mode and another where I start at the stage just before the 15 ball mb.

I’m looking forward to getting my P3 and look forward to these save states as I feel the end result is similar to the challenge modes on recent Stern’s but better since you can choose what specific challenges and save as many as you want (I think).

Have an order in, enjoying reading others’ experiences in the meantime. Thanks for starting thread!

Will be joining the club as soon as I get my module. Probably another 2-3 months..

I’ve gotten to the Big Final Heist numerous times (couple times from a regular game but mostly from a save state). I can’t really get past the first section. It is HARD to progress through the stages - multimorphic has a real old School approach to difficulty (the games get hard!)

The screen doesn’t add anything unique in particular - it sets the mood for the game, and there are spots when you have to collect money floating around by rolling the ball over it. The money helps qualify a multiball

The mini games (“/side jobs”) are great little breaks from just qualifying modes, and are really creative in terms of the shots/goals

The modes are fairly standard pinball “hit all the ramps/targets/spinner spins” so they are easy to understand.
Multiballs are also really creative - if you get one or more of your team arrested (by failing a mode) you can start a multiball to break them out of jail.

Got my P3 two weeks ago with WAM installed. I wanted to wait until I was sure I liked it before ordering more modules. I don't go to a lot of shows and I hadn't touched a P3 since Lexy was new. So I was kinda taking a chance. I'm glad I did. Now I have Heist and Drained on order.

I own Lexy, Heist and Weird Al and enjoy them all, but personally think Heist is at a different level. Probably a top 25 pin.

Great flowing fan layout; fantastic center dual spinner loop & lock/mech; amazing interactive crane; approachable but challenging rules; great use of scoops with armor/police car, side-jobs & hurry-up mode finishes; fun/humerous storyline with immersive sound/video/lighting choreography; +++.

Regarding use of the screen: dollars fall down after hitting certain stand-up targets and are collected by shooting over them to qualify crane multiball; an armor car or police car drive across the screen and you need to shoot (armor) or avoid (police) the scoop popping up behind them; in Cat Burglar mode the crane grabs the ball, hangs over the middle of the screen aka Tom Cruise in MI and you first need to avoid hitting it while completing shots and then knock the ball off to escape…

Suggest you watch some videos and don’t decide on the P3 until playing Heist.

Yep. You can set the game to default to a particular profile too, which makes it fewer steps to save/restore games.

I wonder if there's been discussion/consideration at MM to integrate Scorbit. It would make logging in a profile even simpler.

They’ve discussed it, and I believe Nick Baldridge put together a set of functions to integrate with it, but it’s not top of MM’s priority list just yet

Getting maguffins by completing modes helps a ton with progressing though the BFH. I’d recommend focusing on grabbing those — and save states can help!

This would be cool, but unfortunately there isn't a way to know the Scorbit player, and be able to tie that to the machine profile at the current time.

The default profile option on each P3 game is the best way to handle this if you are the primary user of the machine.

Heist is an incredible game. The shots can all be diverted with magnets or physical diverters, the crane is extremely versatile, and imaginative modes like the pick and roll side job use the screen in really interesting ways. If you're not aware of how the hardware works with the software, some of the screen integrations are not as obvious. The fact that they are mostly unremarked upon tells me that they are extremely well integrated (and my own experience).

The BFH is incredible. I've only ever cleared it with save states, but the build up and execution of each stage is really really well done, and some of those wizard mode light shows are beautiful.

Heist has so many ways to approach the game, and multiple layers that can be completely ignored if desired. It's a really amazing game, and the layout is fantastic.

It's so good that I released Silver Falls using the same layout - a wildly different game in feel, goals, etc.

100%!

Like others have said, go back and get the macguffins to make difficult stages easier. But also, there’s no such thing as “the first stage” in the Big Final Heist. The stage order is decided by the order in which you gather your crew in the main game, and like a choose your own adventure, we subtly adjust the cut scenes in the BFH to accommodate for different events happening in different orders. The exception is that we always end with the same last two stages, but you can experience the BFH many different ways depending on how you got there and what macguffins you collected along the way.

That’s one thing about the save state BFH, it’s always gonna give you that version of the BFH, but you can go set up many different BFH save states! If your save state BFH starts with a no macguffin hacker stage first, yeah, it’s gonna be rough every time. (Even starting with that save state, you have the option of going back to unlocked modes to get missing macguffins before you start the BFH. So you could save an even better save state from there.)

…..

And I’ve seen people asking P3 fans to justify the screen to them. I’ll say this as the person who poured so much or their life into this game. I don’t feel like we could have made this type of game experience with a traditional painted piece of wood with inserts. The P3 platform lets us do things with the environments and storytelling and world building that is truly unique in pinball. We were able to actually dangle a cat burglar over the items she was stealing in the lab. We were able to let the crane become a helicopter searching for the wheelman on the city streets with a spotlight and then lock on to him during the high speed pursuit when you made the wrong shot into a police trap. We were able to have scoop wall waves be an actual police car or armored car with good or bad consequences for hitting them. Every single character in the game got to take over the world of that playfield for their modes, and the player never once has to take their eyes off the playfield for any game information. And yes, we also use the ball tracking for cash collection and the safecracker side job and a few other things.

With the crane we have the widest variety of short shots in all of pinball, and the thing can dangle balls for you to hit and it can fling them at you. We tell classic heist tropes without forcing the player into predictable linear paths, and I think we pulled off a pretty fun pinball story in the end. And the screen enables people like Nick Baldridge to build games like Silver Falls with his daughter, and swappable games like Drained, and I think that is incredible. Without pulling the playfield I can switch in seconds to a bunch of other software games.

I try and think about making this game with blinking inserts and backbox animations, and some stuff just wouldn’t work at all and the rest just gets the life sucked out of it.

I don’t think everyone has to love the platform or the stuff I and the incredibly talented people I work with make. But this small team is pulling off amazing things and I for one am incredibly proud of the games we are putting out. The existing library of games on the P3 is incredible and, as a P3 owner myself, it’s awesome watching it get better and better.

Ok, back to work making things betterer.

… and that’s a wrap!

I sure hope not! My goal was not to end discussion. Just to offer perspective on the platform from someone who has thought A LOT about its implementation.

Keep the ideas and suggestions coming. And I’ll say this. If you look at what we are doing and think there are better, more creative ways to use the screen, it is a big ask, but I encourage you to gather your friends with different skill sets, download the free SDK, join the discord and talk to others who have made P3 games before, and show us how it is done.

No other machine could have enabled a rogue-like game like Ranger in the Ruins, a game that people truly love and adore. Not other machine could allow for a grand slam rally to exist. No other machine could let crazy new fun ideas like flipper foxtrot rhythm explosion hit the market. No other machine could let a teenage girl get a runner up plaque for pinball rookie of the year in the twipys because she had an idea for a game and an incredible dad to partner with in making it. And I am just so freaking excited for the yet to be released third party games I see the talented P3 enthusiasts working on in the discord.

And hey, even if you decide you have a philosophical disagreement about the trade-offs and benefits related to a multi-game, interactive/dynamic-playfield-art system like ours, that’s cool. Maybe we’ll win you over with this next game, or the game after that. The store currently has 16 awesome first and third party titles available for the platform, and it’s about to get another kick-ass game. The future looks bright, kids!

-your's truly

The ass-naked-last 2020 rookie of the year TWIPY candidate.

I guess I should have said “mic drop”, but that’s pretty much the same thing. Good insights and BTS here!

Got an email today. Just waiting on shipping and I'll be an official Heist owner!

I got the email as well. Excited for this module. It was a long wait but I’m sure, well worth it.

I actually had to adjust the same ball guide. It was sticking out too far and draining sdtm so I bent it in. Everything else works great so far. They should incorporate the bop bumpers and standup targets into more of the code though.

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I got no email from MM but I have a 50lbs package on the way. I ordered all modules with my Weird Al but I assume it’s my Heist module as lots of folks have been receiving theirs.

Will find out for sure on Tuesday lol.

After what feels like forever (ordered it along with my Weird Al on minute one of its on-sale day), my Heist module is finally waiting for me. Man…these are the days I miss “working” from home!

My Heist should be here on Saturday. Seems like all of us day one machine + WAMONH and Heist add on are all in the same batch.

In a weird coincidence my Drained module will also arrive on Tuesday, same as my Heist module lol.

Seems like it. My guess is they will build the backlog of modules in order of popularity. I would guess CCR is next, followed by LL-EE and then CL.

I'm in! But it doesn't work. Both orbit guides bent in shipping, right ramp isn't registering, crane won't retract making game unplayable and online documentation says "contact multimorphic" so I've got a ticket it. Hopefully I can play a game in the next month!

If you want to drive down you’re welcome to borrow my Heist for a bit while you wait

What a great group of people in here!

Got mine yesterday as well and have some issues but it is playable. I love this game so far! So much greater than I expected and I know I've seen so little. When I think of what I want out of P3, this is it. This dynamic story telling that we can interact with. I really like Weird Al, but this is something else all together. This is the title that all others will be measured by.

I know I got the first date falling in love new game syndrome here, but I would be totally fine if they did like an Ocean's Eleven approach and just added a new game to the franchise. Same module, new story. They could just continue to grow the characters and add new Heists, new experiences within the same city. I'd completely support that.

Letting my compliments go for a minute. Is there a walk-through or rules map for this game?

Edit: I’m slow… figured it out.

I set the wife to single flipper buttons and it keeps erasing that setting. Her name is there, but the settings aren't saved.

Anyone experience something similar?

Hmm, no!

Just to make sure, you are loading the profile before the game starts by holding a flipper and pressing start, then choosing start game with profile?

Then once the game has started, you are again holding flipper and pressing start to go to save/restore and choosing restore?

The states are tied to profile, so if you've been playing multiplayer profile games, it's possible they might have been saved under the profile you don't expect (it is based on which player is 'up').

In other words, you cannot load a profile's saved state if you are not currently playing that profile. I believe you also cannot load on ball 2 or 3, but I'm not certain.

Regarding settings, that issue has been fixed, but the Heist update that addresses this might still be pending rollout.

Yes…I figured it out. Being the genius that I am the save I created was supposed to be named safe, but I spelled save. So each time I saw it I thought it was asking me to save it instead of load it. Absolute genius!!

I am still having problems keeping profile settings on both Weird Al and Heist. It is also causing game crashes on both modules as well.

Another issue that has happened three or more times now.

During Hacker mode, where completing the two middle shots, the flippers will completely die. Sometimes it’s a split second and they come right back. Other times it just kills your ball and you done. Just happened on ball 3 which killed my game.