I get that WE think it would be super cool for them to do voice work on the game, but why do so many people around here think everyone owes it to us to also care about pinball? Let's face it, the overwhelming majority of society doesn't give a rats ass about pinball, and that's fine. I don't care about collecting cars, or stamps, or playing war games.

I couldn't be farther from a huge deal in my business the way these actors are in theirs, but I turn down work that "isn't worth my time" all the time. Just because they are in a totally different price bracket that we can't relate to does not make it wrong. If actors/athletes/etc participated in everything they were asked to do, they wouldn't have time to do their own jobs, much less have any life.

Can I really relate to turning down an alleged $100K for a couple hours or work? No. But I don't make a few million to act in a movie either.

Look at it like this...let's pretend there was a Lord of the Rings collector series stamp collecting convention in Duluth, MN that drew 3000 people (more people than will buy Hobbit by the way). Would you look down on any of the actors for feeling like that was super lame and were not going to waste their time going if they were asked? This is no different. Whether it is charities, personal time, or job offers, we all have different priorities. People, like Karl Urban, are more likely to contribute in areas they care about. The bitter reality is that most people don't give a rip about pinball, but we should not scorn them because of it.

Let's be real here, we're the nerds for being passionate about pinball, not the other way around.

Jesus...why does everyone in the world seem to need to pick a side and defend it to the death? I think WOZ sucks, but I think Hobbit looks cool and I'm on the pre-order. I bought a STLE, but I think a lot of Stern games stink and I have no interest in them. Why do people think this has to be all or nothing?

You are not the only offender, and pinball is not the only place this happens. This same idiocy happens in politics all the time. I mean seriously, how does someone blindly agree with EVERYTHING the democrats or the republicans do? Everything in life is a mixed bag...why can't we treat it that way?

For sure. Either that or a rear accessible scoop (that sounds so wrong) would be cool.

Looking at the ramp horseshoe diverter and the fact that the ramp entrances (exits) point directly to the back of the pop-ups, I would guess there is something to hit behind them.

Since there has been a lot of talk / speculation that there is going to be under playfield subways, it would be pretty cool if the trolls were really scoops you could only access by hitting the ramp and activating the diverter.

Well CRAP! I thought Hobbit looked to be shaping up real nicely, but I don't see any scenario where it is a good thing to lose the designer at this stage. None of us truly know what state the game is in, but we can all safely assume it is not completed and just collecting dust until the 3rd movie. Anything short of this, not having the guy who envisioned this from the start, to me is a step back.

I definitely don't want Lawlor touching this game. I loved 90s Lawlor, but haven't liked his games since he joined Stern. Regardless, this game is so different stylistically from Lawlor's stuff, that I don't want him anywhere near it. I'll evaluate his game on its own merits when he has something to show on game 3.

For the first time in this process I'm officially a bit nervous about where this is headed. I hope I'm wrong!

To be clear, I have a decent size collection with only 2 Stern games. I also HATE WOZ. So, I'm definitively not a fist-pumper for either camp. That said, I love the Walking Dead theme and kinda like the Hobbit theme. However, my enthusiasm has gone in opposite directions on the 2 games. Walking Dead was a dream theme for me, but I'm just not feeling enthusiastic about it and I'm deciding to drop my pre-order and take a wait-and-see approach.

Hobbit on the other hand, despite the middle of the road theme for me, I'm really getting excited about. Even something as small as the skill shot discovery just feels cool to me. I'm really looking forward to this game, I just hope I get mine (realistically) in Q1 next year.

This is semantics. Did anyone ever think these were going to "interact" with the ball? They're essentially the same thing as the Boogie Men on Scared Stiff. Now, whether you like the flat plastic vs. expecting them to be 3D molds, that is a different question.

No kidding! Wondering what that picture might have been is the first intriguing thing to hit this thread in countless pages.

AMEN!

And they said the LIONMAN post was stupid and full of worthless information. In all honesty, would you rather listen to a bunch of people yell LIONMAN repeatedly, or listen to the incessant bickering and name calling (and apparent camel-toeing)?

We should just drain this thread and wait for a new one to surface with real info in it.

All that said, I'm kind of expecting to walk by the JJP booth at expo, and not be able to see the Hobbit machine they bring because too many people have gathered there to yell at each other.

Or worse...

I thought I read early on that they were going to go with combo buttons, like what's on RFM/SWE1. Did I misread this somewhere? If true, I would imagine the lockdown bar button is something else.

Separate note, I'm kind of sick of lockdown bar buttons. Stern has made that into a cliche at this point.

I'm in the minority too that liked the old playfield better. My wife is casually into this stuff at best, and when we walked up to TH at expo, she commented about how cool the panoramic view was with the mountain and the dragon. Oh well. Maybe the new playfield will look better to me once integrated with all the plastics, etc.

Anyway, to your point about the redundancy, I hear you, but to me the biggest differentiation between the models is the trim color. Assuming your game is in a row, you can't really see the cabinet much. Also, you can get the red Smaug on the SE. So this then comes down to which trim looks better, as this will be seen from the player perspective. I don't know the answer to this though.

Alex has said the SE trim looks awesome, and from the one comparison picture it does look better than the LE bronze. I'm hoping to see more comparable pictures before I have to choose, because to me, this is the only thing that really makes a difference between the models.

They're physical and pinball is a physical game. I'm not saying that adding 15 of them makes the game awesome. I also agree that when they are used in other configurations (like inline drops) is where they really shine. But to say that dropping physical targets is no better than lighting a playfield insert I don't get. It doesn't look like any of these are set where you can sweep the bank, but hitting one shot that sweeps down 3-5 drops at once is always cool and can't be replicated with stand-ups and inserts.

It remains to be seen if the individually controlled drops create an experience that feels any different than usual drops. Regardless, are these drops going to qualify for Panzer's "toy" requirement? Likely not. We'll have to wait and see if they make the game cooler, or if they're just meh. I don't get all weak in the knees over drop targets like some, but a drop target is cooler than a stand-up with an insert light.

Maybe, that's what I'm trying to figure out. In general I've been moving away from gold. I don't like brass and have actually removed that look from a couple games in lieu of some new powder coating. That said, I'm guessing the SE trim isn't actually brass looking, so I'm trying to determine which looks better. From the one picture, I couldn't tell the bronze looked much different than standard trim, but that could have easily been the lighting.

I think JJP really owes owners/buyers some professional quality pictures of the trim so we can see what they look like and can make an educated decision.

I can't figure out what happened to the ball. It hit the ramp entrance and rattled around at light speed. Next thing you know it's coming down from the left orbit. No clue how it ended up there.

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Wow! I hadn't realized the difference. I just assumed they went back to the originals.

I agree that I like the original design far better. The current VUKs are big and arching that drop the ball dead on the underlying wireform. The originals were smaller wireforms that fed the ball with flow into the ball return wireforms. I like the look and the fluidity of the originals much better. I wonder why they changed?

I would prefer that every minute and dollar that could go into a topper, go into the game instead. To me, the only benefit of including a topper would be that I could re-sell it to someone that needed one. As cool as I used to think toppers were years ago, I'm completely over them and don't need any new game to include one.

Those are some nice high quality pictures. Does anyone have any of similar quality pictures of the LE so we can make a decision between the two models?

Well, for someone like me where the game is in a row with others, I don't really care about the cabinet. I care about the trim color and whatever is on the playfield since that's all you'll see as a player. The problem is they have not shown the LE with the new playfield and the wireform VUKs. They also haven't done a very good job of showing the trim colors with their respective artwork or as wireforms. Everyone at JJP has been pretty coy about showing both games in detail, which as someone else suggested, seems pretty shady. To set a deadline and make people choose from some crappy photoshop promo mock ups or user collected photos of the SE vs the outdated LE is pretty shitty.

Why is there not a barrel on the left pop bumper? I thought I heard something about it blocking the book, but I don't see how it would do that. The left one is the most exposed of them and is the one in the most need of the barrel. Would look much better than the yellow dome on the "Stern" pop cap.

Exactly! I can't see why there isn't room and it would make the area look a lot different.

Didn't they say they had a better book casing to house the LCD? The one it's in looks pretty weak.

In general I don't agree about the love for cannon toys. I think it is about as played out in TWD as in other instances (ACDC, T2, etc). The only reason I wouldn't totally disagree with you about TH is there are so many different targets that could be what you'r aiming for. If they would have combine a swinging bow shot with the cycling drop target, that could have made for a pretty cool aiming experience.

That said, I'm totally fine with there not being a cannon, and we don't really even know how TH is going to handle the Windlance. I couldn't follow exactly what's going on with the wireforms on the left, but I'm guessing this somehow incorporates with the third flipper to shoot the Smaug area.

I'm curious to see the accuracy of the target hit detection when in roving mode. With a lighted bank of stand-up targets, if you hit the lit target at the last second before it moves (and software allowably even with a small grace period) the game recognizes this and awards the hit. With these drops, once the machine trips the target to come down, I would think it is not capable of recognizing being hit. If true, then hitting a drop as the machine starts to move it to the next target would not count as a hit. So, in cases like where they showed the quickly roving target, I wonder how the machine would ever be able to tell if you hit the target versus the software tripping it.

No offense, but this is seriously one of the dumbest requests I've ever heard. It is literally no different than if I asked for someone to program a multiplier into MM scoring so it had super high scores like AFM.

Is it dumb that AFM scores are so high? Yeah, kinda. But frankly, why do other games need games in the millions? You could literally create a game with 1 point targets and 50 point jackpots. Who cares? As long as the scores within the game itself are scaled well against each other, who the hell cares how exponentially large or small they are compared to other games.

As someone else mentioned, if for some odd reason it bugs you that much, 4 Post-It notes and a Sharpie serves the exact same purpose.

Get yourself a paper cut on your asshole and then answer that question again.

Totally agree on this. The idea is cool, but the frame just looks cheesy. Putting it in the apron and fleshing out that whole area like Rapids would have been a lot more striking.

If you followed the post-expo activity you'd realize that's because it apparently was an after-thought.

Couldn't agree more with all your comments. The book looks cheap and out of place in that area. It also lessens the way the whole rapids scene feels. I and many others have said that moving the book to the apron would solve several issues. It would get rid of the bad bezel, and put the LCD in a more viewable area. It would also free up the pop area to get a makeover with the third barrel and some other waterfall-like artwork.

Duh, a 10 point switch.

This may be the case with me too. I hear so many people talking good stuff about the deep rules, etc. I've played it a little, but I just can't stomach more than a game or two before the music makes me want to scream. I cannot imagine owning this game. If the same intricacy was put toward another theme, then we'd be talking.

I'm in on TH now. I must admit that I'm pretty underwhelmed comparing against the early claims from JJP and team on how this game would blow everyone away. This is exaggerated by how many changes were needed based on community feedback/demands. I'm hopeful the game experience will be great, even if the current package seems less than promised.

One thing I find interesting is that there's been a lot of criticism about that flipper over the months (years) since we first saw the design and never a comment I've seen from the JJP team. They have jumped in and addressed many of the direct questions/criticisms about other features, but I've never seen this one ever touched by anyone. I would have expected at least some acknowledgement. "We've spent X time shooting for the ramps with this flipper and no signs of damage." or "Don't worry, we'll have some surprises in the rules that take full advantage of this flipper." Never been anything like this that I've seen.

Normally I would defer to the designers and figure they know better than us, so trust their judgement. However in this case, TH has been through so many changes because the original design didn't work, including pulling what used to be a fourth flipper. If the original designer misjudged the fourth flipper, maybe he misjudged the third one too. Given how many other things the community got "righter" than the original design, I fear this extra flipper may be another one of those things.

I'm in on TH and eager to get the final product, however, I fear this may come complete with some of the missteps still intact.

I'm not saying it was designed for hitting the ramp, but tons of people have said how shots from that flipper are going to beat up the ramp entrance. I would have thought they would either reinforce the entrance to make this a non-issue, or tell people they've put enough test-play time on the layout that it doesn't need addressing. I don't think it should be an issue in home use, but there have been enough negative comments that if it were me, I would have addressed it.

Now, it having nothing unique or interesting to shoot at, that is another issue all together.

Yeah, because nobody has complained about bag end...
or the area behind the barrels...
or the missing barrel on the front pop...
or the lame book LCD casing...
or...

I have TH on pre-order, and I like a lot of the improvements they've made, but let's not pretend everything has exceeded expectations.

What is the wireform on the far left just floating there next to the left lane return. I can't tell from any of the vids or pics if/how the ball would ever get on that.

Oh, is that to load the windlance? I assume when this happens that ball stop is there to hold the ball waiting for you to hit the center button? If not, then the ball just drains down the outlane which seems like it would suck.

Totally missed that. Does the kickback have variable strength? When it got kicked out in the video it didn't make it anywhere near the upper flipper, which is what I thought it was supposed to be for.

Between the F U that I'm taking from Jpop right now, and Jack acting like a dick about the situation here, I'm really fed up with this hobby. At this point I just feel like liquidating my collection and getting out. Sometimes this just isn't fun any more.

My Hobbit will be in a row of games, so the cabinet art is secondary, regardless of which I like better. For me the decision was all about the trim color, which is what you'll see constantly while actually playing. I had a bunch of other games with gold (brass) trim and have been pulling it going with different less blingy colors. I think here the bronze looks a lot better with the playfield art than the gold, and that's why I went with LE over SE, even though I could have upgraded for free.

I didn't look at that picture long enough to notice it was not routed, but I did find it odd they were all stacked on top of each other like that.

I've already been jpopped once this year, it better not happen again here.

I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin.

Wow...i really HATE HATE HATE the new armor. I thought the old colors looked really cool, and Alex certainly pumped them up enough. Various applications have had this kind of crinkle finish on them for forever and I've always thought it looked tacky.

Way to downgrade at the last minute!

Touche! There are likely MANY MANY minutes until this game gets released.

Aside from liking the hammered finish or not, what pisses me off about this is that we were forced to choose LE or SE in a limited time window, based solely on the machine's cosmetics. Now they have changed the cosmetics. I stuck with LE mainly because of the seaside bronze trim. Now I think the SE looks like a better combo with the new trim options.

Since they revisited a main aspect of the differentiation between models, do I get to reconsider which model I want? Doubt it.

Well, this couldn't be more false. P3 would be considered "in the pipeline" and is almost incalculably more advanced than JJP pins.

I'm in on the Hobbit, but P3 blows it away in terms of innovation.

I'm in on both, and I'm much more excited about Lexy. Hobbit at best is going to be an awesome pinball machine on the level we've all played before. Lexy at best will provide an experience unique to anything that has come before it. Not saying in the end Hobbit might not end up being more fun, but the ceiling potential of the two aren't close.

I'm in on Hobbit, and initially dismissed GOT based on early photos and reaction. After playing both at expo, I'm a lot more excited about the gameplay on GOT than TH. I'll probably wait around and grab GOT Premium, possibly used. If I hadn't already paid for TH, I would be putting my money on GOT instead. TH looks nice, and I'm hoping the rules will be fun, but the game paled in comparison to the FUN FACTOR of GOT, just sayin'.

Embryon is AWESOME, but definitely feels like a widebody. FullT is really good from what I've played, but it DOES NOT feel like a wide body. That game isn't for everyone, but certainly don't turn it away because you fear it feels like other widebodies...it doesn't.

I hope the pop-ups aren't only used as targets, but also used as blockers. What would be cool is if they would pop up for a mode (or portion of a mode) as if they were defending the targets you need to hit and don't go down if you hit them. The targets you need to hit would be something in the back (drops, ramps, whatever) and the pop ups serve as an obstacle. Maybe the pop-ups go down if you hit them enough times and the shot you need to hit is a countdown, so "breaking through" would serve as a time/point penalty. Lot of creative ways to use these targets that could make them better than just being the same trolls that were in MM.

Couldn't agree more, this has always stood out like a sore thumb to me. No idea why they drew the pimp my pin line at flippers. I'm not sure what I'll upgrade mine to though.

Is anyone putting protectors (Cliffy or otherwise) on the holes?

I typically don't like Cliffys because despite what so many say, it does impact gameplay and shots to holes with them on them. However, I really don't want to damage the holes if that is going to be a concern.

Thoughts?

That's good to hear in case I decide to add them. I'm actually about to pull the Cliffys out of another game because it's made the shots almost impossible to hit.

I'm talking about removing them from a non-Hobbit game. I have not added them to Hobbit at this point. Most Cliffys are not glued in any way, they're attached by surrounding screws, either under the playfield or by nearby posts. Some that need extra adhesion do use double-sided tape, which may be the case with Hobbit as well, not sure.