Take out the flippers...

Make the playfield pitch steeper.

LTG

Thats a start

Wax.

Game difficulty settings; outlanes open fully or posts removed.

you can turn off the ballsaver if the game has one never played royal rumble so not sure

Do you have 2" or 3" levelers? If only 2", you may need 3" on the back legs. Once you've extended the levelers, tighten the nut to hold them in place. If your levelers don't have nuts, get them. Front levelers should always be raised all the way up (unless your floor is crooked, then one can be slightly lowered).

Also, before you tighten the nuts, use a tool to check the pitch. I use one of these:

http://www.homedepot.com/buy/tools-hardware/hand-tools/empire/protractor-magnetic-polycast-protractor-114839.html

RR is probably be ~6.5 degrees factory. Your manual will tell you for sure.

no ball save also helps

Wear a blindfold.

I would disagree that a steeper playfield makes for a harder game. It certainly changes the physics, where verticle ball speed is increased and flipper shots may be more difficult for upper targets. But side to side motion, including the risk of an outlane drain risk would be reduced. The ball wants to come down quicker, sending the ball down towards the flippers more frequently. I would think it may make it easier, as most of us can recover better from center drains than side drains.

Rebuild the flippers = new plungers and coil stop. That makes the flipper travel a shorter distance which makes it harder to trap the ball. That along fresh soft rubber rings on slings and flippers. And you'll find everything that area chaotic.

Second a fast playfield. Which may only be possible to a certain extend relative to playfield wear. I hear wax recommended. But I havn't any experience with that myself.

Put on Red Flippers which give less ball control than the black. Remove the out lane posts and any rubbers by the out lanes or sides.

remove the outlane posts.

Mark and company out at PAPA are great pin experts. They take all the big shots on a table and make them harder. They add fat yellow rubbers to posts, remove outlane posts, change flipper styles, etc. There is alot of input of what to change.

One thing people perhaps tend to forget is the standup targets. Replacing the pads behind the actual targets with a hard bouncy material, make them more unforgiven. Random rebounds to them may not be hard enough to register. And direct hits become more dangerous.

Remove center posts, add "squirrely flipper rubber", put a big yellow post next to certain easy high reward shots (skull on T2), remove outlane posts and outlane rubbers, adjust all operator settings to hard, etc

Tell her she's right.

I have yet to play a machine where a shallower pitched game made the game harder. Every steeper game I have played has been harder. I know what you are saying about side to side action, but if you have nudge skills, a slower side to side game is pretty easy to keep a ball in play. Steeper games don't give you as much time and/or have physics that let you keep a ball in play with continous nudging.

Incline the back legs to max, front to min
Pull the outposts
Go to utilities and change the factory setting to extra hard

uh, dont you mean the opposite? All the way down on the fronts.

Play drunk, and high....really drunk and really high

I play better when I'm drunk.

haahaha

Maybe buzzed, I'd believe that. But drunk, no chance....you also can't drive drunk better either haha...

Replace pinballs with powerballs

It would seem like that, but no -- when the ball comes down so fast, two things happen that don't feed it straight to the flippers. It can hit the top of the sling, or the sling itself so it is shot away. Either of which make things much harder to control.

I have set up a number of my games really, really nasty because I use them in the MGC tournament and then leave them that way because I like to play them that way. I do not like to "bastardize" games so much that it totally changes the way that they play, such as putting lightning flippers onto a game that never had them, or changing playfield geometry to make shots harder. Because of that, I avoid certain machines where shots are too easy or repeatable. I like my machines mean and tough.

Anyway, here are some things that you can look at doing: Find out if the game plays well with white rubber. If so, it's bouncier and anything you can do to increase side-to-side ball motion is better. Take rubbers off the outlanes. Use red flipper rubbers. Jack up the back legs all the way with the front legs down all the way. Set ball saver really low or off. Turn off extra ball. Set the machine to "tournament" settings (don't change other stuff though, generally). Make your slingshots *very* sensitive so that even brushes to them can cause side-drains. Rebuild your flippers so they work the exact same, but do not *ever* increase their power by getting new coils or whatever. Then...

Play the game and see what is going on. If you can do something too often, start messing with it to see what you can change to fix it. I was a little worried before this year's MGC because I picked up a WCS that we used, and I was setting it to be nasty, and I was able to get to the Wizard mode and score 2+ billion on a game during the tests. Turns out I just had a rockin' game, as no one that weekend touched that score even with some of the best playing on it. Average ball time was just over 1 minute, but people thought it was really fair.

The good thing about setting up machines really nasty is that it evens the playing field between good and not-so-good players. If a good player can only keep the ball in play 20 seconds more than a not-so-good player, it means the scores won't be too different... BUT, the bad thing is that for new players having machines set up that hard is a turn off, and if you like long, deep games (LOTR / TSPP, I'm lookin' at you) they aren't really satisfying if you don't last more than a minute or two.

I like my games shallow and fair, and personally like my games to last about 3-4 minutes tops. I have a couple machines set up nice for guests though.

I notice in all the Stern machine adjustment menus there are choices for Installs: extra easy, easy, hard, etc. Does anyone know what parameters are changed to make things easier or harder? I can't find anything anywhere that tells you. Mine is a Tron by the way.

Play with small pinballs than regular.I do this to my High Speed 1 and is much more fast and difficult

Drink

That always makes pinball difficult.

But seriously I think the others nailed it. Go to the diagnostics menu to make it tough, open lanes, install thick post rubber to make shots tighter, crank up the back legs & etc.

Adding mods/toys to a playfield actually makes the game harder, compared to having them removed and leaving the playfield stripped or barebones. More distracting to the mind, less focus on the ball(s) and path/lane visibility.

It's in the utilities menu (stern/bally/williams)

Trade whatever machine you have for a STTNG. The outlane drain in that bitch eats everyone

Some games I just can't make hard enough so I sold them.
Having a hard game to play is very important to a home collector as we play a lot and they become easy really fast.

For example my MM was way too easy. The 2nd game I played on it I blew up all 5 castles. Thats the main feature of the game and I completed it after the 2nd game.
I know there is much more to the game than the Castle but come on this is the main feature of the game!!!! What else is there besides hitting the two ramps over and over and over. I couldn't make it harder as to do that would mean I would have to increase how many times I hit the castle door and it was already way too much. I didn't want to play a game that consisted of just bashing the castle door, which by the way is an extremely easy shot, over and over and over.
I tried to make the game more appealing, especially after the $$ I spent to get it, but there was nothing I could do but sell it.....and that was easy too.
IMHO that game has a big big flaw....it was too dam easy to complete the main feature of the game and the other things the game has to complete it just wasn't doing it for me.

Now AFM is essetially the same game but because the Mothership is difficult enough, it's not easy to blow up all the ships, it makes the game the best one I've ever played. Difficulty can make or break a game IMO and sometimes opening the outlanes and making it steeper just isn't enough.

Wes >> You must be an awesome player! I still have not beat all 5 castles on my MM and I think it is one of the most difficult games ever.
When set up appropriately, the castle shot (with drawbridge down) is supposed to be a SDTM drain monster and that is exactly what mine does. I also think the real difficulty of MM is to hit all the other shots before actually starting a Multiball madness.

I actually think AFM is way easier since the mothership shot does not seem to go SDTM as often.