Stern games in my collection:

SM - No playfield wear, no insert issues.
Tron - No playfield wear, no insert issues.
AC/DC Premium - No playfield wear, no insert issues.
IM - No playfield wear, no insert issues.
GB LE - No playfield wear, no insert issues (already have over 300 games on it).

Either I'm lucky, or people with issues are unlucky. I hope it's the latter, because I'd hate to be the exception to this sort of problem.

Don't trust the numbers in a blind poll. Even if they were overwhelmingly positive, people often vote with an agenda. If the real numbers were as high as the polls were saying, we'd be seeing MUCH more of a fuss about this. But still, even 5-10% rate would be unacceptably high. I can see 2% slipping by quality control, but if 1 in 20 or 1 in 10 were getting out with issues, then there's a problem with inspection. We haven't seen a large enough sample to know what numbers are like of bad playfields compared to the run sizes. Heck, we don't even know how many games are out there, because Stern doesn't release that information.

tl;dr - numbers in voting are probably inflated by fanboys/haters on both sides, but Stern is definitely letting too many bad playfields out into the wild.

Everybody has issues. No use throwing anybody under the bus or propping anybody up on a pedestal. The real test is how the companies deal with the problems. We're still waiting to see how Stern reacts, though in the past they've done well. JJP has a solid record of doing right by customers. But man, both companies have been having to fix a lot of issues after shipment.

GBLE here...and at around 500 plays my ghosting finally showed up.

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No solution that I know of would do much. Either it's going to ghost or it's not. Seems like many just will.

Looks like Nifty LED is starting up the #FixMyPlayfield hashtag. I wonder if it'll be the new Where's the Code? movement.

Guys, don't leave your games unplayed. All it will do is delay the issue, not prevent it. This isn't a curing issue, it's an issue of bad adhesion and shoddy clearing. If you wait a month before playing, and then your issue shows up, Stern is going to raise an eyebrow at your claim that your game that you've had for 2 months only has 200 plays on it. Just get it, play it, and hope you got lucky. Stern has never had these issues before now, and people didn't let their games sit for a month before playing at any point in Stern's history.

If this is what's happening, that's unbelievably sloppy.

It's just crazy to me that August build date games have issues still. Those games were built well after Stern was fully aware of widespread problems, and they still built them and sent them out anyway. Either they're planning on being very strict about what they replace, or they've put their heads in the sand regarding how big the problem is and are just hoping that it'll magically fix itself.

The problem encompasses fixing affected playfields. Until that happens, there's still a problem.

My ghosting took a couple of weeks to start. Until playfields are good for a couple of months after delivery on a consistent basis, I would be wary.

I'm getting chipping and clear lifting. Chipping behind the Scoleri targets and lifting at the outhole. 20161003_214556 (resized).jpg

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June 20th. I have four ghosted inserts, a nicked shooter lane, lifting clear at the outhole, chips in the clear behind the Scoleri targets, and I have a gouge in my cabinet (not really noticeable). I also had TONS of out of the box issues. There's no way that my game was play tested before shipping.

This is my 3rd NIB game, but my first preorder. I'm open to future NIB games if issues get fully sorted, but I'm never going to preorder again. Stern lost my faith.