Pinball is certainly an odd industry.

In most other industries, if there are people who are "dissatisfied with the company or product" the company goes out of its way to try and address that.

But in the pinball scene, it's the opposite. If there's a group of disgruntled enthusiasts, the pinball companies just brand them as "haters" and say they're not worth pandering to.

Perhaps this is why these groups continue to be at odds with each other and this industry is more contentious than it should be?

You can't take people's money and then not tell them when they are going to get something.

If he wants to not announce a date, don't take money. If they can pull this off with JJP3, show the game and sell the game without taking pre-order money, then no one will have anything to say about it.

He's like the Santa Claus from Hell. "I'll be there on Christmas, kids!" "Oh, wait...I might be there for Valentine's Day!" "Okay...so it could be Memorial Day!" "You know what? Screw it. There's always next Christmas."

It sure does make waiting tougher.

Wow, sorry my collection of "only 3 games with two old Data East games" doesn't qualify me to talked about what games are played more often than others. Or maybe it reflects the fact that the type of people that play the games at his place compared to mine might be different. Most all of the people at my place are NONE pinheads and don't know they are suppose to look down on "Old Data East" games. I wish I could buy one of the new Data East games but I have been unable to find any. Let me know what you have. If John has mostly pinball people that play at his place they know not to even look at Data East games. But let's also forget the fact that their are numerous posts from people that have a WOZ on route talking about how much play time it gets. Maybe they only have old Data East games next to them as well.

As a side note I also see that you and I both have one of the same "old Data East" games in our collection. Why would you even buy that?

Someone needs anger management.

Good point. No pre-order would be a huge help for them. They could release it when it is truly complete. Making arbitrary deadlines in this industry just seems like trouble. So many things can go wrong making a pin, regardless of who is making the game, with the exception of Stern, who gets around this by shipping incomplete games.

Unfortunately, the consistently missed deadlines doesn't make it look like a professionally run operation, which is clearly not the case when you read between the lines. There will always be a knee-jerk "boooh-hisss" reaction from people when you promise to deliver something by a date and you constantly have setbacks, regardless what the product is. But especially if you have $ invested.

Huh, we must be looking at things very differently.

I don't own a WOZ. I currently have no plans to buy a Hobbit. (#1 reason, too expensive, #2 only time I played it was as Expo and it didn't impress me. Hard to fix #1, but be happy to change my mind about #2.)

I was pretty vocal about things I saw as problematic when the first playfield art package was revealed. Jack called me out on stage at Expo (in a funny way, no hard feelings). He didn't call me a hater. He didn't say I wasn't worth pandering to. Instead they went back and redesigned a lot. (Note that I'm not trying to take credit for all this, I was just one voice amongst many.)

And it's a vastly better looking game now because of it, IMHO. JJP deserves credit for listening. I pretty much feel they did the opposite of what you're suggesting actually.

Would I prefer less cheap shots at Pinside during presentations? Definitely. It's not helpful guys, just let it be. But they put their time and effort and money into improving the game based on what we said, and that's the ultimate proof of listening.

Coming from a creator's perspective, Pinside is a a big ball of negativity. View these posts from the outside in, it comes off mostly negatively. There is a way of being constructive with criticism without having to resort to name-calling and straight-up bashing.

It seems like there is a lot of wasted energy here from people spending 5 minutes posting about stuff they dislike without explaining why and what could be done to make it better.

That's how I feel as well.

I don't mind debating the pros/cons of issues. In fact, I'd love to hear more about the technical aspects and differences between Stern and JJP's new technology. As you said, if someone has a criticism, hopefully it's more than just an emotional, personal reaction so it can add substance to the dialogue.

One thing I really like about the JJP system is [some of] the hardware isn't proprietary. If Stern's new system is based on a special boardset they make, then it's going to cost more to maintain.

I hope this isn't directed at Aurich? You may have missed his immense list of great suggestions on The Hobbit.

I know my Hobbit will be a better game because Jack listened to a lot of us Pinsiders especially Aurich.

Thanks to everyone on Pinside who helped make my game more fun!!

Absolutely not. He's the example of what people should be doing. It is easy to just sit and have no clue the process that goes behind anything and be like "this sucks". Tell those people to explain why, and better yet, what in their opinion would be the better alternative.

BTW, the revision of the PF art on Hobbit was excellent. I felt they really listened to their customer base there. There were a lot of comments that struck a chord and had commonality. But from Jack's perspective, imagine coming on here and just reading a bunch of bashes with little to offer in constructive critique. That doesn't exactly make for a friendly development environment, you can see why he'd feel the way he does.

Spooky has led the best example to date of encouraging civil discussion here while also not feeding the negativity. Those threads never have the level of hostility that exists elsewhere. I have a feeling that may be due to their ability to starve trolls. Talk too much, and you feed. Talk too little, and you anger people with limited info. It is a fine line to walk I'm sure.

It does not help that you have pinball manufacturers employs pissing in the pot

That's what my starve the trolls comment was in reference to. Negativity fizzles out if you let it die. No troll food, dead trolls and nothing left (hopefully) but useful commentary.

I realize this is a little off topic, but since you raised the point, I wanted to address it here.

IMHO, the primary reason that few trolls exist on the Spooky Pinball threads is because of HOW Charlie is managing his business:

1] Building and shipping quality games,
2] Promptly updating software,
3] Treating people with respect,
4] Engaging with the community, and
5] Incorporating constructive feedback.

All those apply to JJP as well...#3 is sometimes a bit rough around the edges - but getting better

Anyone catch the Star Wars shoutout? hmmmmm

He's mentioned star wars a few times now. And we've also heard rumors of JJP4 is in development, secret designer (that we know). The movie comes out December, but we've since learned they wouldn't want to time it with a movie anyways, so if it was a late 2016 release that would line up well with JJP4.

Don't recall that...but I think someone asked a question at the end along the lines of "Is there anything on The Hobbit, hardware, that we haven't seen yet". And I think Jack said yes but quickly moved on...anyone else catch that?

Also interesting was the wind lance design. JJP assumed that Smaug would be killed by a black arrow from a wind lance and not from a broken bow from Bard. I wonder if that PF area could just replace the wind lance image with a bow or a picture of Bard?

Excellent point - not a big deal really.

If the button was originally just for the lance - it may be so much for the better that it is now a ring button. I'll bet they can do some really cool stuff with that concept.

Things like:
1) Extend hurry up | Score a hit on a hurry up
2) Ball save
3) Send in a extra ball
4) Start a ring multi ball on demand
5) Countless others...

You stated in the first post " what is your point". I was just observing that you both have different collections and one collection probably favors a new woz over older games in a very small collection. THAT IS IT ! Wow dude?

Reliability is a possibility. Ease of troubleshooting i might also grant you. However, you kind of forgot the biggest one, which is serviceability. I'm led to believe (correct me if I'm wrong) all of Spike is SMT now. For the vast majority of people, that is not serviceable. So when a coil goes down, you're stuck until you can order a board, receive it, and replace it. Meanwhile, if your game is on route, depending on what it is that blew up your game is down that whole time.

Vs. replacing a transistor and diode.

Also I wonder how much those boards cost. Given what I've been hearing about parts sales recently, I'm guessing you're in for a $100 if a coil goes out.

If a board isn't serviceable, this is kind of irrelevant.

Nothing you said refutes my comment re: PCs but whatever.

If you re-read my context, I clearly implied that any savings they get based on what they had to have spent to get there is going to take a very long time to realize. I'm not sure why this matters anyway, given that customers won't see any cost benefits of the system.

I can understand your reasoning that you think they are ahead with wiring and stuff (to what end to consumers I'm not sure), but right now they drive a 320x240x16bit display, and not very well. If you want to call that "ahead" or even "even" there's not really any point in arguing this anymore.

It's a lot easier to imagine they are close on sound, since the sound plateau is a lot lower than any of the other ones. But if a board can make stereo sounds and no one can hear it, does it matter?

Keith I think it's awesome you care about reliability and sevicability.

In the spirit of that, perhaps you can build in a config setting into WOZ so that the upper playfield flippers are not activated except when a ball is up there? It would reduce a tremendous amount of wear and tear on two major parts of the game that would be a real PITA to service on location. And there's no reason for the flippers to be activated if the ball flies up there when it's not supposed to - it should just fall back down otherwise it would be subverting the ruleset.

What are the chances of this reliability improvement being included in a future update?

I have often wondered this too. Why are there more trolls on JJP than any other threads? There must be a reason, or several reasons. I would like to add that all the delays on WOZ and the missinformation has incited lots of the negativity towards JJP. The last year and a half of waiting for my WOZ was the worst and it is the primary reason I did not preorder TH.

I love Jacks passion and every time I have met him he's always been pretty cool. However, the mud slinging at Gary and Stern very early on probably had a little to do with the division. Personally I thought it was poor form for somebody coming out as the first new pinball manufacturer in years.

So, yes, it all starts with Jack.

Sounds like a good feature, but may be hard to implement. The only thing worse than an unused active flipper is a dead flipper. But perhaps KJ can respond.

That will never happen. Keith has always been consistent with that.

I think he addressed this about a year ago in another thread and answered with a resounding "NO."

You make a good point, though. But if it's not going to change, it's not going to change. Quite frankly, I don't care either way, because if I'm going to do a flipper rebuild on a machine, I'm going to do EVERY flipper...not just the ones that need it that week. That's like replacing only one battery.

Anyone notice how disrespectful Jack was to the man from South America who was gushing about his game? From someone who's never met him. Seems like Jacks a dick

...its called profit.

I have a few 400 pound arcade games, you need a dolly with the extra pull out wheels. But totally manageable if you don't have to deal with stairs.

I really enjoyed playing the Hobbit this weekend, I wish I got a few more games in on it, but the line was long every time.

0%.

Calling this a "reliability improvement" is a gross oversimplification of all the issues involved and a clear attempt to steer the opinion that you are correct that this is a good thing.

Joe Blackwell, perhaps the most-respected man that ever worked in pinball service thought as you did. We had a couple of conversations about it, and he came to the conclusion that I was correct not to put it into TSPP. If I can convince Joe of that, then I'm going to go ahead and sleep comfortably at night.

That's not pinball. You take the good with the bad. Sometimes the ball goes over the flipper, and sometimes some whacked-out thing happens that's awesome. That's also why things like Dirty Pool exist, Sneaky Lock, Secret Lock, the list goes on.

SMT isn't as scary as it seems. It is easier to work with than thru-hole in my experience, not to mention worlds cheaper for parts. I don't even own a hot air station either. I agree people that have trouble seeing or working with small parts are screwed though.

Games? You can add the "s" when The Hobbit actually ships!

SPIKE has 2.1 stereo. Both WWE and KISS are in stereo.

Sorry, but those transistors are not surface mount. Easily serviced in the field or replaced with cheap spare board and service the broken one at the shop. Much easier than hanging over the machine to get into that terribly placed metal box... my operator friends love SPIKE already and are not so nice when they discuss system JJP.

Not worth debating any more if you did not even know this.

I think you may be wrong there at least on WWE. KISS would make sense to be in stereo so hopefully they got that in place.

SPIKE supports 2.1 stereo. WWE is a SPIKE system.

I think he is referring to games as machines, not titles. But I know you were just giving a friendly jab at JJP - no worries.

Was there any mention of how many Smaug Editions were ordered? My apologies if this was posted somewhere else.

Maybe this is what Jack was referring to and not bashing vendors at all!

http://www.pinballmafia.net/

I don't think so - Jack said he has about 1600 hobbits ordered (if I recall) and is hoping for about 1500 more. But I don't think he gave the SE number. And perhaps he shouldn't - some SE orders may request an LE, but I don't think they can trade from the LE to the SE as of end of December 2014.

Stern i get, "profit" for Jack? I guess, hard to imagine there is enough $$$ in the world to put up with this shit.

I get why Stern drinks.

Isn't that the truth.

I can't wait to see his new game and JJP's #3 with Lawlor.

Anxious to see the game in person. The technology and development are nice to hear about.

No doubt it's a pinball audience. Over 2 hours and no one asked about the Apple Watch Jack was wearing.

Along those lines - which city is up next to host a Hobbit prototype?

Here is a link to the presentation - sorry if someone else already posted it.

http://www.twitch.tv/nwpinballarcadeshow/b/666683896

EDIT: Starts 3:40 in

Douchiest, snobiest comment ever?

First, thanks for replying.

You may have convinced Joe (and I sure would like to know how that discussion went - perhaps it was something like, "Hey look how many extra flipper parts we can sell!" I don't know), but myself and others are actual customers who have paid for the game with the intention of operating it publicly. This is not some arbitrary, "Hey please it would be nice if you did x"-type feature. It is something specific and direct to do with the main [traditional] purpose of pinball, which is to earn money. I can't tell you how many TSPPs I have seen on location that were impossible to play because the couch could not be shot due to poor flipper condition. Yea, in a perfect world, every operator would maintain games perfectly, but that's not the real world, and not every game can get immediately fixed. And it's a fact the less a flipper flips, the more reliable and longer-lasting it will be. It's just a matter of time before WOZ will have the exact same issues, but x2.

As I understand it, your main rationale for not implementing this feature is...

I can appreciate and relate to that. But I'm not asking you take away the random, unexpected fun out of pinball. I'm simply asking for a config option that says: "[x] Disable upper playfield flippers when inactive." You could re-enable them during any multi-ball mode just to be safe.

If you say, there are technical reasons why it can't be done, after I squint my eyes a bit, I'll grudingly go, "Ok." But if you're simply holding your position because it doesn't jive with your principal of how pinball should be played, that seems a bit overbearing in my opinion.

I know you didn't like the idea of making ball locks virtual, but the ECMB locks were problematic and manipulable, (excuse me, I meant, "exciting and random") But in competition, items like that matter and make things unfair. Sometimes there are some good reasons for making minor adjustments because of the way other people want to use the game.

I don't see how this in any way compromises pinball, WOZ, its ruleset or its enjoyment in the slightest.

Anyway, I guess we know where you stand. This is your line in the sand, though I'm not sure exactly what you're defending.