Quoted from Dan1733:Sorry to be so late to the party on this issue, but...
What is missing from the code that would make this game a more pleasurable experience for 99% of the owners?
Even aside from the final mode, there are fixes & tweaking to do. They've mentioned in the past they'll have a code adjustment to help recognize loop shots that are sometimes missed by optos, there's a bug that can kill the game in Liar's Dice, there are placeholder animations for some wizard modes, and there are character changes that were listed by JJP in this forum in I think May 2019 that have been in beta code for quite awhile now. And it would be nice to add a good shaker effect when you sink the target ship. There's also a separate thread where people have listed ideas for fixes here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/potc-code-change-game-play-requests-#post-4999608
So there are definitely changes that could & should be done in addition to the final mode. There have been three code updates since shipping and one of those was an update released the day after the first one to fix a crash bug, so really there have been 2 true code updates. The most recent update was released in April 2019. Last communication I saw by the designer (on one of his gameplay streams last year) he said they won't release any code until the final wizard mode is done, which is just a really crappy way to treat customers who bought this game since it's pretty apparent the final mode is way, Way, WAY down on their list of priorities.