Most Canadians don't mind ignorant statements like this, makes us look better practically ever where we go across the planet. I wish you were here to say that to my face buddy.

Because whatever management says goes, and if you go against that then they can easily just fire you. That's just business. I feel like Eric was somewhat forced to make this announcement per direction of his superiors. Maybe they think that the community will not have as much backlash if it's coming from the game designer himself? Anyways if that was the intent, huge fail on their part. Eric hasn't done anything wrong here and he is just at the mercy of his bosses unfortunately.

@Hogbog, I feel bad you had to make a video like that.

Either JJP can't afford the mech and forced you to say it was because of reliability, or there really is a reliability problem and you ran out of time/money to engineer some changes to make it more reliable.

Either way, I think you are more than competent enough to engineer a reliable mech, so obviously costs were a concern in my opinion.

I know of one that did for sure.

I know all about steppers and how they work. For them to reliably report the position of the disc to the system, they need to report back or have some way of homing them so it knows from which point on to count, just like in a 3D printer. They could make that work and they should.

“Hey Eric, they love you! You can do no wrong right now...be jovial, make a pirate face or something”

A203ACDF-6F82-4547-B663-C966BB5B3288 (resized).png

Where's the Hitler Finds Out About POTC Changes vid? Don't let me down Pinside.

I know of one for sure too. I just got the refund (minus fees) posted to my paypal account. Joe at PinballStar was very understanding.

The spinning disks mech was the heart of this game, without that it becomes even more generic. I'll wait and play a production game, but doubt there will be enough there to warrant buying it later on.

That was difficult also. Joe at PinballStar has been Amazing to work with and canceling with him was difficult as he has been so professional and courteous throughout all of my transactions even with Late night text debates. lol I will do business with him again as soon as he lands my Houdini! Props to a Great distributor!!!

Joe is great. Could you imagine if your pre-order was with KingPin and you wanted to cancel? That could be a little awkward.

This will still be a great game. I haven't canceled my pre-order yet, as I want to see what the game plays like and what happens. It's tough for how expensive it is. I don't think it would have been designed with the spinning disc if the idea for 3 never happened.

I don't understand why the trunk can't open and close if you don't use the forked diverter, but instead open the trunk with a different mech when ball lock is qualified, and shut it when it's been hit. It's an opto and programming, just a separate mech. For $10k you should make it work.

what about no disk at all?

Sagan mind blown gif

I do find it a little crazy if the price isn’t changed. The overall impact of what is removed is basically the step between Pro and Premium an a Stern game.

Premium: sculpted and animated treasure chest that opens and closes.
Pro: Static chest

Premium: 3 piece rotating lighted compass bonus wheel.
Pro: single wheel

That is way more than $0 in the eyes of the buyers...

Eric's pirate face on the spinner disc complete with callout and I'm back in.

Whatever they do now they cannot lower the price. Doing that is a straight admission of failure and a sign that they are not a boutique company. Imagine Ferarri admitting they couldn't fix some feature so they cut it and then lowered the price of a car. What would that say about them. JJP is the Ferarri of pinball and this is the worst move they could make.

We don't want a discount for gods sake - we want to pay a premium for a premium product. Damn it would be 100x less controversy if they would have just asked for $500 MORE! What a @&&$show.

Nice!!!

Mike and April at Automated were also more than understanding, and instantly issued the credit.

For me these changes highlight how little I care for the theme. POTC is not a dream theme for me but with the full package they unveiled it seemed magical. It was just enough cool shit to cross over into "gotta have it" territory. Now that it's being stripped down it's falling out of that zone for a lot of people.

The calculus for the average high-end pin buyer is something like THEME+FEATURES/PRICE = BUY or NOBUY.

I think that the main problems here are twofold. One, the art in the center of the playfield looks terrible now and Two, that JJP took consumers' money after saying that the triple disks would be in the game and then eliminated the feature.

I personally have no problem with them eliminating mechanisms that were destined to have major reliability issues. The game is still cool without the three disks, but the way this feature was hyped and promised and then eliminated is a problem. As others have mentioned, JJP definitely should never have unveiled Pirates at Expo. Showing the game for the first time closer to the actual production date will serve two purposes, generate more hype and eliminate the removal of features issue in the future.

I'm not sure why the chest opening and closing is causing so many problems, other games have similar features that seem to be fairly reliable. Still, eliminating the chest mech was the right thing to do if it constantly breaks.

I'm sure that this is not the end of the story with Pirates. At the very least I would think that JJP will redesign the playfield graphics to make the brown blob in the center look better. I wouldn't be surprised if they did something else to appease irritated customers on top of that, though I don't know what that would be.

This is all fairly irrelevant for me because I am not a NIB JJP buyer. That's too rich for my blood. I'm more of a used game or at most Stern Pro sort of buyer.
I would like to buy a used WOZ some day.

Something simple they can pull off twould be make the laser cut topper optional for the standard, a more interactive topper of some kind for the LE and ship in bottle for CE.
This along with a slightly revised art package for the spinner to make it fit in and I think most would be onboard again.

Edit - I would prefer the original design though, just throwing some other ideas out there that haven’t been mentioned.

A better example would be after Ferrari taking your money, you waiting the usual 2 years for your car to be finished, and then in the last 6 month stretch they tell you:

a: Your car will now have 6 cylinders rather than the 12 it had when you ordered.

b: The 12 speaker Media System has been replaced by an AM/FM/CD player.

Ferrari would like to share with you this great news, because now the car will be much more reliable, for the same price !!!!

What about redesigning the spinning disk to have a magnet in the middle like twister? When the compass goes into action on the display the ball is held in the middle so that you can see your reward.

If this is a reliability issue, this tech is already proven.

There really is no sustitute here and I agree with Vid.

What about just giving us what we paid for?

Assuming that the pf spinner hole is the same size for 1 versus 3.

Why not charge an extra fee for the three disc mech and offer a limited warranty on just that part? All games ship with one disc mech, but for $xxx.xx 3 disc mech shipped separately. While having it plug and play and a setting in the menu. (Included no charge in CE too because 12.5k).

Then if an owner want to risk the reliability it’s on them.

WOZ had MAJOR problems upon delivery...to JJP's credit, they stuck it out, removed no feature, and worked through the problems. Am convinced to this day they lost $$$ on the early ones, but now have a cornerstone machine. For whatever reason, not the path chosen here. Is what it is.....

Just reading about this. How about using the LED idea for the middle circle and just have the larger spinning disc around it. You would still have a map spinning disc but the other 2 spinning circles would be on the LED to line up. Not sure if I'm making sense....

Think big! This is JJP. Replace the hole with a scratch resistant gorila glass and project animations from under the PF like waves, ships, gold, and storms like the picture below. If done right, this would make everyone forget about the three concentric ring spinning disks. One big spinning disk is an old toy which would just remind us of what was meant to be there. If JJP does not do something like that, some enterprising mod maker should.

Storm (resized).jpg

Vortex (resized).jpg

No one has paid for anything, just made fully-refundable deposits.

WOZ was different since people had made payments for something expected. Plus, it's a lot harder to play a game without lights than what we're talking about here.

Absolutely!

That's still paying for something. That's money that could have been used elsewhere, but was locked in to get the game as advertised.

Cue the violins

JJP made my day gloomy. Need a Valium.

This coming from a Stern basher.

Try a Tito's and Red Bull!

It's also tough to want to buy a 9500 machine when THE marketing tool used by JJ to get those deposits is now being replaced by a shoddy paste on. We didn't trot out these disks as new innovation never seen before, we didnt market it as the focal point, we just want the promise delivered on.

First everyone complains because pinball companies don't let us see the process. JJP let us see the prototypes and early stages of this machine.
Now, as they work things out, there is complaining that they should have waited and not shown anything until it was ready.
Oh well, you are never going to make everyone happy no matter what you do.

To make matters 100x worse, they took a cool looking centerpiece of the game and replaced it with something that looks like someone threw up on the middle of the playfield. I can live with the trunk change, but I don't think I can stay in based on the disc change. Who wants to look at that all the time while you're playing? Feel bad that this is the hand that Eric is getting dealt. Deep down, I can't see how he could be ok with this even though he HAS to say otherwise publicly. C'mon JJP, you gotta do something better than this.

damned if you do, damned if you dont.

If what we saw is final and they as a company think that's acceptable, it certainly tells you a lot about belief in quality.

I spoke with jack at the release party in Connecticut and he stressed to me the mission statement of every table being playable art. That disk replacement is far from art.

I will wait until I see and play the finished product. I hope they can make adjustments that will please the majority of potential buyers.

Really, no.

There's clearly ONE best way of doing it, and it's the Stern way. People bitch about code all the time, but that can always be fixed or changed. Clearly it's not worth it to reveal games until they are absolutely ready - that's the big takeaway from all of this. It's not worth it to dazzle a show crowd just to have to deal with potential messes like this months later.

I hope everybody remembers this next time it seems like the end of the world that a game isn't being revealed at a show, but I doubt it.

Quit making sense Crazy L.

So maybe CGC was wise in not announcing at TPF when not ready?

Their slogan stating - “Our Games Premium No Compromise” clearly doesn’t apply to this title. Lol

i completely agree with you, my comment was more saying that there is no winning for these manufactures, people are going to bitch no matter what happens. Dont show anything, people complain, reveal you game then have to make changes, people complain. Delay a game/miss projected ship date, people complain, rush a game out to market with not complete code, people complain. Anyone see anything in common here?

Not in Europe. 1000 Euro non-refundable.

NGG had a wheel that gave out awards. Granted it was only one wheel, and didn't always reward the right thing when I've played it. Can't remember how that is implemented.

Bring back the mechanical action! 3 disks and a functioning trunk! I played at Automated last December. The game was fine. In fact I ordered one from Automated right after it was announced. I can only imagine that the distributors all ordered an allocation based on preorder numbers.

I haven't seen this mentioned, but Judge Dredd effectively has a 2 "ring" motor. The big deadworld spins in one direction while the planet on top spins in the other direction.

Yes... I know this is only 2 "rings". Also, it spins significantly slower. But something to at least acknowledge.

... Altan

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If it wasn’t a feature in the flier and not talked about on all the streams and hyped up then there wouldn’t be as big of a backlash...next release, don’t make the advertising with features that may or may not be on the game (or at least put *features subject to change or be removed)! Other than the rocking ship, it’s arguably the biggest feature on the game. We’re not talking about a minimal item like the chest opening and closing.