I can't find a build date on my playfield but bought it summer of 2016 right when all the playfield problems were starting. The game was a floor model with only like 100 plays. I checked all the inserts for ghosting. Maybe I missed one or it happened shortly after I got it but one has some decent ghosting. Like dnapac, it bugged me a little at first. Doubt Stern would send out a new playfield for just that and didn't want the stress of trying to get it fixed. Game plays awesome and already did a few mods. It's kind of like getting a scratch on your new car. It sucks but at least you don't have to worry about keeping everything perfect after that. It will probably affect resell but whatever. It's a fun pin that I have already enjoyed quite a bit.
I will say that it and all the other stuff has affected my opinion on Stern games. The one big thing I liked about Stern games was that they just worked and you didn't have to worry about anything going wrong. I figure there will always be a few games with issues every now and then but Stern would make it right. Now you really don't know what could go wrong. Cab could split, inserts could ghost, clear could flake, node boards go bad, etc. The bad thing is that a game could look and work perfect day 1 and then start having issues a week or month later.