I need help…
Much of this is prefaced by the fact that, #begin auto plunger rant#, as I have posted here a few times, my auto plunger sucks and now almost never makes it around the left ramp. I guess today will be the day I really try to fix it. I have tried bending the plunger per some advice in this thread and played with the plunger power but nothing has worked. It’s mostly laziness or being stubborn and thinking that after dropping ~$10k on an LE that something as simple as the auto plunger should simply work. To me, its like buying a new car and after a week having to hot wire it to start it because the standard ignition won’t work - I simply don’t get how Stern isn’t 1000% embarrassed by this apparently being a common issue across games. Needless to say having the ball dumped into the pops and having a >50% chance that the ball is going to drop out from Cap and go SDTM 30 times a game (esp if you get soul gem mode) is stressful and is getting less and less fun. I took out the tilt bob and fricking slam the machine around, with middling success. #end auto plunger rant#
Anyway, I have had AIQ since November. When I got it, for about the first month, almost every game I would get 1-2 gems. I was consistently scoring in the 400k range. I think my high is ~700k and that was put up right when I got the machine. Now I can’t break 200k. I struggle to get gems. I know this is exasperated by the auto plunger issues right now because after accomplishing something, my ball is put into chaos instead of being fed around to a flipper where I can regain control.
Anyway, here’s the crux of my question. This game is unique in that when you lose a gem, generally speaking, you are done with that aspect of the game and have no way to recover. It feels super punitive. If I play a game and lose two gem quests, I generally left flipper/start and start over. What’s the point? Why should I think differently and keep playing through all 3 balls? I’ve never played a pin where, frankly you lose and are screwed like this. A lot of advice here is to set the game to 4-5 balls, but if you lose the first few gems, who cares how many balls you have? Maybe if there was a way to replay gems after you played them all? Maybe that mode exists and I have never gotten there.
Interestingly enough, the two times in the last month that I won the first two gems and the soul gem, then I had to battle Thanos and he took the gem(s) away from me. Personally, I think the battle thanos / thanos attacks mode should have an on/off setting in the menu as for me right now the mode is a huge kick in the sack and not a reward. Instead of thinking, cool 3 down and now here’s a fun mode, I instead am thinking, oh crap now this…
As amazing as this game is to shoot and hit combos, its starting to feel futile. Maybe I am simply not a good enough player and this machine and rule set is for a world champion pinball player. How do others approach this game and deal with losing gems?