Has anyone figured out the purpose of the subway? When I shoot a ball into the Strange disc to start a mode, the ball goes into the subway and slow walks through the teeth to the VUK and then is kicked out. You can't even see the ball from the playing position. What is the point of this? I've also changed the setting from the default to "pass-through" but it works exactly the same when starting modes.

Perfect. Thanks for this.

Avengers works totally fine with Ninjas. Don't sell yourself short by using the Polaris balls which are nowhere near as shiny and degrade much quicker. Ninja balls magnetize on games that rapidly move the ball back and forth over the magnet (eg. LOTR, Dialed In, Metallica, among others). Avengers simply holds it, so very little magnetism is transferred.

Not a fan of Thanos Attacks. Who asked for this? It's already a challenge to collect gems - now I've got to worry about this @$$hole regressing things I've already accomplished in the game? What other pin does that?

What this game needs isn't more challenges, it needs more fun. The game isn't 'fun' - when you want to play a 'fun' game and you've got Deadpool and Maiden next to this one - nobody is picking Avengers (at least not if you've actually played the other two). Great game to sharpen your skills, challenge yourself, and blow off some combos. But way too serious, antagonistic (thanks for the ST:TNG right outlane, Keith), and still lacking fun side-quest type stuff. I hope that changes.

Hey if anyone wants to make the cheesy Star Trek: TNG style outlanes a little more fair, remove the little black bumpers from the top of the inlanes.

Conventional theory is that removing these makes the game harder and MORE susceptible to outlane drains. Not true. I noticed this anecdotally and decided to run a test - 100 games with them on and off. End result is 12% fewer outlane drains with the inlane bumpers off.

My observation is that on nothing-but-net outlane drains, it's possible the bumper MIGHT have stopped it - but no guaranteed it wouldn't still go out. But on volleys where it's trapped and bounces back and forth - especially in the badly designed area between Antman and the right outlane - it goes out nearly every time with the bumpers on, and only about half the time with the bumper gone.

Yes, bumping the machine will clear the ball out of the outlanes more often than not, but this game's design makes it so outlane hungry that it becomes exhausting to keep having to do this during a 30 min game. So removing the bumpers is much easier. Try it out and see what you think.

First few times I played the game I didn't realize what it was and thought he was saying the "The eye of automotive" and was like "is that a random car ad??".

Whenever you hear the call out it's a good thing because it means the saucer target is loaded up with something good.

Lots of us are frustrated by the bad geometry with the outlanes. The slings are positioned too high resulting in them steering balls to the outlanes. The bouncy trap up area near Antman always results in the ball bouncing off the inlane divider and out - a terrible design element. It's not "challenging" if it's going out this way 95% of the time - it's bad design. And you know this because the outlane gap is not even particular big, it's just that the design of the game fits balls there perfectly.

I've waffled with lots of ways to adjust for this without nerfing the difficulty too much, and I found removing the rubber from the lane divider (ala Deadpool) reduces side drains by just enough to feel it's more fair. I think the larger outlane adjustable post is too much of a fix, although I think we can all agree that Keith messed up in having even the easiest/default outlane settings still with a pretty wide gap. I get that he's good...I'm good...but not-good players don't find this to be fun at all. On TAF, the left outlane post can be adjusted to where a ball almost doesn't even fit through. That's too extreme, this is the opposite. Give the players more choice.

Of course it was done on purpose. And he messed up. It isn't fun. People don't find ST:TNG particularly fun for the exact same reason. JP and IMDN are fun games, that are also challenging, and neither have gaffed outlanes. Just because someone designed great games before and/or is a great pinball player does not mean they can't make mistakes. I mean, releasing a turd like LED Zeppelin was a bad idea - but Stern still did it, on purpose. In fact, most modern Stern's are shipped with design mistakes that require major intervention by the user (eg. just on this game: subway mech, spinning disk, captain marvel ramp, and so on). How about the demogorgon hole on Stranger Things? I know there is a heavy amount of designer fanboi worship on here and Keith's IMDN is a masterpiece, but this game suffers from some design flaws that will keep it from reaching IMDN-level popularity and it's OK to acknowledge that.

No lies here. Keith, I believe, designed this game for himself. Like, just him. It's a drain monster with no ability to adjust the outlanes and incredibly depressing. And if you do have a hot game, Thanos now shows up after 3 gems or so and takes one away (in most cases, let's be honest you all aren't beating this consistently). It's brutal to the point where it's not fun no matter how well you do.

Yesterday I alternated between Avengers and Iron Maiden for several games and it's just astonishing how proper the geometry and shots are set up in Maiden. He made the ramps hard but the outlanes are fair, there are no BS traps where the ball always goes out, a non-flipped ball off the mini flipper rolls down to safety rather than draining like on Avengers....and it lacks the idiotic idea where the game takes away accomplishments you already made. An absolute masterpiece of a game. Avengers has amazing shots and some unique 'toys' but the need to make the game a drain monster leaves it lacking compared to IMDN or JP. But 2 out of 3 sure isn't bad. Better than many other designers.

I'm going to try to raise the pitch on mine to see if it affects the outlanes any - although I'm pretty sure its up there already. I own 10 modern games and this one has easily the worst outlanes, and I can't even name a 2nd place. On one hand, I want to believe the outlanes are supposed to be more fair than they are on mine, but on the other hand the slings ARE placed higher than on all my other games (including Maiden) so there certainly was intent here to make them harder.

Nah that was some other bro with a Dr. Dude avatar.

Hi everyone, Greg here. I've commented a few times about the difficulty and unfairness of the outlanes.

When I first got my Avengers, I set it up with the back leg castors raised to about the midway point. After that I usually play several games to feel if it's off, too slow, etc. This game felt OK so I left it as is. I think I was more concerned with the leveling left to right and that was spot on, but it didn't feel floaty.

I've played probably 200 games so far, have gotten all the gems (on the old code) and have had several billion point games, but the game always felt lame because of the cheap outlanes. On a tip from Jediturtle I checked the legs and noticed - sheesh, the back leg castors are much lower than my Deadpool and LOTR next to it....so I raised the legs to their level.

Annnnnnd the cheapo outlanes are now a thing of the past. Gone. Raising the pitch (I don't know what it's actually at in numbers) significantly removed the random side to side action the slings create and sharply reduced outlane drains. It does create an issue where the Black Panther shot is a bit tougher to make now (now I can related to those that said it was hard to make after lengthy play - mine used to always make it no problem), but overall it makes the game feel less random and a bit more enjoyable. If you have a similar gripe, try it.

I was complaining about cheap drains for a few reasons: 1) For players that are not me (i.e. my kids, wife, etc.) cheap drains make the game not fun. It's the least played game out of my 10 machines and also the newest. When I ask why I'm told "it's not exciting and I lose the ball easily". So that part of my complaint was for casual players. 2) The cheap outlanes created an enormous amount of randomness. I can play Deadpool, IMDN, or MM and consistently reach the late parts of the game 9 out of 10 times. With Avengers, I'll put up a 10 million, than a billion, than 25 million, than 300 million - because the outlanes created all sorts of randomness - finding consistent play was incredibly difficult.

But after adjusting the pitch, it's not the drain monster it used to be and my play is now consistent. My prior comments about the sound, Thanos Attacks BS, and lack of stuff to do besides gem modes still apply, but the outlanes, thankfully can be fixed with a sharper pitch.

I don't know the number but there is only about 1/4" left for the back legs to go even higher - they are nearly maxed out. Front legs are as low as they can go. Despite this it doesn't really play super fast. I will also say that this alone will not eliminate the ridiculous outlane drains. Having a sharp pitch like this directs the balls more often to the inlanes, however with the inlane rubber bumper present, these balls often volley into the outlanes. At first I observed this anecdotally and then counted outlane drains and ball time with them on and off. Without the inlane rubbers increased ball time by 22 seconds and decreased the outlane to center drain ratio from 1.15 to 1 to to 1.05 to 1. Tested 50 games each.

So if you want the fairest outlanes, you need to increase the pitch sharply and removed the inlane rubbers (like on Deadpool).

Unrelated - they should add an operator option to disable Thanos Attacks. It's so stupid. One of the dumbest ideas I've ever seen in a pinball game. I find myself, with 3 good gems in hand, picking the weakest gem first and intentionally draining so I don't lose one of the other two more valuable gems by accident. When good players are using that as a strategy, you messed up.

Deep? It is not. Very one dimensional right now - shoot the disc, play the battles, get gems. Rinse, repeat. Hopefully that might change with new code. Compared to other recent Sterns like Deadpool or Maiden, it's pretty basic. Difficult? Yes. Deep? No.

My experience observing 8 or so people playing it on their own here at the house over the past month (including my two kids) is that they are excited to try it at first but after a couple games everyone prefers my other games to Avengers. Primarily because of how difficult it is to keep the ball in play as a casual player. The outlanes are brutal. My 6-year old son is absolutely nasty at pinball and of the 10 games I own it's his least favorite (though he enjoys trying to beat the Battle Royale mode). If you like challenging games that kick your @$$ over fun factor, this is the game to buy. The shots are incredibly close together because there are so many so you will often find yourself angry that you got a multiball you didn't want because you were trying to get a mode going first. One of the only games I've played where I'm constantly trying to -avoid- getting multiball.

Bro - I don't get into Pinside debates because it's 6 year old stuff, so I'm DMing you a response to this. Suffice to say for the OP who asked about the game and whom I answered honestly, Avengers is a new game and is ranked below Maiden and next to Deadpool on the Top 100. By year end, it will be several spots below Deadpool as the newness wears off. That's all of Pinside talking, not just me.

Typically, new games start out hot and then fall over time as the fanboy hype wears off. Avengers went from #1 to #8 to #13. Sure it's possible that it moves up - Metallica's code was pretty iffy when it first came out but the Crank It Up Modes drastically improved the game and made it much deeper and fun - but code can't fix the physical issues with the game - you always want to give your customer the option to set the difficulty how they see fit and Avengers removes the ability to do that at the outlanes. That's the reason novice players don't warm up to it.

That Wonka at #1 is a glitch. It was ranked like 31st a couple days ago.

For anyone, er everyone, having trouble with Stern's crappy auto-plunger not making it up the ramp, I solved this issue on mine and it was bad.

So, first advice: Do not try to line up the forks so they both touch the ball exactly. This won't work. In fact, doing this will drop your ramp-make rate to near 0. The way this mech works is a mess - what happens when Stern goes cheap on everything (compare to the auto plunger on LOTR to see what I mean).

Record your auto plunger with your phone in high speed (slow mo) mode and you'll likely see it takes a hard left after its plunged and then tries to go straight. Even with the forks perfectly aligned to the ball right down to the atomic level.

Instead, grab a pair of plyers and bend the right fork so it's perfectly straight (on mine, its actually bent a little outward at optimal setting, as crazy as that sounds), now gradually tweak the left fork as outward as it can go until its either pointed straight (it's usually bent to the right at the factory) or the ball is resting JUST above the manual plunger tip - this is how you get the torque you want.

Now, drop a ball in the shooter lane and watch. Doesn't make it? Turn the left fork inward a tad. Continue repeating this until your ball is making it over 100% of the time. The sound the auto-plunger makes is unique when you get it right. Its a solid thunk sound. When adjusted correctly, the ball easily makes it up the ramp 100% of the time without fail. It can be done on every copy of this machine. Try it, the auto-plunger mech is quite difficult to break.

EDIT: Attached a photo of mine at rest so you can see what I mean a little better. Notice the right fork doesn't touch the ball at all and the forks hold the ball -just- above the shooter tip. Having the ball sit this far back gives you much more torque on both manual and auto plunged shots.

PXL_20210226_221429207 (resized).jpg

So let's take the most fun game I own - Deadpool, and least fun game I own, Avengers: IQ and compare my audits.....

*DeadPool*

Ball played: 7331
Ball saved: 1720 (23%)

Right drains: 1040 (14%)
Center drains: 5616 (77%)
Left drains: 675 (9%)

*Avengers*
Balls played: 1924
Balls saved: 600 (31%)

Right drains: 502 (26%)
Center drains: 957 (50%)
Left drains: 465 (24%)

My games gets played by both me (70%) and my kids (30%) so these numbers represent a good variety of skill levels. Matches up with all anecdotes - Avengers IS an outlane drain monster. Both games have outlanes set at factory settings. Both have the inlane post rubbers removed.

BTW - I've found that turning slingshot power all the way up to 64 is the best no-drain setting. At the lowest setting, they actually seem to aim the ball into the outlane. At 64, they overshoot the outlane area far more often.

Way ahead of ya, bud.

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/110131

If anyone feels it might be interesting, I'll get the numbers for a few others to provide variety...some older SAM Sterns and Williams games and see how they compare. ST:TNG did have shitty outlanes (especially the right) so when the ball gets over there, it's going out. BUT, because the playfield is wider and the geometry is more forgiving than AIQ, it's not such a drain monster.

For me I much prefer a game that favors center drains because in multiball especially, it's hard to watch the outlanes. Avengers is the only game where I've routinely lost 5-6 balls all at once at the outlanes. I laugh. Can't even get mad. But yeah, it's an absolute outlane drain machine.

EDIT - Here are the numbers for a bunch of other games I own. All at factory outlanes, etc. I offered a reason why I included each game.

Center vs. Outlanes Draining

Lord of the Rings - Super long ball times
L: 20% R: 14% C: 66%

Iron Maiden - Another Elwin game
L: 25% R: 24% C: 51%

Metallica - Stern favorite
L: 14% R: 18% C: 68%

Medieval Madness - All-time favorite
L: 14% R: 19% C: 67%

Dr. Dude - Nortorious center drain monster due to top ball exit
L: 17% R: 13% C: 70%

Addams Family - Most popular classic
L: 19% R: 17% C: 64%

I'm no expert but it's safe to safe Elwin's games specifically are designed to funnel balls to the outlanes. I love Iron Maiden, which goes to show that you can still make a fun game that favors the outlanes as much as the center.

Yip. Mine will be sold this week, but most optimal setup to minimize outlane drains is to remove the inlane post rubbers, set pitch to 7 degrees, and jack the slingshot power to maximum. Best you're going to be able to do without direct mods but makes a noticeable difference.