GBLE ordered, I was assured if play field issues happen , they would replace it.

I ordered my GB Pro a few days ago. I called my distro yesterday and mentioned the insert ghosting issue. Was told that they spoke to Stern about it and was assured that Stern would be making an announcement in the very near future regarding the issue and their plans to correct it. They also assured me that if I had ghosting issues they would personally deal with Stern and make it right.

I have a Met Pro and while it's very minor, I have some decal lifting on the head. They told me to take a pic along with my serial # and they would get new decals from Stern. While I have never dealt with an issue with Stern, they claim that Stern has always resolved every issue they have brought to them and this would be no different.

While I know some people have suggested calling them directly, your distro might have a little more pull to get things done. I know others in this thread have little faith Stern will do anything about it. I guess I am putting faith that my distro will work for me. We'll see. Hopefully the issue is resolved when production resumes and I don't have to put it to the test.

Who is your distributor?

A local arcade up here has a Ghostbusters Pro model and the pin looks beautiful but that's about the only positive I can say with regards to the pin. It's two weeks old and it's ghosting and it's a clunker! Talked to the owner who had an LE on order for himself he cancelled it once he played the pro machine. He's also not happy with the quality that Stern seems to cranking out their new machines and the price they are charging. Gameplay will improve with code but it's going to take alot more than a code update to convince me to buy one. Stern needs to improve their quality of work. $5k for a pro model and two weeks later it's falling apart!

I'm glad I didn't buy this turd of a machine!

What's failing on it?

The location players are glad I bought this turd. Coin box reflects that.

Dropped the out lane posts, shortened the springs on drop targets and adjusted the slimer cable. Plays great, fun game. No ghosting on inserts. Art work is off the charts great, well done music, theme integration is top notch with a ton of movie quotes. Once the code is done and a colour DMD comes out for it, I'm sure it will remain a good earner.

Is that you Jersey Jack?

Kaneda is that you?

Because geometry is part of the game DESIGN - it's not some universal boilerplate.

Flipper location is part of the game's design.

My god people just want no variation at all anymore I guess...
Smh...

I guess you don't have any understanding at all of the difference between playfield layout/geometry and mechanical engineering.

For someone so opinionated and eager about game design.... Why don't you actually seek out all the information out there FROM THE DESIGNERS THEMSeLVES on topics like design teams, process, evolution, etc

You go on and on and on without the slightest background at all in what you are sharing your thoughts on. Get informed

It's not about good or bad.

Kpg asked why is one substitution is perceived as negative while another is not. Because it's not shoe sizes or car colors... These are the bones of the game's design and layout.

The layout of the game and how it plays is the task of the designer and they usually go through that before there is any rules or often before any theme even.

Jt clearly is aware this geometry differs from the usual boilerplate. This is not n oversight but intention design feature of the game. Like it or not oh sorry personal choice, but 'mistake' or error it is not

Please explain what you mean by saying its a "clunker"?

Captain Kirk... has just been permanently ejected from his own thread.

... and he already misses me

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Good grief...put that nut in the basement.

Yeesh, that's a bit over the top.

Sorry, man. That's not cool. You and I obviously disagree on several things, but I still think you're a good dude. Just want to make that clear.

That may be a pinside first .

With that follow up comment he may risk being Kenadaed .

Thanks dude, and likewise!

One thing we all need to remember is why we are logging onto this site.. because we are all hobbyists of pinball. There's not many people who would even take the time to play, let alone come on a forum and discuss it. I'd like to think that in person, on location or at a show, we would all click and have a good time playing some machines together and not getting into any pissy discussions.

At the end of the day, internet forums and the anonymity of screen names and posting can sometimes bring out the worst in us, myself included. I know its easy to be a dick sometimes online. I give the benefit of the doubt 99.9% of the time, including to Mr Captain Kirk. He might not even be such a bad guy in person, but he likes to vent online. None of us know what is going on in his personal life, nor is it our business- maybe it's a way to relieve daily pressure for him. I do not dislike him, I just think he needs to chill out a bit online. It's all good.

I don't even care he called me a douchebag. It's the internet.. I have never been called a douchebag to my face in my entire life, but online, you just need to have thick skin because no one knows who you really are as a person, and only know you by your postings. I'm fine with that, and I don't let it get to me.

Be glad you were only called a douchebag. I consider that a compliment. You should hear some of the shit I've taken in PMs...but it doesn't bother me because it always seems to be coming from REAL douchebags.

The linear sequence worried me at first, but not any more. The number of scenes on each path is pretty well thought out IMO. The left shot is challenging, but I'm getting better at it. The ramp is easy to hit and a lot of those scenes will use the ramp. The right loop is the easiest to hit, so having 4 scenes on that shot are fine too. My current challenge is getting the right ramp when a scene requires it. Each scene that I have noticed has a 40 second timer, that stops if you stop hitting things. Most of the time if a scene requires a right ramp shot, I can hit all of the other shots in 10-15 seconds, and then spend the rest of the time missing the right ramp (normally). That's what I'm working on now though. I hit it 3 times in a row on PKE Frenzy the other day. 90M in about 5 seconds from that, which was nice. On the left ramp, I get to The Ballroom pretty regularly, but struggle getting the right ramp and storage facility shot.

Or this one "Steers and Queers are from Texas", which one are you?

Could this be the same guy with the video rants a while back? Same MO

btw, it's just a GB thread, NOT his thread, adios and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out

I would buy a factory reject playfield for wall art in the game room if Stern decided to sell them at a nice discount to help make up on the loss they will take throwing them out.
Just a thought.
But I'm sure they can't do it either for write off reasons or because some people would probably buy them and try to pass them off later as new ones.
Hate to think of all of the bad ones heading to a landfill though.

what-do-you_(resized).jpg

haters (of carrot flippers) will still hate...
my son few minutes ago :

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he also beat the ghost catching with 229, and was few shots away from completing the 9th & last mission (ball room), than we still didnt see WARTBY

enjoy (your pin)

Yeah if they had them for $189 like they want for their Rolling Stones pf I'd take one too.

Since this is The Real Ghostbusters Thread. image_(resized).jpeg

i find that the ones that use the term douchbag all the time, are the ones that are a prime example of one. probably because they hear it so much in their life, it's the only insult they know.

There are times when even the designer, in hindsight, will admit that an intentional design aspect of the game was a mistake.

Example, Steve R. with regards to too many shots in the fan layout of No Fear or the punishing outlanes on STTNG. Both basic "bones" of the layout.

Eh I think we all can be or have been douchebags at times.

Immature or not, it gives me pleasure he has been kicked out of "his" thread.

Yeah you would think a grown man that admits to collecting children's Ghostbuster toys his whole life would have an abundant sense of humor.

With the Captain gone...

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Again.. the context of the posts...

Let's return to the start... and the postulation made..
"I don't know why there's any argument with using carrot flippers. They simply make the gap the same width as the 99% of other pinball machines ever made. If a larger flipper gap was better, why are people not modding their existing machines with shorter flippers? "

Let's re-read the last sentence a few times... and then review the first sentence. kpg's post misses the idea that the game's geometry is not some boilerplate, but is actually the creative output of the designer. There is no right or wrong choice by the designer here.. simply their design.

To your point, maybe in hindsight they may think the choices could have been different or they had a negative impact - but that was the design, and maybe it could have been better. Still different than inferring it's an A or B scenario.. the point is the game's geometry is what the playfield designer works on and the flipper choices are part of that.

I agree basically all the angles the ball falls from down to the flippers was designed with that gap in mind.

We've already seen that people throwing on carrot flippers are getting much, much higher scores. The improvement in score isn't mild by any means. I think that validates that the game was designed around the flipper gap to keep things balanced.

Wrong again.
KIRK_(resized).png

Scoring is "just a number", and the people who want to make the game "easier" isn't due to scoring - it's due to content. They want to be able to see more of the modes during gameplay, plain and simple...they want more Ghostbusters in their Ghostbusters.

No one has ever put carrot flippers on their Iron Man...and that's a fast drainer...but the design matches the content, so it doesn't bother anybody.

Your post doesn't even make sense.

Did I miss the posts saying that the game was not designed around the flippers that come on the pin?

People who close the outlanes from the factory setting are going to get higher scores too. So? I really don't even understand what your point is. Maybe someone else can decipher it for me?

I say do wait you want with your pin I'm gonna try standard flippers closed outlanes !

Then why are they posting scores?

I dunno. Who cares?

Presumably because longer ball time = higher score?

That's helpful.

I don't care what people do to their own games. That's their business. The part that gets annoying is when they're acting like they're "fixing" issues with the game. The gap isn't an issue. It's just not. It's deliberate. It wasn't an oversight that got through testing and is now on buyers to correct.

But again, people can do what they want to their games. Just don't pretend like your scores are comparable or that you've outsmarted Trudeau for a day.

I think you're taking scores too seriously. If you're not in a tournment, no one cares. The the legs can be high or low...the outlanes can be open or tight...extra ball settings can be different...there are too many variables for scores to have ANY meaning outside of a tournament.

Some people hate the gap. Explaining that it's deliberate won't change that. If it makes the game less fun, making it more of a standard gap isn't a horrible thing to do.

Eh, IDK, from what I've played on it the wide gap does seem a little weird, given how much vertical gameplay there is.

Well, the reason it bugs me is that rather than getting good at the game, they're altering it right away. All this serves as a sort of feedback. I don't want Stern telling Trudeau that he has to abandon the gap in future titles because of perception that it's problematic. If John feels like the best game he could create included that wider gap, I want him putting it in the game. I think it's fine for games to be hard. Iron Man is incredibly hard, and that's ok!

Closing the posts down is FAR different than swapping out flippers. The post holes are part of the design, and they were created by the designer. It was tested with all post positions, I'm sure. I doubt much testing, if any, went into the game with a standard flipper gap. The layout is designed with a wider flipper gap in mind.

So again, people can do what they want with their game, but it was deliberately created with a wider flipper gap to play the way it's meant to be played. It's not a flaw. It's not a problem. The game was designed to be fast and hard. It's, by choice by the designer, not an easy game.

Sure, but just because it was intentional doesn't mean it can't be criticized.

A game with a really high score from someone who put carrot flippers on is one data point.

We've seen hours of play on the standard machine with most players having very short ball times and getting very low scores.

It would be interesting to see a similar hours long video on a game with carrot flippers. The carrot flippers may also allow you to adjust the flipper angle to make it easier to trap the ball and still make the outer shots.

I remember listening to an interview about the Gottlieb days and all the effort they put into evaluating games in test locations. Goal being to find just the right level of difficulty so that the players felt they received decent value for their coin and the operator made money.

Oh, criticism is fair game. Fair critiques is how we get better products in the long run. If you don't like Ghostbusters, feel free to say it! If you hate it for certain reasons, say why, that's even better than saying you hate it without reasons as to why.

There's just a big difference between saying "I don't like the wider gap and it makes the game not much fun for me" and "John Trudeau is washed up and doesn't know what he's doing anymore." The former is a statement about you not liking something, which is normal. The latter is just not helpful at all.

Does anyone here think Iron Man would be a better game with a Trudeau flipper gap? Would it be more fun?

Because GB is just as brutal as IM, but with way more SDTM's due to a large flipper gap and "geometry" meant to send the ball careening down a 180* straight angle between two flippers that were geometrically placed to not allow saves and to geometrically piss you the fuck off.