Been following this thread as I am an owner of a POTC and I feel I want to post my opinion. For me a pinball machine is in no way comparable to any other machine. There are freaking heavy STEEL balls being shot with force into the components of the playfield and over a wooden playfield with just paint on it for crying out loud. If you guys cannot handle the fact that this will damage things, you better should find another hobby or just buy the game and not play it.

As I see how many times I have read the same things over and over again - not only in this thread by the way but in many many many others - it should be obvious by now that this is normal in pinball. Throwing a heavy ball around will damage things !

Of course I am not talking about excessive ghosting or the excessive crackling of some playfields as those were clearly a problem that should not have happened and as such they have been handled. But now I feel you guys are constantly scrutinising every aspect of the game and it must stay perfect. It just does not work that way.

For the clear coat specialists: try throwing the same pinball at your car a few times and show me there is no dimpling or crackling occuring. Good luck with that. JJP is doing more than they are supposed to just to make you guys feel better as they know they need the collector market, but they cannot give away their complete margins just to satisfy people that should play the game instead of looking for things that will inevitably happen. That is the nature of pinball.

Again, my opinion. Play more and just have fun people, just like generations before you that did not mind that the game got some character in its lifetime.

Trust me I feel your pain. I was the proud owner of a ghostbusters with excessive ghosting and chipping. Stern never made that right but they should have, as JJP should help people with worse than normal problems with their games.

I made my post because we need to get this into perspective. My POTC is doing great and I do not even feel the need to look under the posts as I know they get a lot of hits from the ball and the slingshots, thereby putting lateral stress on the playfield. Cannot do anything about it. As long as no big parts of the playfield are coming loose from the playfield, I consider it to be expected.

Sorry but I do not call anybody insain, no need for that. My opinion is just that a pinball machine will never stay in pristine condition. That is not possible. That is why playfields are being reproduced for a lot of old and new games. Every hole, every shooterlane, every point on which the ball falls repeatedly WILL get damaged. That is a fact of life. Otherwise Cliffy would be out of business very soon. And it will be visible. Again: if you think that is not normal than you are in the wrong hobby.

edit: just wanted to add that also where the ball does not physically touches stress can occur of all the things going on on the playfield, just like I pointed out in an earlier post.

Maybe there is a way with JJP to exchange your playfield with a populated playfield at some cost ? Just thinking because you seem to have one of the worst cases of bad playfield here and that should be taken care of.

Stern did it that way (exchange populated) but not with everybody, so your milage may vary. Might be better to try to talk to JJP instead of being frustrated as hell.

But this is because not many people are looking so hard for these problems, as I tried to point out in my previous post. But then you all got very upset and did not read my post right or I did not do the wording right.

I read a lot of your posts (harry) and you do amazing stuff with mods and think really creatively with your machines and if you do that, you will see much more problems with the machines as other people that are not that involved. If you then point them out for that one game, everybody with that game goes looking for problems and sure enough will find them. But as I said before, the problem with pinball is that the steel ball will break stuff. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. It is like with a telephone. I can drop it 10 times no problem and my friend drops it once and it shatters to pieces. Same phone.

Again - please read on - I do think that when parts of the artwork just come off of the playfield, that is not normal. But you would be surprised how many problems like these there are on all pinball machines if you go looking for them.