Ok, so you think Tournament play has "screwed up the hobby" because some players only shoot for "certain things," but you want to make the games punish you for not shooting certain things, thereby forcing you to do what the game wants, "not what you want out of game."

Congrats! This makes absolutely zero fucking sense.

A few games do this.

A few system 11 games have center ramps where a repeated shot gets to "infinite millions" and you can loop the shot over and over to blow up your score. Watch tournament players go and that is all that they shoot for.

One of the rarer and later system 11s I just picked up is Bad Cats. It has a center ramp that progresses from (going from memory), 50,000 to 100,000 to an extra ball to 500,000 to... 1,000 , 1,000 , 1,000. It absolutely stops rewarding you if you don't stop looping the shot.

Of course it also has a Tiger Ramp that shoots up to 20 million for 5 consecutive hits... about 4 times the default high score, but the idea of punishing people exploiting shots is in there.

The point of a game is to score points. If you are shooting where the points are, you are "play what the game rules have been designed for" as you eloquently state.

Also, "tournament play" is a tiny, tiny part of this hobby. So exactly what is the problem? Virtually nobody here plays in tournaments on the reg. This affects almost nobody.

Just don't play in tournaments and you can spend your whole day shooting post rubbers if that's what gets you off.

Almost every single pinball machine built in the past 45 years does this. There's extremely few pinball machines on the planet where you can just shoot the same shot over and over again and get the same bounty of points.

the price of the games, and rolling the dice every time on the transport damage lotto is punishment enough. the absolute last thing i want is for the gameplay to follow suit, after it's arrived safely.

Flippers go dead? Oh my.

If a game is well designed, it doesn’t have these balance problems. Some games have a dominant strategy and that is not a great game design. Casual players won’t notice but advanced players will exploit it.

You cite a valid problem but the solutions will make a player play the game one time and never again. Think more about how should the game be changed to reward the player for exploring. If the game is in the can there is nothing that could be done so just play better designed games.

Also games shouldn’t be designed with tournament players in mind. They are like 0.01 % of the playing population.

Maybe put one of these accordion punching devices on every game at crotch level

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Kings of Steel right target.

I pay money to play pinball. I'll do as I damn well please and if the game doesn't like it I'll go play a different game.

I thought this was going to be a BDSM thread. :/

Quote:

'You cheat Dr. Jones!'

'Dirty pool, old man, I like it!'

Any others?

Just don’t play in tournaments then? Sounds like an easy fix for oneself.......

Granted, there are some tourney players, that know a majority of each game’s rules inside and out, a very small percentage I’m guessing. A vast majority are not going to know each individual game’s rules for progression, just what they’ve seen or encountered while playing. You can’t assume each person has played each game, and knows all of the rules/progressions for each.

If you want something that’s planned out, with no option to alter the course, play video games then. It’s one of the true blessings of pinball, anyone can play their own style/way.

yeah man we need more old school games like...um...lost world? where you run through the shots once and then there's nothing left to shoot. that's fun

why would you want a game with dozens of modes and mini wizard and wizard modes when you can play little pro

Good tournament players are always going to be good players and maximize their scores via strategies the game gives them. Most of us don't operate on that level and never will.

However, your punishment idea could be a good one. Maybe not punishing, but more of a gamble? Hi risk/high reward shots that aren't physically risky but point risky, maybe gamble points to complete an achievement. Like, gamble a million points that I can complete a mode, or make so many combos in a period of time with a multiplier that makes me consider it.

Make it like a final Jeopardy mode or something like that. Could be interesting.

How ever it works though, the tournament guys will still beat us.

This is an idea I used in my STTNG remake. The Borg ship adjusts to your attacks and tactics. If you make the same repeated shots, the Borg mix up the shots to confuse the player. My code uses a primitive A.I. to detect the skill of each player and the Borg will adjust their counterattack accordingly. Different each time you play.

I think in the original game you just attack the Borg and they don't do anything. In my code, the Borg fight back!

It can be done but make it fun and interesting.

If you want to be punished,take up golf.

I believe Keith Johnson programmed something like this into Woz.

Allegedly, a player can't cradle and repeatedly backhand the crystal ball shot during MB. The game will detect the repeated shot and go into a no flipper hold mode to prevent further cradling.

Ok, I'll bite.

(This does not seem like a real conversation, but rather "I think I'll be controversial for the heck of it". What do the kids call it? Trolling?)

Anyway let's suppose a player is to be punished for *not* doing something. How does that get decided and what is the degree of punishment? Is that an entirely new set of rules to learn? So in addition to: here's what is available to do and here are the overall game goals, but there is a set of rules of *when* it has to be done?

Many games offer risk/reward where a large sum of points can be gained for taking the risk (Delaying cashing in the Cannon Jackpot on AC/DC for example).

So, is the inverse of that to take away a large sum of points for not doing something basic (such as not hitting a side standup target that is essentially worthless) versus only deducting a few points for something hard (such as not completing ROTK in one try).

The "tournament play has screwed up the hobby" almost sounds like there is a sub-story here. Maybe the OP was playing against someone who was able to lather/rinse/repeat a sequence and the OP lost a game to that person.

I would argue that tournament play has enhanced the hobby, not screwed it up.

But that doesn't matter anyway. The games aren't built for the specific purpose of tournament play. There are elements to that notion, but I believe that games are built to suit the masses as much as possible, not the niche.

I like the purpose of the original post and I think it was mentioned with good intentions, but I also think it's a player's responsibility to find the appropriate points for the specific tournament, and if that involved shooting the same shot over and over so be it.

Examples:

-- Pingolf on World Cup Soccer where the goal is 125 million. Just shoot the goal a million times and get a 1.
-- Matchplay on World Up Soccer. Now you need to start multiball or at least make your way through the cup.

Different tournament = different strategy. I like it.

I like the concept if executed well. If you hit the wrong shot you lose points. For example if you have a ramp in between an inner and outer orbit and you need to hit the ramp but hit an orbit then you lose points or your timer is reduced, etc.

Some games already have similar concepts; disabling cradling, reverse flippers, etc.

I think a good programmer could come up with some interesting rules.

There is an unstated assumption in the OP's arguement, which is that players consistently hit what they shoot for.
Speaking for myself, I really need to say: Hahahahahaha................. hahahaha.............. HA!

Man, I am so grateful that the lower skill level players in my local tournaments don't whine about the dumbest things ever. They just want to keep improving their skills (and most of them are!) and seeing what the better players are doing so they can implement those moves themselves. Lol take away cradling, nudging, and shots that give you points. Just go play the slot machines then bozo.

Don't games already do this? Hurry ups count down the score... don't hit it, take a zero. Modes make you hit X amount of shots... don't hit those shots, you don't get the big score. Operation Thunder forces you to quickly hit the targets they want you to hit or they kill the flippers. You can add time by shooting the fuel shot but hardly anyone can under pressure (fun at league and tourneys lol)

if the game is giving you big points for shooting the same shot over and over that's playing the game, if it didn't want you to shoot it it wouldn't be worth points!

Too much repeating? Yeah, sure, and modern games never ever make you do everything at least once to play the Wizard mode. Riiight. Maybe it's hard_ for some, even for most players to do, but that's a feature of almost every game made in the last 30 years. From Ruling the Universe to Completing Godzilla, that's been the great challenge, and great idea, for decades now - - play ALL the modes / features / multiballs. If you just do the same few things, you might get a decent score, but not likely the GC nor will you ever see that magical wizard mode unless you do it all. Sure there could be some tweaks to the software to discourage certain types of repetition, but it's not that big a deal. (My favorite would be to require playing Martian Multiball before being able to restart either Lock Multiball or Total Annihilation.)

Game balance is a super tricky nut to crack, as hard as you try you'll never be as invested and creative as your playerbase. Once it's out in the wild, with time it's inevitable that dominant scoring strategies will emerge. Reducing the value on repeat shots is effective but isn't ideal - risk/reward is a fundamental aspect of game design and devaluing a player's risky but successful action because they've done it too many times sort of punishes the player for mastery.

Arcade games solved this issue many years ago with stage timers and invincible "hurry up" enemies that appear and kill you if you remain in a single area and "leech" points for too long. This solved the problem extremely well - if/when a high value scoring setup is found, you still only have a finite amout of time to exploit it. The day I sit down and design a pinball machine I'll definitely be exploring these ideas, since personally I never liked playing for score in "marathon" games that never end. It rewards endurance and preservation instead of skill. Finite, limited "gauntlets" with theoretical max scores (that are humanly impossible mind you) interest me much more, but that doesn't really exist in the pinball world as far as I know

But enough of the game design talk; As for your flipper kill idea: Operation Thunder actually does that with the fuel gauge, which kills your flippers if you don't refuel your plane periodically. Personally I think it's a neat/interesting mechanic but it would probably be frustrating to regular pinball players. Operation Thunder in general seems like a videogame in pinball form with the fuel gauge and fixed mode progression. I find it super interesting and wish there were more experiments like it. Would like to play it someday!

This has started to happen in Keith Elwin's games. Jurassic Park and Godzilla both end your game after the final wizard mode. It's not exactly finite and bounded (you can still get any number of multiball jackpots), but there is a sense of maximizing score within a limited window rather than endurance forever.

One of the nice things about pinball is that you can choose to play the game in a way that feels fun to you.

Tournament players like knowing how to squeeze every point out of as many games as possible. If that's not fun for you, don't play that way. I really hate getting beat by superior players who can just keep looping shots on games like Dr. Who; however, they've developed that skill and I haven't. So, I lose. That's the game.

You can try to play the 'story' and ignore points on a game like Stern JP and just move through the modes and beat it all.

You can also find a middle ground and try to stack as many modes as possible - like Iron Man - for another level of challenge.

Unless you're literally competing with someone else on the game at that moment, nobody cares.

Just reading the word "punishment," all I can think about are timed-lit shots and ED-209 voice asking you to comply to the way the game is apparently supposed to be played.
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Also, it would be cool if they actually used that for a timed shot if they ever did that theme.

Why would those “high scoring” shots be in the game if you weren’t supposed to shoot them? Dumbest thing I’ve ever seen on here. And how’s tournament play ruining the hobby. Seems like it’s making it better.

As someone pointed out, end states are becoming more common. Jurassic Park and Godzilla end. Heist and Weird Al end. TNA ends. (Fun challenge, set the reactors needed to win from 9 to 1…then everyone will be trying to not blow up the reactor because then their game is over)