Quoted from Rdoyle1978:

Holy crap, it sure is. CGC confirmed he’s not working for them - so he’s either really not involved with them at all, or he’s an independent contractor like Pat was for a while. Man, I am super sad Lyman is gone, we’ll never get a final update to the amazing EHOH!
Psyched about Steve at JJP though, that does seem to imply they are making some changes.

Quoted from Tranquilize:

Not sure where TZ came from, but it definitely has goals in mb - score meaningful jackpots! It has a great jackpot shot (and reset) for the primary mb, and power mb is probably the best in all of pinball, with its defeat the power jackpot. DI has none of the intensity in its mbs. The primary mb is more useful to use for modes and to get Sims. Theatre is rarely seen, and chaos is decent but still lacks an intense goal.
The unbalanced scoring is light Bang, light mode, Bang, sim, repeat. This blows up the game so fast that there is no reason to do anything else.

All of these are irrelevant with the strategy mentioned above. Plus there is a design flaw with the bottom Bob target being almost impossible to hit. Most players might see one Bob mb per game. It's just not integrated as well as it could be.

Logical fallacy. I didn't mention disliking the game once. I've owned it since it came out. I play it often and enjoy it. My point was, and still is, that the game has some pretty serious flaws in the code.
DI is the best jjp machine imho, but that does not mean it is beyond criticism.
I truly hope jjp hire Lyman.

Quoted from PanzerFreak:

I don't think Eric would want to leave JJP for Stern as he would be held back there with lower game budgets. Stern’s platform also seems less capable and slower compared to JJP's which would be another limitation.
Anything could happen though. Eric also seems heavily involved on the engineering side of things at JJP. I believe it was Eric who fixed the WOZ light board issue 7 - 8 years ago by coming up with the light board design that JJP still uses today.

Quoted from PanzerFreak:

Have heard the "Less is more" argument when it comes to LZ. That game is a lot of fun to play. However, why should it cost the same as more feature packed games if there's less in it? That's the issue a lot of people have with LZ. I just paid $9500 for a GNR LE and while I enjoyed playing LZ LE it was easy to tell what game had more in it in terms of feature, rules, animations, music, etc for nearly the same price.
With Steve + JJP I can see them making a game like LZ but in the case of them the Zeppelin would have locked balls, maybe even moved, and the bottom 2/3 of the playfield would actually have something in it (shots, magnets, drops) versus being empty.

Quoted from PanzerFreak:

*Rant post incoming, I apologize in advance lol.
Steve's critical comments of Stern are pretty much confirmation from one of the top designers in pinball that Stern management has been limiting game creativity due to wanting to make maximum profit regardless of the high asking prices. Modern pinball machines are insanely priced, $6k - $10k+ is a crazy amount of money for a pinball machine of all things. At those prices there's no excuse for a game not to be loaded, to have multiple 3D molds, interactive mechs, full RGB lighting etc.
The fall back stance for some is "All that stuff doesn't make a game fun". Ok, so by that analogy would you pay $50k for a base Mustang just cause it's fun to drive? Would you pay $50 for a pint of Ben and Jerry's simply because it taste good? Hell no you wouldn't lol. There lies the issue with Stern and it's not fun factor (they are a blast to play) but rather that their prices are not consistently justified by enough features, mechs, code, cabinet quality, etc. I wanted to say consistently as I don't know how Stern can price all of their games the same (the cornerstone games) while some clearly have more features, and code then others.
It's being rumored that Stern is abought to raises prices from $500 - $1k+ based on model to match JJP pricing. Stern can of course do that but they are not matching the JJP feature set (mechs, full RGB lighting, variety of 3D molds), cabinet quality, and game hardware. Going back to the Mustang analogy it would be as if Ford suddenly raised the base price of a Mustang GT from $35k to $60k just because that's what GM charges for a Corvette...then not improving the base vehicle to make it comparable.