I hear your mom calling ...run upstairs and eat your oatmeal.

Says the guy with the Johnny Quest avatar. Are you still mad they don't have Saturday morning cartoons for you?

YES, PINSIDE should consider seriously doing this.... at least as an alternate ratings system!!!

Are there any 90's onwards pins that you are not repeating the same 7 shots?

Thank you SKB for this primer on ST after the code updates. Incredibly helpful - at least to me.

heh, that's almost not fair!

I will second the A B C D F scale. In it's attempt to be meticulously fair, the current rating system loses me. I find myself knowing that I like one game over the other but rate them pretty evenly when I go through the system. The simpler and admittedly more subjective letter system lets me express that feeling for consistently.

I would be in favor of a new system, or at least an alternative scale. Kind of like AP vs coaches vs ESPN poll for NCAA.

I don't care what ranking this game has but my opinion of it has dramatically improved since I first purchased my ST Pro Refinery Ed from QG. At first it was "Oh, no... what have I done!?" The shots were all the same. Now, with the new code, it's slowly approaching keeper status. This is a term I never throw about casually, only attributed to one game in my current collection.

This is a player's game now. A superb tournament pin with many, many strategies to achieve good scores. Game progression is far from linear and that's what makes it something that can last in a private collection.

I like the idea of a letter scale, much like a grade point average. Take the current numerical scale and convert to a letter. 8.1-10.0=A, 6.6-8.0=B, 5.1-6.5=C, 3.5-5.0=D, less than 3.5=F (values are examples not actual suggestions) If there is a wider scale perhaps we would get honest ratings. I'd be ok with +/- values but no A+ values to stop the guy that only has one pin, lives in fantasy world and rates it a perfect 10 just to feed his ego.

The scale system isn't really the problem though... There are people here that will give a game a 0-2 rating probably without playing it just because they don't like the theme, or leave some dumb-shit comment about walking away after the first ball. You don't even have a hint about how good a modern game is without putting an hour or two into it to see some of what it offers.

Regardless of the system, ratings become useless when they lose objectivity. The only ones that get a balance back are the ones that have a lot of ratings to balance out the nonsense.

The ratings system really is not the problem.
The problem is the era in which the pins were built, and the companies that buit them.

If you go by Stern titles ST is #5.
If you go by pins made since 1999 ST is #5
If you go by every pin ever made, its not #5

The difference is... of course pins that are 20+ years old are going to have more ratings.
They have been around longer and played more.
And are honestly more collectable because they are not as available.

And there are willians fans and stern fans that downvote the other company just because.
And purists that only think "vintage" pins should be in the top 10.

So is ST a #5 pin? It depends on how you view the ratings.

The ratings are not really flawed. Pinsiders who view ratings as the true measure of a machines value and play factor are.

The ratings mean nothing, play and like the pins
You like. No one can tell you you're wrong.

To add to the problem of the rating system: new pins are also rated with non finished software. All the older pins do not have this problem as when the rating started, they were already finished.

Glad you are enjoying it
If I ever get a ST again, it will have to be a refinery edition. After owning a refinery edition, nothing else will do.

Premium for the same price and get the full experience this time?

Hmmmmm, I suppose that's true