The left orbit awards a THEATRE letter and it either A) Drops into the pops for 2x - 8x bonus or B) Makes it all the way around to the right flipper. In either case, you can catch it on the right flipper and keep making that shot all day. If you have decent bonus, it makes every other shot relatively worthless until you get 8x. Even then, you still keep getting theatre letters and don't have to try for an unpredictable bounce off the trunk or trying to get MAGIC letters.

If I'm playing for score, I'll even skip mode points to try and bump up my multiplier. Why shoot for 5 million points when the bonus multiplier might may give you 100 million?

It's not necessarily that it's exploitable in the same way Earthshaker is, but, for highly skilled players, their first 20 shots every ball is to that orbit, which is boring for everyone.

Some games also take waaaaay too long. In a pre-pinburgh tournament, there was a ST machine that I waited in line for 1 hour 45 minutes to play. Granted you have some of the top players in the world, so times are going to be long, but.... man ST is a long playing game. Didn't have that problem with Super Orbit is all I'm saying.