Quoted from cooked71:
Say it happens once in a 4 payer game. And you were lucky enough to be the following player. The multiball you got meant you could start the reactor, get it to critical and destroy it, as well as getting a few jackpots in the process. As a result you won the game.
That is pure luck that only benefited you. A mistake on the preceding players part gave you, and you only, a large benefit - probably more than any of the mystery awards. The other 2 players that were not LUCKY enough to be immediately after did not benefit. They were effectively punished. There was no strategy or skill on your part in receiving the gimme multiball.
If the 4 player game was deciding final places, some players might not be so happy. Others might not care. But a tournament is supposed to test all players SKILL on a level playing field (so to speak).
And multiball is vital in this game, particularly later on as the jackpots and reactor values grow and are multiplied by the amount of balls left in play. And even more so that you can add a ball.
Everyone seems so concerned about removing the random award and the random reactor destroy shot, yet don’t care about leaving the most valuable random award in the game.
In any case, we are talking about a menu option here. If you choose to leave it on default you can.
Pinball is a game that always has and always will involve an element of LUCK. By the above argument there would be No Real (fun) "pinball machines" in tournaments at all, and the highly skilled would "roll" every dead boring "newtered game" they played among themselves! Lol
If someone doesn't enjoy the Nature of pinball (and it's across the board natural luck aspect), maybe it's time for a new hobby!? .... Motor racing? ... oh cr@p, still involves luck!
If we want to take the luck part out of pinball (and don't discriminate about various forms of luck) in order to have tournaments then it is not a pinball tournament, it would be nothing more than a pretend pinball tourney, a no fun battle for sheep stations on games that are no longer real Pinballs, and I'd be out. It would become meaningless. We have fun at tournaments because all that attend ours seem to be there to enjoy Playing Pinball, bad luck included. If someone does not win, and needs to in order to be Satisfied with their effort, all I can suggest is instead of asking for a tissue, maybe PLAY BETTER!
It IS a level playing field from both skill and luck perspectives (even described in the above post!), as long as the game isn't altered during the event.... everyone gets the same random oppertunity for the bad luck, including player position. Most can deal with it, some can't. Here we call it bad sportsmanship.
Sorry for digging out an old post, but I found it reading about Amp settings, and could not help but comment. There are the odd "pro's" about that seem to want to take all the fun out of playing pinball. Rant over