Some tourney players play full speed , no cradling .I’m not a expert but it seems it can both help and hinder .

Not to be antagonistic but what does cradling have to do with someone who knows the rules or not? If you cradle, it’s mainly to get your bearings and think about what you need to do next to better your chances in said tournament.

If you're in a tourney and just flail away it’s not only a lack of rules knowledge, but a lack of general smart play.

What is with all the scrubs today demanding machines get altered so they have a chance in “tournaments?”

Just a play a bunch of pinball, watch some tutorials if you need help with skills and rules, and you’ll be able
To play in tournaments with machines that work as they were intended.

It’s not hard. Thousands of people enter the competitive pinball ranks every year.

(Btw, If you feel “cradling” somehow gives good players an unfair advantage, you aren’t going to somehow be able to beat them because they aren’t allowed to cradle. Just work on your game and you’ll get better without smoke and mirrors)

It may be the most true post you’ve ever posted. It’s not the cradle that’s giving an advantage. It’s the apparent lack of skills and game-specific rules (which are available on many sites and even YT tutorials) that hinder newbs from being serious tourney players.

Such a entitled opinion. “I don’t want you to play the smart way because I don’t put in the time or effort to know game-specific rules or even general pinball skills at all”.

As the king says “play better”.

While I appreciate your rebuttal to Levi, it is nonsensical to hate cradling.
If you’ve been playing since 1975 then you recall a time when basically nobody cradled! The modern way we play has changed drastically from the Golden and Silver ages of pinball. You should know this.

I’m not sure if this is some old man fist-shaking or just a refusal to practice improved modern play-styles.

Oh and I’m a bogey golfer on my best day and am a member at 2 local courses. Do you ask players working on their putting to not have sharpie alignment lines on their balls? Or are practice swings uncool?

In disc golf we call it the 2-disc dilemma. In ball golf it’s a 3-club dilemma. A tourney where you have a fraction of your full bag but have to play a full round. It’s doable and certainly shows where you have your strengths. Yet it’s not an overall skill competition. It’s niche.

But in none of those scenarios would I think smart play would be discouraged. There may be specific tourneys where you alter the rules for a change of pace, but to outright nix smart and thoughtful play due to their apparent advantage via knowledge of the rules or better skills is not the way to go. Better to just not play pinball at all and give everyone participation trophies.

We live in a "move the goal post" mentality era I think. Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed.

Mandalorian has impossible mode which prevents the player from holding up the flipper more than 2.5seconds. I am not aware of any tourney that uses that gameplay mode. It is normally just used by home players for a change of pace or a way to handicap a better player when playing a weaker player.

IMPOSSIBLE PLAY
Impossible makes the game difficult on many fronts:
• The game is temporarily set to VERY HARD
• You can not hold a flipper for more than 2.5 seconds. You have to release the flipper to
charge it back up.There are meters in the main score frame display that show you how
much time you have on each of the flippers.
• You will not be able to get any extra balls or Armour in the Foundry

Participation trophy generation? I don’t know.....

Put time and effort into it, stop the thinking of “I’m entitled because *insert some ridiculous reason* blah blah blah.”

To get better, it’s time, effort, and discipline. Nobody’s born great, even with talent, you still have to hone those skills for years.

Guess I have always been under the impression that what makes a ‘scrub’ is the level of play, not how long you have been playing pinball.

Mine wasn’t a general old man generational rant, as in “what’s wrong with these kids today,” I meant, literally, TODAY!

We had another guy today complaining that games don’t “punish” tournament players for shooting things that gave them points.

Very odd!

You can't tease that and not share.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rules-need-to-start-punishment-

What's funny is the converse of this is certain games get gameplay features disabled. Like on TAF, they disconnect or disable the magnets because the better tournament players know that the game will automatically timeout the magnets after a certain amount of time of inactivity during the modes that use them. Kinda defeats the spirit of the game, if you can pardon the pun. I think if a game is played in a tournament, you play the whole game, fully intact. Score exploits are learned skills, feature exploits(like the TAF magnet timeouts) are a form cheating IMHO.

In most major tournaments games are altered to shorten the game play time. This is to keep the overall length of the tournament manageable. When players have ball times that reach 20 to 30 to 40 minutes, it becomes a problem. The events can last way too long. I have had tournaments that start at 12pm and don't end until 8-10pm. I have also had a couple held at my location that went into the next day. It's the tournament directors job to help keep it real and that usually means setting long playing games to tournament mode or changing the settings on modes, etc. Removing outlane post rubbers, gates, and super tight tilts are very common too.

Just practice and get on their same level. It’s the same as asking if you can disable the flippers completely.

But to answer your question on certain modes of games disallow holding the flippers or penalize the player for doing it. (No hold WOZ, impossible mode in Mando, multiball in Royal rumble)

I’ve been playing golf my whole life. Most definitely still a scrub.

All pinball takes is practice and you can be the best in the world. The only activity I’ve seen where that’s possible. The game can be beat.

I’ve seen many tournament games where the angles of the flippers were purposely decreased in order to make it more difficult to trap the ball. Shallow flippers are an easy and common way of making long-playing or overly controllable games a little more difficult.

People do it too to make games that are center shot focused, very hard to manage.

The guy asked a question and the shit heel, gatekeeper tournament players throw insults around.

It was a simple question that didn’t require an editorial response from the typical peanut gallery.

I don't even know what cradling is. I might be doing it and not even know it.

I could see it being an interesting twist on gameplay. Like playing a sport with a hand tied behind back. Something that people opt into if they think it would be fun. Not something to be forced on participants.

'Cradling your balls' is when you hold the ball at the base of the flipper by keeping the flipper up. Pros use this technique during multiballs to capture 2-3 balls on one flipper, and then shoot the loose ball to sweep up all the Jackpots. You can even juggle from one flipper to the other to keep the momentum going.

I did code an anti-cradling feature into my Kiss remake many years ago, where the player had to constantly keep the ball in play and scoring points to excite the crowd. Any cradling (timed at over 500 ms) would immediately lower the flipper. The player was encouraged to keep the ball moving at all times to excite the crowd (represented by a meter displayed on the HUD). When the meter dropped below a certain point, the crowd would boo you off the stage and end the mode.

This idea was copied by JJ in their GNR game I believe. So now you know where it came from.

I haven't used it since but it's an easy line of code to add to any game, if you wanted to make tournaments more challenging. Possibly having a 'Speed Ball' round.

The (sadly expected) hostile response to a honest and simple question is what's wrong with Pinside. I like talking with people, not at or down to them. Lots of talking at, not a lot of listening to.

Looks like this scrub didn't like the feedback he got.

Could have a tournament with impulse flippers. Not sure how many games had them though.

It’s not practical to alter most games for constant ‘no-hold’ flipper action. There are a few games that alter flipper usage in a particular mode. Ghostbusters has reversed & inverted at the same time.

Is there a list anywhere? Houdini, ghostbusters, tspp, WoZ, GnR all come to mind.

Rush

I'M GOOD AT GOLF SO THEREFORE I AM GOOD AT PINBALL PLS NO CRADLE I MIGHT CRY THO

i love the irony of typing this as a response.

Maybe you guys can all go to some kind of space...one thats safe for everyone...and you can ask each other absolutely ridiculous questions to each other all night long and answer them without jest. Should people who are good at the guitar stop being able to use the G string (insert beavis.jpeg here)? Maybe guys in basketball who aren't good at free throws should just get the points automatically if they are fouled. The best QB's in the NFL should have to use rugby balls instead, what do you think? And then you all can come up with deep meaningful answers to all these wonderful questions away from big bad scary GATEKEEPERS

I’ve noticed the word “gatekeepers” a lot around here lately.

Is it edging out “woke” for Pinside word of the month?

Did Watters World just do a segment on “gatekeepers” or something? What gives?

I’m gonna have to invoke a previous Pinside word of the month: snowflake.

Tournament pinball is high stakes, high pressure athletic competition. It’s not for everybody. You must be mentally fit as well as in top physical condition.

If you can’t handle the fact that you’ll run into players who are better than you, and posses better skills, you really shouldn’t bother. Nobody is going to give you any handicaps. Nobody is going to let you win. Nobody is going to alter a machine to give scrubs a better chance of lucking into a victory.

It’s for fierce competitors. Not snowflakes.

Gatekeeping is generally is a term from the people who are the WOKE SNOWFLAKES. See? Annoying people across the spectrum!

Well, woke gatekeeping snowflakes aside, I think we can all agree that tournament pinball isn’t for everybody!

If you are afraid of playing people better than you, you need to keep your own gate and stick to the bar leagues.

I believe games should punish more for making wrong shots. However, I suck....so I should be careful about what I wish for!

By the way....when my WOZ goes in to that mode that doesn't allow the flippers to cradle...its pretty much the worst thing ever for me!

That deaf, dumb and blind kid must of had one hell of a rabbits foot.

Ignoring most of the flame posts in the thread... on topic->

Pincinnati used it in the tournament bank last year with impossible mode enabled and it was great fun. FYI, it's typically accepted that TD's can set up the games however they see fit!

OP is going to throw the best dang tournament any of you guys ever saw

Only hot bangers like Sinbad and Dipsy Doodle. Any disputes will be settled with a high stake game of tiddlywinks.

You can still cradle on the upper Sinbad flippers. DQ'd

Get your tiddlywinks ready...

So doing nothing is cheating? Waiting for the game to do a thing it's programmed to do is CHEATING? Is timing out low value modes cheating? If so, why? Disable the magnets or I'm going to wait for them to turn off. Anyone trying to reduce the risk of draining would do the same. Play the whole game, fully intact.

generally I'd 100% agree with you, keyboard warriors are comical. that said, Levi may be one of the only exceptions to this rule. I have absolutely no doubt he'd say it directly to you, in person, whether he knew you or not. And frankly, exactly how it appeared in his post, as he tends to type exactly how he speaks.

Very true. He's an acquired taste.

You realize you’re the person that used the term in this thread, right?

Are you bragging about your “WOKE SNOWFLAKE”edness? I’m not quite following your point here.

Tell a fella he's a shitheel, doesn't blink.

But tell that same fella he's a gatekeeper? LOL Flips his wig.

100% agree. Why the heck take the chance and fight with the magnets for control of the ball when you can play it safe...?

I am? I mean..I know I used it...but in extreme sarcasm. I wasn't the one who used it unironically. Go back and re-read sir. In fact, I suggest you do a search to see if I've ever used that word unironically. I find the term to be quite cringey.

I have not heard of one.. but the bottom line is if you have a way to manage and enforce it, you can set up and run whatever you like... you just can't say no cradling tho. Players will need context on what constitutes this? I could move my flipper up and have the ball roll back for a second between the flipper and the inlane guide, does this immediately penalize me? That seems silly. So I cradle for more than a second, do you have a means of judging this?

I like the discussion about technical means of preventing ball control. Titles that support the feature, adjustments to the flippers.. whatever.. This is nothing new, and something many competitive players enjoy IMHO. Appreciate the discussion on how people are making adjustments to challenge players further, and learning about titles with specific settings for this. Reminds me of some machines set up with weaker flippers and a steep pitch, so taking a shot from a cradle does not provide enough power to get up the ramp, you really need to have the ball coming down the inlane to make it up... good stuff! But in many ways, I'd argue this type of playing is going to require more skill than less.. More dead flips, live catches, accuracy, rule knowledge etc. pretty difficult to take the skill out of pinball, but at some point it is about setting it up so that the random and uncontrolled factors begin to exceed what the player can do.. at some point, you're just turning it into bagatelle tho.

I've been to tournaments, and it seems to me that neither of these traits apply.