Quoted from kcZ:It is a frustrating game. I went thru the audits and most of my games are 1-1.5min long. 2 ball saves per game seems to be the norm also. I like the rules of the game but these drains are ruining it for me... and I refuse to cheat and put some odd rubbers to help with the drains. On a positive side, I think it is making me a better player as I am learning when to take certain shots and when to avoid them. After a frustrating session on TWD the other day, I took a couple rounds on Met... made Grand Champion score plus a bunch of the top mode scores.
I think that I need to learn nudging better in order to save the ball. I watched Bowen and he is great at saving the ball from the outlane. If I could save some of those outlane drains then I would be much better off. Yes, I have plenty of center drains... out of the pop bumpers, off the prison, ramp shots that do not make it but most of those can be fixed with smarter play.
On a side note: I did fix the crossbow switch. Ball registers every time now. Took some frustration out of normal game play there
We've had our TWD Prem for almost 2 weeks now. After the first week I felt similar to you, and my wife also said she didn't like it. She wouldn't have cared if I told her I sold it, just out of frustration.
Fast forward to a week after that, and this machine will not be leaving my home any time soon.
Did I "cheat" by making adjustments? Maybe to some people. I got down voted earlier for stating the things I adjusted.. Which I'm fine and the hardcore pinheads don't like. But the custom adjustments I made to the game made us have more *fun* with the machine and we now play it all the time and my wife is now consistently hitting new Grand Champion scores over 200M (beating me!) and having FUN. Which matters more than anything. We are not great players, and frustration drains SDTM and through the outlanes made me want to get rid of it. I'd have 20 horrible games and 1 great game which after that game I'd love it.. Then 20 more horrible games I'd want to sell it.
After my adjustments I get a much better great to horrible game ratio lol.
My recommendations:
1) Slingshot rubber mod on the tunnel entrance metal rails- it's mentioned in this thread. Definitely helps the ball going in the center drain just by the ball exiting the pops. Reduces drains by 50% over factory I'd guess.
2) lean the machine to the right 0.2-0.3 degrees. This helped a lot.
3) get fatter star posts and close the outlanes as far as possible- trust me you aren't cheating! It still drains out the sides more than my Metallica.
4) give yourself an extra ball reward at a fixed score amount- ours is at 35,000,000
5) Change ball save to 15 seconds. This allows you plenty of time to either open the prison doors (and get a SDTM drop but your ball back) or get the drop targets down to start a mode- or both. WAY less frustrating when you can safely go for these items.
As you get better and better than you can turn the ball saves down- but seriously, we play pinball to have fun- if the game layout and cheap drains are ruining it for you, make adjustments so you have more fun games more often. I'd say it's now just as fun, if not MORE fun than our MET Prem. I'd have never said that before making the aforementioned adjustments.