Sttng demands too much money. Fun layout, great theme, bad rules. Too many exploits and too unbalanced to be a keeper. Traded mine for WPT+cash and haven't looked back.

Oh I don't? Can you explain to me how a video mode that runs a consistent easy to remember pattern which scores massive points isn't a scoring exploit?

I'm getting deja vu because I feel like I've already done this with you in a couple STTNG threads. The exact same people each time. Some of you people are blinded by "it's the best pin ever made attitude" that you completely ignore just how bad the unbalanced the scoring and strategy actually is. You will literally never play half of the game because it simply isn't worth anything. The risks don't equal the rewards. That's massively unbalanced.

Edit: Here we've already gone through this a year ago https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/games-that-get-stale-fast/page/2#post-2513978

You seem to be forgetting about the artifact you receive that is worth how much? And potentially how much more when you hit FF? All for doing what? Absolutely nothing. 100% zero risk, 209 million reward. Plus much much more when you hit FF billion. Worst of all it's guaranteed every single time. It's the exact same sequence...every...single...time.

Come on, it's not hard at all to get to FF. You can get to the wizard mode of the game shooting the exact same shot dead center of the playfield with no obstructions or much risk, what 8 times? Even then you can plunge a bunch of them with start mode. If you don't do that the game plunges directly to the left flipper with a straight shot at it. I can't see how under any circumstances that could ever be considered difficult. At any rate artifacts pay off regardless of getting to FF. Just an absurd amount more when you get to FF. Where hitting shots in modes scores you anywhere in the neighborhood of 5-50 million (give or take), getting to FF with a set gives you 1 BILLION. That's balanced? . I'm not saying you need to hit the ramp 51 times and only shoot for video mode. I'm saying it isn't uncommon at all to hit the video mode at least a couple of times in a game without even trying and get to FF with very minimal work. Anyone that thinks STTNG has rock solid balanced code is super naive or sets the bar of what good code is insanely low. A good portion of the game will never get played because it simply isn't worth anything. I'm fine with whatever scoring strategy people employ. You don't have to call it an exploit if you don't want. If it's coded into the game, it's fair to use. For someone like me that cares more about the code in a game than anything else, having balance issues like that (along with the many others in STTNG) means the game simply can't be called a keeper. Fun while it lasted but once you get to know the in's and out's it loses too much and doesn't stack up well at all with games that have actual good code and scoring.

I realize it's some people's holy grail game but it isn't for me. I get the theme, love it. I get the sounds and lights, love it. I get the layout and shots, love them. In the code department it needs a major overhaul to be worth tying that much money up into (for me). I'll say it again that if it ever got a code redo I'd be first in line.

haha believe it or not I actually had tons of fun with it when I owned it. Unfortunately that's when I got my first keith johnson game and I saw the light . And to be fair I'm just as hard on a couple of those games where they fall short as much as I love them.