Austin, TX
The gameplay is a different style (to the point where I'd say it was made for a different audience) than most games made for an operator market. The rules focus more on rewarding long-term play and less on hooking new players on ball 1 compared to other pins.
Pinball rulesets these days usually give you a default sequence to go for. Back in the day you had to start a mode to make shots worth going for. Lately Stern, and it's not necessarily a bad approach, gives you the mode select before you start the ball so that there's always something lit. The modes end up being the hook for the game, giving you an intermediate goal and sense of accomplishment while you learn the rest of the rules, and once you've cracked the game's strategy, modes are components in the stack you're trying to create.
Mode select has been the spice of life for pinball for a while now - multiball rules are the same each time, but variety in modes and how you do in them shakes things up. Woz doesn't start you off by selecting your jam, and there's no ring or tv or whirlpool to shoot for that will give you something to do. When you do get a haunted or munchkin mode started, It's not in the form of 'hit these shots to kill a spider', it's more of a clever point multiplier for you to use in your multiball stack.
The depth and lack of guidance is daunting for new players. But I like being daunted! Features that you stack together and scoring possibilities you have to plan out to pursue is my kind of game. I prefer the choice of what to shoot for rather than picking a scoring mode before the ball plunge, as inevitably a few songs/modes are optimal and that variety in modes will likely go to waste in competitive or high score pursuit play.
