Good ideas. The ability to save a game and come back the next day would be great

It would not interest me.

The idea of a "campaign mode" is intriguing, where you would achieve goals over many plays, accumulate trophies, etc.

Imagine a D&D style game where you gained experience points for your character over multiple plays and unlocked new scenarios. And kept your magic items!

You are the smartest person I know, that is an excellent idea imho

I like this better than just saving your progress for an otherwise normal pin. I think of getting deep in a pinball game as a test of endurance as much as anything. Then you can say you scored this high score and it was over the course of four days.

A "campaign" game could go on location too if connected online. No need for players to use only the same machine and same location. Enter a code that can be texted to you and continue it at any location or a home version if it's on the grid.

Saving a regular game would kill longevity.

An online ever evolving campaign would be awesome but probably would cost way too much money for too small an audience.

Williams used to let you buy extra balls back in the 90s.

This is what Zen did with their virtual pinball table based on Skyrim. I liked it at first, but I have mixed feelings about the way they implemented it. Properly implemented, it could be quite good.

In general, the ability to save progress is an intriguing idea. Though, one of the things I love about owning modern tables is that I know there are some modes that I will either never get to or may get to just a few times a year. It keeps me coming back for more. If I could save my progress, I am fearful that the games would lose some of the appeal for me. I would be too tempted to use it (no self control) and see modes too quickly or too often.

And ops will tell you it didn't work well for repeat business. I tend to believe them because I was always surprised it never made it's way back in with Stern.

Overall I wouldn't like it, and I would see it as weak sauce. I would only use it the day before i sold the machine to "see" everything in the game.

Thats what makes pinball different to everything else thats going on in world today. You can have a good game or an absolute shocker no matter how good you are, I think pinball should stay in its purest form!!!

Agreed, but at least then you can see everything. So many games currently have mods that are beyond my skill.

No. If you want to see more set it to 5 ball and make extra balls extra easy.

The point is to get as far as you can with three balls.

If you are playing all night leave ball three in the trough and finish it in the morning.

Yeah. And everyone wins a medal for playing. Christ on a Cracker Man.

@multimorphic has something like this on their P3 with the profile system. You can load a profile, set up with prearranged game settings while keeping the "master" game settings at factory, or what ever you have them set to. With the profile system running you can play a handicap match with players that are much better than you by having your profile set to "easy" and theirs set to "hard". Unfortunately there is no game save state that will allow you to drop the game and come back to it, but I believe it is technologically possible, obviously not good for location play, but for home use it might be worthwhile.

For home use, I dig the idea of an "MMORPG" style game, you could have players from all over the country playing you every time you boot into the game, but I'm not sure how you would design the playfield to keep gameplay interesting.

littlecammi you should check out the P3, they have a lot of the framework for this kind of innovation built, and they have an SDK that will allow users to create games and content for the platform (pending approval, kind of like the App store) you could make this happen...

I think this would be an awesome idea as well. In fact, remove scoring all together on this and literally make it like a 1st person shooter. Respawn at a certain level in the game after loosing the ball, they keep advancing to the next checkpoint.

I think it would be a great option where you could save your progress or not. More people would be able to play the deeper modes where as they would never be able to reach them otherwise.

Hah - actually there is.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/save-and-restore-game-state#post-2225888

- Gerry

You already have the ability to see the whole game in a home setting. Give yourself 10 balls. With some time and a small amount of effort you can see a whole game with 10 ball games.

No interest in save state, and no way Stern is spending the money/time/support to implement campaign mode in pins.

If you practice specific skills/shots enough and set the game to 10 balls so it doesn't matter if you lose them, when you get really good at catches, passes, cradling, etc with no fear of losing the ball a lot, you can start to dial the game back until you get to 3 balls with much better skills.

Man, how the hell did I miss that? Now I don't have to lose my game when I'm playing at work, and someone needs me to do actual work...

One of the reasons I like pinball so much, is there isn't a big time commitment to it like modern video games. I used to be a big gamer when I was younger, but now the thought of putting a ton of time into a game in order collect XP and items just bores me to tears.

I have no problem if Stern decides to release a pin like this, but I would most likely pass on it.

Just play better or take off the glass if you really need to see everything. I personally would sell a game quickly if I ever saw everything. I've sold games that I know had more to offer, but that's what I like. To each their own.

Finished Cirqus Voltaire the first week I had it in the 1990s. Sold it two weeks later. Once I "finish" a pin I usually lose interest.

You could just use facial recognition to recognize the same player. No need for initials.

Having said that, pinball is stateless and every game is different and i think those are features not bugs IMHO. I don’t mind games that tell a story; but I think adding some sort of continue mode is a lot of work for diminishing returns. It would be useless for the competitive set; overly complicated for operators and new players, and never deep enough of a game for the collectors who are dropping $5K + on a game. If I want an engaged story I’ll buy $60 Skyrim. I think anything Stern or the other mfgs could put out would be a bad video game on top of a pinball machine. We saw that with baby pac and granny’s gators. Good story driven games take large teams of programmers and millions of dollars to make. The numbers re: pinball would never play out.

You can't take the glass off or set it to 10 ball play on location. I think this is a great idea for locations.

These were my two thoughts exactly. Not having the "save" function just means you have to start earlier in the day. And I think it would be a sale crusher. Once the first batch of NIB machines have all been "beaten" 10 times in the first month, they flood the secondary market.

Knowing that some things will take a lifetime to achieve (if at all) make the attempts worthwhile. Knowing that I'm going to finish the game, no matter how badly I play, would kill pinball for me.

I think it would be a great idea for location players. Again, I see it as a profit killer for location owners.

Whenever they try to F with the Forumla - timed games for instance - it’s not a big hit. Supergame, buy extra ball - these were all novelties that didn’t catch on and likely weren’t worth the trouble to code.

I hate to be a naysayer but I personally would have zero interest in it and doubt it would have any affect on bringing in NEW players. Wouldn’t interest me in a home setting either (first thing I do when a wpc game comes in is turn off buy in). Location players wouldn’t care less about this, would they?

It sounds interesting to me, but I don't think the added complexity is going to bring new players, or bring current players back more often. Added complexity with no increase in revenue to offset it would be a no-go from a business perspective.

This would be really cool in a home brew though.

If it’s in a home environment, just take off the glass. Then remove your shoes. Take off one sock, and stuff it in the outhole. Play until you are bored and hate pinball. Then sell your games.

Steve Richie is appalled. Play Better! Regular players aren’t good enough to get to wizard modes until the are good enough to earn it.

Tough but fair

I do like what Scott did with TNA. You can select a 2 player game....and work together to try and destroy all 9 reactors....versus competing against each other

Not interested. What interests me is the connected Pinball. Automatic updates, easy diagnosis from manufacturer, determine your own songs for music pins etc.

Sega Genesis Dragon's Fury Pinball back in 1990 used to have a save feature and advance through the game advancing levels. I like the idea if implemented well.

Btw...I got hooked on Final Fantasy Empire on mobile phone. Leveling up skills of your castle and hero is addicting. Nice idea!

I think it would be a cool idea to add a second level of code, but given the choice between a single perfected code or two non-perfected levels of code...Ill take the prior.

Next people will want a "pause" button too

Clearly you’re not familiar with TZ home Rom.

I like that pinball is (generally) a 5 minute experience. I can choose to play again, or walk away after 5 minutes. I don't want to play (excessively) deep games. I just let my TSPP go because I never played it, since a good game means a big commitment of time and energy.

TNA is incoming for the spot TSPP freed up.

I'm a older player,and we don't have quite the reaction time we once had! I find with 5 ball play,I see more of the game!Sometimes early in the A.M I can go and put up good scores on my Houdini,and B66LE>Also sometimes it's not my day! I start a new pin on "easy"until I have grasped the modes! Then progress as my skill at that pin increases! All that other stuff,extra buy-in,save games,seems to be a bit much,but the younger crowd seem to like it with more variable phases!

I like the idea of a saved game or saved player, but it won't come from a manufacturer like Stern. They are the least likely to have finished game code, so how could we hope for additional features like this on top of that! Maybe JJP? Developing software costs lots of $$$.

From your lips/fingers to Gary's ears.

Do you remember the video game transition from starting at the beginning every time to quarter-sucker?

I think it's still debatable today whether that extended the life of arcades or helped kill them but today it's beneficial to offer a feature that's standard on all home consoles. If it kills longevity but increases profitability operators will love it.

That's the real question though. Like I said before it hurt profits (as we've been told before) back then...but maybe now that it's standard fair at home people will latch on more?

Sorry that one is flying past my head. I am not trying to start a bash Stern / yay JJP tangent. I am just stating what I feel is obvious. Maybe OP should not reference Stern but instead all manufacturers. Once a manufacturer implements this and sets a "standard" maybe others will follow. C'mon Stern, show me wrong I would love it if they did it first!

Love this idea! I was thinking about this recently too. I think the biggest problem with trying to get new people into pinball is if they have zero skills the game is over too fast. Most people see my machines and are eager to play a game. The game ends up being maybe 2 minutes. The player ends up discouraged and usually walks away saying "That sucked". And shows no further interest. Theyll never get to experience what a great game it really is. This could be the solution.

For the record, it was meant in humor and not to bash Stern, whom I support (but struggle with their code treatment). Sometimes when people make obvious and indisputable statements, "from your lips to Gods ears" is the response - meaning I agree.

Stern is producing solid games like IMDN with improved code, graphics and color DMD. But it's takes pushing Gary/George to get these improvements. Maybe a new leaf has been turned over by Stern. Still a fan but this type of code we're talking about - may be JJP (Keith) to create first and have Stern be the follower. Hope I'm wrong.

Actually the recent Stern games like IM and SW have been a lot better when it comes to software delays.

The pause feature on TZ was kind of cool, but I really don't see game save as a good idea. One thing I would like to see included in all games is to not award high scores to any game that is started via a game restart. When a machine is on Free Play and someone just keeps playing ball one after ball one until they get a great first ball, they should not be rewarded by entering their initials.

The Multimorphic P3 does this and has for about a year, I think. You can do a team co-op game on LL:EE with up to 4 players, I believe. It’s coupled with their profile system that allows handicaps and save state also.

A pinball game should not take hours to complete. I think a lot of modern pinball is complicated enough and annoying to have unachievable modes for all except elite players. Pinball is a skill game with risk and rewards. If you took the glass off and just threw around the ball to beat everything that is no fun. I also don't want a home environment designed pin. Something cool about having commercial arcade games in your home. Like others said, all experiments in changing pinball has failed such as timed gameplay, cheaper huo pins, video game hybrids, etc.

How long should it take? When you say "complete" do you mean accomplish every goal, start every mode (but not finish them), get to every wizard mode, 'beat' the game, or some other definition?

What do you consider an elite player? How should a pin be designed for new, below average, average, above average, and elite players?