(Topic ID: 120230)

WOZ throne room scoring bug exposed

By PinballHelp

9 years ago


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Topic Stats

  • 24 posts
  • 16 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 9 years ago by Wolfmarsh
  • Topic is favorited by 4 Pinsiders

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#1 9 years ago

With the help of Marcus Trevino and Josh Tidmore I was able to find and document the scoring bug that has been discussed as being used in competition. I feel keeping this exploit secret doesn't serve the community. It's better for everybody to know rather than just a select few. So here it is:

http://pinballhelp.com/woz-throne-room-bug-exposed/

In a nutshell, the exploit has to do with the second phase of Emerald City Multiball Jackpots. In order to use the exploit you do the following:

1. Start ECMB (Emerald City Multi Ball) by lighting all the character letters and locking 3 balls in the center/right ramp.

2. Complete the first phase of ECMB jackpot shots by hitting a character rollover and then shooting the right/center ramp. After all three characters are collected, you then shoot the throne room to approach the Wizard.

3. The second phase involves rolling over each character button (Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion) and then shooting the throne room to collect the jackpot/reward

You're supposed to hit each character + throne room to get a jackpot.

The Jackpot starts at 20k and then increases by 10k for each subsequent Jackpot, so ideally completing the second wave would yield:

20k + 30k + 40k = 90k total points for all three character jackpots in the second phase.

However, if you avoid hitting the second and third character rollovers, and instead keep shooting the throne room, you can rack up consecutive, cumulative jackpots in perpetuity (20k + 30k + 40k + 50k + 60k, etc.) theoretically scoring endless amounts of points and jackpots that keep increasing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fvVXoWA9ebc

#4 9 years ago

I think the general consensus is it's not very easy to exploit this bug. Possible? Yes. And relatively likely you could hit it accidentally, but to intentionally nail the throne room over and over without losing control of the balls probably requires a high degree of skill. There are probably some tricks that could be used to make exploiting the bug easier, but I think there's probably already a fix in the works.

Now that the exploit is known, people know what to look for. It's the right thing to do.

Otherwise, it would have been pretty difficult to spot it being used. An extra jackpot or three during multiball?

Will making this public affect operator revenue? I can't imagine anyone would seriously believe it would. Only a very high-end player could do this, and they're not the type that would exploit a location game.

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#6 9 years ago

What bothers me about this is that the people that knew about the bug had no intention of letting anybody else know, even active tournament directors such as myself who own the game and use it regularly in tournaments. We used WOZ in the state pinball championships.

If someone had told me the details and said, "please use this to make sure the tournaments are fair but don't tell anybody", I would have done just that. But the attitude of a few, being unwilling to let others, even tourney directors, know about the exploit in order to keep their tournaments fair is what motivated me to want to publish it once I figured it out.

It's not fair to the community. Especially owners and tournament directors. So now everybody knows. And it will be unlikely someone will try to use this to give themselves an unfair advantage in a competitive scene.

#19 9 years ago
Quoted from pinball_keefer:

If anyone is threatened by this bug, download this update (it only works on top of 4.10).

Thanks for the update! I hope you're not upset about the reveal. I assume you were ready to release an update anyway.

To be honest, I would have contacted you first, but I've tried in the past and not gotten a response from you.

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