I agree. Some reward other than points would be nice.

Definitely not, I know from reading your posts that you're an excellent pinball player. Gambit, also.

Some players get a feel for shots in certain games and some don't. Some don't take to it right away and leave it, because for whatever reason it wasn't fun for them. Some keep shooting and it becomes easier with practice.

Changing four posts definitely helps, as well. I mean seriously, any machine with that amount of return shots and flipper feeds leading to combo possibilities really has to be considered a flow game. The only stops are the scoop, which fires it back at the left flipper, and the center lock, which often releases to the right flipper.

I'm really disappointed in this whole fiasco. This was my 1st NIB and I like the game and the theme a lot, but this whole code updating thing just ruins it for me. I haven't updated the game but after this thread I'm gonna stay away from 1.23. Stern needs to give this game the much needed software attention it needs to take this game to the potential it clearly has. Stop pumping out games with broken and unpolished software. last NIB for me.....
Merry X-mas to all the Pinsiders.

Chris

How difficult is it to program a pin?

I work in software myself... I just can't see this being anything other than a super rush job to fulfill Gary's promise 3 months ago.

Is it possible that nothing was done on that promise for virtually the entire 3 months and then all of a sudden some work got put into it?

Especially when a game is already written, and you are making changes to it. Can anyone enlighten me on what a task this is?

Baywatch has modes based on each of the major shots on the game (like X-Men) and none of them can be replayed (beat or not) until the wizard mode is reached. Spider-Man doesn't allow replaying of timed "white arrow" modes (which are more like the X-Men hero modes than the untimed spiderman villain modes). The spiderman villains are replayable, but only after cycling through each of their 3 modes (not as repetitive as playing phoenix over and over just because you are hitting the shot to lock a ball) . Why would I want an already beat mode to interrupt the DMD animation, timer and audio of a mode that I am currently working on but haven't beat yet?

At the very least only replay the beat modes after a player has reached Danger Room. Getting the beat modes out of the way would help clear the clutter that this game has become in this last update.

The code does feel rushed. That said, I have a change of heart. Changing the mode start difficulty to hard definitely improves this update. And the magnets are super strong now; it's very cool. software is still very sloppy, but I'm coming around on this update.

Isn't that what the Dark Phoenix insert is for? Beat all the villains and it starts Dark Phoenix?

I suggest to make getting to DP mode easier they have a villain mode be qualified every time you hit the scoop and all villain modes stack with each other and hero modes. If someone doesn't like this they can always go in the setting and put the setting on the super duper extremely hard setting to make the game playable again.

After spending more time with current code on Hard setting, I'm loving it more and more.

Don't get me wrong, still a lot of stuff needs to be addressed, but other than the Wolvie callouts and villain and Omega lights issues, I really don't think this update is a step back at all. I sincerely doubt that Stern has this as the last update for this title, so I see this as a placeholder for now until they can comb it a bit better, but I'm no "insider"....I'm just a knucklehead. I think the expectations were too big from <us> for the most part, but also a little over promising for what to expect from this update from Stern, so I think everyone is to "blame".....if such a thing is warranted,lol.

I will say, I am DIGGING the Hero stacking at points. Completing 4 modes at once with a couple flow combo rounds, to me, is VERY satisfying. Keep in mind, I admittedly am screamingly mediocre at pinball, so little things like that don't happen every game for me.

Villains STILL need progression saves I think, and I think villain completions should add to the multipliers bonus, not the heroes. The completed heroes should give extra damage to certain villains in certain combinations, IMO.

Dunno, this update is growing on me. Go ahead and call me a simpleton or dummy, but my feelings on this update has 180'ed since my knee jerk reaction to the board posts and overwhelming negativity.

My advice to those not updating because of the negativity: just load it, set the mode start difficulty to hard, have 3-5 games and then make your decision. If you hate it, awesome, no problems with your opinion, but at least you formed your opinion on experience, not on an Internet message board, which pretty much feeds on negativity.

Oh, and Happy Holidays guys!

+100000 good post. Couldn't agree more.

Wow, but what about all these awesome posts in this thread....
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/not-another-xm-thread-had-to-you-see-the-problem-is
I took some heat for my review, and yet for all the complainers I still see a lot of 9.8 ratings for this game on the Pinside 100.
Some people just crack me up...
I wonder if people would stop hyping their game, their game would get more attention.
More hype less attention???? I have always asked, "why would Gary want to spend more time and money on a game if the game was averaging a 9.5 review out of the gates from the collector market" ????
Not a statement, just food for thought...

Scott
Detroit Pinball
Merry belated Christmas
good luck to all still holding on to their xmen, trust me I have been there before.

Scott
Detroit Pinball

Ok, How Do I start Hellfire Club?
It told me it was ready. But what should I have done?

Also I guess you need to complete all X-Men lighted modes? and completed each and not just get all of them flashing?

Still sort of lost with the rules.
But like the Flow on the game
P.s After installing the update and changing the mode to hard, I'm starting to like it more.

After qualifying Hellfire or Brotherhood MB, you need to shoot the scoop to initiate a villain mode if lit, and when you cycle through the villains, the MB's will be in there to select.

Ok Thanks

If you are looking to get to Danger Room you just need to light each X-Man by starting their mode. You don't need to beat their mode (make the light solid). After you have all X-Men lit you need to then start Magneto Multiball and get a super jackpot (beat him).

I have found that beating him in multi-ball is the only real challenge to this and a complete pain if you don't do it. You will need to relight the locks between each ball lock and lock another 4 up and try again from the start.

I have to say I do like the idea beating Magneto Multi-ball actually doing something (as I have beat him before in the past), but I'm not to fond of it here. Just like all of the other villain modes, I think his damage progress should be saved from one attempt to another. Seems pretty unbalanced (be default) to only have to hit each shot 1 time to start each mode...then if you don't get a super jackpot in multi ball it's grind time to get 4 more locked up and have only the same shot of doing it the second time that you did the first.

SAVE VILLAIN PROGRESS...it doesn't seem like it would be such a hard option to add.

I wouldn't call myself "excellent", but I don't suck ass either. I'm not as good as most of the local guys that I play pinball with who are also here at Pinside, but I don't embarrass myself either.

But your statement about some players getting a feel for shots in certain games and some not is something that I completely agree with! Certain pins seem to have just fit like a glove with me and the shots seemed to come pretty easily/naturally. MM and IM are two pins that come to mind. As hard as I had heard that IM was, I was *way* better at it right off the bat than I was with SM, and SM is known for having long ball times, which is in complete contrast to IM. I was eventually able to get the shots down in SM too after a good amount of practice. But I admit, I have never been able to get the shots down in XMen with any type of consistency, and that no doubt is part of the reason that I didn't care for the pin (in addition to the poor scoring rules, lack of high risk/reward strategies, etc.).

Had a full house last night and today. Finally updated the code and played.
Had a good laugh as I nearly beat all heroes, completed 3-4 villains and played both villain multi-balls in the same game. I proceeded to set modes to extra hard and this interim code is now great. That is all.

I agree with you Scott on not hyping a game. I also think a lot of people play a game a few times and denounce it or hype it. You know my feelings about the game, its a good game in my opinion, and I will be keeping it for a while (because all of my games get sold at some point) Over the top hype is as much of a problem with new games as over the top bashing I still think TF sucks, but I keep playing it to see if it changes my mind, because I have had Pins prove me wrong before. Now I find myself doing the opposite with XMEN LE, playing it over and over trying to figure out why others do not like it as I do. In the end some like blondes and some like brunettes. As a side note I like Tron le better, and AC/CD less at this point.

I don't know this game well enough to comment. But let's say it's true. Mm, afm, mb are 3 of the top 4 on pinside. Baywatch is nowhere in the same league. The 3 I mention have shot modes that work more like xmen.

Spiderman hero modes are saucer shot starts just like the examples I provided (Tz scoop). They are like the villain modes. You don't get the spiderman white hero modes started by just making shots. Instead you qualify it then hit mode start. That's xmen villain modes: qualify it, mode start at the scoop. So your examples still don't apply too well here.

Rcade: great post. I totally agree with you.

Robt: xmen flows great. you suck ass

When exactly did it become wrong for pinheads to love a pinball machine? Just becuase you think it is inferior those that say they love it can't actually love it because it is out of the realm of possiblility they actually have a great time playing the pin? Some pinheads will love a pin some will hate it. To chalk up a persons enjoyment of a pin to hype is a bit short sighted. I own machines that I like to play (don't most of us) what others think of them doesn't really affect my enjoyment of them.

your like me i love game and theme but all the negativaty about the code sort of upsets me but when i play it i love it even with a few problems hopefully stern will sort them out i think this update was rushed out to get it to us before x mas as promised cant of been nice working till late x mas eve for the stern software guys

Well I'm getting to the opposite side of you now, I am liking TFLE more than Xmen atm.
I play about 20 games a day on X-Men and go and play about 3 games on the Transformers, and I just feel that the game plays better with modes and code.
ATM I can see X-Men selling, I hope not tho as I do like the theme.

BTW what are you guys doing with your X-Men set up?
have you altered your out lanes at all? as with the left side with the metal plate on the side wall, Its a killer.

Just to be sure. In order to set it to hard, I update to 1.23. Set number of balls to 3 or 5 using the INSTALL menu and then I use INSTALL HARD, correct?

Pretty much. How many balls your want per game is your preference, but to set to what everyone is referring to "hard" mode on here; go to the adjustments menu, and then standard adjustments I believe. A few in you'll find "Mode Start Difficulty", this is the one you want to set to HARD or higher, depending on your skill level, its factory default is MEDIUM.

also, you can "tweak" the difficulty by increasing or decreasing the timers for all the modes too. Set it to your preference, it's in YOUR home, set it to what ever makes your playing experience more fun, you can always tweak the difficulty later on or change things back!

I have not installed the new code, so my comments are based off the V1.23 description and my experience with the V 1.21 "old code".

I like the rulesets and challenges in a game. I want to see the wizard modes and features. Playing in tournaments is for points, playing at home is for the prizes and exploring what the game does.

The prizes to me are Danger Room, Dark Phoenix and Deadpool.

I had no problem with the Danger Room requirements before. I liked having to complete the Heroes to reach DR. I never asked for Heroes to stack nor even cared. They were not that hard to start and were not that hard to complete. Phoenix and Iceman were the harder ones, but something needs to be a challenge. (Even with the goofy ramp antics, you could do it)

Further, my strategy was to play as many Heroes ahead of Magneto anyway. Playing all Heroes raised the base jackpot to 1MIL. This also made defeating Magneto easier since all shots were available to decrease the health meter. If you went the easy route, lit locks and just hit the Rogue shot over and over (soft plunge lock, soft plunge lock etc), you'd only have one Hero and the points were almost worthless and she was the only one lit to decrease the meter. You had to plan your attack.

So the DR rule should have been left alone IMO.

My issue with the game was always the lack of integration in the Villains. Most people played for Danger Room since it was easier to reach. So if you played a Villain, you were encouraged to time it out. (Unless you had say Sentinels ready to stack with Magneto).

The Villain modes were polar opposites of the Heroes. Long as heck, and obnoxious to finish them all. No progression so you had to be dead accurate and fast. Not that it is a bad thing, but way harder than Heroes. Players figured this out and started wondering why even mess with this if I am trying for Danger Room. You did not want Villain lit and would curse if you hit the lit scoop. So, start Villain, trap ball for 60 seconds return to playing Heroes.

Right there is the problem with the game!

The player should never want to NOT do something and not have to wait 60 seconds to go back to what they want to do. The game should have a risk/reward. So if battling the Villains was easier depending on how many heroes you completed (akin to the Magneto rule) then there would be reason to play more Heroes AND a reason to battle the Villains-other than starting your 5th mode for extra ball.

I never really had an issue with starting Hellfire Club or Brotherhood. The rules are fine in the earlier code. The problem, again, is that there was no real reason to play either. Defeating all of the Villains is a massive task with 3 balls + 1 extra. Whenever I felt like exploring those multiball modes I would just play them. I typically just focused on Danger Room. Which goes back to fundamental issue.

The argument could be made that it is "integrated"; completing Heroes and Villains will get you to Deadpool. Players can figure out when a task is out of reach and Dark Phoenix and Deadpool are classic examples of holy crap that is a lot of work! A good game taunts you into keep trying for the goal. Come on you almost did it! Try again! When I just focused on Villains I never was close to all 7 done. I don't recall hear anyone even playing Dark Phoenix legit. I think the difficulty made players abandon the Villains and played for Danger Room.

So as far as stacking is concerned, there really needed to be a way to use the Heroes to advance through the Villains. Examples: use Weapon X with a Villain and defeat them easier with multiball. If a player completed more Heroes, it makes the health meter decrease faster. Each time Villain is started, a player would naturally have started more Heroes, maybe even completed some. The incentive and ability to defeat Villains is building naturally as the game goes on.

The X-Men game has tons of potential. I am hopeful it will eventually come around, but I am a bit disappointed (not angry) with the integration of rules so far. And for the record, there are plenty of shots/combos-there should be some reward for that, but that is an aside to the "prizes".

Thanks for reading

They called it 1.23 meaning that Stern does NOT consider it to be a major change compared to the 1.2 version..... If they would have made major improvements they would have called it at least 1.3

I don't know if its easy to code but an easy sounding, sensible, Fun and Strategic enhancement to integrate heroes and villains would be to have completed heroes lit during a villain mode to increase damage for those shots. Or if that makes it to easy, have specific completed heroes tied to specific villains (1 or 2 each). Example, complete Beast and his shot does 3x damage on Omega Red or maybe Beast and Storm do 2x.

The code is pretty good but there is no link between Hero and Villain modes. To me this is fundamental to comics and should be fundamental to the pin.

Dave

Well, after 3 months, we should have gotten a "major change". The reason we didn't, in my opinion, is that Stern doesn't care about working on old LE machines because we all bought them up. They are more interested in pushing out the new (including the ridiculous "the pin") to fatten Gary's wallet.

I have always known that Stern was iffy with code on games, but this time it's convinced me to stop buying their product until I know its done. Period. And even then, I may balk. The killer code updates they did to AC/DC gave me a false belief that they would do the same for X-men and TFLE. Problem is they can still profit from AC/DC but not from the others.. so guess what? They don't care.

I hope others do the same and don't reward a company that doesn't care about its customers.

I almost, ALMOST considered a Hulk LE, given that Gary stated that Stern would be working on the code for both Transformers and X-men and we'd see the improvements at Christmas, but I'm so glad I didn't. I believe that he may have been saying that only to entice buyers that were on the fence (including distributors) so the cash flow would continue inward to Stern. And his statements were right after the well accepted AC/DC code changes, so again I think some of us started to believe they would be committed to making the code right on other games.

Some of the semantics being discussed should be addressed by building it into the difficulty settings, making everyone is happy. For example,

EASY: 1-shot heroes, and DR by starting all Heroes
NORMAL: 2-shot heroes and DR by starting all Heroes
HARD: 2-shot heroes and DR by completing all Heroes
X-HARD: 3-shot heroes and DR by completing all Heroes
...and similiar difficulty progression for Villains.

This is a perfect suggestion toward integration of Heroes and Villains modes, the best I've read so far. I would even add that completed Heroes should be weighted more than started Heroes in a Villain mode.

No that's not what we are referring to. Go into the settings, adjustments, xmen adjustments and look for mode start. Change it from medium to hard or extra hard.

There are already:
1: earn extra ball
2: get to dark Phoenix wizard mode

with so many wiz kids with computers , why can't code be rewritten by these computer wiz kids and installed . is sterns code protected ?

no source code or compilation tools.

Great post, Jeff. You are one of the best students of rules, not to mention players, around. And I agree with everything you said, although at this point I must admit that speaking only for myself, I do have a touch of anger mixed in with the disappointment. (Serenity now!)

With the new bugs that crept into this release, and the one major benefit of added magnet strength being something that XM should've shipped with, we are now left six months later with buggy code that should've been ironed out in pre-production. We are becoming trained to get all excited about features being fixed six months later to work how they should've upon release, like the spinner/magnet toy.

I'll try to remain positive and hopeful that they will fix these bugs and rule progression problems eventually, while trying to enjoy the game's features that I do enjoy in the meantime, being thankful for having these first world problems and keep it all in perspective.

But, being honest, the quotes of Borg referring to Waison as "stubborn" make me want to imagine Borg putting that kid over his knee, spanking his little butt, and TELLING him what to do and how to fix these things. It's Borg's project, and he's ultimately responsible for the end result, and has been around pinball long enough to not only forsee the mechanical coding problems but the rule progression issues as well. In 2013, to be encouraged to time-out modes towards one goal in order to reach another is inexcusable.

Waison, to be fair, thank you for the several cool features that you have implemented, including health bars, comic cut scenes, and awesome lighting effects like Storm's show. Now get your head out of the comic books and play some pinball, and most importantly, stop being stubborn and try *listening* to people who already know more about pinball than you ever will. And please fix the basic problems with the game which still exist!! THanks!!

All this bickering is a waste of time.
You need to send Stern a email about your complaints.

I'd take that with a grain of salt. I've heard the same "stubborn" comments about (and from) Ritchie and Lyman. As long as a good working relationship and respect is maintained, it should be a non-issue.

I skimmed this thread, but I didn't have time to read it all. Most of what I saw looked negative. So what's the general consensus? Did Stern drop the ball on this update?

Best described as very negative in the beginning but now becoming more constructive. The main highlight is that once guys learned that the Hard setting was a better option the rules started making a little sense. Still issues on Magneto, and two villains with the Iceman ramp moving but the magnets are quite a bit stronger in the new update.

All in all I would say the latter half of this thread would look at this code as a slight step forward but not what was hoped after 3 months of waiting.

It's not the awesome code release everyone was after.... but also not a total loss. Most things appear to have been simplified and dumbed down and I think that beating villains and achieving brotherhood/hellfire multi-balls certainly needed a little simplification. The problem comes in adding mode stacking and one shot start to the hero modes. Way too much going on and way too easy. The general consensus seems to be to jack up the mode start difficulty to hard or extra had to avoid the excessive stacking. Then you still get to reap the benefits of the other changes.

Combo scoring and ice ramp issues (and deadpool) still have to wait for the next update.

Ritchie and Lyman have earned the right to be stubborn with their body of work on multiple pinball masterpieces. Watson has not.

It should be a non-issue, I agree, in that Waison should be listening to complaints and absorbing knowledge from people who clearly know far more about pinball than he does. 1.23 tells me he isn't doing that to the level he should be. As I said, I'm still thankful for some of the fresh perspective on a great theme he is bringing, and I'm still trying to remain positive, hopeful things get fixed and tweaked.

Ouch! Playing the "asshat" card on Christmas!

At least you didn't question his di*k$ize!

yes, Stern dropped the ball. It's not total loss, but also not something I'd like to see as a final code on a $6600 machine. More like saying the last code was terrible and this code is just bad. I was looking for good.

IMO this code is a step in the right direction, better than 1.2 but that's not saying much. Kind of like saying Steven Tyler is better than J Lo as a judge on American Idol.

Positives are hellfire/brotherhood multi balls are easier to start, magnets are stronger.

Negatives:
- New bugs (constant Wolvie call outs, villain lights not working properly)
- Spastic hero stacking. Can be ameliorated somewhat by increasing mode start difficulty, although you'd think 1 shot to start would be the "Easy" setting, not the "Normal" setting. What is "Easy"? 0?
- Crappy Beast voice still there.
- Iceman ramp moving bugs (one mode was fixed, others were not)
- Still nothing tying hero mode completion to villain modes, which limits any strategy. Some great suggestions have been made by multiple people multiple times, but all ignored.
- No combo bonuses.

So for me, a step forward two steps back kind of release.

I will state two things again:

1. Lyman should be VP of code creation and development. All code must be approved by Lyman.

2. http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/player-focus-group-why-not

Stern has the designers they just need to implement a few changes. It's really not rocket science.

Really sucks when you have three balls locked and Phoenix and Rogue left to light, no way to light them both before starting.
Also sucks to have three balls locked and any characters unlit and start a villain mode the uses a lock shot. Either have to time it out, give up on danger room, or drain on purpose.

They really shoehorned you into playing villains too, removing the extra ball qualifier from heroes. I still doubt anyone will get close to Dark Phoenix, especially with less extra balls available in general.

I did finally get Nightcrawler once in about 50 games played, have to get him on that first blackbird of the game and avoid starting a hero mode or completing the lanes again or else the villains stack all up. Also have to get lucky, first few times i pulled it off it was a 200000 bonus and a hold bonus award.

there are a few more positives than that (but not much more):

1) magnets stronger
2) setting for hellfire and brotherhood now and fault is way less hits to start them. Those mb now generally run every game
3) villain mode shots were reduced and default time reduced to 45 secs. This speeds up the villain portion of the game now. Increasing villain time back to 60 makes the update have easier villains.
4) magneto lock mech improved over v1.20 which was last official release
5) mode stacking on heroes now eliminates annoyance of accidentally starting the completed heroes and having nothing else to shoot at.
6) magneto my now given a purpose - its part of danger room
7) heros now add to bonus multiplier. Bonuses now are significant.

The downside of 5 is that they also defaulted the hero modes to 1 shot each so the game plays like a cluster f*** stock. You need to set mode start to hard or even better extra hard to get rid of that.

I won't list negatives in the form if "they didn't add feature xxxxx". Those aren't downsides to doing the update. The two biggest introduced issues are:
- beast callouts randomly on all shots but intermittently
- villain inserts do not work right for completed modes.

all in all, update is an improvement. But a big disappointment.

Every stop to think that this is something that Lyman *doesn't* want? Maybe he is happy "owning" a game like AC/DC, making a game "his baby"?

Has anyone verified that order matters? Perhaps you can super jackpot prior to getting the heroes and still light danger room?

OK, here are a few integration thoughts, expanding on your idea. Let me know what you guys think

-Right now, a played Hero shot insert becomes Solid (whether played or finished*). What if these inserts were to stay lit when you start a Villain - and if so, those shots cause 2x Damage/Points? For instance, if you've got Xavier Lit, that would really benefit you during Shadow King since you have to hit Xavier so much. It would also benefit Juggernaut since Xavier's your final shot to defeat him - giving you 2x points for the finish.

*Side thought - Should you get the solid playfield Hero insert for just playing or only completing? Should these match the center Hero insert circle inserts? Before a solid Hero circle insert meant you were qualifiying toward Danger Room...that's not the case anymore...it now basically means you've earned the 3x Multiplier. Still, perhaps they're planning some future reward for completing heroes & villains...

Have to light them all from what I've seen, order doesn't matter.

Magneto Multiball already had one of the best purposes in the game imo, it already had the biggest jackpots/ super jackpots in the game. Now it's tied to the only other viable thing worth going for in the game, in my opinion. I consider myself pretty efficient and skilled on this machine and I don't have a chance of seeing Dark Phoenix.