Here’s my fishy flippers 
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Slow news day 
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Indeed..lol
Going by the backglass I'm pretty certain Popeye is meant to have lightnings 
OP
OP
Deleted member 2463
Yup it is.
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I don't think you should be putting lightning flippers 'on all games' if that was the plan? I'd agree with the approach that the PAPA guys use though - which is to put them on traditionally long playing games, and where the geometry of the game doesn't suffer from using them.
Spiderman works really well with lightning flippers (and I'd honestly argue it's a better game with them). The Shadow with lightning flippers might be just too brutal though. Similarly it's a myth that PAPA make all their games super steep to make them harder. Quite often they deliberately make the games shallower/slower to induce side to side movement, which as we all know is death.
Basically - put some thought into how games individually should be made harder. It's not as simple as 'make them steeper and remove posts'
Spiderman works really well with lightning flippers (and I'd honestly argue it's a better game with them). The Shadow with lightning flippers might be just too brutal though. Similarly it's a myth that PAPA make all their games super steep to make them harder. Quite often they deliberately make the games shallower/slower to induce side to side movement, which as we all know is death.
Basically - put some thought into how games individually should be made harder. It's not as simple as 'make them steeper and remove posts'
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Deleted member 2463
Indeed Paul - I spent a couple of days with them setting up at New York and got many ideas, only an idiot would be put lightning flippers on every game.
Not sure that’s true about the steepness though based on what Fred said but it goes along with adjusting many other things to make games play brilliantly.
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Not sure that’s true about the steepness though based on what Fred said but it goes along with adjusting many other things to make games play brilliantly.
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I've heard them talk about it in tournaments from years ago, and it's mentioned in the directors guide, which is HIGHLY recommended reading before TD'ing your first large event. Good luck with all this, you're much braver than I would be for taking on such a high profile tournament so soon
https://papa.org/learning-center/directors-guide
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OP
Deleted member 2463
yeah I read that a while ago.
I've been involved in a few tournaments - there was the small one in 2012 in London, there is another small one on Saturday night
I've been involved in a few tournaments - there was the small one in 2012 in London, there is another small one on Saturday night
I always love the game notes:
I'll stop before I end up copying the whole damned thing...
I'll stop before I end up copying the whole damned thing...
I thought Creech had lightning flippers. Seem to remember reading that some where. How come Williams didn’t use flippers with the lightning bolt on them?
Not lightning flippers. Just the 'Trudeau gap'. John Trudeau traditionally uses a wider flipper spacing which has a similar effect to lightning flippers, but still uses the normal sized flipper bats.
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OP
Deleted member 2463
I’d refuse to use Creech purely on the basis that it takes twenty minutes to get the freaking score up after a game!!!
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New code sorts that, as well as removing the random awards. Would like to play it on new code some time.
To everyone commenting/complaining about the lightening flippers (and anything else regarding the UK Open)
Quite simply @Neil McRae is the TD of the comp and it is his choice as to how he sets up the games, what games he chooses, what the rules are etc. etc.
The ONLY comments/advice I will give is this
About the comparison of the UK Open and PAPA/Pinburgh and the decision to make the games mega brutal is - Keith Elwin, Zach Sharpe, Raymond Davidson etc. etc. have not signed up for the UK Open. The average skill level will be significantly lower here, so the worry about games lasting hours is probably unfounded.
No one enjoys a game when it is set-up overly brutal and becomes a luck fest if you hit the skillshot, and it removes a significant amount of skill from the game. I remember playing Metallica at the Belgian Open when it was first released - it was set up that brutal (over fears of it playing long) that the scores were ridiculously low. I recall Martin Ayub and Frank Bona both scoring under 3mil. The same had happened to me on a game of Avengers - neither me or my opponent made a significant shot at all. He won because on of his skillshots was a hands free skillshot, with both of us finishing under 4mil.
As all (?) of the game play is head to head through qualifying, if a game is found to be playing overly long - it is not a problem to change the set-up by removing oulane posts, or even changing steepness, without impacting games played previously.
A good comp has a varied set-up of games - if every game is set-up mega steep it makes catching and trapping significantly easier, likewise if every game is set-up shallow.
Quite simply @Neil McRae is the TD of the comp and it is his choice as to how he sets up the games, what games he chooses, what the rules are etc. etc.
The ONLY comments/advice I will give is this
About the comparison of the UK Open and PAPA/Pinburgh and the decision to make the games mega brutal is - Keith Elwin, Zach Sharpe, Raymond Davidson etc. etc. have not signed up for the UK Open. The average skill level will be significantly lower here, so the worry about games lasting hours is probably unfounded.
No one enjoys a game when it is set-up overly brutal and becomes a luck fest if you hit the skillshot, and it removes a significant amount of skill from the game. I remember playing Metallica at the Belgian Open when it was first released - it was set up that brutal (over fears of it playing long) that the scores were ridiculously low. I recall Martin Ayub and Frank Bona both scoring under 3mil. The same had happened to me on a game of Avengers - neither me or my opponent made a significant shot at all. He won because on of his skillshots was a hands free skillshot, with both of us finishing under 4mil.
As all (?) of the game play is head to head through qualifying, if a game is found to be playing overly long - it is not a problem to change the set-up by removing oulane posts, or even changing steepness, without impacting games played previously.
A good comp has a varied set-up of games - if every game is set-up mega steep it makes catching and trapping significantly easier, likewise if every game is set-up shallow.
Or be on hand with a phone camera to capture the score straight away then record it
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Interesting stuff!!! I’ve already suggested to @Neil McRae our tournament directer to have various games set at different difficulty levels. May not be appropriate but an idea. I would like to also know how 70 odd people will be managed for the classics qualifying phase.
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Why? Each game has it's own inherent difficulty anyway - The TD will align the machines to tournament standard... it's then down to the players to do the rest
Why? Each game has it's own inherent difficulty anyway - The TD will align the machines to tournament standard... it's then down to the players to do the rest
Fair point in that case how is it possible to make a game harder than the developers set it up as apart from waxing the play fields to make the balls travel lighting fast and fit lighting flippers?
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I think the TD has enough to do without a significant number of questions - and I certainly don't think it will be helping them prepare. Suggest you go along and see if you like it or not. Make any constructive suggestions following that. You're new to the forum (by the looks of things) and you've handed out quite a lot of advice to members that are long in the tooth here (and far more experienced than I). I would recommend that you get to know the key people first before offering them advice (such as the interchange with @bartron for instance). Just my tuppence, based on my lack of experience particularly when first starting out (and still now).
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Yes Questions, the parts of a sentence with a ? on the end. As some one else stated turn up on the day, play pinball do good or bad don't ask the far end of fart every post. Just enjoy yourself..
The more you over think things, the worse you’ll do
OP
OP
Deleted member 2463
I’d have turned off the skill shot also lol!
Indeed I think a few crazies here have over reacted about one simple thing. Trust me the games will play beautifully they will be challenging, fast and tough. I predict that when I survey you all more than 90% of you rate the games as excellent.
Cheers,
Neil.
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Indeed I think a few crazies here have over reacted about one simple thing. Trust me the games will play beautifully they will be challenging, fast and tough. I predict that when I survey you all more than 90% of you rate the games as excellent.
Cheers,
Neil.
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As I put in my recent article, if @Neil McRae is tournament director, my money is on him using proper tournament software. Why is everyone overlooking that and focussing on how he wants to set the games up? In the latter stages won't the players have calls on which games to play?
Thanks all for your helpful comments and input it’s all very interesting with this being my first major pinball tournament it’s always interesting to get sone insight from behind the scenes
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Nothing wrong with questions buddy, just watch out about supplying ideas to those you're learning from; there's a lot of practical experience that goes into the way these are run already, through the combination of sheer difficulty of getting several pinball machines in one place, keeping them working, keeping the time commitment for players low, catering for all skill levels and above all, making it a good fun time. And as you can see, even amongst the experienced there is still disagreement. So eyebrows get raised if you come across with ideas before you know if they've been tried before, and what was wrong/right with them.
That being said, people here are pretty darn friendly; the only time I see grumblings is over tournament formats, and the odd bad price.
Oh and actually, I could answer this one too:
Which brings us back to Fish Tales, and the flipper sizes. It wasn't designed from the start for lightning flippers, but in reality every game was shipped with them and as the thread shows, it can be argued both ways as to whether it makes the game better balanced. I personally feel that it handles shorter flippers very well. Neil knows his stuff and I'm sure that having FT with lightning flippers won't represent the lowest difficulty table in the roster...
On certain games it is very effective to change the thickness of rubbers on some posts, effectively making shots tighter to hit. But on almost every game, it's possible to really change the difficulty of a keeping a ball in play, by changing the position of the outlane posts as they're usually adjustable, by making the slingshots more sensitive, reducing or disabling ball saver features, etc. Except when you're trying to ensure that the tournament finishes on the same day when you have the world's best playing, most of the time these kinds of adjustments aren't used except to try and reign in the play time per player on long-playing games. Even at PAPA level they don't usually try to make Iron Man, or F14 any harder.
Which brings us back to Fish Tales, and the flipper sizes. It wasn't designed from the start for lightning flippers, but in reality every game was shipped with them and as the thread shows, it can be argued both ways as to whether it makes the game better balanced. I personally feel that it handles shorter flippers very well. Neil knows his stuff and I'm sure that having FT with lightning flippers won't represent the lowest difficulty table in the roster...