thejefu
Site Supporter
I found myself in a quandry where LOTR should be my favourite pinball machine, but I keep selling it. I love the franchise, the shots, the layout/feature combination, yet I hate owning it. I'm a sniper, I enjoy high scores and being rewarded for difficult shots. I prefer drain monsters with a typical 'good' game anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes. LotR you need atleast 30 minutes to have a 'good' game and often 40+ to have a 'great' game. The problem is that 99/100 'great' games return neither a high score you care about (more on that below) and they rarely return the wizard mode (Valinor).
I've long suspected that we use Valinor as a crutch for the lack of pace and shape of the game design. Any criticism of the games features is too easily shutdown by their spectacle, followed by 'yeah but Valinor is the hardest wizard mode in Pinball!'.
Destroying the ring is by far the best shot in the game, yet it's far too easy and Valinor far too hard - worse yet there's nothing of value inbetween. Nobody talks about that game where they got X score and completed X modes on the road to the end game. There's no memorable victory of a given MB or game mode because you're not using them specifically to score, you're using them as a means to an end. The difficulty and churn intrinsic to seeking Valinor has a hugely detrimental effect on our enjoyment of the game as a whole. The worst effect of this is that we lose our relationship with high scores, something otherwise paramount in pinball and one of the most motivating factors for why many of us play. Valinor 'should' be the zennith wizard mode upon which to elevate our high score to the highest possible level; instead I'm not sure a LOTR owner would accept his Valinor high score being bested by someone cheesing pre-Valinor - "Yeah but you didn't Valinor" - the way the game was shipped forces LOTR owners into a self-defeating psychology which sabotages an excellent game so I wanted to explore an alternative.
A big part of this experiment is to say goodbye to Valinor and explore gamechanging modifications in the adjustments to refocus the legacy features as the principal content of the game.
I'm sure many of you will be familiar with the Papa Pinball video of LOTR being played in competition (with typical hard mode Papa setup). I used this as a benchmark because it does one thing that is desirable - it makes Destroy the Ring the spectacle it deserves to be, appropriately placed in the meta. I also made some other choice changes:
- Remove the uppermost outlane posts.
- Place 2 rubbers on either side of the sword/aragorn ramp.
- Set FotR Multiball to sequential (1 member at a time) and require 2 shots per member of the fellowship
- Set TTT Multiball to extra hard (KEEP lanes disable when rolled over, no memory between games).
- Extra balls off.
- Consolation prizes (Balrog etc) and Palantir set to extra hard (remove the busyness).
I've put in maybe 20 hours so far so it's early days, but I'm more than impressed by how different the game has become. Make no mistake, the game gets harder and balls get shorter BUT you discover a new pinball game which competes if not excels the vanilla offering:
- The rubbers on the sword ramp balance it. Previously I was hitting it 95% stationary from the right flipper and 65% of the time from the left. It balances this out to something like 60% on the right and 20% on the left. The only reason the vanilla implementation makes sense is as a neccessary crutch to facilitate Valinor. No Valinor, no brainer. They're never coming off.
- The missing outlanes are not as punishing as you'd expect and definitely don't feel like overkill. LOTR is an up and down shooter's game where control is key - it certainly's isn't a game which excessively slings the ball left to right. Previously I could nudge myself to safety a good 60% of the time when in peril; this setup for me basically put the fatality rate back into the global average for the typical games I enjoy. My average casual gametime reduced from 20-30 minutes to 5-15. I haven't had a game longer than 30 minutes.
- Initially I set extra balls to off as this felt neccessary to keep the fatality rate at a level consistent with shorter balls / amplifying the early game. Advanced LOTR players can also suffers from a strong case of wanting to start over once you've lost an early ball. I went with the Barad-Dur memory wipe change in and reinstate the extra ball reward to offer a new recovery strategy to mix up gameplay. This also adds a decent strategy consideration for MBs.
- The balance of gameplay upto the point of Destroy the Ring shifts entirely for the better (and for very specific reasons). All opening strategies in vanilla LOTR are inferior to pumping souls; you'll incidentally trigger KEEPs for TTT and you'll incidentally trigger FotR during TTT or RotK MB. I could rant for a long time about what a missed opportunity it was that the games core multiballs (and very essence for the vast majority of players) are so disregarded as to be simultaneously triggered incidentally... Assuming you're a home player and you can comfortably destroy the ring in vanilla setup (and therefore are defacto playing for Valinor), the early game and it's three very unique MB activations are basically congealed and blended behind this very muddy powerplay.
The specific changes to unlock FotR and TTT resurrects these features as singular pinball goals. By making FotR sequential and setting KEEP lanes to disable on rollover, you single handedly add atleast 15 minutes of gameplay that otherwise was not there. The neccessity to shoot for these multiballs (mostly exclusively) is extremely balanced and more suiting of the impressive MB modes which demand to be played for completion vs being cheesed to facilitate other goals. You will find yourself shooting for FotR first owing to it being the riskiest of the 3 MBs to achieve and a neccessity towards destroy the ring. TTT can no longer be triggered incidentally by mashing a RotK multiball (or any other multiball since you can't keep the 4 lanes lit), but naturally you'll be on your way towards this if not there already from seeking FotR. The critical factor is that you won't achieve TTT incidentally, you can just as easily undo all progress towards the MB. The cheese of opening with farming souls for RotK MB remains viable, but this is counter balanced by the opportunity cost of risking the completion of RotK and the loss of the points associated with the completion (did I mention high scores matter again?). The meta feels tight, well balanced and, I won't lie, it feels really good to re-engage in the basic features of the game in a meaningful way, using direct tactics AND completing the movies in order. Given that this plays so well I can't help but suspect it was designed specifically this way - I take no credit for it. In my conspiritorial mind this was the design, then Stern decided this was too rules heavy for location and they put it in the blender.
- Destroy The Ring retires as a poorly placed mid game participation trophy and takes it's seat as the perfectly executed finale shot in all of pinball. The new difficulty, pace and balance of the game sets it up perfectly such that it becomes a true (and one of the best executed) wizard modes. This one fact alone has almost convinced me it is a crime that this shot isn't used precisely in this position of difficulty and time investment. It remains a challenging goal even for me as an experienced player, dominates the meta for scoring and is something you want to achieve again and again.
LOTR shifts from being a heavily 'gamed' Valinor sniping pin which rides roughshot over it's feature set into something closer to Medieval Madness. Valinor is out of reach, there is no longer an imperative to game the system but to play the content as it is presented. All game features and modes return to the forefront to be rinsed and repeated/compounded infinitely with a view to high scores. For me it's a much more rewarding and competitive experience.
Lastly, Valinor is still not impossible - did I mention it's the hardest wizard mode in pinball? Forget an hour - try 2.
I highly recommend any owners out there to give some of these changes an honest try and let me know what you think.
I've long suspected that we use Valinor as a crutch for the lack of pace and shape of the game design. Any criticism of the games features is too easily shutdown by their spectacle, followed by 'yeah but Valinor is the hardest wizard mode in Pinball!'.
Destroying the ring is by far the best shot in the game, yet it's far too easy and Valinor far too hard - worse yet there's nothing of value inbetween. Nobody talks about that game where they got X score and completed X modes on the road to the end game. There's no memorable victory of a given MB or game mode because you're not using them specifically to score, you're using them as a means to an end. The difficulty and churn intrinsic to seeking Valinor has a hugely detrimental effect on our enjoyment of the game as a whole. The worst effect of this is that we lose our relationship with high scores, something otherwise paramount in pinball and one of the most motivating factors for why many of us play. Valinor 'should' be the zennith wizard mode upon which to elevate our high score to the highest possible level; instead I'm not sure a LOTR owner would accept his Valinor high score being bested by someone cheesing pre-Valinor - "Yeah but you didn't Valinor" - the way the game was shipped forces LOTR owners into a self-defeating psychology which sabotages an excellent game so I wanted to explore an alternative.
A big part of this experiment is to say goodbye to Valinor and explore gamechanging modifications in the adjustments to refocus the legacy features as the principal content of the game.
I'm sure many of you will be familiar with the Papa Pinball video of LOTR being played in competition (with typical hard mode Papa setup). I used this as a benchmark because it does one thing that is desirable - it makes Destroy the Ring the spectacle it deserves to be, appropriately placed in the meta. I also made some other choice changes:
- Remove the uppermost outlane posts.
- Place 2 rubbers on either side of the sword/aragorn ramp.
- Set FotR Multiball to sequential (1 member at a time) and require 2 shots per member of the fellowship
- Set TTT Multiball to extra hard (KEEP lanes disable when rolled over, no memory between games).
- Extra balls off.
- Consolation prizes (Balrog etc) and Palantir set to extra hard (remove the busyness).
I've put in maybe 20 hours so far so it's early days, but I'm more than impressed by how different the game has become. Make no mistake, the game gets harder and balls get shorter BUT you discover a new pinball game which competes if not excels the vanilla offering:
- The rubbers on the sword ramp balance it. Previously I was hitting it 95% stationary from the right flipper and 65% of the time from the left. It balances this out to something like 60% on the right and 20% on the left. The only reason the vanilla implementation makes sense is as a neccessary crutch to facilitate Valinor. No Valinor, no brainer. They're never coming off.
- The missing outlanes are not as punishing as you'd expect and definitely don't feel like overkill. LOTR is an up and down shooter's game where control is key - it certainly's isn't a game which excessively slings the ball left to right. Previously I could nudge myself to safety a good 60% of the time when in peril; this setup for me basically put the fatality rate back into the global average for the typical games I enjoy. My average casual gametime reduced from 20-30 minutes to 5-15. I haven't had a game longer than 30 minutes.
- Initially I set extra balls to off as this felt neccessary to keep the fatality rate at a level consistent with shorter balls / amplifying the early game. Advanced LOTR players can also suffers from a strong case of wanting to start over once you've lost an early ball. I went with the Barad-Dur memory wipe change in and reinstate the extra ball reward to offer a new recovery strategy to mix up gameplay. This also adds a decent strategy consideration for MBs.
- The balance of gameplay upto the point of Destroy the Ring shifts entirely for the better (and for very specific reasons). All opening strategies in vanilla LOTR are inferior to pumping souls; you'll incidentally trigger KEEPs for TTT and you'll incidentally trigger FotR during TTT or RotK MB. I could rant for a long time about what a missed opportunity it was that the games core multiballs (and very essence for the vast majority of players) are so disregarded as to be simultaneously triggered incidentally... Assuming you're a home player and you can comfortably destroy the ring in vanilla setup (and therefore are defacto playing for Valinor), the early game and it's three very unique MB activations are basically congealed and blended behind this very muddy powerplay.
The specific changes to unlock FotR and TTT resurrects these features as singular pinball goals. By making FotR sequential and setting KEEP lanes to disable on rollover, you single handedly add atleast 15 minutes of gameplay that otherwise was not there. The neccessity to shoot for these multiballs (mostly exclusively) is extremely balanced and more suiting of the impressive MB modes which demand to be played for completion vs being cheesed to facilitate other goals. You will find yourself shooting for FotR first owing to it being the riskiest of the 3 MBs to achieve and a neccessity towards destroy the ring. TTT can no longer be triggered incidentally by mashing a RotK multiball (or any other multiball since you can't keep the 4 lanes lit), but naturally you'll be on your way towards this if not there already from seeking FotR. The critical factor is that you won't achieve TTT incidentally, you can just as easily undo all progress towards the MB. The cheese of opening with farming souls for RotK MB remains viable, but this is counter balanced by the opportunity cost of risking the completion of RotK and the loss of the points associated with the completion (did I mention high scores matter again?). The meta feels tight, well balanced and, I won't lie, it feels really good to re-engage in the basic features of the game in a meaningful way, using direct tactics AND completing the movies in order. Given that this plays so well I can't help but suspect it was designed specifically this way - I take no credit for it. In my conspiritorial mind this was the design, then Stern decided this was too rules heavy for location and they put it in the blender.
- Destroy The Ring retires as a poorly placed mid game participation trophy and takes it's seat as the perfectly executed finale shot in all of pinball. The new difficulty, pace and balance of the game sets it up perfectly such that it becomes a true (and one of the best executed) wizard modes. This one fact alone has almost convinced me it is a crime that this shot isn't used precisely in this position of difficulty and time investment. It remains a challenging goal even for me as an experienced player, dominates the meta for scoring and is something you want to achieve again and again.
LOTR shifts from being a heavily 'gamed' Valinor sniping pin which rides roughshot over it's feature set into something closer to Medieval Madness. Valinor is out of reach, there is no longer an imperative to game the system but to play the content as it is presented. All game features and modes return to the forefront to be rinsed and repeated/compounded infinitely with a view to high scores. For me it's a much more rewarding and competitive experience.
Lastly, Valinor is still not impossible - did I mention it's the hardest wizard mode in pinball? Forget an hour - try 2.
I highly recommend any owners out there to give some of these changes an honest try and let me know what you think.
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