I have hosted the league at my house, and taken machines to events - so I know the effort that goes into making pinball happen. Without guys exposing their houses/ cars/ spines/ games/ marriages to damage these things could not occur
One thing that can reduce the fun of tournaments and in my opinion could be very easily remedied, is excessive game times. This is something I have seen happen at a number of places over the last couple of years. And it reduces my appetite for attending and I know that it puts some others off too.
And I also think that it may stop some competitions from happening altogether as tournaments can go on all day. There are events where there are loads of machines present and competitions could happen but don't.
When you get a good player on a long game (ie Sterns designed with the home owner in mind) with easy tilt and outlane settings, it can make competitions really drag on. Meaning the waiting v competing time is out of kilter. It reminds me of scuba diving where you spend ages getting fitted for gear/ carrying it/ waiting around/ travelling to the dive site/ kitting up v a small amount of time actually under water.
When one set of players draws games like Medusa, Flash Gordon and Twilight Zone - and another gets Spiderman, LOTR and the Hobbit the time differentials can be huge.
There is obviously a balance to be struck here. I am not suggesting Flash Gordon with a hair trigger tilt. But nor am I suggesting AFM with no tilt like a recent one I was at. Terry has a range of games from EMs to the latest Sterns but he has relatively tight tilts on his games for example, so when he hosts events things move along nicely in my opinion. So I went round my games and shifted outlane posts and tilt settings to try to achieve a similar thing - and had @ronsplooter over for a second opinion on the matter. On my old WPT, ball times were so long that I took the outlane posts out altogether.
Recognising the enormous effort required in getting games to tournaments, setting them up..... Might I suggest that folk consider taking just 5 mins extra to tighten the tilts and/ or shift outlane posts of known long ball time games to keep the competition moving along as this means everyone would get the chance to play more competitive games. Much of the fun to me is playing with new faces in the tournanents, and it is not the same playing casually between rounds.
One thing that can reduce the fun of tournaments and in my opinion could be very easily remedied, is excessive game times. This is something I have seen happen at a number of places over the last couple of years. And it reduces my appetite for attending and I know that it puts some others off too.
And I also think that it may stop some competitions from happening altogether as tournaments can go on all day. There are events where there are loads of machines present and competitions could happen but don't.
When you get a good player on a long game (ie Sterns designed with the home owner in mind) with easy tilt and outlane settings, it can make competitions really drag on. Meaning the waiting v competing time is out of kilter. It reminds me of scuba diving where you spend ages getting fitted for gear/ carrying it/ waiting around/ travelling to the dive site/ kitting up v a small amount of time actually under water.
When one set of players draws games like Medusa, Flash Gordon and Twilight Zone - and another gets Spiderman, LOTR and the Hobbit the time differentials can be huge.
There is obviously a balance to be struck here. I am not suggesting Flash Gordon with a hair trigger tilt. But nor am I suggesting AFM with no tilt like a recent one I was at. Terry has a range of games from EMs to the latest Sterns but he has relatively tight tilts on his games for example, so when he hosts events things move along nicely in my opinion. So I went round my games and shifted outlane posts and tilt settings to try to achieve a similar thing - and had @ronsplooter over for a second opinion on the matter. On my old WPT, ball times were so long that I took the outlane posts out altogether.
Recognising the enormous effort required in getting games to tournaments, setting them up..... Might I suggest that folk consider taking just 5 mins extra to tighten the tilts and/ or shift outlane posts of known long ball time games to keep the competition moving along as this means everyone would get the chance to play more competitive games. Much of the fun to me is playing with new faces in the tournanents, and it is not the same playing casually between rounds.
But an important lesson I learnt from that one is how explosively the game landed in the UK shores on the back of two very well made European releases, Euromix and Euromix 2 - these games especially nailed the new-player experience, with easier options trivial to find and memorable and catchy songs to draw in new players, but the hard stuff was still all there. Those games covered new people well, as well as experienced people. Additionally, on easy mode, the machine would let you play the full three songs credit, no matter how brain dead you would play. Prior to that, it was a niche game with no real arcade presence or popularity, for virtually exactly the same game even with a lot of distribution in a prior release.
