clyde

Pinball Club

Recommended Posts

6JlAZI8.jpg

 

This was a good game while still having no idea what is going on. I played as the rebels, played mission 1 which apparently includes some sort of attrition battle on the playfield which I'm not sure how well I did with. I played the lone wolf mission which was a surprising change in perspective. I think I beat that one, but I'm not sure. Around that time I noticed an energy-bar at the bottom of the table that was mostly red. I played multiple evade missions, but it kept saying "Fighter Lost" when I felt like I was hitting the flashing lanes. I also did two types of multiballs where I was just juggling during rather than knowing what the objectives were. I got a few promotions and upgraded my ships twice, but I have no idea what the upgrades do.  And I did a repair mission where I got the impression that you can change the energy-bar at the bottom with combos(?) I think the energy-bar is your fleet-size and it said that combos would increase your fleet so...

Very confusing table, but I find myself enjoying the shots and the chaos.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Played two games as the empire. Except from launching form the left sight (and more difficult skill shot I think) nothing else seems different.

 

New highscore:

HqyCLne.png

I completed mission 1 and 3, and maybe 4, I'm not sure. Except for phase 1 of mission 1 I really don't have an idea what I have to do. There's so much text in the objective which goes away so fast. I guess it usually involves hitting the flashing lanes? Which is seriously annoying, the flashing lane indicators are shit.

From what I can tell, only mission 1 and 2 are open until you rank up. After that I saw missions 3 to 5. I ranked up even more after that, but didn't manage to hit the mission select to see if there are more missions available. I've got the feeling the weird ship that's floating in the top right part of the screen is the indicator of completed missions. Which would suggest 4 missions until wizard mode?

I don't like the "kickback" of this table, I keep thinking I lost the ball, only to have the gate direct the ball directly towards the flipper, causing me to lose it anyway because I wasn't paying too much attention.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

YpPRsgF.jpg

 

Just played a nice long game. I think I got two extra-balls. I learned a lot.

-In the first mission, its all about the bumpers. The other flashing lanes just give you more mission time. Mission time is weird on this table. The mode doesn't end when the timer finishes, you lose a ship. So the bumper-hits determine how many ships you take out while the other flashing lanes reset the time until you lose another ship.

-The second mission is pretty simple; hit all the flashing lanes without shooting non-flashing lanes. Your ship count is the amount of non-flashing lanes you can shoot before the mode will be failed.

-The third mission (I'm thinking of repair, I'm not sure if it is third) is interesting because you are basically shooting all the lanes, but in order to launch the required amount of ships, you have to send some off. So each lane you shoot three times is a ship launched, but launching a ship opens that lane back up for another ship to be launched from it (I think).

-I beat four missions and then it automatically selects one called capital assault. I had a lot of trouble with this. I didn't manage to beat it, but I started it 5 or so times during this one game. Basically you have to shoot both bumper ramps and then shoot one of them again immediately after opening the hyper-drive. You have to do it 5 times and the who mode is timed. Very difficult for me to make those shots under pressure.

-The promotion lane seems to start a multi-ball and whenever you lose a ball it tells you that a new mission is available. I think there are as many extra missions as there are little emblems below the flippers because every time I lost a ball in promotion multi-ball, it lit one of those emblems.

-The kickbacks get activated by lighting all the letters in the inlanes and outlanes and then shooting an orbit.

 

I think that's everything I figured out during that last game. The things I'm still really curious about is what the extra missions are (of course) and figuring out what the upgrades do.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I hat a 60mil game that I really enjoyed yesterday. I can beat the first mission half the time now.

I think I'm going to read the rule-sheet today because I don't think I'm going to be able to figure out what the fleet-meter on the bottom means or what any of the upgrades do. I've come to really enjoy this table, much more than I expected I would. It has a lot of similarities to Pasha, but this table feels a lot less squished. Maybe it's because I'm not using the default view on it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I didn't have a lot of time this week to play pinball, and today I sucked big time. Played quite a few games and only 1 breached 10M :/

I some how managed to loose my ball in the left and right outlanes a lot, especially during mission 1 phase 2.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If y'all are interested in extending the tournament an extra week, I'd be down. I'm probably going to keep playing either way. The wizard-mode is within reach and I'm still having a good time playing it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

O.K. So I only got up to 30mil this week, and am unmotivated to go through all that stuff you gotta do to put up a pic of it since it's such a bad score.

Me and this table. So the trouble for me was that I hit a lot  (like 3/4 of the time a lot) of dud shots on here. I have a natural place where I hit the flippers, it's always the same, one some tables it leads me somewhere good and on others it doesn't. Aside from that if I want to make a specific shot I just catch the ball. On this table my natural flipper hit is between the ramps on both sides, so I hit a dud shot and it goes down the outlanes or so fast down the middle I lose it. I tried catching it for every shot but it is a bouncy, fast moving table and that caused a lot of ball losing too. I tried hitting the flippers at different times, but I am programmed. So yeah, probably won't be playing the extra week.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm at a cafe right now.

It just occurred to me that looking at strangers has a similar feeling to table nudging. I want to do it a lot, but I resist and conserve my efforts in fear that I may tilt. In the case of the cafe, The frequency is restricted to much less than 2 times every 15 seconds.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I also have troubles hitting the ramps on this table, it's always a little bit too much to the left or right. I also often fail to get enough speed to get all the way to the end of some ramps. So yeah, this table feels slightly off in a lot of places. It makes it look like a lot of tables have really similar basic ball paths.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm still playing.

I beat the first four missions again and got stuck on the fifth...again.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I also have troubles hitting the ramps on this table, it's always a little bit too much to the left or right. I also often fail to get enough speed to get all the way to the end of some ramps. So yeah, this table feels slightly off in a lot of places. It makes it look like a lot of tables have really similar basic ball paths.

 

I think they do have similar paths on most tables, because when they are a little off I can tell because of all my dud shots. clyde can reprogram himself to hit the flippers at new times, but I haven't figured out how to yet.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm way late, but I took a few shots at Starfighter tonight and ended up with 34,496,690. Better than everyone on my friend list that isn't posting on this thread at least, and half way to ElMuerte.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Anyone playing on PS4 or via Steam? I’m desperately in need of friends to compete against, especially in Pinball FX 2 PS4 & Pinball Arcade PC. My Playstation ID is zovietfrance & Steam ID is Manresa.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Pinball FX3 is out. With cross play between PS4 and Steam; and XBox, Windows 10 and Steam. With custom tournaments.

Most of your Pinball FX2 will be imported in 3 for free.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've played a few hours of FX3. Overall I think it's cool they released a new game for free with 90% of existing tables carried over (a few are missing due to licensing). The tables look and feel pretty much the same as I remember, with some visual upgrades. The new multiplayer modes look nice if I can convince any friends to join in.

 

The interface is better but still a bit unwieldy. If you set a local high score with a controller you still have to switch to keyboard to enter your name, every single time.

 

Given the focus on competition I think the game splits player attention too widely; 68 is already a lot of tables, and with 5 modes each that's 340+ leaderboards in the game. Worse is that the default mode lets you level up upgrades like "bumpers score 20% extra" for future runs on a table. That's a huge score advantage for experienced players, when pinball is already hard enough for beginners to get into. It was presumably intended to incentivise replaying but to me doesn't make the game feel any different, just artificially inflates scores once you've played a table a few times and makes leaderboards fairly meaningless. I wish classic mode was the default.

 

Superscore is confusing now too, instead of just being the sum of your high scores across all tables it's based on how many times you've ranked on a leaderboard (?)

 

Still, I intend to keep playing and find a few tables to get really familiar with. Anyone else playing this?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Redownloading all my tables is an inconvenience and I haven't heard about any new features that make me think it is worthwhile to do that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, instead of posting your highscore here and timing the thing you can simply do it all in-game.

 

With the physics changes quite a few tables are slightly different. I noticed this really in Skyrim, hitting the skillshot is much more difficult now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm installing it now. I read the Tom Chick review and I want to examine the purist-sentiment I feel welling up in me. The leveling-up sounds like sacriledge (though I imagine it could get more folks into pinball abd he says that classic leaderboards are still available so why not). I want to find out if I enjoy the experience-points idea or if it'll feel like added bloat to something elegant.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I enjoy maxing out the challenges on the tables. It's helping me get into tables I've never liked and giving me reasons to play old favorites again (though briefly).

I like the 1-ball challenge the most, but part of my process is to unlock the absurdly over-powered rewind-time upgrade by getting 5 stars in the 3rd challenge type. 

I think it's cool that the latter challenge types allow folks to see what completing a mode is like since they have always-on ball-saves. 

The scoring system that includes upgrades does bloat scores, but I like that the default mode accounts for time spent on a particular table. I also like that is essentially makes the table easier over time. A lot of Zen's tables have become too easy for me which results in a single game lasting +30minutes in a lot of cases, but for beginners I can see this potentially incentivizing them to keep learning a table until they come across the wizard-mode. For the tables that take too long to lose on, I'll just stick to classic after I max-out the challenges.

 

 

Also, the table-guides are much better than they used to be.

 

I'll join a tournament if one of you starts one. My only preference would be that the scoring be classic.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

well, obvious classic scoring as that balances the playing field

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
14 minutes ago, elmuerte said:

well, obvious classic scoring as that balances the playing field

 

But if we level the playing field, the ball will never drain. It'll just stay up in one of the orbits. :getmecoat

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I said balance it, not level it. Something can be balanced, but not leveled.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now