Fish Tales ball speed slowed down / Game Modes...

[Kimkom]

Zen,

Merry Christmas to the team! Hope all is well.

On the latest build, what is happening with the ball speed on Fish Tales?

It has been slowed down dramatically and playfield friction appears to have been increased a lot.

This is also the only WMS table I can see which has an option for Game Mode - Normal / Game Mode - Challenging under the Classic play mode.

I understand from the latest patch notes and video that there is now a 'gameplay difficulty' option to be incorporated. Perhaps the intention is to roll this option to all the tables?

In theory this sounds like a good idea, but I can only see this adding confusion.

If the plan is to roll to other tables, perhaps the ball speed needs increasing a little more, as I'm finding that even the 'Challenging' option is much slower than the old version, to the point where I'm sure some players will be able to spend hours on a single game.

From your latest Patch Notes - 2023.12.07 - Holiday Update....

Features:

Gameplay difficulty (separate leaderboard) - for PC, PlayStation and Xbox

Cheers!

[Pinballwiz45b]

Clarifying: All 9 of the newest releases, plus the 3 free tables, received physics options for all game modes, and leaderboards are now split between the two.

Normal: The FX3 set of physics seen on games prior. Falls more in line with the Nintendo Switch version of the game.

Challenging: The FX set of physics originally found on Williams, that's been here all this time.

Pro is left untouched...for now.

[Kimkom]

Ah understood. Strange that this wasn't applied to all tables before release of the update.

Having played a few more games of FT, I think my experience of slower play in Challenging mode may have been placebo... Classic - Normal Mode is definitely very slow though. I guess it's a good way to make the WMS tables more accessible.

[Kimkom]

I see today's patch notes now confirm that the gameplay modes are only for the new and free tables.

Zen, is this option coming for all WMS tables?

EDIT: Just seen that this option is planned for all tables.

[remm]

I really dislike the old slow (supposedly easy) physics on the one Williams table that got the update.
However I would say it better matches the design of an original like Sorcerers Lair and that one felt much better overall.

IMO the default mode should be challenging (or whatever) on Williams, since it s more similar to real tables behavior. Pro mode is way too hard for me overall, gave up after repeatedly failing to do any car moving stuff ...

[Kimkom]

Agree default should be Challenging mode, not the easy option.

[⎛⎝⎛-||-⎞ ⎠⎞]

I really appreciate the better/more realistic physics on the zen original. With the crippled FX3 (non pro) physics, they were stupidly easy and games could stretch to 20-30 minutes which is frankly ridiculous for pinball (and tedious AF too.)

With the updated physics, the older zen originals actually became more of a challenge and not as boring.

[Yakass]

Woah, what a massive step backwards. Feels like the panderverse for pinball. Just tried Fish Tales and almost fell asleep from boredom. Only my disbelief kept me awake.

To call this "Normal" mode and have it set as default is embarrassing. If we have to have a participation award mode like this, call it what it is: "easy" mode. And leave classic as default mode.