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Doctor says "Then don't do that!"
Maybe use the left flipper to hit the saucer or change the timing of the right flipper. Bounce to the side more than straight in?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYZElOmFoQ
i find you will get good runs on the worst of tables the more you play..
1) The ball on this table is just totally spaz. It's ridiculous how long it takes for it to come to rest.
2) The bounciness (restitution) of the ball of OFF THE SCALE! Unbelievable at best.
3) The limited amount of random(ocity) in digital pinball is causing what the OP hates the most...which is what I hate the most. I'd say 70% of all shots up to the saucer gate is STDM! However, I'm finding that it's happening to me mostly off the left flipper. My guess is the two of us are polarizing our experiences and if we could see the other's method, we'd probably be ok...While this is chalked up to GitGud, I'm a fkin god at these games and it's just off. It's totally broken.
4) The game doesn't register the left flipper held for super skill shots unless you wait about 2 seconds after the table's started and then hold it. Otherwise, it puts it in the pops.
5) The game starts refusing to launch the ball entirely. It will only launch if I up-nudge at the same time as hitting launch. Once in this mode, you can't hit launch to continue either. My X-Button kicks the crap out of enemies on other games...so it's your game.
6) The game ALWAYS restarts with the additional animations activated in standard single player, making me hit 3 on my controller to turn it off...every time. Make that stick.
7) The ball is skipping frames down near the flippers almost universally. It also skips when a light bounce sends it up slow enough to just turn around to gravity and come back down. At, or near, the apex of that...skipped frames.
8) Some of the animations skip frames.
9) The slings are too sensitive.
10) Post passing is a fkin nightmare on every level.
11) IT's LITERALLY NO FUN!!! Nothing says "GTFO and shut me off" harder, louder and faster than making the ball drain constantly after every other shot. Combine that with the ball skipping frames and teleporting around, I can't stand this table for more than a single try or two. Today I put in like 10 attempts, just to be thorough. Each game was more conclusively irritating than the last. The balls started draining faster, it got glitchier and put me closer to my original feeling about digital pinball than ever before. I shelved this game, and all other pinball sims, for the entire year because I just started to feel like the whole thing was getting stupid and annoying and putting me in bad moods. This just compounded that like a billion times.
I have proof the table is setup to be completely irritating and frustrating. The fact that a good portion of my friends list hasn't really put up any good scores on the table is proof enough. Almost every table in the game has tons of scores that are all way high and a really good challenge to meet. Some of my friends are the best players in this game. Hardly any of them have put up good scores..which means they're not putting in any time on it. They're all hardcore pinballers, great in real life and even more amazing when playing this game. There's no reason they would stay away from this, one of the most classic and all-time greatest pinball tables of all time. There's something driving everybody away from it...and it's this...
...IT'S ANNOYING AF!!!!
However...so is the real thing. So I'm torn. DO I really ask for it to be made "easier". Actually, that's not what I want. I don't mind challenging...but holy lord folks...not like this. Not like this.
They also agreed that ZEN is one of the better companies when it comes to taking feedback from the players. I hope they decide to visit this table and perhaps just throw a hair more drag on the ball and lower the bounciness.
Again, it's VERY important for me to stress that this table is supposed to be difficult. But, it's supposed to be able to be wrangled in with experience and increase in skill. This table is just one step above too punishing for that to be worth us putting in the effort on our side. We're all willing, but not if it's really not looking like it's going to get better. Right now I feel the more time I put into it, the more damage I'm going to do to us both as it's just pushing me towards frustration and not really ever showing me that there's something I can do about it.
I also want to stress that I'm SO aware that I could probably just get better at it with a lot of time. Unfortunately, that means I'm just going to be looking for safer ways to cheese it.
Here is my strategy guide for Classic Arcade. It used my one, and so far only, time that I beat Ruler of the Universe on Classic Arcade.
https://youtu.be/QoCDsznx0xs
The good news is that Zen listened to the feedback and refined the physics. The physics of Universal Monsters and Volume 5 is much more manageable. Zen is going to go forward with that and will also update the previous volumes, including AfM, to have the new physics.
I'm actually a bit torn about how I feel about that. because one side of me wants to eventually rule the universe on tournament mode one day. but another side of me thinks it's just gonna be a fluke if I do. So yeah It'll be an achievemnt but, can it be repeated? and the answer to that is probably no. eh, maybe I'll just give up on pinball.
The thing I noticed the most about re-playing these first williams packs is that,, yeah they are hard. They make you doubt yourself. (sh.. have I lost my mojo??) But then you eventually have go at the zen physics and you're all good again. I know that many "purists" never bother playing the zen physics on these tables. So I can't help think that ,,yeah, they are probably setup too hard to be fun, for the majority of people. Personally I kinda like having that one table I haven't gotten to WM yet on. Gives me something to strive for, and a chance to maybe learn a new skill, trying to overcome the dangers on the table. But I also realize that ,, I'm kinda ok at pinball these days. and there are lots of people who will not be able to play "a good ball" on it.
Being able to have at least one good ball is kind of my metric for how fun a table is. It's not much fun if you can't have at least one good ball every now and then.
But.....
This will all soon™ change once they update the physics to all the packs. So we shall have to wait and see how it plays then. I think they are aware of the feedback of how brütal the first packs was and have noticably tuned it down a notch in the later packs. Still hard, but no umlauts. I think they will take it into account once they work the tables over with the physics.
We shall just have to wait and see.
Everyone told Zen how amazing their classic arcade physics are and now there's no going back.
If people were not so quick to get excited about the (admittedly improved) physics and took a moment to evaluate them against playing or even watching the real tables for a longer while, they would have discovered that indeed Zen's physics are too eager, the ball is too fast in a lot of situations and this leads to artificial difficulty, that many are happy to write off as "realism".
Don't get me wrong, on the other side of the equation TPA is obviously very slow and floaty in a lot of situations, I'm not implying it's superior to FX3 WMS physics in any way, but then again, TPA is nearly 10 years old now and FX3 is supposed to be the leading pinball platform so expectations are high.
Friendly reminder that they have been telling us they'd migrate the latest version of the physics to all Williams tables for nearly a year now...
Pinball Arcade is obviously dated and floaty. Zaccaria is your only real competition in terms of physics and while I like their ball speed a little better, I feel their randomness is poor and the ball bounces off flippers and surfaces are a bit too deterministic and static.
I think we reached a consensus that Universal and Vol 5 had pretty much the best iteration of your physics and everyone has been waiting for you to back-port those physics to older Williams packs.
The only issue I have with the physics on some tables is that the ball can feel a bit artificially fast just for the sake of difficulty and it sometimes moves visibly faster than it does in real life. I'm talking strictly about Classic Arcade, as it's the only mode I play. Even if tournament has a steeper table angle, I expect Arcade to be the manufacturer stock angle and some tables feel a bit too fast on that.
I'm not talking just about the ball going back down the table at you, even slingshots and ricochets can sometimes feel a bit too fast on some Williams tables.
I will be happy with even just unified Vol 5 physics on all WMS tables. I don't expect corrections to ball speed at that will probably take too much work and balancing, but I feel something like a 3-5% slower ball movement will be a positive step towards realism.
I've given lots of feedback to you guys, but this is the first time that the questions was actually asked after Vol 4 ;-)
This is something I wrote when Universal Monsters came out.
Considering the Classic Arcade physics to date, from my understanding (and the tables I have played):
- Vol 1 - 2 has the same physics. Flipper tricks are very inconsistent and tip passes are missing. The Party Zone has completely different physics with e.g. the nudging way too strong and the ball speed slowed down. Black Rose is apparently the same as The Party Zone but I haven't played it yet.
- Vol 3 has similar physics, but they slowed the ball speed down. Flipper tricks, especially on Theatre of Magic, is much easier to do, but still not all that consistent. Still can't do tip passes.
- Vol 4, they introduced rubber and movement to the flippers so especially tip passes became possible, and deadflipper bounces are more realistic. Flipper tricks are still not that consistent to pull off, so not really useful in practice to use in a game.
- Universal Monsters - they refined the Vol 4 flipper physics, slowed the ball down considerably, and the ball is now more weighted (after a demonstration by Spacies arcade comparing a marble to Vol 4 ball physics). Flipper tricks are much more consistent now, backhand shots are possible, and tip passes works well so I'm using it a whole lot more in my gameplay.
I feel they slowed the ball down a little bit too much in Universal Monsters, but the rest of the physics feels amazing. It is still tough to play, but you lost that feeling of never being fully in control of the ball that you had with especially Vol 1 - 2 on tables such as Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars. Looking at real table footage e.g. the PAPA tutorials, that is what I expect it to be like.
and here is something else I wrote on Vol 4
I looked at Universal Monsters objectively compared to real table footage and my experience with Vol 4 (and previous volumes) and quickly realised what bothers me about it, and specifically why it doesn't have that edge/zip of real table play that keeps it challenging and make the difference. I posted comparison videos and discussed it in much more detail all over the place but in short, these three main factors in combination is the issue (note I speak relative to Vol 4):
- the ball speed is reduced
- the ball weight is increased too much so it gets bogged down i.e. no chance of the ball slipping off the flipper anymore from poor ball control if you don’t pay attention
- the randomness in ball interaction was reduced i.e. the ball predictably and reliably does what you expect like in Zen physics.
The crux of the matter is that it now plays much more like zen originals in terms of predictability and ease of aiming and the player is not being pushed into making mistakes by the table. Zen physics is not near an Arcade-perfect simulation anymore (read Zen's Williams FAQ). Well, not an Arcade that is interested in making any money ;-)
and after Vol 5 came out, I wrote the following when playing TotAN (also relevant for the other two tables)...
TotAN on Classic Arcade plays for me with pronounced side to side movement resulting in super hungry outlanes (especially the right). Nudging to prevent a ball going out is near on useless because the post rubbers are very bouncy... you are more likely to bounce a ball that was not going to go out by itself out, than keeping a ball in that was on its way out.
The more I play TotAN, the more I'm convinced they simulate it on a flatter slope. The ball is very bouncy. It is e.g. much harder to do a post pass than on even the Universal Monsters pack. Attack from Mars I could do it all day long. Live catches are also very uncertain because of the bounciness and it is very difficult to get close to a clean live catch. Then also the deadly outlanes as discussed in paragraph above. I definitely prefer the faster ball, where it is actually easier to control the ball.
I actually like the way you guys have increased the "boom" factor by getting the rubber slings / posts more dynamic. But the flipper's bounce 'feel' a bit of a mess to me.
Show me 1 place in the (AFM remake) video, that Rage posted, where the ball bounces halfway back up the table from flippers held in a cradle position.
IDK Linne ... maybe I'm not the best person to judge Monsters. I never liked that table even when it was new. But I'd say that the FX version is at the tip of what a casual player could control... even with some practice.
AFM is an interesting table to talk about when it comes to physics and brutality. IRL ... it was probably one of the very fastest white-boards ever created. It was only slowed down as the mini modes / games were introduced into it. When the top (loop) was still open and the saucers fired instantly... that table was pure brutality... ... just saying.
I like the way TOTAN and Gophers play on regular. I really really like TOTAN :)
[edit... I'm being too hard on Cirqus. It's a good table that many people like a lot]
In classic... yeah maybe a wee bit bouncy still. :)