Parting Thoughts for Farsight and Fellow Posters

Mark W**a

Banned
Sep 7, 2012
1,511
0
I post here a lot. Too much. Way, way, way too much. But I've still got nothing on the voices that are currently shaping the game (for better or) for worse (for worse).

And since this is my last post I'm not going to hold back. I'm going to speak my full mind and not give a ****.

First off to you Farsight. I love the game, I loved it on Xbox so much that I started posting here, but ever since I started gaming primarily on my Phone (iPhone 4S) I've felt like an unpaid game tester. Seriously. My most anticipated release, Scared Stiff, has end of game bugs that still haven't been resolved, and that was a late October release. We're not talking about some obscure *X then Y then Z* chain of events triggering bug, we're talking a bug that just makes the game not work after you've entered a high score. How the HELL does stuff like that make it past testing? Do you test? Serious question. I don't believe you do.

I understand you are a small developer. So may I make a simple suggestion? Take a month off. All of January, CLEAR IT. WE DONT NEED A TABLE PACK, we will survive. Take the entire month and do NOTHING BUT BUG FIXES. There are bugs throughout all the games including RELEASE tables. This stuff has to be sorted. Now I take into account that you guys are small, and have bitten off more than you could chew with deciding to release on every platform in existance. It's too late to back out now (I guess), but if I was your boss my first order of business would be to simply cut out platforms that aren't paying the bills. Primarily PSVita. I'd say Mac, but since it's just an upscaled iOS port, it's free money. PSVita on the other hand, the quality is so damn low, and the userbase so small (the handheld is a failure and will be discontinued soon enough, a shame as it's a great piece of tech but was never going to survive in a post-smart phone world, even 3DS is struggling) I can't imagine it's made any money for them, and furthermore, development resources are development resources if cutting out a platform allows you more time to work on the others, than so be it.

I know that might even mean cutting off my platform of choice, Xbox 360 (GASPS!). What's shameful about that platform isn't the 40k per patch fees, which means packing in multiple updates to keep profit, but rather the fact that you haven't made any kind of dent in Pinball FX's marketshare, despite having the VASTLY superior game. 10k base pack sales is pathetic, that's like obscure Japanese XBLA game bad (I should know, I own most, if not all of them. Reminds me to buy Trouble Witches...). For a userbase as large and as online-connected as the 360 you should have, minimum, 100k sales of the base pack. Then the 40k fees would no longer be such an issue.

How can you achieve this? Well I have a marketing background and I have some ideas, I could do a big powerpoint on it (maybe I will), some of my ideas would cost you, but here's one that wouldn't cost you a dime (ok well 2.50$ but well worth it): give away Arabian Nights for free. That would give you huge downloads, getting you easily into XBLA top ten, giving you tons of free advertising and sales, without spending a dime on dashboard ads. Then you just break up the other 3 tables into the same pricing structure as iOS. This is how Pinball FX got so damn huge. I know, I watched it happen I've been gaming on Xbox 360 since 2005 and checking the XBLA marketplace is a habit I do just about every time I turn on the console. Most people wouldn't know or give a damn about PinFX if it wasn't in the top 10, and it's there because they give away a free table, while charging for every other table individually. There has never, to my knowledge, ever, been on dash advertising for PinFX, barring the Marvel tables and that was post MS aquisition and well after they were already a million seller. 10$ base price is scaring potential buyers away. The per-table PinFX model (as well as your mobile model) is superior in every way. To my knowledge, something like this is being tried with PS+? Except you're giving away the ENTIRE base pack for free, that's a huge mistake. You don't do that. You give away 1, that makes them salivate for more, better tables. I know that sounds like shady marketing speak, that's because it is! MARKETING IS SHADY! (hence why I got out of it), but it works I know what I'm talking about here! Base pack with 4 tables is enough to keep them very busy, and many potential buyers will pass on DLC who wouldn't have otherwise. Still, with that being said, it's a step in the right direction and I feel the PS+ promotion will be successful, just not as successful as it could potentially be. Anyways, moving on.

Next up. The new menu. It's an alpha build. An alpha build with too many scripting bugs and quirks to make it to Besta form. Oh I'm sorry this is the release. Ok let me laugh harder. Again, there is no way this was tested in any fashion. If it was, please fire your game testers.

I mean when I saw it I was like, please tell me those are placeholder graphics and sounds? How can you honestly release that to the public. Guys when people see your game for the first time, the UI is the first thing they see. A classy, well made, functional UI gives the impression this is a polished, well made game. The menu you have now, that might have worked or looked OK for a shovelware PlayStation 1 game in the mid 90's, but it's just flat out shameful for such an otherwise amazing pinball sim for 2012. After you just got game of the year, and other accolades people now more than ever are going to be seeing the game for the first time, and first impressions are a big deal. It's important. And that music. You cannot be serious with that. That's something the folks over at Snuggie would have been ashamed to put in one of their infomercials. Seriously public access shows would probably consider those tracks too crappy to use. I think you guys stole it from the opening to the Sports Collectibles show from Shop at Home circa 1998. I'm calling Don West...

Look my Sister is a graphic designer. She could slap something together OVERNIGHT, that BLOWS AWAY what you have now. Do you want her number? I am dead serious. On this board alone are plenty of people who would probably do this for you FOR FREE. Many of us, in the back of our minds, are all thinking the same thing. God, can't ****ing wait until the Steam release so modders can come in and really get to work on doing/fixing what Farsigh-don't (can't?).

If it seems like I care too much you're right. I got this as a gift for 3 family members this year, and 4 other family members I've gotten to buy over the last year. 2 of whom bought Xboxes JUST FOR THE GAME (50 year old pinball players, my Dad and Uncle). So I really care about the quality and I'm telling you this isn't hard, there are a million graphics design majors all across the damn country who could do a nicer job in their sleep. This is being talked about on another message forum as well, who likens the UI to that of a cheap chinese DVD player or car GPS.

Balanced difficulty: The release of Twilight Zone was soiled for me, not because it was too easy, but because people were complaining it was too easy. Here I was happier than a kitten in a field of flowers on a spring morning, Twilight Zone was here! Finally! It's amazing! Yet there was a huge vocal outcry day 1 (zero) about the tables "super easy" difficulty, and by huge I mean a very small, but rather loud, vocal few spearheaded by two incredibly outspoken individuals, who even in my heated meltdown, I still have too much class to call out by name. I will admit that it was definitely one of the easier releases, but I knew that no good would come out of such heated verbal discourse, and I was right. And instead of just maybe slightly tweaking the next release, you flat out made it brutally difficult. If you are going to take a small handful of people so seriously then why don't you just hire them? There's a video, I wish I had the damn link, but it's basically a fan video talking about why developers should NEVER LISTEN TO THEIR FANS. Of course that's a misnomer, it's good to listen to fans, but the point is fans are always going to ***** no matter what you do, sometimes it's simply best to ignore them. The most outspoken fans don't necessarily represent a large number of people and often times, they have no clue what the hell they are talking about. It's good to take fans into consideration but at the end of the day difficulty hasn't been an issue on any table until TZ, so it was never really a problem, and you need to know when to stick to your guns and ignore people and when to listen to them (like with BUGS!! etc.), which brings me to my next point:

Fix Pro Mode. It's a rip off. Not much I need to say that hasn't already been said. Charging 3.99 which is the price of a licensed, non-kickstarted table for what amounts to little more than OPTIONS (which should be free), a free camera mode, and two other features nobody asked for, is outrageous. Either lower the price or add some kind of actual value to it. You got me on Scared Stiff and Medieval Madness just because I'm a sucker for their over the top, unrated glory but now you've also got me on Star Trek because the difficult is unbalanced.

Serenity now, serenity now! Ok. I'm calm. I don't read big posts either (unless they are well written, and I'm bored), so :

TL;DR

Classy UI: Pay some college student 100$ and boom 3000% improvement.

Balanced difficulty

Better or Cheaper Pro Mode

FIX THE MOTHER ****ING BUGS

Xbox release; see you in February (March?...April?...2014?)

I bolded the entire paragraph that I feel is the most important. IF Farsight listens to me, one damn time, on one damn issue, this is the one, that could make the game the runaway success it deserves to be.

Love you guys take care now, tis been fun I'm out.
 
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Hinph

New member
Feb 29, 2012
230
0
Well, you gotta do what you gotta do, but I have enjoyed having you around here, even when we disagree on things... most notably on the table difficulty issue. Hah.

Take care, man.
 

Bonzo

New member
May 16, 2012
902
1
The paragraph you put bold because it's the most important to you says it all... You seem to don't think stuff through to the end and you don't listen closely enough. If FS gave a table away for free, they'd have to pay royalties for every single damn copy that's downloaded without earning a cent.

In addition Sean DosCarlos repeatedly stressed the fact that he was asking for an option to make the tables harder and a moderator of this forum replied to you saying that Bobby King, the one and only one responsible for tuning the table difficulty at FS didn't even read any of the threads in which we discussed the difficulty of TZ (or lack thereof).

Nevertheless, no hard feelings. At least you voiced your criticism in a civilized way. Let's hope for new Xbox content soon, cya then.
 
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Kolchak357

Senior Pigeon
May 31, 2012
8,102
2
I will miss your posts. I agree with many of them. But I don't think you are being fair when you say that FS should never listen to their fans and then turn around and be pissed when they don't listen to your suggestions. You can't have it both ways. In the end FS is going to do what FS thinks is best. I think they listen to fan feedback, but I don't think they let the fans make decisions for them.
Take a break from the forum, cool off, then come back. Differing ideas make this forum a more interesting place. Hope you decide to stick around.
 

Rudy Yagov

New member
Mar 30, 2012
836
0
Just gonna go ahead and say I play the game on Vita more than any other platform, so I pretty much stopped reading after that statement about "cutting" it.
 

Tabe

Member
Apr 12, 2012
833
0
Can't really contest much of what OP said regarding Pinball Arcade but just wanted to point that the 3DS isn't struggling. At all. It just passed the PS3 in sales in Japan. Not bad considering it's been on the market 1/3 as long.

Tabe
 

shutyertrap

Moderator
Staff member
Mar 14, 2012
7,334
0
Well, I'm gonna disagree with many of the statements the OP said, as I witnessed first hand what goes on up there. No intention of debating it here though...it'll be getting a nice fat post of its own you all can read on Christmas day. Until then, the best I can wish Mark is to have some patience, know that things ARE happening, don't give up posting quite yet.
 

spoonman

New member
Apr 20, 2012
1,435
3
I skimmed through it...

I had some strong feelings about certain bugs and lack of fixes, but what it comes down to is no one does it better than Farsight, so why bother complaining?
Just be happy we have The Pinball Arcade and that they will hopefully continue to improve and fix older bugs before moving onto new adventures..
 

Sean DonCarlos

Moderator
Staff member
Mar 17, 2012
4,293
0
Balanced difficulty: The release of Twilight Zone was soiled for me, not because it was too easy, but because people were complaining it was too easy. Here I was happier than a kitten in a field of flowers on a spring morning, Twilight Zone was here! Finally! It's amazing! Yet there was a huge vocal outcry day 1 (zero) about the tables "super easy" difficulty, and by huge I mean a very small, but rather loud, vocal few spearheaded by two incredibly outspoken individuals, who even in my heated meltdown, I still have too much class to call out by name. I will admit that it was definitely one of the easier releases, but I knew that no good would come out of such heated verbal discourse, and I was right. And instead of just maybe slightly tweaking the next release, you flat out made it brutally difficult. If you are going to take a small handful of people so seriously then why don't you just hire them? There's a video, I wish I had the damn link, but it's basically a fan video talking about why developers should NEVER LISTEN TO THEIR FANS. Of course that's a misnomer, it's good to listen to fans, but the point is fans are always going to ***** no matter what you do, sometimes it's simply best to ignore them. The most outspoken fans don't necessarily represent a large number of people and often times, they have no clue what the hell they are talking about. It's good to take fans into consideration but at the end of the day difficulty hasn't been an issue on any table until TZ, so it was never really a problem, and you need to know when to stick to your guns and ignore people and when to listen to them (like with BUGS!! etc.), which brings me to my next point...
You should have gone ahead and used my name, Mark. It's not like the people here aren't aware of what I think about Twilight Zone's current difficulty. But most of them were also aware that I wanted a second, optional mode to contain the more-challenging version of the tables, and that I said repeatedly that I did not want the existing table changed. I was here when CV's outlanes went from sleepy to murderous and witnessed the outrage myself. And again, it is not as if TZ is broken because it's easy. I still enjoy playing TZ...it's just I can't play it "seriously" anymore, because that takes too long. Everyone seemed to get all that...except you.

I do not know why ST:TNG came out harder than the other tables, but I can assure you I had nothing to do with it. Also, people have been asking FarSight to stop making the tables easier ever since Bobby first revealed in the WGN Radio interview that the tables were nerfed. I was actually fine with the tables being relatively easier until TZ came out (although I admit I had one eyebrow raised at SS). Even then, I am not upset because TPA TZ is easier than the real TZ, I'm upset because TPA TZ is one of the easiest TPA tables when it should be alongside MM and RBION as one of the hardest.

As for whether I know what I'm talking about, I have developed software as an independent developer and as part of a small business for 17 years. I happen to specialize in the same programming language (C++) that is used to create TPA and incidentally was also used in many of the tables' ROMs. I did work in video surveillance systems, where I integrated our hardware and software with all sorts of third-party devices...a process similar to emulating a table's ROM in that both involve communicating with a outside entity you have little control over. I even have two new posts on my blog (On Pride and Programming and The Lust for Results) where I try to explain for the benefit of non-developers here some of what actually goes into development and bug fixing.

On the pinball side, I have detailed strategies for 8 of the tables posted in these forums, all of which seem to have been well-received by the community here. My high scores sit on my blog for the world to see, whether they're good, bad or ugly. I have nearly 1300 posts on this forum; I have to assume that if I have been speaking bull-@#$%! all this time someone would have called me on it by now. And I've started using my real name, which is not something people generally do on the Internet if they're trying to pull a fast one. I have nothing to hide; there is no nefarious agenda here to get FarSight to do my bidding or to influence the direction of TPA. I suppose I should be flattered that you think I have so much influence in Big Bear Lake, but I must confess it's not true.

So goodbye, and thanks for the relatively civil discussion while you were here. I hope you are able to find a pinball game more suitable to your tastes in the near future.
 

dtown8532

New member
Apr 10, 2012
1,685
0
I don't think ST:TNG is that bad as far as difficulty goes. The real table has BRUTAL outlanes and the ios version is not near as bad, and I don't even bother nudging. I find it to be too much of a pain on the touch screens. I do agree that TZ is a little too easy and could do with a little more randomness in the kickouts and outlane drains. Nonetheless, I do really enjoy playing it. One of my all time faves and I just don't have the cash to buy a real one. Just my thoughts.
 
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Rafie

New member
Jul 17, 2012
336
0
Take care of yourself, Mr. Wyda. While I agree and disagree at the same time. It's no need to bring it up. Have a safe holiday to you and yours.
 

Jeff Strong

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 19, 2012
8,144
2
I think it's interesting that Mark thinks they made ST:TNG harder because of our TZ difficulty discussions. Sometimes I wish we had that sort of influence in regards to improving the game, but as Bonzo pointed out, Bobby hasn't even read those threads yet, so it's just simply not the case, especially when we were only asking for an option, and not a global change, which we repeatedly pointed out to Mark...but apparently to little avail. And if you look back on those discussions, they weren't as "heated" as Mark makes them out to be. They were quite civil actually, and it certainly wasn't "a huge verbal outcry"...

Anyway, have a good one, Mark. Hope you have a wonderful new year. I always thought you were a pretty good dude, even when we disagreed.

Oh, and I guess we will have a lot less console wars around here now :)
 
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Fungi

Active member
Feb 20, 2012
4,888
2
I really wish we did have an influence on the difficulty. Because if we did, I'd be enjoying the Cirqus again.
 

SKILL_SHOT

Banned
Jul 11, 2012
3,659
1
Cant you change difficulty in pro mode? And those decisions are made by people that have been in the pin industry for awhile and want to tone it down not to detract from the fun of pinball, you play a real game its over quick! and the only way to prolong your games is practice...or dumb it down wich FS has done but all that does is raise the scores either you have SKILL or you dont. I must add after a 12ver it plays like real pinball:D atleast the scores reflect that.
.
 

Worf

New member
Aug 12, 2012
726
0
And that's the problem with the real pin industry as well - it's a HUGE balance on ball time - too short, the player feels cheated, and the table goes idle, and operator doesn't make money. Too long, the player is happy, but the table is occupied for a long time and the operator only gets 1 credit the whole time. And operators are the ones who buy the machines, so they're the customers. Keep them happy and they'll order more pins. Upset them and they'd scrap the pins they have and put two arcade machines in its place. (Home pin ownership has never been a consideration for manufacturers - owners are a VERY small part of their purchases).

It's why purely computer pinball sims have it easier - they can balance for fun, and not what would make operators money (because there are none). A sim that costs $10 doesn't have to earn it back - only the purchaser needs to feel they got their $10 worth.

And why Farsight has a much harder problem - because the games were made to make money by balancing fun with game time and operator profits. They're easier to accommodate the fact that sims are harder to play as there's less "feel". They're easier to inexperienced players can feel they got their money's worth because while they can spend $10 on TPA with the original 4 tables. For mobile users, $10 is a fortune for an app. For a console, it's a reasonable price, maybe even on the low side. For a PC or a Mac game, it's low (probably worth closer to $20).

So yeah, real machines are harder. But TPA has to justify itself and it's harder because it's confined to real games. Perhaps Farsight would be best to concentrate on the fact that these machines are real, and not just some figment of some designer's imagination that can't be converted to real life. Maybe provide more value by showing real playback on a real table for hints and tips. Emphasize the reality of the tables. Add in interviews with the table designers. There's a lot of "cheap" value-add Farsight could put in TPA to make it more real.

The same should go for all the promo videos to advertise on Greenlight and such. Real tables, cut with the simulated ones. I'm betting 90% of the people who play TPA (who aren't on this board) have NO idea that the tables are real.
 

night

New member
May 18, 2012
2,109
0
FarSight is a small firm releasing Pinball tables in a too high tempo on too many platforms. This is the reason why bugs and platform issues won't be fixed and graphic artwork is below average.
 
N

Nik Barbour

Guest
See you Mark - Have a great Christmas!
Hopefully you'll return again sometime!
 

Kevlar

New member
Feb 20, 2012
2,631
0
FarSight is a small firm releasing Pinball tables in a too high tempo on too many platforms. This is the reason why bugs and platform issues won't be fixed and graphic artwork is below average.

This statement sums it all up for me. So many tables released on so many platforms with a small team is not going to yield a high quality bug free product ( yes I know nothing is bug free ).
 

canuck

New member
Nov 28, 2012
880
1
Guys, I'm quite sure that Farsight has a marketing department and a well thought out plan and rational for how they price the DLC. In fact, we really have no idea how much money they make on these tables, but considering they have a huge roll out for future upcoming tables in 2013, they can't be doing that bad. Indeed, Farsight has been winning accolades and recognition from various media outlets for their software.

Regarding multi-platform, clearly mobile is the future. I use an iPad and I'm quite happy with the quality.
 

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