What separates the best players here from the rest?

So I'm doing a test run on some new settings for this game on PC, trying to get it to run smoother, and I try my hand at a game of Scared Stiff.

I proceed to have my best game ever, getting Monster Multiball three times, even activating Spider Mania for the very first time. I even get that last Wizard Goal, the 250K Beat The Crate shot, thus getting the Scared Wizard achievement, and with it, carte blanche to finally turn off Family Mode so I can hear the raunchy clips.

Oh, and all that above? On ball 1.



(Before you ask, yes, the score's font changes once you break 100,000,000. And I was lucky to get a screencap without any dripping blood animation blocking it.)

So I think I'm all that, right? My fingers are quite tired from holding the triggers on my 360 controller, but I'm glad I was able to get triple my highest score ever...even though, after this screenshot, the rest of my balls drain real quick. But I still end up with a score around 270 million, and of course all the Wizard Goals.

Then I go to the leaderboards...only to see that, sometime in the last month, Mark Miwurdz scored a billion.



Talk about sobering.

Thus, I have to ask...is there something I'm missing? Do I just lack the timing to hit the ramps over and over for ever-increasing rewards, like on this table and Juidge Dredd? Am I just not working hard enough?

Even with tilt as forgiving as Pinball Arcade's, it amazes me how Miwurdz and Pinballwiz45b can carry on these games so long, shooting so precisely for what seems like hours. This one game I just talked about took at least 30 minutes! I was afraid we'd have a power outage and I'd lose my score and Wizard Goal credit, or a random download-finished message would pop up and make the game crash (I once lost a 2B game of TZ this way, which would've been my highest score to date at the time), or some other calamity...

How do you guys do it?

they are great players whom I admire a great deal,i could never get to there level,but I just love playing pinball no matter how much I play like a boofhead !!!

Trackball said:

Thus, I have to ask...is there something I'm missing? Do I just lack the timing to hit the ramps over and over for ever-increasing rewards, like on this table and Juidge Dredd? Am I just not working hard enough?

Even with tilt as forgiving as Pinball Arcade's, it amazes me how Miwurdz and Pinballwiz45b can carry on these games so long, shooting so precisely for what seems like hours. This one game I just talked about took at least 30 minutes!

How do you guys do it?

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How much TPA do you play? I'm only speaking for myself, but I play it a LOT. Steam says I've played it 6,770 hours... well that isn't right, but I'm probably over 1,000. I was not very good at TPA when I first started, and very gradually got better, and am still improving. I have never cared so much where my best scores were, as long as they were improving. The main reason I've played TPA so much is to first get almost all my scores into the top 1000, then the top 100, now the top 20...

At the highest level, stamina might be the most important factor. Thirty minutes? Some of the #1 games took over thirty HOURS. That's only for the very, very top, but I've had many three to twelve hour games (that's without pauses, I pause and take breaks frequently and so now often have games last over two or three days).

Having the optimum strategy is crucial for certain tables, and important for all of them, especially if you don't want to play many more hours than you need to . Most tables in TPA have terrific strategies laid out in detail in their individual forums. My advice: look for anything vikingerik and Tarek Oberdieck say.

invitro said:

How much TPA do you play? I'm only speaking for myself, but I play it a LOT. Steam says I've played it 6,770 hours... well that isn't right, but I'm probably over 1,000.

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...I have a lot of work to do.



And that's not counting the PS4 time, which I played before realizing my PC could run it.

I'm not the modern definition of "casual gamer." Video games (and, when I can find it, real-life pinball) are a hobby to me--a hobby I've been doing for over 25 years now.

I play games casually. That doesn't mean I stick to Bejeweled and FPSes all the time (though I do like the former). It's just for fun. If I want to play Dark Souls or whatever, I'll play it.

And seeing how dedicated people like Mark Miwurdz and Tarek Oberdieck are...man. You guys are several orders of magnitude over any level of skill I could ever hope to reach.

Now, if only the tilt wasn't so darn forgiving...seriously, I'd love an option to adjust tilt sensitivity, in addition to just turning it off altogether. (And yes, I'd be fine if this meant no leaderboard eligibility.)

To be honest, first: have no life. Play only this like crazy and u will become good at it (if you are over 500 hours and still got no top 100 scores u will never get good at it). Then u realize it's actually very boring and way to easy and it's not about skill at all. It's about who got the most time and who wants to put the most hours in. Not something to be very proud of. I have no clue why somebody wants to be first so badly that he plays something very very boring for days just to get that first place. I have one clue but i can't say that or i'll get banned. So trust me, u don't even want to become very good at this, cause it's booooooring. With all the buggy tables wasting so many hours it will become a big waste of time. I prefer Zaccaria allready. Don't have to play for days and days for one game!

So in short the answer: TIME.

Sidenote: You might already know, but Scared Stiff has the reputation as one of the easiest games in TPA in terms of keeping the ball alive. I've honestly only played the TPA version a handful of times because it's such a time grinder and I'm not even that great of a player.

And yeah, totally agree with you about the tilt being way too forgiving. It's something we've brought to Farsight's attention numerous times, but they don't seem to have any desire to mess with it or even add more custom settings.

Trackball said:

Now, if only the tilt wasn't so darn forgiving...seriously, I'd love an option to adjust tilt sensitivity, in addition to just turning it off altogether. (And yes, I'd be fine if this meant no leaderboard eligibility.)

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There is one thing you can do. In the pro menu in operator mode, there's an option for how many tilt warnings you get before tilting. Put it on one and the game instantly tilts when you shake too much.

Not only are huge scores boring because of grinding long games - they're boring because you want to avoid every shot, plunge, kickout or whatever that has the slightest risk of draining. During multiballs, you want to trap one or more balls and keep looping or ramping with the other flipper.
Also to get big score, it's not only hitting a ramp over and over - it's about having a counter move ready if you miss.

Huge part of big scores are extra balls - if there is no limit to total extra balls during a game and you can collect extra ball more often than you drain a ball, you can easily go infinite and the only limit is the score rollover limit. (Bally/williams often have limit of 4 extra balls at one time, but no total limit).

On some tables, there are easy modes you want to exploit. Like Star Trek - starting borg multiball is ridiculously easy and safe. Just do that over and over and over. You don't have to be good at anything else pretty much. Not even good at making jackpot shots. Only having that right loop shot down is enough pretty much. Avoid everything else. On medieval madness, the multiball is also VERY easy to start. Go for that over and over. Find the exploit - exploit it!

Just keep it boring and repetetive and you'll be in the tops in no time.


Oh and just a reminder, turning off family mode means you have to go through operator menu and your high score will not get posted on leaderboard.


And a few tips for general pinball skill improvement:
If you want to improve your skills as pinball player IRL (and pinball arcade) through pinball arcade, DON'T RESTART. Play only 1 or maximum 2 games of on table at a time, then switch to another table. Play only max 3 ball games. You keep your playing controlled and composed.
The restarting style is devastating to real pinball playing, especially real tournaments. You develop a much to risky style, even the slightest shift in risk taking makes a huge difference. You want to learn to make the best out of every situation. Make the most out of every shot. Probability calculation of risk-reward is MAJOR. Avoid unnessecary shots. Catching ball, trapping ball, avoiding danger, being methodical, focusing. Exploiting railroads (patterns and paths the ball will take every time in exactly the same way) doesn't give you much but looping ramps and loops and stuff is actually good practice. Even though IRL no flipper feed is ever exactly the same, repeating running shots demands focus and also if the reward keeps getting higher there is a nerve to it that is good practice.

I disagree on some points here:
- I think the mental stamina required to go for the really high scores is an impressive skill or characteristic (depending how trainable it really is) in itself, and I don't mean that as sarcasm. I have tried a few times to go the length so to speak, and I found it very hard to keep the concentration level necessary, even with taking breaks.
- I also think finding a minimal risk strategy AND especially not diverting from it while playing is a great skill, even when that means repeating the same shot over and over. How often I have been tempted succesfully to go for that high-risk high-reward shot and failed....It's also the main difference between playing casually for fun, and competing for the leaderboards (fun notwithstanding).

I agree on TIME in general (and willingness to invest it, and sacrifice other things). There's also something very related to that, and that is the 10.000 hour rule. To achieve high level competence in any complex skill, somebody with average talent has to put in 10.000 hours on average to achieve that level. People with extraordinary talent can succeed with less, but not a whole lot if there is a lot of rote memory and automatization involved. The best TPA-related example I know for me personally was to learn how to nudge without thinking about it. I slowly acquired that reflex by playing a LOT.

In the end we are moving pixels around people! So think hard about where you want to spend your time and on what.... I for one don't mind to move pixels if it brings me joy....and who says what is really real and what not? My brain doesn't really make the distinction either way.....

The best players I watch all have a great knowledge of the game. This means rule strategy (when to stack etc.) and also how to play the digital version (exploits, when to nudge, railroads, stc). They also have good reflexes and controller coordination. And the stamina and concentration needed to play for extended periods.
I am not one of these people.

I stopped at 1b on that game as it was table of the week on a Facebook group I'm in. Wanted to log a decent score. As it's an infinite table for me now, I tried to go for a monster score a few times in the days after. Got game ending glitches everytime. I'd be happy to stream some Scared Stiff on twitch for you. http://www.twitch.tv/markmiwurdz
Might be a video currently archived. email me at mark21667@yahoo.co.uk if you want me to stream.

Also recently perfected Judge Dredd.

Getting tired of playing SS and end somewhere around the high 200M then dismayed by the high scores? I was in the same boat, IMO the first two seasons have boat loads of people playing the most popular tables so I'm finding the later seasons don't require 2+hour games to get into the top 20 worldwide, besides the really popular tables like HS/HSII (which I like playing too)


(S) = sandbagging, lost interest and ended it early
just noticed my table order must've been mixed up some time ago.. F14 in the wrong place

I haven't played SS since playing for score but it can't possibly be more easy than BoP.

Oh yeah, watch a lot of top level pinball. Real and digital. Every thing you see will open up as a possibility for you.

switch3flip said:

Oh yeah, watch a lot of top level pinball. Real and digital. Every thing you see will open up as a possibility for you.

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Oh, I do. I subscribe to PAPA's YouTube channel, and I watch Bowen Kerins' excellent tutorials. Laughed pretty hard at his first drain on Demolition Man, and got a real kick out of his Jack-Bot Casino Run. They also helped me a lot with TPA.

But I also realize that real, physical pinball is a very different beast from digital. As one guy in another thread pointed out, this is partly due to, of all things, the framerate: a game operating at 60 frames per second means there are only 60 possible angles per second a ball could travel at upon hitting and being launched by a flipper. Contrast real pinball, where (to use his example) a difference of a thousandth of a second can be the difference between a clean ramp shot and a brick off a post.

That's one reason I so respect the highest levels of players of fighting games like Street Fighter or Super Smash Bros, or even shooters like Dodonpachi. They have their timing and reflexes honed down to the frame of animation. That's hardcore.

Mark Miwurdz said:

I stopped at 1b on that game as it was table of the week on a Facebook group I'm in. Wanted to log a decent score. As it's an infinite table for me now, I tried to go for a monster score a few times in the days after. Got game ending glitches everytime. I'd be happy to stream some Scared Stiff on twitch for you. http://www.twitch.tv/markmiwurdz

Might be a video currently archived. email me at mark21667@yahoo.co.uk if you want me to stream.

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Thanks, man, but...please don't take this the wrong way, but I don't play these games to nine-out the scores and get to the top of the global leaderboards. I play these things for fun when alone, or to beat the other human in the room if there is one. If this were a PAPA tournament (which I hold no delusions about being A-division-ready for), I wouldn't dare intentionally end my game early--then again, those games are set up to be so difficult, you can't really carry on ridiculously-long games anyway. Even Keith Elwin's epic Funhouse ball at Louisville 2015 could "only" go about 24 minutes.

Thanks to Relaxation for letting me know the term is "sandbagging." If I feel tired playing TPA, I deliberately stop nudging so I can get to other things--or other video games. Imagine thinking "man, I wanna play some Zelda right now."

While I do respect the time and effort you guys put into this great simulation, and your talents are commendable, my goal playing Pinball Arcade is to set me up for the real machines. I recently had the chance to play my first physical pinball in about 20 years, but man, was I in for a rude awakening--I should make a thread in the Real Pinball forum detailing my experiences.

tl;dr: I think Farsight made a big mistake making the tilt on this game as forgiving as it is. It leads to hours-long games from the best players.

It's all about endurance and nerves. You can't choke and you have to stay really focused. It also helps if you can ace those wizard modes.

Not sure about that. Wizard modes are often the last thing you want to be going for when going for a big score.

Mark Miwurdz said:

Not sure about that. Wizard modes are often the last thing you want to be going for when going for a big score.

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Oh, I know--just that my mild OCD tells me to get those darn things out of the way...unless the goals are ridiculously hard to get, like Genie's 3 million or Addams Family's Super Bear Bonus (never even gotten halfway there), in which case I don't bother.

And then there's Starship Troopers' Recon Combo, a TABLE GOAL, which has eluded me for years...but I digress.

My point is, I usually go for the achievements first, THEN try for score. Or just turn off extra balls (especially on Judge Dredd, which gives out WAY too many, and the pro tips admit this) and put on Tournament Mode.

Hey, that's why I got the Pro packs--so I could play how I wanted. Like I said, this is for fun. Getting on the leaderboards is just a bonus for me...and yes, I'm well aware I can't make the leaderboards if I mess with the operator menus. I'm fine with that...though I do wish Farsight would do tournaments with the games actually SET to tournament settings...do they?

And most importantly, Farsight's game has re-kindled my interest in real-life pinball, as I'm sure it has for many other people. There's been a mild resurgence in popularity for the hobby lately, and I believe Farsight is largely to thank for that.

Getting more people into pinball can only help the hobby.

...I think I just derailed my own topic.

I could show you how to get Addams Family's Super Bear Bonus.

Dizzer2012 said:

To be honest, first: have no life.

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This isn't true. I have a full-time day job, and travel somewhere most weekends (why I haven't joined in the TotM for forever). But I can still make time for long games of TPA when I want.

Dizzer2012 said:

Then u realize it's actually very boring and way to easy and it's not about skill at all.

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This also isn't true, broadly speaking. There's only maybe ten players here that routinely go infinite on tables. The vast majority of the leaderboard is still based on skill. And only some tables allow infinitely long games anyway. There are quite a few like AFM, Whirlwind, Ripley's, Cactus Canyon where extra balls are limited and it's always still a real competition.