Volume 4 out on iOS

shutyertrap

Moderator
Staff member
Mar 14, 2012
7,334
0
I have to ask the question...if grinding through ads is the better income generator for them, why don’t they do their own tables that way? How come they sell those for a set price and not an unlock through grinding method?

First off, you no not have to grind through ads. The Advanced challenge no longer requires you to watch an ad before every play. Once you’ve won a challenge and are presented with the 5 cards to flip, you can get by just fine without flipping the one you’d have to watch an ad for, as parts are rarely hidden beneath it, usually it’s tickets or a skin.

As to why they don’t do this system for the mobile Zen app? Because that came out before they decided to move in this direction. After that the Aliens vs Pinball app and the Bethesda Pinball app came out, both experimenting with tickets, coins, and ads for those that didn’t want to pay outright.

I’m not privy to how the financials work, but I can guess that Zen got more downloads and play throughs with those two than the Zen app. Why? Because I’m one of those that doesn’t wanna pay on mobile (go ahead, call into question my hardcore pinball bonafides) and therefore never opened the Zen app. Aliens and Bethesda on the other hand had me playing daily for a while. Advertisers want to know how many eyeballs might see their ads, and showing active account logins generates better ad rates for Zen. Advertising is a perpetual income, a one time purchase is not. Then Zen app might have more app downloads in total, I don’t know, but what’s it matter if active usage is low?

Look, I agree that Zen should be more transparent with their intentions and have some consistency between releases. That being said, they’ve actually made improvements on the grinding side of things. For starters, the score targets for challenges have been reduced and made easier. Parts are now hard capped, meaning you will cease to earn parts beyond the 170 needed in total, regardless of if you’ve upgraded or not. Upon release of Vol 4, there was a limited event that allowed you to easily get all three tables up to 2 stars in the span of a week. You can now play 2 star tables offline. They just did another limited event that dumped around 60 coins and lots of tix in the span of 4 days.

My point is, Zen is making it very doable to get your tables for free. Why would they want this instead of the easy money? Because they want activity, and there’s way more mobile gamers out there willing to get something for free* than 1 time purchasers. I’m sure the app also acts as a gateway to people downloading and checking out FX3 on console or PC, where they will more readily pay the purchase price.

I’ll say this too; Zen had planned on updating the Zen app to more closely reflect the FX3 platform. I don’t know if that is still in the works or if the Williams app is what became of that, but if we see a new version I suspect it’ll be modeled on the Williams app. I’d certainly welcome it as then I’d finally start playing originals on my phone.

*even amongst the free players, there are going to be those that like throwing money at an app. I just saw it in a different app where mist in my clan didn’t like spending anything. Suddenly a new season pass gets introduced and most jumped on it because of the value they saw in it. We’ll see how many renew next month.

**a newby starting from scratch with the Williams app can conceivably fully own every table within 4 months of daily grinding, playing the Basic, Advanced, and Pro challenges to completion once per 24 hour cycle. By cycling and playing the Basic and Advanced twice more each day, that time gets cut to 40-60 days. Is it instant gratification? No, but the same people that have been complaining and refusing to play the app because Zen won’t take their money could have been close to owning them all after all this time.
 

Kolchak357

Senior Pigeon
May 31, 2012
8,102
2
4 months of daily grinding? That sounds insane to me. Some people just don't get that the daily challenges are not fun to everyone. Why force me to play a game in a manner that isn't fun to me? I play games to be entertained and have fun. I don't care if it will make me a better player. I don't play in tournaments and I'm not a score chaser. So the challenges offer nothing to me other than a rare moment where I just feel like playing a challenge. Currently I haven't been playing any Zen pinball. They have soured me on their entire company. Why only mobile platforms? Do people who game on a phone or tablet need to be forced to jump through hoops like a trained dog?
 

MadScience2006

New member
Oct 5, 2012
779
0
I have a question about unlocking tables with Zen coins...

I have all three Volume 4 tables already ground to Grade 2.

Looking at the "Unlock Tables" section in the store, I have White Water and Road Show available for unlocking at 250 Zen Coins each. Tapping on the blue "i" (info) for both of these two tables brings up two stars and "2nd Grade Table".

My question is what exactly will be unlocked with this purchase? Will the table(s) be unlocked to Grade 4 (fully unlocked) or Grade 2? If this "offer" is to only unlock the tables(s) to Grade 2, what kind of insane "offer" is this exactly if they are already at Grade 2? I can see no place that specifies what exactly will be unlocked...unless it is the "2nd Grade Table" I mentioned above after tapping the blue "!" WTH??? :confused:

Thanks for any insight.

EDIT
Well, I found out for myself that you indeed purchase the Grade 4 unlock...I tapped on the yellow bar with the Zen Coin price hoping to bring up more info/confirmation what exactly you're getting but it immediately spends your Zen Coins...NO confirmation is given (like "are you sure you want to do this?")...tap on that yellow bar and you've kissed your Zen coins goodbye (if you have enough to make the purchase). At least I accidentally spent 250 Zen Coins on Road Show...I would have preferred White Water if I was going to blow my coins. I now have a whopping 19 Zen Coins remaining.

This app is pissing me off more and more...:mad:

EDIT #2
I emailed Zen Support hoping they will do something about this glaring omission of confirmation when spending Zen Coins. Zen Coin spenders beware...
 
Last edited:

zmcvay

Member
Sep 19, 2014
356
5
My point is, Zen is making it very doable to get your tables for free.

No. They are not doing this as a service to get your tables for free. They are doing this to guide you to special offers and premium coinage to fleece a smaller group of people and make a larger amount of money off them than the people who would have just paid them a straight fee for the tables.

I'm looking at a "special offer" on the app to get Attack from Mars at 4 stars for 800 coins. Doing the conversion that's $20. For one table. And that's assuming four stars is a straight unlock of all features.

I like Zen. I've been buying their tables since the original Zen Pinball on PS3. Even when I preferred the table selection on TPA I always supported getting whatever new original table packs they released. I've been impressed with their level of attention to the product, and the polish they've applied to it. I've been very appreciative of the upgrades between platforms they've provided.

But I look at the store function in Williams Pinball, with its wall of special offers with costs obscured behind premium coinage, confusing star rankings, and legendary bundles that don't even tell you in plain terms what you are buying and all I feel is anger.

Ask yourself. If this is just a way to allow people to own their tables for free, what is the point of the purchasable Zen coins with real money? Why wouldn't they just allow you to pay for the tables same as on other platforms? If you want to look at it as big spenders dropping lots of cash to subsidize your free tables, you may. But it's predatory, and I will not support any apps that use this pricing model. It is only there to confuse and disorient, and take advantage of people.
 

twopossums

New member
Apr 14, 2019
69
0
Let’s remember that 4 months of grinding is fully unlocking the tables. It would be much less time to get them to level 2 which is all you need to play them in arcade mode. Which means play whenever you want. I forget how much it was but Shutyertrap had a great idea of buying like 10 bucks in coins and buying the Visual extras, pro difficulty,And pro physics for something like 300 coins. That unlocks those features on all tables and all future tables. So for nominal effort you can have pretty much everything and play whenever you want
 

MadScience2006

New member
Oct 5, 2012
779
0
EDIT #2
I emailed Zen Support hoping they will do something about this glaring omission of confirmation when spending Zen Coins. Zen Coin spenders beware...

Replying to myself to draw more attention this post...

I heard back from Zen support and they have made good on correcting my issue...thumbs up.

They are also aware of the "No confirmation before spending Zen Coins" issue and are apparently working to add a confirmation dialog before actually pulling the Zen Coins from your account. If you had an inadvertent purchase using Zen Coins, I would contact Zen and tell them of your issue. When doing so, use the Williams App to contact them:

Within the Williams App, tap the Settings icon (blue menu bar, top right), then the Contact Us button.

This will auto-compose an email with pertinent info to Zen like the DeviceID and UnitID so they can help you out more easily. If you want, you can then copy & paste the auto-generated info into a new email composed using Gmail (or any of your other email accounts) on your Mac or PC since I find it much easier to compose email using a full-size keyboard rather than a small mobile device's keyboard.

The email should be sent to: support@zenstudios.com

Subject line should include "Williams Pinball Feedback" or similar to draw attention to the Williams app.
 
Last edited:

Scared Stiff

New member
May 18, 2019
184
0
Let’s remember that 4 months of grinding is fully unlocking the tables. It would be much less time to get them to level 2 which is all you need to play them in arcade mode. Which means play whenever you want. I forget how much it was but Shutyertrap had a great idea of buying like 10 bucks in coins and buying the Visual extras, pro difficulty,And pro physics for something like 300 coins. That unlocks those features on all tables and all future tables. So for nominal effort you can have pretty much everything and play whenever you want

Yeah but that timeframe and cost are for what is available currently. As more tables get added, both timeframe and cost will go up to achieve that.
 

twopossums

New member
Apr 14, 2019
69
0
It’s my understanding that paying to unlock Visual Extras,Pro Difficulty and Pro Physics is for all tables including future tables so actually your per table price would go down as they release tables.

I do certainly agree there is definitely going to have to be some change on how you earn points as the table number grows. But I just wanted to help focus the people that are upset that fully unlocking the tables is not actually the goal. It’s the goal that I’m sure Zen would like to suggest that you do but you don’t actually need it to enjoy the game the way you want. I’m

I would like to suggest to zen a new challenge to bring to the game. The 3 ball challenge. Now there is a challenge that is really just a regular game of pinball. If you don’t like grinding play that one. Then your playing the way you want while still grinding.
 

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