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Farsight Studios
The Pinball Arcade / Farsight Studios
WGN Radio Interview with Bobby King
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<blockquote data-quote="Sean DonCarlos" data-source="post: 29450" data-attributes="member: 152"><p>FarSight can't just "screw the average player". There are not enough of us diehard pinball fanatics who would willingly slog through a full-strength table to keep the business model going. I'd rather play tables that have been made slightly easier than not have any tables at all because of a misguided quest for purity. As it is, the "average" video game player, new to pinball, probably finds TPA frustratingly difficult already.</p><p></p><p>As someone who has frequent access to 10 of the 14 released tables so far, I can tell you that the rulesets have not been changed (at least not deliberately) and that with the exception of "replay-is-extra-ball", the settings are generally factory defaults, and that 98% of the time, the ball behaves as it would on the real table. I'm assuming, given Bobby's comments about how the real tables were designed to take players' quarters, that the collision geometry has been slightly adjusted to reduce the number of "cheap" SDTM and outlane drains, and perhaps so that in marginal cases where a real shot has a 50-50 chance of going up a ramp or deflecting at a weird angle, TPA gives the player the benefit of the doubt. I'm OK with this. The adjustment must have been very slight anyway, because these forums still have posts complaining about Rudy vomiting the ball straight to left outlane, Monster Bash's and Cirqus Voltaire's outlanes being voracious, MM's flipper gap, etc.</p><p></p><p>We also do not have the same degree of fine control, especially on mobile devices. TPA has difficulty with live catches, drop stops, tap passes. Playing a trapped-style multiball is pretty futile, because any attempt to do a controlled cradle separation launches the balls into the stratosphere. So given the lack of fine control, it makes sense that the table geometry is tuned a little easier for compensation.</p><p></p><p>As far as getting through the modes: I have seen Atlantis exactly once in TPA. It will be <em>years</em> before I am good enough to see Atlantis on the real RBION. So TPA has enabled me to enjoy a feature of Ripley's that I would not have otherwise been able to experience. It was still plenty challenging in TPA - it took me four months, and I'm pretty good at this game. I imagine the great majority of players will not reach Atlantis on TPA ever, even with whatever FarSight has done to make it easier.</p><p></p><p>So while I'm surprised Bobby volunteered the information that they tune the game to be slightly more forgiving, I'm not surprised that they do such tuning, nor do I have a problem with it.</p><p></p><p></p><p>TPA is good for shotfinding a real table, as the sweet spots on the flippers are in roughly the same places, but otherwise the skills do not translate as much as you would think, particularly nudging. I'm certainly not getting anywhere near 240M on the real TOTAN. It <em>does</em> work the other way; I do better on TPA tables where I have extensive experience with their real world counterparts.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Sean DonCarlos, post: 29450, member: 152"] FarSight can't just "screw the average player". There are not enough of us diehard pinball fanatics who would willingly slog through a full-strength table to keep the business model going. I'd rather play tables that have been made slightly easier than not have any tables at all because of a misguided quest for purity. As it is, the "average" video game player, new to pinball, probably finds TPA frustratingly difficult already. As someone who has frequent access to 10 of the 14 released tables so far, I can tell you that the rulesets have not been changed (at least not deliberately) and that with the exception of "replay-is-extra-ball", the settings are generally factory defaults, and that 98% of the time, the ball behaves as it would on the real table. I'm assuming, given Bobby's comments about how the real tables were designed to take players' quarters, that the collision geometry has been slightly adjusted to reduce the number of "cheap" SDTM and outlane drains, and perhaps so that in marginal cases where a real shot has a 50-50 chance of going up a ramp or deflecting at a weird angle, TPA gives the player the benefit of the doubt. I'm OK with this. The adjustment must have been very slight anyway, because these forums still have posts complaining about Rudy vomiting the ball straight to left outlane, Monster Bash's and Cirqus Voltaire's outlanes being voracious, MM's flipper gap, etc. We also do not have the same degree of fine control, especially on mobile devices. TPA has difficulty with live catches, drop stops, tap passes. Playing a trapped-style multiball is pretty futile, because any attempt to do a controlled cradle separation launches the balls into the stratosphere. So given the lack of fine control, it makes sense that the table geometry is tuned a little easier for compensation. As far as getting through the modes: I have seen Atlantis exactly once in TPA. It will be [I]years[/I] before I am good enough to see Atlantis on the real RBION. So TPA has enabled me to enjoy a feature of Ripley's that I would not have otherwise been able to experience. It was still plenty challenging in TPA - it took me four months, and I'm pretty good at this game. I imagine the great majority of players will not reach Atlantis on TPA ever, even with whatever FarSight has done to make it easier. So while I'm surprised Bobby volunteered the information that they tune the game to be slightly more forgiving, I'm not surprised that they do such tuning, nor do I have a problem with it. TPA is good for shotfinding a real table, as the sweet spots on the flippers are in roughly the same places, but otherwise the skills do not translate as much as you would think, particularly nudging. I'm certainly not getting anywhere near 240M on the real TOTAN. It [I]does[/I] work the other way; I do better on TPA tables where I have extensive experience with their real world counterparts. [/QUOTE]
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WGN Radio Interview with Bobby King
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