How Big Of A Factor Is Luck In Pinball?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I've been on a bit of a pinball kick this last week, spending a whole lot of time playing pinball on both real machines and The Pinball Arcade game from Farsight Studios on my tablet (I'm up to around 15 hours at this point), and this whole time there's been one thing really bugging me. Is luck as big of a part of scoring well in pinball games as it seems like?

 

To give you an example of what I'm talking about, here's a sample of my scores across 10 games played on the Pinball Arcade simulation of one of my favorite pinball tables: Bram Stoker's Dracula.

 

Game 1: 80,402,810

Game 2: 1,079,327,340

Game 3: 79,907,750

Game 4: 62,238,325

Game 5: 80,535,860

Game 6: 92,355,350

Game 7: 59,748,670

Game 8: 22,396,360

Game 9: 77,674,030

Game 10: 81,901,990

 

Now I'm no stranger to Bram Stoker's Dracula, having logged over a dozen hours this week alone playing it, and I know all the ways to activate every multiball mode and what you need to do to get the best scores. However, no matter how well I know the table, I still feel like whether or not I get a high score is mostly at the mercy of luck and random ball physics. If I lock the ball on a flipper to stop it I can hit pretty much any ramp or target I want from there, but when the ball is on the way back down the table it seems like what happens there is all luck based. Sometimes the ball comes back to the flippers, other times it goes careening straight down the middle or into one of the outlanes; and I think this is reflected in my scores above. Most games I averaged around 60 to 90 million, except for game number 2 in which I netted over 1 billion points by the end. Reflecting on it, I can only think that on that particular game I just got lucky and the ball never went sailing somewhere I didn't want it to go on the way back to the flippers.

 

Based on my experiences playing pinball thus far I feel like the game as a whole is far too luck based for my liking, and the random ball physics often leads to extreme frustration playing a table over and over and over in the hopes that maybe one time you'll get lucky and nab a high score. But, I also know that there are a lot of people out there who can consistently play pinball very well, and that kind of baffles me. Do professional pinball players just have superhuman reaction time and know exactly when to nudge the table this way or that to alter the ball's trajectory, or are these people just exceptionally lucky?

 

What do you guys think? Is luck a major factor in pinball, or is it all skill?

Edited August 22, 2015 by Jin

[pinballaddict]

On a real machine, luck helps but it is actually skill that gets the real points. I use to make alot of money playing and earn a lot of free meals. I sure miss those days. I have only found 2 real pinball machines in my area. I always leave free games on the machine when I leave. I do not play pinball on the computer, phone etc. I like the real thing

[Keatah]

Well. On VCS' Video Pinball I can play for hours on a game. On real mechanical machines it's about 50/50 which way the ball goes, I have zero skill there.

[ComputerSpaceFan]

Watch the documentary "Special When Lit" and you will see players do stuff with pinballs that will blow your mind. I mean these guys can tap the cabinet, roll the ball places with the flipper you'd never believe, and the luck factor will be greatly reduced. Then again these are pinball savants, us mere mortals can only dream of getting half as good as them

[Andromeda Stardust]

It's part luck and part skill. I have been playing TPA for a long time on my Ouya and purchased all of the available tables so far. I've also played real life tables, and a properly maintained table offers a pretty good feedback compared to the Pinball Arcade. At the Texas Pinball Fest in 2014, I played a number of tables that I was previously familiar with in TPA. The timing required a slight adjustment as real life tables are always snappier than an emulation, but I found I was able to do a number of things in real life that I could do in the simulation. Obviously the real life table gives you additional feedback, as you can really feel the physical feedback from the solenoids and other elements which get lost in digitization. Whether playing real in life, video simulation (TPA), or fantasy pinball (Zen, et al...), I have found that sometimes I'll have a couple of really crappy games and then have a stellar round where I get an amazing score. Often times the bulk of points acquired during a great game were earned with a single ball.

 

Also for the longest time, I have been playing without nudging, but a skilled player can nudge the table at just the right time to jog a ball from an outlane or a SDTM death. I was playing Xenon last night and I surprised myself by knocking the ball up out of the outlane just before it drained and back into play via the flippers. Such technique is banned in competitions and tournaments but I was amazed that I pulled off this "pro" technique for the first time in the simulation. Pro players generally know how to nudge gently enough to not set off the tilt sensors, and can judge when the ball is headed for a SDTM or outlane and adjust it's trajectory accordingly.

 

In TPA, you basically get a three strikes-you're-out policy with tilting, ie nudging three times in rapid succession will "tilt" the pinball table and you will lose control of the flippers until the ball drains and forfeit any end-of-ball bonus. On a real table, the tilt sensor is in the form of a metallic cone-shaped weight that hangs inside the center of a ring. This can be adjusted by the operator to make the table extremely sensitive or make it where you really have to bang it around to tilt. If this cone-shaped weight contacts the edge of the ring, a circuit is made and a tilt condition is detected. Some tables will give you a warning before they go into tilt mode, others don't. There is also typically a slam tilt sensor. Slam tilting is where you lift up the front of the table to allow the ball to roll upwards, and drop it down. Penalty for slam tilting is much more severe as it is considered abuse of the machine, and typically the machine will automatically terminate the game, losing your current score, all remaining balls and acquired credits.

 

Overall I've gotten hooked on Pinball, real life, real simulation, fantasy, and retro games. I am slowly trying to collect all pinball games available for each retro system I collect for. It's kind of a niche genre in video games so not too hard to collect complete sets of pinball themed games for a given system. Bumper bash (Atari VCS) is the rarest I believe. Also if you enjoy TPA, I'll also recommend Zen. They are fantasy pinball based around Marvel, Star Wars, and other themed tables. I've purchased pretty much all of their non-Marvel tables.

Edited August 23, 2015 by stardust4ever

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

I never really play pinball games very often. But when I happen to go to an arcade place, bar, etc and see a pinball game there. I'll decide to press my luck on a game or two. I do ok but not great on pinball games. And I can get frustrated playing them at times. The thing that matters is physics of the ball, where shot, timing to get it onto a ramp for big points and mini games, reflexes, and most of all just luck. You get a ball richocheting against your favor and bouncing all over to fall off on the far left or right to lose a ball. I don't think skill is really relevant. Like mentioned it's timing, reflexes, and ball physics. I am a fair sport and never try to nudge or bump the machine to get the ball into my favor or in a bad case a tilt. I do have some pinball video games like True Pinball for the Saturn and a couple which is the Williams collection and Pinball Hall of Fame for the PS2. Also Video Pinball for the 2600 and Pinball for the NES are some rather addicting games.

[Algus]

The beauty of pinball is that is is part luck and part skill. Some tables are easy to get good at and some are bullshit. A real pinball guru can easily eliminate the luck factor. Being a quick study of a new table helps too.

 

I'm not a particularly good pinball player but it is a game I greatly enjoy and respect. There have been some amazing tables made over the years.

[Omega-TI]

Yeah, some guy's have the skill, but when you suck at it (like me) it's ALL about luck!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AKbUm8GrbM

[Andromeda Stardust]

@ ---Ω---- I'd like to see a "deaf, dumb, and blind kid" play some pinball! Great song and great album...

 

@Retrogamer81081 I agree it's bad etiquet to deliberately bump or nudge a real table although gentle nudges I think are harmless. But when the ball is heading for an outlane or SDTM, a small nudge can spell the difference between keeping the ball in play or losing it. Real life simulators like The Pinball Arcade let you slap the table around all you want (until it tilts) but it's a sim so no harm not foul; it's fine to experiment a bit.

 

I was amazed when playing on Xenon in Pinball Arcade, I performed a "Death Save" nudging the ball from the outlane up through the open flipper and kept it in play. But I would not attempt such a maneuver on a real table out of respect to the owner.

http://www.ipdb.org/playing/wizard.html

Edited August 23, 2015 by stardust4ever

[racerx]

If you're a skilled player (which I am not) luck plays a part, but it's minimal.

Bumping or nudging is essential for big scores, as is knowing the rules for the table.

[Algus]

You don't want to get to rough with them sure but there's a reason for the tilt. Proper bumping is essential, which is why any decent pinball video game is going to include it as an option. I'm not to good at it on real machines but I've seen guys do it just perfectly where they give a little tap and save their ball, not to mention having a good eye for where to let the ball roll on the flipper before hitting it.

[Rybags]

On real pinball, skill is paramount to surviving and being able to rack up a big score.

Ball rescue from the centre exit is largely a case of being able to almost simultaneously hit a flipper and nudge the machine to alter the travel path enough so it hits the first paddle, then you need to hit the second paddle (and usually have released the first one). Timing for this comes down to several hundredths of a second in some cases.

Likewise, there's usually one or both side exit lanes in effect and you need to be able to nudge to prevent the loss of the ball.

 

Left to luck alone, you won't last long. Practically all machines have sufficient leeway with the tilt such that rescuing the ball from a centre loss is possible almost all of the time.

 

It's also something lacking in emulation - you can get the playfield near perfect and project it in 3D and all, but tilt physics just can't be done. To be accurate you'd need a feedback system. In fact you'd probably want a portrait horizontally mounted monitor with rumble pack and controller buttons.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Rybags

[Schizophretard]

I would say that it has about as much luck and skill as any game that includes a ball(video game or otherwise like sports).

[Rybags]

Watch the documentary "Special When Lit" and you will see players do stuff with pinballs that will blow your mind. I mean these guys can tap the cabinet, roll the ball places with the flipper you'd never believe, and the luck factor will be greatly reduced. Then again these are pinball savants, us mere mortals can only dream of getting half as good as them

 

Cheers for the doco - I've not seen that one but grabbed it off YouTube for later.

 

A good pinball player will know how to hit every possible target or lane from a controlled shot or moving shot from each flipper.

Depends on the table, but with some games you can control things to the point where the only times you're at the mercy of luck is when the ball is trapped in the bumpers - almost everything else will be deterministic and controllable to a large extent by the player if you're good enough.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Cheers for the doco - I've not seen that one but grabbed it off YouTube for later.

 

A good pinball player will know how to hit every possible target or lane from a controlled shot or moving shot from each flipper.

Depends on the table, but with some games you can control things to the point where the only times you're at the mercy of luck is when the ball is trapped in the bumpers - almost everything else will be deterministic and controllable to a large extent by the player if you're good enough.

I own the documentary. Pretty good in it's own right, although there's the part about some old guy hoarding repair parts in his house and doing an interview in a mustard stained shirt that could have used a little more editing...

[Keatah]

I wanna see that part. It might be me in disguise.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I wanna see that part. It might be me in disguise.

Dude was pretty gross IMO. pot belly hanging out. Overall the documentary was good however.

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

Special When Lit, good doc.. Just watched it.

I miss my Kings of Steel table I had, sold it a couple of years ago