From: lfs@ccs.northeastern.edu (Lyman F. Sheats Jr.)
Newsgroups: rec.games.pinball
Subject: Re: Pointage
Date: 10 Apr 92 15:41:54 GMT
Article-I.D.: random.1992Apr10.154154.3074
Organization: Comp. Sci. @ NU

Well, we've been experiencing major news lossage at MITRE and at NU lately,
so please excuse me while I try (for the third time) to get this reply out.

jpwetmil@descartes.uwaterloo.ca (john!wetmiller) writes:

>But what I would like to know is.. What skill do you need to score 1 point?
>Say you and a friend are playing High Speed II and your final score is 45,920
>points higher that his/hers.  What does this mean?

I'd say that you happened to hit a slingshot bumper 9 times more than your
friend did :-).

>I don't think that the makers of pinball machines really understand the
>relative values for each shot or achievement on a pinball machine.

Well, I know that manufacturers and designers care that their games have
a reasonable point distribution so their games don't turn into one shot
games.  As to whether they care about how high the points will go, that I
don't know.

IMO (look out, here it comes :-), I think that the point inflation fits in
very nicely with all the neat gadgetry, dot-matrix fx, etc that all the new
games are boasting.  I mean, wouldn't it be a little anticlimactic if when
THING plucked the ball from the THING saucer for the T-H-I-N-G award, you
only received 100 points?

The fact is, anyone who's good and has played a game enough (be it a high
scoring, point inflated game or not) is going to know what a good score is
on that particular game, and have a rough idea of what a person had to do to
get that good score.  Some shots are worth more points than others, and my
feeling is that a good player will be able to recognize those shots and be
able to hit them on a regular, consistent basis, without losing the ball too
often.

So what happens if you spend half an hour playing one ball on T2 and make a
ton of low scoring shots for 100 million points, and I spend 5 minutes playing
one ball for a jackpot and two super jackpots and score 125 million points?
Who is the better player?  You are.

You'll usually see me wearing two different "faces" around here: one's the
pointy face, where all I'll blab about is how to score lots of points on
games.  The other is the funny face, where I'll blab on about how much I like
(or don't like) a new game.

Whatever face I may be wearing, deep down I believe there's a big difference
between having fun playing a pinball game and getting a low score as opposed
to not having fun on a pinball game and getting a big score.  If a game is
fun, then points really shouldn't matter.  Unfortunately, at times, they do,
but I firmly believe that points are secondary to the fun factor.  I certainly
wouldn't be playing all the pinball I do if I wasn't having fun.  And the day
pinball stops being fun for me is the day I stop playing.

And that's the reason why I'm still playing TAF, despite the fact that I've
had some pretty good scores on it.  It's a great game with great complexity,
a lot of fun, and an excellent piece to practice on (although sometimes it
can be a little on the costly side).  If I were only concerned with how many
points I could score on this game, I would have stopped playing it a couple
of months ago.

>I didn't notice that I was such a zombie to what relative scores meant
>until I began reading Operation Thunder reviews, where completing missions
>is a little more important than scoring points.  Every time I get into the
>top five on the local Addams Family I start to wonder.. What does this score
>say of my relative skill on this game?

Interesting.  You mention the word skill in the same sentence with the word
score.  There are two sets of skills, IMO.  There are the fundamental skills
of being able to keep the ball in play, and then there's the skill of knowing
what high scoring shots to hit when on a particular game.  It seems people
who are able to do the latter are considered more skillful, since they usually
end up scoring more points.  There are some situations in which I would agree
with this, but I think the majority of good players are able to do both.
My opinion is that greater emphasis should be placed on developing a good set
of basic pinball skills; you can take them with you to any machine you want
to play, and then it's just a matter of learning the rules of that game.

If you're trying to compare your score on TAF to your score on OT, don't.
OT, as you know, isn't as liberal with the points as TAF is.  But does that
make OT a lesser game?  No.  What does make OT a lesser game, IMO?  Read on.

>The other part of this is that if pinball "scoring" structures were to change
>so that the purpose is to achieve preset objectives and the concept of 'points'
>were thrown out the window, then the pinball machine would become not much more
>than a mechanical video game.  This puzzles me as to what makes pinball games
>different from video games, other than the cosmetic difference.  Is all this
>out-of-control scoring inflation the main concept that gives pinball its
>uniqueness?  I sure hope not.  Scoring inflation in my view is something to be
>put in the undesirable side of pinball experience.  Oh well, now I'm
>depressed...

Don't be depressed, pinball is supposed to be fun!  Don't let the scoring
inflation get you down, it's not worth it.  Forget about the score; just go
find a game you like and have some fun.  That's what pinball is all about.

As to your comment on objective oriented games, I think all pinball games
have some kind of goal to them, and some pinballs are unique and complex
enough to let the player decide what the goal is.  On TAF, for example, one
goal may be to get the jackpot.  Another could be to tour the mansion.  Yet
another could be to get the multiplier up to 5x.  Another could be to get
T-H-I-N-G with two stars.  Etc, etc, etc.

So I guess I have no objection to pinball games with goals.  So if a game
comes out and it has some "concrete" goals to it, like OT, then hey, that's
fine.  Pinball is pinball, a silver ball (well, I have seen a gold ball) with
flippers, ramps, targets, bumpers, separate playfields, etc.  I hope no one
will ever change that.  What really scares me, though, is that OT will shut
off the flippers and end your ball.  It may also end your game, if you happen
to complete mission 12 and your operator doesn't know what he/she is doing.
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!  I think this is pinball at its worst.  Too
bad, really, I happen to like OT, it's a good game, not a "great" like SURF
'N SAFARI, but this flipper shutoff and game ending crap has got to go away
real fast.  It just *has* to.  I know I'd be a pretty burnt if my first
pinball experience was playing OT and all of a sudden the flippers magically
shut off.  I'd head for the nearest video game before you could say "BALL 2."

So give me a game that's fun, and let me have some fun with it, but *don't*
take that fun away from me.

Before I go, I'd like to mention that Rob Chesnavich authored a pretty good
article in the March 1992 issue of the Pinball Trader that discusses this
'points vs. goals' thing.  It certainly made for some interesting reading.

>I hope what I've said makes sense.. I'm right in the middle of an exam period
>and I'm a lot less coherent than usual.  I think playing Cyclone a few times
>to boost my ego is in order.  Have fun..

Hey, CYCLONE's a good one.  Hurry hurry, step right up...

Best of luck with exams.