From: phaedrus@halcyon.com (Mark Phaedrus)
Subject: Re: Drop Targets (Was re: Cue Ball Wizard Rules sheet request)
Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 03:30:51 GMT

In article <1992Nov23.222045.26202@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov> Stephen Jonke <jonke@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov> writes:
>This is a silly argument -- no one said they wanted Williams to recall all the
>Fish Tails out there and blindly replace the round fish targets with drop
>targets.  You have to design the use of drop targets into the game (just as
>they designed the use of round targets into the game.)  With the difficultly
>level of Fish Tails as it is, replacing those targets with drop targets would
>be foolish, of course.  But there's no reason why they couldn't have
>incorporated real drop targets into other areas of the game...

     The original poster said something to the effect of "the fish targets on
Fish Tales should have been drop targets".  He didn't say anything about
moving them, or changing the rest of the machine.  It sounds like we're
saying the exact same thing; that drop targets in other areas might be good,
but replacing the Fish Tales fish targets with drop targets in the same spots
would be A Bad Thing.  What's silly about that?

>As for the ball bouncing off differently dependent on the target being up or
>down, I'm all for a little variety.  If you want games that react exactly one
>way to anything you do, then maybe you should try modern pattern based video
>games where no thought is required whatsoever, just automatic reflexes built
>up through repetition.  

     Unpredictability is good; it's one of the reasons I play pinball.  But
too much of a good thing can be bad.  Removing the flipper buttons and having
the flippers fire randomly would make the game much more unpredictable, but
I don't think either one of us would play the machine afterwards. :)  There
are plenty of unpredictable elements in Fish Tales as it is; the rebound off
the captive ball shot, the path the ball takes when it gets cast out of the 
lock, etc.  Ask any novice player whether Fish Tales is predictable. :)  I
just happen to think that during multiball, on a difficult machine with a
particularly difficult lower-playfield layout that encourages the balls to
get bouncing side-to-side, while I'm trying to keep two or three balls in
play while making a fairly difficult lock shot just to light the jackpot, a
small bit of predictability keeps the machine livable.  Yes, I can see which
targets are up and down, so if I take the time to look at the ball's trajectory
and the target bank, I can probably figure out about how the ball will rebound
(though a novice certainly couldn't).  But Fish Tales doesn't give you the
time to do that.  And it doesn't give you the space or the time to react to a
shot that hits the side of a drop target and heads for the drain, or a ball
that gets thrown airborne by a resetting target bank.  Yes, these problems
could probably be solved by moving the targets higher.  But there's really no
place else to put them without reshuffling large parts of the rest of the 
layout, at which point the machine is no longer Fish Tales and this whole
conversation becomes pointless.

>Drop targets do require more maintenance, but then so do Ferrari's.  You can't
>give me a Toyota Tercel in replacement and say "it's more reliable" and expect
>me to be happy!!!

     Given a choice between a Tercel that runs reliably, and a Ferrari that's
in the shop 50% of the time (which several of the pins around here are), I'll
take the Tercel any time. :)
-- 
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