From: ung (Bill Ung)
Newsgroups: rec.games.pinball
Subject: Auto adjusting replay scores (was Williams' ruthless outlanes)
Date: 10 Apr 92 17:56:16 GMT
Reply-To: ung (Bill Ung)
Distribution: rec
Organization: FileNet Corp., Costa Mesa, CA
Return-Path: <darnold>
Apparently-To: felix!postnews

In article <1992Apr4.201528.20455@ils.nwu.edu> lopez@ils.nwu.edu (Chris Lopez) writes:
|overturf@bigbootay.sw.stratus.com (Dallas Overturf) writes:
||
|| [much stuff deleted]
||
||  I should think that auto adjust should be limited to
||  some reasonable maximum level; and let the replay boost be responsible
||  (within reason!) for making us so called wizards put in money
||  occasionally.
|| 
||   				Regards,	Dallas...
|
|The feature you ask for does exist.  Operators can set the auto-adjust to
|reset the play level every 1,10,100,1000 plays on some of the machines I
|have been inside.
|
|The only place I ever saw a funhouse had it set to readjust every game.  The 
|first time I beat the machine it raised the replay by about 30%.  The second 
|time I beat it, it raised it another 40% or so (I went over the replay score
| by 
|a larger amount the second time).  Needless to say this put it beyond me.  As 
|soon as my credits were gone the replay dropped back to its initial value.
|
|I complained to the manager who said 'and that is how it will stay.'   Why?
|Because the only people really effected are those who can win consistently
|and thus tie up the machines for extended periods of time.  He figured that
|the profits he could make on the faster turnaround customers far exceeded the
|loss of the better players business, even if they were more steady business.
|
|Never played that (or unfortunately any other) Funhouse again.

Do you really think that this is fair?  I know how most people feel
about pinball on this newsgroup, but most OPERATORS are in it for the
MONEY, plain and simple.  Take this operator, he's interested in
profits, do you blame him?  On the other hand, he hasn't been as
nasty as some other operators who jack up the legs, make the outlanes
super-wide, adjust for sneeze-tilt and on top of it all, set the game
for super-duper-ultra-difficult-only-Rick-Stetta-could-win difficulty
settings.  From your report, I can only assume that the game was set
up along standard settings (ie: leveled, standard outlanes and standard
difficulty settings).  You got to enjoy your game, he got to make some
money.  Isn't that the way things work?  Adjusting the replay score
only ensures that you don't tie up the game all day.  I think the game
was doing it's job, fairly too.  I can see you're not going back to
that particular FunHouse again (although I probably would have), but
all FunHouse games in general?  FunHouse is one of the most innovative
pins to come out of Williams, a sheer joy to play, when well kept, of
course.  I'm sorry you've decided to abandon it simply on the replay
value.

|----
|
|Readjusting every 10 plays, or limiting the replay score increase to 5-10%
|may have made it reasonable.  Whether he had any control over how much it
|increased the replay score by I don't know.

5-10% of what?  5-10% of the original replay score, or 5-10% above the
score you ended up at?  It's hardly logical if the replay is 37 million,
you score 52 million and it adjusts to 42 million.  I'd expect it to jump
to (say 10%) 57 or 58 million.  Is that fair?

Keep in mind, video games don't give replays at all (none that I've seen
anyway).

Bill Ung
  ung@filenet.com