ZEN Studios Interviewed by This Xbox Life

[Wingman709]

Check out the interview with ZEN Studios in the latest episode of This Xbox Life Podcast. There are some interesting tidbits of news in the interview. We think you will enjoy.

http://www.thisxboxlife.com/?p=9523

[Vincent]

Yeah cool !!

[The Albin0 Rhin0]

Can't wait...

[KGSoloman8000]

Really cool interview. Thanks.

One thing I am a little concerned about is the issue they go over about high scores and specifically how people utilize the save game feature to have a killer game using their best ball 1, 2, and 3 and restarting back to the last ball as they please.

I was unaware that you could exploit the save game feature this way. I wonder if all the top 10 scores on all the tables have been accomplished like this. Its seems unethical to post a score using that exploit. If so, it makes me feel a lot better about my high scores now knowing that they were all obtained in a single consecutive game without saving and restarting if I had a bad ball 2 or whatever.

I am interested since I know a lot of the best players are here on the forums. Is this the technique you guys use to get those billion plus scores?

I am all for competition and high scores. That is what pinball is all about... but hearing about this makes me a little uneasy. Almost like they should have scrapped the save game feature to keep the leaderboards more ethical.

[The Albin0 Rhin0]

Really cool interview. Thanks.

One thing I am a little concerned about is the issue they go over about high scores and specifically how people utilize the save game feature to have a killer game using their best ball 1, 2, and 3 and restarting back to the last ball as they please.

I was unaware that you could exploit the save game feature this way. I wonder if all the top 10 scores on all the tables have been accomplished like this. Its seems unethical to post a score using that exploit. If so, it makes me feel a lot better about my high scores now knowing that they were all obtained in a single consecutive game without saving and restarting if I had a bad ball 2 or whatever.

I am interested since I know a lot of the best players are here on the forums. Is this the technique you guys use to get those billion plus scores?

I am all for competition and high scores. That is what pinball is all about... but hearing about this makes me a little uneasy. Almost like they should have scrapped the save game feature to keep the leaderboards more ethical.

I agree 100% with you, i think it is a game breaking feature which allows one person to restart as many times to get a extremely high score that no one else can get to only playing one consectutive game.

Zen, i have a request. Please take this feature out of the game. I may get flamed for saying this by some people, but i think its essential to make it feel like a real pinball game. Because in real pinball, there are no restarts, redos or anything.

[heathenSauce]

I definitely use the save feature, as on a few of the tables a normal game for me can last hours, and at some point you gotta take a break and pick it up the next day. I had no idea the save game could be exploited like that, and I honestly hope it's addressed in a future update. I had just assumed it used temporary saves, so when you re-loaded your last save, it deleted it, preventing you from constantly re-starting from the save point.

[KGSoloman8000]

I definitely use the save feature, as on a few of the tables a normal game for me can last hours, and at some point you gotta take a break and pick it up the next day. I had no idea the save game could be exploited like that, and I honestly hope it's addressed in a future update. I had just assumed it used temporary saves, so when you re-loaded your last save, it deleted it, preventing you from constantly re-starting from the save point.

Yea, I like the save feature too... but I would rather have it omitted to increase the integrity of the online leaderboards. Its just really disappointing to see a feature like this get abused.

I was under the same impression. I thought you can save your game and resume it but if you power down your xbox and then try and reload the same save game wouldn't work anymore.

From what the interview had to say it seems like they are going to address it in a future patch.

[Womble]

Great interview! Answers a LOT of questions I and others around here have had. Thanks for the link.

Minus: I was appalled to learn that tournament scores and leaderboards could be abused by the save game feature. Seriously, that's just lame. A score of a billion achieved by exploiting a save is not a high score, it's just a lousy exploit. But, I'm glad to hear Zen will fix this.

Plus: Was very excited to hear that there are 8 dedicated teams at work on pinball. Oooh aaah.

Plus: Lots of new IP coming, and cross-promotions from other XBLA game titles. (It's a pity Bizarre Creations have gone under, we could have had a Geometry Wars themed table. )

Plus: credit to Mel for being honest regarding the influences behind many of the Zen tables...

Plus: some of the Zen designers have physical pinnies of their own, and are big fans.

Nerdgasm: "Star Wars would be totally, amazingly rad, and let's just say ... both parties know each other very well".

[Cloda]

I'm real happy that we can be expecting one new table a month for the foreseeable future. It is also great that we can be expecting various different themed tables. In the end it actually doesn't matter to me what the theme of the table is - as long as it has a great flowing layout and great missions and mini games I will play any themed table, even High School Musical or Hannah Montana!!! (will though find it hard to explain to my wife that it is all about the game play for me). I don't know much about Marvel comics and their characters, apart from seeing a movie here and there, but in the end I love playing the Blade table as there is just so much that you can do and many cool ball and table effects.

I agree fully that the save function should be sorted out - I would still like to have it in but it should be such that as soon as you resume the game from a save game, that particular save game must be instantly and permanently wiped. It should thus function more like a long "pause" rather that being an actual save game.

[Vincent]

I remember trying to reset my console when I messed up with a saved game, but it didn't work. So I don't understand how those people do. But yeah, I'm very disappointed with Patch of Blue...

By the way, what is "IP" ?

[smilingsaint]

i dont think there is any reason to believe blue used that exploit.

[Steam89]

In the interview, I believe that "IP" was referring to Intellectual Property.

As far as Blue goes; in the Xbox Life interview, the Zen rep said that he talked to Blue frequently, and that Blue openly acknowledged using the "save technique".

[Cloda]

This whole question of using the save function reminds me of a Jose Gonzalez song - In our Nature. Don't know what the lyrics is but yes... humans will always find a way to identify and exploit any and all "opportunities". So in this particular case is it up to ZEN, the rule makers, to close this "opportunity" else the serious record breaking players will all be making use of it in their high scoring endeavors. Those of you that follow Formula 1 racing will recognize this tendency to push all the set boundaries to the maximum and to exploit any loopholes, just so that they can have the winning edge. The next year the rules would be changed again or would be redefined to prevent the teams from further exploiting the loopholes.

[Vincent]

In the interview they say that patch of Blue explained he had been using that method.

i dont think there is any reason to believe blue used that exploit.

[Lepruk86]

Good interview...

A bit annoyed about the save-cheat/bug/glitch/*feature*...

I won't use it as my scores are already inflated to a point where it is hard to reach them.

The saving either needs to be converted to a temp save (and thus all scores wiped clean to support the new system) or just removed; as someone said earlier, no restarts on a real machine and a bad ball happens to everyone.

Makes me quite happy with some of my legit scores now however.