Is Zen pinball overly easy?

[caper_26]

Indeed! I'm also trying to figure out the best way to hit those two holes.

Blue Native is easy: Hit it in the Yellow first, then when ejected above the left (Red), time it right and bat it across. You can get it most times once you get the hang of it.

The wierd thing about shooting from caught/trap in ZP2 is that the ball seems so stick to the flipper, and not accelerate uniformly once released...

[Boulderdash]

An excellent topic

Now this is an interesting topic. First of all BB, thanks for being open about the game design and philosophy behind the flipper position and difficulties.
ZP is (for me at least) more than just another pinball game. Allmost all of the tables are chuck-full of audio visual eyecandy, missions, cut scenes, bonus stuff and other content I love to discover without (rage) quitting because of another bad luck ball drain.

A great example is the MARS table. Good in every single part of entertainment, atmosphere, voiceacting, music, difficulty, content, artwork and graphical models and effects. Definitly my favorite table.

I suppose Zen is aiming for a wide audience thats why there are easy, moderate and challenging tables in the huge library.
The themes seem to match the difficulty level. It yould be silly if MsPlosionman was the hardest of em all

[Metalzoic]

Wow! I had forgotten I made this thread.
Glad you liked it. Ha!

[Boulderdash]

Wow! I had forgotten I made this thread.
Glad you liked it. Ha!

In the nick of time before the end of the world

[skippycue]

OK, I must've missed something on PvZ, because I didn't find that table to be super easy. At least, getting to and beating the wizard mode was challenging for me... Maybe I've just lost my skills, lol... but I DO have 100% in Zen Pinball 2 so I don't think that's it...

[tenorhero]

OK, I must've missed something on PvZ, because I didn't find that table to be super easy. At least, getting to and beating the wizard mode was challenging for me... Maybe I've just lost my skills, lol... but I DO have 100% in Zen Pinball 2 so I don't think that's it...

PVZ is easy only because of the ridiculous long multiball sessions and the fact that it was super easy to start. The wizard was annoying to me at first only because I didn't master that sinkhole shot to the left. Other than that I have not plated PVZ since release....well aside from the update where the changed a few things in the update before Civil War was released just to check it out.

[ER777]

OK, I must've missed something on PvZ, because I didn't find that table to be super easy. At least, getting to and beating the wizard mode was challenging for me... Maybe I've just lost my skills, lol... but I DO have 100% in Zen Pinball 2 so I don't think that's it...

Many of the rules in PvZ were patched to make it a little less easy now than it was at release. The Mail Multiball used to take a lot less shots to initiate (I think maybe they over-corrected that now) and the kickbacks, ball saves, and extra balls were much easier to get. When it was first released it was tough to have a game not last over an hour unless you let balls drain on purpose.

[caper_26]

I still dont get how people think this table is "easy" in comparison to other tables. Compare the scores.... there was no need for any changes to the game at all.... IMHO

[Cloda]

I still dont get how people think this table is "easy" in comparison to other tables. Compare the scores.... there was no need for any changes to the game at all.... IMHO

The table is easy from the perspective that you can keep alive the ball for a long time. It was very difficult to have short games don't know how it is now with the new updates. I agree though that the tableI us not that easy from the perspective to beat wizard mode especially a second time. A table that is similar for me is Tesla. I manage to have really long games but haven't been able to beat or even reach wizard mode.

[caper_26]

But I think the changes they made didn't affect difficulty in keeping the ball alive, only scoring... which is ridiculous when you consider other table's scores. I believe it is the second lowest scoring table next to Ironman.

[snakeman07]

But I think the changes they made didn't affect difficulty in keeping the ball alive, only scoring... which is ridiculous when you consider other table's scores. I believe it is the second lowest scoring table next to Ironman.

NGSII is pretty low scoring also, I only have some over 300m and I'm number 3 on the leaderboards, at least, the last time I checked.

[hunter328]

I think the difficulty is just right. Sure it's far easier than the real deal (nudging a heavy machine can hurt) or even a proper sim like The Pinball Arcade. That said on Zen you don't have to be the second coming of "Tommy" to fully explore a table and to have games lasting longer than a handful of minutes without hours upon hours of practice, though it does take practice to fully complete all which these tables offer, which in some case offer more than would be possible on a real life table.
Also, compared to other genres of video games these days Zen is still pretty difficult. Everything has been dumbed down it sometimes seems.

[Boulderdash]

I think the difficulty is just right. Sure it's far easier than the real deal (nudging a heavy machine can hurt) or even a proper sim like The Pinball Arcade. That said on Zen you don't have to be the second coming of "Tommy" to fully explore a table and to have games lasting longer than a handful of minutes without hours upon hours of practice, though it does take practice to fully complete all which these tables offer, which in some case offer more than would be possible on a real life table.
Also, compared to other genres of video games these days Zen is still pretty difficult. Everything has been dumbed down it sometimes seems.

I wonder if it is even possible to measure a dificulty in pinball. From a simple philosophic kind of way the only thing that counts are just the scores. EG. if you find a trick to score some big points can be easy whlie going for some trophys or exploring all table contents that gives you far less points can be darn hard. The only measurement that may define a dificulty level is the top score of other players. And even then those players can be, correct me if I'm wrong, very luck on a game and set the benchmark for that table by accident/luck.

[surf1der]

If you define the difficulty of a table as how easy or hard it is to keep a ball in play, a simple measure of average game duration across all players would give you an accurate measurement of table difficulty. If you wanted to take out the variable of extra balls, because you can extend game length if it is very easy to get extra balls, use average duration per ball. The higher the number the easier the table. And I believe these statistics are already collected by the game.

Judging table difficulty by scoring is not a good idea because scoring mechanics can vary greatly from table to table. For example, i believe my infinity gauntlet and plants v zombies scores are very close. But i would consider ig to be a much harder game than pvz. I have very long pvz games (hours) but scoring is low while IG I have shorter games but higher scoring. Just because my scores are fairly similar, I don't think anyone would assume pvz and ig have similar difficulties. Also, certain tables have modes that can be spammed for big points which would skew results.

[ER777]

If you define the difficulty of a table as how easy or hard it is to keep a ball in play, a simple measure of average game duration across all players would give you an accurate measurement of table difficulty. If you wanted to take out the variable of extra balls, because you can extend game length if it is very easy to get extra balls, use average duration per ball. The higher the number the easier the table. And I believe these statistics are already collected by the game.

I think that's the most sensible and common measure of difficulty for pinball, since it relates back to real world tables and how much play time you get for your money on them.

So by those standards Zen 2 is on the easy side. The average duration per ball is pretty high compared to most pinball games.

However, I agree that Zen 2 makes up for it in the difficulty of completing missions, especially the wizard modes.