What about Highscores?

[Cloda]

I don't have a lot of time to play these days so prefer shorter, more intense games e.g. one of my favourite pinball games is "Revenge of the Rob-O-Bot" as part of the Atomic Pinball Collection. Pinball FX2 has never been the ideal game for local leaderboards and multiplayer as games take too long as soon as people reach a decent level of proficiency. I see value though in still having local leaderboards if we can have alternate gameplay modes (one ball only, time limited etc.) where a bunch of people can play in short succession and you can repeat the process a couple of times during an evening.

I long for a leaderboard (local and online) that provide additional information on key aspects as to how the score was achieved. Something like: score - main modes completed - side modes completed - times wizard mode completed (e.g. 2 300 000 - 7/12 - 3/6 - 2 times). I will place much more value on a high score where the wizard mode was completed a couple times compared to a high score where it wasn't completed once and only certain modes and side modes were completed as you can then be certain modes were spammed.

[MuddyWolf_Beta]

I agree Cloda. More focus on Wizard modes, speed running, etc. would have been great! My hopes for FX3 lay in that direction too.

I also immediately liked the addition of the one ball challenge and the time challenges. Unfortunately those challenges are exclusive to the upgrading part of the game and that’s just not my favorite part of FX3. I love arcade pinball. I can’t help it. And FX2, video game graphics and all, was at heart still an arcade pinball game. (It had an Operators Menu to prove it )

From the beginning of the beta, I felt two essential features were missing in FX3. No matter what I liked and didn’t like about the rest of the game.

The first feature is the topic of this thread. Local high scores. There’s simply no excuse for doing away with those. I don’t have many real life friends that love pinball so unfortunately my local high score rankings are mostly populated by ‘AAA’ but I’m still firmly on the side of those lucky enough to have such marvellous friends.

(I also like local high scores because it gives you the chance to keep an eye on your score progress on a table.)

The second feature is not completely missing but is severely lacking right now. Gameplay achievements. Pinball FX2 has the greatest achievement medals I’ve ever seen in any game on Steam. Period. And I’m certain I’m not the only one who feels like this. On my Steam friend feed they are by far the highest rated screenshots and the ones that get the most comments. They are also responsible for keeping the older tables alive. Players keep coming back for one more attempt at those elusive medals.

You can collect 3d/concept art items in FX3 by completing certain goals in the challenge modes. You’ve got an in-game page where you can look at them and they are nice to look at once or twice. 10 years ago collecting them all would have been a good in-game goal.

But these days, it’s all about achievements and the fact that FX3 has got only one(!) gameplay achievement per table is a huge let down imo. The only excuse I can think of is that Zen has no idea how many achievement hunters are out there. Maybe they are not aware of sites like Astats? With the success of games like Zup?

Not only has Zen cut the amount of achievements in half (on Steam at least), they’ve also kept the same achievements as in FX2. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first booted up Biolab in FX3 and noticed that the only achievement was the Cozy Cookie achievement (Amass your first million with the Mad Professor watching.) You can collect this achievement with just one super skillshot

[LeanderL]

Like Cloda said, a hot seat mode where each played had x minutes to play would be nice. This way, a game with pros wouldn't take long! Maybe 5, 10 and 15 minute turns would be great.

Local highscores with initals are crucial! I started two petitions in both the FX2 and FX3 Steam forums with tons of replies so far. Devs, please add them!!!

[Georgyboy]

Agree that a local score is good just to have an idea of the scores we can make on a table after a long break on it.

A other big point is the superscore which must stay the total of the all the scores in normal mode (no boosted mode, no 5min mode/1ball mode etc..) and only them !

Can you say what happen to the superscore on FX3 ?