Future tables without exploits and multiple leaderboards suggestion

[LeanderL]

Hi!

1) I've been a pinball fan literally forever and love your work. However, some tables can be exploited, which is not fair and boring. In my opinion a table should be about completing missions and you should gain the most points by doing so.

In A New Hope, you can exploit Yarwin (?) multiball. In Return of the Jedi, a strategy is to keep aiming at the bumpers to raise the multiplier before even aiming elsewhere or starting missions. I never do that and only aim at flashing lights or go for a natural flow, but others play strategically.
In Wild West Rampage (one of the best tables!) missions are risky as bandits kick your ball back and drain it easily. On the contrary, just aim at the saloon door and go for rampage multiball...again and again. This is also very boring, but not risky (as every multiball mode is save because of the number of balls) and you get a good amount of points.

I am sure there are other tables with unbalanced mechanics and I'd really love to see better balancing on future tables (all but Williams ones of course as they are based on real machines).

2) Every new pinball pack (again I am not talking about Williams tables) adds tables of varied difficulty. A table is more challenging while another one is difficult...my problem is that easy ones might be appealing because of the story, theme and movie it is based on, but easy tables often take too long and are not that interesting. In contrast, there are brilliant tables out there such as Wild West Rampage, The Walking Dead or Jaws and all of them are difficult and drain-heavy so you cannot enjoy them as long as you want to.

Why not add multiple leaderboards? Every tables should come in two variations. Easy tables: normal mode (easy) and a more difficult mode with more difficult physics, fewer balls or whatever. Difficult tables: normal mode (difficult) and an easier mode with easier physics so the ball does not drain as often. This way, difficult tables can be enjoyed more and easy tables are more challenging and less boring. Just add two more different highscores for all modes (single player normal and special; classic single player normal and special).

What do you think?

[cantankerous--]

I for one don't see the point of creating additional leaderboards as those atop of the current ones will be atop the others as well. Not only are the top players simply, in most cases better, but they also know all the exploits as well. I have spent years playing zen pinball on various systems competing against some of the best in the world. I have a handful of WR's across the leaderboards, but in most cases those that best me do so regularly...................some are just better than me and no additional leaderboards will ever change that. I purchased the nintendo star wars for the switch about a month ago and since have won 3 tournaments and got a second and a 3rd and am currently in first place and second on the two that are playing now, but that is only because all of the best players are on other consoles and because the star wars title is not cross platform. You might think winning all the time on that console would be fun, but it's really not as I know those I am competing against are not the best. Let's say Zen somehow had the ability to create specific leaderboards that were based solely on ones skill and in this magical made up scenario Zen also had a way of shielding it so that those of better skill were unable to simply create another account and just play shitty to infiltrate the lower level leaderboard, let's say, they could actually do that, at the end of the day you would still just be the best of the worst wouldn't you? It's a hollow feeling really.