Gamebreaking bug on Paranormal (&Avengers &Skyrim)

[sui99]

My Paranormal game just glitched out after ~4 hours at 3 billion on ball 1.3...

The cube started spinning (select a mode state) while the ball was still in play. I was still able to stop the cube and select a mode (eventhough it also ate up the magna save since I had to hit the launch button during the game). When I started the mode afterwards (Doppelganger) the film reel shot an empty slot onto the table eventhough there was another ball locked in there. So, at this point I was running Doppelganger with one ball. After sinking that one ball into one of the sinkholes it's now stuck beneath the table and no other balls are shot out. The table is stuck in an infinite loop and I'm almost certain that tilting doesn't resolve the issue*.

Is there any way to fix this glitch? It's already a top 10 score and I can easily grind out rank 2. However, I'm never ever gonna spent another 4-5 hours just to get back to this state...

A quick research shows that this bug is present since the table's initial release in 2011!!! Like wtf?! How on earth can you go through the trouble of adjusting ALL tables including rules updates for Pinball FX3 but not fix gamebreaking bugs that have been reported multiple times already??

Same thing with lockpicking on Skyrim, which I already reported in the bug megathread (lockpicking screen never shows up, the screen stays black). That one was present in the original release as well and was fixed back in 2017 (according to deep on the steam forums). However, it's still present on PS4 in PFX3 and has also been reported not only by me but also on steam in January 2020 as well as recently on reddit.

*On Avengers I encountered an infinite ball save during Quinjet Multiball. Balls just kept coming back into play infinitely regardless of ball save. I tried letting balls drain for a while but the table just kept shooting them back. After tilting the table the balls still kept coming, preventing me from finishing the game or posting my score. Maybe related to this issue: Sometimes the game shoots balls back into play before the actual Ball Out message shows up and disables the flippers. (you drain the ball, ball comes back into play as if ball save was active, a couple seconds later "Ball Out" shows up on the DMD and you can't move the flippers anymore).

And just for good measure while we're at it: What about flippers getting stuck after using the rewind feature? That one was reported since the release of PFX3 and I guess at this point we can call it a feature? A feature that's only present on some tables because who cares about consistent controls in a videogame, everyone loves surprises, right? xD

Let's also take the opportunity to talk about some of the unreal scores on the leaderboards. There are people on there who have perfectly round scores on multiple tables (750M here, 800M there, 1.2B over there - all ending on XXX.000.000). I guess it's safe to assume that those scores aren't real so why are they still there? Even worse, there are highscores on the leaderboards where the actual player who achieved those scores literally posted a youtube video showing that those scores are the result of a bug. Does anyone even care? I certainly wouldn't if I could disable cross-platform leaderboards but wait, that option doesn't do anything because the superscore is still calculated based on the cross-platform leaderboards. *sigh*

At this point I have to believe that the developers simply don't care about their product anymore once it's out. It's bugged? Well, tough luck, just buy some new tables and hope they will be fine... With this lack of support it's difficult to justify any further purchases. I mean, these are not just some minor issues that can be annoying but aren't really relevant, these are some serious bugs that affect the core functionality of your product!

Well, at least I'm not angry anymore that PS4 EU didn't get any goodies while every other platform did. Saved me from purchasing more of this broken mess... And yes, I'm very salty right now and maybe the tone of this post is a bit inappropriate here and there but the issues are there and I would love to see a comment on those issues.

edit:

I'm not sure if this one is a bug or a feature but it's certainly annoying enough to mention:

On Starfighter Assault the Bumpers can shoot the ball with such velocity down the right drain that it simply shoots right through an active kickback, resulting in a ball loss. I assume this has to do with increased bumper strength in PFX3? Anyway, it's another table where games last a couple of hours and losing one or two of your balls this way is soulcrushing.

edit 2:

Here is the original post describing my issue. It was posted 11-10-2011...
(Thread: https://forum.zenstudios.com/showthr...for-Paranormal)

My game just glitched It was my first run after reading the guides (and I think my third or fourth on this table ever).. I got the full 18 Balls, was on ball #14 with 890M.. and on my way to score my very first billion ever..

I was very carefull not to trigger any known glitches.. kept my fingers off the levitation multiball and never touched the upper left flipper, when the ball came down from the mansion.. so here is what happened:

During the game, I locked the second ball in the film reel and managed to get a skillshot after that. It was the first of the three-step-skillshot and the second I hit it, one of the balls from the film reel fell out. Since there are moments when you have to choose a phenomenon or something on the score-screen, I lost the second ball very quick and wasnt sure if that was a bug or some feature I haven´t encountered before.
Soon after that I startet the Doppleganger-Multiball and scored 1 Jackpot right away.. but since there was an empty space in the Film Reel, it turned without giving me a second ball. My first ball locked was rolling around in the triangle and now theres nothig I could do.. I waitet a while and tried tilting the game.. now it is tilt, but the ball keeps rolling around in the triangle.. so I have no way to finish it.

So even with Doppleganger there can go something wrong, but I think this bug would´ve caused problems with any of the multiballs.. if you ever encounter a situation where the game gives you a second ball without having activated a Multiball-Mode, you should think about drowning both balls an lose one of your balls rather than breaking the whole game.

I don´t think Im gonne touch this table again as long as there´s no patch

[Cloda]

Man... that sounds rough! It is disappointing that none of those has been addressed. What I find interesting though is the Williams tables on Classic Arcade have relatively few issues, including bogus scores. There certainly are, and I have reported quite a few, but none as serious as what you are talking about. It seems clear that Zen shifted its focus to the real-world Williams recreations as they probably are tapping into a brand new lucrative market. I don't complain, as I've enjoyed the game more than ever, but it is disappointed that they basically abandoned their originals and what initially made people fans of their tables.

My only suggestion for you is to join the Pinball FX3 Discord (link pinned on the Steam Pinball FX3 discussion page) and to report it there under the bugs section as there is a whole lot more activity there, and you can actually tag the Zen guys who usually responds.

[sui99]

Thanks for your reply! I recently stumbled upon your youtube channel, awesome content and amazing gameplay!

Back to topic: I tried the first two Williams packs but they aren't for me really. The tables are pretty fun at first but ultimately they feel empty and boring. There's just not a lot to do there and highscoring is pretty much always a mind numbing grind. It's either a) collect super jackpots cause nothing else is worth anything in comparison, b) grind multiballs or c) grind this one ramp until eternity.

I think Zen's table designs are a lot more intricate. The missions, side missions and sometimes "meta mechanics" are just so much more fun. Also their scoring is usually well balanced. So far, I have been able to compete (Top 50) on all tables by just going through the wizard modes. The only exceptions I encountered were Paranormal and Wolverine. But that makes it 2 out of 70+ whereas my experience with Williams is 6 out of 7 are grindfests (Junkyard is fun though ^^).

By the way, it's fine for me if Zen wants to focus on Williams now; they created a massive collection of amazing original tables over the years, so there's plenty of content for me. But stopping support completely despite some serious bugs? That's a no go in my opinion. I mean, they are still charging money for those old tables so at least they should guarantee their functionality.

There's still almost 30 tables left for me to buy but after my experience this week I'm not even sure if I would grab them on a 50% sale. I played 6 tables this week, 2 completely broke and 1 had a potentially highscore run ending bug. That's just a bit too much for me.