Thank you very much. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Alan, one of the owners of Wedgehead, the pinball bar in Portland, Oregon, and the name of the show. Joining me is my trusty co-host. He's one half of the podcast. He doesn't have to work at the stupid bar that the podcast is named after, but he's intrinsically tied to it at all times on this show. It's Alex, the water boy. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. Yeah, I'm constantly thankful that I'm only one half of the podcast. I don't have to be responsible for the bar. You know, I'm doing particularly good because it's my turn to plug the coffee account, right? That's correct. Yeah, for anybody that's unaware, you know, if you like the show, we have a coffee account. It's ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead Podcast. And you can go there and throw us a few bucks just to say thanks for, you know, all the work that Alan puts into this show, entertaining you guys every week and the small amount of work I put into, I guess. We raised money. We're going out to Colorado. We're just getting that on the books now. So hopefully next time we record an episode, we can actually tell you the dates. We will be out there for anyone listening. Otherwise, when you do donate, you get an invite to our private Discord server. and you can just ask us the dates in there and you'll get an answer a lot quicker than waiting for a podcast right alan that's right we're looking forward to that trip and as an unsponsored show we're only getting to go on that trip because y'all were kind enough to donate to the show and we are very excited to go play some pinball on location in the great state of colorado but today's episode is all about playfield multipliers and the absolute stranglehold that they have in modern pinball design once upon a time playfield multipliers were a very rare feature but nowadays the only thing that is rare is to see a modern game without them they become as ubiquitous as modes or multiballs and we are going to talk all about them on this episode including why i hate them why alex loves them and all the middle ground in between how does that sound alex oh sounds great this is something that comes up with me and you in the discord constantly uh so we figured we may as well uh do an episode about it yeah this is kind of like the tail wagging the dog type of scenario here so before we get into the history of playfield multipliers you want to explain what a playfield multiplier actually is it's just like a blanket playfield multiplier it just lasts a preset amount of time like 30 seconds everything is worth twice as much 2x or 3x or 40x in some cases but yeah for anybody that's listening to this if you don't really play pinball much at all you're just getting going playfield multiplier is something that's just multiplying the value of things on the playfield. It's usually like a straight number like that, like two or three or 40 times. And it means if a shot was worth 1 million points before and you have a 2x playfield multiplier lit, it's going to award 2 million points. I honestly don't know what the first playfield multiplier is. So if you're listening to this and we get this wrong, come into the Discord. Actually, give us money to get to the Discord. and then you can correct us there you go give us five dollars and then you can correct us yeah but the first game i could think of with a true playfield multiplier is flash gordon in 1981 and it has a 15 second playfield multiplier of either 2x or 3x and like i said there might be an earlier game but it would have happened at this time like in the early solid state era and it really even though it happened then it didn't really become common in every game for decades Like even many of the 90s games don't have one, most notably, like a lot of the DMD games. Some do, but it's still unusual, even kind of there. And then now it's like they're in everything. Yeah, it's kind of like you said, they've become ubiquitous. They're absolutely like everywhere. It's very, very rare to see a game without a playfield multiplier come out. And there are different types of multipliers. People might be listening to this and then like we should distinguish because they're be like what do you mean there's ems where i see 3x or whatever on them and but that's where we get to kind of the classic multiplier of score was always the bonus multiplier it occurs during the bonus collect sequence you know at the end of every ball or sometimes during like a saucer collect like on a play field where it allow you to collect your bonus while the ball's still in play but they were always meant to be like you gain some sort of points that you collect after you drain and that was the classic way of doing bonus multipliers what we're talking about today is the playfield which alex said at the top of the episode everything on the playfields multiplied for a duration of time there's also shot multipliers and that's where it's like it's a limited variation on a playfield multiplier because this a particular shot is multiplied for a certain amount of time games like spider-man or guardians of the galaxy those come to mind it's like shot multiplier games rather than blanket playfield multiplier. Yeah, and if you play a game like I'm thinking about, Rick and Morty has all three of these used extensively. Playfield multiplier is probably the least important on Rick and Morty, which is interesting, but the shot multipliers are constant. If you've played that game, for the few listeners that are familiar with that thing, the shot multipliers would be like the Meseeks, the bonus multipliers is Megaseeds, and playfield multipliers are dictated by the dimensions. So it's kind of interesting to see how it starts with one thing a lot of games it was like a novelty to get one of these put into it and now it's just kind of expected that games will have all of these things gets to be a bit much yeah and a lot of modern games too won't even you know when i said spider-man or guardians those are very obvious like you'll plan a big act on the guardian shot or on spider-man you'll place you know the next shot you hit once they're all lit will be where you place your multiplier right but there are games where it's like it's just a combo like you hit one shot and then for a short amount of time the next shot is 2x right so that happens on a lot of games and that's not what we're talking about in this episode uh we're talking about the different i'm talking about the blanket yep and even there there's different implementations of playfield multipliers themselves right so i have four of these and i want to go over these the first one the times right just most common your basic vanilla playfield multiplier that lasts for a preset amount of time usually like 30 seconds or So, you know, just kind of what you think a play field multiplier is. Then there is the modified version of this. Well, I'm calling the juice timer. And this is common in a lot of Dwight Sullivan's games like Munsters, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, to name a few. It's basically the same thing as the common time play field multipliers. But Dwight allows you to keep feeding the timers by hitting shots, usually stand up targets to add more time and keep your multiplier going longer. So it's like it's on that timer, but he allows you to go, oh, if you hit these again, it'll keep resetting the timer, adding time to it, and just kind of like it becomes the priority of keeping that timer going. Yeah. And then there's Alex's favorite version, which is the multiball playfield multiplier. That is probably my favorite version. It's tied to how many balls are left on the playfield. So like TNA or Tag Team or Myst Multiball and Dracula. But it's basically like Myst works a little bit different. Myst is a multiplier just for the jackpots based off of how many concurrent multiballs you got running. But I don't think it does other stuff. But it's so funny on that game because there's nothing else to do besides the multiball jackpots. So I'm not sure it functionally is different. Every shot is a jackpot for Myst. So it's essentially a playfield multiplier. But if you're to read it as, you know, text on a page, you would have to be a little more clear. But, you know, TNA is probably the easiest to understand in the game. Simplest. Yeah. Right. You have three balls on the play field. Everything is worth three X. If you have two left, it's worth two. And one, you're just down to normal play one X scoring. And then the final version of a play field multiplier is the unlimited version. and I put unlimited in quotes because obviously nothing's unlimited, but I'm saying a play field multiplier that lasts until the end of the ball. There's not a timer on it. And a game that does this is Pulp Fiction, where you start your play field multiplier. It's good for the rest of the ball until that ball drains. Yes, you qualify it, you get it, and you could do whatever you want. You know, you can sit there and cradle the ball and think about, you know, what you want to do from here. Rip spinners, dude. you rip spinners just rip spinners you're ripping spinners so all these great playfield multipliers in so many fun ways to use them you're certainly a big fan right or does that disagree with you know that's you already you already kind of gave a spoiler i think i hit my hand at the beginning here but uh let's talk about it because this is the meat of the argument here like we both agree on they're everywhere and they're not going anywhere but in my opinion all games would be better without play field multipliers and uh you know i don't there's not really an exception in my mind uh there's games that do it less egregiously to me but the games that do it horribly it just make me not want to play a game at all i yeah i can agree that some of the some of the ones where it's just like completely out of hand i think would be better with nothing at all i disagree that i'm like i don't think all games would be better because i think there's some games that are basically just playing the play field multiplier and those games are great my thing is like more progression should always mean a better score i just always fight against this idea of like let's hurry up and put everything into this compressed time window of like whatever 30 seconds where everything's worth a lot and this is what i think you're going to talk about and what you like but it's like you can either set this up and then kind of cash out or it kind of falls apart and you know like i'm not against all stacking but i am against the idea that like especially on certain games which we'll get into at the end of this episode but it's like there's certain games where you're just kind of slopping into multipliers and that is atrocious to me i am like there's there's nothing worse than that feeling where it's like the multipliers are on targets or something and the balls just kind of slap into them that's the worst it is kind of funny when you play something like uh like you play a ghostbusters and if you and a buddy that have just started playing pinball or playing ghostbusters and you both kind of know how to like get into the multiball by you know shooting the ramp a bunch and you don't really need to know too much other than that on that game both kind of get in there and you play the multiball for a minute or however long the ball save is now and you can get to the end and be like wait why is one of our scores five times higher than the other persons and you're like oh because the stand-ups like you selected advanced multiplier for your skill shine you probably didn't even realize that so the stand-ups were lit and you like rolled into like a huge sick like a six x multiplier yeah and you're like huh so when you can have like runaway games like that on accident i think that's definitely part of the problem but i disagree that i was like to me playfield multipliers are just another scoring tool in the toolbox in the same way that like a multiball is or like modes are you're like it's just a way to get the player to earn points and i think it all comes down to the implementation i don't think every game needs them i think we've become we've got to a point in pinball where every game has everything right like every game must have a subset of modes feeding into at least one wizard mode probably multiple if you want to be like respected if you only have one wizard mode people online will complain yeah though even though they won't even though those players won't ever see that fucking wizard mode people will complain that there's not another one that they won't see also they want to tune into carl d'Python Anghelo get through all of it and if he gets to the game and it breaks because there's nothing else after it they'll just rail online about how the game's garbage yeah you're not carl d'Python Anghelo dude you're not fucking getting there anyway like i don't know what this shit's going on but yeah every game that comes out it needs to have everything it needs to have all the modes it needs to have all the wizard modes it needs to have a you know a way to build bonus that's like some kind of funky thing going on with a bonus multiplier available it needs to have a playfield multiplier needs to have shot shot multipliers and combo rewards and hurry ups and it needs all of this stuff now every single game that comes out and i don't think that's true at all i think when we look back at like the all time classic games a lot of them are missing like many of those things yeah like we get we're talking about dracula and you're like dracula doesn't have any modes it just has three multiballs and it's to me a perfect example of like a dmd game with ramps and multiball doesn't have a wizard mode no it doesn't have shit dude it has also fucking banging uh video mode and three multiballs and like it has fucking good sound effects as three multiballs that you can stack together for a big scoring moment yeah and that's the thing i think when when bonus multipliers are or when playfield multipliers are used well they're really cool i do think they have the potential to kind of throw a game out of whack and like when we talk about our least favorite examples we get into a couple specific games that do that or can lead to that at least the way me and you are playing them but in general i would say that a good play field multiplier to me is all about risk versus reward and i think a good risk reward system built into a game is what keeps me coming back like a safe strategy may include starting the lucrative multi-baller mode as soon as you have the chance but like if you're a cool guy you know you're airton senna taking the gap in front of you you want to risk it all You want to line up everything and you get that playfield multiplier going before you start that lucrative multi-baller mode. That rewards the players, my opinion, a playfield multiplier that you have to qualify and set up before you get into something. It rewards players who have confidence. And if you don't have confidence, you're never going to stack up to the guys that do. Like we're talking about, you're like, yeah, you can turn into a runaway game. And you're like, yeah, until it doesn't because the guy setting everything up, you know, shits the bed and doesn't get any points. because that happens a lot like i don't mind when it is like a very careful stack but i'm just being realistic like most games aren't that way not not in that way like most of these playfield multipliers are just like you kind of slap a ball around you hit some fucking targets that you weren't even aiming for all of a sudden you're in a multiplier but because everything's lit on the playfield anyway you might not even know that you're in it and then all of a sudden you look up and you go what the hell i played i played one battle on deadpool like why is my score you know four times higher than my last game where you know i got into mech suit in the mini wizard you know like what the hell is going on and you're like oh you got like the snicked couple of times yeah multiball and you didn't realize dude and that's the thing is that playfield multipliers that you accidentally pick up while just trying to do other shit and especially when they impact the scoring enough to sway the outcome of a game i think that sucks and we're seeing we've seen quite a few of those yeah we see more than you would expect where you're just falling into them but i also i did make the note here that you can slop your way into a lot of stuff in a pinball machine and so that is kind of just the nature of a game like you can you can just get into a multiball with no idea what you're doing and just be nailing jackpots without you know knowing that like oh you hit the jackpots in the right order so that did something for sure here's the thing man like good good pinball design is like a noob is going to go up there and just slap balls around and stuff's going to happen i just don't i'm like if the scoring isn't satisfying to the player for a thing right like say a mode requires you to hit three shots in a tight succession and then hit this other shot like say at a a scoop or something that's harder to hit for big points just make those points more like make you know what i'm saying like i'm like if you have to rely on a multiplier then you fucked up that's my point is like you fucked up like it's just another way to do to kind of like set that up to set up to give the player options i just i think it's a way to first of all i'm like bonus multipliers are way better that's the way they were bonus you collect at the end you can lose it because you tilt that's better tilting should hurt that's the other thing that happened in modern games where this isn't like just a bonus multipliers episode but like tilting doesn't fucking matter anymore it's just like with rare exceptions it just doesn't matter and it's almost like when it does you know then people are like startled they're startled because they're like man you know like i heard somebody say stranger things bonus is op overpowered and i'm like that's what the fuck playfield multipliers are dude yeah Like a bonus multiplier is like you had to specifically get the thing, which again means you could have just slopped into some lanes. OK, but at least it's literally the same for every player on every ball. And it counts a set number of things that count towards your bonus. And it happens to everyone. But you can also fuck it up and lose it by tilting. So you get that risk reward thing of like, hey, I bet I had a good ball. I have a good bonus coming, but I could also maybe save that ball going out the out lane. And, you know, that decision making happens in a split second, you know, as far as like, do I want to like really try to get this ball or let it go and just collect my bonus? You know, obviously, like a lot of solid state games are bonus games, you know, like you just build your bonus and then you don't want to tilt. Yeah, you got to take it more seriously. It adds tension to the game naturally because it's like when you first start playing a game, if you're like playing Paragon or something on ball one and you like see the ball going, you know, for the fucking den or whatever. Yeah. What's that cave on the left side called? You'll shake the shit out of the game to keep the ball out of danger on ball one. But then when it's like ball three and you've got a bonus carrying over, you start wondering, you're like, hell, even if I get the ball back, is it going to impact your score much? You're like getting the bonus matters more than the chance of getting the ball back. it's i do think bonus heavy games are great and i wish we saw more of them nowadays i think that having multiple multipliers gets confusing and i wish rules would prioritize one and then entirely scrap the other because it's like i like some playfield multiplier games we get into our we'll talk about our best our favorite examples of them in a second and it's like there's games where the playfield multiplier is the whole game and it's like well you just play that differently it's a different style of game i think that's cool or can be cool when done well or interestingly but it gets confusing when you have a whole bunch so it's like just kind of like quit trying to throw everything at every game in my opinion and focus on one thing i guess they did kind of like they did focus on playfield multipliers in a game we're going to talk about later and it kind of sucks so maybe be careful what i should wish for here but that's the thing man is like i just think it's like when we talk about pinball and we talk about what we like and what we dislike and you know now it's like i own a location so i talk about pinball all the time right like i'm working on pinball machines we've been doing this show for two years uh we have our discord and we talk about it and the people are like what is it about a modern game that you don't like alan like what is it because i get this reputation that i hate modern games which isn't entirely true but there is there are some things that i that i pick out and i point to like a lot of modern games lately honestly yeah But the thing that I'll pick out and point to is one of the main things is it's so easy to pick on what I think are terrible implementations of playfield multipliers. And then I go, that's it. That's what I hate about a game. Like, that exactly is, like, if not number one, it's definitely, like, high up there. Like, obviously, like, long ball times you hear me talk about on the show all the time. But I hate that. Long ball times are the number one gripe for me. Yeah. And so much of this feeds into that. The biggest thing, if we're just going to kind of like our grievances with modern games, the long ball times and just the feeding of ball saves as you get into more multi balls and like just ball saves from anything are a major problem. yeah i agree i mean and we talk about that on the show this is just something that i pointed out and i thought would make a good episode because you and i have very different thoughts on that i mean i think we hate the same ones yeah we kind of have an idea i think that's the thing you'd rather say cut them all out and i'm kind of fighting for them but there's a lot of overlap in our taste here like if i was gary stern like gary stern kind of famously like when stern started and i think he's more open now or you know he's like not in the lead make every decision role like he famously always wanted all the games to have three pop bumpers you know he wanted that post in the orbit to stop yeah he was making his like big rulings yeah he was like gary's like this is what these games are going to have because i think they're important to pinball like if i was in that position my rule would be like no more play field multipliers the games are going to be better like Like, if you guys can't give risk and reward or properly wait a shot to feel super valuable or commensurate with the stuff you did to get there, then you fucked up on the scoring. That's how I feel about play field multipliers. And that would be my decree. I'd be like, you guys are going to make good games without play field multipliers because play field multipliers are a crutch. Now, I think I kind of I think going to like Gomez's thing that I always quote back the smaller sandbox makes you more creative or whatever. And I do think eliminating that tool from the toolbox would lead to like more thought about how they're handling their scoring. I think it would be a good thing. The problem with the layfield multipliers, too, right, is that it's literally in the name. you're multiplying the scoring of every other feature you put in the game so things might seem balanced this mode you know like this ramps worth this when you're not in a mode or it's not it exaggerates the differences in yes because everything so now it's like oh there's nothing like worth going for except for the one luke most lucrative thing on the table yes and it does kind of limit what it i see i kind of like that because it's like okay it's just like uh here's your next you know your next option how are you going to use it that's some of the kind of the beauty of it to me is that it's like okay like you it's up to you to use that playfield multiplier especially the timed ones they feel like that where it's like well what can you do with this and that's a good segue actually to what do you think the best what's the best example of a playfield multiplier to you what game would it be and why do you like it but this is the one that always gets thrown in my face um because there's there's a game that i love listeners of the show will know it's whitewater i say is i always point to as it's my favorite game i think it's basically a platonic ideal of what a good pinball machine is to me but it has two very distinct features that i hate in pretty much any game and the one is an upper play field but i think it has the best upper play field of all time but that's for a different episode oh that'd be good upper upper playfield episode would be fun yeah we'll we'll do that soon but yeah yeah in this point it has a 5x playfield multiplier so what i encourage people to do that if you hate whitewater and you're the person that goes well it all comes down to you either get the 5x or you don't and then nothing else is worth doing and they hate it i would go i suggest you add deadpool to that list of games you hate because it's the same thing if you're not snickering it doesn't matter what you're doing you know like that's the same thing right now what i now what i will say is the difference between those two games is whitewater to get the playfield multiplier you have to get it as a whirlpool award but the only way to get it early and meaning not climb up that whole ladder one by one in order is to hit the pop bumpers so you can yeah knowingly throw the ball into the pop bumpers to hope that it randomly lands on the five x some of the meanest pop bumpers in a bally williams dmd yeah so it's you're throwing it into the most dangerous part of the play field and it's still not guaranteed the other thing that i defend about the whitewater one is you can't farm it you can't just go into it and then you get your 5x and then you can't keep it running and then you also can't just go all right well i'll just throw it in the pops and then hope i get that again and then i'll start the 5x again you have to go through every award now the rest of them because it won't let you do a 5x until you go through all of the whirlpool awards again and the timer on it is short and you can definitely stack it all right and then totally fuck it up 100 so many times i've done that it's not a like that's what's good about it is like if you're making me shoot a dangerous spot i can't farm it and the potential is like what you said when you talk about how you like something or a good play people multiplier is if you could do this perfect stack because you're confident and then you fuck it up then the play field multiplier is less egregious to me if there truly is the risk there yes and whitewater to me is like a great example of like it's very risky to try to get it early and try to set it up with say the main multiball or hot foot or whatever or try to do something else and it's very dangerous and it doesn't last a long time and you can 100 totally fuck that stack up and get nothing out of it and so like that makes it acceptable to me yeah i think white water is a really fun one too and i think a big part of that is just because of how difficult it is to get that kind of like keeps you coming back because you're like ah fuck i really want to like bring that into something lucrative and i think it's also a good example of why play field multiplier specifically being everything on the play field is multiplied can be cool because it's like there's this play field multiplier that you can get in there and then you can it's like well what are you going to do with that and white water gives you like it's like you can get into bigfoot hoffer you can get into the multiball or you can get into a two ball or whatever like there's a couple different ways you can cash out with that because the whole play field is essentially you know lit and i think that's kind of like the argument for a play field multiplier is that it's like okay it's this limited use it's like in like a fucking star and mario kart and you're like yeah you can get the star and just drive on a straight section of road and you're going marginally faster but like you should be swerving into other drivers or you should be using it to get across a big section of grass a shortcut and you're like so that's what i i like that about the play field multiplier is like it's kind of on you to do something cool with it. And like as much as I think Whitewater is the peak of pinball design and they do so many things right I think they even do the 5x playfield multiplier about as well as it can be implemented into a game I still like man if if you just took that out the rest of the game is just as good and it wouldn be a fucking problem and then people wouldn't be like let's only do this stupid thing and i'm like man even if i didn't get a 5x playfield multiplier i'm gonna beat your ass playing whitewater like you can get it and stack it with your multiball you might even hit a couple piddly jackpots with it and it won't matter like because i'm just going to tear you apart on that game see the problem the problem there is that whitewater is just too damn good of a game so even if you pull out one cool part of it the rest of the game carries it like there i agree with you that whitewater would not really be worse without the 5x it would be hardly that much of a different experience to me yeah that's what i'm not that important there i think they do a great job at like making sure it doesn't ruin the game which is like my big critique of a lot of games with playfield multipliers it's like this ruins a game to me i think it makes the game better because to me it adds extra pressure when you get it running because it's like i kind of play like you it's like i'm not going out of my way for it but i definitely pay attention to when it's lit like when i'm going to cash in on it if i if i hit the pops i'm suddenly looking in those inserts a lot you know what i mean yeah be like oh shit am i going to start 5x i'm like i gotta have something lined up if i'm going to start 5x in that extra pressure i think makes the game more interesting and more fun that being said i do think whitewater would be very good without the playfield multiplier i don't think it would hurt it too much that's my uh you know statement in general yeah we could wake wipe them all out and they'd be fine but what's your game what's what's your favorite i try to pick two that i think make an argument for being notably worse without playfield multipliers the first is a modern game you know and it is pulp fiction so kind of a modern i'm kind of cheating there sort of modern so on pulp fiction you can progress through the game and you can take your paltry little points like a scaredy cat just playing modes or you can prioritize playfield multipliers if you want to actually put your initials into the game if you can't run with the big dogs you got to stay on the porch allen the multiplier isn't timed like we talked about specifically earlier with pulp fiction it just lasts the length of your ball so if anybody hasn't played pulp fiction you got to throw the ball up top you kind of have to play the pops it's very hard you can shoot both of the playfield multiplier qualifier stand-ups the multiplier qualifiers are up in the pops but you basically have to throw it up top and then play the pops like nudge off of the pops into those qualifiers and then to actually start the multiplier you have to hit it's the watch stand up down on the lower playfield watch stand up not anybody would know what i'm talking about it's the shot the stand up and then grabs by the magnet over your right out lane yep and the interesting part is you can keep doing this i think it's capped at 6x but the first time it's like you you hit those two stand-ups and then you hit the third stand-up and that'll start at 2x and then you can repeat that process and you know three and i think it just is a sequential thing i think it's three four five up to six and that play field or that multiplier lasts for the length of your ball so anybody that's listening to this is like well that's three targets and then your score is now worth double like of course you should just keep doing that but the problem is pulp fiction's hard so yeah you can try to do that but it's really actually hard to keep juicing that multiplier and then actually cash in you have to be nailing your shots to have the confidence to get up to a 6x right and my example with this why i brought it up is i had this game on my house for about a month and for a while i was just trying to get to the wizard mode and so i'm just playing through straight modes fast as i can just get into the mode try to get points out of the mode finish it qualify the next one start it and that got dull for me pretty quick even though i never made it to the wizard mode because i fucking suck at that game and i had it set me in my heart dude it's hard and i never made it to the wizard mode and i still kind of was getting like sick of it and then i was like well i should try to get a decent score on this thing before i give it back to roads and goes back to wedgehead because i don't want them making fun of me so i started prioritizing the playfield multiplier and uh trying to get the multiplier up when you know you've got a lucrative mode if you're playing pulp fiction on the early code basically means that you're waiting until you get the wash the car mode or whatever and that made the game significantly more addicting and kept me coming back because it's like okay sometimes i'd get a 2x and i'd get into the car wash and i'm like fuck i've had it in the three or four or whatever i would have been like you know that would have been a good game and so to me that's a really strong argument for playfield multipliers because without that it just starts feeling really one note there's not really any choices to be made it's just do the thing start the mode do the thing and when you add the multiplier you're like okay we'll do the thing and then it's like if you got a multiplier going if you actually get a high one up you're like well maybe i'll get into the multi balls the multi balls are kind of a waste of time on pulp fiction a little bit but if you have a good multiplier it's definitely worth doing and so it changes my approach to the game and i think it does make it more fun and that one would be notably worse without it they might be able to tweak the rules and do something different to make up for not having a multiplier but as is it would be a worse game without it i like pulp fiction and again because i like that the multiplier on pulp fiction doesn't bother me as much as other games but i disagree like with the i think it would be better without it but they would have to they would have to change it a little bit you know they would have to like balance the modes better what i like about the pulp fiction rule set is is kind of like a throwback it's more of a despite it looking more like a mid-80s game as far as layout it kind of has like the 90s rule set where it's like it's kind of like there's like five main things to do i think the multiplier makes the game worse and here's why is i think it makes it worse because the game is built around the playfield multiplier in the sense that like if you're if If you want to get a good score doing it, especially either main multiball, you have to have a multiplier running also in a mode. It's obviously going to help that mode. But the way that that code is built is that the multiballs really aren't worth shit. But they know that by giving you the playfield multiplier, that's how you're going to jack it, jack up those points. So it's actually worth playing. You see what I'm saying? But like if those multiballs were rebalanced to score better jackpots, then you wouldn't need them. And then each multiball would be interesting on its own. And then the modes would be interesting on their own. Then there would be the whole collecting of the cast, which is interesting on its own again. So it's like doing all the things to get to the final wizard mode, in my opinion, should just be valuable on their own merits. And it's like I hate the modern approach of like multiballs aren't worth shit. Now, in the 90s, there was definitely too many games where the multiball with the jackpot was the only thing that was valuable. So that's obviously not good. But even in the modern code set that Pulp is, I will at least say that, like, to agree with your point, like, at least the shot's dangerous. The shot's that you got to shoot the magnet shot. Like, and I like that. Pulp is a really straightforward example of the risk reward because it's like you're not getting those on accident. And it does make a big difference. I like it because it allows them like to counter to counter argue your multiball point. I like it because it allows them to give a pretty easy. It's like the pawn shop multiball where you just clear the drops and then hit the scoop a few times. It's like you can put a pretty easy multiball on the table that like a newer player can get into and get some points out of. But it's like it doesn't serve you much purpose unless you have a play field multiplier. So it's kind of like, well, again, it introduces that risk reward. because it's like, where are you going to cash out? Because the multiball to me is more safe points than actually playing a mode, right? Because you've got multiple balls. And so it's like, I like that. It just adds another element of thought. The mode is harder to start because of the way that it's shot. Like, it's just a hard shot to hit consistently. Yeah, the modes are harder. And then to have to do some of the modes, some of the shots are harder. So I kind of like that the multiballs, which aren't gimmies on this game, but are definitely more, are easier. Easier than the modes. Yeah, at least the modes are valuable. So I like that. Again, it'd be kind of cool if like you just stack the two multiballs together and then now the jackpots are worth 2x because you stack to like more of a Dracula rule. I would like better than the current set. But you know what? Like, again, I'm not going to argue with you about pulp because that's not an egregious game to me. Like, I'm like, this is fine. This is at least making efforts to be somewhat balanced with the usage. and even though i don't particularly like playfield multipliers i can at least be like this one at least makes the right concessions like the shots dangerous it's hard to do uh you can totally fuck it all up like you can spend your whole time focusing on that and then not do anything with it so with those prerequisites like yeah it's a good use of it okay another another example of a good playfield multiplier and where it's incredibly central to the game like the entire game is the playfield multiplier would be the classic george christian Bally Midway title lady luck you got any thoughts about lady luck alan you like that game lady luck is rad i do love lady luck it's an incredibly addictive game and it's all about the one two three combination of advancing your spinner or orbit shots via the captive ball or hitting the orbit itself because you need something lucrative on the playfield lit and then starting the playfield multiplier and then executing and nailing your shots to cash in. Yep. And if you don't do those three things, you will get nothing in this game. Without knowing how the playfield multiplier works on Lady Luck, you will be so fucking confused as to how people are getting their scores because it's like you can't make up for it. Yeah. You can't. I mean, theoretically, you can just rip the spinner ten times, but it's like when you see how fast scores build with the 10x going, it's a different game. And so it's a funny one to me because it feels very, very broken if you don't understand the rules. But it's also that era of games where you can just read the rules on the rule card and you get all of it. And so I think that's kind of like an argument for the playfield multiplier being like the central gimmick of a game. And a good example of like they work well when that's the emphasis. Sure. They don't work well in the background. I just don't like games where you just sort of kind of you know hit some targets you slop in and then it's a stack on a mode you have a character has abilities you're in a mode now you're in another multiball maybe you're in two multiball like and then you have a playfield multiplier it's like that's the kind of shit that I'm like this this is like we're losing it here now wandering shot multipliers are my personal like what the fuck is this what's even going on when it's like oh there's like a roving arrow that's lit and it's just like oh this is just and like the me see like it took a while for me to get what was going on in rick and morty which is kind of funny like months and months of having that game before i was like what the fuck is how does this actually work and that game is pretty straightforward but it's like when you have moving shot multipliers it's very confusing to me for some reason totally well because you're mixing multipliers like you said at the top there's a lot of multipliers and i think that's that's probably i think where we're definitely in agreement that it's like once you start mixing all the multipliers up because that's what i was gonna say lady luck so george christian he designed some of our favorite games like a bottle lux and frontier frontier is an example of a really bonus heavy game yep in fact it's arguably a little like it's almost complicated how it does its bone yeah because there's two bonuses with two with individual multipliers per bonus yes which is really bizarre and interesting it's fairly intuitive you don't really need to know how exactly like what you're doing you're just like well this advances this one and this one advances that one and it doesn't matter just keep the ball alive and you have a good time but that's like a bonus game from george christian in lady luck i'm sure it has a bonus based off of the cards but it's like nobody cares about the bonus on lady luck yeah the bonus doesn't matter cared about yeah yeah in that to me i'm like that's what you need to do you need to make a choice if you're going to have one or the other i will say one other game that we should talk about and we mentioned earlier is total nuclear annihilation Scott Danesi's first production game from spooky and you said the the playfield multiplier is based off of how many balls are on the playfield and i think that's just such a slick way of doing it because it rewards you for keeping more balls alive during multiball it rewards you for setting up because that game your objectives run completely independently of the multiball destroying reactors and it rewards you for starting a multiball specifically to get that play field multiplier before you cash in the jackpot yes it's it's slick it's that's a good one where it's like this is central to the game it's intuitive it doesn't completely fuck up the game if you don't understand that it works really well and when we were talking about this in the discord you brought up this game and you brought up at Dracula when we were arguing about it and I was like yeah I like both of these I like if it's gonna happen I like it to be on a multiball and I like the balls in play like TNA because it's intuitive three three balls it's 3x if there's four balls it's 4x right like because you can get an extra ball like and and I like that and then it's 2x if there's two balls with most modern games you're trying to what does everyone say about every modern game even though they don't know the rules is find out how to start a mode, find out how to start the multiball and stack them together. Right. Use the multiball to make progress in your mode. And so what I like about the multiplier being on the multiball is people are already doing that. People are already assuming that it feels so intuitive that it's like, oh, yeah, it makes sense You want to make progress during the multiball And you like yes it such a fucking again all of the games that are my good examples are difficult layouts and that adds the risk reward when a game just plays friendly and you can cradle three balls on the left flipper and just keep looping shots on the right flipper all of this shit goes out the window that's why we got to talk about the worst use of playfield multipliers we waited for it this whole time we got to talk about the worst i've been dancing around it what's funny though is i was thinking about this as we've been doing this episode and we were both gonna say that our least favorite playfield multiplier what is it i gotta assume this is for anyone listening star wars has got to be the unanimous choice right the problem is star wars isn't a playfield multiplier it's a player selected like shot multiplier yeah exactly it's not a playfield it's crazy it's even like it's so we're like i was thinking about this as we're going to that so then i'm like fuck i guess that's not and it's also when i kept saying like well the multiplier if you're going to do one that's impactful it needs to be central to the game and it is central to the game on star wars and i still hate it well i think what what so what i think the problem is is like it's farmable and yeah you have to move the multiplier around which means you spend all of your energy replenishing and then moving the multiplier around all the time rather than playing the game itself you're playing multiplier you're not playing star wars yes and being realistic crazy which is crazy to do this on fucking start you're like it's insane the theme just give me the lightsaber about the modes and stuff on star war are cool and fun yes they're very cool we did not need a 40x potential shot multiplier no matter what side of the fence you're on 40x is fucking stupid the ability to stack the multiplier or place the multiplier on the video mode shot and it carries in a video mode is so garbage fucking insane that it's just like it's the more we're talking about this the more endearing it is where i'm like fuck i gotta go play star wars and like actually try because this shit's hilarious dude it's crazy i don't care what side of the fence you're on 40x is stupid i we have we have to cap these you're like we got to just have like a if see this is the thing if i was if i was gary and i'm making my hard rulings like all games must have three pops and shit i'd be like okay guys 5x multiplier absolute top i would refer two or three yeah and i think we are seeing more twos and threes lately in the last couple years nobody else is dare to 40 right well well there was a while where they were getting pretty high and i guess pulp can get up to six which i think is kind of too high but it's also really hard to do that fucking hard i was like good luck catching that magnet six times but you know we're hitting that yeah on one ball yeah and exactly for me and i love this man i love a lot of his games but really like dwight's like juice multipliers are the worst use case and they're the easiest to bring up rinky-dink stand-ups that are just all over the place yeah everything just turns into keep the multipliers juiced and like he puts them on like the kitty target in uh monsters or it's the two stand-ups on ghostbusters outside the ramp or it's the targets on uh you know on star wars you know Like, and I'm like, this is the worst. Like, because then the whole game is just multiplier. And you slop into them. Right. See, that's the problem to me. It's like, in theory, it's like, okay, well, he's putting them on dangerous shots. And you're like, okay, well, I guess that's cool. And then you're like, yeah, but does anyone actually play the game like that? And you're like, eh, maybe. Like, if they know that exact copy. Otherwise, they're taking, like, the safe strategy and kind of, like, winging the corners of the stand-ups and shit. Like, it's like, which is cool, but, like, most of the time you just end up getting them off slop. When you're just playing the game league, someone's your average league night player is 100 percent incapable of hitting the snicked target on purpose. I would bet money if I give someone if I took the glass off in Cradled and I went to an average person at a Howdy partner and gave him 20 tries to hit that snicked target and make it up the ramp on Deadpool. I would bet money that they can't do it. Deadpool is my other example of worse use. That's non that's a non Dwight game. Deadpool is just slop city. and that game is vastly improved when you disable the snick target like that's what i did when we had it at wedge uh one time got a whiny baby note about it you know like how dare you do this or whatever i'm like i'm just trying to make this game good like i the fact of the matter is like that game the snick score like that deadpool is a very fun game a very interesting game with allies But then you're just playing battles and you just kind of I really like the whole kind of like the game path of Deadpool. I really like. And then you get to the scoring. You're like, this is fucking stupid. For me, the more the kind of weird distinction with Deadpool is that you can farm your inlanes to collect boom buttons and you can level up your boom button. so it clears all lit shots on the play field. And so it's like a very routine strategy for people to make sure you have a big boom, like when it changes colors on your lockdown bar button, you make sure you have a big boom, you get into something that has a lot of lit shots, and then you just focus on the snicked multiplier over and over and over until you get like a 5X or whatever you can get up to, and then you cash in with a button. And so it's like, okay, you're removing like the actual cash in part of the process. that feels very very not pinball to me the game you can do it while you're in a multiball so so a ball can hit the snick target and then it's on a timer and a different ball can just go up the katana ramp and since those two things are tied together it doesn't mean doesn't have to be the same ball that bounced off the target enough because the game can't tell and so floppy dude it just feels very sloppy it's cool that you can bounce but like it's like it's cool that this is like a shot path that like works sometimes the shot is and you're like i get that it's like oh we want to like reward you for it but it's like it could have been like just like a fucking call out it could have been like a uh like a theater of magic when the guy falls down the stairs and it's the best thing in all of pinball and you're like it's because it's an unintentional shot they reward you with the coolest funniest animation and sound effect of all time the guy falling down the stairs and you're like that's all it needed man yeah or it could have just or it could have been a thing where you made it in a valuable shot on its own for people to try to shoot for in single ball play where you can count where the ball is you know what i'm saying like it could have been as soon as you lose as soon as you have multiple you're like you get slop yeah and so those are my examples what what what's your worst use case i had a really hard time thinking about this and that's because i don't because you love play field multipliers well kind of but i don't usually play games i don't like and then i forget how they work and i don't want to like put my foot in my mouth in the podcast so ghostbusters is one we were talking about and i was kind of defending in the discord because i like riling you up but it is one that annoys me because those stand-up targets kind of just suck you get weird air balls all over ghostbusters and like those will give you violent enough air balls that you get goofy shit off of them so they just they're shitty targets in like a uniquely Ghostbusters shitty kind of way. And they're also targets that you just clip constantly while you're shooting the ramp. And it, again, rewards slop. And they make a pretty big impact on playing and you can keep it going. So again, in multiball, you can just kind of keep that multiplier going and going if you just kind of were like, I'm going to just ignore everything and just kind of keep shooting at the ramp. And if I miss, that's good. And I hate that. I hate it when you're getting rewarded for slop and that's very much what it feels like on there. I'm sure there's other examples, but I just can't think of anything. Batman 66, I don't know how anything on that game works. All I know is there's insane multipliers that can happen in there, but I think that might be a result of, like, your mini modes and all kinds of shit. And your villains. But that would be, I think that's more of, like, you have to have rules knowledge, and then you have to stack it, and I think you can probably biff that stack. So I think it would probably, if you played more. You can definitely biff it on Batman 66 trying to do it. Like you might like it more if you knew the rules because it seems like it would fit into your sort of like ethos. Yeah, maybe. For some reason, that game bothers me, though. I was going to say, though, that's what I was going to say, though, is that as long as I understand where the multiplier is, how it functions and how to qualify it, I don't have a huge issue with it. as soon as it gets confusing it's like well why is this in the game then and so all of my like all of the examples the games i talk about fondly it's like well that's because it's really straightforward yeah it's like they have a giant fucking light at the back of pulp fiction it's like one of the first things you learn when you learn the rules if you're like looking at the fucking rule card you're like oh there's a playful multiplier and it lasts for the length of the ball that's important it's hard to do okay and then it's and so it's like that's not a problem it's because like i said it's just it's just a tool and so it's like it all comes down to how they use that tool but if it's like a hidden tool that like changes the impact the outcome of the game that sucks totally i think it really comes down to what we keep harboring on or what i keep harboring on with games is that it's like not every game needs to be the same and not every game needs to have everything but people want everything dude the buyers want it all they would be upset if like they will complain that you know they'll complain that the pulp fiction rules are too simple as this it's bizarre well what's funny to me is like you're not getting to the end of pulp fiction you know because i'm like they're always like that game's too shallow and i'm like i don't know man that game's hard to fucking get to divine intervention like i can't do it and if you have it it's i mean we i saw the same thing with rick and morty with just like the amount of modes and stuff and people complaining that there should be more wizard modes and they're like just so disappointed and you're like you guys have the game set up way too fucking easy yes if you're routinely getting through all of the content in these games that just speaks to your ability like inability to set the game up as intended that does not speak to a flaw in the game nobody has ever been like oh like chess is a bad game they need to have twice they need a playfield multiplier on chess yes dude you're like no dude that's like it no what the problem they're like they need a third color you're like this isn't the fucking like quit trying to create problems out of nothing just because you learned a new word quit trying to shoehorn everything into every game quit complaining when you think games are too simple go figure out how playfield multipliers works they're very important and they can be fun if you're going to be playing modern games regularly you got to figure them out because like dude it's important they have taken over and some games the whole game is finding the playfield multiplier and then it's interesting i haven't played a ton of kong and i'm like is there a playfield multiplayer there's a 2x it's limited to 2x 2 is nice dude 2 but it's like again we could have just had none do we need a 2x multiplayer is there not enough shit going on now you sound like me dude i'm just saying because it's just because there's too much man i know much there's too much shit on these games too much fucking shit on me dude there's too much fucking shit on me there's too much fucking shit on me What? There's too much fucking shit on me I can't breathe You're fine I can hear you breathing I'm so hot Carmine, relax Take a deep breath I can't Buddy I can't do this We did way too much You can do this I'm telling you I can't I'm so hot Look, you're fine, okay? Go over, grab that guy's tray There's too much fucking shit on me I can't Listen to me Go over to those ladies I'm going to rip the fucking head off. Do not rip the head off, Carmine. I'm telling you that I am. Do not rip the head off, Carmine. I can't see shit off the sides of my eyes. I'm ripping the fucking head off. Please, Carmine, don't rip the head off. That's hours of work. I'm taking the chin off. It kills. The chin kills. Yeah, it actually does kill. It's quite heavy, Craig. You don't know. I think there's fun multipliers. I think some of them were misused. Yeah, but, you know, thanks for listening. everyone out there to another episode of the Wedget Pinball Podcast, no matter where you your personal stance on a playfield multiplier. If you want to weigh in on playfield multipliers and which ones are good and which ones are shit and if all games should get rid of them or what, just go throw us a few bucks in the coffee account to say thanks. And then you'll get an invite to the discord and, you know, you can come yell at us in there. Yeah, you can come stir the pot in there and uh we can come hassle greg dunlap everybody's favorite you know pastime go out find some games on location and play them find a game with a playfield multiplier they are everywhere and uh but until next time good luck don't suck Thank you. And now for my next number, I'd like to return to the classic. Times. Classic. Classic. Classic. I'm better than I ever been.