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FX Knee

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 3m·analyzed·Oct 11, 2017
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Pinball FX 3 offers better graphics and engaging challenges but matchup mode lacks risk/reward challenge depth.

Summary

Chris Freitas (Shut Your Trap) and Sven from Germany discuss their experience with Pinball FX 3, comparing it to FX 2. Chris was injured in a work accident (severed knee tendon) and couldn't podcast the previous week; Jared was absent due to internet issues and a diabetes charity event. They cover FX 3's improved lighting, new upgrade/challenge system, matchup mode mechanics, and initial impressions of new universal tables (Back to the Future, Jaws), noting both strengths and balance concerns with the competitive ladder system.

Key Claims

  • FX 3's lighting improvements make previously difficult-to-read tables like Tesla much more playable

    high confidence · Chris played Tesla on both PS4 and FX 3, directly comparing the lighting and physics improvements

  • Matchup mode point system lacks real risk/reward - winning gives 20-40 points, losing only costs ~5 points, making it purely a time-grind rather than genuine competition

    high confidence · Both hosts discuss the asymmetric reward structure and compare unfavorably to Clash Royale and TPA tournaments

  • FX 3 uses algorithmically generated or curated opponent scores rather than real tournament player scores for matchup mode

    medium confidence · Sven notes some Steam usernames exist but scores 'are sometimes just ridiculous' and inconsistent (Family Guy jumped from 3M to 30M)

  • Back to the Future table has no traditional mode-start mechanic; instead tasks are tied to year selection (1985, 1955, 2015, 1885, etc.)

    high confidence · Chris describes the unique structure in detail, noting this is different from typical Zen design

  • FX 3 matchup mode will face structural problems as top 20% advancement creates exponential player drop-off, leaving Diamond leagues with only 16-20 players per week

    high confidence · Sven calculates from estimated 10-12k Bronze III starters: 2k→Bronze II, 80→Bronze I, 16→Silver III per week

  • Back to the Future multiball increases balls on successive triggers (2→3→4→5 balls), with escalating complexity

    high confidence · Chris describes progression, Sven confirms reaching 5-ball multiball during matchup play

  • FX 3 allows concurrent use of one wizard ability and two upgrades in single-player, all earned/leveled through challenges

    high confidence · Both hosts explain the upgrade/ability system in detail

Notable Quotes

  • “The knee is something really, really terrible... half a year until I could walk again”

    Sven @ ~5:00-6:00 — Sven relates to Chris's knee injury, revealing his own prior tibia head fracture; emphasizes severity of knee recovery

  • “sacrifice the equipment, never sacrifice your body. The equipment is insured. It can be replaced really easily. Your body, not so much.”

    Chris Freitas @ ~3:30-4:00 — Reflects on prioritization during the accident while holding $100k+ Steadicam gear; shows occupational hazard awareness

  • “It's not a risk versus reward, it's only a time versus reward... you just have to play it day in and day out to get your points... it's not a challenge”

    Sven @ ~25:00-26:00 — Core criticism of FX 3 matchup mode design; identifies fundamental game balance issue

  • “I found myself playing Tesla for quite a long time. Long enough that I started actually figuring out how to play the stupid table. It's amazing.”

    Chris Freitas @ ~18:00-19:00 — Demonstrates FX 3's challenge/progression system solving a long-standing Zen problem: player engagement with unfamiliar tables

  • “the scores are sometimes just ridiculous... I don't know where they come from”

    Sven @ ~27:00-28:00 — Questions legitimacy of matchup opponent scores; suggests algorithmic/non-player sourcing

  • “I wrote some posting in Steam forums about this not being a challenge. And I think three days ago or so, they changed it suddenly... 30 million points”

    Sven @ ~28:30-29:30 — Evidence of developer responsiveness to feedback but also score algorithm opacity; raises questions about real-player vs. generated scores

  • “you need to do something to have really a risk versus reward. Because otherwise, it's just a huge grind and nothing else”

    Sven @ ~30:00-31:00 — Summary of core design critique; identifies path to improvement

Entities

Chris FreitaspersonSvenpersonJaredpersonPinball FX 3productZen StudioscompanyPlaydate Pinball PodcastorganizationBack to the Future (FX 3 table)gameTesla (FX 3 table)game

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: FX 3 challenge/progression system successfully drives sustained player engagement by rewarding continued play and exploration of unfamiliar tables

    high · Chris: 'I found myself playing Tesla for quite a long time. Long enough that I started actually figuring out how to play the stupid table. It's amazing.' Previously noted Zen tables had player abandonment issue.

  • ?

    product_concern: FX 3 matchup league progression math creates structural collapse: 10-12k Bronze III → 2k Bronze II → 80 Bronze I → 16 Silver III per 6-day season leaves high-tier leagues with insufficient player base

    high · Sven calculates: 'from Bronze I to Silver III, there are only 80 players left. The week after, from Silver III to Silver II, there's just 16 of 80... they have to do something about that'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: FX 3 matchup mode lacks risk/reward balance; low penalty for losses (5 pts) vs. modest win rewards (20-40 pts) makes competition purely a time-grind rather than skill-based challenge

    high · Sven: 'it's not a risk versus reward, it's only a time versus reward... you just have to play it day in and day out... it's not a challenge.' Hosts compare unfavorably to Clash Royale (±29/27) and TPA tournaments.

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Chris Freitas works as Steadicam operator on film/TV production; severe knee injury (severed tendon) during work accident suggests occupational hazard and raises questions about podcast consistency during recovery

    high · Chris: injured Monday on set holding $100k Steadicam gear (post $80k, arm $20k, vest), had surgery Tuesday, now immobilized with leg brace; doctor appointment same day as podcast release

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.191

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast, with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Freitas, aka Shut Your Trap. Joining me from not quite halfway around the world is Sven from Germany. Good day.
0:32
Good day. Exactly. So you may be wondering, why is Sven here and not Jared? Well, Jared basically just rage quit on us because his Internet was not playing fair. we were getting the voice out of him here's my approximation of what it was sounding like guys no internet so yeah I think he decided he could do something better on Sunday morning yeah probably you know because usually he's had his breakfast and then this is how he does his Sunday morning. And, yeah, I know I would be wanting to do better things too.
1:25
So while me and Sven were waiting for Jared to figure out his Internet, we were laughing about back in the days of the 14-4 modems and the 28-K modems and the mysteries of how long it would take to download something. and it made me think of so back in 2002 when I was doing visual pinball and downloading tables I was still on the dial-up modem and downloading anyone's table would take probably about an hour for me to get and so you can imagine if I spent an hour downloading their table and then I put it up and it would be some just hacked piece of junk that barely had any good graphics at all and the physics were all wonky and it just looked like garbage. And then I'd just be furious that I'd wasted that much time downloading that one. Yeah, and it cost more money as well. At least in Germany, it was the case. You didn't have any kind of flat rate. What you're having now, you had to pay for every minute being online. yeah so I wound up writing reviews of people's tables which is now that I think about it kind of mean I mean it's like they were doing this out of their own free time and stuff but I was writing reviews trying to help people with the idea of hey is it worth your time downloading or should you just give it a pass and basically that's when I got all hooked on Pack Dude's tables because I knew that for sure I could download his tables and they were going to look absolutely excellent as opposed to some of these other people's tables.
Jaws (FX 3 table)
game
Family Guy (FX 3 table)game
World War Hulk (FX 3 table)game
Castle Storm (FX 3 table)game
Fallout (FX 3 table)game
PacDudeperson
Pinball Arcadeproduct
Clash Royaleproduct

product_strategy: Back to the Future (FX 3) deviates from Zen's typical mode-start structure; uses year-selection mechanic (1985/1955/2015/1885) with auto-generated per-year tasks, unique wizard progression

high · Chris: 'there's no mode start hole... when you start the table, you have to pick what year you're starting in' and describes task-based completion system for each year's wizard mode

  • ?

    product_strategy: FX 3 user interface clarity significantly improved over FX 2; on-screen button prompts (right joystick, R1/R2) eliminate navigation confusion

    high · Chris: 'there's always an indicator of use the right joystick, use the R1, R2s... finding navigation through it very simple' vs FX 2 'no indicators at all'

  • ?

    product_strategy: FX 3 physics and lighting improvements on Tesla and other legacy tables significantly improve playability and readability, addressing historic Zen design criticism

    high · Chris directly compared Tesla PS4 vs FX 3: 'good job on the lighting... that table is a mess to look at... makes the table so much more playable' and notes dead flipper physics were improved

  • ?

    product_concern: Matchup mode opponent scores appear algorithmically generated or non-player-sourced; inconsistent difficulty scaling (Family Guy 3M→30M after 3 days) suggests dynamic adjustment or data validity issues

    medium · Sven: 'the scores are sometimes just ridiculous... I don't know where they come from' and notes Family Guy score jumped from 3M to 30M after his Steam forum complaint, suggesting non-transparent algorithm

  • ?

    technology_signal: FX 3 introduces multi-upgrade system (choose 2 of 6 upgrades + 1 of 3 wizard abilities per session) allowing tactical player customization and replay variability

    high · Chris explains: 'you can only use two at any one time for any session' and customizes based on table type; Sven confirms leveling upgrades (1-10) improves bonuses across all modes

    • 3:11
    I kind of created this database of things. But yeah, it was kind of mean of me to review. I think I reviewed something like 50-some different tables.
    3:23
    And how much of them were good out of the 50 tables? Was it worth downloading them? You know, I would say probably, well, 50% of them were for sure you've got to download it because those were all packed dudes. And then there was probably about another 20% that were, hey, it's good enough.
    3:52
    There was this one guy, I want to say his name was Scopino. I can't remember. He did these gorgeous-looking lighting jobs. but they were massively video card hogs and so I couldn't play the tables half the time because they would just be in slow motion because they were so intense on the processor but I didn't give them bad reviews because I was like well that's on my end not on his end but there were some people who didn't even bother putting the walls of the table up so it was just imagine a play field with no walls yeah yeah you know it's like what is this an amusement park um so that would frustrate me or everything would have no dimension and just look like a piece of cardboard you know kind of bad snapshot so i'd say about 30 of the tables were that um when i first started looking at them so yeah so anyway that's that's why uh why jared's not here and and sedan is yeah so one of the things I was going to mention with Jared but you get to fill in so pretend you're him we did not you're at your very best you're going to have to work on your accent but that's okay it will be difficult we were supposed to podcast last week but there were two things going on Jared was doing some I believe some event once again related to childhood diabetes because he posted all sorts of photos of him and his daughter and they were wearing like fairy wings and stuff.
    5:31
    Yeah. You took an arrow to the knee, no, something else to the knee. Yeah, yeah. And then there was me who rather badly damaged myself.
    5:45
    So I'm at work on a Monday. We're on location. We're in a fitness gym. We've come back from lunch. We're shooting on the second floor of the fitness gym. And they've got, it's very, like, the show I work on takes place in Portland. So think of Portland tech. It's a lot of wood, but also it's a gymnasium, or not a gymnasium, a fitness gym. So it's a lot of high-tech gear.
    6:14
    And so it's wooden metal everywhere, basically. And the staircase, wooden stairs, but on the tips of each stair is a 90-degree bracket of steel.
    6:26
    So I'm walking up the staircase. We're in a hurry trying to grab some gear in between shots, and it's our Steadicam rig. So on one hand, I've got the Steadicam post. That's $80,000. On the other hand, I've got the Steadicam arm. That's $20,000.
    6:44
    And I've also got the Steadicam vest up around my shoulder. I don't know how much aesthetic invest is, but it's soft, so I'm not too concerned about that. So I'm busting up the stairs. I get about three-quarters of the way. And I don't know if I lost my footing or I just lost my balance, but I started falling forward with the gear. And in my head, it's like, oh, God, don't let that hit. That's bad news.
    7:07
    And so I went to go take a knee, and I put my knee straight into the steel of the step. And when I say sprayed into, I'm talking like hot knife through butter. It went right underneath the kneecap, sliced from all the way to the joint, cleaned in, and I severed the tendon.
    7:28
    So now I'm sitting on the staircase writhing in pain, temporarily in pain until the shock took over.
    7:37
    With the equipment and holding the equipment so nothing happens to it? Yes, apparently the equipment was fine, but here's the part that bugs me, is that we're always told, sacrifice the equipment, never sacrifice your body.
    7:53
    The equipment is insured. It can be replaced really easily. Your body, not so much. But when you're in the moment, you don't think that your body is going to get damaged.
    8:04
    I certainly did not think that I was going to do that to my knee. That was probably not the plan. No, that was not the plan. And here's the thing. So I hit and I rolled over onto my butt immediately. I couldn't see the damage that I'd done to my knee. My knee was bent at a 90-degree angle, and I couldn't put it back down. And I reached over and I went to touch my knee, and my finger just went right in like a bowling ball.
    8:32
    And that's when I thought, oh, my God, I shattered my kneecap. Thankfully, I didn't do that. But, yeah, so then I had surgery on the Tuesday, and now I am stuck at home with my leg in an immobilizing brace. I'm not allowed to bend it and just need it to heal, which I'm not quite sure how long that's going to take, but it's going to take a while.
    9:01
    I can tell you one thing. You know, maybe you remember I had a motorbike accident last year. Yes. Almost like 14 or 15 months ago now. It was in July, 23rd of July last year. And I had what they call a tibia head fracture,
    9:27
    which is basically at the knee. So it's the tibia head is where your knee is plugged into. And, yeah, that got destroyed. And it took me like half a year until I could walk again. Oh, God, don't tell me that.
    9:50
    The knee is something really, really terrible. Well, and the thing is with my job, I'm constantly kneeling onto the ground to put the actor's marks. so many my knees yeah otherwise i guess what did the doctor say uh about um what would it be fixed like like will it be uh back uh as before or will you have um continuous um pain or or um maybe you're not able to to get it back working i don't know because i haven't seen the doctor yet he didn't bother checking in with me in the hospital after he did the surgery on me.
    10:33
    I'm seeing him on Tuesday, which is basically the day that this podcast releases. So I will see him then, and then that's when I should find out more, and obviously he'll know more. Before he started the surgery, he said that he wanted, the reason why my leg is going to be completely immobile and not allowed to bend the knee, wants the tendon to heal properly and straight. because he says if that doesn't heal straight then you will have knee problems but if it heals straight then presumably you're back to normal just with a nasty ass scar on the knee yeah so but yeah so that was fun now you would think that was not what Colin Kaepernick meant by taking a knee exactly right not how you're supposed to be taking a knee now you would think that hey this is okay since I'm not allowed to work and I have to be at home well geez I can do anything I want you know in terms of playing video games or watching movies and stuff like that but then there's the comfort factor which was for and again you probably experienced this for the first three days I was so miserable I could not get comfortable having my legs straight out and the knee both my knees because I actually hit my other knee too. It just required stitches. It didn't need surgery.
    11:59
    But the knee is swollen and it's just bruised and the slightest little movement just like you know again caused discomfort. So I wasn't even able to comfortably watch TV. I couldn't sit at my computer desk here and play any games because I couldn't get my leg physically in a comfortable position underneath the desk. so again that's part of the other reason why we did a new podcast last week because I don't think I could have physically sat through one but I'm feeling much better now I'm pain free now it's just the immobility aspect that sucks the risk when you're pain free is that you're doing more than you should do yeah I agree and it's hard for me not to be very very careful with that the last thing you want to do that have pain or mobility issues for the rest of your life.
    12:59
    Yes. So in the honor of Jared's absence, let's jump into some pinball talk, and we can save our stuff for later.
    13:08
    So one of the reasons why we have Sven here, because we scheduled him to come in, is basically because Jared does not have a PC or consoles with which to try out Pinball FX 3,
    13:23
    as opposed to me and Sven, who both do have our PC fully hooked up and have been playing Pinball FX 3.
    13:31
    So let's talk about what we've noticed, what we've liked, if there's anything we haven't liked, and just kind of go from there. So, I don't know, Sven, what's your first impressions after putting in some time with this?
    13:45
    My first impression is it's really nice. it's a better looking better looking tables um and what what they uh i think what uh zen tries to achieve is uh getting more um multiplayer uh features on on those uh tables or in this app uh which is quite a quite nice because um um with uh pinball fx2 they didn't have anything except maybe for some high score comparison. Yeah, and then you have your leaderboards. Yeah, exactly. That's barely anything. And they're going down this route. It's still asynchronous multiplayer. They are saying they are looking into doing synchronous multiplayer. I wish. That would be nice. yeah that would be cool if the player base is big enough yes that's always a problem i mean we are not talking about call of duty sizes here we're talking about what what do we have 2 000 sales online at the same time maximum maybe maybe even less yeah that's not gonna be enough and then they all or some of them need to be willing to play multiplayer synchronous play so yeah a bit difficult I said that as well with when pinball arcade tried that you almost have to chat with some people and say hey do you want to do some head-to-head play and otherwise you probably won't get a lot of matches.
    15:41
    The first things I noticed A, I started off with the universal table pack because I just wanted to see what the new is.
    15:53
    We talk about it a little bit more just because we have some thoughts on those I messed with those but then I was like okay let see what they did to the older tables So I went to one of my absolute nemesis tables, which is Tesla, and part of the reason why I did that is because I also own that on the PS4, and I'll say this right now.
    16:13
    Bringing over your tables from Pinball FX 2 is super easy. there was no issues. In the PlayStation Store, you constantly just cycled through and basically had you purchase and download the tables. Purchase when I say purchase I mean free.
    16:32
    You download a table, boom, you install and then it asks for, hey, do you want to install this next one? And you do that. So it took probably maybe half an hour to get them all over but that was no biggie. On Steam it was instantaneously there. It was nothing.
    16:46
    You're probably lucky then as you most likely have all tables right i have them on steam i have less than half on ps4 yeah and uh if you are in the problem of not having all on steam since they repackage the dlcs some tables get lost you own them but sometimes you have to restart
    17:17
    the program to make it visible because they are shown as locked. Because that did happen on the PS4. Some of the tables that I own, yeah, they got repackaged. So what it had me do was it had me download one file that was for the whole package and then it had me download the individual table file.
    17:40
    And so then it would, once those two installed together, then I had the other tables shown as locked and then the one that I owned shown as unlocked. So anyway, that's why I started with Tesla, because I've had Tesla with the first iteration. It was then pinball.
    17:58
    So I've had that table the longest out of any, or their four-pack. But anyway, the first impressions was, wow, good job on the lighting. Just really good job, because that table is a mess to look at. it's got so many things very busy table looks great as steampunk but not so great to play on and with the combination of the graphics wise but mainly lighting wise it makes the table so much more playable and then also they changed the physics on it because that table was one of those dead flipper physics where there was just no bounce through the ball at all and now it's got a nice is still not as bouncy as some of their other tables, but it is not noticeably different as it used to be. So, yeah, that made that table way easier to play, or way better to play, I should say. And so I was kind of doing that. I was kind of loading up old tables just to see what the difference was. And the main thing is the lighting. It's just incredible. Yeah, it looks even better than they already did. I mean, Zen was always good in presentation of their tables, although some people may say they look a bit cynic, a bit sterile.
    19:21
    But I always thought the presentation is just gorgeous. And now it went a giant leap further. Yeah. The second thing I did was I played it in their single player mode with the upgrades. And at first I wasn't sure if I would like the upgrades.
    19:41
    But what I'm finding is it's kind of cool because there's six upgrades that you can use, but you can only use two at any one time for any session that you're going. And so I'm switching them up based off of what my style of play is. Like sometimes I find my ball constantly going to the bumpers, and so I'm like, well, shoot, I'm going to put that upgrade in because that's just going to kick my score through the roof.
    20:10
    Other tables, they're combo tables, and so I wound up using the combo upgrade. And so it's kind of fun. It shifts your perspective.
    20:20
    Actually, you have the sixth upgrade, and then you have the three, I think, wizard abilities, they call it. Right. and what you can do is you can have at the same time one of the wizard abilities and two of the upgrades. And the wizard abilities you get with the challenge modes.
    20:47
    Once you beat, there are three single player challenge modes. It's one of the one ball challenge mode where you have just one ball and you need to get to a certain point. And they have like a star system, like one to 15 stars. And if you get enough points to get five stars, you get this ability.
    21:13
    And the same is then with a five minute challenge. The five minute challenge is unlimited balls. Unlimited balls with Ball saver always activated Yeah And then you have The Survival mode Which is brutal Can be really brutal So survivor mode basically is In the amount of time They give you keeps on varying But you basically have to reach a certain Score before the timer runs out once you hit that score, timer resets, and now you're able to, and now you've got to go for an even higher score. And on some tables, if you know the table, it's not terribly taxing, because it's like, okay, I know how to get a mode started, and if you clear the mode, then mega points, or I can get multiple going. But then there's those tables that if you just haven't figured them out yet, you're like, there's no way I can get that next point totaled in 45 seconds. It's just not going to happen.
    22:19
    You get always one minute and within this one minute you have to get the score. If you have it, you get one star and then another minute starts. but you can use your already earned upgrades and wizard abilities with those challenges. So once you level them up, you're automatically getting higher scores.
    22:53
    So it gets easier with that over time. and so here's another thing that again I'm liking with this that what Zen has done with regards to like Tesla normally I would have played a couple games on that and be like okay I'm done with that thing but because of the star system and because of the challenges and that there's a lot of different challenges that's the main thing it's not just like in pinball arcade where you're earning your wizard goals this is a lot of challenges and progressing past to get even more and more stars, I found myself playing Tesla for quite a long time. Long enough that I started actually figuring out how to play the stupid table.
    23:38
    It's amazing. It is. So that's the big issue that's always been with Zen, where it's just like, God, I don't know what the heck I'm doing on these things, but now they're rewarding you.
    23:51
    And it's definitely a carrot leading me down the road trying to do more. So, yeah, no, it was good on that. You can level up your upgrades from 1 to 10, and the bonuses get better with every level.
    24:10
    The other thing that's nice is no matter what version of the game you're playing, you're still earning points for your upgrades. So I wound up playing, I tried out their match-up mode. So matchup, basically you're offered three different scores for the bracket that you're in. You start off at bronze three, and they offer three different scores. And you need to pick which one you're going to go for and try and beat that person's score in the time frame that they give you. And, again, I don't know if that's five minutes they give you. Three minutes. Three minutes? Okay. Okay, and if you beat that person's score, then you earn guaranteed X amount of store points. 20 points for lowest, then 30, and then 40 for the highest. 40.
    25:03
    But then you can also earn points. Let's say you absolutely crush that person's point total. Well, then you get what's called a domination bonus. And so you can earn more points that way. And then in the match-up mode, there's always four tables that you can choose between. Well, if you wind up playing all four tables, you get what's called a diversity bonus. So it's basically if you're only focusing on one table and not playing the others, you're not going to get the diversity bonus. But if you're spreading it out and playing all the tables, then you get the diversity bonus. And what you're trying to do is get into the top 20% to bump you into the next bracket when that, are they calling it season? They call it season, yeah. Six days long. Yeah, it's a six day long season. So it's a really short season.
    25:52
    So while I was doing that and just trying to beat these free pulls points totals, I was still earning all this bonus stuff. So it was very cool. Yeah. So here's my thoughts while we are talking about this matchup mode. You mentioned the diversity bonus. Yeah.
    26:16
    Here's the thing. You only need to play every table once to get a guaranteed 15-point bonus for every game you win. And to be honest, if you're not completely bad, you will at the moment beat all three opponents without any problem. At least your first go-round.
    26:45
    Yeah. And that's the first thing where I have an issue with. that is you get guaranteed points when you win when you're not winning you're losing what? 5 points so almost nothing yeah it's not really a huge risk and that's why I say it's not a risk versus reward it's only a time versus reward because what's happening is those points you get in those challenges just get added up and if you have enough points to stay in the top 20 you level up to the next league so all you have to do is play it day in and day out to get your points there's no real challenge there it's just time investment even more time investment than you have in our TPA tournaments because there you at least need to beat your own score. Here you just have to beat them some very low maybe even just virtual score.
    28:13
    It's not a challenge. Yeah you're right I didn't even think about it but now that you're mentioning it,
    28:21
    you know, a game that I play on mobile is Clash Royale, and that one, if you win, you basically get, say, 29 points. If you lose, you lose like 27. So you'll always get more for winning barely than if you lose. But yeah, you're right, that would be interesting if you were constantly losing that many points. You may not be so bold to go for the absolute high point total to get the maximum points. And no matter how long you play and how high you get within your league, the points usually don't change a lot. You have like one million for the lowest guy, two million for the middle, and three for the highest, except for family guy, which is a completely different story, which I come to a bit later.
    29:15
    Well, because that's interesting, because I was just playing all four tables that they have right now, the tables for the next two days, which by the time this podcast comes out, it'll be over. It was Family Guy, Fallout,
    29:28
    Castle Storm, and blanking on the fourth one. But anyway, the third highest point total thing... Oh yeah, World War Hulk. No, the point suddenly it was, can you get the score of 10 million?
    29:50
    12 million. And then the second highest point one was still, you're right, like 2 million, maybe 3 million tops. So it seemed like the more I played it, the higher the points it wanted. And then it started eliminating having the bonuses being able to be applied. Yeah. So... You get the domination bonus is if you beat the score by 100%, you get five points. And for every 100% more, you get five points more, up to 25 points as a domination bonus, which is a max. Cool, I got that recently. Yeah, and what happened was with Family Guy, when season two started. It was always like 3 million, like with all other tables as well. It didn't change. And I wrote some posting in Steam forums about this not being a challenge. And I think three days ago or so, they changed it suddenly. And suddenly I had 30 million points there. Oh yeah. I have to be 30 million points, which is not, not impossible to do. Yeah. Was a visit modes or visit abilities. But it was a huge change. And
    31:29
    what I wonder is what, what they did there because they must have changed something in, in how the scores work. I don't think the scores are real scores from the tournament. Yeah I don either Although the names which exist there there are actual Steam users or PinballFX users I looked some of them up, but the scores are sometimes just ridiculous. I don't know where they come from. But anyway, what they should do to improve that is having a real ladder system where you actually challenge a score from someone else. And if you beat that score, you get your points. But you can only challenge someone who's above you or very close to you, something like that. And you get punished if you lose. And maybe even the opponent gets points credited for that. See, I think the opponent should get credit. If you don't beat their score, they should get points. Yeah.
    32:50
    So I think there's still a lot to do. And another thing which I think is still a problem, I don't know how they will counter that.
    33:01
    You know, we have in there, we have three bronze leagues. Three silver leagues, three gold leagues, and three diamond leagues. So what happens, as you said before, the top 20% of all players go into the next league. So I looked at the first week, and I assume they had about 10,000 players starting in bronze three in the first week. Let's say it's 10,000, maybe 12,000 or something like that. So 20% going in Bronze II in next week. So that's 2,000 players. Let's assume they all play the tables. So then in the next week, 20% of those 2,000 players will go into Bronze I.
    33:57
    The week after, from Bronze I to Silver II, there are only 80 players left. the week after from um silver uh three to silver two there's just 20 of 80 which was 1.6 players two players will move up to to see uh to silver two so they have to do something about that i don't know what maybe maybe they wait until they have at least 100 players before uh opening a new league so that just 20 players move to the next higher league.
    34:37
    I don't know how they tackle that. You know, this is kind of with Fimble Arcade, with their tournaments, and they were always taking the top 20%. We'd go up and the bottom 20 would move down. But the thing was, if you were able to move up quickly in the beginning, it became really easy to stay up at the top because of that very reason. So, yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting conundrum.
    35:11
    Yeah, I think they will have to work on that mode in several ways, especially the most important thing is they need to do something to have really a risk versus reward. Because otherwise, it's just a huge grind and nothing else, which is a bit sad because I like that mode. I think it's a great idea. And if the challenge would get higher, the higher you rank would be just perfect. Yeah. So I know some people, I've read some people have not been thrilled with the user interface of Pinball FX 3, but I've got to say I'm loving it way better than Pinball FX 2 because it's very clear what to move on your controller to get something else highlighted. Pinball FX 2, sometimes I'd be like, how do I get... How do I change it from being friends only list to showing me all time scores? It would just be frustrating because there was no indicators at all. Here on the user interface, there's always an indicator of use the right joystick, use the R1, R2s. Yeah.
    36:26
    So I'm finding navigation through it very simple. Yeah, very easy. In the beginning, maybe it's just a bit overwhelming. Yeah, there's always a learning curve. With the elements you have there, with the recommendations and everything. But as you said, it's just a learning curve. If you play it for a few times, I think it's really a solid interface.
    36:54
    So let's talk real quick about, of the three universal tables, what our thoughts are. I think you and I are in consensus that Back to the Future, a lot of fun. Yeah.
    37:06
    The interesting thing with that table is there's no mode start. So basically when you start the table, you have to pick what year you're starting in. So there's 1985, 1985 alternate, 1955, 2015, and 1885.
    37:27
    I think that's it. And whenever you start the year, there's automatically three tasks that you're trying to accomplish. And that's by hitting a certain ramp a number of times or a certain target a number of times. And once you have all three of those things completed, then that's when you can start what you might call the wizard for that particular year, which is obviously getting your time machine up and running and out of there.
    38:01
    So there is no mode start whole, which is kind of different. I've never experienced that with Zen. Yeah. And you can always get the multiball? Yeah, multiball is pretty easy to get.
    38:16
    And the cool thing with multiball is you start off, well, at least with out-of-time multiball. First time you get it, you have two balls. Next time you get it, you get three balls. Next time you get it, four balls. Five balls. I don't know if it goes up to six balls. I don't know. I haven't gone that far because… I got the five ball and it was crazy. I played most of it during the first week or first season of the matchup mode so I only played three minutes of the table most of the time so I never saw all the years because I spent my time just there interesting it's a great table it's fantastic lightning it's wonderful to see how the DeLorean moves around and you know what despite them not having for the visuals oh yeah despite them not having the voice actors their Marty McFly is pretty dang good and their Doc Brown is not bad it's not spot on, but it's pretty decent. A lot of movie quotes and pinball-related voiceover. And the music... It's funny because I don't miss the Back to the Future theme, but there's one mode where they're clearly trying to channel Huey Lewis in the news, and they fail.
    39:57
    Yeah. Yeah, so that's not the only thing I was just like, oh, guys, if only they could have gotten Huey Lewis and the News' Power of Love song, that would have been good. That's so great.
    40:10
    For the voice acting, that's interesting because, as you may or not know, in Germany, we usually have localized versions of movies.
    40:23
    We see them in German language. so I don't know exactly what the voice should be like for the actors in the original are these tables in German for you? no, so all the voices are in English yeah it's just the movies so I don't have really something to compare it to because the voices are different anyway well just go to YouTube and look up the movie and you'll find hear what it should sound like um moving on let's talk about jaws for a moment yeah i have not a clue what to do on that table i've been trying to figure out what what this is about uh what to hit you get blinking uh lanes where you should shoot to but nothing happens if you hit them well and quit yelling at me to do something and i'm like i want to do it i have no clue where to shoot I had it happen sometimes that the cage was opening yeah with the ball in yeah for a ball lock yeah for a ball lock exactly but I don't know how to open the cage it just seemed to suddenly open and be like okay I guess I'm shooting there exactly you have this um um spinner wheel above the cage I think that's that's bit of a key to shoot to. You know what I mean? Maybe, yeah. Above the cage, it's a bit hidden. You can shoot it with the upper left flipper. You can shoot in a circle there. Okay. I think that's something that you have to do a few times. But other than that, some modes start, but I don't know how. Sometimes you get some kind of hurry up, but I don't know why.
    42:32
    Completely clueless. Yeah. But the only thing I figured out on that table was the skill shot, which is more than I can say from Back to the Future. I have no clue how to do the skill shot on Back to the Future. I've never gotten it once and I've tried varying degrees of shooting it I have got it on Back to the Future but it's very difficult to pull it off it reminds me there was one of the Star Wars tables it took me forever to figure out the skill shot on it once I figured it out it was like yeah that wasn't obvious at all so I think part of the reason why it's hard for me is because the angle when the table drops onto that camera view is blocked by the twin pines or whatever a mole sign. So I can't see what the mole is supposed to be doing. It's supposed to jump up onto the habit trail if you get it just right and I haven't been able to figure that out.
    43:35
    Okay, last table of the universal fact. Very, very easy. You just have to wait until the shark is at a certain position and then you shoot and that. Yeah.
    43:49
    Last table is the ET table. Yeah. Which, if I had to guess, I would call that a wide-body table. That's kind of the feel of it.
    43:57
    It's got... It's one of those where you shoot the ball and you have no clue where it's going to come out. Yeah. The orbits on it are crazy.
    44:09
    So you've got that going for it where you're like, I don't know where the wall's coming out. And then you've just got the fact that you're like, I have no clue what this game wants me to do, what it wants me to shoot, collect. I don't know.
    44:22
    And the voice acting on that one is terrible. Mostly, it's not that difficult. You have this spaceship. Yeah. Well, that's how you start the modes, yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then you have the different modes where you have to collect sweeps or something like that. And usually the lanes are lit where you have to shoot to. Then you have this multi-ball chamber on the lower right side. I don't know whether you noticed that one. No, I haven't played it enough to actually pay much attention. Yeah, you should like there's a two targets thingy. I don't know what to call it. You shoot two or three times again, then they lower down then you lock the ball, you shoot again against them and you get a two ball multiple multiple. Yeah. Hmm.
    45:29
    And other than that, you have the modes with the spaceships. That's all I know at the moment. What I can say, what I really like is if you're going to night mode, it looks absolutely fantastic to me. Oh, see, I don't think I had that happen, so I don't know. Yeah. no, what I was going to say the voice acting on that, the person that got to do Elliot, sounds exactly like A, they got a girl to do Elliot and it's the same girl I think that they did Sorcerer's Lair with I recognize the voice from one of the other tables it's basically slightly altered but it does not fit at all It's one of those, it's kind of like, I always refer to Alien vs. Predator, where it's just like, great looking table, terrible sounding voice acting, and the E.T. table, the same thing. And I always laughed at E.T. when he speaks anyway, so when he starts speaking on the table, I just kind of snigger.
    46:43
    He's like, Muppet Bob, I don't know. So yeah, I can't really get into that one much. I don't know, I'll have to give it some time later. I don't think it will be an all-time favorite table, to be honest. But talking about ET, they currently have, and maybe that's a way to move over to the tournament mode, they also have an official tournament for ET at the moment. I think it's in the morning, where you can win some DVDs and stuff? No. Yeah. Prizes.
    47:24
    Prizes, prizes, yeah. Wonderful. Cool. Speaking of tournament mode, I went ahead and tried that out, and I created one. So I think we're going to do this. I'm going to try and do this frequently.
    47:42
    If you look up, just do a search for Shut Your Trap because I can do it as Blockade But look for Shut Your Trap and you find a tournament And I going to have it run for seven days basically so from the time that we start this podcast, Saturdays on America time.
    48:04
    And I'll have it run for seven days. This week's tournament, I decided to, hey, let's go ahead and do it with Iron Man because everybody loves that, right? and it's an old favorite of mine so that's why I did it but I did it for five minute ball mode and yes there are bonuses that you can play with and I left it open to the public so it's not just to blockade listeners but I figured that would be kind of fun to just kind of play amongst the community that listens to you I'm very curious about what's going to happen because and that's something I would like to touch as well the tournament mode I created three tournaments already and the first one was with three days and I can tell you nothing happened during the first two days because the tables or the tournaments are not really visible you only see 16 tournaments at the same time in the list and scroll down more.
    49:12
    And so you have to either look for a specific name or you can filter by who created it, like did a friend of mine create it? Then you will find it. Okay. You cannot search for a specific table. You cannot say, I want to play now, let's say Iron Man. I will turn it with Iron Man. It will pop up. Yeah, not happening. The only thing you can do is you can put a table to your favorite tables and search for favorite tables. That's some kind of workaround. Okay. What I experienced when creating the tournament is in the first, if you have it for like three days, in the first two days, nothing is happening. On the last day, nothing is happening. Only in the last hour or so, people start playing because that's what the default view is when you go into the tournament mode.
    50:19
    So whatever is ending soonest. Yeah. Exactly. And so that's something they absolutely need to work on. Because at the moment, it's just a waste of time there. And I don't know why they decided just to show 16 tournaments at the same time. And you also cannot filter out private tournaments where you don't have a password for it. It would be nice to just filter them out or to say, you know what, half of the games created or the tournaments created are sourced or are slared because of the free table. But I don't want to play it. show me all tournaments without certain tables I dislike or tables I just don't want to play at the moment.
    51:17
    That's something they really need to do. Well, like I said, I will announce what we're playing in the podcast here, so you can just look up my username Shuttertrap. And I also have it, I believe, set open to, since I'm on Steam, basically if you're on Xbox, if you're on PS4, you'll be able to play in the tournament. I don't know if you'll be able to see other, like, if Xbox will be able to see PS4 people score or not. I don't know how that'll work. I think they should. I would think they should. So yeah, it's an open tournament that way. So, you know, join in. Have fun. Okay, enough of this Zen madness that's dominated most of this. Let's quickly mention that Fathom did get released on Fimble Arcade. Did you mess with it at all? Yeah, I played a bit of it. It seemed to be quite brutal.
    52:16
    If that's just me being bad at that table or if it's really that... No, it's a bit of a nasty customer. There's no doubt about it. Locking balls? Easy.
    52:30
    Unlocking or getting the multiball going? Not so easy. Yep. And it also has those funky bally lanes, which I'm glad this is the first time we've had basically what normally is the out lane is your in lane, and the in lane is your out lane.
    52:49
    So bally did that on quite a few tables, but this is our first, I think this is our first taste in pinball arcada, so I'm happy that we finally get that in one of these machines. Jared describe this as a mirrored version of 8-Ball Deluxe. And I tried using that mentality when playing and that mentality will not do you justice at all. It is a different... it may look similar, it does not play the same way at all. It doesn't play similar, but I don't know... I know where he comes from, but it's a totally different beast and although 8-Ball Deluxe, when I first played it, I thought, well, how difficult is that one? Right. It's like, you cannot get any decent score. You have to play very disciplined with that table. What I found interesting with Fathom is, to me, it was kind of a combination of 8-Ball Deluxe and Centaur, which I mean these are all from the same era of Bally and I'm realizing hey I like this era and it's kind of a combination of both and yeah it's easy to pick up and very difficult to master yeah absolutely and although when I was in the age of when Centaur came out I never liked the tape because of the voice acting. I just didn't like it.
    54:25
    It was annoying as hell. If you stood next to it playing another table and it was in a track mode and every, I don't know how often it What does it say?
    54:45
    Other than Sandar. I don't know what it says. I don't know what it does in a track mode. I don't know exactly what it was but it got so annoying and at that time I didn't like the graphics today I do like it
    55:00
    and what I especially like is the way it plays and if you have like five ball multi ball it's like it's putting a smile on my face really every time I get that I don't know whether Fathom will be a table like that for me.
    55:24
    I enjoy 8-Ball a lot, but Fathom, at the moment, not so much. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't put in enough time with it to really form a true opinion, other than the time I did spend, I just kept on going, well, I can do better than that, and immediately played another game, which I think is a good sign. But it also might be one of those that once you've mastered it, then there's nothing left in it for you, and then it can become kind of just a grind fest. So I don't know. I'm still on the fence. But I just wanted to give props that, yes, there was another machine that got released other than Zen stuff since our last podcast.
    56:09
    Okay, last bit of business. And as Jared would like to always notify, warning, not pinball. So last year, you may recall, we did probably three different podcasts where we talked about Fissure Cubes.
    56:31
    Oh, yeah. And I got an email last week from the people that made the Stress Cube, which is the one that I bought. and they said, hey, we've got a new project. It's up on Kickstarter, and this is for a spinner cube. So it's basically the fidget cube, but what they've done is they've put two spinners on opposite sides, and now you can spin it like a fidget spinner. And the thing that they're mentioning about it is that it's perpetual spinning because the cube itself is off balance, and so if you just kind of jiggle your hand whatsoever, you can keep it going. The record that they have set right now is 18 minutes for non-stop spinning.
    57:17
    There was also on their Kickstarter page, one of the things I didn't like about the Stress Cube was its magnets. That's how they do all of the light switch and the joystick were done with magnets. And if you get any kind of dirt inside your cube, especially with the joystick, the joystick will then start sticking, and it loses the satisfying effect, you might say. So they'd given an early version of the Spinner Cube to some Internet people that basically break and tear down everything and see what's inside. And they did this with the Spinner Cube,
    58:01
    and I was very, you know, eyes looking, what do they do, what do they do? And with regards to the joystick, it's now using the same mechanics that are inside your basic controllers so no more magnets and that got me excited I was like oh awesome and then they turned the light switch instead of it being a light switch they made it into a like a shoulder trigger so if you have your thumb on the joystick and your forefinger on the shoulder trigger it's going to feel like holding a controller which I think is way cool so anyway They just started their Kickstarter campaign two days in. They're already halfway funded.
    58:41
    And I encourage everybody to go look at the Kickstarter campaign. It is just go to Kickstarter and search for Spinner Cube. And you should find it. It's by Stress Cube. That's who's the maker of it, in case there's some other knockoff going. And the guarantee that they have is that if they're funded, which it looks like they will be, two weeks after the campaign ends, they'll be shipping out. They've already got the molds made. They've already got everything ready to go. Basically, they just need materials cost to manufacture it.
    59:14
    And for the first 250 that sign up, if you select just a single cube, it's only $13 plus shipping, which I think is $3 within the U.S. but if you do two cubes then it's free shipping which is what I did so anyway I just want to give them a shout out because I still to this day whenever I do a podcast I have my cube in my hand because it does this weird bizarre thing with your brain if your fingers are doing something you're less likely to always say um which in public speaking is something that we always do because we're trying to think of what our next thing is while speaking at the same time and that's when all of a sudden you're going um and um so um and if you ever listen to people on the radio just listen this is how you know true broadcasters they don't say um ever and it is so incredibly hard to not do oh yes it is so that's why I always have this thing in my hand so I've been using it all year that's something where I have a problem with that as well yeah so anyway it's a good campaign I'm far from a professional that's for sure far far far far far okay so on my agenda has been I've been playing Last of Us on PS4 which I've given a shot on the PS3 years ago and it freaked me out and so I quit playing it and what I didn't realize was I wasn't even a quarter of the way through the game and I was basically still in tutorial mode.
    60:59
    But since I've been relegated to the couch, I got it and have been playing through it and thoroughly enjoying it and I should be finished with it by the next podcast. So there's something to look forward to. Me giving a review of a game that's, I don't know, what, four years old?
    61:19
    That's what the world has been waiting for. Exactly, my opinion. You know. Hopefully. Plus, I'll probably mention other things I've been playing while being relegated to the couch.
    61:34
    Because I don't know how much pinball there is. Oh, wait, I know some pinball stuff. See, if Jared was here, he would be talking about the project that he's working on. If you're on Twitter, follow after Jared Morgz. You'll see exactly what it is that he's been messing with. But I'm not going to spoil it. I'll let him talk all about it next time. As for me, you can follow me at ShutYourTraps.
    61:55
    And most importantly, though, follow the show. We are at Blockade. If you would like to visit the website, it is blockadepinball.com.
    62:06
    There you will find show notes as well as all of our previous recordings as well as web links to things just like the Kickstarter that I mentioned. And if you didn't want to look it up yourself, you can just click the link and go, wow. You can also drop us an email. We are blahblahblockade at gmail.com.
    62:25
    And the last thing I want to mention is me and Jared have been thinking it's time for a new logo for the show. We roughed one up last week, and it was posted to Twitter on both Jared's Twitter handle and the Blockade Twitter handle. So why don't you take a look at it, see what you think, if we're heading in a good direction or not. We'd love some feedback because eventually that's what will be on new T-shirts. So we need your opinion. All right, Sven, thank you so much for submitting your diary.
    62:59
    Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. We shall talk to everybody again next time. Until then, bye-bye. Bye-bye. wizardamusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter routes, easy to install totally unique, mention blockade podcast for 10% off your order wizardamusement.com, sales, restoration customization don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to, we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some pinball
    63:39
    you