Enjoying That Time Sink

[kevin_standlee]

I've been enjoying walking down to the bowling center and playing pinball the last few weeks since I discovered they had a copy of Medieval Madness, and I've been doing pretty well on it. In fact, I have all of the high scores. It's getting harder, though, because as it detects better players (i.e. me) it starts ratcheting up the points needed for a free game. When I first started, it was 10 million. It's now 24, and whenever you win a free game, it bumps it up another 12 million for the next game, and so on.

For all that the people at the Frontier Fun Center have taken to calling me "Tommy," there's a lot more to master on that game. I'm really only about halfway through all of the challenges. But I'm having a good time, and it doesn't cost too much, either.

Comments

[billroper]

This ratcheting up of the required score to win a free game seems like cheating to me... :)

[clothsprogs.livejournal.com]

Me too

Teddy

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Dynamically changing the necessary high score is pretty common in modern pinball machines. (It doesn't change the necessary score during the game, of course.) It works the other way, too. If more people play without winning, the machines may ramp the necessary score back down in order to not discourage them. But as long as you have someone like me tearing up the playfield, the score will keep ratcheting up in order to keep the challenge relatively constant.

[billroper]

Oh, I don't disagree that it's common nowadays. I just don't like it. :)

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

This does seem useful, from a game design standpoint. If the machine is being visited only by casual players of little skill, it's handy to offer them easy goodies so as to reward them and make this machine more appealing than any nearby rivals.

Conversely the tempting fruit can be made harder to reach when the machine detects some kind of unstoppable Terminator rolling over all challenges... *grin*