Playstyles & Archetypes (Pinball Strategy)

[@OutlandishZathrus]

Often-times, the machine will determine the playstyle. Flipper hop is the bane of the flow player. For example, when playing Addams Family and shooting Ramp > Chair, if the inlanes are smooth and there's no Cliffy, and I can hit the chair on the fly 90% of the time, then it's better to stay on the fly rather than take the 90% chance of bringing the ball to rest successfully before even attempting a shot. But... if there's flipper hop, then the accuracy shooting on the fly might drop to 40% or worse. And then it's much better to use that 90% success rate at a ski-jump, inlane shimmy, post-trap, tip-pass, or live-post-pass, to bring the ball to rest and then another 90% to shoot the chair from a cradle. I used to always shoot Ramp > Chair on the fly like a flow player, but as the game gets older, flipper hop (or a Cliffy) becomes much more common, so now I almost always need to bring the ball to rest first, like a control player.

[@avd1427]

I am honoured to be in the same category as mr Elwin

[@NightlitePinball]

@@avd1427 you’ve earned it!!! Love watching you play 👌

[@kressenstein]

Would consider myself a reaction based player. Love to play flowy, but learned to slow down and try to find shots and strategies during play. When you're a decent/good, but not a great player, it always helps to get a feel for the speed of the table, find out how the flippers are set up, and which shots/targets to avoid in order to be able to not get punished when you still miss and need to find certain shots for a while.

[@NightlitePinball]

@@kressenstein there’s definitely a period in which you start getting better rapidly because you find the playstyle you’re comfy with! Glad you found yours.

[@MikeH-e6x]

He hasn't competed in years, but Neil Shatz is still one of the best control players on the planet. His IC profile isn't public, but if you know where to look, he's still out there putting up epic scores.

[@NightlitePinball]

@@MikeH-e6x I was gonna make a joke that he must have invented the shatz, only to find out that he literally did 🤣

[@MikeH-e6x]

He'll be the first to tell you he didn't invent the alley pass, but he is absolutely the best at it. We'd go to a new location and he'd always test any older Bally games there for alley passing. Fantastic ambassador for the hobby and sport.