Pinball is supposed to be fun, not infuriatingly frustrating. There's no pleasure in a game that rapes you everytime you play it and there's no challenge involved in trying to prevent a ball from going down a gaping canyon of an outlane. In home use, I say use the lane extenders and have fun.

Challenge, good. Rapefest, bad.

Like I said, I don't care if you change it to have fun, just don't blame it on the design.  The game plays fine and I really don't find it that bad of a drain whore.  

Also there is quite a bit more challenge involved when you have a gaping canyon.  I'll never forget the monster sized hole created by removing the left post from the outlane on CV.  It only made playing well on it more rewarding, keeping the ball away from that side is a challenge in and of itself and with control can be done.  

Anyway, change your game all you want, but don't blame the design just admit you can't handle it and move on.  

Quoted from Vengeance

but don't blame the design just admit you can't handle it and move on.  

BAD DESIGN... BAD BAD BAD !

Oh and i suck...

Anyway that piece of mess is always broken so i fix it more than i play  

Quoted from Azatotht

Anyway that piece of mess is always broken so i fix it more than i play  

I hear that, I finnaly got my mutlipile ball feeding problem fixed, game has been playing great since then.  

Quoted from Vengeance

I hear that, I finnaly got my mutlipile ball feeding problem fixed, game has been playing great since then.  

Mine has the infinite ball feeding loop right now.. under pf diverter got shorted (or maybe its the drop target one), fuse 103 blowing at start so probably a few tip transistors blown on the extra driver board too ...

Thats where i'm at, have to go thru the fixing sequence now   Standard daisy-chained under pf coils issue...

Quoted from Monkeybug

I was amazed at how extended lane guides really polarized people.

Same goes for center posts...

But I believ that today the whole discussion is almost irrelevant, considering that the games are older. These points were very critical when machines were new. A tough machine frustrated most average players in arcades, therefore the games made less money, so the operators were less enticed to buy more examples of the machine in question. In STTNG's case, the theme helps it a lot, and so does the overall gameplay which is quite good, but yeah, a greedy outlane is never a good marketing ploy. But then again, an overly-easy game isn't great either. It is a difficult balance for a designer to come up with a game that is hard enough to attract collectors and serious players, yet at the same time not frustrating your average occasional player.

Quoted from Azatotht

Mine has the infinite ball feeding loop right now.. under pf diverter got shorted (or maybe its the drop target one), fuse 103 blowing at start so probably a few tip transistors blown on the extra driver board too ...

Thats where i'm at, have to go thru the fixing sequence now   Standard daisy-chained under pf coils issue...

Add me to the list, too. There is simply too much technology in that game. I love it when it's working, but it breaks down more than any game I have ever owned or experienced.

My current problem is something is burning. I cann't tell what. I can only smell it. I turned the game off when I noticed it, tried visual inspection and couldn't find it. I checked all the fuses and it is properly fused, so a fuse should go first. The smell is so faint, I cann't isolate it. This after I finally gave up and had Geoff come over and fix it. I might have to have him come over again. He fixed one problem, but now I have another and it's beyond me at this point, I don't know where to begin.

I love/hate this game.

On the plus side, my game looks amazing -- because it has gotten so little play since I fully shopped the beast.  

Duane

Quoted from Vengeance

Like I said, I don't care if you change it to have fun, just don't blame it on the design.  

The design IS to blame.

Although some would argue that some recent designers had player satisfaction foremost, don't forget that the primary purpose of pinball design was to "drain" a customer's quarters.  So, just like planned obsolecence, there was some "design" in making games that ended quickly for almost all players.  We're just reverse engineering the games a little and putting them to the way they should have been designed for the common man.

And besides which we're making up for all those operators who "re-engineered" their games to make us lose quarters faster...  

I have no issue with reversing the reverse engineering for a tournament game since it doesn't matter whether there is satisfaction, only that the playfield is relatively equal for all players being scored.

Quoted from websherpa

The design IS to blame.

Blaming the design is just an excuse for your inablity to keep control of the ball.  The game was designed that way, those are the lane guides that ship with every production version of ST:TNG.  Putting in longer lane guides is to make it easier for you to play, not to correct a design flaw.

As an example, CSI has a design flaw, if you shoot 2 or more balls into the camera scoop the balls will all get stuck and you will be forced to open up the machine and clear them out manually, that is a design flaw.

ST:TNG was designed the way it is, was produced the way it is, any attempts to make it easier are for your own personal reasons and have nothing to do with a flaw in the game.  

Like I've said, put them in, I don't care, but don't try and tell me it's because there is something wrong, just admit you want it to be easier and leave it at that.  I could care less if someone put rubber bands on the outlanes and a sock in the drain, but if they try and tell me that's how it should be, I take issue with it.  

... this thread has the word "TACT" written all over it.

Different players, different opinions... My opinion? Any game that you can play 30 minutes on a single ball is badly designed. That's why I like older pins... they were designed to take your money, kick your a**, and make you just want to come back for more beatings.

I will ehco that STTNG is a pain to maintain.  I have a phantom MB problem that I have yet to track down.

Regarding the lane guides: Steve Ritchie himself said that he approved of the extenders because he too felt the game was too much of a drainer.  And anything that added to the enjoyment of the game he wholly supported.

However I am in the camp to leave it original as it is not an actual defect in the game, just an  element that sometimes makes it more difficult to play.

Quoted from Meat Popsicle

I will ehco that STTNG is a pain to maintain.  I have a phantom MB problem that I have yet to track down.

You should buy the Great Lakes Modular Trough boards, that is all I ended up needing to fix my problem.  the trough optos seemed to work fine, but I would still end up with balls being fed in sometimes and other times it would just lose track all togethor.  since putting in the new boards haven't had a single problem.