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[Sp3eD]

On their pinball show today, Zen studios announced that pinball fx (pinball fx4) will release to early access on Epic game store on March 31st. The game will launch with 3 brand new tables and have 35 other legacy tables from pinball fx3 / pinball fx3 VR.

My main talking point, Pricing for these tables will be based on a ticket system where you will ultimately be forced into buying groups of tickets in order to buy tables within the main game store. They are offering a discount the first week which just makes this whole thing even more complicated.

Here is a graphic table I found on Reddit that shows just how convoluted and how “Xbox360 space bucks” like this is going to turn out being.

And we aren’t even talking about the $15 a month pinball pass that doesn’t get you every table, or how Indiana jones pinball isn’t apart of any of this for some reason and is just sold for $15 with real money separate from this…

What is zen studios thinking here? Wasn’t Microsoft’s test for a generation and ultimately ditched enough to show them this type of practice leads to upset customers? Really boggles the mind here. Thoughts?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I remember playing these games on 360. I think it was a free download with free 3-4 tables. I never paid for anything, but I remember them being solid games.

PARANORMALLLLLL!

 

[zombrex]

It's like they want the game to fail.
Terrible pricing structure.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

Wait I thought this was already out on Steam years ago?

 

[MrA]

So glad farsight lost the Williams tables to them,
Censorship and obnoxious pricing, what could be better? Oh thats right no ambition to get licensed williams tables

 

[Yui's Empire]

Man, that is incredibly disappointing. I bought dozens and dozens of tables between FX2 and FX3, with them always carrying over and featuring great prices and, with 3 in particular, even more incentives to keep on playing. Custom cameras, revamped physics and Pinball Royale sound cool, but this game's monetization is a fucking mess. Can't carry over tables, can't be bought in bundles, individual prices for tables went up (so a table I bought a decade ago has to be rebought for more than I paid at the time), and the usual MTX trickery of selling you round numbers of virtual currency but nothing to spend them "evenly" on - so if you buy 100 tickets and want two 40 ticket tables, you're left with 20 useless tickets that you will either let go to waste or buy more tickets for later.

The 100USD per year pass is straight up insanity, too: at no point in this franchise's history they had a content plan meaty enough that you'd spend 100USD in a single year of day one purchases on any table, so unless they somehow start pushing out like 2-3 new tables per month (which is simply impossible, for the level of polish they put into them), it's simply not even worth it to switch over from FX3. The fact none of the Marvel tables carry over and that's it an Epic Store exclusive on PC for a year is really just the icing on the cake.

A glance at Reddit, YouTube comments and so on and fans are really not happy about this, so let's hope they'll be forced to reverse this insanity. I would even close an eye on having to rebuy some of the content, perhaps with some discount - they have to earn money after all. But this monetization scheme is an intentionally convoluted system to hide the obvious fact that the money required to play this new Pinball FX is drastically higher than it has ever been, and as cool as some of the additions look, I'm really not seeing a reason to jump ship to this one. The physics and graphics changes seem quite marginal, and when they pulled that in FX2 and FX3 the upgrade paths were always favourable. In this state, there's just simply not much of a reason to move from FX3 to this. Hell, even newcomers are currently better off buying the same tables on FX3, given it's much cheaper and currently has more tables too.

 

[RJMacready73]

 

[Walter Matthau]

The ticket system is going to be very confusing to the average customer and feels like a mobile free-to-play scam.

Charging Game Pass Ultimate money for a subscription is overestimating the passion of their audience. The subscription doesn't even include Indy, just the tables that historically cost little money to outright buy.

 

[jshackles]

 

[Wonko_C]

Rebuying tables will we worth to me ONLY if the whole game is VR-compatible, instead of a separate game with just a few tables like they did with PFX2 VR/Star Wars Pinball VR

 

[Sp3eD]

The ticket system is going to be very confusing to the average customer and feels like a mobile free-to-play scam.

Charging Game Pass Ultimate money for a subscription is overestimating the passion of their audience. The subscription doesn't even include Indy, just the tables that historically cost little money to outright buy.

The community have done math on a lot of this and pretty much every way way you slice it, after buying tables you will have $2-$6 sitting in your account unless you really try to buy down to $0. It’s a huge fail for something they had been doing for like a decade pretty reasonably.

The pinball pass on the other hand is baffling. $15 a month or $100 a year. I can see why a monthly price would be a decent deal for casual players that just want to play the game for a month or two but even that should hover more around the $5. The $100 per year i have no idea what they are doing. What casual gamer is going to invest $100 to rent tables for a year and the other side, what enthusiast is going to waste that amount of money renting when they can buy them?

It’s just disappointing all around.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

A pinball... PASS ?
What's wrong with them !?!

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Looking at the charts, it's a ballpark price of a dime per play session, or cheaper on a sliding scale?

Who would play digital pinball for 10 cents per play?

 

[Sp3eD]

Looking at the charts, it's a ballpark price of a dime per play session, or cheaper on a sliding scale?

Who would play digital pinball for 10 cents per play?

Those prices are to buy the table for unlimited plays. It’s a worst deal then fx3 but thankfully not THAT bad.

 

[00_Zer0]

I enjoy tate mode pinball on the versions of FX available on Steam where there is no such gimmickery as this. If this is how it's going to be I will look elsewhere for my Pinball fix. So long Zen.

 

[jaysius]

Early April Fools joke? Jesus today is tricky as tomorrow(North American April Fools day) with timezones and all that.

 

[Hendrick's]

 

[Mephisto40]

If you can't carry across tables you have already purchased from the previous game that is suicidal on their part

 

[Calling 911 Melts Beams]

this is very straightfoward and easy to follow

 

[Forsythia]

I remember being able to import all tables I already owned in previous games. Yeah, they can fuck off with this, I'll play the old games.

 

[Rayderism]

I'm no pro pinballer by any stretch of the imagination, but I love playing pinball and I have all of everything for FX3. But honestly, I don't care for their original tables, I've been nothing but disappointed with them. And I really tried to get into them, but I just can't. Something about them never having existed in real life kills my enjoyment. Kind of hard to explain, but they just don't do it for me.

From here on out, the only tables I'll buy from any company that produces video pinball will be the re-creations of tables that actually existed in real life. But with this ticket baloney.....I don't know. Why can't they just sell me the tables I want without the ridiculousness? To quote AVGN, "What were they thinking?!?"

 

[smart_brazileiro]

They lost me as customer back when they announced that your previously bought tables wouldn't carry over. Never bothered again. Way to annihilate your customer base right from the start. They can fuck right off.

 

[zcaa0g]

Yeah, being on the Epic store exclusively to start ought to help their cause as well. smh

 

[Sp3eD]

Game came out today. Game is plagued with bugs, crashing, and overall poor optimization. I know it says it is “early access” (and let’s be real, after fortnite what does that even mean anymore) but people are giving them real money for this.

Looks like Zen needs to start to navigate out of their nosedive if they don’t want to go down the Farsight studios path as the forums and such are angry. A damn shame after how amazing fx3 is

 

[MacReady13]

On their pinball show today, Zen studios announced that pinball fx (pinball fx4) will release to early access on Epic game store on March 31st. The game will launch with 3 brand new tables and have 35 other legacy tables from pinball fx3 / pinball fx3 VR.

My main talking point, Pricing for these tables will be based on a ticket system where you will ultimately be forced into buying groups of tickets in order to buy tables within the main game store. They are offering a discount the first week which just makes this whole thing even more complicated.

Here is a graphic table I found on Reddit that shows just how convoluted and how “Xbox360 space bucks” like this is going to turn out being.

And we aren’t even talking about the $15 a month pinball pass that doesn’t get you every table, or how Indiana jones pinball isn’t apart of any of this for some reason and is just sold for $15 with real money separate from this…

What is zen studios thinking here? Wasn’t Microsoft’s test for a generation and ultimately ditched enough to show them this type of practice leads to upset customers? Really boggles the mind here. Thoughts?

God I love the future of gaming! Sub services are the future!!!!!

 

[Walter Matthau]

Game came out today. Game is plagued with bugs, crashing, and overall poor optimization. I know it says it is “early access” (and let’s be real, after fortnite what does that even mean anymore) but people are giving them real money for this.

Looks like Zen needs to start to navigate out of their nosedive if they don’t want to go down the Farsight studios path as the forums and such are angry. A damn shame after how amazing fx3 is

This is a Game of Thrones season 8 like downfall for Zen

 

[Yui's Empire]

Game came out today. Game is plagued with bugs, crashing, and overall poor optimization. I know it says it is “early access” (and let’s be real, after fortnite what does that even mean anymore) but people are giving them real money for this.

Looks like Zen needs to start to navigate out of their nosedive if they don’t want to go down the Farsight studios path as the forums and such are angry. A damn shame after how amazing fx3 is

I didn't have particular issues so far, then again I only played like 4 matches on the 2 daily free tables. The ray-tracing, like most games, seems ill-optimized, as a single 3D table like this shouldn't chug on my rig with high AA, so I had to lower it. It generally looks good with it, but the trade-off in performance (and well, everything I lose from FX3) is just not worth it at this point. Oh, where is Pinball Royale? That was probably the main addition I was looking forward to and it's not on yet.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

this is very straightfoward and easy to follow

Exactly as was the intention when designing it.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

I'll pass on the pinball pass.

Zaccaria pinball is the one and only!

 

[nemiroff]

I don't get it. I just want to know what's their main justification for doing a "new" platform instead of continuing making content for FX3. I mean, it doesn't take much to feel that it's just to try to milk their loyal customers and thus create animosity along the way.. I'm already fed up buying almost all the tables in several version on several platforms(!), I'm not going to go along with some fucked up weak shit this time.

Edit: Wait, it's also an Epic exclusive now???

Fuck off

 

[Miles708]

If you need charts and tables to explain your pricing, you're already dead on arrival.
Why devs still fall in this trap.

 

[MasterCornholio]

Someone needs to fine whoever came up with this pricing structure.

 

[nkarafo]

Glad i'm on PC.

Visual Pinball X has (many) more tables and i managed to gather the 200 best looking tables (for a 2 screen pincab) and they all look much better and more realistic than FX3.

The virtual pinball scene is similar to emulation. Meaning the homebrew efforts are superior to the official ones.

Dunno how good FX4 will look but i doubt it will look better than the best VPX tables. The only thing FX has are the moving cameras. But if you want to properly play pinball like the real thing, static full screen vertical is the only way anyway.

 

[chixdiggit]

But if you want to properly play pinball like the real thing, static full screen vertical is the only way anyway.

Always thought about tinkering with this. Would be cool to make a little pinball esque cabinet dedicated to VPX.

 

[STARSBarry]

Well its not like they didn't have the balls to do it.

 

[MagnetoWasRight]

The backlash on Zen's Facebook posts is hilarious.

 

[zcaa0g]

I think we'll be seeing a "Well, we listened to the fans..." announcement at some point in the near future when they have horrible sales numbers.

 

[nkarafo]

Always thought about tinkering with this. Would be cool to make a little pinball esque cabinet dedicated to VPX.

I made 5 cabs so far.

But all with 4K, 60hz TVs. Now i need to make one with an even more powerful GPU and a 4K + 120hz TV, because 120fps are a must for Pinball. 60fps is just too slow for natural ball movement. But this way the cab will be even more expensive than the previous ones and they were not cheap.

 

[chixdiggit]

I made 5 cabs so far.

But all with 4K, 60hz TVs. Now i need to make one with an even more powerful GPU and a 4K + 120hz TV, because 120fps are a must for Pinball. 60fps is just too slow for natural ball movement. But this way the cab will be even more expensive than the previous ones and they were not cheap.

Really cool. I would love to see pics!

 

[nkarafo]

Really cool. I would love to see pics!

Here are the ones i made with sticker reproductions i did in photoshop:

Getaway was the first. I don't like the flipper/nudge button placement. Indiana Jones is an improvement, button placement is better (though a bit too low) and there is a front door so i can access the buttons inside. It's also a bit smaller (43 inch instead of 49) which is a better size for a home.

I use the 200 best looking VPX tables, accessible through a frontend. I also avoided any VP9 table because they all look very bad. I don't care about having a ton of different tables, i could have 900+, i only care about the ones that look somewhat realistic up to very realistic. Also, 4K is a must, otherwise a lot of the realism is gone. I just don't see a point making such an expensive thing if you are going to look at bad graphics. So a GTX 1660 graphics card is the minimum for 4K+60fps with the most demanding tables (the 1060 is not enough, i tested it). Not sure what's the cheapest card for twice the frame rate though. Probably an RTX 2070 or 3060?

Here are some screenshots i took of some of the best looking tables in those setups:

Pinball FX simply doesn't have that kind of graphical quality. Their tables look good for a casual video game but VPX can look almost like the real thing at times. Not sure if FX4 can reach this quality, we'll see.

 

[Pejo]

Man when you need a spreadsheet to understand the monetization practices of a pinball game, you fucked up.

 

[chixdiggit]

Here are the ones i made with sticker reproductions i did in photoshop:

Getaway was the first. I don't like the flipper/nudge button placement. Indiana Jones is an improvement, button placement is better (though a bit too low) and there is a front door so i can access the buttons inside. It's also a bit smaller (43 inch instead of 49) which is a better size for a home.

I use the 200 best looking VPX tables, accessible through a frontend. I also avoided any VP9 table because they all look very bad. I don't care about having a ton of different tables, i could have 900+, i only care about the ones that look somewhat realistic up to very realistic. Also, 4K is a must, otherwise a lot of the realism is gone. I just don't see a point making such an expensive thing if you are going to look at bad graphics. So a GTX 1660 graphics card is the minimum for 4K+60fps with the most demanding tables (the 1060 is not enough, i tested it). Not sure what's the cheapest card for twice the frame rate though. Probably an RTX 2070 or 3060?

Here are some screenshots i took of some of the best looking tables in those setups:

Pinball FX simply doesn't have that kind of graphical quality. Their tables look good for a casual video game but VPX can look almost like the real thing at times. Not sure if FX4 can reach this quality, we'll see.

Woah! This is way cooler than I imagined. Well done, Thanks for sharing.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I dont follow the game, and it looks like my interpretation of the price charts was wrong. And I'm not going to bother trying to understand all those colourful charts.

I don't know how it costs the devs to make a single pinball table, but this franchise (you never know) might be a giant money maker.

I'm no pinball gamer (real life or digital). Played the free stuff on old Xbox downloads. Seemed ok. I remember some of the tables boring as hell. But maybe I'd buy it if it was $10 flat fee for like 20 tables.

 

[Danknugz]

maybe if they license the williams/bally tables that were all cancelled for TPA and then provide VR support for them. otherwise not really interested in these fantasy tables.

 

[Danknugz]

They lost me as customer back when they announced that your previously bought tables wouldn't carry over. Never bothered again. Way to annihilate your customer base right from the start. They can fuck right off.

for some reason this seems to be a persistent thing with pinball titles ever since TPA, it's like pinball fans are just always getting shit on, having tables they paid for removed, ripped off over and over again, really bizarre

 

[stranno]

Pinball PASS

Gaming nowadays..

 

[ReBurn]

These pinball games have always had a bad pricing structure. Just when you think it's as bad as it can get they go and find a way to make it worse.

 

[BigLee74]

Once I played the tables based on real tables, I couldn’t go back to Zen’s own tables.

 

[Omnipunctual Godot]

Epic exclusive is really the cherry on top of the shit sundae.

TBA losing Williams and Bally support was such a disappointment. PFX3 on Steam literally felt like playing a mobile game.

What would possibly compel people to switch from previous versions to PFX4? It looks exactly the same except now you have to rebuy all of your tables at higher prices and on a different platform on PC. Fuck off, Zen. It's all been downhill for them after PFX2.

 

[MrA]

Once I played the tables based on real tables, I couldn’t go back to Zen’s own tables.

On the bright side the pinball arcade seasons 1 and 2 are on physical disks, so you can get a pretty big line up of real pinball on ps4/5