Sky Pirates : Treasures of the Clouds

Si il n'y avait que le stream qu'ils devraient améliorer ... Quand tu vois les vidéos de DIY de fabrication de pincab en chaussettes, ça fait peur. 4 longs épisodes de téléréalité et 4 planches fixés.

Bref, sinon cette table me parait plus sympathique et attrayante que la Mummy.
Et puis si Zen ne sortait pas une table avec des bugs ça ne serait plus une sortie Zen en fait.

wims a écrit:... stream où l'on peut voir un bug en direct, à 23'25" quand Linne arrive dans le shop avec 41 golds, achète une amélioration à 30 golds, et il lui reste 31 golds à la fin de la transaction.

Pas l'impression que cette table soit vraiment terminée, pour une sortie annoncée en mars ça me laisse perplexe. D'ailleurs, malgré les demandes, toujours pas de date de sortie d'annoncée officiellement.

Autrement, la table (et les décors) sont bien sympas, la structure a l'air intéressante, mais ça manque cruellement de nouveautés à première vue. Le flow n'a pas l'air non plus au top, et les orbites particulièrement traitres. Je sens également que le pirate qui n'arrête pas de jacter va vite me pomper (même voix horrible que le pêcheur dans Jaws, en plus bavard).

Bon c'était légèrement mieux que le stream de COTM, mais faut vraiment que Linne arrête de streamer, à moins que le but justement soit de ne rien montrer du tout.

I get the impression that the pirate constantly talking is a glitch too... or it could be intentional, considering Pewet's previous table also has a lot of passive dialogue when you're not doing anything. As for the orbits, as long as you hold up the flipper off the returns, they shouldn't be too difficult. As for lack of toys... I'm fine with it. We get a lot of complex tables in Zen, and this one is relatively more simple. I'm not looking forward to it as much as the two others, though.

This stream proved Zen has a lot of work to do in regards to communication though. I felt bad for Linne, poor guy got no information about the planned release date and it must've felt awful to go through all those requests and not have a concrete answer. And we still have no information about why the Pinball Show got delayed.

Here's a table I admittedly was looking forward to, but was overall left kinda disappointed by. Sky Pirates has an absolutely killer concept, and is one I'd love to see fleshed out on a pinball machine going forward - the steampunk vibes here are excellent. But while the concept won me over, the rest of the table I just find kinda alright.

After he designed Kung Fu Panda for ZPP, this was Pewet's next design, and I definitely think he's improving in regards to playfield layouts - there's a wide variety of shots on this game, all of which flow into each other reliably. Of course, the table uses the traditional Zen "shoot lots of shots to start modes" rule, but it's reliable and I have no problems with it. Rules-wise, I'm particularly fond of the shop rule, and wonder if their interview with the Spooky team somehow influenced this because I remember a similar feature being on their Halloween table. The scoring increasing as you upgrade your ship is a perfect fit.

At the same time, though, something about this table didn't grab me the same way that Curse of the Mummy or Noir did - and I think if I had to pin it down, it's the modes on this game and how they're started. I don't like having to make 9 ramp shots to start a mode, fail it, then have to repeat making those shots again; it feels like a grind and gets in the way of an otherwise enjoyable game. But that's just me, plus this game is still in very early testing, so maybe the rules will improve over time.

Another 3/5 for this one, but a stronger 3/5 than the one I gave Kung Fu Panda for this table's ambitious identity and theming. There's a true winner buried somewhere here... "X" marks the spot, for sure.

So I think I pinned down what I dislike about this table, as well as Curse of the Mummy although to a lesser extent - the rules heavily rely on repeating shots over and over rather than having a centralized way to start them, and the required shots are way too many for a casual player to make. Every time I think I want to come back to this table, I realize that I'll just spend my time going for Shootout at the safe upper loop instead of going for the actual shots, and that feels like a grind rather than the fun table that Pewet intended it to be. (No offense intended btw - just providing some feedback).

I think Zen could learn something from Keith Elwin, a real pinball designer who's done some recent games for Stern that have immaculate theming. In his Godzilla machine, the player is placed in the role of the titular monster as he rampages against other kaiju and alien forces. This game has a mission structure, but the focal point of the game as a whole is just to destroy all four cities, and the fun comes from determining risk / reward implications and completing each city's set of Monster Monitor inserts. Missions don't need to be the focal point of a pinball machine - sure, they're what novices have come to expect, but I think that the mission structure is just limiting these designs. There are very good videos of these games on YouTube in case you want to see them.

So, taking that approach to theming in mind, what I'd love to see from Sky Pirates is a table where you're a member of this steampunk crew that plunders islands. You can tie the modes into different islands, or have them correspond to different forces that attack your ship, but instead of having them be started by shooting shots repeatedly, you could have them started by making a sequence of shots, then locking a ball in the treasure chest under the center ramp. I think the game otherwise does a fine job at integrating its theme - having to repair the damaged ship, collecting gold from the pirates you defeat, and I like the unique way of lighting locks on this game. I just think that there are far better ways to encourage the player to play missions besides repeatedly making shots. This is solely my opinion and I don't think all tables with this structure are necessarily bad - heck, Monster Bash does this "shoot every shot enough times to start modes" rule and I love that table - but I think that table implemented the simple rules better, and in a less intrusive way, than the "shoot the ramps 8 / 9 times to light a mission" rules here.

TL;DR Sky Pirates has a good theme and layout that's tarnished by lackluster theme integration and rules that heavily rely on repetition. As I brought up earlier, there is a good table buried somewhere here, and I hope this feedback is able to help. But at the moment, it's just not a table I can see myself coming back to compared to the other two new tables.

wims a écrit:Merci Rich pour ton feedback, toujours aussi top, ça fait plaisir de te lire !

De mon côté, je n'y ai pas rejoué depuis le jour de sa sortie, où j'ai senti d'entrée une table très moyenne. Certes, le thème est chouette, c'est bien fait, mais on s'emmerde un peu, c'est mou. Et la voix off me sort par la tête.

A côté on a quand même 100 tables dans la bibliothèque, alors aujourd'hui, quand on en découvre une nouvelle, on attend d'être surpris. Soit on a envie d'y revenir vite, soit bof, et on préfère même aller (re)découvrir les 37 autres tables du nouveau Pinball FX, sorties le même jour. En tout cas, c'est ce que j'ai ressenti très vite avec Sky Pirates, j'ai eu d'autres priorités à découvrir.

Il manque quelque chose d'important, et d'indéfinissable. Pour moi, ça vient de Pewet, le nouveau designer : je me dis qu'il débute, alors il n'ose pas. Il n'essaye pas de prendre des risques, de déplaire, d'énerver le joueur... C'est plat, tout semble très classique, déjà vu. Aucune adrénaline, pas de speed quand on joue.

Enfin, le métier de designer, ça ne s'invente pas. Après, c'est pas si mal non plus pour un premier (ou deuxième) essai. Je veux dire, on est quand même au dessus de Tesla, et quand on sait ce que Zoltan Vari a fait par la suite, on peut laisser à Pewet... mais j'en doute, tellement tout semble un peu copier / coller sur ce qui a déjà été fait.

Completely agreed with you! No designer should be judged solely by their first few games not being the best, it takes plenty of time to figure out what works and doesn't - and I respect the people who work on these games, as this is way tougher to do on digital tables compared to physical tables. I've just been noticing a trend with recent Zen designers where they tend to use the same types of rules on their recent games; I get that they're easier to program, but as someone who's always interested in seeing these new tables it can feel disappointing when a new table feels like a retread of something we got earlier. But I'll be patient, regardless.

I noticed a clear evolution with Zoltan's design style, as early as his Wolverine table I'd argue, but becoming fully realized with Han Solo. That table wasn't perfect, and definitely suffers from rules that feel like a grind to accomplish, but I suspect it was the table that got Zoltan fully into his design groove. We got tables like Venom, Ant-Man, and Might of the First Order in the following years, all of which share a similar design philosophy while improving on what people felt didn't work earlier. However, the difference between Zoltan and many other designers is that he's spent over a decade at Zen, and thus was given this time to improve while other designers (with the exception of maybe Deep) weren't.

Designing good tables takes time, and I'm happy for the newcomers who were able to join Zen in recent years. I provide this feedback not because I want to make them feel bad, but because I want their tables to improve as much as FX has over the years.

4/5, j'aime bien cette table, ce côté pirate est cool. Elle est bien dessinée également. Il y a pas mal d'objectifs à réaliser. Il y a juste la mission "bateaux" qui me déçoit quelque peu. Après elle ne paye pas beaucoup. Avec du recul je donne plutôt 3/5, désolé ! En effet la bille est trop speed avec des rebonds imprévisibles. Allumer les missions prend trop de temps. On ne fait pas assez de points. Voilà j'ai tout dis.

J'ai essayé de rejouer ce soir mais j'ai une galère... Pas moyen de viser le trou de droite pour entrer dans l'échoppe / collecter les multibilles. Du coup, mon bateau est toujours abimé, je ne score pas, et je ne récupère pas mes multibilles ou je perds la bille en essayant, ce qui est stupide au final.

Une astuce de shoot ??? Le bout de flip tape dans le slinger avant de toucher le trou j'ai l'impression...

Pas d'astuce non plus pour le trou.
Je n'ai pas essayé sur mes 2 parties du jour.

Je mets 3/5 a cette table.

Y'a plein de bons trucs. L'esthétique steampunk réussie, la bande sonore, l'originalité du lance bille ou des kickbacks, des mini-jeux sympas, etc...

MAIS :
1- Un des trous principaux est quasi inatteignable sauf a attendre un rebond chanceux favorable, ce qui n'est pas un gameplay acceptable. Je perds systématiquement avec une extra-ball en stock !!!
2- Le personnage du capitaine à droite et le petit vaisseau volant (qui droppe les pièces) qui gène trop souvent la visiblité
3- La répétitivité. Il faut spammer de nombreuses fois les mêmes rampes avant de lancer la moindre mission, et cela coute souvent la partie car certains rebonds sont imprévisibles, comme si c'était une bille en "rebondissante"...
4- La mécanique de réparation de vaisseau est une bonne idée mais trop compliquée à mettre en place et on finit par jouer pour la moitié des points, ce qui ralentit encore la progression.

Dommage, ca aurait pu etre super; c'est juste très moyen...