SSL Discussion Thread (#6: 19XX: The War Against Destiny)

[heisenbergman]

lol just realized that the top 3 finishers for Gunbird 2 week are all touhou fans

get used to it, that's how shit works

Haha yeah. All I'm saying is they'd end up all nominating Touhou games

Not that Touhou is bad, not at all. I myself and enjoying some Touhou 5 right now.

It just makes for a lack in variety of titles to choose from for the given week.

[Eno]

lol just realized that the top 3 finishers for Gunbird 2 week are all touhou fans

get used to it, that's how shit works

Haha yeah. All I'm saying is they'd end up all nominating Touhou games

Not that Touhou is bad, not at all. I myself and enjoying some Touhou 5 right now.

It just makes for a lack in variety of titles to choose from for the given week.

We're doing non-MAME games too?
Too bad for the League if they do conspire to bring only touhou games as options, guaranteed hilarious poll thread though

[heisenbergman]

Yup non-MAMe games are alright. The thought is that people will eventually be voting for the game of the week anyway in spite of three people controlling the nominations for that week, so provided that all of choices aren't crap a popular choice will end up winning the poll.

[trap15]

The Touhou guys are going to just keep winning, regardless of what games they pick. You know that, right?

[cskcsk]

My gunbird score isnt counted

[heisenbergman]

Sorry, you posted it almost half a day after the deadline

[cskcsk]

My shmup heart is broken.

[Zengeku3]

DDP? Cool enough. I hope i can learn to NMNB Stage 5.

[heisenbergman]

SSL #2 is done. Thanks to all for participating Final scores are in the OP of this thread and the OP of the DoDonPachi SSL thread.

Next up will be Touhou 03: Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream, and as mandated by Zil, it should be played on Lunatic mode.

Nominated games for SSL #4 will be chosen by: Erppo, Zeron & Zengeku3

[KAI]

2hu Lunatic, I don't think that's a good idea for a tourney.

[heisenbergman]

It sounded sketchy, but I don't know enough to veto it outright

If normal sounds better, then we can play that instead.

[Jaimers]

PoDD really is lunatic or bust.

It really doesn't shine or do it justice on any lower difficulty. Lunatic is about arcade mode difficulty anyway so it's all good.

[CStarFlare]

I was going to say, I just played PoDD on Normal to get a sense for what this week's players are in for, and breezed through on my first credit. I understand Lunatic is somewhat infamous, though (or is it just with Chiyuri that people say it's the hardest Touhou clear?).

Would be nice if this spurred some scoring discussion for the game, though. I imagine a lot of scoring is letting the other side live long enough to cash in on a good chain, but not really sure if there's any way to make that happen aside from not launching charge attacks?

[heisenbergman]

FWIW, everyone I see nominating Touhou games make a point to mention it should be played in Lunatic mode. And all Touhou competitions and scores I've seen thus far seem to mostly be played on Lunatic mode.

[Zengeku3]

Touhou on Easy is for babies.
Normal is for those who would want to touch said babies.
Hard is for those who would get hard from watching either of the above.
Lunatic is for those who wouldn't want to be any of the above.

So in other words, for most of us Lunatic is the only way to go. It's also the most fun.

[Sakurei]

playing PoDD on anything lower than lunatic is a sin. As long as you don't use Chiyuri (yes, that's the only really hard one), some of you might even clear, hurr.

and as Jaimers said, lunatic for PoDD is arcade difficulty anyway.

[heisenbergman]

Lunatic is about arcade mode difficulty anyway so it's all good.

Hmmm idk about this.

In most arcade shmups, I can get to around Stage 4 on the average.

So far I've tried PoDD on Easy and Lunatic. On Easy, I can get to Stage 9 but can't beat it. On Lunatic, I can't even beat Stage 1. So as far as I'm concerned at least, saying that Lunatic PoDD is about arcade-mode difficulty doesn't seem to hold true.

[Drake]

The difficulty doesn't scale quite like an arcade game, I think is the main issue. It doesn't really start on a breezy stage, progressively get harder and have some difficulty spike in the middle, it just starts wasting you from the beginning and has particularly difficult stages depending on which character you pick.

[Zengeku3]

The difference is more or less that most arcade shmups start out with 3 stages that can barely even kill you.

[Sakurei]

Not to mention that PoDD relies on a completely different set of skills than most arcade games do. you are very likely too used to the regular arcade play-style.

[heisenbergman]

Oh well let's see. I'll wait until all the nominated games for SSL #4 come in before deciding.

Leaning very slightly towards Lunatic as Zil chose and most Touhou fans recommend, if only to see how it will pan out. Will be lucky to post a 5M score if ever

(someone should totally post a PoDD strategy guide btw. Even the touhouwiki for PoDD doesn't have one, unfortunately...)

[PedroMD]

Completely different skillset indeed. I liked PoFV because it was less pattern memorization and more dodging random shit from everywhere all the time, and countering spells in time was quite fun. In fact it was the only Touhou I managed to play on Lunatic (although I never cleared it, I could go for ten minutes without taking damage and that damn final boss wouldn't give up).

I couldn't beat Lunatic stage 1 on this one. I was so confused that I thought I wasn't understanding any of the mechanics, but then I tried on Normal and the 1CC came almost effortlessly. So I'm still confused. Not much more to do than to keep trying in Lunatic, I guess.

[Zengeku3]

Do you have a replay of you surviving Eiki Lunatic without taking damage for 10 minutes?

I'm interested in how you cannot clear if you can do the above

[PedroMD]

Hyperbole. It certainly felt like a long time, but the point is that she simply wouldn't go down.
Then I watched an AI vs AI match on Lunatic and it actually lasted for more than ten minutes, so I gave up.

[Zil]

It's worth noting that it's programmed to lose after a certain time, in both PoFV and PoDD.

Just saying this now because it bugs me when people complain about the enemy refusing to die, when it's they who just didn't live long enough.

[heisenbergman]

btw, I updated the OP to reflect overall rankings so far. A bit wonky at the moment because we've just played two games, but it should flesh out more accurately as more games are logged:

R=Rank & Player & SSLs Played & Average & WEIGHTED SCORE & SSL01 & SSL02 R=1 & Zil & 1 & 100.00 & 69.52 & 100.00 & R=2 & Jaimers & 2 & 83.77 & 68.86 & 82.86 & 84.67 R=3 & Erppo & 2 & 81.36 & 67.25 & 62.73 & 100.00 R=4 & Zeron & 1 & 73.20 & 56.12 & & 73.20 R=5 & ResumeDPosition & 1 & 62.35 & 50.70 & & 62.35 R=6 & chum & 2 & 55.42 & 49.96 & 69.01 & 41.83 R=7 & Zengeku3 & 2 & 55.14 & 49.77 & 41.85 & 68.42 R=8 & saucykobold & 1 & 59.32 & 49.18 & 59.32 & R=9 & ratikal & 1 & 56.56 & 47.80 & 56.56 & R=10 & Zerst & 1 & 55.54 & 47.29 & & 55.54 R=11 & trout & 1 & 51.56 & 45.30 & 51.56 & R=12 & Aleksei & 2 & 44.06 & 42.39 & 36.19 & 51.94 R=13 & touhou=better.harder & 1 & 45.03 & 42.03 & & 45.03 R=14 & Sakurei & 1 & 39.45 & 39.24 & & 39.45 R=15 & jepjepjep & 1 & 37.30 & 38.17 & & 37.30 R=16 & Battletoad & 2 & 36.08 & 37.07 & 45.40 & 26.77 R=17 & Lep & 1 & 34.16 & 36.60 & & 34.16 R=18 & Aettaa & 1 & 31.68 & 35.36 & & 31.68 R=19 & VHS-porn & 1 & 26.43 & 32.73 & 26.43 & R=20 & PAPER/ARTILLERY & 2 & 26.94 & 30.97 & 29.13 & 24.75 R=21 & ciox & 1 & 22.52 & 30.78 & & 22.52 R=22 & DocHauser & 2 & 26.41 & 30.62 & 23.74 & 29.07 R=23 & Chaos & 1 & 20.29 & 29.66 & & 20.29 R=24 & Iori Branford & 1 & 18.17 & 28.60 & & 18.17 R=25 & DMC & 1 & 17.03 & 28.03 & 17.03 & R=26 & shmuppyLove & 1 & 15.67 & 27.35 & & 15.67 R=27 & ED-057 & 1 & 11.39 & 25.22 & 11.39 & R=28 & Eno & 2 & 17.77 & 24.86 & 31.84 & 3.70 R=29 & trap15 & 1 & 8.37 & 23.70 & & 8.37 R=30 & Pinehed & 2 & 15.64 & 23.44 & 20.04 & 11.24 R=31 & PedroMD & 2 & 13.81 & 22.22 & 14.22 & 13.39 R=32 & heisenbergman & 2 & 6.74 & 17.51 & 7.38 & 6.10

[PedroMD]

It's worth noting that it's programmed to lose after a certain time, in both PoFV and PoDD.

Just saying this now because it bugs me when people complain about the enemy refusing to die, when it's they who just didn't live long enough.

Do you know how long is that? I had read somewhere that the enemies have a certain "invincibility" period after taking damage, but the final boss' one seemed to last for too long. Then again, saying that it was I who didn't live long enough is equally right.

Also, does the AI on a stage get easier if you lose a life? It always seemed like it does to me, but anything could be attributed to the randomness of the game, so I was never sure.

[chum]

This is going to be pretty hilarious...

Do you know how long is that? I had read somewhere that the enemies have a certain "invincibility" period after taking damage, but the final boss' one seemed to last for too long. Then again, saying that it was I who didn't live long enough is equally right.

Also, does the AI on a stage get easier if you lose a life? It always seemed like it does to me, but anything could be attributed to the randomness of the game, so I was never sure.

The timers increase the further you progress into the game. It goes from under 2 minutes, to around 4 minutes. Something like that... Also, the final boss on her first round will not die unless you trap her (there's no timer)

As far as I know, the only time the AI will get easier is if you lose round 1 of the final stage. So, not at all like PoFV where losing a round will completely cripple the AI.

[Zil]

Well it depends on the round, so yeah. In PoFV for example, against the final boss, you can't win the first round, then the next lasts 3:30, then 3:00, then all the rest are 2:30. The bullets get a bit slower as you lose lives as well.

I'm less sure of the PoDD timers, though I may look into it some more tonight. At the moment, I think the final boss goes indefinitely on the first round, unsure of the second (may be over 5 minutes though), then 4:00 for the third round, 3:30 for the fourth. Here the game doesn't slow down, nor to the spell and boss levels reset, so in a sense the game gets harder when you lose, aside from the timers getting shortened of course.

These won't always hold true though, particularly in PoDD, since the AI can get trapped and die early. It's extremely rare for it to last much longer than it's supposed to though.

edit: also what chum said. Yeah. This'll be the greatest week ever. We're playing the best game in the world, after all.

[PedroMD]

"you can't win the first round" explains a lot. Thanks for the info, I think I'll go back to PoFV later and try to get at least this one Lunatic clear.

As for this week, I wouldn't exactly say things are looking up, but this doesn't mean it won't be fun. The game is good, alright.