Why don't you try hard?

[Squire Grooktook]

1CC'ing a game - a 'scrubby' single loop clear at the least in multi-loop games, if we're making a distinction - isn't remotely difficult at all and only requires a small amount of intelligent, focused practice

I remember having a discussion like this with Hagane a while back, that it would be easier to get people into the genre if people didn't exaggerate the difficulty of 1cc's, but I personally have to disagree. The "mystique of the 1cc" is something that's natural to the genre, and most new players are going to feel that 1cc's are something "hardcore" and difficult to attain regardless of how the community feels about them.

Even easy 1cc's are pretty damn tough stuff by the standards of...pretty much every other single player genre.

TBH even a 1cc of something like Contra Nes (which I consider one of the easiest 1cc's possible) is on a level that most mainstream players would find "too hard". I've seen people, who claim to be lifelong gamers, game over in the early-game of Mario 1.

I'm not disagreeing that they aren't TEH HARDEST THING IN THE WORLD, but it must be remembered that skill is relative and the overwhelming majority of mainstream players possess neither the fundamentals nor the wisdom needed for even the cheesiest of bomb spam 1-alls.

There's also something to be said for the "stress factor". The sense of tension of being close to a clear whilst on the brink of death is something that I cherish, but for most players I imagine it would make the experience stressful to the point that they might not want to put time into a clear. Even if a clear is easy, the "gauntlet" nature of the arcade experience definitely requires a unique mindset.

[Eaglet]

Even easy 1cc's are pretty damn tough stuff by the standards of...pretty much every other single player genre.

This isn't really that discussion but everybody knows that it has to do with how mainstream games have (d)evolved the last decades.
Anybody who's managed to clear normal arcade style NES games has the ability to approach these games as well.

There's also something to be said for the "stress factor". The sense of tension of being close to a clear whilst on the brink of death is something that I cherish, but for most players I imagine it would make the experience stressful to the point that they might not want to put time into a clear. Even if a clear is easy, the "gauntlet" nature of the arcade experience definitely requires a unique mindset.

This is what made me play shooters in the first place and is a sort of pressure i've always thrived being under. Learning how to manage acute stress is something that would be beneficiary in other aspects of life as well so instead of excusing why players give up, they should be encouraged to learn how to handle their stress and perform under pressure. There's literally no negative aspect to it.
That is, if you actually want to improve as a human being. If you don't i can't relate to you at all.

[Squire Grooktook]

if you actually want to improve as a human being. If you don't i can't relate to you at all.

Eh, as much as I like high tension games, I'm not going to question the humanity of people who don't like games I like. Some people are just into different things. Some people just want to relax on their freetime. It's not for me, but I can respect whatever somebody is into.

[Eaglet]

Eh, as much as I like high tension games, I'm not going to question the humanity of people who don't like games I like. Some people are just into different things. Some people just want to relax on their freetime. It's not for me, but I can respect whatever somebody is into.

This has nothing to do with games but with stress management being a universal skill. That is, if your reason for quitting is that you don't want to learn how to manage your stress.
It's just a sentiment i can't relate to at all.

[Special World]

I suppose my problem with what you guys are saying is simply that you may as well not be saying anything at all. So far, the tagline for this topic has been "1CCs ain't hard, focus during practice and git gud." Which to me is like talking to your son about his poor grades in school and saying "Son, school ain't hard. There are two surefire tricks to doing well in school: Be smart and study." Be smart!—The surefire way to succeed in any endeavor. I'm being pretty snarky here, but that's because I think all you're doing (so far) is giving people a complex. It's easy to 1CC, any scrub can do it! Well, this scrub hasn't 1CCed much of anything, and I'm going to press you now to explain what the hell exactly you're doing right. Because "playing with a plan in mind" is NOT a concrete method for other players to follow. Just what is the plan?

I'm playing Eschatos right now. There's no training mode and there are no savestates. But like Grooktook's example of Rayforce, I don't think it's a game that requires heavy memorization. It's very well-built for players to be able to engage in off-the-cuff displays of skill, in order to 1CC the game and then work towards a respectable score by figuring out enemy patterns. I've 1CCed original easy, but I'd like to 1CC original normal and then original hard, as that's considered the "default" difficulty. I've thought of a general plan of attack—you tell me what's right with it and what's wrong with it.

Let's assume here that we're talking about any game. You've got a new game and you'd like to 1CC it. So here's what you do. Think of this as a "pyramid of needs", where one step precedes the others, but if you feel like you need to go back a step because you're not as good as you thought you were, then that's what you do.

1. Play through the game five times. Not five credits, where you stop the game as soon as you game over, but five full playthroughs so you can experience all the challenges the game has to offer.
2. After the fifth playthrough, record your run. Watch it. Where are you dying? Make a note of each death. If there's comes a point where you're just flailing around and dying endlessly, focus on the parts before that point where you were actually displaying some semblance of skill. Look at the run and think about if there are any glaring holes in the patterns that you can exploit to survive.
- This is made difficult in Eschatos, because you want to kill every enemy (quickly), and this can often leave you directly in harm's way. But Eschatos gives you the shield. Now, I utilize the shield far too defensively. I am fully aware that the shield can be used as a potent offensive tool, where you ramrod smaller enemies and thereby make sure they can't scatter flak everywhere. So I might think to myself, "Can I barge in with the shield and totally negate this problem, or do I have to actually deal with the enemies and patterns?" Etc. Think of a way, for each death, that you could have avoided it. Look at your movements. Are you steady, or flailing your way into bullets?
3. Play through the game again, in its entirety. Watch the replay, see what you did right and wrong.
4. Now watch a superplay (or a 1-sissy, if you can) and figure out what they're doing. Watch the whole thing and pay attention to all of it, but especially pay attention to the parts you missed. What are the good players doing?
5. Practice, practice, practice. Examine every death. If you have savestates or training, practice those parts. If you don't, just play the whole damned game, every time.
6. Make a checklist. Every ten games, watch a superplay.

Does that seem correct? Is that what you guys are doing? Do you pause the game after each death (assuming you're not on a cab) and think about what happened? Or do you just watch a replay? Is there anything I can add to that? I assume that's a reasonable goal—after all, Eschatos is not incredibly difficult, and it allows players to take baby steps to improve unlike, say, Ketsui, which is pretty much do or die.

You guys who take the 1CC to be the most basic, entry-level unit of scrolling shooter skills: Exactly what are you doing?
3.

[Icarus]

Exactly what are you doing?

You know, I wrote this a while back to answer a lot of questions about my practice habits and mentality, and for general pointers.

[Legendary Hoamaru]

I'm playing Eschatos right now. There's no training mode and there are no savestates. But like Grooktook's example of Rayforce, I don't think it's a game that requires heavy memorization. It's very well-built for players to be able to engage in off-the-cuff displays of skill, in order to 1CC the game and then work towards a respectable score by figuring out enemy patterns. I've 1CCed original easy, but I'd like to 1CC original normal and then original hard, as that's considered the "default" difficulty. I've thought of a general plan of attack—you tell me what's right with it and what's wrong with it.

There is a level select under options. Pretty sure you unlock it with total points across sessions, but you can start your game from the 5 levels.

It also has a toggleable god mode and hitbox displayer locked under the options, which you can use to help with practice too.

[Special World]

Read and noted, Icarus. I'll check and see if I've unlocked stage select as well, Hoamaru.

[Bananamatic]

I've never seen a player try to play a game safely with a planned route and still fail to 1cc - every single time they failed was because they kept making bad decisions on the go, making it way harder than it should be, which is how i see most people play

also about your plan:

1) and 2) - it's useless to try and analyze your blind gameplay of 5 runs when you barely remember anything about the game, since it's pretty much certain that every run will do something very differently, leading to different causes of death

if you want the most straightforward way to learn a game:

1) grab a replay immediately, one appropriate for your skill level - if you just want to 1cc, get a low scoring survival replay
2) learn the stages 1 by 1, don't play any other stages until you have the previous one in muscle memory and can execute it reliably
3) keep grinding for consistency if the run requires it (this honestly isn't required at all if you aren't scoring or trying to do a very difficult 1cc)
4) do runs

this whole watch your own replays/pause the game and think about the death is nonsense - once you automatically know what to do, you'll immediately know what you've done wrong

i honestly don't do anything else - just get the game into your muscle memory as fast and as efficiently as you can and then play

the great thing with playing for survival like this is:
1) you can skip doing this with the first 2 stages as they're usually very easy for survival
2) you have a shitton of disposable resources - bomb the hell out of bosses or any more difficult parts if you need to for the first 1cc
3) you can also do the reverse of 1) and learn the game up to stage 5, then bruteforce it with dying and bombspam, or learn only stage 5 to the point where you can clear it with very little remaining lives and spam runs until you get it

also, 1-sissy/first clear videos are useless - it's usually blind bombspam which works for a lot of games and you won't learn shit except for the fact that the game is very clearable that way

if you want to 1cc sdoj, grab the most recent replay of a hibachi clear that ignores scoring entirely and apply bombs on parts you still find too hard
if you want to 1cc ketsui, find a low scoring ura clear replay - the cool thing is that while the player wasn't allowed to bomb or die in the first loop at all, you can die 6 times and bomb over 20 times

[Special World]

In that case I would say you and Icarus have very different methodologies, as his seems very much based around examining your deaths and determining how not to die.

[Legendary Hoamaru]

One keeps the "sense of discovery" element and the other doesn't. "Sense of discovery" is a must for me as inefficient as it is, I usually don't get into replays until I try to play for score.

[Lyv]

To answer the initial question, the only game I could say I know by heart would be Strikers 1999.

I'm not really competitive-minded, so I tend to focus on "relatively hard" 1CCs (2-ALLs or playing without bombs) on a few games, as I don't really care about scoring but I enjoy some good personal challenges. I tend to play games where scoring is highly correlated with survival anyway.
Not sure if this makes me a "casual" or if I'm "doing it wrong", and not sure if I care about it.

I kind of agree with the overall feeling that there should be more discussion about actual gameplay (in the Strategy section), even though I think that 90% of the questions could be answered by just looking at a replay. Discussing top-tier replays could bring a lot of interesting points though.

[Bananamatic]

icarus plays different games than i do, maybe it's more important in raizing stuff where RNG and rank is a bigger issue

One keeps the "sense of discovery" element and the other doesn't. "Sense of discovery" is a must for me as inefficient as it is, I usually don't get into replays until I try to play for score.

i find that the discovery happens only after you understand the game at some level, when you don't know the game and watch a replay you don't really know what the fuck is happening at all

once you know the stage layouts and what your route is, you can start comparing to other replays/testing out different stuff on your own and making adjustments

[Icarus]

… his seems very much based around examining your deaths and determining how not to die.

More like "examining your problem sections and determining how not to make repeated mistakes." It's less reducing lives lost, and more finding safe, functional methodologies tailored to your own skill level.
While I do endorse the usage of replays as a tool for learning, I don't advise copying them by rote. This is because replays demonstrate an individual method of play, which:
1. may not be the most optimal one for scoring (if you're not watching a WR-level replay for score tips), and
2. may require a level of skill that is higher than what you have currently (eg a lot of tricks by NAK in the Futari BL God replay).
If there are no replays available, make your own! Sometimes watching your own mistakes from an observer's viewpoint can help you get some insight into solutions to tackle problems you run into.

What I'm trying to get at is that, yes, people should be looking to improve their practice habits and routines, but every player has a different way of going about it, and what works for one player may not work for another. My analytical approach may not favour someone that prefers brute-forcing his way through hard parts, for example. The most important thing you should do is find a routine that suits you - your timescales, learning style, skillset etc - and use it. Just make sure that it is efficient.

[Stevens]

There is a wealth of good information in this thread, particularly as Icarus mentioned, differentiation of learning styles.

I'll play until I hit something that repeatedly hands me my own ass, watch a replay of my run if I have it, identify trouble areas, and come up with solution via practice mode.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I try to avoid other's replays, but recently one of Kiken's Under Defeat runs helped me immensely when I was trying for the 1st loop hard clear and the 2nd loop clear. I didn't use that though until I had well over 100 hours into it.

[Some-Mist]

"Son, school ain't hard. There are two surefire tricks to doing well in school: Be smart and study."

sort of on this point, some people are now-naturally better at controlling ships regardless of control scheme due to conditioning. not to do ~the callout~ but when I compare myself at meetups to other players, I see that others can control the ship way better than I can due to being used to the control scheme - even with a regular controller. I remember talking with beatsgo because I was so impressed at how he can pick up nearly any game and be able to control the stick/ship with precision, and he said something along the lines of... "it's because he's played dr. mario on arcade most of my life" along with puyo puyo and other stick-related games.

being relatively new to the control scheme (not much dedication until 2010 or so) I can still clear games he can't due to the time sink and vice versa, but my clears and scoring runs - albeit pretty decent - look so sloppy in comparison. with time I know I will gradually become more precise (unless it's my ADD lol). It does actually take me a couple months to get the 1CC down and I think the overall conditioning contributes. I also don't have a solid practice regiment down and I usually just throw a credit in and play till the game over screen, throw a credit in, etc.. actually used a save state for the first time in progear near the beginning of the year to work on the s3 boss final pattern 100% every time. every time I throw a credit in I just want to beat my previous run.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Am I the only one who plays these games just to blow some shit up and have a bloody good time doing it? Getting better as you play more is a nice side effect and leads to more fun.

I've spent every day of my post graduate and working life analysing stuff. I'm not into doing the same with entertainment. I get my fill of working my brain, I prefer my gaming to just be a product of my brain unwinding. It's relaxing. Practice regimes? Save states? Locking yourself into one 20 minute game for a few hours several days in a row? Nah, not for me.

Why don't I try hard? Because I have more fun not trying hard. That's my way and I'm happy for anyone else to play how they like. The elitist dictating can do one, because a community should be everyone who enjoys the games - regardless of how they enjoy them.

[Icarus]

The elitist dictating can do one

Pot, kettle, black.

[Special World]

So. I did an Eschatos run and noted where I lost my lives. I did fairly well (I lost one life early on, I think) up until the middle of Area 12, where a series of careless mishaps quickly spiraled into a game over. So I started the game at Area 12 (conveniently stage 3!) and decided to see how far I could get. I noticed that during my initial run I was doing a lot of flailing about, so I decided to reduce my ship speed by one to chill myself out and avoid hitting random shots. One thing to note is that, in my initial run, I got to area 12 with three lives, so I was not advantaging myself in any way by starting here. I ended up getting to the last boss without getting a game over (I had one or two lives at the beginning of the fight), where I promptly got two game overs before beating the game. This means that theoretically at least, I should be able to get to the last boss instead of area 12, a pretty sad area to be dying in.

So basically I've come up with three independent hypotheses (ignoring the chance that I just had a good run):
1) Reducing the speed helped reduce flailing and improved my game
2) The system of lives accounted for my success, as it seems like the beginning of a credit is more rich in lives than the end of a credit, perhaps owing to a point-based lives system where early on you get a lot of lives—which would account for why, every time I died, I seemed to get another life to make up for it (I'll look into this right now; I've never been sure how lives work in this game)
3) By around halfway through a game my attention span has waned, and I begin to make sloppy mistakes

So I guess I'll look into the lives system right now, and play some more credits to see whether 1 or 3 could account for my improved performance.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Didn't realise encouraging inclusion counts as hypocrisy there. Oh well.

[Icarus]

Didn't realise encouraging inclusion counts as hypocrisy there. Oh well.

My mistake. Calling a pretty informative and serious discussion about practice methodology "elitist dictating" isn't elitism in itself, it's ignorance.

[TransatlanticFoe]

I wasn't referring to the thread, just a few of the "people need to get good if the community is to have any value" comments that I can't faff around and quote while on a phone.

[chum]

1. Play through the game five times. Not five credits, where you stop the game as soon as you game over, but five full playthroughs so you can experience all the challenges the game has to offer.
2. After the fifth playthrough, record your run. Watch it. Where are you dying? Make a note of each death. If there's comes a point where you're just flailing around and dying endlessly, focus on the parts before that point where you were actually displaying some semblance of skill. Look at the run and think about if there are any glaring holes in the patterns that you can exploit to survive.
- This is made difficult in Eschatos, because you want to kill every enemy (quickly), and this can often leave you directly in harm's way. But Eschatos gives you the shield. Now, I utilize the shield far too defensively. I am fully aware that the shield can be used as a potent offensive tool, where you ramrod smaller enemies and thereby make sure they can't scatter flak everywhere. So I might think to myself, "Can I barge in with the shield and totally negate this problem, or do I have to actually deal with the enemies and patterns?" Etc. Think of a way, for each death, that you could have avoided it. Look at your movements. Are you steady, or flailing your way into bullets?
3. Play through the game again, in its entirety. Watch the replay, see what you did right and wrong.
4. Now watch a superplay (or a 1-sissy, if you can) and figure out what they're doing. Watch the whole thing and pay attention to all of it, but especially pay attention to the parts you missed. What are the good players doing?
5. Practice, practice, practice. Examine every death. If you have savestates or training, practice those parts. If you don't, just play the whole damned game, every time.
6. Make a checklist. Every ten games, watch a superplay.

Does that seem correct? Is that what you guys are doing? Do you pause the game after each death (assuming you're not on a cab) and think about what happened? Or do you just watch a replay? Is there anything I can add to that? I assume that's a reasonable goal—after all, Eschatos is not incredibly difficult, and it allows players to take baby steps to improve unlike, say, Ketsui, which is pretty much do or die.

You guys who take the 1CC to be the most basic, entry-level unit of scrolling shooter skills: Exactly what are you doing?
3.

This sounds deliberately overcomplicated to the point where I wonder if you're actually being serious. And I'm not trying to be offensive, I was earlier propagating how people should look for their own solutions and methods after all, but if the above is not working so well for you, then back to basics you go.

Important notes for working on a 1cc:

-Watch someone else's run and look at parts where you're struggling and see if that helps.
-Try to remember key portions of the game. You generally don't need to remember everything.
-Use the resources given to you efficiently. If there's parts you consistently are unable to do, that's okay, you don't need to be able to do everything unless you're playing those 1-shot horis.
-Use practice mode or even savestates to practice problem spots if you think that's necessary.
-Hone your fundamentals

Don't examine every death, don't set up rules like "watch a superplay every 10 runs" be flexible and cool. Make sure you know what the enemies and bosses are doing. You shouldn't just know when they're coming or what their bullets look like, you need to work out how they actually function, so you can relax and focus on dealing with them and not lose your cool. Bullet curtains are in some shape or form, fixed, aimed, random... work out plans and patterns. If all else fails you can rely on the tried and true bomb button.

But overall I would say, to get better (and thus, less struggle to 1cc) play multiple games and improve on your reading and movements that way. Play something above your skill level and try to adapt to the higher difficulty. When you are used to reacting to more difficult thingss you won't need to rely as much on memorization when you go back to an easier thing.

So you have a total noob and ask them to play game x and they get to stage 3 and they simply cannot pass it unless they memorize every nook and cranny, meanwhile an experienced player could pass it their first time easily because they can recognize and avoid the bullet curtains on the fly.

I mean, step 1 is to just be able to make simple movements as you please and not overshoot and stuff like that. In other words, as long as your movement patterns arent too complicated or strict, just being able to move the specific way you expect to every time you try so, that in my opinion is step 1 to be able to play these games.

if someone has not reached this step, 1ccs will seem hard to them because they make stupid mistakes.

step 2 is reading and screen awareness. a good player can keep track of "everything" (more or less) that goes on in the screen even in a very chaotic game without losing track of their own hitbox, and subsequently, make tight/difficult dodges while also focusing elsewhere on the screen. this skill is difficult to develop, but doing a variety of challenges and making sure you go a bit "above your skill level" (don't stick to easy modes forever) will hone this skill

[Giest118]

The key to a 1cc is to move and shoot in such a way that you die a number of times that is less than or equal to the number of spare lives the game gives you.




You know, the ideal way to practice a game differs depending on the game. Something like Battle Garegga requires a lot more analysis and replay-watching and reading of Icarus' dissertation on how everything in it works. Meanwhile, something like Touhou is as much a test of whether your eyes can keep track of all the shit that's happening as it is figuring out the ideal way to dodge specific patterns or kill enemies.

Each game requires a different allocation of "reflex dodging," "analysis," "memorization," etc to such a degree that whether someone feels like they want to "try hard" may depend on whether they've found a game whose skill requirements are in line with what skill they enjoy flexing the most.

Basically I'm saying that a player who doesn't feel like going for a 1cc may have just not found the right game yet.

Or maybe they just have fun making tanks explode and don't give a shit about all the other stuff attached to it. That's also possible.

[Cee]

because a community should be everyone who enjoys the games - regardless of how they enjoy them.

The problem with this is playing at a decent level to progress and produce better scores etc gives the player a certain knowledge that just doesn't reveal itself to the casual players as a result it's very hard to communicate on the same levels with everyone and the community just breaks down into little groups of the guys who discuss mechanics,technique,performance,nuances etc and the others who react to that negatively labeling it as "elitist" or "autistic" and proceed to endlessly just say lots about these games without actually saying anything which is fine but a bit more balance would be nice. There is room for everyone but it'd be nice to have some more players in the learning to get better is fun camp is all.

[jepjepjep]

1CC'ing a game - a 'scrubby' single loop clear at the least in multi-loop games, if we're making a distinction - isn't remotely difficult at all and only requires a small amount of intelligent, focused practice

Statements like these are kind of silly because you can always push yourself to improve. It's all about perspective, really. Try walking into a random Gamestop and asking random video game players to 1-all Dodonpachi or Battle Garegga, they will look at you like you're crazy. To a seasoned shmup player it may not be difficult because they're playing below their skill ceiling. The tension and sense of acheivement comes from raising the bar.

Icarus, Eaglet, Bananamatic, you all posted how you can take months off or only play 1 hr/day, 4hr/week, etc and still perform. It's because you're not pushing your skill ceiling. You can always ask, "Why don't you try harder?" Why haven't you scored H in Garegga, cleared Inbachi, etc? For those who have never 1cc'd before, the struggle is real. It's all about perspective.

[Eaglet]

Good points on all about practice. I'll write how i see it myself shortly but in short i agree with chum that every player has to find out what works for them and how they learn best. There are some fundamentals that need to be there though which i'll cover (the ones you haven't brought up).

Icarus, Eaglet, Bananamatic, you all posted how you can take months off or only play 1 hr/day, 4hr/week, etc and still perform. It's because you're not pushing your skill ceiling. You can always ask, "Why don't you try harder?" Why haven't you scored H in Garegga, cleared Inbachi, etc? For those who have never 1cc'd before, the struggle is real. It's all about perspective.

It's very true that perspectives differ but the thing is (and this is true for any disciple), when your skill ceiling is low, it doesn't require much effort at all to raise it. The human body works the same way. Start lifting weights for real and the first year will be filled with crazy gainz. After that things start to plateau and you need to experiment with different workouts, periodization and volume if you want to keep moving forward. Unless you've got crazy genetics or use roidz, of course.

To put things in perspective; before i played my first modern shooter i'd only played and 1CCd Axelay on the SNES. After visiting an arcade me and a guy i met there started competing in who could clear Deathsmiles first. It took me about a week and a half/two weeks (can't remember exactly) with about 9 credits played per week. Lacking any fundamentals whatsoever. What i did have was my knowledge of practicing though.


edit:
Ok so here we go; for a player that is looking to clear anything what you need first are of course acceptable fundamentals (as chum mentioned). Being able to maneauver your ship around and making it go where you want it to. This is something you just improve by playing and it's a bit like bodily stamina and endurance. You take a couple of months off and you'll be at a lower level than before but they're easily brought back to where they were before with moderate practice.

Secondly, what i like to call a practicing mentality, is that you need to THINK whenever you're playing. Constantly ask yourself if what you just did can be improved in any way or if whatever you failed at could have been avoided. If the answer to those questions is "yes", you go into specific. HOW can i improve? HOW can i manipulate the bullets and enemies to increase my risk of success? etc. etc.
Once you've done that either watch a replay of someone proficient or experiment with the game (this is what credit feeding and savestates are used for). How you need to approach the situation entirely depends on what game it is and what the situation is.
Once you've established what needs to be done; start practicing that specific part/attack/movement for consistency and when you feel that you can pull it off with a small margin for error, incorporate it into your route.
Routing is important whether you're going for a survival clear or scoring. No progress will be made with random flailing each credit. You have to paint yourself a mental picture (or why not save state through a run if playing on MAME) where you manage to execute everything perfectly and then strive to follow that route with every run you play. At the early stages you'll probably encounter a lot of unexpected problems, and this is what's interesting, here's where you get more details to analyze, practice and perfect the same as you did with the other parts.

Myself and a huge chunk of other players see these games kind of like puzzles or problems that you have to solve. Find each piece of the puzzle and make them all fit together to complete the final picture.

After a while you start to build up your own little database with references to different "problems" and ways to solve them. This comes in handy in pretty much any shooting game as a lot of games use similar patterns or concepts. If anybody has played DOJ and get to the fourth boss in SDOJ they'll know exactly what to do at the last attack without even having to come up with a solution on their own for an example.

When i started out playing shooters i didn't know where to look for reference material so i had to make up a lot of my strategies on the fly and i honestly think this helped me evolve as a player a bit faster than if i had everything presented to me. High level strategies often come across as completely alien if your understanding of the game isn't that great. This is especially true for more obtuse games like Garegga that rely mostly on the players understanding of the mechanics and level design than anything else.

Will add more if anything comes to mind.

[jepjepjep]

To put things in perspective; before i played my first modern shooter i'd only played and 1CCd Axelay on the SNES. After visiting an arcade me and a guy i met there started competing in who could clear Deathsmiles first. It took me about a week and a half/two weeks (can't remember exactly) with about 9 credits played per week. Lacking any fundamentals whatsoever. What i did have was my knowledge of practicing though.

Your points about weightlifting are very true and you can extend that analogy to many walks of life.

I imagine that it felt pretty satisfying achieving that 1cc of Deathsmiles in the arcade at the time. It may have only taken 1 or two weeks, but you started from the base of already being able to 1cc Axelay. For many gamers, they start at a lower base. Now compare that 1cc to a 1cc of Battle Garegga, it's much harder. The point is, where do we draw the line? I could imagine someone with the skill level of Clover-TAC achieving a 1cc of Deathsmiles on the very first credit. Several posters agree with the notion that 1-alls are trivial. Where do we draw the line for player competency in this community? It seams rather arbitrary.

[Tregard]

The problem with this is playing at a decent level to progress and produce better scores etc gives the player a certain knowledge that just doesn't reveal itself to the casual players as a result it's very hard to communicate on the same levels with everyone and the community just breaks down into little groups of the guys who discuss mechanics,technique,performance,nuances etc and the others who react to that negatively labeling it as "elitist" or "autistic" and proceed to endlessly just say lots about these games without actually saying anything which is fine but a bit more balance would be nice. There is room for everyone but it'd be nice to have some more players in the learning to get better is fun camp is all.

I understand. But that just goes with the territory. Pro shmup players are a small proportion of an already small audience. I was sufficiently motivated in the past to net a few easy 1CCs, but as soon as I realised what it would take to get a challenging 1CC like Ketsui (which would require methods like those outlined in this thread) I checked out. Aint never gone have time fo that shit, but massive respect to those that do. I would suspect that there are more people like me in the audience than there are dedicated pros (though I could be completely wrong).

For me the genre comes alive at that sweet spot where your skill and the difficulty are in perfect harmony, where the palms get sweaty and you will yourself not to blink, where the boss warning sign brings with it a sense of nervous exhilaration. For me that moment is usually known as "Level 4". Level 5 then ratchets things up so far beyond my skill that I bail. "Git good or GTFO" the games demand, and I respond by playing level 4 some more.

[Icarus]

Icarus, Eaglet, Bananamatic, you all posted how you can take months off or only play 1 hr/day, 4hr/week, etc and still perform. It's because you're not pushing your skill ceiling. You can always ask, "Why don't you try harder?" Why haven't you scored H in Garegga, cleared Inbachi, etc? For those who have never 1cc'd before, the struggle is real. It's all about perspective.

The problem is, I'm a player that thrives on competition. Why would I push myself further if I'm the only one taking the game I'm playing seriously? I'm by no means a good player - I don't and have never considered myself to be - but when the standard of competition is so painfully low that I can take a game on, occasionally one I've never played before, and in about a week, bash out a top ten score (see: STGTs) with a few sporadic but smart practice sessions, it doesn't exactly spur me onward.