I got a 1CC live on the AGDQ2015 bonus stream! (dojbl 1-ALL)

[DanMagoo]

I don't see how what you said has any relevance. By quality he means community quality. Increasing the number of average brain-dead drooling stream monsters in the community can only lower posting quality. Money has no factor.

Errrm... except over at Cave where they actually, you know, SELL games?

[jepjepjep]

No, I want to see a higher quality of community contributors come in. The only thing that this could possibly lead to is a much lower quality in the short to middle term, especially from a place like Twitch which is 99% idiots spamming emotes in chat during the event.

So we want new people to join the community, but only "quality" people. Got it.
Time to update the forum rules. It's not enough to like shmups. New accounts only approved after demonstrating a full chain of Dodonpachi Stage 2. Top hat required.

Of course it is better to have high-skilled players demonstrating at AGDQ, that goes without saying and is why Stunfest has been so awesome.

[trap15]

Errrm... except over at Cave where they actually, you know, SELL games?

Except they don't because they're dead. Again, don't see what money has to do with it since all the best shooters are like 15-20 years old now.

Of course it is better to have high-skilled players demonstrating at AGDQ, that goes without saying and is why Stunfest has been so awesome.

I think that's the only argument being made. Don't show off somebody who can just barely bomb-spam clear DDP 1-ALL.

[jepjepjep]

I think that's the only argument being made.

My comments were more directed to the general condescending tone and shifting attitudes of the forum, not so much having to do with AGDQ.

[DanMagoo]

Errrm... except over at Cave where they actually, you know, SELL games?

Except they don't because they're dead. Again, don't see what money has to do with it since all the best shooters are like 15-20 years old now.
.

Yes, and why are they dead when gaming is bigger now than it's ever been?

Because not enough people bought their games!

Do you think Riot Games give two sh*ts about the quality of all the people buying and watching their single hugely successful game on Twitch? Do you think they complain about the skills of the audience?

Isn't it more likely that they just sit back and admire the power of Twitch to generate and maintain interest in their game among hundreds of thousands of viewers EVERY DAY.

Elite play will always attract and motivate players but the smart money is in getting a big enough install base that anyone will care about your game or indeed your whole genre.

True, a lot of good shmups were made a long time ago- don't you want some new ones??

[trap15]

Not particularly, I have hundreds of shooters I've still not cleared or scored well in. Plenty to last several lifetimes.

They're dead because they made lots of very poor business decisions and arcade gaming is dead aside from fighters (as it's been since the release of SF2, essentially).

Face it, shooters will never be mainstream. Best is to embrace the small community and higher-than-average intellect of it. I'd rather have it as it is than to have millions of drooling monkeys that I'd be ashamed to say I have a common interest with.

[jepjepjep]

Best is to embrace the small community and higher-than-average intellect of it. I'd rather have it as it is than to have millions of drooling monkeys that I'd be ashamed to say I have a common interest with.

That's a false dichotomy though. With more exposure at events like Stunfest or AGDQ, smart, reasonable people will be attracted to the genre, but they may be turned off by the community if it becomes too elitist.

[DanMagoo]

Face it, shooters will never be mainstream. Best is to embrace the small community and higher-than-average intellect of it. I'd rather have it as it is than to have millions of drooling monkeys that I'd be ashamed to say I have a common interest with.

I've never been one for snobbery or elitism.

Let the people play!

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

Just to put my two cents in about scraping clears and then moving on to another game - I absolutely do this. Reason being I'm relatively new to the genre, there's hundreds of great games out there for me to try before I decide to commit to one seriously (this is starting to sound like a dating/marriage analogy). No doubt at some point once my skills have improved a bit I'll return to some of my preferred games and attempt to master them somewhat. I wouldn't suggest to someone that just got into classical music that they should exclusively listen to Beethoven on repeat until they know every note before they move on to another composer.

[Lilium]

Could you please just stop?

Fact of the matter is that AGDQ is NOT about casual lazy-play, its a demonstration of highly skillful gameplay. Even if you think that you can attract some passing attention from some people simply through showing someone with 5 hours of playtime clear a Cave 1-all, its simply not what AGDQ is about. Please understand that.

[Erppo]

Yeah I don't know how the discussion moved to this. I don't think anyone here has been denying that a 1-ALL can't be a great personal achievement. It however is not an objectively high level achievement and those are what AGDQ is about. And AGDQ was the original subject of the thread.

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

Yeah I don't know how the discussion moved to this. I don't think anyone here has been denying that a 1-ALL can't be a great personal achievement. It however is not an objectively high level achievement and those are what AGDQ is about. And AGDQ was the original subject of the thread.

Yep, agreed. Back to the subject at hand.

[chum]

this doesn't seem to be on-topic anymore and i'm not sure what the bickering is really about.

as far as AGDQ is concerned, including any player that isn't good at their game would be a huge mistake. stg aren't an exception.

with speedruns there's varying levels of skill on display. the fact is that many games just aren't pushed as far, or have lower skill ceilings, making those easier to speedrun "well" compared to the big games. many stg that are popular on here are possibly even more nightmarish than the popular speedgames. if you can't find a superplayer, the best bet for stg to make it to AGDQ is to play a less difficult game but one that still fares well with viewers. demonstrating a DOJ 1-all for the main event would be absurd and laughable. twitch asks "what's wr?" and the response goes, oh, only 50 times higher than the current run.

it is important to stop trying to shoehorn stg everywhere. there may be a time and place for it, but unless a suitable player submits a suitable game, i just don't see the point in even thinking about it. just forget about submitting any scrubplays, you'll just end up looking silly.

as for the bickering. DanMagoo you are caring way too much about what people outside of the community thinks, + money, fame, and stuff like that.

"quality of community" i think there is no point in getting offended by what icarus said. it's nothing personal at all and i can't grasp why anyone wouldn't see that any community benefits more from people that push the genre forward in some way, whether by being excellent players or simply by sharing strategy and information, or whatever else, than someone who never does anything. it's not meant as an attack on anyone i'm sure, nor is it a suggestion that any particular person needs to change.

"1ccing and then moving on" i don't find anything inherently wrong with this. everyone has their own way of enjoying this genre. the criticism i have is that people put too much weight on a 1cc/1-all run compared to much harder things. after all, it is most likely easier to get 100 different 1cc/1-all runs than a single world-class score.

the complaints about elitism are par for the course, but not everyone has the same point of view, i've long since been thinking that this community is too casual/scrubby so more elitism would be healthy for this community if you ask me.

[Shepardus]

As much as I would like to promote the accessibility of shmups and how you don't have to be a cyborg to enjoy them, I don't think that means a kusoplay would belong in AGDQ/SGDQ (except on the bonus stream, where I would welcome it). The point of *GDQ is to spotlight high-level play from the best (Western) players, and it kind of defeats the point if people's reaction to a run is "anybody could do that" or "I've seen far better than that." Besides, if anything it might even turn people away from the genre if they see a scrappy 1-ALL and think "even the best players struggle to play at a high level, what chance do I have?".

I think the sheer number of people watching the *GDQ streams would result in a noticeable influx of people looking to get into the genre regardless of how much you promote the accessibility. The /r/speedrun subreddit gets a lot of newcomers interested in getting into speedrunning every time one of these events happens, even though most won't stay long and even fewer will become world-class speedrunners themselves; it's reasonable that something similar would happen if shmups had a sizable presence in the event. I think a lot of it comes down to the commentary and putting a human face on the performance, distinguishing the event from your typical superplay DVD where at most you might see the player's hands.

If we can find someone who can produce a top-level run of a shmup (even if it's not a particularly difficult shmup) with enough consistency to do a live run, and someone who can provide good commentary, I would love to see it at AGDQ/SGDQ. The former might be difficult to find, but I think it would be worth the time and effort to do that rather than settle for a lesser run. It doesn't have to be on the same level as the Japanese superplayers invited to Stunfest, but it should at least leave little doubt that the player is among the top in the West (like the Tetris TGM runs). Maybe if there are any interesting games to counterstop someone could go for that, since technically you can't get higher-level than that.

[Bananamatic]

I cannot commit enough time to playing shmups to achieve very high scores due to life circumstances being a husband, father of young children, and job commitments. Does that make me any less of an enthusiast given that I really enjoy playing shmups and I'm even one of those crazy people that has an arcade cab in their living room? I'm lucky to get 1 hour of time to play on a good day and I read about superplayers practicing 8+ hours per day every day.

this is bullshit, I play for an hour a day on average as well

focus on one game for an hour a day for 2 years, that's over 720 hours of playtime and that's plenty to learn a game and 2-ALL it with a really nice score
give it 3 years and you'd possibly be GDQ material depending on the game

thing is that people would rather spend that hour arguing on the forums about cave being dead or not and convincing each other that a dojbl 1-all is really hard rather than improving their game

[DanMagoo]

I think this is a perfectly healthy debate about how to revive a great genre of gaming that is dead on its arse.

Every person reading this (yep all 10 of us) would love to see the genre revived and have exciting new games to conquer. That is not going to happen while a handful of elite players sneer at the idea of getting more exposure for the genre.

Twitch TV and the like have revolutionised the consumption of games as entertainment. Streaming is an absolutely mainstream part of gaming now, and that is not going to stop. Not every channel features masters at work, but hundreds of thousands of people watch every day to learn more about the games they love and to be entertained. It's a joke to say that shmups shouldn't get more exposure in this way, just because a handful of up-their-own-arse elite shmuppers look down on streaming. A big joke.

I understand that events like AGDQ and Stunfest need and deserve high level play. However I also understand (and others seem not to) that this is not the only way to consume shmups for entertainment in 2015. If people want developers to make quality new games for this genre then they have to answer the question of who is going to pay for it and how to attract the necessary number of gamers to do so.

[chum]

you can't force people to be interested in something.

a handful of up-their-own-arse elite shmuppers look down on streaming.

not sure what that is all about.

you seem to be suffering from some sort of complex, you should cool down a bit and try to stay level headed.

[DanMagoo]

you can't force people to be interested in something.

a handful of up-their-own-arse elite shmuppers look down on streaming.

not sure what that is all about.

you seem to be suffering from some sort of complex, you should cool down a bit and try to stay level headed.

I'm not talking about force, I'm talking about making shmups available on established mainstream streaming channels.

I haven't got a complex, I'm just a bit disgusted at some of the elitist bollocks that has been chatted by others on this thread.

[chum]

i don't even know where to start with that contradiction.

done here, have fun

edit: actually, may as well point out that it'd be a good idea to check out the countless smaller streams

[Bananamatic]

I'm not talking about force, I'm talking about making shmups available on established mainstream streaming channels.

but people do stream every day

[jepjepjep]

I cannot commit enough time to playing shmups to achieve very high scores due to life circumstances being a husband, father of young children, and job commitments. Does that make me any less of an enthusiast given that I really enjoy playing shmups and I'm even one of those crazy people that has an arcade cab in their living room? I'm lucky to get 1 hour of time to play on a good day and I read about superplayers practicing 8+ hours per day every day.

this is bullshit, I play for an hour a day on average as well

focus on one game for an hour a day for 2 years, that's over 720 hours of playtime and that's plenty to learn a game and 2-ALL it with a really nice score
give it 3 years and you'd possibly be GDQ material depending on the game

How is what I said bullshit? I'm not claiming that I won't be able to 2-all a game, in fact I put down in the 2015 goals thread that I will try to 2-all one of the dodonpachi games. But let's say I 2-all Dodonpachi with a "nice" score. It won't be anything new. The Japanese players have done this decades ago. In most cases, we are just chasing their scores anyway. But that's kind of besides the point. This genre is about personal challenges, and I think their is a little too much of the "scrub 1cc" talk for a healthy community. That is the only reason why I brought it up. The fact that you responded saying that I should only play one game for three years kind of reinforces the point.

thing is that people would rather spend that hour arguing on the forums about cave being dead or not and convincing each other that a dojbl 1-all is really hard rather than improving their game

I can read the forums from work, but can't play shmups at work.

"1ccing and then moving on" i don't find anything inherently wrong with this. everyone has their own way of enjoying this genre. the criticism i have is that people put too much weight on a 1cc/1-all run compared to much harder things. after all, it is most likely easier to get 100 different 1cc/1-all runs than a single world-class score.

the complaints about elitism are par for the course, but not everyone has the same point of view, i've long since been thinking that this community is too casual/scrubby so more elitism would be healthy for this community if you ask me.

You see nothing wrong with "1ccing and then moving on" yet you criticize the community for being too casual and scrubby. Sure, the community would benefit from greater achievement, but I don't see how more elitist attitude would be a good thing.

Anyway, I will stop. I think the horse is very dead by now.

[mastermx]

We need to look at it from a beginners eyes. When I was first reintroduced to shmups several years ago. A "scrubby" 1cc impressed the hell out of me, and really got me into the genre. I think what I'm trying to say is, to appreciate really high level play, you have to have some skill and understanding of that high level play first.

I doubt most of the twitch viewers even understood what chaining was, or even cared about it. People new to the genre will not care about score from the get go, that is untill they really get into it. Everything we are discussing depends on perspective. A DOJ 1cc is an example of incredible skill and dedication, maybe not to all players, but to most people who aren't as dedicated to the genre as we are it seems an impossible feat.

I'd rather accept new members with open arms into this genre and this forum. Make many shmupping friends at many skill levels and from diverse backgrounds to share knowledge and experience. Don't get me wrong, I love all of you and everything... but we need new offspring.

[trap15]

a handful of up-their-own-arse elite shmuppers look down on streaming.

Considering chum, Icarus, Bananamatic, and myself all stream shooters quite often, I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

[Shepardus]

<stuff>

Wholeheartedly agree, I actually don't have much to add to this but I do think that all players interested in shmups should be welcomed with open arms, even if they don't seem to be interested in playing for score.

It can already be a daunting task for new players to get a scrub-level 1cc (I myself still struggle to get my first Normal 1cc on Touhou games, though subsequent playthroughs are a lot easier) so I think it's unreasonable to expect them to be interested in scoring for a while. For the first few years I played shmups I didn't even bother looking at the score counter (though that might be because I started with Touhou, and I'm still not a fan of scoring in most Touhou games). That doesn't mean they won't eventually acquire that taste, though, they just might need practice, some encouragement from people more experienced with shmups (like many people here), and people of similar skill levels to compare their scores to. I would expect it also takes someone longer to find a game they enjoy scoring than it would take for them to find a game they enjoy simply playing; I still haven't found one that I really want to commit to scoring, especially when there are so many to choose from.

[DanMagoo]

a handful of up-their-own-arse elite shmuppers look down on streaming.

Considering chum, Icarus, Bananamatic, and myself all stream shooters quite often, I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

Well where do I find the fucking details hot shot?

[Shepardus]

Well, there's that one thread that still isn't stickied for some reason...

[DanMagoo]

Well, there's that one thread that still isn't stickied for some reason...

At last, a constructive contribution.

Thanks Shepardus for shepherding me. *rei*

[Bananamatic]

Make many shmupping friends at many skill levels and from diverse backgrounds to share knowledge and experience

my main issue is that there is almost no knowledge and experience being shared in the first place aside from "game X is very hard"
there's zero strategy discussion, when someone gets stuck it's just dismissed as too hard rather than asking for advice and looking for a solution

take the laser wheels in dfk for example, they were brought up millions of times and people still say it's too hard with almost no one actually asking how to approach them
hell, look at the touhou forums, hate touhou all you want but they have threads where they discuss even specific attacks and how to play the games better

it's not about getting a super high score or getting 2-ALLs, it's just that it feels like no one really gives a shit about the games in the first place yet they expect to get more people into the genre
we've had over 10 years of ketsui and the strategy section has a grand total of 7 request threads, 4 of which are not general questions (and 99% of players are still unaware that there are WAY easier methods to do stuff like the st3 boss or st5 midboss)

even worse, look at the gamefaqs boards of any RPG or action game, if people have issues with a boss, they make a thread and people post useful advice the discussion gets going and most strategies become common knowledge, meanwhile our own strategy subforum is completely dead

[mastermx]

Prehaps part of the reason for people being so reluctant to ask for help, is due to the fear of being looked down upon. People would more gladly ask for help if we gave off a different vibe.

But then again many of us here rely on replays to figure things out.

[trap15]

Except whenever anyone actually does ask for help, it's never met with scorn or such things. If you look at any request threads, it's all helpful answers. There may be some "I didn't find it that hard", but it's usually still accompanied with helpful information.

I think people just don't care. I agree 100% with Bananamatic.