*threads of interest
http://www.super-play.co.uk/forum/index ... =showPosts (RaidenDX)
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... ht=#150648 (daiohjoh)
and also
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... ght=#72676
*as i said on the other board, just go check the blackheart entry on the aiva database, i have the feeling the ketsui dvd playerO was just looking for an easy all japan top score. ;)
*i imagine this arcadia rule is a left-over from the old days, were most games didn't really have a scoring engine, so ranking players by stage reached seemed okay. for newer games its a bit of a moot point, since most of them have one round only, and i guess many japanese arcade veterans dont really need more that a couple days to pull off those ALLs anyway.
*personally, for non-looping games, i would put completition above score. i'll use one of those really shitty analogies to illustrate why. imagine two guys (john and jim) are racing a, umn, formula one race over 70 laps. john is really fast, he cuts all corners perfectly, and so on, while jim is faaaaar behind etc.- then, on the 2nd last lap, john does a really stupid mistake, and crashes the car,
GAME OVER. TRY HARDER NEXT TIME.
five minutes later, jim gets to
THE END. CONGRATURATIONS.
catch my drift? ;)
*2 loop games (ddp, ketsui, anything psikyo, etc) are more interesting. i guess in the long run it doesnt matter (in japan anyway), but for the first couple weeks that "arcadia rule" probably adds some extra motivation, in the sense that someone like TAC might go "okay, i dont like the super anal chaining in doj, but i wanna set the pace for the others and beat hibachi with the green ship" or similar.
also, for games with many characters, someone might start teasing his locals with "hey fellas. wanna get your 15minutes of arcadia glory? go clear both rounds of gunbirdII using that piece of shit know as heicob!". you know, GAP-style. ;)
*speaking of which, go check the vasaraII entry on the aiva database. seems that the 11M score is a 2-6 only...
*the 'stage reached > score achieved' "rule" used to be applied by this old japanese site as well (HK STG lab or somesuch). funny thing, i remember that more or less 3 years ago, the french dude posting on this very thread tried to implement the same "rule" to the feveron HS thread he was maintaining, and asked for feedback. people quickly scoffed at him with stuff like "dunno, strikes me as pointless!!" or "wtf! i would be looking at who has the highest score anyway!!", so the next day he went back listing players by score. suddenly, one of the critics posted "damn, just when i was trying to reach stage 5 with a speed 2 ship. :(" - hehe, i guess ppl are never happy. ;)
im not sure if this is a serious question, but one exception i can think of, is (or was) cave's daioujou netranking page. i dont have a link handy, but if memory serves well, the first four ranked players had all beaten the game (including hibachi), with some crazy scores in the 1.7B-2.0B range. the next three or four guys had pretty good scores (+- 1.2B), but "only" reached 2-5 (i imagine this means they died at the true last boss). then, on the 9th place was a player with a 2-ALL but a "paltry" 800M score (or similar).The real question is: has there ever been a JP listing that didn't put completion ahead of score?
I think in this case its okay however, because:
a) the game was released in arcades more than a year already (ie. no need for pacemakers anymore)
b) if i understand correctly, someone who enters, say stage 2-5 with a really HIGH score, will also have to deal with a really HIGH rank (thus actually playing a harder game).
also, someone (lets call him takeshiro) who aims primarly at completing the game might not be afraid of using a few bombs here and there, and thus reach the TLB with a full life stock (ie. having room for five mistakes), whereas someone who tries to squeeze anything outta the game, might perform a 3000+ hit chain in 2-5 then accidentally run into a bullet towards the very end of the stage (loosing a life), get a little excited and die a 2nd time while fighting the regular 2-5 boss. suddenly he only has room for 3 mistakes at the TLB. he might get the bosses lifebar down to a millimeter, but loose his third & last life just before the TLB dies (gameover).
now, if takeshiro dies FIVE times at the hand of the TLB, did he really deserve a better ranking? and what if he only died ONCE? are games with ridiculously hard TLBs unfair? is anyone actually reading this? ;)
...
man, this was onelongboringpost. one last thing - some months ago, i played a few rounds of OmegaFighter, and w/o too much trying i got to the penultimate stage (2-7). this was the furthest i ever got, but i didnt even make it on the games scoreboard, because the digits I pulled off one year before were much better (for my standards anyway). strangely enough i was not upset at all. maybe because i was playing causally and the game is scorecentric anyway. or maybe because a gameover is still a gameover.
either way, are there shooters were the ingame scoreboard ranks players by stage reached (insead of score)? or an ALL over a high scoring non ALL?
here's an example of a game who does that (altho its not a shmup).
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... ht=#197729
so yeah, i guess prioritizing completion over score is not soooo far fetched. good topic.
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"I am a natural at shmups, I just dont have the patience to get a hiscore!!!" - some unskilled western scrub.