Power Ups: The forgotten art

[PROMETHEUS]

I don't believe in strategy in shooters at all, all you do is find through trial and error the most optimal path you can use to be safe and make as many points as possible :

Not every game is DDP. Some require thinking beyond trial and error and on the fly thinking. Regardless of that, coming up with and sticking to a plan is precisely strategy. "Plan" is all over any definition of strategy.

It's not, but people indeed argue over the definition of strategy. In any case, if a rigid plan is called strategy, it certainly doesn't take any strategy skills to use it.

Also I don't believe much about other games allowing on the fly thinking. Very superficial thinking at best. I do that when I play DDP but couldn't call that strategy or anything really.

If you have played chess, go, some good board game or good RTS at a decent level you really can't call anything you do in a STG strategy. At any level.

[Arvandor]

I agree with Rob.

And the fact that Battle Garegga does indeed have a very well done power up system.

[Cromarty]

... it is a simple mechanic to ... make recovery after dying harder.

This.

I especially hate losing speed boosts, as in Gradius and R-Type. That alone is a death sentence.

I'd prefer something like Ikaruga or AirRade, where one/some of the basic attacks has fixed power without being worthless against anything more durable than popcorn.
(Haven't played Einhander yet, I should try it out.)

[Rob]

In any case, if a rigid plan is called strategy, it certainly doesn't take any strategy skills to use it.

For shooters the skill is in devising a strategy (plan), which is why I think replays are so lame.

[Twiddle]

nemo

[Rob]

He is missed.

[Limbrooke]

Under Defeat

[glitch]

in a sense power-ups are the dual of rank objects, increasing the player's, instead of the enemies', firepower when doing well. thesis: awarding the player for doing well should never take the form of a decrease in difficulty. dunno if that always holds everywhere, but i'm fairly sure that BIG NUMBERS and EXPLOSIONS make far better rewards.

Cave's weapon power-ups, at least in the Ikeda games, are vestigial and ripe for extinction, imho. they only serve to match the player's firepower to the increasing strength and numbers of the enemy, which might as well be done by automatically upping the player's firepower at the end of each stage, cause collecting them is completely trivial anyway (just a minor distracting inconvenience, as is re-collecting them after death). they can get the power-balance between player and enemy just right by taking full control over it. it's the game saying "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.", and indeed you better do or you're f*cked badly. and in effect, collecting a power-up in mushi or esp does not feel rewarding at all. (which is perfectly OK cause BIG NUMBERS and EXPLOSIONS are far better rewards anyway, but i wouldn't mind if they just cut the floating icon nonsense already (nice icon design though...)).

i like what Karasu does, power-up-wise. i haven't touched any RPGs in years, but selectively leveling your weapons by getting experience points for, well, using them sorta blew my mind with sheer awesomeness, at least conceptually. the necessary increase in player strength is virtually guaranteed as long as your player is wise enough to indeed use his weapons, but control over the distribution of that strength over the different weapons is handed back to the player. even more so than in games with traditional power-up systems: if, say, you want a stronger sword attack, you don't just go hoping for a SWORD UP icon to appear, but instead you shift the emphasis of your attacks to your sword. so your choice of attack does not depend only on enemy type anymore, but also on more long-term plans of which weapons you currently want to level-up. adds a very nice bit of depth. pity they messed it up a bit by also throwing random power-up icons for instant level-ups and whatnot onto the screen...

[Ed Oscuro]

thesis: awarding the player for doing well should never take the form of a decrease in difficulty.

Seems a reasonable enough premise for competitive shooting games. Good note on them being the rank item's doppelganger, too.

[PROMETHEUS]

In any case, if a rigid plan is called strategy, it certainly doesn't take any strategy skills to use it.

For shooters the skill is in devising a strategy (plan), which is why I think replays are so lame.

I strongly disagree with that... Making a plan for a shooter doesn't take skill, especially if you have all the time in the world to make one. You're gonna do some thinking and trial and error but it's utterly insignificant and easy compared to what you have to think about when you play those board games or RTS or 1vs1 FPS. I know DDP is like that, and I don't see why Mars Matrix or other games should be any different (Ikaruga may be a little harder at that, but still nothing special. Mostly trial and error I'm sure).

This anti replay argument comes from the oldschool era if I'm not mistaken, where the only thing you had to do to beat most games is figure out the path to beat it, because most of them were memorizers (right?). Well, that's retarded, because figuring out paths was trial and error that took unnecessarily long (I did it with Pulstar and Blazing Star. It's obvious when you see the final paths anyway). Watch a replay and you got the solution instead of wasting time doing tests.

Let's take chess as an example. Openings in chess are something you have to learn to play well, much like paths in STGs. Making up an opening means a LOT of thinking. It's rather smart and deep thinking, far deeper than any thinking you do in any shooter to find a path I'm quite sure. Well, chess players aren't retarded enough to hide the solutions to themselves and try to find them all out. They learn them by heart from books. Because all that matters in the end to play the game properly is to have the required knowledge. Plus, playing the game with the necessary knowledge is what takes more skill, because you have a time limit. Making up a new opening isn't simple, but if you have a very long time on your hands to do it, it's probably not going to take as much skill as it's going to take time.

Anyway, I know for a fact that finding paths in DDP doesn't take any particular skill (or not high level skills), and I doubt your other games are much better at that. Why should they be ?

[spadgy]

I'm not anti-replay, and find them fascinating, but working out your own path through is part of the fun for me, so I'm not pu of by a memorizer...

Skill or not, I love it. Using that strategy might not be the big a test of skill for some, but developing it is a great challenge.

Loved what you have to say glitch - very interesting stuff.

Me, I do like the perhaps dated 'rotating' power-ups where a timer causes the function of the power-up to change. In Rapid Hero, where you don't have long too pick it up and have to take some massive 'top of the screen' gambles to get stuff it makes the 'strategy' elements thrilling and fast.

[Udderdude]

Cave's weapon power-ups, at least in the Ikeda games, are vestigial and ripe for extinction, imho.

Apparently he agrees with you, I remember GaijinPunch reporting that DDP 4 has no power-ups.

[nimitz]

I strongly disagree with that... Making a plan for a shooter doesn't take skill, especially if you have all the time in the world to make one.

What about correspondence Chess, the amount of time you have to think about your next move doesn't make it any way less strategical.

This anti replay argument comes from the oldschool era if I'm not mistaken, where the only thing you had to do to beat most games is figure out the path to beat it, because most of them were memorizers (right?). Well, that's retarded, because figuring out paths was trial and error that took unnecessarily long

You are forgetting a BIG part of the interest of newer shmup (especially newer Cave games): When they are released in the arcades in the first few months after release. Many players try to figure out the best or optimal path for scoring. It is really like a race to finish and there is really strategy involved into thinking about path or ways to improve your score when you only have limited time to play everyday and don't wanna lose ground in terms of score.

And that is a big part of the Cave "hype" in japan. And theres no way to emulate that in the West.

[Rob]

Making a plan for a shooter doesn't take skill, especially if you have all the time in the world to make one. You're gonna do some thinking and trial and error but it's utterly insignificant and easy compared to what you have to think about when you play those board games or RTS or 1vs1 FPS.

Why is time it takes so important? Everyone can't do it. There are the players who figure out the strategy, others who copy and could never figure it out for themselves. See people who still don't know where a huge chunk of Batrider's points comes from. Single and multi-player games each have their place, kind of like the point you were making to icy about arcade vs. non-arcade games.

Anyway, I know for a fact that finding paths in DDP doesn't take any particular skill (or not high level skills), and I doubt your other games are much better at that. Why should they be ?

The possibilities are very limited in DDP, they are less limited in other games. Like in DDP, it's not much more than figuring out when to tap the firing button, moving with the enemies and to bee locations. It's a game of connect the dots. But it seems like what you really want are only games with human opponents.

[Shatterhand]

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/strategy

This will help the discussion, I guess.

I agree, but there are games where you actually might not want to pick up powerups, like to rank control. Those are good.

Power-Up rank is kinda dumb to me. That's where "Unbalanced" goes . It's good if it makes the game more balanced, keeping the difficulty at the same level all the times, but most of the time powering up on those games just fuck up your game, so you should avoid it.

Also, I find very annoying to keep dodging power-up icons on Psikyo games

[Rob]

This will help the discussion, I guess.

Yeah, don't mean to sidetrack. The main feature of a good shooter is not strategy or deep thinking anyways. I don't know if people get an adrenaline rush from chess.

Power-ups in Psikyo games suck and their near requirement that you power-down to keep bullet speeds somewhat manageable.

[Mortificator]

A lot of chess is memorization anyway, at least at the competitive level. A book of chess matchs is just ye olde superplay DVD, and computers especially benefit. Heuristic chess programs don't have any creativity and can't really think, but they can kick pretty much anyone's ass.

[Koa Zo]

I too sorely miss Power-Ups.
Figuring out how to use the Power-Ups in Zanac most effectively was a defining moment in my videogaming upbringing.
Radiant Silvergun is the last great Power-Up fest that I can recall.

[PROMETHEUS]

Yeah, DDP is a little like you say, but still without having a video of the world record I had a hard time understanding where the points came from, too. We kind of do know only because we have aichi ken's TAS or KO's video.

This will help the discussion, I guess.

Yeah, don't mean to sidetrack. The main feature of a good shooter is not strategy or deep thinking anyways. I don't know if people get an adrenaline rush from chess.

Power-ups in Psikyo games suck and their near requirement that you power-down to keep bullet speeds somewhat manageable.

Obviously it's not the main feature. I think those people who never find out about how to make points just didn't take enough time to look at the game up close. I could use Guwange as another example, I did a lot of the path finding by myself and figured the scoring system by myself and had to think a little bit, yeah, but anyone could have done that kind of thinking. It's simple. And time has to do with it because like in chess or in Starcraft, while anyone will be able to find a good solution to a situation given unlimited time, the good player is the player who will find that solution in the shortest time. That's why you can heavily handicap a player in chess by giving him less clock time than his opponent.

People do get "adrenaline" out of Starcraft and I'm pretty sure chess or go produces similar effects. Not that it's what I personally like most when playing games.

[PROMETHEUS]

What about correspondence Chess, the amount of time you have to think about your next move doesn't make it any way less strategical.

See previous post, time is everything in strategy skills.

You are forgetting a BIG part of the interest of newer shmup (especially newer Cave games): When they are released in the arcades in the first few months after release. Many players try to figure out the best or optimal path for scoring. It is really like a race to finish and there is really strategy involved into thinking about path or ways to improve your score when you only have limited time to play everyday and don't wanna lose ground in terms of score.

And that is a big part of the Cave "hype" in japan. And theres no way to emulate that in the West.

Sure, that's fine and all, but it doesn't mean it takes much skill to figure those paths out. Merely trial and error and some careful thinking, yeah, but not skillful. If it was that hard to do, players would practice path finding for hours by playing different games all the time, but they really don't need to.

[Ed Oscuro]

Under Defeat

Under Default (shot power, I am defeated). :(

[Shatterhand]

I too sorely miss Power-Ups.
Figuring out how to use the Power-Ups in Zanac most effectively was a defining moment in my videogaming upbringing.
Radiant Silvergun is the last great Power-Up fest that I can recall.

Those aren't power ups, they are weapon changing.

About finding out how to use the different weapons on Zanac, I give you a tip: don't bother and use weapon 5

[Turrican]

I must mention bells. Powerup that 1) require skills to get; 2) gives you a (moderate) score malus since you're not getting a gold bell (points).

Awesome powerup.

[Shatterhand]

I must mention bells. Powerup that 1) require skills to get; 2) gives you a (moderate) score malus since you're not getting a gold bell (points).

Awesome powerup.

They also raise your stress level if you happen to playing the STGT.