Shmups top list...?

[Drum]

You want me to justify why I didn't put something on my personal, hypothetical, currently non-existent list?

Let me explain to you why this is normal for me to question you. Cave is the most active and most successful modern STG developer, and by and large every shooting game they release is critically acclaimed and most people who are very interested in STGs (the people on this forum) also take interest in Cave's works as shown by all of the top 25 lists. You posted something that is contrary to the overwhelming majority of the people who love STGs, so I am curious as to why your tastes differ so greatly from mine and others when we seemingly share a common interest in a genre. Why is that strange?

Well, the answer to your question is 'because I'm a trolling dick'. Why am I being a trolling dick? Because in a healthy, sane community of peers I would be able to pointedly say I'm not sticking a single Cave game on my list of top shmups without seeming like a trolling dick. If somebody doesn't like, or is ambivalent to, the core elements of Cave games, they're not gonna like any Cave games because Cave do what Cave do. Every time. And that's fine. For people who like that. On the other hand, if you put one, why not put all of them (for the same reason I left them off)? Shit, most people here will. I just don't care about what Cave is trying to do. I think their scoring systems are sorta interesting on paper, and would maybe make for, say, a good Tetris Attack or Puyo Puyo variant or something like that, but are not interesting in the games they appear in (or outright toxic to enjoyment). And if you don't care about their scoring systems, you might as well be playing Truxton II (which possibly will make my top 25 list!).

It's as if you said in a top 25 FPS list that you wouldn't include anything from ID software, and you won't tell why. Well it's cool that you have an opinion, but why did you share it? Just to act cool that you don't follow the group? You're acting like a child in this thread, you want to be different for the sake of being different.

I don't think I've even played 25 FPSers, but these days I probably wouldn't put any iD games on it because they have really (deliberately) barebones gameplay and nothing else on top of that. I loved Doom at the time but everything they did since then left me pretty cold. In a lot of ways Quake III and UT are very similar, but I love one and consider it among my favourite games, but am completely indifferent to the other to the point of mild disdain. Does that make you angry? Couple of years ago I might have had HL2 near the top but I'm not sure I could face playing it through again.
Pointedly ignoring your personal attack, refusing to comment on possible underlying reasons ^_^

Drum's top 25 list can include whatever games he wants, but the board at large should be able to vote democratically. If he insists on speaking for the whole board, it's fair that we should refer to him as Dear Leader and remove all mentions of the Great Satan from his glorious presence.

This is just it, not only do I not run the Circus McGurkus, it's not like my list is gonna make a dent in the rankings. Stand down, Bee warriors.

[Bee Cool]

Thanks for actually giving a reason, that's all I asked in the first place. The rest of your post unfortunately was nonsense.

[Drum]

That's all I should have expected I guess.

[Ebbo]

I love lists. Love to read the lists of others and to think about my own. I really hope we manage to continue the tradition!

+1

I've got this habit of searching for old top lists and discussion topics just to read people's reasonings/"all of my hate!" posts - too much fun, sometimes even pretty interesting stuff (atleast on my standards).

So yeah, bring it on!

[Bananamatic]

let's lobby for HELLSINKER

[Rob]

Nothing should stop the top 25.

[incognoscente]

Nothing should stop the top 25.

Bring the Top 25 back and I promise I will not put a single Cave game on my list.

Since Drum has promised to not put a single Cave game on his list, the Top 25 will return.



(Mostly been hella busy this year and, uh, forgot. Yeah. Today I'm working on almost no sleep (and I suspect it shows), but I'll aim to get the 25,000 associated threads up within the week. So be thinking about your lists, because if I post the voting thread and the first 24 replies are posts consisting entirely of the word "Reserved" (and not in an ironical way), I'm going to pull this car over--so help me--and make you eat your brussels sprouts.)

[Treasurance]

let's lobby for HELLSINKER

ASS WE CAN

[chempop]

Forgive me for bringing up cave...
Also, I'm not math wiz, but the whole allocating points thing never made sense with me. Doesn't it just provide people with being able to sque the results? For instance, say if 5 lists have a single game in their top 5 out of ten 10 games that are rated:

1 [100]
2 [90]
3 [80]
etc.

And another list has a different game in their top seed rated as:

1 [100]
2 [5]
3 [5]
etc

Doesn't that mean the game rated [100] in the second list will be bumped ahead of the other game, despite 5 people not including it what-so-ever? Maybe I'm not seeing why this is a good thing...

[RNGmaster]

let's lobby for HELLSINKER

ASS WE CAN

I wish there was a bottom 25.

[louisg]

It's as if you said in a top 25 FPS list that you wouldn't include anything from ID software, and you won't tell why. Well it's cool that you have an opinion, but why did you share it? Just to act cool that you don't follow the group? You're acting like a child in this thread, you want to be different for the sake of being different.

I don't think I've even played 25 FPSers, but these days I probably wouldn't put any iD games on it because they have really (deliberately) barebones gameplay and nothing else on top of that. I loved Doom at the time but everything they did since then left me pretty cold. In a lot of ways Quake III and UT are very similar, but I love one and consider it among my favourite games, but am completely indifferent to the other to the point of mild disdain. Does that make you angry? Couple of years ago I might have had HL2 near the top but I'm not sure I could face playing it through again.
Pointedly ignoring your personal attack, refusing to comment on possible underlying reasons ^_^

I know this isn't the FPS thread.. but.. YES! I love Doom, but I think their later games are pretty bad (with the exception of Q3, which was pretty well put together but I just didn't care for it).

On the subject of Cave, I understand why they have such a presence-- especially since they are one of the only surviving and experienced dev houses making shmups with good production values. I personally prefer games from other companies myself; I've never been that big on manics. The comparison to a top FPS games list without Id Software isn't a bad comparison: They only represent a slice of FPS designs. If you prefer games like Counterstrike and Call of Duty, or perhaps games like System Shock and Thief, then there's probably no reason you'd list an Id-made game on your top list-- even if they used to be synonymous with FPS.

So, speaking for myself, I usually don't list Cave games on my top list not because it's some kind of hipsterism, but because they only really represent a small (but popular) fraction of the shmups genre that doesn't hold my interest the way other games do. It's like Psikyo, Milestone, Compile and Takumi: those companies are capable of making many games, but they generally stick with a similar gameplay style in nearly all of them.

[professor ganson]

Since Drum has promised to not put a single Cave game on his list, the Top 25 will return.

That's awesome! Your efforts are MUCH appreciated. I've got a list to post the moment the thread is ready.

[hwl]

Forgive me for bringing up cave...
Also, I'm not math wiz, but the whole allocating points thing never made sense with me. Doesn't it just provide people with being able to sque the results? For instance, say if 5 lists have a single game in their top 5 out of ten 10 games that are rated:

1 [100]
2 [90]
3 [80]
etc.

And another list has a different game in their top seed rated as:

1 [100]
2 [5]
3 [5]
etc

Doesn't that mean the game rated [100] in the second list will be bumped ahead of the other game, despite 5 people not including it what-so-ever? Maybe I'm not seeing why this is a good thing...

I somewhat agree with this. Imo it would be better if every person had a fixed amount of points, say 100, to distribute between as many titles as he likes. That even would account for people who haven't played enough titles to pick 25, but who still have, say, 5 favourite games which they absolutely love. This system still leaves some room to personal judgement (even more so than the old system), but could reduce the amount of possible exploitation, too.

Whatever the voting mechanism will be, plz do it!

[incognoscente]

Also, I'm not math wiz, but the whole allocating points thing never made sense with me. Doesn't it just provide people with being able to sque the results?
....
Doesn't that mean the game rated [100] in the second list will be bumped ahead of the other game, despite 5 people not including it what-so-ever? Maybe I'm not seeing why this is a good thing..

The point of the weighting is to allow people to skew things a bit. I enjoy it and think it adds to the fun, but that's me. Incidentally, your example would not result in the conclusion you guessed. With exactly the numbers provided (6 voters, only three games on each ballot), the game favored by the lower ballot would score 2.74 while the one favored on all the upper ballots would be 8.79999 . Not only would the more popular game win, it would win handily. What's more, assuming that the upper five are identical ballots, their last place game would net 8.22 and so even their last place would beat the top game on the lower ballot.


A game's final score is derived from two main components:

• the popular score is based simply on how many people vote for the game. In all years since perhaps the second this has formed 2/3 of a game's final score. With all of the weight given Ketsui last year, it still couldn't beat Dodonpachi and Battle Garegga. While it bested them in weighting, they both appeared on far more ballots.
• the weighted score counts for only 1/3 of a game's final score. Requiring voters to use only integers 1-25 caps the maximum influence of a single ballot to half a point. When you consider that the weighted score only counts for 1/3 of a game's final score, this means that such a ballot can't do very much. If a single voter gave maximum weight to a game no one else even mentioned, the game would have netted 92nd place last year. (It would take only 9 voters giving another game the last place on their ballots to beat that.)

I somewhat agree with this. Imo it would be better if ever person had a fixed amount of points, say 100, to distribute between as many titles as he likes. That would still leave some room to personal judgement, but could reduce the amount of possible exploitation, imo.

You're free to attempt to do that under the current rules (it's what I did in 2009), though you're capped at 25 points per game so you can't plunk down the full 76 on a single title. And the system in place is flexible enough that I won't have to inform you later on if you fail to adequately count to 100. Allocation is a system that sounds nice but really is more suited to a special front-end (like an RPG character sheet) that will track your points for you than to posts on a message board.

[hwl]

Well, that explanation sounds reasonable enough, even though I don't think a single person's high weight vote should be able to push a title up to 92nd place. It obiously is a matter of the number of people participating though. Whatever, there are worse voting systems than this so I guess it's just me being quite hyped for this poll. Bring it on!