The BIG thread of Shmup grievances.

[Giest118]

Pfft. Rank is soooo gay. Just keep the difficulty ball bustingly hard at all times or things will get boring.

Ironically, you kind of have my response to Erppo; if the game is not fun with slower bullets, just make them faster at all times.

[Zengeku3]

Pfft. Rank is soooo gay. Just keep the difficulty ball bustingly hard at all times or things will get boring.

I assume you're a Ketsui lover then!

Ketsui is a pretty cool game. Problem is just that the hitboxes in it are pretty awkward to me so unless you've been playing it a lot recently you'll find yourself dying stupidly. When you do get into it, the first loop becomes entirely too easy while the second loop has suicide bullets which is not really a mechanic i'm fond of since it means way too much memorization for my silly non-existent dedication. It's a good game though, no doubt about that. Just not that big of a fan of it. I used to be though, back when the 1st loop still posed a reasonable challenge.

No sir. For me it's UFO all the way. It has patterns that are harder than a lot of DOJ 2nd loop stuff, no stupid loops, no rank and it starts picking up the pace already at Stage 2. Early game could do with some higher difficulty though but other than that, my fave shmup.

Pfft. Rank is soooo gay. Just keep the difficulty ball bustingly hard at all times or things will get boring.

Ironically, you kind of have my response to Erppo; if the game is not fun with slower bullets, just make them faster at all times.

Then the two of us can agree, although Erppos argument makes perfect sense but yeah. Some people's (us) prefference will not appreciate it even if it does make sense.

[KAI]

Ironically, you kind of have my response to Erppo; if the game is not fun with slower bullets, just make them faster at all times.

Sometimes a higher Rank means more bullets, not faster ones (Pinksweets/MMP/IKBL)

[Giest118]

Ironically, you kind of have my response to Erppo; if the game is not fun with slower bullets, just make them faster at all times.

Sometimes a higher Rank means more bullets, not faster ones (Pinksweets/MMP/IKBL)

... Feel like you've kinda missed my point. If the bullet patterns aren't fun until you no-miss the shit out of everything, then there is something wrong with the initial pattern design. Just make it optimally fun and interesting from the get-go.

[O. Van Bruce]

Ironically, you kind of have my response to Erppo; if the game is not fun with slower bullets, just make them faster at all times.

Sometimes a higher Rank means more bullets, not faster ones (Pinksweets/MMP/IKBL)

... Feel like you've kinda missed my point. If the bullet patterns aren't fun until you no-miss the shit out of everything, then there is something wrong with the initial pattern design. Just make it optimally fun and interesting from the get-go.

There is fun in controlling and maximizing the rank.

[SuperSoaker360]

Pfft. Rank is soooo gay. Just keep the difficulty ball bustingly hard at all times or things will get boring.

[Zengeku3]

Not just words. True words from a great philosopher.

[KAI]

In that case, you guys are going to hate SDOJ.

[SuperSoaker360]

Of course not. Story mode arrange, animu opening, trap Hirano -- perfect for the casuals like me.

[Zengeku3]

I will probably like it. I'm terrible at shmup games so I'm sure the game will wreck me even at low rank. Besides, I kinda get the impression that rank doesn't play as big a role here as it does in things like Mushi Futari BL Original.

[Giest118]

Like I've said, rank systems aren't a game-ruiner for me, I just usually don't see the point.

[KAI]

They call it RISK/REWARD, good games use that formula.

[Giest118]

Oh hey, "risk/reward", that phrase people throw out when they want to justify something without actually explaining anything.

Risk/reward only applies to things that you actively do.

In, say, DoDonPachi, you have no say in whether the rank increases, other than to stay alive, which you're going to be trying to do anyway. You don't "risk" anything because you're not the one doing the "risking," instead, the game arbitrarily decides to make itself harder. And what's the reward? I don't fucking know. Would the game feel any different if there was no rank system at all? I seriously doubt it. You might think that some bullets would end up slower in that case, in which case I would refute you by pointing out that Cave could have just made them faster in the first place. Problem solved.

Crimzon Clover's Simple mode rank system gets to have the "risk/reward" stamp applied to it because it's obvious what effect it has, what triggers it, and what the reward is for keeping it high. DFK Black Label has these qualities as well. Even SDOJ does to an extent; the Rank is displayed prominently at the top of the screen, and you can clearly observe that using hypers is what triggers an increase in it.

And you know what? I fucking love Crimzon Clover's Simple mode, because it's obvious what the point is. If someone would like to explain to me why DoDonPachi has a rank system, I'd be interested to know. For context, this is coming from someone who loves DoDonPachi, but just thinks the rank system it employs is useless.

[Erppo]

DDP is a really bad example since it barely has a rank. Only thing it does is reducing slightly after a death just to promptly go back to max after you spend a minute without getting hit and even then the effects aren't very noticeable.

[Giest118]

And then of course there's Dragon Blaze, the one mentioned in the post that started this debate.
There's also some Touhou games that use similar rank systems to DoDonPachi, with similarly useless results.

I'm gonna generalize and try to come up with some properties that make rank systems annoying to me:

1) The rank is invisible.
2) The only way to decrease it is to die or use part of a (limited) bomb stock.*
3) Lower rank actually makes the game harder somehow (for example, by making bullets stay on the screen for a longer time without modifying fire rates to compensate)
4) There is no reason (such as score or charging hypers or something) that you would ever want the rank to be higher.**

*Crimzon Clover is an exception since the bomb system is charge-based, not stock-based.
** We've already been over the argument that the game gets more fun when rank is higher.

[KAI]

2hu rank lol.

Most of the games increase the Rank when you try to score higher. I see nothing wrong with taking risk for that reward.

[Zengeku3]

2hu rank lol.

UFO rank is best rank.

[Giest118]

2hu rank lol.

Most of the games increase the Rank when you try to score higher. I see nothing wrong with taking risk for that reward.

If the trigger is indeed something that causes score to increase, then fine. Otherwise, the list I provided above is a pretty good summation of the things that can make rank annoying and stupid.

[SuperSoaker360]

Garegga rank.

[SuperSoaker360]

Okay so I can't really dent Stage 5 on Radiant Silvergun so far. I can only make it to Stage 5b. Everything about this part of the game reminds me of the scary difficulty jump in Ikaruga's Stage 4.

[Captain]

The useless complexity of Dogyuun.

And Trap's recent Ketsui hacks not working on the latest mameuifx.

[O. Van Bruce]

Maaan, every Pink Sweets boss and midboss is like "Getting hit until you memorize perfectly the order of enemy attacks"...

I got rammed so many times by unexpected attacks...

[trap15]

From what I recall, they don't have a set order, it's random. You just have to know which attacks they can pull out, and be ready for them.

[Hagane]

Rank down makes the bullets move slower. Would be fine, except that it means that the bullets aren't getting off the fucking screen fast enough, meaning that it's impossible to get into the position you need to be in.

Rank in Dragon Blaze should be as high as possible at all times. Decreasing it doesn't yield any rewards (unlike other Psikyo games), so if you are getting powered down simply get better and don't. And if you are waiting for bullets to get out of the screen faster you are playing the game wrong. Get in close and abuse the Dragon Shot; the game was designed around quick killing, not waiting and dodging.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Don't they do something to hint which attack is going to be used?

Not that it really matters if so because there's nothing that shows off all the strats for the attacks.

[O. Van Bruce]

Don't they do something to hint which attack is going to be used?

Not that it really matters if so because there's nothing that shows off all the strats for the attacks.

more or less... Getting used to it.

Braving max rank in Pink Swets because I'm too dumb to care about it...

[Obscura]

Urrrgh, Exceed 2nd, 5th boss...

Thanks to glitched out collision detection and the awful "contact with enemies only bumps you around, rather than killing you", I seriously lose control of my character for seconds at a time during this fight.

I swear, its like Tenen-Sozai has never even heard of ground enemies. It would solve soooo many of these games' problems.

The funny part is, I can still usually win the fight with only one death, despite having no control, because the boss is that uneventful. It's probably the closest a bullet hell boss will ever come to a Gradius last boss.

[Arvandor]

My usual complaint with rank (read: Garegga, which is a really cool game, I just hate rank,) is that it's counter-intuitive. It REWARDS DYING! What... The... Hell???

Also, in some games it adds a layer of difficulty that bugs the ever living crap out of me. When you can ignore rank and just get better and beat it anyways, like Dragon Blaze or DDP:DOJ, fine, whatever, I can pretend it's not there, but in something like Garegga, it's just... not fun.

[Obscura]

Actually, Dragon Blaze is usually easier at high rank, which is the reason that game's rank implementation sometimes pisses me off.

It's the weirdest version of Gradius syndrome ever. Luckily, it's not a very severe case of Gradius syndrome; just enough to be annoying sometimes.

[Hagane]

It might be easier in some alternate universe, but in this world's Dragon Blaze, higher rank means higher difficulty. Not only bullet speed is slower, bullet density, enemy aggressiveness, resilience, etc. are affected too.