bestcellar wrote:I guess if it makes you feel better to put me down, go right ahead.
That really isn't the intent here.
Your arcade has reached out to our community to let us know who you are and what you're up to, which is honestly really cool! However, you do so in an attempt to generate interest and draw in players while maintaining practices that specifically put off the community you want to invite.
I would guess that 90% of the players on this board have never once altered the difficulty settings of any shooter they're playing, and if they have it was for a specific themed challenge or just goofing around. Nobody putting serious effort into learning DOJ at home has the settings on anything other than defaults.
DOJ is a rare game in US, and a lot of people that have a fair amount of time invested in it (myself included) have often thought to themselves, "hey it'd be really cool if I ever had the chance to play this in an actual arcade and show off a bit!" However, taking all of that practice and skill up to a cabinet with the dips jacked up to Very Hard is going to rend them largely null and void. Scoring strategies will basically be thrown out the window and gameplay will be reduced to desperate flailing about attempting to deal with a difficulty level the game was never balanced on and that the creators never actually intended to be used.
It almost amounts to an unintentional cruel trick. It would be like seeing a Wangan Midnight 4 cabinet, running up to it and excitedly throwing your money to have it boot into Cruis'n USA.
Also, listing 33mil on DOJ as a "World Record" on Aurcade makes the whole thing look REALLY BAD. Just for the sake of comparison, I'm a horrible DOJ player and I don't have much trouble reaching 100mil on a botched run. This could easily be remedied by making it say "Aurcade Record."
To be honest I completely understand the idea of having a small, isolated scoring community like this. It promotes competition among lower level players (the topranker community, especially in the west, is quite small) and will likely lead to players breaking out of that and continuing to develop in the global community. However, presentation is EXTREMELY important with this sort of thing because even marginally knowledgeable people that glance at this High Scores page with no context at all are going to write it off instantly.
I know we may seem harsh, but I really feel that most of us have good intentions. I personally would really like to see your arcade grow and succeed. It's a bit of a drive for me but I'd be willing to make trips out there if it were an environment conducive to serious play. Putting hours of practice in on a real machine with other players there in person is an experience I would greatly appreciate.