A Touhou theory (and how to become a superplayer)

[nimitz]

I just read part of this thread: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=43895 and realized that many people have conflicting views on what makes a good/great shmup player.

I'd say it all comes down to "dodging skill", not that dedication and effort doesn't play a big role in setting impressive records, but the truly good shmup players (the ones who might have a chance of breaking records) will be able clear *many* games with minimal effort, perhaps the best known example on the forum is sikraiken, he can pick up an arcade shmup considered though by most people and clear it on his very first credit. Now the first "explanation" to that would be that he has some sort of innate dodging "talent" and that no matter what we do we will never be able to clear games with such ease.

I beg to differ.

In light of recent developments (Touhou is Harder winning STGT, Many High Score Threads) it doesn't take much to realize that something is going on.. All the players who have cleared multiple touhous on Lunatic and ended up coming here in search for more shmups to clear have been obliterating our high score tables. Is it because they are more dedicated players? Because they all happen to have that innate talent? Or is it simply because they can pick up pretty much any modern arcade shmup and clear it with "minimal" effort?

________________________________________________________________________________________

Just like any skilled practice, playing shmups doesn't come innately, these skills need to be developed over the years and eventually that person can be considered an expert at playing these games. Now, one might wonder why everyone on this forum isn't able to clear Cave shmups with minimal effort. It's not because it takes amazing talent and dedication and not because people on this forum do not play shmups (while it's true that many members don't).

I believe that some games offer little in terms of dodging practice while others will make anyone a "superplayer" in a relatively short amount of time. Case in point being touhou games. And here is the main idea:Anyone who plays enough touhou to clear a few of them on Lunatic (and at least one of the really tough ones: SA or UFO) will be able to clear the vast majority of arcade shmups with minimal effort.

One might reply that this could be said about any though shmup "achievement", that is anyone who gets a DOJ 2-all can clear other shmups with minimal effort, while this is somewhat true, the main difference is in the amount of time it takes for one to reach that level.

With touhou games (played on lunatic) it seems to take around a year to reach that level of "shmup mastery", while it might take 2-3 years if you are playing "standard" Arcade shmups. The reasons why touhou makes for such great shmup practice are not simple and probably beyond what anyone on these forums would care to know about, but the fact remains, touhou (on lunatic) makes you better at shmups quicker than any other game out there.

A nice thing about this theory is that it can be tested rather easily, take a shmup you have played very little or not at all and compare your score with someone else. then player A will practice for X hours on touhou lunatic and player B can practice on anything he wants (except touhou or a clone, obviously) for the same amount of hours. Then a few days/weeks/months later the two players pick another game (or the same if they havent played since) and compare their "blind run" scores. I am willing to bet that 19 times out of 20, the player who practiced on touhou will have improved much faster.


(Keep in mind this is still a theory and has not been thoroughly tested)

[Erppo]

Oh no, the secret is out!

[SuperSoaker360]

And here is the main idea:Anyone who plays enough touhou to clear a few of them on Lunatic (and at least one of the really tough ones: SA or UFO) will be able to clear the vast majority of arcade shmups with minimal effort.

I played and cleared most of the Touhou games on Lunatic (not UFO because that game still kicks my ass and I don't have much motivation for it), and I still suck at arcade shmups.
I wish I followed that theoretical trend though.

[Seppo Hovi]

Is it because they are more dedicated players?

Yes. A lot of dedication and SHMUP experience spread across the people, talent hardly plays a role.

Also, the games of this genre tend to rely on high amounts of memorization, and knowing how to react to whatever pattern that's about to be thrown at you. Sure, playing UFO teaches you some basic grasp of resource management and certainly teaches you to dodge UFO patterns. It also proves that you have in yourself to grind the same game for long enough to clear it, same stands for any SHMUP that's not too easy to clear.

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Clearing games doesn't necessarily make one superplayer, though. Playing Touhou games on lunatic teaches you some things, sure. But you can learn things from arcade shmups as well, and eventually, if you want to get good with a game in terms of scoring and survival both, you must play the game itself, not some other game. Since learning the route across a single game will only be reached via playing the game, not some other game.

If you want success in STGT, or become better at the games, play shmups, and play them actively.

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Also, most of TiH hardly plays any Touhou anymore (which is sad).

[Zengeku3]

Haha, true or not. Doesn't matter, once you play Touhou, arcade shmups are too static and boring.

[Sapz]

We've had this discussion a few times; IIRC the main conclusions that were drawn were that Touhou is excellent for skill building on two fronts. The first of these is that the games generally provide a ton of resources, which allows the game's attacks to be pitched at a high level while retaining a manageable difficulty overall. Something like UFO Lunatic in particular is an excellent example of this; many of the areas in that game can easily be seen as a similar difficulty to stuff in Cave second loops and the like, but the overall difficulty isn't as daunting due to the large amount of lives given. The second reason is the extreme focus on semi-random micrododging (that is, going between individual bullets in a tight and often improvised path as opposed to going around clusters of bullets entirely). Though there is structure to the patterns, you're rarely going to find some kind of guaranteed path to make things simple and usually you'll just have to rely on your ability to spot or create paths, your ability to change these paths on the fly as needed and your ability to execute the path precisely. The vast majority of boss attacks take this general form, and since bosses are generally over half of the games' lengths this is extremely significant in building all of these skills, especially factored with the first point about the high base difficulty.

The one area where Touhou games are inferior for learning, I'd say, are in 'attacking'. Generally you're encouraged to sit near the bottom of the screen and dodge if you want to play in a safe, survival-oriented fashion, as opposed to something like Ketsui where survival is dictated by how well you can take things out before they become problematic. I regularly see players who are moving from Touhou to arcade shmups have difficulty with this aspect of Cave games (the natural entry point for a Touhou player) initially, but once they overcome that it's usually pretty smooth sailing since the bullet hell is generally relatively straightforward.

Just my two cents.

EDIT: Another thing to consider is the four difficulties for every game which give people a really natural way to advance their skills; a piece of advice which is often given is 'play one difficulty above your current level for a while', and after that happens once you go back down the previous difficulty generally seems like a piece of cake. Players doing this very often end up reaching a level where Lunatic begins to seem feasible very quickly.

[Smraedis]

I think not having a job and living with your parents is a way to do well at STGT. No long post required.

[RNGmaster]

I don't think playing Touhou is a magical formula for success. Really, I understand where you're coming from, but I think you're cherry-picking examples and coming to a conclusion that might not be warranted. The majority of Touhou players I know from Shrinemaiden are playing on Normal mode, and don't necessarily know how to practice efficiently or copy replays to learn techniques. There's a lot of silly things that seem to be universal among shmup players, like complaining about certain patterns being impossible, compulsive refusal to bomb, and unwarranted fear of playing in high difficulty.

To be honest though, I think most of the difference between the western Touhou and arcade communities (such as there is) is that the primary uniting interest of Touhou players is improving at the game, and the arcade scene is more of a social network/hobby/lifestyle thing. Arcade players also have an unfortunate undercurrent of purism which sometimes causes them to overlook efficient practice techniques like savestate runs and stage select. Eh. If you're picking out the specific subcommunity of Touhou players who seem to stomp all over arcade shmups, I think that the only real secret is that they're a close group of friends who share replays and discuss strategies together. Maybe the fact that Touhou has a replay saving feature helps, but it's not some sort of arcane thing about dodging skill or anything. Just long, hard work.

[wiNteR]

I don't know much about good scoring since I have decent scores in only handful of games. As far as bullet dodging skills are concerned, I think there are two points with respect to arcade games. First is the second loops. Most players would usually only play through the first loop, or occasionally try the second loops half seriously, and then move on to other games (not to mention the time spent on going through first loop repeatedly). The second point is the heavy reliance, in most games, in being able to bomb at the right time just to get a clear. Surely it is a skill but it doesn't have too much to do with bullet dodging in general. Just with more general awareness of the moment in the game and your own limitations.

If you just modify these two factors a player playing these games would improve much faster purely in terms of bullet dodging (can't say much about score or strategy aspects though). At least, if I was starting out on the genre, this is how I would play to improve my skills faster.

For example, for say the following games, do the following:
- add a second loop start option (emulated easily with save states for emulated games)
- add an auto-bomb feature and reduce the number of bombs to about half (feature obviously not available in the games or emulators). Though the exact reduction depends more on the game.

The following games serve as pretty good candidates:
1- Ketsui (Stoic + omote loop) or DOJ WL
2- Sengoku Aces or Strikers 1945
3- Under Defeat or some Raiden Fighter

The games I have written are just a little arbitrary though, but I guess they serve as better candidates for bullet dodging skills than a good percentage of arcade games. Some of these are (presumably) only good candidates based upon assuming auto-bomb though (2 and 3), which clearly isn't the case. However, the cave games listed (1), I believe, would serve as good candidates in any case.

[Bananamatic]

I think not having a job and living with your parents is a way to do well at STGT. No long post required.

but i'm living proof that it's not enough

[nimitz]

I played and cleared most of the Touhou games on Lunatic (not UFO because that game still kicks my ass and I don't have much motivation for it), and I still suck at arcade shmups.
I wish I followed that theoretical trend though.

How long ago have you started playing shmups? and which have you Lunatic-cleared?

I think not having a job and living with your parents is a way to do well at STGT. No long post required.

I would be very curious to know how many hours the winning team put into the games each week. Because the people I know who have great "sight reading skill" will clear games in very little time, then it's just a matter of optimizing score, it still takes some time, but is much easier than the others players who have to learn some of the game's patterns just to clear it.


Sapz: What about UFO though, surely it helps with "attacking" and moving around. And I guess the others do too provided you do some basic scoring.


RNGmaster: I did mention you had to play touhou on lunatic, playing on normal won't do much since it's so much easier than most arcade shmups. Also, I would be interested to know which games you "learned" with, because I'd say you are now a pretty good player.

winNeR: If someone took the time to distill the parts of arcade games that challenge you the most it would indeed improve learning rate, but as Sapz mentioned touhou also gives you more "ways" or surviving barrages that would otherwise be too hard for you.


The main point is that there *is* such a thing as a universal "dodging aptitude" or "sight reading skill", one that applies just as well to shmups from 1985 as well as it does to shmups from 2012 and that once your basic dodging aptitude is at a "good enough" level, most (all?) games seem much easier, and if it's really high, as is the case with the TiH players I know, you can achieve pretty amazing runs without having to play much at all.

[KAI]

once you play Touhou, arcade shmups are too static and boring.

Play Pinksweets.

[Zengeku3]

once you play Touhou, arcade shmups are too static and boring.

Play Pinksweets.

I wouldn't mind giving it a shot but I don't think it's available for any of the systems i own.

Also, i kinda posted that it jest. Arcade shmups are cool too, it's just well... you go there, you play them for a few hours, beat them and then meh, not much more to do.

[SuperSoaker360]

How long ago have you started playing shmups? and which have you Lunatic-cleared?

I started playing Touhou around the Summer of 2009 (I'd wager around the beginning of August). It marked the beginning of me playing shmups avidly so I suppose that's when I really started. I was an active player on the games up until around Summer of 2011 where I started to branch out and play other shooters. I have a list of all my 1CCs (modes and difficulties should be listed as well) here if you're interested.

[Sapz]

nimitz: The games have to a degree gotten more aggressive as time goes past, UFO in particular, but there are still plenty of sections where you can (or even should) just hang back and shoot from a distance while dodging as an optimal survival strategy. Bosses in particular, which are usually the meat of the game, almost universally have this as an optimum survival strategy unless it's something weird like Vajra (UFO stage 5 boss, 3rd spell card). Of course for scoring this goes out of the window and the games become very aggressive with grazing, but that's something of a different topic.

For STGT this year I estimate I played both S99 (#5 spot) and SSS (#7 spot) for about 10 hours each... maybe a little more? Something in that ballpark though (I didn't play the others since I was on holiday). I also had quite a lot of prior experience with S99, which helped immensely since it's a pretty tricky clear. Having said that, 10-15 hours of STGT play with good replays at hand, plenty of savestate practice and a bunch of other guys playing simultaneously to strategize with to rip the game apart as quickly as possible is way more time-efficient than the same amount of time just throwing credits at the game with no real plan. Even if you have a relatively small amount of time, you can certainly beat someone with a lot more hours at their disposal just by attacking the game in a way that speeds up your learning.

[KyoKusagani1999]

I should link you to this. It's how I came to develop said talents with practice routine that gets
me familiar with the game in mind along with scoring. http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=636430

[Erppo]

I think my average for a STGT game is something like 20 hours. I spent over 30 to the ones with most effort though. Then there are things like the caravans to balance that out (and games that I simply couldn't spare the time to play as much as I wanted).

I'm somewhat curious what's the motivation for the seemingly unprovoked personal insult.

[KAI]

Maybe you guys think arcades are shit cause we play shit at STGTs.

[pestro87]

Arcade shmups are cool too, it's just well... you go there, you play them for a few hours, beat them and then meh, not much more to do.

I take it that you don't like to play for score then?

[Chaos Phoenixma]

once you play Touhou, arcade shmups are too static and boring.

Play Pinksweets.

I wouldn't mind giving it a shot but I don't think it's available for any of the systems i own.

360 version of Muchi Muchi Pork and Pink Sweets is region free. And it'll be getting a cheaper rerelease soon.

Pink Sweets is kind of lame though.

But Muchi Muchi Pork seems like it'd be your kind of game. Fun, hard stages, fun hard bosses. And despite what people love to say, it's not really an easy clear despite extends every 10 million. I've gotten to Stage 5 Boss in Futari God Mode, but I've never gotten past Stage 4 boss on one credit in Muchi Muchi Pork in 1.00 or 1.01.

[hail good sir]

life

[Zengeku3]

360 version of Muchi Muchi Pork and Pink Sweets is region free. And it'll be getting a cheaper rerelease soon.

Pink Sweets is kind of lame though.

But Muchi Muchi Pork seems like it'd be your kind of game. Fun, hard stages, fun hard bosses. And despite what people love to say, it's not really an easy clear despite extends every 10 million. I've gotten to Stage 5 Boss in Futari God Mode, but I've never gotten past Stage 4 boss on one credit in Muchi Muchi Pork in 1.00 or 1.01.

God Mode? I dunno, got to Stage 5 on my first credit of it I think... or maybe it was a game over on the Stage 4 boss' final attack. That game doesn't seem that hard, I find it rather boring to be honest especially because of how the Stage 3 and 4 boss became easier. MMP; How would it measure up to something like UFO Lunatic? That's kind of the level of dodging difficulty i want. Or something like DOJBL's 2nd loop without the undesirable first loop before it.

So i guess a better question is, that Muchi Muchi Pork, how does it measure up to DOJBL's 2nd loop at high rank?

Arcade shmups are cool too, it's just well... you go there, you play them for a few hours, beat them and then meh, not much more to do.

I take it that you don't like to play for score then?

I'm actually working on some scores at the moment but they are only for Touhou games. Cave game scoring is a bit too grindy for my tastes compared to a game like MoF where score is essentially 'don't die, clear boss attacks without bombing or dying, raise your point-item value as quickly as possible and pick up point items at max value'.

I can definitely see why some people would enjoy Cave scoring as they've made many solid systems but I prefer things simpler, so I play them for survival only.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Muchi Muchi Pork is obviously harder than UFO Lunatic.

Not sure how it is compared to DOJ second loop.


It is also a looping game though. The requirement to loop being no death for version 1.00 or to just no continue in 1.01.

However, you can just choose Harahara mode, and you'll start in the second loop, and it's a valid mode for scoring too. So if you find first loop Muchi Muchi Pork easy, you can just pick Harahara mode and skip straight to the second loop. There's also Manpuku mode, but that's just ridiculous with the suicide bullets.

[Rex Cavalier]

Hmmm, PC-98 Touhous definitely upped my skill a bit when i have played them, especially the third one(*cough*dat final boss*cough*), dunno about windows ones though, haven't played them much.

[Zengeku3]

Muchi Muchi Pork is obviously harder than UFO Lunatic.

Not sure how obvious that is. I'm asking about the pattern difficulty. Not the difficulty of the clear. It's the patterns makes or breaks the game i think.

But other than that, it actually does sound pretty interesting. I'll take a look at in when I can spare the cash.

[Cagar]

I think that the best players here have played touhou first because it's so easy to buy for PC, so they have had much more time to practice basic dodging and stuff.

[DMC]

Another point is the sheer number of touhou players, and that you would expect, just by normal variation, that a decent number of them would have the relevant abilities (good motor abilities, fast reaction time, high working memory & long-term memory capacities, etc.) and by doing well in touhou they would seek further challenges and proceed to this forum.

I like the theory though, and have been impresssed by their performance in the STGT.

I think the speedrunners at the SDA should also be mentioned. They appear to be used to break it down, part by part, in a more efficient way than I think many arcade gamers are used to.

[NTSC-J]

So i guess a better question is, that Muchi Muchi Pork, how does it measure up to DOJBL's 2nd loop at high rank?

MMP 1.01 2-ALL isn't a very hard clear due to the constant extends. It should still be a challenge for most players, but DOJ BL 2-ALL is harder.

MMP 1.00, on the other hand, is really hard stuff. No-missing the first loop alone is rough, then you have to clear the second loop with no extends. I would argue that it's one of the tougher Cave clears.

However, the 1.00 challenge is a bit of a moot point if you're playing the 360 port. Just as with Pink Sweets where they didn't include the infinite lives bug, the second loop in MMP 1.00 on 360 has extends, preventing home players from competing with arcade high scores.

[nimitz]

Another point is the sheer number of touhou players, and that you would expect, just by normal variation, that a decent number of them would have the relevant abilities (good motor abilities, fast reaction time, high working memory & long-term memory capacities, etc.)

I did think of that but looking at how few touhou lunatic scores are posted even on their own forums I'd say there aren't that many "serious" touhou players.

I've also been following my own advice recently and even though I am not playing more than before in terms of hours played (maybe 2 hours/week) I have improved more in the last year than I have in the past ~6 years or so.

[Seppo Hovi]

A lunatic clear and serious Touhou playing are a two different things.

But you're right, there are not that many active Touhou players around this forum currently.