No bomb diary - or How I'm declaring war on fun in STGs

[7711]

Hello,
since I've decided to radically change the way I play STGs and stop using bombs for as long as I can (hopefully never to change that) I decided it would help me a lot to keep some kind of diary.
I'm not expecting any kind of response, so if this kind of topic is seen as a bad thing just throw it away (well, if I've already written a few things in it please give me time to back it up ) but if someone has some advice or thoughts on it I'd be happy to read about it.

First thing, the games I actively play and wan't to be able to play reasonably well (I mean, getting to no miss - no bomb to stage 4 would already be awesome) are Dodonpachi, Dodonpachi Daioujou (white label in priority), and Ketsui. So I'll give myself the incomming week to make some preliminary strategies and tweak them before I really pick a game to focus on and start practicing.

Maybe I'm beeing too hard on myself but I'd like not to use savestates or continues and see how it goes. I've been playing TGM for a few month, believing that starting out with an "easy" difficulty (well, playing classic mode on the first games) and gradually increasing the difficulty would be good but I quickly got stuck at around level 700 on both TGM 1 and 2. So I got bored and started training in TA Death mode and once the kind of "rite of passage" was over progress went on to be quite faster than with the previous method. So hopefully....

[nasty_wolverine]

You realize when you say that you are no gonna bomb, you deprive yourself of the raizing big 3, and alot of other shmups where bombs integral to survival and scoring...
Plus bombs are there for a reason, to get you out of a tough spot, as long as you are not a superplayer, you will get into a tough spot, hell even superplayers get into a tough spot.
So pick up that controller and when that wall of bullets is hurtling towards you, scream "BOMBAH!!!!"

[7711]

Yes, I do realize that, but I've never been a fan of such scoring system anyway.
My goal with this isn't to 1CC every game there is (or any game at all for that matter), and I've never played for scoring anyway, so all I wan't is to see how far I could go, without comparing myself to other players or shifting away from this rule.

Even though the result it may give won't mean anything if taken from a scoring or classic surviving perspective, I think it will still say something if I somehow makes some progress and manage to do something that I feel is gratifying or reach any goal I may have.

[nasty_wolverine]

Yes, I do realize that, but I've never been a fan of such scoring system anyway.

Sorry to say, but you are missing out. Nothings more satisfying than laying couple of bombs over pink flamingo's and see the score shoot through the roof.
Anyway do let us know what comes of it.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I remember when that US arcade "with heavy respect for shmups" guy let us now that DOJ White Label is on Hard in the place. Boy, did he unleash a whinefest on these boards.

[7711]

I remember this, but what does it has to do with me ? Just so you know, this has nothing to do with wanting to prove something to others, I'm just tired of playing the same way and feel that a radical change may help me understand some things better.
It has nothing to do with wanting to make the games harder, just making it different to play, even if by doing so I'll probably have to wait a very long time before I can put something in "I did it" or any High score thread. Thats also why I created this topic, for myself to have somewhere to talk about it since by playing in a different fashion, comparing to others on a strict technical point of view wouldn't make sense.

[jugemscloud]

donpachi is designed to be played at high level with no bombs, and is fairly easy in the first loop to do so.

[Despatche]

the above. tbh, bomb spamming is the war on fun (raizing plays by different rules). being able to no bomb things that are meant to be no bombed is ZIKNAZTYKOOL.

i think you're being a bit hard on yourself with the no savestates/continues thing though, that's kinda war-on-fun too*. sometimes you just have to grind, you can't get it right all the time.

on the other hand, the decision to just do things the hard way is commendable. starting with easy stuff does indeed just make it harder to move on; just keep in mind that "easy" is not the same thing as "basic".

of course, i tend to restart when i die, because that one life and its bombs might score me a cheapo 1cc (psikyo), or because dying kills scoring and thus makes the rest of the stage/game unfun (touhou).

[AntiFritz]

Play Pink Sweets, it doesn't want you to bomb either.

[KAI]

Play Radirgy without ABS, it's fun too.

Here are 6 good reasons for no-bombing:

[Ruldra]

Bombs help you learn the game more quickly. Once you can nail an 1cc, you are good enough to attempt a no-bomb run. Crawl before you walk, etc.

Nothing wrong with handicapping yourself but you might give up on the game due to frustration. Use everything at your disposal to reach the end, THEN you start handicapping yourself for a challenge.

[Deca]

With nearly every shooter you should learn how to get through every single part of it without bombing. That doesn't mean you should stop yourself from using bombs if you make a mistake, that's just going to severely limit you.

A no bomb clear is desirable on a lot of games and always very impressive, but saying that you're just going to stop using bombs and approach learning like that is somewhat foolish. What you want to do is learn a game without getting lazy and relying on bombs in certain places to avoid certain attacks. Make it your goal to have no planned bomb uses.

If you simply refuse to bomb your way out of deaths you saw coming due to mistakes you're only cheating yourself out of practicing more of the game beyond that point. You want to be able to approach every pattern with an understanding of how to dodge, misdirect, safespot or otherwise avoid it, so stopping yourself from using bombs shouldn't change the way you play the game at all. The only thing it will do is slow your progress and make it more frustrating.

[EmperorIng]

You want no bombs and are declaring a war on fun?
Play Gradius III!

[Despatche]

nah you can time mega crushes and things like that in that game, unless you're really doing capsule scoring.

[Ruldra]

You want no bombs and are declaring a war on fun?
Play Gradius III!

Hey now, Gradius III is awesome. If he's serious about war on fun, he needs to play something REALLY bad.

I suggest Divine Sealing.

[7711]

Bombs help you learn the game more quickly. Once you can nail an 1cc, you are good enough to attempt a no-bomb run. Crawl before you walk, etc.

Nothing wrong with handicapping yourself but you might give up on the game due to frustration. Use everything at your disposal to reach the end, THEN you start handicapping yourself for a challenge.

With nhearly every shooter you should learn how to get through every single part of it without bombing. That doesn't mean you should stop yourself from using bombs if you make a mistake, that's just going to severely limit you.

Well the only non-doujin 1CC I've ever done was Dodonpachi and I had never felt that disapointed before. Somehow I didn't felt like what I just did was good, in any way, shape or form. Sure, I was kind of proud, but looking back on it it wasn't that good.
What I really wan't is to feel like what I'm doing is good, not perfect or amazing, but I need to feel that I'm actually mastering the game, with bomb that easy to use, the only thing I'm thinking about is bombs. When to use them, when not to use them, what to do when no more bombs in stock... So every move I do feels rushed, like I didn't really think about it. Nothing feels really good, sometimes when I'm in great shape I will play ok, thats why I keep playing, but most of the time...

Well, just to make my point, I played quite a few games this afternoon, whithout using bomb once, and on 5 different games. It really did felt different, not only was I focusing on the game like never before, but I did great (well, thats what I think anyway) right off the start. I reached stage 5 in Gunbird 2 for the first time despite the fact that I didnt touch the game for month, and everything felt really clear, I actually had a lot of fun.
Now I'm not saying any of that was mindblowing, but for me, having found a way to really appreciate what I'm doing certainly gave me some confidence, and if I can keep it that way I'm sure that it will bring much more progress than playing games in a way that makes me almost dislike them.

I've always hated both Espgaluda games. I played Espgaluda II for half an hour and it was awesome, I did my best to survive and reached the stage 4 boss, not bothering about bombs, just dodging and shooting. Sure I might never finish the game that way, but I'm playing for myself, and all I wan't is to enjoy these wonderful games as much as I can.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hey guys, I have a great idea - I'm going to play STGs without pressing the player start buttons. Will update each day with my progress. I'm sure you'll all be very interested!

[7711]

Hey guys, I have a great idea - I'm going to play STGs without pressing the player start buttons. Will update each day with my progress. I'm sure you'll all be very interested!

Thank you for your input, thats helping a lot.

[Ed Oscuro]

Should I have skipped right to the straitjacket?

[7711]

Should I have skipped right to the straitjacket?

Doesn't make any sense, sorry

I'll wait till the end of the week and see how it went, but for now I'm pretty happy with it. I understand what you guys are saying about bombs beeing a cool part of the game, but I feel like with my playstyle its now plagued by bad habits and the best thing to do is to stop using them.

I need a break now, thanks for the replies.

[DMC]

Bombs help you learn the game more quickly. Once you can nail an 1cc, you are good enough to attempt a no-bomb run. Crawl before you walk, etc.

Well said.

I think it makes sense to divide bombing into two categories;
1) preparatory - bombing in advance because the upcoming attack is scary.
2) Reactive - panick-bombing in a reactive fashion when you see no way out.

Perhaps it makes some sense to avoid the first category because otherwise you won't learn to dodge the attack. But in the cases where there is no way out other than smart-bombing, I don't see what you get out of intentionally ruining your run by have a no-bomb policy, it's basically a suicide or just a small hope for winning the lottery. After panick-bombing you can still analyze afterwards why you ended up in the undodgeable attack.

I'm a coward so I make a lot of category 1 bombing, I hate to see bombs go to waste. I guess it's due to some past trauma like losing a life in Strikers 45 II and seeing the bomb stock go from 9 to 3 (or something like that). It hurts!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

On the other hand, if you use up all your bombs by early bombing patterns, you'll eventually end up with zero bombs left and then you can make all the scary dodges you like without worrying about wasted resources on a death. It's better than dying to something with bombs left at any rate.

The third category (or a subset of intentional bombing) would be bombing for score. Several Cave games have sections where a bomb can actually be beneficial for scoring, like to speedkill a midboss thus earning more points off the extra enemies that appear (Espgal 1 & 2, Futari God). And then of course, most Yagawa-influenced games have a bombing for score element in them.

[PedroMD]

I find playing with no bombs in stock liberating, since I can stop thinking about dying without using them and can focus on dodging. Most of the time I end up dodging stuff I would have not deemed possible otherwise, so I kinda see you point.
But still, absolutely refusing to use a game resource seems counter-productive, specially on a genre-wide scale. An argument could be made about never shooting at all, since you are destroying the enemies instead of letting them fill the screen with delicious bullets for you to dodge, thus making the game less fun.
If you were going for a game-specific challenge, it would be understandable. No-bomb runs are common enough in most games. Setting this as a rule for ALL shmups all the time just seems a bit harsh and precipitated.

[Jaimers]

I can understand where you're coming from, I also have the habit of being reluctant to bomb during first and early credits of a game because I want to understand how to dodge the patterns.
However, not bombing and just spamming credits doesn't seem like a very productive way to spend your time.

The best thing I've found to do is to use stage practice and savestates to figure out and practice stages until you can NMNB them, or at least close to it. This way you'll also figure out the tough spots where you'll often make mistakes or are just too risky and where it's better to plan a bomb for full runs.

After that you can do full credits all you want and you'll use less bombs automatically as a result.
Being able to use up -all- of your bombs before losing a life is a necessary skill you'll need to master in order to get good at these games. Not bombing at all during runs will make you develop bad habits down the road.

[Despatche]

is anyone else going to take this seriously? i don't know what part of you he's somehow affecting, but you've got to fight it and just try to think. he's not talking about "all shmups" (he's made that very clear), he's talking about games that expect you to never bomb. you know the ones.

the idea that you'll somehow incur "bad habits" from such a mindset is complete nonsense. never mind that it's the bombspam nature that's the bad habit, not the desire to beat it at the source. the only reason you would ever need to bombspam (or creditfeed/savestate) is because you would get frustrated easily otherwise. they are placed in (most) cave games to be a crutch, not to be an interesting tool you can use like in raizing and co.

people are worrying way too much about "efficiency" even when they don't have the right to. this would actually be fine (i do it all the time) if you all were speaking of good principles and even intentions, but i know as well as any of you do that you're not so kind. and yet... somewhere deep inside, you've all felt that same terrible feeling... that you've just mindlessly mashed through the game, that you'd better either right that wrong as fast as possible, or run as far away from it as possible. the common choice is obvious.

7711 here has good principles, and a good idea. don't bother trying to discourage him, because you're getting nowhere. the problem is on your end, until you can figure out what efficiency really means, and how best to express it. i know some individuals here can do so.

not that this didn't devolve into an easy troll topic on day 0

[NTSC-J]

Yea, get with the program, guys!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

he's talking about games that expect you to never bomb.

I can't think of a single game that gives bombs that works like that. Even ones with heavy scoring bonuses for not bombing are generally played with bombing late game (second loops of any *Pachi, Ketsui, Progear) so if you're in the habit of never bombing it's unlikely you'll even see that far into the game. The only relatively easy no-bombs ever game I can think of is Futari BL Original which has a ridiculous bombing penalty over other game modes, but is balanced by your shots being ridiculously powerful. Even then, nobody'd tell you not to use bombs against Larsa. The counter doesn't matter there and it's better than dying several times.

If you restrict yourself from never, ever bombing, you won't be in the habit of using them at the times you really ought to.

[Ruldra]

Progear is extremely punishing on bombing. If you bomb a little you won't even make it to the second loop. To score high you pretty much need to avoid bombing until you reach the final stage.

I love that game but the complete focus on no-miss/no-bombing to score high made me give up on it.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

If you bomb a little you won't even make it to the second loop.

Actually, you can bomb twice safely, and no matter how many times you die you'll get to the second loop as long as you clear the first one. Usually those bombs are best at the final boss where you've built up a nice fat score counter, but the second loop doesn't give out score extends (as far as I'm aware) so by then you want to use your bombs, especially since a death in the 2nd loop during the stage (not during boss) brings you to the start of the stage...

It's actually one of the few games I've managed to get into the loop (that and Donpachi, which has no loop restrictions). Progear's not really designed with strong bombs anyways. The bombs have huge durations, but they don't do much extra damage on top of what your shots hitting are doing. The duration's helpful in the second loop where bombs will last for quite some time, thus helping actually clear the stage segments to let you get to the bosses.

[Erppo]

I can't think of a single game that gives bombs that works like that. Even ones with heavy scoring bonuses for not bombing are generally played with bombing late game (second loops of any *Pachi)

Umm no. Unless you mean bombing the last boss.