Here's a trend which has been annoying me

[Pteriforever]

Okay, before I begin, I'm not going to tolerate any name-calling or rage of any form against me because of opinions expressed in this post. If you particularly want to call somebody a noob, do it to someone who will listen, because I certainly won't. If you disagree with me, that's fine, but please don't toss ad hominem attacks. Thank you.



Basically, more and more games these days -- some major culprits are Aero Chimera and Leiria -Stargazer- -- include an easy difficulty mode which is extremely similar to the next one up, with the most major difference being that it has autobombs while the others don't.

Just to clear things up, I have no problems with easy modes or either of the games I used as examples.

What I do have a problem with is what this implies about the attitudes of the entire shmup community. Basically, by making them only available on easy modes, what they're saying is "If you like autobombs, you're a noob." Now, I could argue for hours over the benefits of panicbombs vs autobombs and what they mean and which is better or more intelligent or whatever, but I'll just summarise by saying that neither are perfect, as panicbombs are rage-inducing while autobombs defeat the purpose of having bombs at all.

"But autobombs really do make the game easier, so they should be considered less valid!!!!", I hear you cry. Yeah, that's true. However, the way they make the game easier is by reducing the need for perfection: You only get punished when you honestly can't cope with the bullets onscreen, not when making minor mistakes on sections you can perfect 97% of the time.

This brings me to my final point:

Imagine you suck at a game, and are completely destroyed by its medium mode. Then, if you try easy mode, you'll still get just as badly destroyed, as the content itself is not made any easier; you just need to be less perfect. One will always see the best results from practicing bullet patterns on the edge of one's abilities, and that is why there should be real actual changes between difficulty modes.

I understand that this is often the result of lazy developers (i.e. "Meh... I cbf to change all the enemies on every difficulty mode. I'll just change the bombing mechanics for one and add suicide bullets to everything on another. I'm a genius!") but anyway, please stick to either one bombing style or the other, come up with something else entirely, or determine it based on something that doesn't affect the "validity" of a run, just please stop doing this.

[heisenbergman]

How do autobombs defeat the purpose of having bombs at all?

EDIT: Also, I don't think I fully understand this. Could you elaborate?

"You only get punished when you honestly can't cope with the bullets onscreen, not when making minor mistakes on sections you can perfect 97% of the time."

----

EDIT 2: Do I understand it correctly that basically, your complaint is that developers should distinguish the levels of difficulity based on content and not based on adding/removing/changing gameplay mechanics?

[Cagar]

I don't like autobombs either, unless one hit takes your whole bomb stock and the game is hard enough to compensate it with bullets.
..but I don't like too punishing systems either, like DOJ losing all of your stored hypers & chain, which can fuck up so much score that the whole run will become completely worthless.

[Pretas]

DFK's forced autobombs are far too excessive a concession to difficulty, far more so than Galuda 1's Kakusei (which is a tool to be mastered, not simply a free "saving throw"). They're the biggest reason why DFK is my least favorite game of the series, excluding the IGS and smartphone games. I can imagine that they make practicing on the PCB hellishly annoying, since suiciding to restart the game after an early mistake becomes an incredibly slow process. I appreciated autobombs much more when they first changed them to consume your entire stock in Akai Katana, and then when they made them optional in SDOJ. I still use them in SDOJ for when I want to focus on practicing the survival aspect of the game more than scoring.

[Bananamatic]

I understand that this is often the result of lazy developers (i.e. "Meh... I cbf to change all the enemies on every difficulty mode. I'll just change the bombing mechanics for one and add suicide bullets to everything on another. I'm a genius!") but anyway, please stick to either one bombing style or the other, come up with something else entirely, or determine it based on something that doesn't affect the "validity" of a run, just please stop doing this.

It's better for your practice to make it like this
worse players can get the clear and still play against the harder patterns->they improve more than if they played against some extremely castrated patterns like in futari novice or something

also there are no attitudes here, many people still suck and no one has a problem with it(as long as they don't whine about being bad)

[GaijinPunch]

I'll fill you in on a hint since you're kinda new:

Okay, before I begin, I'm not going to tolerate any name-calling or rage of any form against me because of opinions expressed in this post.

You in da wrong forum.
...and hobby for that matter.

[heisenbergman]

You in da wrong internetz.

Fixed.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I can think of a few games where autobomb is selectable and not tied to difficulty (DDP Max, DFK BL, SDOJ, SSS).

I don't really have an issue with the idea of autobombs or a kind of shield that protects you from a hit for free (Batsugun Special's white glow, Cho Ren Sha's shield), and honestly I think autobombs where the entire stock gets depleted when you're hit are a good way to balance their use. Akai Katana is pretty cool in that it has autobombs any time you have zero extra lives left, and a hit depletes your whole stock. You can manually bomb twice for the same damage then sit on your very last bomb ever as an autobomb (and since this is on your last life, it's basically a do-or-die emergency shield).

My issue is with games where there's way too many autobombs available - DFK certainly gets a bit silly here, and Futari's Xbox 360 port's Novice works the same way with autobombs costing 1 bomb each for a weaker bomb (the iOS port wisely makes autobombs drain your entire bomb stock... but your counter goes to zero so the penalty is even harsher than death or normal bombing, your score is instantly screwed!). Games where autobombs are exactly the same as a normal bomb are the worst though, so there's no difference between autobombing or manually bombing (SSS, though in the options, autobombs are actually disabled if you reset settings to default, for some reason when you install the game the config file comes with them enabled).

[spadgy]

Playing devil's advocate (rather than dismissing your comments Pteriforever); this hypothetical 'easy' mode where the difficulty feels the same as 'medium' mode but there's autobombs…

Perhaps it's not for the core shmup community, or at least, perhaps it offers and alternative mode (over a patronisingly easy mode) for those just dabbling in shmups/casually interested in the genre/curious about the genre.

I can think of a couple of mates that are devoted gamers, but that are far from shmup devotees. They like the odd shmup, still, and such easy modes suit them.

It could be an attempt at the important task of welcoming more players – and types of players – to contemporary shmups.

[Stevas]

You in da wrong internetz.

Fixed.

That's okay, though - not to worry:

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2013/11/08/b ... g-tuesday/

[Sinful]

I say the more difficulty options the better (though I personally prefer more harder dififculty options then easy for higher replay value. I always think about replay value). And playing Easy shouldn't always be frowned upon. Cause I'd rather people play Easy then giving up on games cause they're too hard (Reading most bad rated game reviews says this is very true... like "I'm a give up" in the first five seconds of play, is how most of this reviews seem to me. How about) or even ruining a game through maybe way too much repetition of early levels only to always die at this one spot over and over. It's not hard to figure if a game is not fun for you cause it's too hard or repetative. Just that I wouldn't accept a game truely beaten, learned & understood until one eventually did beat it on at least normal difficulty. But if normal is taking too long to get the hang or too overwhelming, nothing is wrong with practicing on Easy.

This whole "you're not allowed to touch easy difficulty level, ever" rule is BS to me from what I've seen. To the point of people taking a delusional answer instead of the obvious one. ie. swicthing to the easier Player 2 side. Cause as far as I'm concerned, if it's easier then normal, it's an Easy difficulty setting. So same thing. So don't kid yourself. ... Or how about the use of Insane auto fire rate, a la Darius Gaiden? ... Or how about state saving? I say Easy difficulty is better then these last two options.


Though this can go the other way too. ie. to me beating Thunderforce 3 on Normal difficulty in not a legitimate 1cc. So "A+Start buttons" at the title screen to fix this.

[GaijinPunch]

You in da wrong internetz.

Fixed.

That's okay, though - not to worry:

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2013/11/08/b ... g-tuesday/

Haha.