14th Annual Top 25 Pre-Discussion Thread (+ Poll)

[Some-Mist]

I've never voted in these because I can't in good conscience say that I have 1cc'ed enough shooters to pick out 25 of them as being clearly better than anything else. I guess I may be taking the individual polls a bit too seriously on that account though, which is why it's a collaborative effort.

Then again, there are several games that I've never 1cc'ed and still consider among the best, but I don't really feel like I can objectively express my opinion on them when I haven't seen all they have to offer. (for example, I really love Progear, but I know a lot of people are completely put off by the second loop)

I've said in the past that I only consider individual lists worth looking at. Part of this is because I doubt the genre knowledge of many participants, a doubt this thread reinforces. There've been so many great shooters made, the idea that you could run out after a mere fifteen and need to resort to filler is laughable.

Another part is that every year, there are votes whose purpose is baldly just to boost pet games in the aggregate list. Replacing user-manipulated weighting with a universal method would probably cut down on strategic voting and make the results a little more respectable.

Concerning second loops, don't feel compelled not to vote over that. I have little interest in playing through the same shooter multiple times in one sitting myself, so my list will be different than the list of someone who loves looping. The objective strengths of a work are filtered by personal taste, which is part of what makes the personal rankings put together by knowledgeable players interesting.

This is different than having tunnel vision and only playing specific kinds of game. My vote from nine or so years ago was full of R-Type, and the aggregate list would only have been improved if such an ignorant contribution had been thrown out. But if you've shmuped broadly, shmuped deeply, and shmuped passonately, then I'd be happy to read your list.

maybe people have different criteria for what counts as a true gem? I'm not even sure I can list 25 games I love outside of the genre and I've undoubtedly played 100s & sunk significant time into much more than 25. In world of warcraft, time listed on my mage after the 2nd expansion was 128 days played (embarrassing) and I wouldn't list it in my top 25 of all time. I spent an insane amount of time with ikaruga but it's definitely not in my list. I try to list those games that I can't put down and have some desire to set higher scores.

actually, a lot of the games that fall after my top 15 I've either 1CCed or posted a score on here. But I definitely feel much much more strongly about... say... progear (that I've been playing on/off since 2012 working on a new score/goal) or working on the 2nd loop of muchi muchi pork than I do battle bakraid..which is still a fun clear when I'm taking a break from practicing the games I love to sink time into. If the list size could be reduced, I'd post a list exclusive to those games instead of putting ones I like more than the rest (filler by your definition).

edit: even though it's the point of the discussion thread it'd be nice to have people write descriptions for each game they list in the voting thread. unfortunately it would scare some individuals away since not everyone would want to do it, but it would solve the issue of doubting "genre knowledge" for some users. For instance, I'd be nice to see why you'd rank progear and batsugun at the bottom of your list slightly beating einhander. biased me would say that progear is so much fun to play for score which is why I rank it so high. but then I see dodonpachi daioujou at the top of your list and I have my doubts that yours is based on fun scoring systems. some insight would be nice, but it's not a major concern on my end.

[Sumez]

I like the idea but feel like that would derail the voting thread into a discussion thread mirroring those already seen repeated throughout the history of the forum.
Of course, I too am interested in knowing why anyone would find DOJ's scoring system more fun than Progear's, but that's really a discussion for another thread. :9

[CStarFlare]

This is different than having tunnel vision and only playing specific kinds of game. My vote from nine or so years ago was full of R-Type, and the aggregate list would only have been improved if such an ignorant contribution had been thrown out. But if you've shmuped broadly, shmuped deeply, and shmuped passonately, then I'd be happy to read your list.

As I expect you were referencing my post as laughable, I'll poke in here and just say that I've dug pretty deep into the genre - to the point of spending hours tracking down dumps of obscure shmups for Japanese computers that no one cares about. I haven't meticulously kept statistics, but I've got clears in 50 or more games and played well over a hundred and I don't have more than a moderately good remark for more than 10% of them. It's a genre with a wide selection of OK games that will amuse you if this is your thing, but games I would genuinely say I hold in high esteem are relatively few and far between. It's also a genre with a variety of subgenera, some of which I don't care for - and I don't care what people say about R-Type, my top # shumps list doesn't have any more room for it than my top # albums has a spot for Marvin Gaye.

I mean, it's an internet list anyway. We're in WatchMojo territory. The idea of taking all this seriously is laughable.

[Some-Mist]

I like the idea but feel like that would derail the voting thread into a discussion thread mirroring those already seen repeated throughout the history of the forum.
Of course, I too am interested in knowing why anyone would find DOJ's scoring system more fun than Progear's, but that's really a discussion for another thread. :9

I mean yeah, but if you limit it to only rankings list with descriptions without additional comments allowed it'd be nice.

But the current format is fine.. even including keeping it at 25 votes. I just look at games on my list like

Spoiler

psyvariar 2, one of the first games I realized that scoring potential leads to extra levels and spending hours upon hours a day trying to get gluon and having an absolute blast clearing it. It was one of the main games that really got me interested in scoring in shmups. But LAST year... clearing mecha ritz over and over again was one of my addictions and I haven't touched psyvariar in a long time. Does it matter that I swap the two? not really because both are going to be ranked lower end on my list, probably not part of the popular vote, take more time for nifty to weed out, and I've been spending years on/off the other games I'm still playing in my top 10-15. If I have the capacity to break past those 10-15, I'd be much more content working on the bottom end of my list. But chasing scores is an addiction. Year 2020: what are you working on now Some-Mist? "I'm still trying to catch up to STG on the progear leaderboards and I'm still OUTRAGEOUSLY FAR behind"

[chum]

what does "significant play time" or "Being experienced" even mean to you? WTF? There's noone on this board that fits this criteria you set up.

You think I established the criteria? Being "widely and deeply experienced" has been part of it for years. There are plenty of posters who meet (and surpass) them, which is why the shooter knowledge displayed on this forum is so far beyond what you see on others.

the "wide and deep experience" is elaborated on in that very post you linked. Here's what it says.

So what constitutes "widely and deeply experienced"? That's impossible to truly quantify, but as a general guideline: voters should be familiar with 50% or more of the games on previous years' Top 25 lists and Honorable Mention lists combined.

And what constitutes "familiar?" Basically, having played it enough to understand the gameplay mechanisms that make it unique, fun, historically important, and/or any number of other things you might take as helping define "top."

Nowhere does it say you need to be more than "familiar". You can reach said familiarity without even having played the game. So strict interpretation of the rules means basically you just need to play 1 formality credit of said game and then you can vote for it as long as you have some surface level knowledge about it. "Significant playtime" my ass. Again, you set up some dumb criteria in your earlier post and I'm telling you off because nobody would be able to vote. The only good way to go about this is to not be so serious and limiting about it and just let people list the 25 games they like the most regarldess of how good or experienced they are, because the level of "familiarity" required is completely useless anyway.

[Bydobasher]

My point is that my #16-35 are all roughly equal; if I'm limited to 25 I'd have to select ten of those but not the other ten, and that decision is largely arbitrary for me. If I'm allowed to cut it off at 15 choices I'd just do that instead.

Right, I understand. I do exactly the same thing! I don't mind the 25 though, even if the bottom of my list is quasi-arbitrary; we've been doing it well over a decade now -- even going back to the old forums before this one -- so I prefer 25 even if only for the sake of tradition.

[copy-paster]

The problem with 15 poll is half of the voting results are filled by "certain" developer games.

[evil_ash_xero]

Maybe. I don't want to have to put THAT much thought into my lists. So, a bit less is good for me.

I still don't like the numbers system. It's just irritating as fuck. I think it also fudges with the results more than it should.

[Shepardus]

If you got rid of the weighting, people would complain (rightfully so, if you ask me) that their vote doesn't accurately represent the different degrees to which they like the games on their list. This could be somewhat remedied by allowing shorter lists - if someone likes their top few way more than the rest of the 25, then they should just vote for those few and leave out the rest. People would still want to recognize those other games that aren't quite in their very favorites, though.

[borislaw]

Its February now. When can we start voting? Can't wait to cast my ballot, this will be my first year, already have my number 1 picked out.

Just to offer my 2 cents--I am against weighting votes. Its difficult enough just to pick out 25 games and put them in order. Do weighted votes actually reflect how highly a person regards a certain game compared to another? I would say it is more a reflection of where they'd like to see it on the final list. If they really want to push the game up the list, they weight it higher. This just doesn't seem like the right way to be voting.

But if weighted is what you decide upon, I will still be fine with that and I will still gladly cast my ballot. Can't wait to see the rules. I appreciate the time you spend putting this together. I hope this years results spark lots of debate and open lots of eyes to the great games of the genre.

[Shepardus]

Do weighted votes actually reflect how highly a person regards a certain game compared to another? I would say it is more a reflection of where they'd like to see it on the final list.

How are those not the same thing? If I like a game a lot more than others, of course I'd think it deserves a higher place on the list and I'd vote accordingly. I would argue that not only is that not the "wrong" way to vote, but it's the only right way.

The decision to weight or not to weight depends on what sort of info you want to get from the final results. Do people want to know about games many people like a little, or games fewer people are really enthusiastic about?

[Nifty]

Its February now. When can we start voting? Can't wait to cast my ballot, this will be my first year, already have my number 1 picked out.

No probably still another couple weeks yet sorry.


One thing I was going to be watching concerning smaller lists this year was the expected effect on voter turnout. The issue would only be exacerbated if there were no newly-interested voters to replace the game entries lost by others shrinking theirs. Fortunately the poll has been evening up as it's gone on which is a big plus.

[reckon luck]

As someone just getting back into the genre, I like the large lists (25+honorables) because they give me a huge number of titles to check out.

I won't be voting though, (an uninformed list won't help anyone) so my opinion doesn't really matter.

[system11]

to be honest, the more I think about it the more it seems like 10 choices might be better, with the option of having up to 15 honorable mentions. That should please everybody, no?

At first, I wasn't really feeling the idea of lowering to 15, but this is a great idea. Looking at my own list, I indeed only feel particularly strong about the first 10, and I highly doubt a significant amount of other people feel strongly about their order after 10. So I would second this idea.

This is how I feel about it now. The only slight problem is it will harm games everyone 'kind of likes' in favour of games a smaller number of people really like. It'll probably look /even more/ Cave centric too.

[Bydobasher]

to be honest, the more I think about it the more it seems like 10 choices might be better, with the option of having up to 15 honorable mentions. That should please everybody, no?

At first, I wasn't really feeling the idea of lowering to 15, but this is a great idea. Looking at my own list, I indeed only feel particularly strong about the first 10, and I highly doubt a significant amount of other people feel strongly about their order after 10. So I would second this idea.

This is how I feel about it now. The only slight problem is it will harm games everyone 'kind of likes' in favour of games a smaller number of people really like. It'll probably look /even more/ Cave centric too.

And this is why I'm even more in favour of maintaining the 25. In some sense many of us feel forced to vote for 25 and I think that's a good thing. It makes you look a bit wider than you might otherwise, and I think the games that show up in the 15-25 range of some folks' lists are often really interesting.

25 games, no more nor less! (Honourable mentions excepted....)