Doing away with creditfeeding is a catch-22, on one hand you have creditfeeders bitching the game is too short and too easy, on the other hand you will have people bitching the game is too cheap by forcing you to replay the whole thing over and over and that it is too hard with a poor difficulty curve, especially if there's no Practice Mode or Level Select feature. And then it'd be tough to assume everyone will use the practice mode, as that is usually where most people draw the line between games being work rather than fun. Normally the game should be enjoyable at a base level for people to consider seriously playing for ranks and score, at least that's what I heard for what people got into Assault Android Cactus. I don't know why there's such an insistence on allowing continues either, as I'd be completely fine without it.Despatche wrote:Durandal's writeup depends too much on two weak threads: that it's difficult to cater to people, and that such games are a dime a dozen. Neither of these are true at all. The problem with the first is that the people in this community worship "arcade standards" way too much and cannot even imagine something like "a game that doesn't have credits". Most basic thing in the world, would absolutely save this genre if it was researched. Suggest that and people flip the fuck out because they only want to see the completely wrong implications of it.
Credits outside of arcades, and the continue culture we have because of it, have done more harm to this genre than anything else in the world... yet the people who are supposed to care, you guys, seem to think that this is okay.
Just look at Durandal's suggestion buried in about the middle, it is flawless proof of exactly what I'm talking about. Too many people end up with that exact suggestion, even. It perpetuates the problem and insults everyone else who wants to play your game at the same time.
You can always go for the go back to start option, but it will frustrate too many people if you don't define some kind of progress beyond score or skill gains, which is partially what allowed these roguelike games to thrive so much. Your run might suck, but you at least unlocked this item to be usable in future playthroughs. Alternatively, you can do with checkpoints and a high difficulty to pad the game length out with player deaths Cuphead-style, so even the common gamer has some goal to bruteforce his way towards.
I guess you can say who cares about casuals, but since we're talking about how high-production value arcade-style games are rather unviable in the current market and what prompted Housemarque to ditch it, ain't no shame to have a separate mode for people to whom the idea of restarting everything over is completely alien
time for a shitty joke that "shmups are for alphas" 
