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[Cagar]

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[Emuser]

Not enough games feature it, but difficulty selection would be great. It gets tiring to play through the first 15-20 minutes in the first loop repeatedly just to mess up once and lose your ura loop.

[Bananamatic]

difficulties

and that's why touhou is superior!

[dunpeal2064]

I like difficuly selection, especially when they actually change scoring between the modes (Mushi)

makes it feel like multiple games.

[Cuilan]

Deathsmiles-esque difficulty selection is objectively the best system (and also my personal favorite).

[Obscura]

One difficulty level is best because any development resource spent on the other difficulty levels is just less resources spent on the "intended" one, which means a less polished overall product.

Loops don't matter to me, I'm not good enough to ever see them anyways.

[disCorder]

One Difficulty, no Looping but if the right requirements are met then extra stage.

[Vyxx]

difficulties!

Yes.

and that's why touhou is superior!

and no.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

A shmup should be short and sweet imo, I hate replaying the first half of a shmup when i'm hitting a wall in the later stages. I can only imagine how frustrating having to play for 30 mins to get to the 2nd loop.

I'ld rather just have an extra stage than a 2nd loop.

Deathsmiles-esque difficulty selection is objectively the best system (and also my personal favorite).

I hated DS for that feature, thinking proper difficulty levels like Touhou does would be better. That said it might have been the suicide bullets that killed the concept for me. Maybe it would work if difficulty scaled properlly. CAVE isnt that good at scaling difficulty levels imo.

EDIT: Yeah I said it, Touhou does difficulty scaling better than CAVE. Get fapping Touhou fans

[ciox]

Stage select with longer, harder levels to pick from, if not then difficulty selection.

[iconoclast]

Loops suck, difficulty selection is superior in every way. I'm glad Cave finally realized this when they were making SDOJ.

[BarfHappy]

I actually like loops, it helps kiss good bye properly to your credit.
Would be even more fun if some things changed, like different m-bosses or cameo enemies from past games, so for short, nothing important but nice to see.
The Extra stage can do as well (like parodius).

[njiska]

I hate loops because it makes the game feel too long. I prefer a game like Mushi Futari with one loop and multiple difficulties/scoring systems.

[MathU]

I don't like loops in general, especially the kind that change almost nothing from the 1st loop and just make everything explode into extra bullets. They're an extremely lazy way to generate extra replayability, and it's really dickish to make the player wade through the game the first time (once they've already mastered it) just to get to the interesting and challenging part. The absolute worst thing is when developers put an extra final boss at the end of further loops, forcing anyone to put up with the loops if they want to feel like they've actually fully beaten the game. A well-implemented higher difficulty mode that is selectable is a better way to give players who have already mastered the vanilla game something more to challenge themselves with.

[Bananamatic]

Get fapping Touhou fans

[TrevHead (TVR)]

^lol

Deathsmiles-esque difficulty selection is objectively the best system (and also my personal favorite).

Does DS2 have the same system? How does it compare to DS1? Does it have suicide bullets?

[TrevHead (TVR)]

One difficulty level is best because any development resource spent on the other difficulty levels is just less resources spent on the "intended" one, which means a less polished overall product.

If ZUN can do it properlly in a year while pissed i'm sure a dev team like CAVE can

[Obscura]

Zun has yet to make a game half as good as DDP, DOJ, or Ketsui IMO. The only shmup I've played that has difficulty levels that's anywhere near as good as DOJ or Ketsui is Crimzon Clover, and that took, what, five years?

[Giest118]

Zun has yet to make a game half as good as DDP, DOJ, or Ketsui IMO. The only shmup I've played that has difficulty levels that's anywhere near as good as DOJ or Ketsui is Crimzon Clover, and that took, what, five years?

The claim was that Zun does DIFFICULTY SCALING better than Cave does, not that his games are better or more fun.

And Zun DOES do difficulty scaling better than Cave does. Cave's novice modes are a ridiculously huge gap from their arcade modes, whereas Touhou's difficulty modes scale in a more logical way; if you can take on Normal, you will probably have a good or at least not-entirely-miserable run of Hard, for example.

[Obscura]

Difficulty scaling itself leads to worse games though, because you've got to split focus between 3 or 4 different "modes".

I imagine Zun's games would be a lot better if he'd just make one difficulty level, not 4.

[Giest118]

Difficulty scaling itself leads to worse games though, because you've got to split focus between 3 or 4 different "modes".

I imagine Zun's games would be a lot better if he'd just make one difficulty level, not 4.

This would be totally an amazing counterargument if I said that Zun's games were better.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

They could make a solid well ballanced and CAVE hard game then tweak the bullet patterns for easier difficulties. This is pretty much what they already do with novice modes anyway. While Futari and Crimson clover are great games that isnt true difficulty scaling, its 3 modes packed into one.

Loops suck, difficulty selection is superior in every way. I'm glad Cave finally realized this when they were making SDOJ.

Care to tell us how this works, I havn't been keeping up with the SDOJ thread

EDIT If CAVE spent the extra effort into scaling their difficulties, their games would be more popular and many of us 1CCers would be more inclined to play for score because we would get the 1CC out of the way. More money for CAVE means better prodution values imo

[Obscura]

Please read what TrevHead quoted.

He was responding to my argument that a game with multiple difficulty levels cannot be as polished by using Touhou as an example.

EDIT, since TrevHead posted while I did:
That time they spend editing the bullet patterns for easier difficulties would be better spent polishing the one difficulty level. If CAVE works like any other software developer in the world (other than Valve), their release date is roughly "set in stone" from the beginning, so it's not like they can go back after they're "done" with polishing the "normal" mode to edit it; any time spent creating the easy mode is time taken away from the normal mode.

[Bananamatic]

the "easy" modes are just normal ones with huge and seemingly random gaps in patterns so it's probably just a lazy edit

we are talking about difficulties like mushi's or SDOJ's

[Obscura]

I guarantee you the Mushis would be better if they had only one mode and CAVE put all of their resources for the game into making that one mode as good as they could, instead of having 3 modes splitting the resources.

[Giest118]

Please read what TrevHead quoted.

He was responding to my argument that a game with multiple difficulty levels cannot be as polished by using Touhou as an example.

EDIT, since TrevHead posted while I did:
That time they spend editing the bullet patterns for easier difficulties would be better spent polishing the one difficulty level. If CAVE works like any other software developer in the world (other than Valve), their release date is roughly "set in stone" from the beginning, so it's not like they can go back after they're "done" with polishing the "normal" mode to edit it; any time spent creating the easy mode is time taken away from the normal mode.

You're kind of assuming that throwing an infinite amount of polish at something will make it infinitely good. There is a point at which the difference stops being appreciable, even if it's difficult to reach. If a dev team does reach that point though, what do you suggest they do with the extra time before release?

[Obscura]

More playtesting. I have yet to see a released software product where bugs couldn't be found months after release.

If it's really *that* perfect, then start the next project early and stop sinking money into the finished one.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

the "easy" modes are just normal ones with huge and seemingly random gaps in patterns so it's probably just a lazy edit

we are talking about difficulties like mushi's or SDOJ's

Ah yeah Futari Original and Ultra is proper difficulty scaling, Maniac is a different mode.

However I still think that and the novice modes are pretty much the same thing. IIRC Touhou 8 and 10 easy and normal difficulties use similar patterns like a Cave normal and novice mode scales, while TH hard and impossible uses different bullet patterns to easy and normal. Not as big a change as Futari original to ultra but similar in concept

I guarantee you the Mushis would be better if they had only one mode and CAVE put all of their resources for the game into making that one mode as good as they could, instead of having 3 modes splitting the resources.

Maybe, but if the game is more popular for better difficulty scaling it would eventually pay for itself.

[Macho De Luxe]

Difficulty settings are dumb in games. Why would you ever pick anything other than the easiest option? It's the obvious best strategic choice for beating the game.

[Bananamatic]

Difficulty settings are dumb in games. Why would you ever pick anything other than the easiest option? It's the obvious best strategic choice for beating the game.

and this is why embodiment of scarlet devil is horrible