Periodic Touhou Tournament (Discussion Thread)!

[ark]

I'd be more interested in a no vertical SA challenge, actually. I've tried it before, and Okuu makes it ridiculous. Ridiculously awesome, that is.

Have you tried the no leftward movement thing? Was it any fun? It sounds pretty annoying actually.

[ARF]

I'd be more interested in a no vertical SA challenge, actually. I've tried it before, and Okuu makes it ridiculous. Ridiculously awesome, that is.

Have you tried the no leftward movement thing? Was it any fun? It sounds pretty annoying actually.

It's fun and annoying, I've tried all stages on Normal and some others, the strategy part is really fun, like in Nest of Stinging Insects where you have to time your movements to avoid the dense lasers at the edge of the screen and spleen eater which doesn't quite get easy unlike in the no vert challenge. Also Parsee on Lunatic is awesome no leftward, but Okuu felt impossible for me on Normal but with some planning it should probably be possible to 1cc.

The annoying part comes when you are positioned at the center of the screen and the boss moves to the left, forcing you have to move to the right and gap over while dodging whatever bullets are scattered across the screen. And it keeps happening!

[Sapz]

I guess the legendary 4x TOUHOU TOURNAMENT COMBO will have to try again some other time.

Anyway, experiment this week - given how the competition is so spread out most of the time and many difficulties are relatively ignored, we're having only one difficulty per challenge this week. Your thoughts after the week (or now I guess!) would be appreciated. :V

[I have no name]

I guess the legendary 4x TOUHOU TOURNAMENT COMBO will have to try again some other time.

>Sapz: Attempt the legendary 4x TOUHOU TOURNAMENT COMBO
   You attempt to and you fail.  It's simply too awesome and legendary for mere mortals to succesfully complete.

I've been reading too much Homestuck lately  :V
One difficulty per challenge, eh?
I'll give the special challenge a go I guess, it's an excuse to try to take down that extra without bombing.  I'll probably not make it past Froggy, if I even get that far, but we shall see.

[XephyrEnigma]

One difficulty per challenge? That would... have to be experimented with a little, because if it's what I'm thinking it is, it could turn down potential competitors, considering one week's difficulty would be above what they're used to. Granted, that last statement alone can also be a counterargument, considering people ideally should play above what they generally do if they want to get better, the idea doesn't exactly lend itself to competition well.

[Erppo]

...the idea doesn't exactly lend itself to competition well.

I have to disagree with that. With multiple difficulties, you will usually see people just playing their normally preferred one, since one week is a really short time to put effort into four different modes in two categories. Since there isn't any way to compare scores between difficulties, you will just end up with a bunch of scattered scores. When picking a single common difficulty, you have everyone competing in the same category so there will be a lot more competition.

Of course, I'm still probably not participating in this so feel free to ignore all this. Just my personal opinion on short competitions like this.

[Zengeku]

I like the idea of playing on a fixed difficulty for pretty much the same reasons that Erppo posted right above. I hope it won't deter some people from playing simply because they don't feel ready for Hard mode or something like that. Someone playing easy mode and having trouble with Normal could really benefit from playing Hard mode. He wouldn't get that far but he would almost certainly improve from it.

[I have no name]

One more thing, I don't really like playing for score, so when I see the special challenge is based on score, it kind of feels like an extension of the regular scoring challenge with some random condition applied.  I'd much prefer it was "survive" rather than "score", with score being used to break ties (between clears, same spot fails, etc.) only on the special challenge.
If people want the special to be score that's fine, but I feel that if so, there should be 3 challenges: score, survival and restricted score.  Of course, this is only realistic if the challenges stay on specific difficulties.

I suppose MoF has the scoring tied to survival the most, but there's no way I can milk the stage for faith with ReimuB, which naturally dissuades me from posting a score I know is pathetic.  If it was survival based, I'd submit a clear regardless of score because I'd be proud of my meeting the challenge (no bomb clear), as opposed to "yay, I cleared, that run sucked score-wise, I'm not submitting".

</rant about not enjoying score-running and preferring survival challenges>

[Archin]

I'd much prefer it was "survive" rather than "score", with score being used to break ties (between clears, same spot fails, etc.) only on the special challenge.
If people want the special to be score that's fine, but I feel that if so, there should be 3 challenges: score, survival and restricted score.  Of course, this is only realistic if the challenges stay on specific difficulties.

I actually like this idea, since I'm still learning new things. Having a survival based challenge where you would get points on clears, ending lives and bombs would be nice. More players would be able to submit IMO since you won't have to worry about killing yourself to get a better score. Plus players still trying to get their first 1cc in the game could watch them and see how Pros tackle the challenges before them. I like finding replays and trying to score with them but now most replays especially SA have the player sacrificing themselves to get a better score. I need those lives and bombs to survive and can't follow what they are doing. A lot of times I am discouraged about posting cause I might only have a 100mil score and everyone else has 800+ mil score.

[Zengeku]

I suppose MoF has the scoring tied to survival the most, but there's no way I can milk the stage for faith with ReimuB, which naturally dissuades me from posting a score I know is pathetic.

Aww, don't be like that. Just perform the best you can and post your score even if it is pathetic. Surely you are not the only one who wouldn't be able to score well so even if your score isn't good, you can still compare it to other players similar to yourself.

[Sapz]

Interesting thoughts.

I'm somewhat opposed to the idea of a straight survival 'challenge'. The point of the scoring challenge in the first place was (aside from an excellent chance for competition) to get people interested in scoring in the first place, and create a way of getting people to compete actively with each other. The point of the special challenge, IMO, is to have something out of the ordinary - meaning a restriction, a single stage challenge, or some kind of modification to the game with either scoring or survival being the focus depending on the challenge's nature - people occasionally do challenges like these, but usually it's just one guy, so it's interesting to see actual competition for these strange ways of playing. A survival challenge, I feel, wouldn't really have a benefit like these two - people play for survival all the time outside these threads anyway. :V

Aside from that, pure survival requires the player to do nothing out of the ordinary and take as few risks as they can. There's nothing wrong with play like this if you want to clear a game, of course, but it doesn't make for very exciting or interesting competition - it'd be a case of 'play as tamely as you can manage and don't make errors for half an hour', especially for some of the more experienced players/lower difficulties.

Archin: Don't worry about it - just submit the best you can manage for the time being. You can't expect to compete on the same level as the veterans straight off the bat, but give it time and you'll be up there soon enough. Of course, being able to survive in the first place helps a lot with performing advanced techniques, but by the same token a survival-oriented clear is still usually going to have a way higher score than a score-centric game over halfway through the game. As your survival capabilities improve, your scoring capabilities should do likewise.

[Thanuris]

In MoF you can get a pretty sweet score just by survival alone, so i fail to see how is that a problem (just NMNB Extra should score 800m and more)

i'll give the challenges a shot later, i have no idea how to score in EoSD so this will be an enriching experience

EDIT:Made an extra run and died three times because i'm dumb  :V (two times on the stage and one at red frog)

[Vanhaomena]

I support the change, most of the time some sections were left completely or almost untouched. This format encourages competition a lot better, and winning because you're the only one who can be bothered to try is worse than losing if you ask me :V.
Picking the "best" difficulty for non-Extra challenges might be a problem, perhaps the difficulties for each challenge should be far from each other so it's more likely for everyone to find at least one challenge they're comfortable with?

[Dr.Strafe]

Anyway, experiment this week - given how the competition is so spread out most of the time and many difficulties are relatively ignored, we're having only one difficulty per challenge this week. Your thoughts after the week (or now I guess!) would be appreciated. :V

Honestly, I don't think that this will encourage competition from the lesser-skilled players. It gives them even more of a reason to avoid competing, as there's no real chance that they have to win against the more veteran players. I believe that one of the reasons participation has declined over the months is that the Expert players have dominated every difficulty level, instead of keeping the competition to players of their same expertise.

Yes, one could argue that this can help to encourage the player to try harder and break out of their "comfort zone", but consider this: Imagine a lesser-skilled player grinding away all week, trying to 1cc Easy or Normal. They finally manage to complete it, and have obtained a high score worthy enough to take first place. Now, one of the Expert players comes along and effortlessly quadruples their score. All that hard work was for nothing, and the lesser-skilled player is less likely to compete next time.

I think that instead of raising the bar for the lesser-skilled player (still with no chance of winning at all), we should have people declare which difficulty they wish to compete in for the challenge. The difficulty they pick is the one they stay with until the end. Extra is a free-for-all. Yes, the brackets will be smaller, but I think people will actually be more willing to compete if they actually have a chance at winning themselves. Even if it is EASY MODO. Hopefully in time, more people will be encouraged to participate if they know they will be competing against similarly skilled players.

I personally have nothing but respect for the Expert players. You guys show tremendous skill at the game, and I tip my hat to you all. But I think that, across all difficulties, it would be nice to see other players take first place rather than the players that can easily crush Lunatic Mode. Just my thoughts.

[Vanhaomena]

I think that instead of raising the bar for the lesser-skilled player (still with no chance of winning at all), we should have people declare which difficulty they wish to compete in for the challenge. The difficulty they pick is the one they stay with until the end. Extra is a free-for-all. Yes, the brackets will be smaller, but I think people will actually be more willing to compete if they actually have a chance at winning themselves. Even if it is EASY MODO. Hopefully in time, more people will be encouraged to participate if they know they will be competing against similarly skilled players.

I propose a compromise: Immortal tier (Either Hard or Lunatic, depends on the week) and Mortal tier (Easy or Normal, same thing), otherwise go with your idea that you must stick to one tier only. If four difficulty modes means that some of them are ignored (Hard modes rarely had many submissions, if you must stick to one they'd have none since it's too hard for newbies and not lunatic enough for lunatics) and a single one is discouraging for newbies, how about two?

[Zengeku]

All that hard work was for nothing, and the lesser-skilled player is less likely to compete next time.

Its not like its wasted effort. Even if they don't win, even if they never had a chance to win, they will still have gotten something out of it. Personal satisfaction from performing things they couldn't before, beating old records perhabs and also benefitting from the higher difficulty. It doesn't have to be all about winning. Doing your best to achieve that is fine of course but even if you can't, simply doing your best and raise as high a score as you possibly can is more than sufficient. There is still plenty of room for competion with people of equal skill levels.

Imagine if you were to submit a score for Extra this week with 400M points and then some other person posts one with 425, then you could still compete with him even if you couldn't match up to the 700M+ NMNB players.

Also, it can often be motivational to see just how much better you can become at the game and you can attempt to see how close to the top score you can get.

[Byaaakuren]

I like having these scoring challenges. I'm not great in scoring, but I participate in them to improve myself into doing something other than sit at the bottom and avoid bullets entirely instead of streaming them to get as much graze as possible. Also, players can learn by watching the replays submitted.

My first no-focus run came from one of these challenges. Never knew how much fun it was XD

[Archin]

I think that instead of raising the bar for the lesser-skilled player (still with no chance of winning at all), we should have people declare which difficulty they wish to compete in for the challenge. The difficulty they pick is the one they stay with until the end.

I do believe Heartbeam mentioned in another thread (Can't remember what it was.) that other forums will place players in the highest difficulty the player submits. This would separate veterans from the lesser players. Now if someone put up a score for a Lunatic and their Hard score was better, you could decide to place them in Hard since they had a higher score. Only problem it would make it difficult for the person controlling the tournament to sift through pages of submissions to figure out their best score.

Archin: Don't worry about it - just submit the best you can manage for the time being. You can't expect to compete on the same level as the veterans straight off the bat, but give it time and you'll be up there soon enough. Of course, being able to survive in the first place helps a lot with performing advanced techniques, but by the same token a survival-oriented clear is still usually going to have a way higher score than a score-centric game over halfway through the game. As your survival capabilities improve, your scoring capabilities should do likewise.

I know. I just keep my scores to myself and keep competing against my own scores until I'm close to the same level.

[Sapz]

Personally, I strongly dislike the idea of having multiple difficulties and only allowing a player to submit for one of them; firstly, it'll create an even worse case of the original problem of some difficulties getting neglected, and secondly I find the idea of splitting people purely for the sake of giving less skilled players #1 spots would cheapen them immensely. It's a #1 spot for a reason - the guy who gets it is the guy who beats everyone else, and so it's something to work hard for in the week on top of having worked for a long time to gain overall skill, a marker saying 'this guy beat everyone else at this'. I think we'd often get only a very small amount of submissions for the easier difficulties, regardless - even in the old format, many of the lower difficulty scores were made by experienced players, so it's more likely to have the effect of isolating people from the actual competition, IMO.

Two difficulties per challenge is a little more realistic sounding, but it still seems counter to the point of this new approach. As Zengeku pointed out, competition within the rankings even aside from #1 is a lot of fun, guys. There are people of a lot of different levels playing, so you'll find some realistic competition. At any rate, I'd like to see how this week's turns out before deciding on anything.

Despite any criticism I may throw out I really appreciate the input, keep it coming people. :V

[Chaotic Phoenixma]

Hard mode ensures I'm not even bothering with that challenge.

That MoF challenge though, maybe I'll perfect Suwako this week.

[Dr.Strafe]

Despite any criticism I may throw out I really appreciate the input, keep it coming people. :V

That's fine. It's your tournament, after all. :V I was just voicing my theory as to why participation has declined over time.

[ark]

I'm not sure about what I think of reducing the number of categories in the tournament. Maybe I'll formulate an opinion later.

In the meantime, this special challenge looks excellent. I'm going to aim for 900M, although that might be a little optimistic. Not really sure at this point.

[Archin]

Despite any criticism I may throw out I really appreciate the input, keep it coming people. :V

Not trying to change the way things are, just giving Opinions and Ideas. The way things are now is fine, its giving me a reason to keep playing and I have improved from this as well. If I get tired of the game I'm trying for a 1cc I can always try what the tournament is doing.

[Zengeku]

Posted my score in MoF Extra. That was a really damn good run for me. No miss, no bombs and a way higher score than my initial perfect run. I still don't have a clue about how to do the first survival card but thankfully my improvisation was enough to get me a capture. This can of course be improved since there were quite some blunders on the stage portion as well as me never really getting the timing down on the 2nd midboss card to do it strictly vertical.

As for EoSD, I'll just skip that one since I can't play it without lag (serious lag issues at that - for some reason. I blame bad programming since the rest of the series works just fine with only TD providing a few dips in framerate at times). I wouldn't have minded attempting a bit of scoring in it since its just Hard mode though.

[shadowbringer]

posting my opinion on the general decreasing interest in participation..

regarding the placement:

while it may be discouraging and/or intimidating for one to have your score beaten by a lot of people, think of it as an opportunity to test, measure your current skill level, against yourself. Either try to find where your current "wall" is, or try to overcome your current limitations to see where your current abilities can take you to, if you use them to your current best potential... it's up to you.

Then, when you look back to the challenge, later, after having played more shmups and had acquired more experience and have more abilities to transfer to the game, watch how you've progressed! Don't push yourself for improvements too hard, though, progress rhythm isn't something that's entirely controllable. Play against yourself, primarily.

Remember: the people who can score high don't laugh at those who can't; they've learned to respect the effort and perseverance of other players, like themselves. (personally, shmups forum's annual STG Tournaments are a rare opportunity for me to appreciate a lot of people trying to do their best, and that's a very.. beautiful thing to behold and take part of)

regarding scoreplay:

for people who're not used to playing for score, doing so may sound as loading yourself with additional work, making survival more difficult. For some, it may also feel more restricting (for example, if you trade bombs or even lives for a better score, or have to risk yourself more). For said people, when looking at higher scores on the highscore tables, they may feel demotivated.

My words, regarding this feeling, is: don't treat the bi-weekly tournaments as your last, or only chance to try to test yourself or compete against others. The games weren't made to be enjoyed specifically for bi-weekly tournaments such as these, so you still have a lot of opportunities to revisit said games, as long as you like them, in your own pace. Maybe you'll even get to appreciate the game more, at a point where memorization becomes less of a problem, and thus you'll be motivated again


regarding the bi-weekly tournaments themselves:

please keep them going, Sapz, you (and whoever's helping you) have been doing an awesome work, and I'm very grateful, even if I skip some weeks.

Some people here have said that they enjoy survival more, let's hear from other people what characteristics they also enjoy!
Ideas for the next TH Special tournament:
UFO base point value ranking? (besides grazing, this would require people to get UFO tokens while an UFO is active, maybe rainbow UFOs for more UFOs, instead of blue/red UFOs)
TD no bombs (but Hypers on)?

[Sapz]

A change in how these are going to be run - both this and the SotW are now going to run on two week cycles rather than one week, starting with this week's SotW. The aim here is to give people a better chance at getting a good score in each, and to make it a little easier for people to participate in both if they want, since from what I've heard it's currently pretty damn hard to do both. So, this means the next Touhou Tournament's going to be in two weeks. Sorry about the delays if you were anticipating it sooner, but hopefully it'll pay off when the time comes. :V

[Vanhaomena]

Does this change take effect in the week 20 challenge? If yes, prepare yourself, RLRBS. Aizo is outside my reach, I suppose :V

[Sapz]

Not this time unfortunately, since I already set the deadline as today and locked the thread. :V Week 21 will be the first one with the new timeframe, aside from SotW.

[Zil]

I've not posted here before, but if my input is welcome, I guess I'll jump in. I think the single difficulty thing was much more interesting that having all of them at once. I felt much more like a "competition," rather than a big list of scores scattered across difficulties. I think I enjoyed this one more than any other, despite getting my scores crushed tragically, just because there was a single thing to focus and improve on. Increasing the time span is another good idea IMO. One week feels too short to really get into it.
This is unrelated to the tournaments, but for those general high score threads, we just post the score there right, with no kind of fancy business? I ask because I posted a score in Mystic Square and I don't think it ever got added.
Anyway, what I've seen of these tournaments has been pretty cool, so definitely keep them going!

[Naut]

How about just condensing all the difficulties in to one scoreboard for the scoring challenges? I think it would work well, and it wouldn't just be the lunatic difficulties taking #1 every time either, we've had a couple weeks where hard mode scores were higher. It also allows everybody to compete together, but still on their own difficulty.

"Get the highest score possible by any means necessary!"