VGS NES Weekly Contest - Gradius 2

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

16 hours ago, docile tapeworm said:

ok 1st. im not trying to look out for me here. ive been in plenty of tournaments to know i would have to get a perfect trio of games tailored to fit my strengths in order to even have a chance at winning the crown.

what i was saying was thats how it seems the cut off for the tournament is decided. if your around the top 15 at the end and have semi regularly played and have podiumed a couple times you get in. which admittedly i have no issaue with because i do think thats a strong enough showing. 

but at the same time if, for example, i win two weeks in the reg season and bert doesnt. hell ya i should have a shot at upsetting him in the tourney. regardless if i only total, what i believe should be a min of 50 reg season points with a win. i actually won a reg season contest bert didnt. so imo, in that senerio, bert is the one getting into the tourney weaker. guy didnt even win and got in.

i dont know if you read what i said to richardhead but it is basicly the same as what you said. it doesnt promote the best players winning. someone who gets lucky with a game in there wheelhouse can absolutely upset a better player. its an advantage for underdogs.

and that $100 offer is silly. i would be relentless if i had time for it. you do have the time and still dont have the marbles to grind. and if you tried you would be burnt halfway through and give up because its too hard. ive only recently, within the last two seasons gotten good enough and seasoned enough, as far as not playing every single game for the first time (besides the 10-15 i had as a kid) to be able to casually play and finish near the top in any single week. after the first week you knew that. i broke you week one. since then you said "its not worth the effort during the reg season to try and out grind you". well lil buddy im a dewalt your a hart.

 

I get what you're saying, but the problem with your whole "you don't grind out wins" and thinking wins are worth more than points is that they are not.  The way this season is set up you only get one more point for first than second.  Why would anyone put in massive effort for that week after week?  I put up my Gradius II score on Monday and I still got fourth.  Don't you get it? The system is flawed.

In pretty much any league of anything I've ever seen, they have clearly delineated at the start of the season what you need to do to get in the playoffs, or where the cutoff is.  But for some reason this tourney doesn't.  If the first post said, "to get in the playoffs you need to do X and/or Y," and then Y was like get at least two weekly wins, then that would make wins important.  But as it is, they are meaningless under the current setup.  We both have shit to do in our real lives, why do you think I'm supposed to grind out wins every week to prove myself, but you don't?  Being at the top of the leaderboard isn't good enough?  Then why are we keeping score??????

Edited August 31, 2021 by Dr. Morbis

[Murray | 2,447]

Lol, skinny and morbis gettin’ into er 

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

3 hours ago, Murray said:

Lol, skinny and morbis gettin’ into er 

I'm the guy in the blue who does that bad-ass backwards kick!

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

I'm with @Dr. Morbis.  The criteria to get in should either be straight points, or the criteria should be posted at the beginning of the season.  If wins matter, or anything else for that matter, it should be spelled out early on so that every competitor is on the same page.  That said, do the genre leaderboards matter for anything or are they just posted for fun?

[Sumez | 2,934]

19 hours ago, mbd39 said:

Stage 7 looks tough with that fast moving green section. Maybe it's easier than it looks.

It's probably the easiest part of the stage. Those speed stages are usually pretty hard in most Gradius games, but in this one specifically, it's very very simple if you just take the upper route. I wanted to record a 1-life-clear of the game, but unfortunately my laptop broke down before I could do it. I did get this video though, where I died immediately before the final "boss". You can see how I handle the speed section at 31:22. This is only the second time I played it, but I kept the same approach on subsequent runs:

Most gimmicky or setpiece oriented challenges in Gradius games can be practiced quite easily though, and I think for almost all of them, the consistently hardest part are the seas of bullet spray when going through tight corridors, and it would be the same for this game if the shield wasn't so ridiculously overpowered. You can take like 5 or so direct hits before losing it, which should probably leave you in perfect condition to immediately activate a new one if you do lose it.

The game already pushes the NES way harder than any other Gradius game on the platform (the Parodius port has less action going on, and slows down way more), so I could imagine they wouldn't dare trying to fit in any more bullets, or they'd go completely invisible.

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

@Sumez

this is an example of inferior gameplay can score more points. at the maui head boss your racked nearly 60k points where i got 35k. just your weapon selection alone would give you more points there as you cannot destroy the boss as quickly due to your weapon being weaker. also this is a weaker run of mine as it was earlier in the week. my gameplay and route got better and better. i was able to destroy all three heads simontaneously very quickly.

anyway i dont mean to take anything away. just an observation. your an excelent gradius 2 player and i tip my hat. you beat me.

this is also an example of nes advantage vs d-pad

edit: damn you racked 90k at the heads. you beat me with the spider boss. you got 1 million i only got 500k. the life force glitch works there.

 

Edited August 31, 2021 by docile tapeworm

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

18 hours ago, Sumez said:

It's probably the easiest part of the stage. Those speed stages are usually pretty hard in most Gradius games, but in this one specifically, it's very very simple if you just take the upper route. I wanted to record a 1-life-clear of the game, but unfortunately my laptop broke down before I could do it. I did get this video though, where I died immediately before the final "boss". You can see how I handle the speed section at 31:22. This is only the second time I played it, but I kept the same approach on subsequent runs:

Most gimmicky or setpiece oriented challenges in Gradius games can be practiced quite easily though, and I think for almost all of them, the consistently hardest part are the seas of bullet spray when going through tight corridors, and it would be the same for this game if the shield wasn't so ridiculously overpowered. You can take like 5 or so direct hits before losing it, which should probably leave you in perfect condition to immediately activate a new one if you do lose it.

The game already pushes the NES way harder than any other Gradius game on the platform (the Parodius port has less action going on, and slows down way more), so I could imagine they wouldn't dare trying to fit in any more bullets, or they'd go completely invisible.

You're using Turbo so your score is null and void (check the rules)

Nah... I don't really care, but if you do play in future weeks, we do have a "no turbo" rule, so keep that in mind.  I also tip my hat to you, as you're definitely a great Gradius II player, but I had to pound that fire button a million times to shoot (since the in-game rapid fire sucks ass) so it's one more thing I had on my plate when I played...

Edited September 1, 2021 by Dr. Morbis

[Sumez | 2,934]

Nah, I saw the rule, and I'm definitely not using turbo. I'm using the Advantage because I can't play shooters for shit with a D-pad. It's a shitty joystick, but it's still better than a D-pad.  

Not that turbo would make a difference for this game, because the built-in autofire when just holding the button is pretty much going at max rate, and you can wreck the bosses completely by point-blanking them. Some times you need to hold your fire though when you need to take down enemies flying fast towards you so you don't "run out of bullets" due to the projectile limit. In those situations having turbo enabled would actually be a big disadvantage if the game wasn't already programmed like that from the get-go

15 hours ago, docile tapeworm said:

this is an example of inferior gameplay can score more points. at the maui head boss your racked nearly 60k points where i got 35k. just your weapon selection alone would give you more points there as you cannot destroy the boss as quickly due to your weapon being weaker.

I don't think the ripple laser is weaker, it's incredibly powerful when the shots all hit their target. It's just the weak point of the heads is super difficult to hit, and at the point of that recording I actually hadn't figured it out yet. I think what you need to do is hit the mouth while it's open, but since that releases a bunch of smaller enemies, most of your shots will get blocked.

I'm pretty sure the big difference between our scores is the spider walker. Unless you know something I don't, there's not really any other places you can really do anything to go for a bigger score when you're only playing one loop.
It's too bad the game doesn't get much more difficult on subsequent loops, because that would be the real way to push for score in a Gradius game, and would have made for a more exciting competition.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Sumez

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

4 hours ago, Sumez said:

Nah, I saw the rule, and I'm definitely not using turbo. I'm using the Advantage because I can't play shooters for shit with a D-pad. It's a shitty joystick, but it's still better than a D-pad. 

I don't think the ripple laser is weaker, it's incredibly powerful when the shots all hit their target. It's just the weak point of the heads is super difficult to hit, and at the point of that recording I actually hadn't figured it out yet. I think what you need to do is hit the mouth while it's open, but since that releases a bunch of smaller enemies, most of your shots will get blocked.

I'm pretty sure the big difference between our scores is the spider walker. Unless you know something I don't, there's not really any other places you can really do anything to go for a bigger score when you're only playing one loop.
It's too bad the game doesn't get much more difficult on subsequent loops, because that would be the real way to push for score in a Gradius game, and would have made for a more exciting competition.

i feel like the laser at full strength is stronger than ripple but i could be wrong. the spot on the maui head boss is the mouth. like i said before bu the end of the week i was able to destroy it very quickly prob rack leas than 20k there. its a broken spot in the game for max score. just like the brain. where i can see the ripple did not destroy that boss as quickly as laser, so you were able to rack more points there as well. you def beat me with the spider boss. i didnt double up the points there. 

i have to respectfully disagree, i think one loop is a better way to show who can squeeze the most points out of the game by forcing us to use every enemy. that shows who can destroy the most. you pass over so many points in your run. you let waves of enemies fly by. i started destroying more and more enemies during the scrolling parts of the game, killing the bosses quicker but seemed my score didnt improve much because so many points can be racked during boss battles.

Edited September 1, 2021 by docile tapeworm

[Sumez | 2,934]

26 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

just like the brain. where i can see the ripple did not destroy that boss as quickly as laser, so you were able to rack more points there as well

You don't get any points during the brain fight though?

26 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

i have to respectfully disagree, i think one loop is a better way to show who can squeeze the most points out of the game by forcing us to use every enemy.

I'd agree if there was any kind of actual depth to the game's scoring. Compare something like Parodius's bell chaining where maintaining a full chain through out the game is very difficult.
In the NES port of Gradius 2, it's honestly not very hard to kill every single enemy (outside of maybe the moai heads in the scrolling section), so it's not really any solid measurement of skill. If the game kept getting progressively harder, the score would reflect who was able to survive the furthest into the difficult parts while still killing everything, but that's not how it works.
As it is, this port is simply way too easy to base scoring simply on killing stuff.

An interesting alternative contest could be based on not allowing upgrades past a certain point and seeing who can perform the best without dying. That would also make it impossible get that many points out of the spider walker, though milking the moai boss would have to be banned.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Sumez

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

48 minutes ago, Sumez said:

You don't get any points during the brain fight though?

In the NES port of Gradius 2, it's honestly not very hard to kill every single enemy (outside of maybe the moai heads in the scrolling section), so it's not really any solid measurement of skill.
As it is, this port is simply way too easy to base scoring simply on killing stuff.

i did score points during the brain but not as many as you because it took you longer to defeat that boss. just like at the maui head.

so your telling me you can destroy every single enemy through an entire loop, while chosing the route with the max amount of points available? i suppose two players could completly master the game and end up with a tie through one loop at that point. but i highly doubt it. i would bet one player would miss at least one enemy through a loop.

[Sumez | 2,934]

Players would have different scores sure, but it would be a negligible and almost "random" amount that I don't think is in any way interesting for a score competition, just like my score came out on top of yours entirely due to the bonus I got from the spider walker. It's not really a measurement of skill.

Even ignoring those points, and the points from the moai boss (the brain fight has nothing to destroy outside of the boss itself, so I'm not sure where you got that one from), if missing one enemy or another only makes a difference of like 100 points, that's an incredibly pointless amount of out what would otherwise be a ~500K score at the end of the first loop, and honestly not a very good scoring metric. Proceeding through a gradually harder game is much, much more interesting.

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

how would it be random? if you destroy even just one more enemy than i can during a loop. your the better player. right? im not as skilled as you even if its only one enemy. you can get the points and i cant. 

ya the spider doesnt matter i could easily match you there. thats not a skill just knowledge (which for the record i think counts, if you beat me with knowledge you still beat me legit).

you get points from destroying the bubbles the brain throws out. so ya you got more points there imo because the weapon is weaker or you just couldnt or didnt know how to concentrate your shot better.

imo endurance is a weak measure. even if the game does get progressively more difficult your still going to get two players who can no death at max difficulty.

what seperates them would be a very small amount of points no matter how many loops.

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

i destroy the brain in like ten seconds it took you much longer.

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

the only way to "fix" playing this game competitive would be low score runs. and we all know how fun that is.

[Sumez | 2,934]

9 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

you get points from destroying the bubbles the brain throws out

I guess you're talking about a different boss then, because the brain doesn't throw out any bubbles.  
If you're thinking of the big core fight from the final boss in Salamander/Life Force (Zelos Force), yeah I guess my weapon was very ineffective against that one, because the weak spot is a really tight squeeze for the ripple laser. I doubt I got that many points from that fight though.  I was trying to kill it as fast as I could because it's a very annoying fight.

9 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

imo endurance is a weak measure. even if the game does get progressively more difficult your still going to get two players who can no death at max difficulty.

If it's just endurance I agree, which is also why this port specifically wouldn't be good to play multiple loops on.
But it's not endurance if the game actually starts really testing your skill. Most arcade level shooters wouldn't get many players who'd build up the skill to beat them in a week, much less play the game indefinitely. Most people aren't even able to beat the second loop in the original Gradius II.

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

43 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I guess you're talking about a different boss then, because the brain doesn't throw out any bubbles.  
 

If it's just endurance I agree, which is also why this port specifically wouldn't be good to play multiple loops on.
But it's not endurance if the game actually starts really testing your skill. Most arcade level shooters wouldn't get many players who'd build up the skill to beat them in a week, much less play the game indefinitely. Most people aren't even able to beat the second loop in the original Gradius II.

is this not a brain? i guess maybe its an eyeball. either way it throws bubbles and you knew what i meant. but it was a cute attempt

and were not talking about "most people". of course someone who has mastered the game will win against someone who hasnt.

there are always top players who will master a game no matter how difficult it is. and what seperates them will be a small amout of "points" or whatever the measure is. so there is no use in dragging on past whatever max difficulty becomes. if thats the third loop or the first loop there is no use playing past that point in the game. we have already proven we can no death at max difficulty.

Edited September 1, 2021 by docile tapeworm

[Sumez | 2,934]

2 hours ago, docile tapeworm said:

so there is no use in dragging on past whatever max difficulty becomes. if thats the third loop or the first loop there is no use playing past that point in the game. we have already proven we can no death at max difficulty.

Well no, and I think you must be skimming over a massive part of the point I was making, because what I'm saying is the exact opposite

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

5 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Well no, and I think you must be skimming over a massive part of the point I was making, because what I'm saying is the exact opposite

no i read every word and perhaps im not understanding what you are saying because to me it sounds loke your saying play on into further loops because most players cant make it that far.

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

@Sumez are you saying if we can both no death at max difficulty we should keep playing infinate loops? if we can both do it forever whats the point? 

Edited September 1, 2021 by docile tapeworm

[Sumez | 2,934]

No, I'm saying if the game kept getting progressively harder (and ideally, very fast after the first loop) two players would be much more likely to have a notably different threshold for how far they could push the game!  It's pretty much the opposite of what you are suggesting.

Yes, the problem with the game as it stands is that we can both probably keep no-death'ing at max difficulty, and therefore I think the current scoring metric of just killing everything isn't very exciting. It's a great port, but it just isn't a great port for scoring competition. Unfortunately!

 

9 hours ago, Sumez said:

It's too bad the game doesn't get much more difficult on subsequent loops, because that would be the real way to push for score in a Gradius game, and would have made for a more exciting competition.

 

5 hours ago, Sumez said:

If the game kept getting progressively harder, the score would reflect who was able to survive the furthest into the difficult parts while still killing everything, but that's not how it works.

 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Sumez

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

5 minutes ago, Sumez said:

No, I'm saying if the game kept getting progressively harder (and ideally, very fast after the first loop) two players would be much more likely to have a notably different threshold for how far they could push the game!  It's pretty much the opposite of what you are suggesting.

Yes, the problem with the game as it stands is that we can both probably keep no-death'ing at max difficulty, and therefore I think the current scoring metric of just killing everything isn't very exciting. It's a great port, but it just isn't a great port for scoring competition. Unfortunately!

what im saying is how do you determine the better player of two who can infantely loop the game on max difficulty?

broken scoring aside. your going to at some point put a limit on loops allowed and say who has the higher score.

right?

Edited September 1, 2021 by docile tapeworm

[Sumez | 2,934]

1 minute ago, docile tapeworm said:

what im saying is how do you determine the better player of two who can infantely loop the game on max difficulty?

You make the game harder.  

Though the better solution of course is to implement a scoring system with more nuance to it. I mentioned the Parodius games earlier, as they have already proven a system that works surprisingly well with the Gradius formula (and IMO it works better for that than the Twinbee games it was taken from) - especially in Gokujou Parodius where green bells really separates the mice from the men and awards players who can succesfully juggle them on to locations where they are able to convert more enemies into more bells, and still maintain an unbroken chain. I don't think there's any real realistic ceiling for how far good players can take the scoring in that game, as evident by the top scores which are still very far apart even among some of the most talented players in the world.

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

@Sumez ok, your right i didnt catch you mentioning make the game harder. 

still why do you need to do that if no one can max the score out on any one loop or didficulty?

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

If the game is so easy that you have to come up with special rules to have the game in the competition, why have that game in the competition?  I'd rather play something new and obscure than have to play some convoluted special ruleset just to have the game in the competition.  In fact, those type of rulesets are more likely to make me NOT play the game, even if it's one I enjoy.