Touhou

Futo can't find the tenth plate because she is the tenth plate.

I have a message from another time...

Why is cheating in this game series so frowned upon? After a period of major emotional recovery I decided to come to terms with my lack of motivation to attempt things over and over in Touhou and decided to cheat for a no-risk experience.

My request for a particular cheat was met with a lot of bile. Why is it such a big deal to play a game right? Why am I not allowed to play a game in a no-risk what does won't frustrate me? Why am I not allowed to experience Extras without having months of experience beforehand? Why am I not allowed to see every ending without supposedly earning it first?

Elite gamers can be arrogant and intolerant - and more often than not, they are. In all honestly, after this orderal I feel like I've been publicly shamed for my decision.

edited 7th Oct '15 6:13:48 PM by AngelG55th

^ You might actually deserve that. Touhou is far from the hardest STG series out there unlike say Mushihime-sama.

If you commit to some basic practice and memorization you can master a Touhou game in as little as an afternoon.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Ugh. Some people. That first response alone makes me want to hit something. I mean, they're just games, ultimately. It's not worth getting that angry at someone if they want a sortcut, especialy in a single-player experience. And even if you don't want to give someone a cheat, is a simple "no" or non-response that hard?

I have a message from another time...

You're acting with the same closed mindset as the players in that thread. As for that latter part, tell that to my 1cc of PCB Normal after 3 years and my continued, repeated failures of Mo F Normal. An afternoon my ass.

I can't believe you think you can play a game wrong.

Haha, yeah no. I have shit reflexes and died countless times to bullets I could have avoided if I moved half a second earliet. That's not something you can fix in an afternoon.

edited 7th Oct '15 6:30:35 PM by TrueShadow1

You can beat a game in an afternoon after you've already gotten used to beating other similar games. There's a baseline level of shooter experience required.

edited 7th Oct '15 6:30:12 PM by Clarste

And it's frustrating as hell if you just care about this series and want to see where it goes.

And this being, largely, a single-player series, cheating to see stuff hurts precisely nobody.

I have a message from another time...

Cheating is generally tolerated if the game is unfairly difficult (emphasis here on "unfairly"), not very fun (so you're not missing much just playing for the story), or grindy. Touhou is none of those things. I mean, you're only hurting yourself by cheating, but you should be able to credit feed your way through easy at the very least. You'll miss the good endings and the EX stages, but the endings really aren't all they're hyped up to be and you can find playthroughs of the EX stages online

...Why wouldn't you think that?

edited 7th Oct '15 6:39:14 PM by Hylarn

Unfairly difficult depends on who's playing.

I have a message from another time...

Because a game is yours to make use as you see fit - Death of the Author. The only right way to play a game is the one that's most fun to you.

Saying otherwise is like arguing you aren't allowed to use books as doorstoppers, paperweights, or even as a supply of paper planes, which simply doesn't happen.

Touhou is/was my first "true" Bullet Hell game ever played. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil to be precise. It took me a little over a month to get my first 1cc on Normal.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Excuse the rest of us for not having the same level of innate skill as you.

Besides, mr. Tom, you don't seem to grasp that your opinions aren't absolutes, do you?

I think it can be called playing a game wrong when you're not even playing it as intended and going outside the means and tools given to you inside the game to basically god mode your way through.

It's not even necessarily just a Touhou thing. Touhou is half trial-and-error and puzzle game, there are games less challenging, or along the same lines, but harder, like Dark Souls. But enter your other favorite game here if need be. But you're missing out on the reward of figuring out how to get through an area, even if you die a million deaths getting there. You're basically warping ahead to after you've defeated Bowser and rescued Peach, in short, missing out on 90% of the experience. And it's absolutely not a way to get better at Touhou.

You could basically just watch a playthrough on You Tube or read the dialogue and endings for the same effect.

So I wouldn't put it quite as harshly as them, but I agree.

edited 7th Oct '15 7:04:26 PM by UTW

I can think of a lot of reasons I might want to cheat a Touhou game (my current avatar being one of them), but I don't think I could ever bring myself to do it, and I don't think I would give others the ability to do so if I could.

I can't call myself great at danmaku games, I've never 1cc'd past Normal and I tunnel vision towards the end of spellcards. It took me 2 and half months before I finally 1cc cleared IN on Normal (never going through Easy do to beliefs that it was looked down upon), and I was thrilled. I oftentimes think that because I was so happy to finally win despite all my frustrations that others will feel the same way. I've come to learn that often they don't. Nevertheless, I continue to advocate that they try again on Easy in the hopes that once they do succeed they will share that feeling.

That being said, I do not see any harm in cheating. These are single-player games after all, your experience is what you want to make of it. The way I see it, the Game Genie is legal to sell, so that much is allowed. If it's to see the endings, that I can understand. ZUN's statement to not post endings has had a strange effect on this fanbase. Because that statement has become similar to law, the endings have become similar to achievements (in the Xbox sense). At some point my concept of gaming warped to include the frustration as part of the experience. I can understand why someone wouldn't want that, but I would hope that one day they might try again.

edited 7th Oct '15 8:09:14 PM by Horselesshorseman

I have no horse, and I must ride. I accomplish unlockments.

^^ But I will tell you I am very far from anywhere close to being the best Touhou player. I've never beaten Lunatic on any game. (Though I have beaten most of the Extra/Phantasm stages.)

I have one piece of legitimate advice to help you practice. Replays. Most Touhou games have them capable. You can find an archive of people making them here. (My stuff is here. Some of it is just me fucking around and/or exploiting glitches/loopholes in the gameplay.)

edited 7th Oct '15 7:07:33 PM by MajorTom

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

You can do those things, but it's not what they're designed for, and inferior to something purpose-built

It's just... I don't really see the point in cheating at Touhou. If you want to see the game without having to get good, watch replays. If you want the endings, the patch center has most of them

And, Tom, stop bragging in the guise of being humble. It makes people want to smother you to death

Wow, that is actually a very interesting new topic that I don't think we've had before here!

I want to clarify at the start: my post is about my opinion on "cheating in Touhou/games in general", but I don't intend any maliciousness towards Mr. Angel in particular! I'm very against insulting and shaming people, and you didn't deserve it for this topic.

Now, I've been a gamer all my life, ever since I first laid my eyes on... hmmm, was it Commander Keen? I think so. I was super young, at any rate, and all throughout my gamer life, games have been beating me down with horrendous difficulties O_O The aforementioned Keen games, for example: I've never beaten them. They annihilated me every time, for years, but I kept playing. Then came Game Boy, Super Nintendo, N64, and after that until today, PC. On all of those platforms, there were games which destroyed me, some of which I also never beat or even got very far in (Don't Starve being the most recent example. $%§& that game)

However, throughout all these years... I never cheated O_O And that wasn't for any ultra-moral reasons or whatever.. I just didn't, I can't really explain it. I was aware through reading magazines that there were cheats for everything out there if I wanted them... but I never wanted them. Over time, I must have just developed on my own the opinion that everything I did from the point of cheating in the game on was invalid. That it wasn't really playing the game anymore...

And that continues to this day, with the love of my life, the Civilization series. In Civ4, you could open the World Editor at any time, to remove or add units or resources as you pleased. I think I used it once or twice at the very beginning to remove a bear ($&§% those bears, btw) or add a source of iron... but very soon, I felt kinda sick doing it; my playthrough was out of whack and not right because of this. So I stopped and never touched that feature again. Same for its successor, Civ5, which I've played more than any other game in my life.

(Wow, all of that was supposed to be one or two sentences :/ Sorry, it escalated)

Ok, to Touhou: now, I don't play the games and have no intention of ever doing so. If I did, however, I would suuuuuuuck so horrifyingly at them, you have no idea. But: as you can probably tell from reading the above, I, personally, would never cheat. I either play a game, even when I am frustrated as hell with it, or I quit that game. But my brain just tells me: "as soon as you change the game with cheats, you're not playing the game anymore. You're cheating yourself", and if I did, I'd feel wrong all the way through and quit soon anyway. But as I said, I'm only speaking for myself here.

—

With all due respect, but from what I've seen, Extras are horribly hard... you actually need the months of experience to actually be able to play more than 10 seconds of them, anyway, right? I mean, sure, one could get a save from somewhere and "experience" the Extra Stage that way... but one would be Game Over'd before reaching the Mid Boss. Is that worth it?

...well, if you wanna "earn" them, then yes, you need to play the games legitimately to do so. That's what "earn" means. Now, if you wanna just SEE/read the endings, which is very understandable for a Touhou Fan, then they're on the Internet and easy to find. That's what I did, too. No need to go through a cheated game for that, it's much easier. Same goes for "experiencing" the Extra Stages, or, heck all the other Stages/Bosses, too. I've seen everything in all the games many, many times without touching the games once, thanks to You Tube. That's the blessing of our generation.

That is actually being more and more ignored, I've found... In many of the Blind LPs I've watched over the last months on YT, the endings are there uncensored! It's only the long-year-fans of Touhou who stick to that rule, everyone else on YT is at this point unaware that it even exists.

"Mystia is a former German nun“ -Clarste //// "[...]collectively, we have the power to destroy the Aki sandwich" -Clarste

Honestly, feel free to cheat all you want. Whether it's "right or wrong" shouldn't matter in a single-player game, and those that seriously subscribe to "lol you sux becuz toohoo 2 ez" aren't exactly worth listening to, anyway.

In my honest opinion cheating is only really a problem if you win through cheating and then proceed to act like you didn't cheat at all. You can cheat your arse off for all I care as long as you're having fun with it.

I do lots of stuff. The real question is am I any good at that stuff.

Wow... lots of folks have lots to say on this.

Personally, I don't particularly care if someone cheats at a single player game. Kinda echoing FDA here: If you like it, do it. If you don't, don't. I'm more of the "Cheating ruins a game for me, so I don't" with a few exceptions here and there that improve my enjoyment ^note for instance, turning on infinite jump in Brave Fencer Musashi was entertaining because it let me seriously mess with the game's flags to basically time travel by jumping in the church's bell tower, which added a lot of fun to the game. It's not the way for everyone, but it's the way for me.

And Also echoing Hylarn: Just... why? if you take away the story, the plot, and the characters (translations and endings available elsewhere, as mentioned), all you're left with is the gameplay. So... if you're going to take that away as well, then... uh... what's... left? What is there to obtain at that point?

Why sneak into an Opera if you can't stand singing? Sure, you're in, but... why did you even do it? If you did it to gun down all the singers, then you have a reason to be there (not one I agree with, but hey, I try not to judge). If you just went there because you figured you could tolerate the singing to watch the story, you probably would be better off reading it at home rather than subjecting yourself to something you don't like and can't understand because seriously do opera singers even sing words? ^note Never watched any, so honestly I have like no idea.

As was pointed out, if you haven't gotten to the point where you can unlock the Extra stage, then playing it's going to be frustrating and little more. You wouldn't be experiencing the extra stage, you'd be experiencing rage and frustration wearing the extra stage's skin as a bloody mask. (Or, with cheats, you'd be experiencing a pretty slideshow with the extra stage as a mask, I guess? that was a bad one, let me try again.)

If you're in a submarine deep in the ocean, in one sense, you could say you're experiencing what it's like to be deep in the ocean... but you're not. You're experiencing what it's like to be in a submarine deep in the ocean. If you were experiencing what it were like deep in the ocean, you would be dead (Drowned, if nothing else). I mean, unless you're a fish in disguise or can transform into one, you won't ever experience the deep ocean as it was originally 'intended'.

That's not necessarily bad; experiencing being in a sub is certainly an experience in and of itself (And a rather rewarding one for some), but it's very different than being down there without one. Looking through a glass-bottom boat is a very different experience than snorkeling through the same waters.

To tie that to the current conversation, learning to play Touhou was, to me, largely becoming adapted to a fairly aggressive environment. I'd heard about what people saw outside the sub, and wanted to swim around out there. Not everyone can become a fish through training (I mean, you've got to have magical fish genes and super-duper want it, you know?) but some can and do ^note I assume, anyway. It would explain where all my old acquaintances go, I guess.

Also I've apparently been cursed to never say anything straight and instead use metaphors and analogies for pretty much everything. This paragraph excluded, I guess. Either way, I apologize.

I write some fanfiction. Satori's Tale is done... but I'm not.

Okay, so let me explain something for all:

I wanted these cheats not to strip the game of its gameplay, but to reform its gameplay into something less frustrating and less pressuring. And I succeeded.◊ Now I can play anything I want without feeling pressured to play to a reasonable level of perfection, while still having something to strive for (dying less, because that code changes the High Score to track how many times you died).

I'm glad you found what you were looking for.

I have a message from another time...

Well, alrighty then, that's settled But we did get a cool new topic and a lot of talking out of it which is awesome!

—

(Warning: horrifyingly off-topic from here on out!)

@Mr. Antimatter: Your post was amazing <3 Now, opera!

Absolutely, yes! That's how my passion with opera started: I read the librettos of Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen first, just as a fantasy story. So when I then watched it on video, it was really helpful to already know the story and characters and being able to concentrate of the voices and awesome music. Same for Mozart's operas later.

Sure they do! It's like a theater play, but also like a musical. The only times where there really is only pure nonsense sounds, or close to it, being sung (which, sadly, are the parts that became associated with opera in the common conciousness) are at very specific parts, like during the start of the Ride of the Valkyries in Die Walküre, or during the Night Queen's aria in Die Zauberflöte. In those moments, it's I guess, there for the singer to show off her range.

But at all other times, they sing normally, just like in a musical. Often, it's super high-pitched, however, which makes it impossible to understand, and secondly, it's very often in the original language it was written in (Italian and German). I guess there's some snobbery about only the original version being decent to listen to, so it will in most cases be the only one being offered. Italian is the perfect language for opera because it flows beautifully and is sexy as hell. The ancient German in Wagner is at least fun to read, but impossible to understand even for a native speaker like me. So I strongly recommend subtitles, which are thankfully found everywhere on YT , like here. Also simplifies and shortens the long-winded, crazy ye-olde-German to nice, simple English.

edited 8th Oct '15 9:45:00 PM by FellDeedsAwake

"Mystia is a former German nun“ -Clarste //// "[...]collectively, we have the power to destroy the Aki sandwich" -Clarste