Other words on shootoub and shootouj

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About shootoub and shootouj I think that objective is to avoid leeching and not to make it difficult. Setting the difficulty to medium will avoid leeching because you will be too busy to avoid bullets. Increasing points needed to win a life will only make more difficult to win a life but it is possible with a little practice. In the second case I think that players will try to leech in any case because it is the fastest way to make points. Moreover if you leech other players will be constricted to leech to reach you.

-- A.D.SAKURAGI (adeidda@inwind.it), May 30, 2000

Answers

I agree, if settings makes things harder to leech, that's much better than allowing X rollercoasters per level.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), May 31, 2000.

I agree with what you are saying in principle, but unfortunately I must tell you that you are both wrong with regards to the clones of Shootout.

It is currently too easy to leech because you get a bonus life every 50 K (at 20k and 70k, meaning 20k, 70k, 120k, 170k, 220k, etc. for some strange reason) If the bonus life is moved from 20k, 70k to just 70k, you have to leech 100k in one round to get your bonus life (after the initial 70K, that is, and the max amount you can score in stage 1 (the pre-roller coaster stage) is 15K). Only 11-12 roller coasters come per cycle in Stage 2, and only about 10 of these are consistently hittable (the other two come just as you are being shot at from the man in the booth protected on the left side of the screen). Of these 10, on a good-timing day I can hit 8, so I can leech about 80K plus maybe 10k in points for the level=90k total. And that's with an optimum run on the level, which is by no means easy.

Now, if all we do is change difficulty to medium, I guarantee you that I can hit that coaster 5 times per level with little practice. At hard I can't, but by hard the game is already ridiculously difficult. This is a game with very little middle ground.

Unfortunately, I think the only solution will be to leave the settings at easy, change the bonus to 70K, and set the starting men to 1. Leeching on stage 2 therefore becomes nearly impossible. As you could make one bonus man (70K) having leeched about 5 coasters, and POSSIBLY another at 170K, but doing so would cost you one man, and there is no way in hell you would make it to 270K from 170K on one man. In other words, if you fail to hit the coaster all 10 times, you are forced to advance in the game, because you will be out of lives. If you can hit the coaster 10 times in one stage, you damn well deserve to keep leeching--and I guarantee you not even a great player will, the coaster is just too tricky a target to hit every time.

So my recommendation for TG settings on all three sets is 1 starting man, bonus at 70K, easy difficulty (as the difficulty level rises during the game anyways. With the approval of the community I will submit these settings as the official ones to Mark Longridge, who I have already discussed the matter with.

If anyone wishes to respond to this, besides QRS, I will ask that you please play the game so that you know exactly what you're talking about. No offense, but after playing it at these settings you'll rapidly see what I mean.

Sincerely, Q.T.Quazar

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), May 31, 2000.


When leeching problem on shootout clones came out, I thought that the problem was leeching and not infinite leeching. With your solution you will have only temporarily leeching but you'll have it. In many games leeching has been banned and many players had their score lowered. I don' t know why we had to permit it. Avoiding to leech you can do about 200-300k (for now), considering a leeching of about 250k (you say that this is the maximum leeching possible) you will double your score. I think that this is not right. The correct settings for me are : 3 mans bonus at 70k (Initially I thought that bonus was on 20k,70k,170k ecc. (I don' t know why but I thought that) difficulty medium

Substantially I prefer to use 3 mans and a medium difficulty.

P.s. In pre roller coaster stage you can get 25-30k (probably you don' t know that you can hit the barrel on the left to obtain 200 points) and not 15k as you said. After all I don' t know "If you know exactly what you' re talking about". ;)

-- A.D.SAKURAGI (adeidda@inwind.it), May 31, 2000.


Ok,ok, the last thing : if you' ll ever found in your city the cabinet of shootout what type of setting do you think you' ll found? Considering that twing galaxies set the settings to be the most possible similar to the coinop I think that mines are best.

-- A.D.SAKURAGI (adeidda@inwind.it), May 31, 2000.

OK, you caught me on stage 1. I hven't really tried with the barrel :) And I wasn't referring to you about 'not knowing what you are talking about,' I just meant it as a warning after all the uninformed posts on the MARP VOTING thread. So don't take anything personally.

I will try your settings vs. my settings over the next week, and ask QRS to do the same, and then make a final decision. I'm aware that my method does not completely eliminate leeching, but I don't see the necessity of completely eliminating leeching--just the possibility of infinite leeching. Many games, such as centipede, are basically marathon leeches, but it still takes skill to do it. Something like TNZS's leeching trick doesn't.

I think MARP is starting to lose perspective on this issue. Agreed, my score of 999999 is ridiculous, but only because it was too easy to score it, not because of how I scored it. That may seem like a very subtle difference but it most certainly exists.

Sincerely, Q.T.Quazar

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), May 31, 2000.



Well, last thing again : mmmm,no I said all.... :b

-- A.D.SAKURAGI (adeidda@inwind.it), May 31, 2000.

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