/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.4025271]

Do you agree with conclusions Icycalm reached in his controversial essay "On Why Scoring Sucks And Those Who Defend It Are Aspies"?

Said essay
http://www.mediafire.com/?6dbctvcd8o94ck6

(/vr/-related cause most of the great shmups, many of which he mentions, are retro)

[Anonymous No.4025279]

RANSOMWARE DON'T OPEN IT

[Anonymous No.4025282]

Who the ever loving FUCK is gonna read all this motherfucking novel on an aspie mechanic only nerds care about?

[Anonymous No.4025283]

>>4025282
Seems like you already agree.

[Anonymous No.4025285]

>>4025283
tl;dr it for me, famm

[Anonymous No.4025292]

>>4025285
Scoring sucks And those who defend it are aspies.

In essence, he says the mechanics and their feedback themselves should be enjoyable and rewarding without relying on a number to show progress.

>Consider, for example ... what would have happened to the Metriod games if, instead of hunting for mechanics-altering and progress-enabling items, you were hunting for boxes with random numbers on them — boxes whose only function would be to increase your score, so that by finding more of them than other players WHO ARE NOT EVEN PRESENT IN THE GAMEWORLD you'd manage to beat their high scores. The entire series' atmosphere would have been instantly wrecked this way — which is the exact opposite to what would happen if pure scoring mechanics in scoring games were replaced with mechanics-altering and progress-enabling mechanics, i.e. with natural mechanics.

[Anonymous No.4025296]

>>4025279
Are you sure? What virus?

[Anonymous No.4025297]

>>4025285
>tl;dr
>I suck shit at games and need to use huge mental gymnastics to justify my laziness

[Anonymous No.4025301]

>>4025292
>>Consider, for example ... what would have happened to the Metriod games if, instead of hunting for mechanics-altering and progress-enabling items, you were hunting for boxes with random numbers on them — boxes whose only function would be to increase your score, so that by finding more of them than other players WHO ARE NOT EVEN PRESENT IN THE GAMEWORLD you'd manage to beat their high scores. The entire series' atmosphere would have been instantly wrecked this way — which is the exact opposite to what would happen if pure scoring mechanics in scoring games were replaced with mechanics-altering and progress-enabling mechanics, i.e. with natural mechanics.
Which is probably why it didn't have it. Surely a better example would be a game with scoring that detracts from the experience.

[Anonymous No.4025302]

>>4025282
nerds and aspies I'd think

[Anonymous No.4025304]

>>4025296
The autism virus.

[Anonymous No.4025309]

>>4025271
is this a saturn thread?
>pic related is the best strategy RPG

[Anonymous No.4025310]

Didn't read, but here are my thoughts
1. Most old games didn't put any thought into scoring mechanics AT ALL. They just went small enemies are worth 100 points and big enemies are worth 1,000 points, arbitrary values like that.
2. Most of the time scoring boils down to checkpoint and infinite enemy spawn point milking, which granted still take a lot of skill to pull off properly but are still TEDIOUS AS SHIT. Look at this garbage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QUHsHli_uo or another one https://youtu.be/TMeeidyknYE?t=73

[Anonymous No.4025312]

>>4025309
Do I need to play the games like Shining in the Darkness and the others before jumping into this?

[Anonymous No.4025313]

>>4025297
I'm just saying, I find speedruns, as autistic as they may be, way more interesting than score runs.

Feel free to disagree, though.

[Anonymous No.4025314]

>>4025313
I was tl;dring OPs essay thing I mean anon

[Anonymous No.4025315]

>>4025312
>Shining in the Darkness
They're not related AT ALL, not even developed by the same team, not even in the same genre.

[Anonymous No.4025318]

>>4025271
people who suck at something are usually really good at finding excuses for why they suck, or why the thing they suck at isn't good anyway

[Anonymous No.4025319]

>>4025315
Awesome. What about Force 1 and 2, do they matter?

[Anonymous No.4025325]

One example of a really shit score implementation is Super Mario World, you can reenter and milk levels indefinitely, not only that but if you collect two capes/feather - it doesn't work with the other powerups for some reason - you can just repeatedly drop it from the item box and score 1000 points everytime you pick them up. Scoring in Super Mario World is an arcade era residue at best, you don't even gain lives from it and the game doesn't save it to battery backup so once you turn it off it's all gone anyway.
They actually reworked the score into a grading system in Yoshi Island that is more in terms with a collectathon mindset.

[Anonymous No.4025329]

>>4025318
Icy Calm is the living ubermensch of videogames, though. He is good at everything.

[Anonymous No.4025332]

Like most things in videogames, score attacking your own Personal Bests can be a lot of fun and breath new life into an already stale game. But getting too deep into it can be painful and largely a waste of time.

[Anonymous No.4025336]

this guy is clearly a fucking mentalist

[Anonymous No.4025337]

>>4025319
shining the holy ark shares characters from shining force 3.
You meet julian as a small boy who asks to find his father only he was killed by galm
this plays a huge role in shining force 3 as julian
joins the synbios team to hunt the vandal galm

[Anonymous No.4025338]

Yeah but in Shmups the scoring system is fine and shows your progress and how good you are vs other players.
I think him picking a game that didn't have a scoring system is kind of retarded because he should pick an example of a game that HAS a scoring system that doesn't really mean anything and use that as an example. Using a game that never instituted scoring in the way he's talking about doesn't really work.

[Anonymous No.4025341]

>>4025329
whatever you say mr. spicyclam

[Anonymous No.4025348]

>writing a whole essay about videogame scores

I think we know who the real aspie is here

[Anonymous No.4025351]

>>4025338
>Yeah but in Shmups the scoring system is fine and shows your progress and how good you are vs other players.
Sure is a measure of progress getting rewarded for chaining hits or point blanking enemies. And don't get me started on Psykyo and their retarded chain-collect a medal when it blinks for a millisecond for 500000 million points system.

[Anonymous No.4025357]

>>4025348
It's one part of his book.

[Anonymous No.4025359]

>>4025357
Is the rest of the book "Why skill and effort is problematic for video game design"

[Anonymous No.4025363]

>>4025359
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/videogame_culture_preface/

You can see the index and even read most of the book in the column at the right.

[Anonymous No.4025369]

>>4025312
other than holy ark (galm and julian)
also the ending of the game if you wait long enough you get to see a conversation from elise who is from holy ark and galm
the plot has no connections to previous games
however on premium disc you can fight darksol

[Anonymous No.4025374]

>>4025369
basically what i'm saying is i recommend you play holy ark but it's not required

[Anonymous No.4025389]

>>4025271
icycalm is a hack who doesn't know shit and deserves to live in a cardboard box at best
not all games need scoring though, and it's completely pointless in many (fighting games)

[Anonymous No.4025402]

>>4025389
Didn't Fatal Fury starting with 3 unlock hidden boss fights depending on your grade? That was kinda cool.

[Anonymous No.4025418]

Oh shit icycalm is alive??

I thought he died.

[Anonymous No.4025423]

>>4025418
Nah, he started posting new Orgy entries few months ago.

http://orgyofthewill.net/

[Anonymous No.4025431]

>>4025271
>do you agree with
>icycalm
fuck off icycalm
I've yet to see a single opinion from this person that isn't completely braindead

[Anonymous No.4025438]

>>4025423
Do people read that? Amazing