Touhou Project 12.5 ~ ダブルスポイラー (Double Spoiler) announced, girls are preparing.

[Pesco]

StB is one big Spell Practice game. Now weren't there a LOT of people bitching about wanting Spell Practice back? :smug:

[Menreiki]

Good grief. Implying that the primary reason people dislike StB is because they're terrible at the game is ignorant almost beyond belief, and similarly for your (and others') inference that any expressed dissatisfaction with 12.5's announcement is motivated mainly by the absence of new characters and "story".

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tl;dr - StB is bad for a Touhou game. Don't take internet "WORST _____ EVER" hyperbole seriously.

Let's talk seriously. You can't just forget the status of the fandom, the amount of danmaku Touhou players is really small in comparison of the fighters players. Most of the Touhou "fans" haven't and won't play this game. Touhou is getting way too much attention from the anime-ish scene, most of these people don't have the intention to actually practice and actually enjoy the games, that's because they have different interest. They just leech from the massive doujin content and doesn't even care about the official stuff.

I have nothing against these people, that would just be extremely elitist. I was just generalizing the fandom in my post. Let's be real, most of the people don't play StB because it IS HARD. You shouldn?t play Shoot the Bullet as if you were playing a regular Touhou game, that's the whole idea of this being a .5 game, it is supposed to be something different.

I know that Shoot the Bullet has some flaws, but have in mind this game is something unique from ZUN. It is quite refreshing to play something different once in a while. I don't see Aya speed as a fun impediment; I see it as an interesting gimmick which adds a whole new dimension of gameplay. The spell cards for me make the whole game, that's the soul of Touhou.

[Kojiremi]

StB is one big Spell Practice game. Now weren't there a LOT of people bitching about wanting Spell Practice back? :smug:

that...just lol haha. Didn't think of it that way.

I see StB and the spells used in them as "spellcards not meant for normal danmaku/duels" Most spellcards have a way of being broken or being fair for the enemy to evade at the least. These spells however are so hard that normal means can't or will barely work at all. take Patchouli's spellcards for example. unless you HAD Aya's camera or means to erase bullets. there would be NO WAY to survive those spells ya know? bomb? sure but every time? no way haha. I think of StB as the "Mario: Lost Levels" compared to "Mario Bros" the main series.

Well to me. If ZUN makes a game, I'm playing it. the only game i don't like that much is IaMP, but i'm playing it anyway

I have nothing against these people, that would just be extremely elitist. I was just generalizing the fandom in my post. Let's be real, most of the people don't play StB because it IS HARD. You shouldn?t play Shoot the Bullet as if you were playing a regular Touhou game, that's the whole idea of this being a .5 game, it is supposed to be something different.

I've nothing against em either, most of us too probably have pirated a few if not all the games (me too afterall. luckily i bought 4 of the windows games on ebay for 41 bucks! FUCK YEAH!)
And its true that one shouldn't play StB as typically as you would a normal touhou game. Naturally if your losing consistently your doing something wrong, if even slightly.

[Lucarius]

Seriously if you only want a Touhou game mainly because of the character and "story" and not because of the danmaku patterns, then you have a problem, since Touhou is all about this.

Let's talk seriously. You can't just forget the status of the fandom, the amount of danmaku Touhou players is really small in comparison of the fighters players. Most of the Touhou "fans" haven't and won't play this game. Touhou is getting way too much attention from the anime-ish scene, most of these people don't have the intention to actually practice and actually enjoy the games, that's because they have different interest. They just leech from the massive doujin content and doesn't even care about the official stuff.

Let's be real, most of the people don't play StB because it IS HARD.

Let's get some facts straight here.

Source: 7th Touhou Popularity Survey http://thwiki.info/th/vote7/result_anq.html
(Japan)
Up to 3 reasons why Touhou interests you. Out of 22207 people.
Music: 84.78%
Characters: 74.61%
Worldliness Setting (ie "Story"): 40.14%
As an STG: 22.58%
Other doujins: 22.47%
Danmaku: 17.46%
etc. (7 other choices)

I don't see how liking Touhou for character and "story" and not because of danmaku patterns is problematic, if problematic is even the right term to be used here. Moreover, I really don't like how you put the term "story" in quotes as if Touhou didn't have a respectable story in it.
In addition, your statement about secondhand > official is clearly wrong too. There are less people who have only secondhand Touhou music than those who have both secondhand Touhou music and original Touhou music, and far less people who have only secondhand Touhou games/books than those who have original Touhou games/books only.

Source: 7th Touhou Popularity Survey http://thwiki.info/th/vote7/result_anq.html
(Japan)
Game         People       Percent
  東方6　　　　20081人   90.27%
  東方7　　　　20004人   89.93%
  東方7.5　　13512人   60.74%
  東方8　　　　20018人   89.99%
  東方9　　　　17894人   80.44%
  東方9.5　　15535人   69.84%
  東方10　　　19604人   88.13%
  東方10.5　16899人   75.97%
  東方11　　　18895人   84.94%
  東方12　　　18088人   81.31%
  東方12.3　15283人   68.70%

I clearly see there are many more people who play danmaku than fighting out of the people who took this survey, if any significant difference at all. Moreover, I don't see that big of a difference between the number of people who played StB versus the other games, save IaMP.

Mind you don't forget that when you say Touhou fandom or Touhou players, you mean us Japanese people too. Mind also that there's no problem on how people get a hold on Touhou, and such holds have no relation with how good they are at the game.

What you're saying adamantly is real would be something analogous to me saying you don't read any of ZUN's written works or afterwords whatsoever, because you put "story" in quotation marks. Regardless of what your intention for putting those quotation marks around the term was.

I see you're trying to be serious in whatever way you can, but you're far from being real in any way. I don't know about the American fandom as much as the Japanese fandom, but your grasp on Touhou in its entirety seems as upsetting to me as (most) other people's grasps are to you.

[Reddyne]

This is weird in conjunction with other complaints I know I've seen about how StB was bad because it was infuriating to be dragged all the way back to the beginning of a spellcard if you lost it right at the very end.

Different strokes for different folks. And these folks sound like the kind of people who hit the savestate key every 15 seconds when playing games.

I can certainly see why the one-hit-and-done mechanic would be reviled as that was my major problem with StB too. Unlike all of the other games, a single mistake meant that you would have to restart. It's completely different from possessing a number of lives and a number of bombs to use per life. The amount of time a spellcard takes in comparison to an entire game is different, yes, but if I try to 1cc any of the regular games, I can do poorly in level 5 yet still make it to the end. In StB, I might spend dozens of attempts to reach six pictures yet fail to get the seventh and final picture. Compound the unforgiving nature of the game's design with a heightened difficulty and that spelled disaster for anyone without solid dodging skills.

[Letty Whiterock]

Up to 3 reasons why Touhou interests you. Out of 22207 people.
Music: 84.78%
Characters: 74.61%
Worldliness Setting (ie "Story"): 40.14%
As an STG: 22.58%
Other doujins: 22.47%
Danmaku: 17.46%
etc. (7 other choices)

Oh, that is just sad.

[Lucarius]

Oh, that is just sad.

Most people in Japan have a traditional or out-dated mindset about commercial products always being better than doujins. There are various reasons to this I don't want to expand on, or know really well enough to be confident about what I'm saying.

Anyway, those who own games like Gradius and other commercial shooting games (sorry, I'm not really fond of shooters) tend to have a degraded view on the quality of doujin products within the same game genre. Touhou does not seem to be an exception.

I personally find this out-dated thought ridiculous.

[Menreiki]

I don't see how liking Touhou for character and "story" and not because of danmaku patterns is problematic, if problematic is even the right term to be used here. Moreover, I really don't like how you put the term "story" in quotes as if Touhou didn't have a respectable story in it.
In addition, your statement about secondhand > official is clearly wrong too. There are less people who have only secondhand Touhou music than those who have both secondhand Touhou music and original Touhou music, and far less people who have only secondhand Touhou games/books than those who have original Touhou games/books only.

I clearly see there are many more people who play danmaku than fighting out of the people who took this survey, if any significant difference at all. Moreover, I don't see that big of a difference between the number of people who played StB versus the other games, save IaMP.

Mind you don't forget that when you say Touhou fandom or Touhou players, you mean us Japanese people too. Mind also that there's no problem on how people get a hold on Touhou, and such holds have no relation with how good they are at the game.

What you're saying about mere preference would be something analogous to me saying you don't read any of ZUN's written works or afterwords whatsoever, because you put "story" in quotation marks.

I see you're trying to be serious in whatever way you can, but you're far from being real in any way. I don't know about the American fandom as much as the Japanese fandom, but your grasp on Touhou seems as upsetting to me as other people's grasps are to you.

I never said it was wrong to like Touhou for some reason other than the shmups. And yes, I forgot to say that I was referring to the Western fandom. I know there are lots of people that play the games, but by my experience in other communities where the usersbase is 20/1 of fighting games players over shmup players, I may have a wrong impression over how big exactly is the shmup side. I apologize for that.

And no, I have read all the print works till today. I stated "story" like that because it is a shmup after all, story is not that important. I love the fact that is started to tie all the game stories together. I do enjoy the storyline of Touhou and follow every piece of information that extends from it. I would be really hypocrite if I said that I don't enjoy the fanwork and music remixes, because I do. But playing shmups is and always will be the only reason I like Touhou. Trying to change other peoples opinion over a game or trying to get it other people to like it, is just not my thing. I prefer to just enjoy the games.

As a final note, I'm not saying something that is completely right, but it is not far from really either. The fandom is growing, really quickly. I'm not saying this is bad, since the more people get into it, the more PoFV and competitive shmup players (scoring) we get. I do hope the shmup scene grows larger. The bigger it is, ZUN will bless us with more fantastic games, which is the thing I truly enjoy.

[Grand Octopus]

I have nothing against these people, that would just be extremely elitist. I was just generalizing the fandom in my post. Let's be real, most of the people don't play StB because it IS HARD. You shouldn?t play Shoot the Bullet as if you were playing a regular Touhou game, that's the whole idea of this being a .5 game, it is supposed to be something different .

See, I took the inference in your post to be that everyone who'd expressed displeasure with the 12.5 announcement here did so because of the absence of new characters/story and the difficulty of StB (which wasn't the case with me, hence my response). If you were making a general address to the fandom, that's perhaps more justifiable.

I still disagree with the "people are particularly adverse to StB because it's hard(er)" suggestion though. The 7th TPP results Lucarius posted above show a noticeable increase in the number of people who haven't played StB AT ALL compared to the traditional shooters, and it seems implausible that people are making negative judgments about the game because of its difficulty having not even played it in the first place. More likely it's because of its unorthodox gameplay mechanics in comparison to the regular games or something.

[Chen]

Different strokes for different folks. And these folks sound like the kind of people who hit the savestate key every 15 seconds when playing games.

What savestate?

[Cadmas]

What did people think 12.5 was going to be other than a stb2?

You're still getting 13.

[Lucarius]

I still disagree with the "people are particularly adverse to StB because it's hard(er)" suggestion though. The 7th TPP results Lucarius posted above show a noticeable increase in the number of people who haven't played StB AT ALL compared to the traditional shooters.

Uh. I'm not sure how you read the graph or charts, but I don't see where you got this from, especially the AT ALL part. There's nothing on the results that differentiate between those that have played the game at least once and those that haven't.

If you're looking at 文花帖クリアシーン数 - 有効回答数：14788人, there's nothing that indicates the number of people who haven't played the game, because the entire chart there is based only on the people who have.

If you're looking at the pink bar, then that's a cumulative status. The percentage accumulates from the bottom data to top so that the top pink bar is 100%. It doesn't have much to do with the results in terms of what you're talking about.

If you're comparing it to TPP6, there's been a fairly even increase between the number of responses for each game.

Perhaps I am reading these results wrong?

Not that I know exactly why 9.5 has less players than the other games on the Japanese side either.


As a side note, most of you are going to have 12.5 available for free within 2 hours after the first copy is sold, like 12 and 12.3 was. I believe having to spend 3000$ in total to buy the game 3 months after, is more to complain about than the fact that 12.5 is 12.5. Yay~

[Letty Whiterock]

Most people in Japan have a traditional or out-dated mindset about commercial products always being better than doujins. There are various reasons to this I don't want to expand on, or know really well enough to be confident about what I'm saying.

Anyway, those who own games like Gradius and other commercial shooting games (sorry, I'm not really fond of shooters) tend to have a degraded view on the quality of doujin products within the same game genre. Touhou does not seem to be an exception.

I personally find this out-dated thought ridiculous.

That's not really the issue, though. It's that the people within the Touhou fandom care more about the music, characters, and the joke of a "story" than they do about the fact that it's a top-down, vertical shoot-em-up at its very core. The spell cards that set it apart in the shmup world have taken a back seat in the eyes of the fandom, even in the region that the game is from. At this point, ZUN could remove the game aspect entirely and just release soundtracks and pictures of new characters with vague background stories, and according to those stats, nearly 80% of the Touhou fandom will not care. That is all sorts of sad.

[Serela]

At this point, ZUN could remove the game aspect entirely and just release soundtracks and pictures of new characters with vague background stories, and according to those stats, nearly 80% of the Touhou fandom will not care.
That is all sorts of sad.

QFT.

[Alice★f]

I like where all of this is going. I'll be checking up on this later...

[FinnKaenbyou]

I've been thinking about this, and I think that the points Letty brought up are exactly why ZUN is making an StB sequel.

There will be no new characters, no new story, nothing. It's all about the danmaku, which is the entire point. His intention is likely to get the fans who don't play the games to leave him the hell alone, which is by no means a bad thing.

The hope is presumably that a good fragment of the 80% Letty mentioned will go off to some other series which is all about characters. You know, like an anime? Which is basically what they're treating Touhou as?

I'm not trying to be elitist to the players who aren't good enough to get anywhere, I'm raging at the people who are 'fans' despite having never played any of the games. The fans who got hauled in by Marisa Stole The Precious Thing and its ilk (remember when people thought that flash was a GOOD thing for the fandom?). Who saw fanart and said 'ooh, this is pretty, I think I'll become a fan of wherever this girl came from!' and didn't think of playing the games. Who listened to the music and didn't bother playing the games it came from.

tl;dr We brought this on ourselves. It is our punishment for not being faithful to ZUN and the games. Pray with me now, children, that those who have turned away from the light of the Danmaku either repent or are exiled from this land. Then perhaps, our lord may grace us with Touhou 13 come Winter Comiket.

[Grand Octopus]

What savestate?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saved_game#Saved_states . I'm not talking about Touhou here.

Uh. I'm not sure how you read the graph or charts, but I don't see where you got this from, especially the AT ALL part. There's nothing on the results that differentiate between those that have played the game at least once and those that haven't.

I thought that segment of the results was drawn from part 2 of the survey, which was translated here as 'Games Played'. So I assumed that people had responded positively if they'd played the game before, and negatively if they hadn't, giving results of e.g. 69.84% of people surveyed had played StB. What're you saying the results actually mean?

[Nobu]

I don't think it's anything worth getting sad or riled up about, personally. Who the fuck cares? Why get so offended?


Lucarius: I think the problem here is due to the availability heuristic. People tend to base their assumptions on the whole based on what they see or who is being the loudest, which if often not representative of everyone.

[Lucarius]

I've been thinking about this, and I think that the points Letty brought up are exactly why ZUN is making an StB sequel.

There will be no new characters, no new story, nothing. It's all about the danmaku, which is the entire point. His intention is likely to get the fans who don't play the games to leave him the hell alone, which is by no means a bad thing.

Funny, most people tend to take it the other way, based on how ZUN phrased it on his blog article.

This game's contents have danmaku that will bully those who say "I don't need any stories or complicated turn of events. I just want something short and easy-to-access to play bit-by-bit during my breaks," to the extent they'd be yearning for games that require extensive play hours.

Retranslated by me to make my point, but he makes these .3 and .5 games to satisfy the gamers who don't care as much about ZUN's ideals, which explains the fighting genre, and the difficult level of StB and DS.
ZUN chose this "danmaku game" as the one best form of expression to materialize his ideas and stories. He emphasizes this in his written works.
Simply put, most people think that ZUN intends for the gaming aspect to be a decoration for materializing his ideals, because there are many things in his works that hint at that idea.

However, because of that same reason, I don't believe ZUN will be abandoning danmaku games as long as Touhou continues to be Touhou.

I thought that segment of the results was drawn from part 2 of the survey, which was translated here as 'Games Played'. So I assumed that people had responded positively if they'd played the game before, and negatively if they hadn't, giving results of e.g. 69.84% of people surveyed had played StB. What're you saying the results actually mean?

I was reading the results wrong.

[Alice Fact]

9.5 was running on the old engine right? (Pre MoF).

no, StB was a sort of "techdemo" for the new engine.

Actually, it's the main title. Bunkachou is the subtitle this time.

it will always be "touhou bunkachou ~ double spoiler" to me. it even looks that way on the title screen!

Implying that the primary reason people dislike StB is because they're terrible at the game is ignorant almost beyond belief

HA! HAHAHAHAHA

no it is not and you know it. if you really gave half a damn about this series you wouldn't be saying this nonsense.

Source: (Japan)

I think he just said DENIED, son
--------

someone who has, since childhood, been used to continually holding down the fire button while playing shmup

play some older games and don't use autofire

StB is bad for a Touhou game. Don't take internet "WORST _____ EVER" hyperbole seriously.

don't use strong words. don't use so much hyperbole. there is absolutely no reason why someone who has no idea how the internet works should actually have to know anyway.

if you had real opinions, being able to express them without sounding like a complete jerk really wouldn't be that hard! unless you were just trolling. oh wait!

[GMOFucker: Makin' GMOs To Fuck 'Em]

I'd like to point out, isn't that up to three reasons? Some of the people who voted music and characters and so on could be primarily interested in the games themselves, but the three categories they chose go up an equal amount. It might not really be as extreme as the results make it look.

Plus since people can only choose 3 categories, they might enjoy the actual games as well but prefer some other things more and didn't choose them as a result. Or they could prefer the fighters, etc

[Chiruno⑨]

If Danmaku was the only basis for playing Touhou, then honestly Touhou wouldn't be as popular as it is today. IMHO, I have to say that if not for the Art, Story, Music, would we all really be gathered here arguing about this?
I appreciate the games (pretty sure we all do for the most part), I got into this back in 06 when I first got a copy of EoSD and Lotus Land Story. What attracted me to Touhou? was it just the Danmaku? was it just the Music? or was it the Characters and Story? Hard to say but I'll try to explain.

First off I should mention that I play more games and emulations then any healthy person should honestly, and, with Touhou it's pretty hard to say you can just like ONE aspect of the game itself and claim it's the only good virtue.
I played EoSD, at first it was a decent game I thought. I always was pretty curious what the characters were talking to each other about though, specially when they change expressions making funny or annoyed faces, yet I had other shooters I payed attention to.

I would get back to it every now and then since it had nicer music and the Danmaku was a bit more forgiving I remember then one game I was playing at the time I needed a break from.
When I got tired of just wondering what these characters were talking about and what the whole deal was with the plot I checked all over the internet. Sadly Touhouwiki wasn't quite there yet, not many places had translations but found them, eventually.

After that I found the creator (ZUN) made books and some I found were translated as well as many fanworks and their versions of the games how they played out behind the scenes.
As I read more of these and bugged some of my more knowledgeable friends on one's that weren't fully translated, WE grew attached to these character's and the world they live in.

Long story short cause I see myself ranting for a good 3 days on this subject is, to me at least, Touhou games are amazingly and fun to play, but unless  you get more in depth with the entirety of the games characters and story surrounding each game your just playing yet another random shooter made by yet another random person.
They are fun but in essence, if you only enjoy the pretty colors of the Danmaku's and it's your only real reason for playing this series then you need to spread your wings more cause there are, from experience, way better Danmaku focused games. May sound blasphemous but it's true =(

To all hating on Parsee's new hair coloring and docking some cosplay wings, just leave her alone, she's off to Reitasai to take Photo's of all those people she's jealous of that cosplay better then her ;3

**I kid, Parsee Aya is cute in her own way I guess, though not big on pointy ear Elf Aya, wtb non-Elf Tengu Aya back thank you.**

Though I guess I've warmed up to Aya this past year, curse you +Anima manga Cooro. Now I can't look at Aya and stay mad at her as much anymore =(

I can't wait for Touhou: DS! may it at least have better music this time around and a speedier Aya! I blame that laxitive Momiji accidently stuffed into the Manju's for Aya's snack in the first game.

[Helepolis]

5 charismatic points for the person that can name Tenshi's original name.

25 charismatic points if you can tell the reason for it.

70 charismatic points for the person who can explain why IN was a 'dangerous' both as a milestone and game according to ZUN.

[Kilgamayan]

100 charismatic points for the first person that doesn't think they're better than other fans purely for differences in methods of enjoyment.

[Chiruno⑨]

5 charismatic points for the person that can name Tenshi's original name.

25 charismatic points if you can tell the reason for it.

70 charismatic points for the person who can explain why IN was a 'dangerous' both as a milestone and game according to ZUN.

Before the name became official I think we all called her Tenko no? lol

[Chiruno⑨]

100 charismatic points for the first person that doesn't think they're better than other fans purely for differences in methods of enjoyment.

Charisma Break in 3...2...1...

[Solais]

Chiko. Because she moved to heaven where she can be an Angel. IN was dangerous because of its Spell Practice, because ZUN was afraid that people won't play his games anymore, the story and everything, just the practice.

Also, I like that Lucarius is here, so we can have a connection with the Japanese Touhoudom. I always felt that we were too far away from them, or maybe they don't even know about us.

Also I don't like just the games' Music or Characters or the Story or the Danmaku alone. I love the games as whole games and every aspect of them.

[Moerin]

Huzzah, 100 points for me~  Enjoy the series however the hell you like, in the end we're all just in love with at least something that ZUN made, and that's all that really matters.

[Kilgamayan]

The joke's on all of you, I gave those 100 points to myself!

[Nat Tea]

The joke's on all of you, I gave those 100 points to myself!

You dumbass, you're the referee!

That's not how tennis works!

YOU IDIOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT