To all who post in HME - please read

[Tengukami]

I see Karisa saying that "a very large number of less experienced players" are offended by this action. This is what I mean by "an apparently grand scale". Lots of newbies are put off by this action. I don't see how anyone that continues the behaviour in the face of that statement isn't going to be perceived as not caring that they offend "a very large number" of people, because they've been directly told their behaviour offends "a very large number of people" and yet they still do it.

Thanks for the clarification on what you meant by "grand scale". I understand you mean quantity of users rather than quality of offense.

And again, I think this is just a part of social interaction. Sometimes things you want to do bothers other people. Way it goes. You're still free to do with you want with that information. We supposedly have an open and communicative community here, so we make information public, especially if it's "a very large number" of users communicating the same message. But, most importantly, as I read the thread here I'm seeing most people - on both sides of this issue - being pretty reasonable about it. I see no danger of anyone being pilloried.

In other words I don't see what makes this case exceptional when it comes to social interaction, nor do I think it's a good thing to just sit on a message that a large cross-section of the users here are communicating. Making the message public, with a clear statement that this isn't a mod issue but a community issue I think helps keep things healthy and open here.

[Shimatora]

I see Karisa saying that "a very large number of less experienced players" are offended by this action. This is what I mean by "an apparently grand scale". Lots of newbies are put off by this action. I don't see how anyone that continues the behaviour in the face of that statement isn't going to be perceived as not caring that they offend "a very large number" of people, because they've been directly told their behaviour offends "a very large number of people" and yet they still do it.

I just want to clarify that Karisa spoke about this of her own accord. She did not ask me my opinion on it before she posted it, so please see it as her opinion and not everyone elses unless stated otherwise. [In reference to the paragraph before Sapz edited it.]

[Sapz]

I've edited the first post in light of the responses in this thread; please feel free to check it out. I feel like we should be mostly on the same page here now. If not, let me know why, I guess. :V

[Tengukami]

Excellent clarification Sapz, addressing both sides of this reasonably and proportionally. If it needs higher visibility, I guess you could add that to this sticky.

[Emerald Mint]

I sort of agree with the message the OP is trying to get forward in regards to people calling themselves bad players.

We could all learn to praise ourselves for the good things we manage to accomplish in our games, regardless of skill. It's a difficult thing to do, because Touhou has a tough learning curve and it's easy to be marred down by mistakes and imperfection. Encouraging good play, no matter how well you play, is positive for you and others. Helping spread a contagious, positive experience creates a healthy mood in others.
It's perfectly fine to talk about your shortcomings and losses, as they are an opportunity to learn more about you. Being able to constructively criticize yourself is a good thing to have too.

The same thing can apply to a bunch of other things in life as well.

[commandercool]

As someone who is genuinely fairly terrible at these games by most metrics, I'll weigh in that at worst the "This complete lunatic run with a bazillion points was so terrible OMG" comments are sort of confusing, but in a way that's ultimately pretty meaningless. Every time one of those comes up I'm like "Wait, am I the only person in the room who can't easily clear every game on lunatic? Wow, I guess I am bad at this". That doesn't change anything though. Given that I often go months without playing because I have other hobbies and engagements taking up my time, I'm comfortable with and aware of that. Although I am vaguely curious about what an "average" Touhou player plays like and how I stack up to them, none of that changes how I play or how I feel about my very modest accomplishments in the games.

The main effect I see coming off of this sort of comment is that it seems to make gauging the overall skill level of the community difficult by (possibly?) giving an inflated sense of what passes as "good". Does that matter? Almost certainly not, but it does create confusion that could be avoided I guess. Or not, if almost everyone playing actually can easily clear Lunatic and I'm really that far below the bar. :derp:

[Tengukami]

The one time I really noticed this distinction between what a Lunatic player calls "terrible" about their runs and what a Normal player does was way back when someone started a thread saying they wanted to make a video compilation of stupid deaths in Touhou. A lot of the entries were really hilarious and great, but this one Lunatic player - Esupantix or however you spell it - kept spamming replays screaming "arrrrrggggggghhhh i suck donkey dongs look at how bad i was here arrggh" and it would be, for example, some 90 FPS portion of UFO that already looked hellishly difficult and the death looked entirely expected.

I simply couldn't get what was supposed to be "stupid" about any of his deaths, so the comedy was lost on me. I know this guy was a pretty big offender when it came to his more ragey posts in particular, but for what it's worth, I never felt as though this kid calling his own 90 FPS Lunatic runs "terrible" somehow meant that my barely beating VoWG on Normal without bombing was worthless or whatever.

[CyberAngel]

commandercool, the whole point of the discussion that took place here is that such things as "average skill" don't (and shouldn't) make sense to individual players. Each player is at their own level of playing, and should gauge their play only by their own accomplishments. One needs time to build up skill, and different people build it up at different speeds. And the skill difference between lowest and highest possible is just so big that it makes no sense to have someone be compared to some sort of a general standard. Someone who got their first Normal clear after only a month of playing the genre deserves to be proud of making progress. Someone who did a perfect Lunatic clear suddenly having a run that barely cleared with no lives left can be rightfully annoyed at playing below their level.

[commandercool]

commandercool, the whole point of the discussion that took place here is that such things as "average skill" don't (and shouldn't) make sense to individual players. Each player is at their own level of playing, and should gauge their play only by their own accomplishments. One needs time to build up skill, and different people build it up at different speeds. And the skill difference between lowest and highest possible is just so big that it makes no sense to have someone be compared to some sort of a general standard. Someone who got their first Normal clear after only a month of playing the genre deserves to be proud of making progress. Someone who did a perfect Lunatic clear suddenly having a run that barely cleared with no lives left can be rightfully annoyed at playing below their level.

Yeah, I get it. Everything I said is in line with this. There is a statistical average across the whole community somewhere, and referring to "high-level play" as "terrible play" confuses that. A statistical average is also not really easy to determine or useful though, so it doesn't matter that much, but it is a thing. That's all I'm saying.

[Drake]

The one time I really noticed this distinction between what a Lunatic player calls "terrible" about their runs and what a Normal player does was way back when someone started a thread saying they wanted to make a video compilation of stupid deaths in Touhou. A lot of the entries were really hilarious and great, but this one Lunatic player - Esupantix or however you spell it - kept spamming replays screaming "arrrrrggggggghhhh i suck donkey dongs look at how bad i was here arrggh" and it would be, for example, some 90 FPS portion of UFO that already looked hellishly difficult and the death looked entirely expected.

I simply couldn't get what was supposed to be "stupid" about any of his deaths, so the comedy was lost on me. I know this guy was a pretty big offender when it came to his more ragey posts in particular, but for what it's worth, I never felt as though this kid calling his own 90 FPS Lunatic runs "terrible" somehow meant that my barely beating VoWG on Normal without bombing was worthless or whatever.

This is definitely a good example of what people should not be doing. This can be attributed to Esu being Esu though; I don't think this really happens often (as you said).

I'm pleased with Sapz' changes to the original post. Given the apparent ubiquity of these complaints (enough to mention it in a sticky), I still think there should be some sort of effort to give new players some notice on the topic. I don't think it's a very complicated or deep problem whatsoever, so a few words could probably go a long way.

[Karisa]

Lately I've been wondering about a semi-related topic...

For a while, I've felt like this forum has been dominated by Lunatic players. For example, I recall an "assume Lunatic unless stated otherwise" policy that several people recommended others to follow, for both accomplishments and questions for help. I felt it was so common that it was drawing attention away from anyone who wasn't yet at that level. But lately I've been feeling like that might not be the case anymore.

Does anyone else think the standards, or general feeling, in HME might be different now than perhaps a year or two ago? Or is it just that my impression's changed for whatever reason?

[Drake]

We definitely have a lot more Lunatic players than we have in the past. Back in say 2007~2008, there were barely any on MotK or other western communities because most were just getting into the series. Coming up to UFO more got to that level (cue "UFO Lunatic is impossible"), but ever since around 2010 I think we've exploded in the number of members who are Lunatic players. And because people don't just leave, we then have an ever-increasing number of Lunatics. Because they like it here and play a lot, they post often, and the board seems to fill up with their posts, leading to the point where people look in and go "wow there are so many Lunatic players". I would really like HME to become dominated with newer players, I think that's a healthy state for the board to be in.

I don't think it's good for people to assume Lunatic unless stated otherwise. If a particular member is known to play at a given difficulty or posts often, it might be clear to others what difficulty they play on. But just because these people post a lot shouldn't mean Lunatic should be the default. I don't think that affords a healthy environment for other players at all; saying that Lunatic is pretty much what everyone plays on does create the problem where people playing on lower difficulties do start comparing themselves to what is said to be a standard.
Where I would say that Lunatic would be "standard" is with things like advice on how to tackle patterns. In most cases, advice for Lunatic applies pretty much the same across all difficulties (or it's pointless advice like needing extra movements), and often times how to do a pattern on Lunatic informs easier ways to do it on lower difficulties. Pattern design and structure becomes more obvious when considering Lunatic. These sorts of things.

[Zil]

I think that at the moment, the beginner to lunatic ratio is at least slightly higher than it was just a year ago, at least as far as activity on this board goes. I wouldn't say that the older players are gone, but they don't post as much. Also we just had a bit of an exodus. The very best of the best are probably much better than they've ever been in the past, but the area between is more vacant.

It's been a while since I've seen such things as UFO Lunatic, VoWG/SFN/etc timeout. Could just be the community's interests changing though. I see a lot more players going for high scores and full run survival, and less NMNB stage practice and timeouts, which is a welcome change in my book.

[chirpy13]

I still go with the assume Lunatic unless otherwise stated/implied (since it's usually the case and I'm not going to bother asking for confirmation) and all clears are 1cc on defaults (because I'm an elitist prick who doesn't consider it a clear otherwise :V :V :V) but I usually specify stuff myself unless it's something obvious and encourage others to do so as well just to avoid confusion.