"HARD" difficulty: Whats the point?

[ILikeBulletZ]

I am the only one who thinks the "Hard" difficulty in most Touhou games seems redundant?

As in, it sort of lacks a point, other than begin a bridge between Normal and Lunatic, obviously.

Let me explain, heres what I personally believe are the "Main function" of every difficulty:

Easy: Well, for one most newbies will start here for obvious reasons. A few may even stay here, but most will move on to Normal at least.

Normal: The standard, the main goal so to speak. Its every players first and main goal: to 1cc Normal the game. Anything beyond that may be a bonus, but I am fairly sure pretty much everyone aims for this at the very least.

Lunatic: For the people who want MORE and want to leave nothing uncompleted. Obvious highest difficulty 1cc desire. The ultimate goal.

Hard: ugh... well I honestly dont know. Maybe some people just like playing in order?

What I mean is, I always found Hard to be irrelevant: You either are happy with the Normal 1cc, OR you want more in which case people will 99% of the time aim for a Lunatic 1cc... so hard is, once again, irrelevant. Now I dont know about you but I never ever played hard (except in PCB once because lol random), my reasoning is: I am trying to get good at Lunatic why waste my time with Hard? It makes no sense to me!

Does anyone else think like this or it is just me begin picky?

(BTW I MAY or MAY NOT have another exception with Hard: UFO. If only because I heard its Hard difficulty is pretty much the equivalent of an others game Lunatic!)

[Drake]

Why did you play Normal.

[Tengukami]

What I mean is, I always found Hard to be irrelevant: You either are happy with the Normal 1cc, OR you want more in which case people will 99% of the time aim for a Lunatic 1cc...

False dilemma. There's a spectrum between "standard difficulty" and "hardest". Just as there's a spectrum between "easy" and "hardest".

It is nice to be able to play different points on the spectrum. I think that's why there's a spectrum.

[Omegahugger]

For me, the difficulties go like this (generally speaking)...
Easy: Never bother with it anymore. Used to when I started playing.... a long time ago now......
Normal: I'll play a new game on normal a few times. After a while 1CCs are 100% guaranteed.
Lunatic: Too hard for me to enjoy myself. I'll make it halfway before my luck runs out. 1CCs are 0% guaranteed.

This leaves hard. If it were just easy/normal/lunatic, I'd be stuck either playing a game that's too easy (100% chance of success) or too hard (0% chance of success) to enjoy. Hard's nice and challenging: no guarantee I'll win, no guarantee I'll fail. I can enjoy myself fully.

Let's keep this in mind: the point of these games is to have fun. You could make a case for easy being pointless too but newcomers are probably very thankful for it. Touhou is made for everyone, not just the super-pros who want to be "the best" in a game but the people who want to enjoy themselves regardless of skill level too.

[Serela]

Hard is there because there's a pretty big gap between Normal and Lunatic. Someone who's just managed to get comfortable with beating Normal is still probably going to get outright slaughtered by Lunatic.

Maybe you were able to just skip hard and move to Lunatic and you were okay, but that's not going to be true with a lot of people.

[Mero]

What do you think when you see someone running up a staircase skipping steps? They're probably going to trip over and slam their face, right?

that was basically my line of reasoning when going for Hard first instead of straight to Lunatic

[Monothemeerp]

This leaves hard. If it were just easy/normal/lunatic, I'd be stuck either playing a game that's too easy (100% chance of success) or too hard (0% chance of success) to enjoy. Hard's nice and challenging: no guarantee I'll win, no guarantee I'll fail. I can enjoy myself fully.

Let's keep this in mind: the point of these games is to have fun. You could make a case for easy being pointless too but newcomers are probably very thankful for it. Touhou is made for everyone, not just the super-pros who want to be "the best" in a game but the people who want to enjoy themselves regardless of skill level too.

Bingo! This is totally me, too. I like to play hard because Normal is getting too easy in some games.

[ILikeBulletZ]

Oh well then I guess I am the weird one for skipping Hard in all games then.

TBH this is just how I operate in ANY game with difficulty modes; first whatever the Normal mode is, then after I am familiar with it I go with the hardest difficulty there is. Anything in between Normal and Hardest Difficulty is just filler to me!...

I actually though a lot of people did this...seems that isn't the case.

[shockdude]

Hard allows you to utilize skills and strategies learned from Normal, while teaching you new skills and strategies to prepare you for Lunatic.
Going straight from Normal to Lunatic is pretty much relearning the game from scratch. You can do it, but it'll be tough; heck you might even waste more time than if you had focused on Hard instead.

A good example of this is MoF stage 1.
On Normal, you can get away with killing the fairies however you want.
On Hard, the increased bullet density encourages you to find an optimal route for killing the fairies, while still leaving room for error.
On Lunatic, you can reuse the route you learned in Hard. However, if you go straight from Normal to Lunatic, the ridiculous bullet spam will make it difficult to discern a route, and you'll spend a lot of time getting walled in or going around in circles instead of learning the route.

[MrL1193]

Well, as you said, most players who are starting out set a goal for themselves of conquering Normal mode, and after that, if they still want more, they set a new goal of conquering Lunatic. If you think of these as two separate "journeys," with the second beginning after the completion of the first, then Hard is to Lunatic as Easy is to Normal--a starting point on the journey and a training ground where you can see the same basic structure in the patterns without getting utterly overwhelmed by the speed and density of them. Hard is also similar to Easy in that a few brave souls will opt to skip it, but they, like the players who start off on Normal instead of Easy, probably aren't going to be achieving 1cc's until they've spent a fair amount of time practicing.

[Tapsa]

I play Hard because my skill level has reached a plateau. I'm not interested in watching replays, memorizing, stage practicing etc. that I must do if I ever wish to Lunatic 1cc. I just want to play for fun at a difficulty I'm comfortable with. And this is a completely fine attitude with a singleplayer game, I'm not dragging a team down just because I can't capture VoWG on Lunatic.

[Mesarthim]

Might as well make a thread of "What's the point of Easy/Normal/Lunatic".

Other people have touched on it already but I am perfectly fine with hard mode in some games, especially UFO. I would be laughing hyterically from the grave before I became lunatic ready in that game. I can beat SA decently on Lunatic with Reimu, but that's me doing mostly ad lib. I would have to be paid to 1cc and practice UFO lunatic considering I'm not really playing touhou much anymore, and I'm pretty mediocre even at hard in that game. Funny, since I can do some other games on lunatic mostly fine.

[Drake]

TBH this is just how I operate in ANY game with difficulty modes; first whatever the Normal mode is, then after I am familiar with it I go with the hardest difficulty there is. Anything in between Normal and Hardest Difficulty is just filler to me!...

I'd like you to answer my question; why did you play Normal? This is for two reasons: One, Easy mode exists, so if you want to say that you need to pick an introductory difficulty, Easy is clearly the main option. In that sense, Normal and Hard are both "filler" towards Lunatic and there's no reason to prefer one over the other. Two, if you want to say that your eventual goal is the hardest difficulty, then you should ask yourself why you would even bother with any lower difficulty. Why not just go straight for Lunatic? Is there a reason you want to play a lower difficulty first? I think it's obvious that you at least acknowledge that you need to get experience first before attempting the hardest difficulty or else you'll get steamrolled. If this is the case, then you've answered your own question and it's a bit silly that you'd even ask, since you're doing it yourself.

[Kappa]

I am a pleb.  Lunatic is too hard for me to beat.  Normal is something I can pull off with a little effort.
Hard, then, should be the perfect difficulty to make me practice a lot and hate myself until the moment I get that all clear.
As it turns out, I usually find the "Hard but not hardEST" mode in games to be the most comfortable, so we'll see if that translates to 2hu.  I have yet to clear anything on Hard.

[Mino ☆]

As stated, there is a bit of a spectrum in the difficulties in Touhou. The lower difficulties mainly appeal to newer players of the franchise. Hard mode offers a significant challenge above normal, and Lunatic seals the deal as being the hardest.

What's the purpose of Hard? It's simply the stepping stone you take to get to the highest difficulty. When I played normal mode, Hard mode was not even comprehensible to me. While on a stream, a friend of mine by the name of Gamercal suggested that I move up to Hard mode, so I did, with little results. But after clearing my first Hard Mode, I felt this rush of accomplishment. I felt like I had done something truly badass, even if nowadays it wouldn't seem like much to me (if I did it). Going in order was quite fun for me. I was slowly working myself up to the top. Lunatic does a really nice job at keeping a very high difficulty level even after adding conditions (such as no bombs and such). Touhou's best thing in my opinion was its replayability. It felt like there was always some accomplishment I could be going for.

Do Easy/Normal/Hard serve a purpose after you hit Lunatic mode? Well, sure. You can always go back and score those modes. Scoring is interesting in the sense that no matter what difficulty you play on, the routes and strategies you have to pull off make every difficulty hard at a high level. If you're uncomfortable with the dodging on Lunatic, you can score on the lower difficulties. But it doesn't mean you're getting less of a challenge. Less bullets means more mobility which can still mean crazy strats to pull of (See Prismriver's spells on Easy mode scoring).

And some people feel comfortable enough at the difficulty that they are at, that they don't really feel the need to jump up on the difficulties. Such a choice is perfectly acceptable, because there is no right way to play this game.

[PhantomSong]

Hard is for those that are better than normal, but find Lunatic too hard. That's all that really need to be said here.

[Cream Soda]

Hard is the first loop, Lunatic is the second loop, Normal is the console arrange, and Easy is no bullet mode. I guess. They all have their purpose.

[Maiden Synnae ミ☆]

Hard is the first loop, Lunatic is the second loop, Normal is the console arrange, and Easy is no bullet mode. I guess. They all have their purpose.

My thoughts exactly. If Touhou was an arcade cabinet game, then Hard would be perfect for the 1st loop and Lunatic for the 2nd loop. Normal would be too easy for the difficulty of an average arcade game, but it'd fit perfectly if said game had a console port.

EDIT

Now that I think about it more, Hard would probably not fit so perfectly. I'm thinking something along the lines:

Stage 1 and 2: Normal
Stage 3 and 4: Hard
Stage 5 and 6: Lunatic

Arcade shmups are generally like this. There's a very noticeable difficulty jump between stages.

[Ghaleon]

I play hard more than every other difficulty combined. To me normal is generally too easy to feel challenged after warming up to shmups in general, hard is nice, lunatic...it's doable, I've 1cc'd several games on lunatic, but it's not remotely possible for me to do it in a just for fun pick up and play way. To beat lunatic, I need to watch replays, memorize pretty much effing everything, plan in advance where I'm going to bomb pretty much...it's a process. It's not simply a matter of playing a shmup. Hard is something I can play and enjoy just for the sake of playing the shmup, I don't have to research and memorize and train and plan and all that, which can be fun and all if you're in the mood for it, but if you're not, and you just want a shmup...there's hard.