What gameplay mechanics do you wish to see in Touhou 15?

[Szayelaporro Granz]

Speaking of overdrive spells, I want to see overdrive as an actual difficulty.

We already have fan-made ultra mode patch though.

Yes, I agree ZUN needs to introduce more LW spells in future games. Unlocking and capturing them is tons of fun and is probably my favorite part of Touhou shmup.

[Sakurei]

The ultra patches are terribly made with no effort behind them. They give you impossible patterns. Not what a higher difficulty is supposed to do.

I don't really care what the system is, to be honest. I just want Youmu to be playable again. Maybe I will even play it for points then, who knows. I probably won't otherwise. And by probably I mean definitely.

[Szayelaporro Granz]

Anyway, I wonder how LNN achievers will feel about it if there will be Overdrive mode.

[wyldstrykr]

not a mechanic but i want to see them anyway

1: A portrait of character when you bomb. (why it is called a spell card in the character selection screen if there is no portrait)
2: Spell card practice comments. (It is night to see the author point of view when making these cards(if you completed it).  also additional card if you unlock few/some/many of those spell cards (last word) also if you capture it in a normal run, you automatically capture it in spell card practice)
3: A difficulty between easy and normal & normal and hard (yeah, im noob at these game so i notice the huge difficulty jump)

[chum]

For a "traditional" game:

Multiple types of shots, options and spell cards per character, as item collectables. These would float around the screen and change type based on time. Ideally, these different types would give scoring routes some depth. I think the ideal number is 3 of each shot, option and bomb type for each character.

More bomb items. I want a game that encourages creative usage of bombs, and having multiple bomb types complementing a strong system, while you mind when you pick up what type of bomb in order to plan your bomb types for various situations, would be favorable. In order for this bomb system to work, you could have 3 bomb "slots", which can be filled up with a bomb item. Bomb slots cannot be used unless filled up, they start out empty and dying does not fill them up; you have to collect items.

Grazing to up the spellcard value and player controlled opportunity-based grazing in general could definitely be brought back by now under a new guise. The former is more important to me than the latter.

Ground enemies wouldn't be too shabby, i.e, enemies you can't collide with and with deadzones.

Longer and more involved stages would be necessary for some of these ideas to be any good.

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For a Phantasmagoria:

Grazing to affect number of bullets sent over to the opponent, more types of bullets/patterns that are suitable for grazing, no pellet bullets but have different types of ex bullets, no bullet reflection, enemy chaining summons bosses as usual, boss behaviour is not random but pattern types are used in succession and depends on how big the chain is, you always have 3 lives and lose 1 when hit, you have 2 bombs which is not part of your spell gauge but does affect the opponents screen, consistent ai timers

[Mesarthim]

Balanced shot types.

Other than that I'm not TOO picky. However it is extremely concerning when Reimu A in DDC can do twice as much damage as Reimu B. The irony being Reimu B having a description of its power being top class. UFO did that right in my opinion where the non-homing shot type was stronger.

[ZXNova]

Multiple spellcards sounds like a good idea. Maybe when you choose a shot type, you get your main bomb (spellcard), and once you do that, you can choose one more spellcard that's not specifically for that shot type. Would be pretty cool. If there were more routes in the game, maybe that make way for more characters (?) or possibly more different spellcards and dialogue for that stage boss depending on which path you took. Plus the obvious different patterns and enemies etc.

[Drake]

oops forgot about this

I can see why you'd be against milking, but why supergrazing? Personally I'd say supergrazes are just about the only good thing that could ever come from a graze mechanic in these games, and if you're going to try to avoid them you may as well not bother with a graze mechanic in the first place. The basic idea (if we agree on what a supergraze actually is) is that you're rewarded for performing difficult tricks, which seems like a sound concept to me.

I probably didn't explain that too well. Supergrazing itself isn't really a problem; conceptually it seems like a nice risk-skill-reward tactic and is one logical extreme of the risk-reward that grazing systems were meant to be. The issue comes mostly when the grazing does devolve into milking, as is the case in every game ZUN has made whose system involves grazing as an actual scoring factor (rather than say FW, where you graze for recharge). Moreover this seems to be the case for all games with graze-heavy scoring systems that I can think of. Unless you can build a system that limits the graze bonuses you can do in some way (few bullets, time constraints, upper limits on things, etc), a system that allows and encourages supergrazing is generally going to be linked to milking for that graze. Of course there are various tradeoffs usually, just from the difficulty of supergraze tricks or from burning resources, but I feel this doesn't "excuse" it turning into milking things for graze. So when I said "devolves into supergrazing", this is what I meant. This train of thought pretty much assumes my position that milking is awful though, so how other people see this can vary.

Essentially, I found that when trying to design a system that works around this, one option comes down to introducing limitations as said above. This is really not a preferable solution because it doesn't really "fix" anything, it just shoves it under a rug, unless you be really clever about how you limit it. Another is designing a system where supergrazing doesn't affect score to the point where it becomes preferable to milk everything, but it's hard to determine where exactly this magic threshold is, and it's even more difficult to really know in advance that some techniques won't be found that will crush scoring regardless (see: UFO). I also find it a minor flaw of sorts that you can simply graze a single spot for an instant and get a ton of graze just because it's a spawn point, for example.

A better solution comes with the observation that this situation becomes troublesome when the focus of supergrazing is getting a large quantity of graze. If you can design a grazing system that doesn't put much (if any) stress strictly on how many bullets you get close to, but rather another metric -- such as how long you can stay near fresh bullets without stopping, then the intended risks of grazing can be preserved but the possibility for milking can be greatly reduced. Using the time-based system for example, just by having say a meter that fills up (to a max) during that grazing period, you get rid of milking entirely because you have no reason to chase big pools of bullets forever, but you're still actively rushing into danger to keep the meter up. One minor issue is that you can then graze sparse bullets for longer than grazing through a dense, more dangerous area, but that can be alleviated. A much more major flaw, and one that I personally found, is that it's suddenly extremely difficult to structure your patterns to work well with this system. Balancing timing and the spacing of patterns well would be a massive hassle and require a ton of very deliberate work. Despite this, I still really like this idea and think it has some real potential.
For a concrete example, back when we were really talking about this, Naut used this style of grazing system for a contest script.

[Quukii]

For a traditional game I'd like to see the return of different spell cards in different difficulties (For example, Remilia's last attack in EoSD on normal is Red Magic, while she uses Scarlet Gensokyo on hard and lunatic. It's not just the amount of bullets that differs between the difficulties; the actual spell is different too). In the more recent games, the only difference in the spells between difficulties seems to be density, for the most part. With different spell cards for the different difficulties, progressing through the difficulties is more fun and interesting.

[Zil]

@Drake: Okay. If the problem is ultimately milking, then I agree with you. And when it comes to methods for discouraging it, personally I tend to think of reducing the amounts of time during which grazing is meaningful, as PCB kind of did with the cherry borders. If you brought the spellcard timers down to reasonable levels, and just removed entirely the points earned directly from grazing, PCB would be almost completely free of milking while nonetheless being full of cool grazing strats.

For a concrete example, back when we were really talking about this, Naut used this style of grazing system for a contest script.

This seems like a cool idea. I'd like to see how it would work in a boss battle.

[Shimatora]

Spoiler:

Bombing and suiciding for points.

[Simon150999]

Reverse power system, power starts off at 100% after you die and slowly goes down to 50% at a rate of 1% per 30 seconds.
Playable Sakuya, Playable Youmu.
More attack types, maybe some unlockable characters PoFV style?

[Snakebite969]

PVP, and not like PoFV
I mean literal bullet hell. Like, same screen danmaku battling, like the bosses, but not like the fighter games.
You could use your own spellcards or something... That's pretty difficult to visualise playing though...

Alternatively, normal power levels.
Vegeta! What does your scouter say about her power level? IT'S... 4.00...

[LunarWingCloud]

Bring back PCB's mechanic where your bomb changed depending on whether you were focused or unfocused
 I liked that.

[Koog]

Phantasmagoria with the following characters:
Kogasa
Yatsuhashi
Raiko
Benben
Medicine
And maybe some of these:
Mima (Because MIMA)
Shou (Time to win in 0:05 seconds with curvy lasers!)
Sekibanki (Flying Head!)
Prismriver Sisters (Imagine Lyrica vs. Yatsuhashi)
Hina (I love her!)
Meiling (It would be interesting to see her in a game like this)
Kasen (Time to appear already)
Momiji (Why not?)
Seija (The new Reisen)
Yuyuko (Yuyuko only shoots in fighting games)
Kaguya and Mokou (Time to finish this)
Eirin and Keine (Maybe like Merlin and Lunasa)
Satori (Copying spellcards of enemies would be interesting)
Wriggle (No Soku, must be here)
Remilia (It's been a while)
Tojiko (I want more from her)
Parsee (It will be strange, but interesting)
Kokoro (She's back! For more popularity!)
Suika and Tenshi (Must have a danmaku rather than DS)
Iku (Yeah! My brother loves her)
That's all folks!

[Emerald Mint]

Reverse power system, power starts off at 100% after you die and slowly goes down to 50% at a rate of 1% per 30 seconds.

Nice thought there. I'd like to see a system where power becomes more important to the roles of survival/scoring.
My idea is not quite reverse power, but something like allowing power to temporarily go above 4.00 and spawn additional options. It could also multiply point item value or other scoring functions in a way. And if no power items are collected within a set time frame, it would start decreasing.

[Darkness1]

Phantasmagoria Trues 2

In general, I would like Zun to just continue what he's doing. I really found his latest games like UFO, TD and DDC fun. I just love those gimmicks that makes me want to cry.

Other than that, a new photo game? Or not exactly a photo game, but maybe something similair, since I really enjoyed that.

[Oldmansour]

Whatever about anything else, I want to see the health bars back in the right spot.

[Star King]

The circular health bars are the best thing about the new games.

Having to glance at the top-left corner in the middle of the action (scoreruns...) = worst.

[Drake]

Reverse power system, power starts off at 100% after you die and slowly goes down to 50% at a rate of 1% per 30 seconds.

Nice thought there.

Why, exactly? This doesn't seem to serve any purpose besides being a backwards-seeming gimmick. Is it supposed to what, encourage dying? Punish not getting more power items (if this system would have them)?


Below: Yeah that one seems pretty interesting.

[Emerald Mint]

Why, exactly? This doesn't seem to serve any purpose besides being a backwards-seeming gimmick. Is it supposed to what, encourage dying? Punish not getting more power items (if this system would have them)?

Well...okay. Sort of underanalyzed there.

I still stand by my idea of having it decrease when going above a soft cap though and tying power as a score multiplier.

[Star King]

Why, exactly? This doesn't seem to serve any purpose besides being a backwards-seeming gimmick. Is it supposed to what, encourage dying? Punish not getting more power items (if this system would have them)?

Probably like a rank system of sorts pretty much is the idea. Coming from a huge fan of EoSD, though, I always thought rank was a stupid system.

[Despatche]

i just wanna see a new phantasmagoria already. next game needs to be a normal game though, or what little pattern we have is wasted (trilogies).

i outright like the "gimmicky" spellcards because that's simply what happens when you try to have "normal" attacks and "special" attacks like that. many of those older spellcards are really just named normal attacks themselves, so having "gimmicks" gives the entire spellcard concept some meaning. that's definitely something i see as inherently better out of the newer games.

[Drake]

Probably like a rank system of sorts pretty much is the idea. Coming from a huge fan of EoSD, though, I always thought rank was a stupid system.

I don't see how that's anything like a rank system. It doesn't even necessarily make the game "harder" until you reach a point where your power actually downgrades, and even then it really isn't comparable to the bullet patterns becoming more intense (which itself can be seen as a reward).

[Jq1790]

Health bars in BOTH places, so that whoever likes one way gets it while not messing with others would be nice.  Circular for scorerunners, top-of-screen for those of us who prefer it there.

As for something truly new, maybe something where you can pick one of two bosses to KO during a certain stage(probably 4) and that'd determine what stage 5 and 6 were.  Not that I want to make him design 2 whole additional stages, but something like that sounds fun, with Extra unlocking after getting both paths' good ends (on Normal+, of course, since it's not like an Easy player can beat Extra most likely anyway), sort of like IN but without having it be a neutral-end/good-end thing, instead both being 'good' ends, and you can only get to the true heart of the matter by seing both sides or something, whatever the incident turned out to be.

[chirpy13]

Circular for scorerunners

This statement is objectively incorrect.

[Jq1790]

This statement is objectively incorrect.

My thought was in response to:

The circular health bars are the best thing about the new games.

Having to glance at the top-left corner in the middle of the action (scoreruns...) = worst.

[Imosa]

Still on that, the order of the Stage 4, 5 and 6 bosses would depend solely on the team you picked. They'd be 3 powerful gods with pretty much the same amount of power.

If you pick Team 1, you'd face the three last bosses in order XYZ, Team 2 would be YZX, and Team 3 = ZXY. (The same applies if you choose only a single character individually. A character from Team 1 would face order XYZ, one from Team 2 would get YZX and so on).

That would be interesting because all of the three bosses would get enough development in the spell cards department. Either as a Stage 4 boss, a Stage 5 or a Final one. (Needless to say, they'd have different spells depending on their placement too).

I had an idea like this too except I would suggest making the 3 rotating bosses in stage 3, 4, and 5, and then having the 6th be a kinda of trio master (a la pokemon). The reason I want this is because this rotating system lets us say that all 3 teams are fighting the game at the same time. Until they all reach the stage 6 boss at the same time and team up against him in a glorious 9 on 1 defense of fantasy (or however many PCs there are).
Unfortunately I've realized that this isn't exactly the place for this idea. Its unrealistic for us to expect ZUN to make this kind of innovation... but a fan circle could pull it off.

1. Total removal of the power system.

Wow, this is so true. Good call.

The thing that I really think 15 needs is IN's unlockable features. It just... gives a reason to play.

[Formless God]

Remove any form of milking.

Remove scoring via bombs. It didn't work the last two times.

Keep the pattern design from EoSD and the last four games (that's 12.8 to 14). Sparse, fast, odd angles. None of that flamboyant screen-filling squiggly "mom i learned trigonometry" shit like in PCB and IN.

TLB.

[Espadas]

What i would like to see?

1) Multiple Boss battles like the Prismriver trio and spell cards that screw with the interface like Marisa's "Supernova" both in "Unreasonable Mechanics"..... CRAZY AWESOME

2) Multiple Boss battles where the bosses use their respective Spell Cards AT THE SAME TIME, creating patterns different from the single ones

3) Boss battles where the BGM music is coordinated with the actual battle (Raiko docet). That would be a dream come true for me.....