Balance Issues

[4n0nct]

Hello, I wanted to share my opinion about it.
It's seriously too high, normal mode feels not doable (for a normal player), it's even more difficult than an official hard mode, aside of that thx for some improvements, like the sprites during the discussions and the optimization, that's good, and the 60fps are here and constant now (arch linux), but that difficulty makes me think you are some lunatic players who made your game only for the other lunatic players. A normal mode shouldn't be this hard, really...Will it be like that definitively ?

[4n0nct]

And also, if it can help you to improve some things:

[Akaricchi]

Hello, and thanks for the feedback!

First of all, what version of Taisei are you talking about? In case it's the latest git master branch, the game is currently undergoing a huge revamp, both from the code and the gameplay perspectives, so essentially nothing is balanced there right now. The latest stable release (v1.3.1) is probably easier, though it absolutely has its balancing problems as well. You can also checkout the unreleased v1.3.x branch, which has the same gameplay as v1.3.1, but with most of the latest engine improvements and fixes backported from master.

As for master, you can definitely expect balance changes going forward, but I can't say when we'll be able to implement them. There is a lot of work that needs to be taken care of, in particular refactoring lots of legacy stage code, before we can start tuning things. And we're short on manpower.

but that difficulty makes me think you are some lunatic players who made your game only for the other lunatic players

We're actually not Lunatic players at all; I don't have a single Lunatic clear in any of the Touhou games so far! However, it's hard to evaluate the difficulty of our own stages — after all, we've designed them and played them hundreds of times, so naturally we're better at our own game than we are at the official Touhous. Which is why we encourage and welcome all feedback, especially criticism of specific sections/patterns. Feel free to use this issue to elaborate, and/or join our Discord.

[Akaricchi]

And also, if it can help you to improve some things:

These are harmless. The first 4 lines are there because of a completely optional (and undocumented) feature where users can apply custom post-processing effects. Those files are not included by default, so it complains. I really should turn those errors into something less scary; several other users reported them before.

[4n0nct]

Thx for your answer, it is 1.3.1-1, the one which is in the aur/ for arch.
I wasn't sure if this was the good place for that and I was ready to apologize for using the issue section.
I'm curious about the next update and I will wait for it. I will also look at 1.3.x.
Have a good evening (or day).

[Akaricchi]

Thx for your answer, it is 1.3.1-1, the one which is in the aur/ for arch.

I see, that's the stable release then. Master branch is probably even more difficult right now, but we'll address that before release.

The general consensus about that version seems to be that Easy and Normal are too difficult, while Hard and Lunatic are too easy.

And yeah it's totally fine to talk about the game on the issue tracker.

[4n0nct]

I've tested easy, I had to use 1 continue and relost all my lives at last boss (lol)...
Also there was this bizarre instant death against wriggle, in each run, but I can see someone else already reported it.

[HybridDog]

I'm generally not good at this game, so I couldn't beat it in easy mode yet after many tries. Here are two replays: replay.zip

[4n0nct]

So after more tries, arrived at stage6 with 3 lives, the best I've done. (normal mode)
All my continues just for the last boss, because of certains spells:

the one which fill the screen with bullets, with 3 zones which kill you anyway (died bombed bombed bombed died bombed bombed died), I don't understand what I'm supposed to do, and after dying, since everything still here, the player is hidden somewhere, and dies again because where is reimu ?
the one with the "writings", impossible to know where to go and what to do (and maybe too close from the player).
there's also this one when the boss send 3 exploding waves, can't know in which direction it will be fired.
the midspells send too much bullets from all directions
and of course, the last spell, it's just too much.
So almost everything about this boss.
There are more things of course, but these ones are the most important I think.

[taehjoon]

Woohoo! I finally clear normal mode. And as I thought, the extra mode doesn't seem to be completed yet. I don't know if the scenario isn't finished yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Until then, I'll try my best to contribute to the code.

[laochailan]

@taehjoon nice! If you have questions about the code or what to do, let us know. Also check out discord where most of the development discussion is happening.

[StarWitch]

The latest v1.4 public preview ought to have fixed quite a few of these balance issues. Let us know if the difficulty curve is still too extreme.

[4n0nct]

Hi. I tried it, normal mode still too hard, i can th6,7,8,10 in lunatic now, but your game in normal mode no, by its visibilities issues (same color for bullets and bg (no !), like in touhou 16 and 17 which are almost unplayable for me and a lot of people because of that), all the stuff happening too close to the player, some lasers spawning too fast making them almost unavoidable, some density that shouldn't even be present in a normal mode, some bullets a little too tiny making them hard to see in some situations when it's already hard enough to understand what's going on etc etc... For some reasons the game is even harder than 2 years ago, and since i can now beat a few cave games, i've done the fantastic danmaku festival in lunatic, so I can affirm it's not a skill issue. But if I had to give all the details about each stuff my english would be too limited. I give up sorry. Good continuation.
Edit: it was just one try

[StarWitch]

@4n0nct Thanks for the update. We've known about the visibility issue (same colour of bullets + bg) for a little while now. We'll look into it more for the v1.4 final version. We'll also look into decreasing density and making the lasers telegraph themselves a bit more.

Related: #198