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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   25759 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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Achievement is always zero-sum. We only respect and feel the power of things that other people cannot or will not do. The magnitude of an achievement is directly proportional to the number of people who have failed.

What the people whining for easy mode are trying to do is co-opt the social cachet of the skill required to beat a hard game at a lower investment in time/ability.

I don't agree with this psychoanalysis. Cuphead has an easy mode, Devil May Cry games have an easy mode, Touhou games have an easy mode. In none of those games' communities does anyone boast of completing the game on easy mode. If there's any chase for social cachet, you're essentially calling those people very delusional because there is no cachet in beating ezmodo. Instead, the normal mode or higher (depending on how sweaty normal mode is) becomes the socially accepted "real completion".

Some people just want to experience [some fraction of] the game's mechanics and beat the final boss and not watch it on Youtube. There isn't any more social aspect in that than idly swiping gems in a 3 in a row game on the train.

Is it not better to have a clear win condition, so you don't even need to have the argument about what counts as winning?

Yes, I realize that some people consider using ashes in Elden Ring as cheating. Clarity is a matter of degree. I have, for example, never heard anyone complaining about beating Sekiro in any semi-normal way as cheating. Btw. the Cuphead easy mode doesn't count because it doesn't let you advance in the game. That's why I put it into the list of "hard games".

You don't have to have the argument. I haven't noticed any argument, certainly. There is a clear win condition, and different strata of Touhou players value different tiers of victory differently. I observe that the majority consider normal 1cc and upwards to be "real".

(There are usually different endings in Touhou games and the ones granted for easy mode or multiple continues are the "bad endings", but it's just a few lines of text.)

Possibly true, but even dumber if it is.

What's dumb? Wanting to enjoy a game's mechanics without being forced to compete in big sweaty boy league?

I can confirm this is definitely the case for Touhou. Not just normal, but also only 1 credit clears of the game are considered "real completion". I have done 1cc on some of the games but only on easy.

And I never once heard from anyone in the Touhou community that "it would feel more rewarding to complete normal/hard/lunatic 1cc if lower difficulty modes/continues weren't available".

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