Touhou difficulty intervals

[Tengukami]

^What he said.
The stage difficulties are all crazy because of all those spells.
Normal players face Earthlight Ray, while Lunatic players go FUCK IT'S KEINE and then cheese off Shoot the Moon. Asteroid Belt is harder on Hard than most Lunatic cards, TBH. Kaguya's Normal Dragon Necklace is largely RNG-based (as are most of her spells, to an extent, especially Buddhist Die-mond) and very hard to capture when compared to lots of Lunatic spells, outperforming all of Wriggle and Mystia's with ease, and then Salamander Shield is just really easy. Keine's EX spells are grossly mismatched to Mokou's in difficulty (even though I suck at Mokou ;A;). Tewi's nonspells are harder than Reisen for most everyone (I say this because I myself am better at Kaguya than Reisen D:). ZUN himself has admitted to being drunk at times while working on IN, but it still bugs me...

etc. etc.

Ooh OK, I think I get you now. I guess the reason why I don't see it is I play IN in Normal, and only Normal. So for me, my first time with IN was:

Stage 1: Yawn.
Stage 2: Pfft.
Stage 3: Whoah, hang on, OK ...
Stage 4: Heh, that was fun.
Stage 5: Oh cmon, Reisen, this is noth- WAIT WHAT WHERE ARE THE BULLETS?
Stage 6: Pretty pretty pretty! Wooo look at me it's a raaainbow!

[I have no name]

If you really want to just have a "hard" game, play the games on Hard difficulty. That's why it's THERE. It hurts and pains me to see people that feel genuinely entitled to demand that Lunatic difficulty should be lowered to a "doable" state of difficulty when they completely ignore the fact Hard difficulty exists. What is the big deal about Lunatic now? Just the name?

I read your entire post of self-indulgent garbage.  You call the players who want it easier (note: I never said I want it to be easier, I said I don't want the to have a massive difficulty spike) selfish and in the same post insist you should have it your way.  Pretty selfish if you ask me.
Specifically the bit about 'play on hard mode': I did.  They don't challenge me, except UFO, which isn't enjoyable because of the UFO mechanic.  But yeah, I can effortlessly clear any of the hard modes bar UFO (Windows only, PC-98 is kind of meh to me), but the lunatics past MoF have a large difficulty jump.  You say to go practice on the 'right stuff', but at my skill level, that doesn't exist.  I either have to go play trivial stuff or stuff I can't do.

Ok, so I basically just explained why hard mode doesn't exactly work, lets add some numbers to this shall we?
EoSD NF H: 1/0 finish
PCB NF H: effortless clear
IN H: 3 deaths total, 2 to Kaguya, 1 to Marisa
PoFV H: *yawn* easy clear
MoF H: no focus in 1 try, no vertical in 1 try
SA H: 4 lives to spare, could have been 6 but I tried to capture the last spells
UFO H: 2 lives left at my clear.
GFW H: ~300 motivation left IIRC
TD H: can do easily except the game isn't that fun

and now for why not lunatic?
EoSD: clear 0/0 ages ago, since then have captured every pattern in Stages 5 and 6 lunatic
PCB: I beat ultra lunatic first try.  Regular lunatic is pretty easy.
IN: All teams cleared with in quick succession, Magic team expending more resources to one of Reimu's nonspells than to the entirety of Kaguya.
PoFV: Won with Aya, then with Marisa a while later.  It's not hard to not die (except Shikieiki who is BS)
MoF: I can clear this whenever.
SA: Can't pass Stage 2 satisfactorily,
UFO: no just no
GFW: can't get a solid Stage 1
TD: Haven't reached Seiga in a 1cc.

Specifically, looking at the pre-MoF to post-SA games, there's a difficulty spike in the lunatics with nothing in between for me to practice on to improve to be able to surpass the other lunatics.  My reason is not just 'because it's lunatic', I never said I'm not willing to invest time, I never said that I didn't expect the lunatics to get harder/change in difficulty, I never said each game shouldn't get its own mechanic, etc. etc.

Yeah, you have your opinion, but that doesn't mean we aren't allowed to disagree with it. Which most of us do. Pretty flagrantly, I might add.

I have my opinion, you have yours, everyone else has theirs.  But if you're going to 'wall of text' refute my points, at least do it without putting words in my mouth.

You claim to have beaten all the Lunatics up to MoF

What do I stand to gain from lying?  Either way, here's some stuff I did.
EoSD lunatic
PoFV lunatic, nonbroken character
MoF lunatic
UFO hard
lunatic Kanako fight,4 bombs, VoWG capture.
PCB perfect extra
MoF perfect extra

[MTSranger]

SA: Can't pass Stage 2 satisfactorily,
UFO: no just no
TD: Haven't reached Seiga in a 1cc.

Seriously I think you are ready for TD at least - it's not harder than MoF lunatic, just more careful resource managing.
For SA, if you can pass stage 5 by spamming continues, then you can 1cc for sure (after some period of practice, of course).

I agree that MoF -> SA/UFO is such a huge jump, that it seems insurmountable, but I'm sure one day you will reach it.
I mean, ZUN already gave us TD - and even if I'm mistaken about its difficulty (due to 1cc'ing it much later than most other lunatics), it is still easier than SA or UFO, so... there you go, difficulty bridge I guess.

[Tengukami]

I read your entire post of self-indulgent garbage.

How about you dial this back a bit? This is completely unnecessary, and at this point you're only repeating yourself - hard mode is fine, lunatic is WAY too hard for you, so even though a bunch of other people can manage, you wish Lunatic were more personally suited to your particular skill set so you don't need to push yourself further.

If you reach the point where you have nothing new to come back with but added vitriol, it may be time to bow out gracefully and with dignity intact.

[I have no name]

I will agree that saying that was unnecessary, but I was reacting to what came across to me as both hypocritical and a personal attack.

I meant to stop responding to this thread a while ago after my second post, but then (in my eyes) I got attacked, so i defended myself.  and hey look, now I'm doing that again.

, you wish Lunatic were more personally suited to your particular skill set so you don't need to push yourself further.

Nowhere did I say this.  If the next games' hard mode had the right difficulty so I could bridge the gap, I'd be fine with that, even if lunatic was above UFO difficulty.

If you reach the point where you have nothing new to come back with but added vitriol

My previous post had something to add.  I also restated things because people seemed to be missing what I was trying to say.

[XephyrEnigma]

I meant to stop responding to this thread a while ago after my second post, but then (in my eyes) I got attacked, so i defended myself.  and hey look, now I'm doing that again.

Except you weren't being attacked then, and you aren't now. Seriously, if you don't have anything else to say, then don't. Anger doesn't lend itself to discussion.

[Drake]

In any case, even if you figured Trance's post was a personal attack, and hypocritical, it wasn't tactful at all to call it self-indulgent garbage, especially since you're the one in the minority group in this discussion. The reason this got so heated is because your "opinions" are viewed as attacks against the Lunatic players and you aren't bringing up a very good defense for yourself while still sticking by it. I'm sure most people posting here think your opinion is what's self-indulgent, myself included. Which would make you a hypocrite calling someone out for hypocrisy. Don't play the victim and claim you were going to stop after you poked the beehive. You attacked, we defended, you defended in return.

Nowhere did I say this.  If the next games' hard mode had the right difficulty so I could bridge the gap, I'd be fine with that, even if lunatic was above UFO difficulty.
In other words you still haven't understood what we're been saying, and would be ok with moving Hard mode up and thereby screwing up the lower difficulties as long you get what you want. Unless this was extremely badly worded, you're re-introducing the exact same problem but with a different group. The difference between what we're talking about and what you're talking about, is that we want balance for all players, but want Lunatic players to keep being challenged instead of ZUN catering to the lower tier players who already have plenty of challenges. You just keep reiterating that you want catering to what you want, because you're currently "unable to get any better".

My previous post had something to add.  I also restated things because people seemed to be missing what I was trying to say.
Your previous post had nothing to add besides arbitrary stats. I'm pretty sure people get what your "main" point is: you don't want there to be such a large difficulty gap between Hard and Lunatic that you have to spend a lot of time on it before clearing. You're masking it as "I want the difficulty gaps to be natural for everyone!", which isn't the problem. Mostly everyone agrees with that sentiment, you're just working on all the wrong reasons and are pissing people off because of it.

I never said I want it to be easier, I said I don't want the to have a massive difficulty spike
You never said you wanted it to be easier, but your overall attitude and everyone else's experience are against you. You plainly want some game to be easier (or have a lower difficulty harder) so you can "bridge the gap", you just aren't explicitly saying it.

You call the players who want it easier selfish and in the same post insist you should have it your way.  Pretty selfish if you ask me.
Except you completely ignored all the reasons explained throughout the thread, why wanting the games to be easier is selfish, and why we actually have balanced reasoning for why the series shouldn't be getting easier. You aren't putting up a defense at all and are just responding to tonality, so you have absolutely no place to say that Trance is being selfish in that. Please, if you actually have something more to say, then do it. Otherwise you're still just poking the beehive.

We don't care about your completely arbitrary game statistics either, dude. They don't contribute towards your argument at all. Your excuse is basically "I can't do it", which is ultimately poppycock. When you're at the Lunatic level you don't go "this is too hard I can't do it ever". It only makes everyone else wonder how you got to this stage in the first place.

MoF: I can clear this whenever.
TD: Haven't reached Seiga in a 1cc.
SA: Can't pass Stage 2 satisfactorily,
UFO: no just no

Here. You have a very clearly defined path for you to improve with. You have four games to get better at, and the only thing actually stopping you is you saying "the difficulty gap is too much so Lunatic should be easier / Hard should be harder to cater to me". Why don't you TRY HARD?

[Vibri]

Wow people really exploded because a guy said "the gap between Hard and Lunatic is too big in the newer games" let's just relax OK

Noname guy you're probably good enough to 1cc the games you haven't gotten to yet, you just gotta put in the effort. If you can do Hard, the majority of the stages and boss attacks aren't going to be fundamentally different on Lunatic, just denser/faster. Play some more, plan out how to use your resources, etc. You shouldn't have to put in a million hours.

I don't have any issues with the difficulty progression in most games, but when SA came out I thought the Normal was on par with Hard in the other games, while Easy was as trivial as always. That sure sucked.

[Tengukami]

Yeah, SA's Normal is definitely on par with Hard in a lot of other games. Fortunately Reimu B and even Reimu C (if you can master that shot type) provide some great assists.

[I have no name]

Why don't you TRY HARD?

try harder or hard mode?

I was going to say something about how my opinion wasn't wanted except then

Wow people really exploded because a guy said "the gap between Hard and Lunatic is too big in the newer games" let's just relax OK

which is true.  Both sides (myself included) blew this way out of proportion.-

Noname guy you're probably good enough to 1cc the games you haven't gotten to yet, you just gotta put in the effort. If you can do Hard, the majority of the stages and boss attacks aren't going to be fundamentally different on Lunatic, just denser/faster. Play some more, plan out how to use your resources, etc. You shouldn't have to put in a million hours.

I know this stuff, but the changes are enough so that most of my strategies are invalid.

I don't have any issues with the difficulty progression in most games, but when SA came out I thought the Normal was on par with Hard in the other games, while Easy was as trivial as always. That sure sucked.

Honestly I agreed with this then and the reason I overcame this gap was IN hard mode-it felt in-between to me.

Nowhere did I say this.  If the next games' hard mode had the right difficulty so I could bridge the gap, I'd be fine with that, even if lunatic was above UFO difficulty.
In other words you still haven't understood what we're been saying, and would be ok with moving Hard mode up and thereby screwing up the lower difficulties as long you get what you want. Unless this was extremely badly worded, you're re-introducing the exact same problem but with a different group.

It was badly worded, I meant to imply that the game went back up to SA/UFO difficulty throughout the entire game.

In any case, even if you figured Trance's post was a personal attack, and hypocritical, it wasn't tactful at all to call it self-indulgent garbage, especially since you're the one in the minority group in this discussion. The reason this got so heated is because your "opinions" are viewed as attacks against the Lunatic players and you aren't bringing up a very good defense for yourself while still sticking by it

I will agree that saying that was unnecessary

This whole thing started (at least IMO, not that that seems to count for much here) as a misunderstanding of me disagreeing with Zil.

[Vibri]

Make new strategies! Lunatic is harder than Hard, so obviously you can't do the same stuff and have it work out the same. If you're skilled enough to clear EoSD/PCB/IN then you should be able to get the rest with some work.
I would agree with you more if UFO was the only Touhou game that existed, but there is something to bridge the gap between the new Hards and the new Lunatics, and it's the old Lunatics. Across all the games I think there's a pretty reasonable progression of difficulty.

[chirpy13]

I find it kind of ironic that you criticize the difficulty jumps in UFO, when it's actually pretty even across the board.  Easy is easy, Normal is hard, Hard is nuts, Lunatic is ultranuts.  Yes, the jumps are big, but they're even nonetheless - the game is just hard as fuck towards the Lunatic side.   In any case, big jumps shouldn't matter for Lunatics so much.  You've got other Lunatics if you aren't good enough for the big ones, and there's also the whole idea that you don't really practice on Hard to get good at Lunatic.  You either practice Lunatic, or preferably something well beyond that (90FPS or playing harder games and moving back to your whatever your goal is to learn the game-specific stuff when you're ready for it).  It's the same idea as Normal mode players practicing on Hard/Lunatic to accelerate the learning curve for their Normal clears.  It's also always nice to broaden your horizons beyond just Touhou.  You might find something else you really enjoy along the way :V.

try harder or hard mode?

Try harder.  It's a reference to DonPachi's game over screen.

[Esper]

Here's the easiest to hardest difficulties for me, excluding Easy Mode because I was so much of a perfectionist (And Overdrive made me too paranoid).

Normal mode
TD > IN > MoF > PCB > EoSD > SA > UFO

Hard mode
IN > TD > EoSD > PCB > MoF > SA > UFO

Lunatic mode
IN > EoSD > PCB > MoF > TD > SA > UFO

See a pattern here?

I'll copy and paste it and bold what I'm trying to get across

Normal mode
TD > IN > MoF > PCB > EoSD > SA > UFO

Hard mode
IN > TD > EoSD > PCB > MoF > SA > UFO

Lunatic mode
IN > EoSD > PCB > MoF > TD > SA > UFO

[Tengukami]

Here's the easiest to hardest difficulties for me, excluding Easy Mode because I was so much of a perfectionist (And Overdrive made me too paranoid).

I will forever hate that song for legitmizing the elitism and snobbery of ridiculing Easy Mode players.

[XephyrEnigma]

I will forever hate that song for legitmizing the elitism and snobbery of ridiculing Easy Mode players.

Seconding this. Theres no shame in playing Easy. And if thats all you can do at the moment, practice until you get better.

@Ammy, the post below: Thats a given. But if youre enjoying the game, then chances are youre playing it often, and that means youre eventually going to get better and start challenging yourself more.

[Tengukami]

Or hell, play Easy Mode because you like it. Sometimes I don't want to approach a game as an athletic competition with myself; sometimes I just want to fly around and shoot stuff.

[Esper]

I will forever hate that song for legitmizing the elitism and snobbery of ridiculing Easy Mode players.

THIS.

Or hell, play Easy Mode because you like it. Sometimes I don't want to approach a game as an athletic competition with myself; sometimes I just want to fly around and shoot stuff.

Okay that is where I draw the line, depending on the game.

With IN, I play NORMAL if I want to fly around and shoot stuff.

With SA, I play Easy if I want to fly around and shoot stuff.

With UFO, I play Ultra 30FPS Easy if I want to fly around and shoot stuff.

Spoiler:

I can't stand UFO. Fuck you ZUN.

[DX7.EP]

I will forever hate that song for legitmizing the elitism and snobbery of ridiculing Easy Mode players.

Agreed. It's one thing to put in limitations in-game for Easy Mode (EoSD S5, for instance) but this....

Anyways, major arguments and textwalls aside, well...I've found the overall differences between the difficulty levels fairly decent and appropriate within their respective games. Across the games, well, that is another matter.

It's also always nice to broaden your horizons beyond just Touhou.  You might find something else you really enjoy along the way :V.

This, definitely, going by personal experience. After taking a break from Touhou and filling in the STG craving with mostly Cave's STGs and a bit of Gundemonium, upon getting back to the Touhou series my playing skills noticeably improved. Not yet on the level to 1cc most Normals but it's gotten more attainable.

[Esper]

Here's what I meant when I said I agreed with Tengukami's hatred of Overdrive.

I've 1cc'd one game on Easy, which was UFO.

Spoiler:

And actually could say with a straight face that I legitimately enjoyed UFO

I then moved straight up to Normal because I thought Easy Mode was for babies due to seeing Overdrive.

I spent FOUR MONTHS TRYING TO BEAT SOMETHING ON NORMAL

FOUR MONTHS

FOUR MONTHS

FOUR MONTHSSSSSSS

Spoiler:

FOOOOOOUR MOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNTTTTHHHHHHSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Why I drew that out: Four months is the time that borders Easy and Hard, maybe LUNATIC for some people.

[Vibri]

There are plenty of people who take that long (or much longer) to accomplish the same thing. You shouldn't worry about other people so much.

Easy mode is pretty cool. I had fun doing a little scoring on IN Easy because I didn't have to concentrate really hard on dodging stuff. Just had to have good timing and positioning. It was legitimately enjoyable and I got some runs I actually take pride in. Anyone who says Easy mode is for babies is free to try and beat them :>

[MTSranger]

I think we should all calm down a bit.
Seriously, why are people pretending that the glaring jump in difficulty is something really trivial?
Just because you are all way beyond UFO lunatic doesn't mean some of us newer players are.
There is no need to patronize us for complaining about THIS huge difficulty jump and pretend it doesn't exist or smthing:
MoF -> SA
SA -> UFO

I find it kind of ironic that you criticize the difficulty jumps in UFO, when it's actually pretty even across the board.  Easy is easy, Normal is hard, Hard is nuts, Lunatic is ultranuts.  Yes, the jumps are big, but they're even nonetheless - the game is just hard as fuck towards the Lunatic side.   

We are criticizing MoF -> SA -> UFO lunatic with practically nothing in between for a new lunatic player to progress through.

In any case, big jumps shouldn't matter for Lunatics so much.  You've got other Lunatics if you aren't good enough for the big ones, and there's also the whole idea that you don't really practice on Hard to get good at Lunatic.

but there is something to bridge the gap between the new Hards and the new Lunatics, and it's the old Lunatics. Across all the games I think there's a pretty reasonable progression of difficulty.

I don't get how people are still saying this!
The big leap is: MoF -> SA, and SA -> UFO. Imo none of your "other lunatics" come between them!
And I would rather say, those jumps are akin to the jump in a level of difficulty (e.g. normal -> hard).
It's like this:
Lunatic: EoSD, PCB, IN, MoF
Lunatic+: SA
Lunatic++: UFO
Telling us that we should simply "practice hard" and be able to clear UFO lunatic no problem is like telling a normal mode player to 1cc lunatic mode. Yes it can happen. No it is not as "reasonable" as you think. It takes many many months of hard work, and we would like to be able to clear something a bit less difficult and frustrating while we are slowly moving towards that goal.

When I went from normal to lunatic, I had an abundance of games in between to play with - everything from hard mode to extra stages.
When I went from lunatic to lunatic+, there was practically nothing - and I had to resort to taking a long break doing random things such as timing out VoWG and stuff. You can argue that I'm just bad or that I can go play other STGs, but that's beside the point.

The difference between what we're talking about and what you're talking about, is that we want balance for all players,

but want Lunatic players to keep being challenged instead of ZUN catering to the lower tier players who already have plenty of challenges.

How can you have "balance for all players" if the lunatic difficulty keeps drifting away to infinity and beyond?
And especially if the drift is particularly fast?
If the drift is a bit slower, then you can argue that lower tier players have "plenty of challenges" from the previous games
But, as it stands now, there is a scarcity of stuff to do between most lunatics and SA/UFO.

[I have no name]

How can you have "balance for all players" if the lunatic difficulty keeps drifting away to infinity and beyond?
And especially if the drift is particularly fast?
If the drift is a bit slower, then you can argue that lower tier players have "plenty of challenges" from the previous games
But, as it stands now, there is a scarcity of stuff to do between most lunatics and SA/UFO.

This is basically what I was trying to say this whole time, I just wasn't finding the right words.
Thank you for both agreeing with me (nice to know someone does at least) and phrasing what I was trying to say in a much better way than I did.

Lunatic: EoSD, PCB, IN, MoF
Lunatic+: SA
Lunatic++: UFO

Although I am curious where you place TD, for me it's under lunatic+ (while all the higher tier players seem to say it's the easiest lunatic because they just came off of UFO lunatic)

[Vibri]

I'll agree that UFO is kind of out there, but I don't think SA is as bad as you make it out to be. It's hard, yes, but it's not unreasonable to go from the other games (and its own Hard mode) to Lunatic. I cleared MoF, EoSD, and TD for the first time this year and I believe the only thing keeping me from nabbing SA is the fact that I don't feel like playing it ever. I've hit stage 6 a couple times, though, so the removal of one or two deaths should guarantee a 1cc if I actually practice a little.
Your experience may vary, though! I'm not going to deny that you feel SA and UFO are way harder than every other Lunatic, but I think most other people don't feel that way. Thus the disagreement.

[チソウ タイゼン]

I was just playing MoF easy


People should play easy modes when they don't feel like dodging things because just shooting things and getting high points gratis ( minus SA ) is always a good time

SA is the most fun Lunatic :<
UFO is probably the worst because I thoroughly cannot enjoy the UFO mechanics while dodging.

[Esper]

Signs of hating UFO:

• Giving the middle finger to the UFO fairies
• Acting like the UFO system doesn't exist
• You are not Naut

If you have any of these problems, you hate UFO.

[Tengukami]

I think we should all calm down a bit.
Seriously, why are people pretending that the glaring jump in difficulty is something really trivial?
Just because you are all way beyond UFO lunatic doesn't mean some of us newer players are.
There is no need to patronize us for complaining about THIS huge difficulty jump and pretend it doesn't exist or smthing

Folks have long since calmed down, and no one is pretending the difficulty leap doesn't exist. The point being made is that rather than want Lunatic to bend towards the player, the player should just ... try harder maybe? The number of replays of UFO Lunatic 1cc's out there attests to the fact that the difficult leap, while significant, is not moving "towards infinity and beyond". So let's drop the hyperbole.

The way I see it, we all have our own skillset. This skillset is, believe it or not, flexible. It's something you can develop, like a muscle. Some people are born with large muscles. Some people will build their muscles faster than others. But everyone has the potential through training to develop muscles strong enough.

Furthermore, barring something majorly buggy, the onus is not upon the independent one-man game-maker to change his game in any way. But ZUN did anyway - the whole point of Ten Desires was to tone down the difficulty a bit. So not only do I not see this trend towards Lunatic accelerating towards the impossible, the game creator has demonstrably taken steps to prevent this.

[Drake]

EDIT: Thank you Ammy.
Guys, Ammy plays on Easy and Normal, last time I checked. Just by the way.

Seriously, why are people pretending that the glaring jump in difficulty is something really trivial?
Just because you are all way beyond UFO lunatic doesn't mean some of us newer players are.

I for one, am not. I still haven't beaten UFO Lunatic. I understand that I should have by now, but that's due to my playing, not the game's difficulty jumping stupidly. And you know what? I probably still would have argued this position two years ago. My current standing has nothing to do with the points I'm making. For people to have surpassed UFO Lunatic to begin with, they were previously at the same point as you guys. It isn't as if we're completely past you guys and just don't understand your position. We weren't born naturally good at the games or anything.

Second, It isn't a trivial jump in difficulty. If you go straight from UFO Hard to Lunatic you're probably going to get your ass handed to you for a while. But that's how it works. If you go from UFO Normal to Hard, you're probably also going to get your ass handed to you. Similarly with other games. Averaged out, the increases between difficulty levels inside each game, are fairly even. However, to provide a bigger challenge as the series goes on, the highest difficulty gets harder, and it ends up that the difficulty gap between games becomes non-linear, as mentioned previously.

Not sure why you're including MoF though. MoF is one of the easier Lunatics when you consider how many bombs you're given. Of course the jump to SA is large. I'd say IN is worse than MoF for sure, and probably EoSD as well.

I don't get how people are still saying this!

Maybe because we've went through this and know what we're talking about. We could say the same with you guys, you know?

Telling us that we should simply "practice hard" and be able to clear UFO lunatic no problem

I don't understand how you're getting that from what we're saying. Nobody's saying it's easy, nor are we saying raw hours practiced inevitably turns into a clear; that's stupid.

is like telling a normal mode player to 1cc lunatic mode

No, it isn't. Don't be absurd.

It takes many many months of hard work, and we would like to be able to clear something a bit less difficult and frustrating while we are slowly moving towards that goal. How can you have "balance for all players" if the lunatic difficulty keeps drifting away to infinity and beyond? If the drift is a bit slower, then you can argue that lower tier players have "plenty of challenges" from the previous games.

Yes okay awesome! I agree! But that wasn't the issue being argued! If your entire point is that you want things to do before SA and UFO, then congratulations, we all agree on that! I'm pretty sure I explicitly said this twice already. As I mentioned, Lunatic should not be drifting away into infinity, and seeing as 10D was herp derp, it demonstrably isn't. Not many people are actually wishing for something as ball-bustingly hard as UFO, immediately. Maybe in the future, but to have a proper balance it's going to have to start, as said, around MoF sans bombspam, and climb from there. This is the only way to ensure a proper spread in the Lunatic difficulties while still keeping the lower difficulties in check. It isn't the "drift" that's fast, but rather naturally the Easy and Normal difficulties are going to bunch together in difficulty more than Hard and Lunatic, simply because having an linear increase in difficulty along difficulty levels, means a non-linear increase along the games, which is why it seems that SA and UFO have huge gaps between other games. I can make a graph for you if you want.

[Esper]

Essentially implying that it would be ridiculous for a Normal player to 1cc Lunatic-level difficulty.

Okay, that isn't too ridiculous. I know people who can play IN Lunatic like any piano player can play Chopsticks but have 1cc'd about half of the other games on Normal.

Back on bitching about Touhou difficulty, FUCK YOU UFO.

There, that's about every post in the rage thread summed up here.

[チソウ タイゼン]

^^^

I do find it ridiculous

I've 1CCed every Windows Touhou on Normal, but can barely scrape through Stage 4 on Lunatic on all of them

[Drake]

Okay, that isn't too ridiculous. I know people who can play IN Lunatic like any piano player can play Chopsticks but have 1cc'd about half of the other games on Normal.

When talking about the overall demographic of the people who play the game it is. Of course there are going to be a few silly little anecdotes that go against the norm.