Batman leeching

[Phil Lamat]

http://replay.marpirc.net/r/batman
http://replay.marpirc.net/inp/2/6/6/zer ... olf106.zip

This game can be highly leeched as shown there.
I'm not familiar with the game, but can this leeching be avoided ?
(I haven't see any way in dipswitches to limit number of lifes)

[Zerstorung]

Here are what I believe to be the main arguments for and against the leeching:

Leeching Allowed: The enemies used for leeching have a 100% trigger rate on the first two lives, and then it quickly diminishes. This is such that by the fifth or so life, not enough spawn to even be worth staying there. It may be considered a legitimate point pressing method, considering this.

Leeching Disallowed: In a full run of the game, without leeching, I would estimate 320-380k points would likely be achieved. Using the leeching method, about 650k points are possible at the primary leeching spot alone, in addition to the score throughout the game. This adds unnecessary length to playing and allows great amounts of points to be earned by means of a low-risk/low-skill tactic.



Limiting the number of lives will not affect this, as you can get more points there on three lives than you can get throughout the entire game without leeching.

[Chad]

I don't really see this leeching being anymore leechiness than shinobi. I would argue just to leave the leeching in. As for many leeching games still could be played in two ways, leech or quickest finish time.

[BBH]

I don't really see this leeching being anymore leechiness than shinobi. I would argue just to leave the leeching in. As for many leeching games still could be played in two ways, leech or quickest finish time.

uhh, did you actually watch the recording? The leeching in Batman is WAY worse than it is in Shinobi. The leeching in Shinobi doesn't account for most of the game's score (most of that comes from the 20k+5k bonuses at the end of levels), whereas the leeching in Zerstorung's Batman recording is like at least half of the score. Plus Shinobi stops giving extra lives after 200k so it's not like you can do it infinitely. Batman keeps giving extra lives every 75k, and more than 75k can be gained on one life doing this leeching. That's an immediate red flag that this shouldn't be allowed since it could potentially be done infinitely (I say potentially because I'm not sure why less enemies were coming out later on).

Fastest finish time sounds like a good idea in theory but there's a problem with that - nobody's finished the game on MARP (which isn't much of a surprise since the game is quite bullshit at points). One could come up with a convoluted scoring system involving stages cleared + fastest time to reach the stage someone lost on (similar to Ghosts 'n Goblins scoring in K6), but that seems kinda silly. It's possible that nobody will get to the end unless they leech a shitload of extra lives. It seems like there's no choice but to ban the leeching completely, but it's a fine line to walk - if we ban one leech spot, what's to keep someone from trying to cleverly stall in multiple areas for a short period of time but still make progress? How much is too much?