markmsx did a video on the somewhat facile "SUPEREASY" modes included in m2 shottriggers ports. i think he's right -- i'd feel like i conned someone out of money if i told them to buy those ports just to play the supereasy modes. i commented with thoughts about interesting easy mode in stg:
i prefer to simply say difficulty is the means by which the player is compelled to engage with mechanics -- the player would have no need to care about bombs if every attack was trivial to dodge
however, it is not really the only way to do this. scoring is another way to compel a player to engage with mechanics -- and it is done in both a rewarding (get the 5-chips for more multiplier) and punishing (if you die instead of bombing, your stage-end bonus gets smaller) manner. yet, the average player doesn't really care about scoring past perhaps extends -- leaderboard placement is not really very important for the average player, especially a rookie
however, we can casually observe that players can easily be made to care about illusory numbers -- playing a modern popular game often involves earning and managing 100 different currencies, and players generally enjoy optimising this process. hook this up to a very rich scoring system and we no longer have to rely so much on difficulty. what do they spend their ScoreBux on? it could literally be anything. they could be building and upgrading a little doll house, i earnestly believe this -- it seems like a gimme to tie these bux to some sort of ship upgrade system, but i think it's stale thinking, and i would avoid this as much as possible. good STG is balanced on a knife's edge, and is incompatible with conventional upgrade systems.
this is how i would do an easy mode that is still interesting, and probably has a quite broad appeal. double down on scoring, reign it back on "game over" style difficulty. a purist's "hard mode" must still exist because the 23-minute mountain climb 1cc is a beautiful thing and is very core to STG. thats what i think anyway
postscript (of course the postscript goes at the start—that's common sense): this originally started off as a comment, but I realized that I'm focusing more on "how to keep people motivated to play the game and take on the main mode" rather than "how to implement an easy mode," plus it started getting ridiculously long, so I turned it into a rechost. not really sure what the point of writing all this was—I'm no gamedev!—but i'd rather publish it than scrap it (also do play esprade psi and illvelo swamp because they're nice!)
preamble: i'm sure mark is specifically talking about arcade shmups in the video but I think it is worth considering console shmups or alternatively viewing arcade shmup rereleases through the lens of console gaming in general. I'm specifically thinking about progression systems rather than easy modes, and I'm gonna give two examples: "irori's room" mode in esprade psi, and illvelo swamp. The question of "how to make a good easy mode" is an important one, but I don't really have any opinion to offer on that (though i do think it can be hard to encourage the average Gamer to swallow their pride and choose a mode labeled "easy," or a mode that could be seen as "lesser" than the main experience. I also think the "custom" modes (specifically the custom settings for score extends) in the m2 releases let the player gradually step up the difficulty as they move from "novice" to "arcade" mode)
with that said, here we go—hold onto your hats!
Illvelo Swamp is the game I always think of here. It's so smartly designed - the easy, short initial campaign, the greater number of levels that unlock as you go. It feels like they've been learning from non-shmups like Hades to see how players make that journey from beginner to expert and how that can be applied to a genre where non-players assume it's always going to be hyper-tough and impenetrable.
