I got downvoted in the past for this:
Super Mario RPG
Stop counting the credits as part of the time! If you have to sit there for 5 mins watching the credits (and are already pretty sure of your time before they even start) who cares that the original Japanese runners timed it that way when basically no other game does? Just recalculate the actual time of the older runs like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 recently did when switching the way they calculated.
Paper Mario used to take after this and do it as well. But it was changed pretty quickly after the game blew up in popularity. Then all the other PM games started following suit but it wasn't until 2019 that they all had them removed. Fun fact: there was actually some timing differences between N64 and Wii VC when it came to the converting lol
Goldeneye runners are dinosaurs by using in-game timing to the whole second. They won’t switch to real time to the frame cause then they’d lose all their tied world records. What a racket.
one really big problem is that there's so many tied world record runs that were never preserved because they only needed to preserve/upload their first one. They wouldn't even be able to get accurate ranks. For example, someone's 57th tied WR on 1 level could be their fastest run in milliseconds, but it went unpreserved as just another tie.
When I said runs weren't preserved, I was talking about people tying their own world records and then not saving the video because they have tied it countless times. They never had any incentive to save every tied run they ever did. This still applies to new runs today.
This isn't a problem exclusive to world records either. Everyone ties their best runs constantly, but also may generally have no idea which tie is their fastest run in milliseconds.
I actually buy their reasoning for it. Their speedruning scene predates most others so they were literally lying on crts and recording on VHS tapes, so in Game made sense.
Now they could of course change, but they like the tradition. And I agree it makes it more hyped when someone breaks.a new second barrier.
Counter argument: is it less hype when a new SMB1 record is set, beating the previous by a single frame? I'd say it's hard to find something more hype than that.
When your delimitation is seconds, you're only fighting over the individual frame that switches it from :21 to :20 anyway. Anything else is now rendered meaningless despite the effort applied.
2 decimal digits are already the max accuracy possible for games running at 100fps or less, specially when people time real time using video recordings that are (usually) at 60fps or less
using the full second is crazy inaccurate tho lmao
My "controversial" opinion is that they should just leave it as it is, since I kinda like traditions like these (despite not being a big Goldeneye viewer).
Also keeping it to in-game time makes so that when WRs are broken videos such as [Karl Jobst's one about Runway Agent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWPGpeXpMhQ) (which now has more than one million views!) put a spotlight over the game that would probably never be there if new WRs were being set on the millisecond.
Get your community to vote on it! Dragon Warrior/Quest voted to allow turbo a little while back.
But for other games where the mashing is a huge part of the skill involved I can see them saying no.
This really needs to be talked about more. Mashing is bad for your health and should not be encouraged in speedruns. I would go even further and say that the problem needs to be addressed at the stage of game development.
Came here to post this. It's a ridiculous rule and Japanese speedrunners regularly use turbo, so it's absolutely possible to have a competitive scene without forcing people to destroy their hands.
Now that nearly all of the speedrunning tricks have been patched I think there's a decent chance we get glitchless as a category, but I think a lot of people unfamiliar with the speedruns will probably be a bit disappointed when glitchless isn't playing it "as intended" anyway. Still think it should happen, though.
I haven't been in the scene in like 10 years, but i used to think people freaked out over the word "wr" too much.
I knew a guy who had like 35 worlds records, but he would just take random uncontested games, beat them once, then claim wr.
He had the "record" for some obscure super famicom godzilla vs fighter, and he literally lost the first round of his first fight.
I just noticed people who like to brag about being wr holders are often talking about some random game that only three other dudes are competitive in.
Anyway, i wonder if i still have the record for evil dead: hail to the king...
The way I see it, as a runner you gotta push the record further by using passion.
Maybe it sounds dumb, but without motivation you ain't going anywhere. The games where there is 1 runner, and said runner has optimized the record beyond crazy, are really fun to watch. Even if he is the sole runner.
People who try to gain fame are more prone to pursue cheating in competitive games. They don't care about the hobby, their motivation is others opinion of them and some status. Like Tsuneo from Doraemon, you know
I want to grind a certain game that only has 1 run, but my camera quality is awful and can't record for long. I've been thinking about using emulator.
It's even worse when it comes to Guinness World Records, where loads of people brag about having a lot. When technically all you need to do is give Guinness a lot of money and you can claim as many records as you want for stupid categories that yet did not exist yet.
A mate of mine at uni did something similar for a joke, we just randomly submitted a Sonic Free Riders all S rank run because he did it a casual playthrough in a single sitting on stream and nobody else had submitted one
World Record by default isn't really that impressive
For bad Kinect Sonic games, however, it is really funny
I believe that emulators should be allowed for 3ds speed runs and some other older systems that are becoming difficult to obtain due to failing disk drives or price.
3ds especially though because it is VERY HARD to get the necessary hardware to record 3DS footage directly.
Yeah, there's a ton of games that are basically locked out from anyone who doesn't already have the specific equipment for it. Like, as I understand it, finding a DS/3DS capture card is borderline impossible.
I understand why a lot of people are probably hesitant to allow emulators for their games but at some point if you want people to get into them you need to let go a bit
Maybe they could add a filter to each category somehow? Like if it's any% there's a little checkbox that allows emulator records to display. That way you could say, "I have the emulated WR of Mario 64 in any%". It would have a distinction since sometimes emulation is inaccurate, but it would prevent the need to create five bajillion emulator categories.
This is already how the biggest speedrun.com leaderboards work. There are separate boards for each platform, and each are tracked independently to (try to) avoid arguments around differing load times and lag.
Though this doesn't help the larger problem and may introduce a price barrier to acquire the console, you can wirelessly stream your New3DS/XL to a computer with homebrew software pretty easily and with no hardware modifications. I hope that it's allowed for most games and categories.
You can use it for DS, DSi, and 3DS games
runners should have to submit emulator replays like they do for TASes. it's just a file that has a record of what their inputs were on that emulator during the run, which can then be tested on a real console to verify it's legit. similar to tasbot at gdq.
Community approved mods to make games more consistent/enjoyable to speedrun is an unambiguously good thing to keep communities around games alive. Anytime I hear of a community vote to allow some new tech I’m always on the side of fun
I don't think this unpopular, but it's definitely controversial
Runs with a ton of RNG are awesome. I get how runs that are mostly deterministic with just a bit of RNG sprinkled in can be infuriating, but to me runs where everything is based around RNG are the most entertaining to play and watch. It's different every time!
Granted, this is coming from a Plants vs Zombies speedrunner, so there might be a bittt of bias.
(Although there's still some RNG I don't like in that run. Like, not all RNG is created equally. Which makes this less controversial, but I'd still say enjoying a ton of RNG in a speedrun over literally none is controversial.)
Honestly I feel this. It's definitely fun as a runner to have RNG that equates out to "I have to get good." Especially if you're not necessarily looking for WR.
It's the unfortunate moments of like, "If I don't get this 5% drop an hour into the run we're screwed" that is unfun RNG to deal with.
I read somewhere (probably on Reddit) that there are two kinds of RNG - input RNG, where the *circumstances* are randomized, such as what enemies spawn in, and output RNG, where the *results* are randomized, such as what the defeated enemies drop.
Input RNG is incredibly fun to watch a speedrunner deal with, IMO, because most of the time it's about how fast they can adapt to changing circumstances with a set toolkit.
Output RNG isn't so fun to watch - either it doesn't matter, in which case it might as well not be there, or it does, and then the run lives or dies on getting that roll to proc. It can be fun in other circumstances, I suppose - I'm sure there are people who get hyped when their favorite streamer gets the +9001 AssBlaster Of Legend's Bane drop after sixteen hours of grinding a dungeon in an ARPG, or something - but it kills speedrun fun, IMO.
I think this summarises it well, the one thing I'd add is that the better the community gets at a game the more the rng shifts to output RNG.
Eventually the shifting circumstances have all been so well practiced that whichever one they get they'll handle it just as well, so all that really changes is if it's one that can be handled faster or slower than a previous run
I mean, I'd disagree; the RNG is either input or output, getting better at working with it doesn't change what kind it becomes. Both kinds of RNG can be run killers, especially at the higher levels of play, it's just one of them tends to be a lot more boring of a run killer IMO.
Plus, input RNG usually seems more recoverable from what examples I've seen. Bad enemy patterns or spawns usually cost seconds, and could potentially be made up down the line - a failed drop for a needed item might cost several minutes or even hours to re-farm if it can be farmed at all. (The Zell card from FF8 springs to mind - about a solid minute per farm attempt, and I have personally witnessed a runner burn three hours straight just trying to get the card to drop, just to prove he wasn't crazy and it *could* drop at that point.)
Yeah I'm not suggesting it goes all the way, if that makes sense, just that the tighter and tighter the times get the less room there is for recovery and clever play and the more it just becomes another value that has to line up for the run to succeed.
There's always going to be an element of skill, a huge one really, but having that skill does mean it becomes less creativity and more executing on known solutions
I'll take an example of input RNG that sucks - Super Metroid Phantoon attack patterns.
Typically a very skilled player on a premium pace will have to roll the dice twice on this fight (going to three rounds is probably a reset).
It's very close to "roll 1d8 - on a 1 or 2, the pattern takes 1 second, a 3, 4 or 5 it takes 6 seconds, and on a 6, 7 or 8 it takes 11 seconds"
Basically, a 1 in 16 chance for an optimal fight, which is 11.25 seconds faster than the mean (10 seconds faster than the median or mode). Assuming you execute correctly, which is actually (slightly) easier on the shorter patterns.
I do agree there's times that input RNG is satisfying, but it's not always the case.
I think we can agree that the problem with RNG in general is swinginess more than anything. This is an example of input RNG with too much swing to it, which, yeah, would be frustrating to watch and probably just as frustrating for the streamer to perform.
If that same spread of probabilities was more like 4 vs 5 vs 6 seconds, then perfect RNG is getting you ahead no more than 2-4 seconds, which is still a *lot* in a run as optimized as *Super Metroid*, to be fair, but it's something more feasibly recoverable. Only the absolute cutting edge runners are fishing for that perfect run, at that point - and people watch those to *see* the perfect run, so being annoyed at the bad RNG is a bit less of an interest killer I think?
More interesting, IMO, is when input RNG changes room strategies but doesn't really change room time.
I don't think this would happen in normal game design - this would be more likely if a speedrunner mod was made for a game.
I'd call a randomizer race a case of extreme input RNG, actually! Every item is available, and every drop is exactly where it always is and guaranteed - just the drops don't have the items they usually have. Which yes, leads to incredibly fun races to watch with both sides trying to adapt to their knowledge and predictions of the scenario as it unfolds and turning to backup strats when things don't work out as planned or skipping ahead thanks to a risky play that worked out for them.
It's not like they have to sit and open the same treasure chest and soft-reset until it's the item they want.
The amount of times I've seen sm64 runners lose their rainbow split or worse even runs, because of coin rng is insane. It's absolutely infuriating to see.
I don't have a strong preference for them over other runs, but my RNG heavy game is Barbie Magic Genie Bottle CD-ROM & it's basically luck whether you get a 7 minute time or a 9 minute time, even with great execution across the board. It can be fun to have a short, silly reset game where sometimes the stars align!
Tbh, my opinion is kind of the complete opposite! I think the longer the run is, the better an rng heavy run is. Because, generally, the RNG is more likely to balance out.
Going to use pvz as an example, just because it's what I'm most familiar with.
Any% has a ton of RNG, and a lot of that RNG can outweigh execution - but the run is also 3.5 hours long. With so much RNG, it's pretty likely that it will generally balance out (other than money luck, which is the worst part of that run).
Meanwhile, All Puzzles is probably the main category with the highest skill:luck ratio, but is 11 minutes long at wr level. As a result, the luck that IS there matters way more, because of how optimized it is.
Although the great thing about pvz is that a better player will basically always get a better time than another player despite the RNG, even in a short category like All Puzzles.
I really love PvZ...
I think that depends very much on the game. Some glitchless runs are really boring because nothing exciting happens or they are just too long. On the other hand there are sub 5 minute speedruns of really long games that immediately skip to the end, making these also very boring to watch.
Ocarina of Time.
Used to watch people set up a warp, break the fabric of reality, and fight Ganon as a kid.
Now, its a stuck camera angle and 2 minutes of offscreen input....
Ultrakill glitch runs are boring to watch cause all the encounters are skipped, non glitch are way more interesting cause you get to see how they optimize encounters
Here are a few of my hot takes:
- Super Mario Sunshine is one of those games that is more fun to watch someone perform a 100% run over an any% run.
- The speedrunning scene on YouTube has been overrun with videos covering “drama” in the community and I feel like those videos hurt the community as a whole.
my controversial speed run opinion would be that if a run includes messing with another save file's data, the time to setup the other file should be included with the final time.
My logic that I see it is that "If someone was to theoretically replicate every input with the same RNG on another hardware or emulator, they should be able to achieve the same record." So if one replicates every input- it wouldn't work since they don't have a specific save file pre-made beforehand.
I believe Zelda Skyward sword and Twilight princess does this? I want to say there was another game or two that did some save state shenanigans by somehow tricking their game was another one and it unlocked items and progression they did not have at the time. Like, it's a really cool technique to be able to accomplish it in a run, just include the setup time in the final time.
Runs that use pre-made save files are often called New Game+ as a category, and if they aren't, they should be. An example would be FF7 PC NG+; that run uses a premade save, which is why it's called NG+ since it's not purely New Game.
Twilight Princess (at least any%, that's the only category I ran) creates a total of 3 save files, and all of them are created during the run, so this is in line with what you wanted. Two of the save files are just quickly saving in specific areas to set your last known exit (I believe), so that you get specific outcomes from using the Back in Time glitch (and its variants).
An example of something that doesn't abide by those rules would have been FF8 PSX with specifically the old WR steproute. The current rules ban pre-new game manipulation, but a few years ago, to contend for WR it was nearly mandatory to use a steproute that was only possibly by having a pre-made save file to manipulate the starting stepID for when you actually started the run. Fortunately, they did away with that, though.
Yakuza 0 has a thing where if you take out some goons in a particular part and then start a new game file they are still taken out whenever you get to them again.
I always thought that was an odd thing that was allowed.
Definitely think it's the sort of thing that feels like a separate category yeah!
First time I saw this was a spyro game at agdq (or similar event) where part of the setup was a completed save with some fairly specific conditions to it, then used the save in the run in order to clip out of the map for 90% of the duration.
Thought it's really cool that they figured out how to do that, but also feels like hours ( or however long) of prep time required for your run surely is just part of your run at that point.
I dislike any kind of quitting and loading, changing settings like fps mid run for certain tricks, stuff like that. I love souls games and their speedruns but I hate all the quitting and loading in them.
I hate it the most in souls games lol.
It's not even faster a lot of the times they do it, but because it stops the timer they do it wherever possible. It makes runs take longer then the times would suggest, and it's annoying as fuck to watch.
It would make souls games 10x, more enjoyable to watch if they couldn't save quit. Or at the very least, it didn't stop the dang timer so they could only use it when it's actually faster lol.
Quitting and loading is fine if it's quick, in the GBA Castlevania games doing a quicksave and reload to return to the start of a long room takes like... maybe 2 seconds? Mostly comes up in randomizers rather than actual speedruns though.
idk, there's a room in Celeste that you quit and reload after entering to skip a getup animation because the IGT doesn't track time outside of levels, and it saves like
Half a second total
And it just takes me out for a moment every single time
I didn't always hold this opinion but nowadays I feel that games "made" for speedrunning or with conveniences for speedrun are less interesting to watch. I can't really explain why, but knowing that the game was "tampered" or "prepared" so it could be speedrun makes me enjoy it less.
AAA devs can add as many level timers and speedrun modes to their third person story focused over the shoulder action adventure games as they want, but if they actually want to appeal to speedrunners, I'd rather they make games that are interesting to run instead of trying to tack on features that are, quite frankly, pretty much just fluff
I know it would probably screw up the entire board but I wouldn't ever be mad if they had a "intro-less" category where you could just load a save state right where mario comes outa the pipe. That intro is a bit annoying to wait through every time. Same could be said for some of Banjo's unskippable bits.
The thing is there’s no real clean way to do it on console. The game only lets you save after collecting a star or a key from Bowser, so the options to make intro skip a thing are very weird and save less time than you would think.
Intro cut-scene skip is actually allowed on the SM64DS leaderboards, but in DS you can save/quit from the overworld at any point, so setting up the file is possible and very easy (just watch the cutscene and immediately save/quit). Not sure how you'd make that work in 64 where you can't do that (terrible game design decision imo).
If somebody wants to submit a time literally 12 times longer than the WR, who the hell ***actually*** cares as long as they have the decency to submit *some* form of proof, like an IGT screenshot or something? The bottom of the leaderboards is such a hilariously minute thing to get mad at that it's beyond not worth it to get worked up on it--and sorry to the sweats, but the RE4 Leaderboard Incident solidified my opinion on this even more actually.
Okay I know nothing about this incident and have never heard people complain about *bottom* placing times so.
Please do enlighten me. I have to know now.
Iirc, the game's moderators basically made a rule where any time that's something like over 50% longer than the WR would be rejected from the leaderboard, in an attempt to make the game more "competitive" and force people to work for a better time
It was not well received.
I’ll bet it wasn’t, if myself or others wanna compete for dead last then let them it doesn’t hurt anyone. Hell even if it just muddying up the main leaderboard then just make a category extension or meme board for it.
Part of what really made people upset about that decision is that after the vast majority of people were very clearly vocally displeased, the RE4 moderators got extremely defensive and some of them lashed out at people, and even after reverting the changes, they said they weren't in the wrong to make them and refused to admit it was a bad decision.
I know they aren't gone, but I feel like "glitchless" or "no major glitches" runs are really underrated when talking about Any% or 100% runs. Like, I really enjoy runs that just look like REALLY optimized casual runs instead of runs that are glitches followed by more glitches and then roll credits. Also don't really enjoy runs that require previous preparations or RNG manipulation before even starting the run.
I like to use Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie's runs as examples for these. I loved seeing early Banjo-Kazooie runs before they found out that you could manipulate one of the saves in Furnace Fun to start a new game with all moves unlocked. I loved seeing the optimized strats to unlock the moves as you went through the levels. And then, we have Banjo-Tooie, with that cutscene glitch to basically skip the whole game straight to the last boss.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it doesn't take skill to pull these glitches out, they're probably even harder to pull out than some tricks in a Glitchless/No Major Glitches speedrun... But I just don't find the joy in watching people speedrunning a game by not "playing" it.
Anyway, that's my take on it, I'm ready and willing to get downvoted to hell for saying this lol
I like "Spirit of a casual playthrough" rulesets but you just need to accept that arbitrary decisions need to be made sometimes.
Take Super Metroid. There's two movement skills (walljump, shinespark) that have in-game 'documentation'. Clearly those are in the spirit of a casual playthrough.
But what about shortcharges, blue bomber, bluesuit, spike suit, mockballs, moonfalls and continuous walljumps, none of which are 'documented' in game in any way? Mockball in particular is central to several sequence breaks, but will happen by accident in casual playthroughs.
The community has decided 'yep, those are all allowed', but draws the line at some other tricks such as out-of-bounds. This is an arbitrary decision, and had different decisions been made, the resulting runs would be different.
The main thing that matters is consistent rules.
So much this. For me, the introduction to speed running was downloading quake done quick demo files form mailboxes.
A speedrun is the game actually played as fast and efficient as possible, not avoiding the whole game altogether to somehow manipulate a code exception to dump you to the credit screen...
I agree with what you say, I think its all down to personal preference, I love watching any % dark souls 3 runs, seeing people skip some of the most tedious areas in the game which would take a solid 20-30 minutes, but a runner goes through the whole area in a matter of minutes is something truly amazing, but seeing someone glitch through the whole game I wouldn't say its boring to watch, but it defeats the purpose and the skill of a game like dark souls for example. Not to mention some glitchless runs can take ages, and personal preference again i cannot run a game if it exceeds an hour and a half
yeah elden ring runs basically encapsulate this feeling for me
-Any% No Wrongwarp & Any% Glitchless .... just under an hour for both
-Any% Wrongwarp .... 4 min
now no disrespect to the people who figured out the wrongwarp but man is it boring to watch
Besides the apparent social issues they don't adress properly, as an EU viewer they always came across as a "boys club" - not generally welcoming but only for those in the know. That and production standards are way lower
Agreed, as an European I tried getting into it, but the runner often don't have an attitude as "newcomer friendly" as at gdq. It's more like guys hanging out, which to be honest is similar to the 1st gdqs, but at this point it evolved into something much more professional and in a format that makes you enjoy watching.
I wish people get into glitch hunting more games, than speedrunning one. In the same vein, more people should venture out to other, less known games, especially games with 15 runners or less (basically 80% of the available games on speedrun.com)
I think speedrunning's mental itch is best scratched by TAS'ing, and human runs are less cool by comparison as soon as they become possible. Routing is the essence of what speedrunning is, not human input limitations.
Oh man, here's a couple:
- 90% of speedrun races are boring and the outcome of the race tends to be set the moment one runner messes up a trick and the other doesn't, the one exception to this are roguelikes which make for great racing games
- titanfall 2 being considered a great speedgame is a mass gaslighting campaign by bryonato and I'm not sure how the entire community fell for it
- games "made for speedrunning" tend to be really boring speedruns
- games with many movement options are less appealing to me than ones where you just hold W, i think optomizing simpler movement is a lot more interestng than chaining together 7 different types of jump
I hate that speedrun YouTube has turned into deifying every person that’s touched a game like they’re a fallen war hero or something.
I think it bled into everything because of how popular Karl jobst and summoningsalt were, who both did it a bunch mostly because they were talking about very old games with big communities (even though it still annoys me when they do it).
I actually love this. It will always be funny to me to hear someone say "but poopslayer6969 wouldn't hold the record for long...because then...VaginaPenisCannon...did *this*" as though they're talking about the Yalta Conference
I was thinking about why so many in the radical left participate in "speedrunning" The reason is the left's lack of work ethic ('go fast' rather than 'do it right') and, in a Petersonian sense, to elevate alternative sexual archetypes in the marketplace ('fastest mario'). Obviously, there are exceptions to this and some people more in the center or right also "speedrun". However, they more than sufficient to prove the rule, rather than contrast it.
How about [that one speedrun where you literally boot into a glitched ending](https://www.speedrun.com/platoon?h=glitch&x=ndx3q7jd) if a particular cartridge pin is covered with tape?
Certain cheats make the runs better. Like ones that get rid of rng and such. As long as it’s a community wide accepted cheat, and makes the run better, I think it’s better.
Dark Souls runners modding the game to make the Black Knight Halberd a guaranteed drop is a good example. All it does is prevent 70% of runs dying 5 mins in for no reason.
I know there's a couple games that do this! Monster Hunter World (iirc) got some spotlight for people cheating, but it was for mods the community had not agreed on. For instance, due to the extreme rng of drops, they allow for a decent amount of drop table modification; as long as it's something that *could* actually happen... but they don't like mods that change monster attack patterns because a lot of the skill is in reading and responding and optimizing that.
Whoever originally came up with the idea that Mario Kart 64 leaderboards should convert PAL times into NTSC equivalents and vice versa and then rank them both together so that NTSC doesn't have an "unfair advantage" was A) definitely a PAL region player who was salty over not being able to play the faster version, and B) an idiot, because all this does is give PAL players an unfair advantage. If any other speedrunner of any other game suggested that the community play on a slower version of the game and then convert the times into what they would've been in the faster version so that anyone with the slower version could have easier World Records, they'd be the laughingstock of their respective community. MK64 records would be much cooler if all the top level runners actually pulled off these runs on the higher speed --- and, more importantly, the *dev intended* speed --- version of the game.
Also ban Dan Burbank from the rankings.
Teleports to credits are not beating the game. When we used to finish OOT by killing Ganon, back when we warped to ganon's tower and killed him there, we didn't stop the timer when we hit the credits, but rather when we killed Ganon. If the timer is supposed to be based on hitting the credits, why didn't we time it that way before? I don't consider any game beat if I just watch the credits from the title, why is this any different? (yes, I know we have the beat Ganon % for this reason since warping now is fucking boring)
Yes, I understand this as a courtesy is done. I think speedruns need to rethink that their true end-goal is for the run. If its a final “the end” screen after credits like Danny is saying it is for OOT, then the credits time should be added to the timer (and credits skips would still be superior by A LOT). If its defeating BBEG, then killing them should be the last frame. I like my Ganon properly skewered.
Apparently, it's considered controversial and banned to allow RunAhead in speedruns done on emulators.
My "controversial" opinion is that RunAhead must be allowed, as long you can measure the entire latency from Controller to Game Action appearing on the display, and the average latency is not lower than the average latency of a Console and CRT.
Seriously. LCD screens have entire frames worth of "do nothing" time before the pixels even start to fade to the next frame.
I find the big-time GDQ events unwatchable these days. And it's not because they're sanitized or noxiously squeaky-clean, it's that less and less time is spent actually talking about the game or the speedrun.
Also there's very little that makes me tune out a speedrunner than to hear them go "I don't know what happens in this game's plot or why things are occurring, I just speedrun it lol". Even if you don't watch the story scenes and/or actively go out of your way to skip them if you had a smidgeon of wit it should not be hard to at least look it up or something, doubly so if you're in an event and promoting the damn game.
Kinda similar: I remember GDQ had a runner play X5 and they just started trashing on the game.
I immediately lost all interest and went to watch something else for a bit. 'Cause it's one thing to play a 'so bad it's good game', but if you're speedrunning a game that you apparently hate and don't enjoy, then why should I care about watching? (Not to mention I think the whole "X5 is bad" opinion is a bit of a dumb meme but that's besides the point).
ACE speedruns are bad and should be a category extension and not the default main category
Watching OOT go from a cool decently long but not too long run to a “jump around in place to get free items/credits warp” game was terrible for that game and killed a lot of interest
Idk, any% is any%, do ANYthing to beat it as fast as possible. Does any% in oot suck ass now? Yes! But the old route is its own category now, just run/watch that now instead.
My hot take is that OOT was never that good of a speed game but it shared its legacy of being a goat video game with mario 64 so that's why it was so popular back in the early speedrunning days, and it was gonna drop off hard in active runners eventually no matter what.
That said yea I kinda agree, any% with ACE should never be the main category (you barely play the actual game in the first place) but idk about category extension, shoving it to an any% subcategory should be enough. Very surprising that it's the main category of OOT, weird decision when 100% no SRM is right there.
All games need a category where the goal is to reach the end as quickly as possible using only input presses, taking advantage of what the game has to offer. This may indeed create a short and boring glitchy category, but it's needed to make logical sense.
An actual problem, in my opinion, is when leaderboards have a different category named "any%" which isn't actually aiming to beat the game as quickly as possible.
I don’t like runs where the goal is to break the game as fast as possible.
I’d rather see an OOT speed run where all the levels are actually completed as fast as possible instead of just finding ways to skip straight to Gannon.
You picked the worst game for this since Zelda normally has tons of categories. Any% gets the hype but stuff like SMT or all dungeons is way more entertaining
I feel you here. It isn’t that there aren’t other ways to beat the game but that these ones where it’s a fast break become the most popular and barely show the game at all. I used to compete on the glitchless OOT runs so I feel this one in particular to my core.
I prefer glitchless runs, because I find it more impressive to go through a game the way it was (more or less) intended as flawlessly as possible. I get that performing multiple frame-perfect tricks is not something to be sniffed at, but watching someone, for example, doing a perfect run on Metal Slug? I can just appreciate it more
my opinion is in the same vein as yours, which is that some games are just not compatible with speedrunning at all. Ive heard a few times that the only reason goldeneye is run at all is because it was one of the few game that had a timer for missions at the end. I feel the same for pokemon games too. I love them to death but ive seen werster lose his shit way to many times for me to think that the game is healthy to run at all.
This is fine, under the condition that they are separate from and do not replace RTA runs. Being able to pause the timer is just such a huge advantage for many different reasons, such as taking time to figure out on the fly routing for games with lots of variables, or simply calming your nerves in the late game on a good run.
For long runs, like 3 hours plus ('movie' length), they should be on the same leaderboard as runs without breaks. We do that in all games I moderate. There is no reason to force people to strain themselves unhealthily just to remain competitive. Yes, there is a small advantage gained from planning during the break, just as there is in any sport, e-sport, board/card game tournaments, etc (which all allow breaks if the run is long), but I don't think it is a big enough deal to warrant the negatives. Plus, this 'advantage' is equal for all participants, as everyone gets this option to take breaks.
If someone managed to do such a run without taking any breaks, good for them and everything, but they shouldn't be rewarded more for this show of 'endurance' than someone who used their break allowance appropriately.
When I was running REVillage, rules were that pausing was allowed (which froze IGT), but total time paused throughout the duration of the run had to be less than 5 minutes or the run was invalid.
Agdq and sgdq is nearly unwatchable these days. I get that they’re doing as much as they can to raise as much as they can, but when they’re appeasing companies by making the whole thing family friendly, it moves it so far away from what it was originally that I can’t watch it anymore.
I haven't really watched very much since they started getting hotels, but in 2011 2012, they small white basement looking place, plus the sgdq at uyama's place, people use to swear all the time.
Like they weren't potty mouthes but 100% they were swearing in the pre-hotel days.
The other thing though, i nostalgia for the community feel of older agdqs. You'd see the same people, laughing together, inside jokes. It's hard to describe, really. Since they started doing the huge hotel room it feels more corporate and not nearly as much as "group of friends having fun".
Its hard to pinpoint, i think agdq 2013 was the last one i got really into. 2010 11 and 12 were my jams. 14 and beyond i haven't gotten into it
But also yeah the bad layouts were a lot less distracting and easier to read. Good point.
> The other thing though, i nostalgia for the community feel of older agdqs. You'd see the same people, laughing together, inside jokes.
See, I feel the opposite because it makes you feel like you need to be in on something to actually understand what’s happening, especially the inside jokes. Stuff like the Bluey run from AGDQ this year are hard cringe for me.
I find them more watchable because my kids watch with me, being family friendly means I can watch a lot more runs live because I don’t have to worry about the kind of shit that’s gonna get said in the interest of being “edgy”
For me it just feels more stiff today. Back in like 2012 the events reminded me of the times i spent just playing video games with friends after school, like this super chill atmosphere with people just hanging out together and having a good time. I enjoyed that a lot and it's why i like to rewatch 2012 and 2013 from time to time. Tuning into the newer gdq marathons feels more like watching some channel on tv. The runs are still impressive but it feels more soulless and is not really enjoyable to watch if that makes sense.
If a game let's you skip a section when you've failed it x amount of times, that's not a real speedrun. My first speedrun memory was watching a Simpsons Hit and Run where you would spam restart until you could skip. Yes I know now they have another category for no skips but at the time I thought speedrunning was stupid.
This might not be that controversial, but this is what I personally think of leaderboards on speedrun.com:
Leaderboard pages should have ALL the versions of one game on the same leaderboard page. For example, Majora's Mask and Majora's Mask 3D should be on the same page, but still split as their on categories. This would make it easier to find a remake, remaster, or port of an already existing speedgame on the website.
"What if the two communities don't overlap that much?" Then make it overlap, we've found success in the Banjo-Kazooie series community with combining the XBLA ports of the Banjo games. Every speedgame is different, but generally I think having say Skyward Sword HD and Skyward Sword SD (etc.) on the same page would make it incredibly easier for viewers to see the differences of these versions and not hide these versions in the dark alley that is the search function of speedrun.com.
There's a good reason to not always group different versions togeathers. Sometime remasters are so different to the original that they're essentially another game. In the case of the Nintendo DS/3ds remakes they have a different engine so the times can't be compared to the console counterparts.
Having too many categories in one page makes the website harder to navigate.
This is the reason why a single game often has 2 entries with category extensions. They want to keep the main page clean and make it obvious that all the categories are respected, while the category extensions can be just sort of whatever
"Gamble" WRs, those that rely on grinding RNG bottlenecks that give you chances of 1/800 pass 799/800 restart, are basically worthless. They don't measure one's skill/mastery beyond a low threshold, they measure one's patience. In some games, a single such bottleneck causes most of the variance in run times, or at least hypothetical runs you'd continue instead of restarting (that's a good way to define a bottleneck, actually).
Unfortunately, modding games/console commands/etc. to remove them also feels cheaty; 799/800 chance of -34s and 7/8 chance of -0.2s are on a continuum, there's often no principled way to separate them. If speedrunners collectively decide to remove one, they might as well remove the other.
I think it's preferable to stick to a principle if possible, even if it leads to dumbed down gameplay in the rest of the game. For example, a "modded so all drop rates are 100%" category is preferable to "modded to make that one run-ending enemy drop that happens two hours in, and only that, into a 100% drop".
Coming from an RPG speedrunner, I am tired of people saying: "If you are an RPG runner, run at RPG Limit Break."
This kind of argument, for me, is really non-sense for two reasons:
(1) This sounds gatekeeping to any RPG runner (most especially if it is decently short enough, say at most 2 hour runs).
(2) Afaik, RTA in Japan does not have any RPG Limit Break counterpart (or some associated channel that runs like it). This means that no one mentions the aforementioned argument at least in their community. Let's not go too far. ESA, in the geographical setting (Europe), has no such RPG marathon dedicated channel counterpart as well.
Probably someone could enlighten or even correct me on this.
What's the context of the statement, though? RPG Limit Break is the top RPG-based marathon, I doubt people are saying to run there at the exclusion of other events.
Simply put:
(1) Most RPG runs are from either a well known Square or a Nintendo game.
(2) Back then, GDQ used to accept long RPG runs (case on point: 9+ hr FF8 and FF9 runs); and even some lesser known ones (like Dragon Quest and Legend of Mana, but these are Square games; Ys would be the best example of neither Nintendo nor Square).
I believe these opinions surfaced once GDQ had become strict in their game choices. I truly understand that not everything can be accommodated. But the opinions pertaining that they redirect you to RPGLB sounds gatekeeping to me. Again, I may not understand something here, so feel free to correct.
Way too fucking late to this, but maybe someone sorts by new: major glitches (like out of bounds skip through the whole map) are fucking lame, I want people execute the game semi-normally with exceptional skill. I'm aware that glitches also take skill, but I just don't care for them.
One of the reasons I love Quake speedrunning, the game is solid as hell, barely glitchable on the official maps. Just a wacky physics engine and beautiful movement and a _lot_ of planning, especially for 100% runs.
Lame may be, but all games need a category where everything is allowed in order to reach the ending as quickly as possible, as that is the most pure and logical ruleset you can have. As soon as you start disallowing things, or putting up requirements of what you need to do in the game, you go further and further away from the definition of what a speedrun is.
But yeah, some runs may indeed become lame/boring, which is one of the reasons why lots of different categories exist.
This is a very specific problem but a game I used to run called "Escape the Backrooms" has skips that involve multiple tabs of the game being open at once in order to load into the save file twice, once on each tab. I really hate these glitches. As for wr runs, you have to have like 5 tabs open at once. I imagine this sucks for people who don't have very good PCs, and overall, it seems like a really cheaty skip. Plus, the RNG in this game is horrible, and some of the community is toxic, so i dont run it anymore.
I got downvoted in the past for this: Super Mario RPG Stop counting the credits as part of the time! If you have to sit there for 5 mins watching the credits (and are already pretty sure of your time before they even start) who cares that the original Japanese runners timed it that way when basically no other game does? Just recalculate the actual time of the older runs like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 recently did when switching the way they calculated.
This makes complete sense to me.
Bit the credits are so good... And it only makes sense to end with the D
Paper Mario used to take after this and do it as well. But it was changed pretty quickly after the game blew up in popularity. Then all the other PM games started following suit but it wasn't until 2019 that they all had them removed. Fun fact: there was actually some timing differences between N64 and Wii VC when it came to the converting lol
Goldeneye runners are dinosaurs by using in-game timing to the whole second. They won’t switch to real time to the frame cause then they’d lose all their tied world records. What a racket.
As a GoldenEye player this comment really rustled my jimmies. Upvoted!
one really big problem is that there's so many tied world record runs that were never preserved because they only needed to preserve/upload their first one. They wouldn't even be able to get accurate ranks. For example, someone's 57th tied WR on 1 level could be their fastest run in milliseconds, but it went unpreserved as just another tie.
Okay but who the fuck actually cares about runs from the early 2000s that never had video proof in the first place?
It applies to all modern runs too.
All modern runs would have video proof or the record would be meaningless.
When I said runs weren't preserved, I was talking about people tying their own world records and then not saving the video because they have tied it countless times. They never had any incentive to save every tied run they ever did. This still applies to new runs today. This isn't a problem exclusive to world records either. Everyone ties their best runs constantly, but also may generally have no idea which tie is their fastest run in milliseconds.
I actually buy their reasoning for it. Their speedruning scene predates most others so they were literally lying on crts and recording on VHS tapes, so in Game made sense. Now they could of course change, but they like the tradition. And I agree it makes it more hyped when someone breaks.a new second barrier.
Counter argument: is it less hype when a new SMB1 record is set, beating the previous by a single frame? I'd say it's hard to find something more hype than that. When your delimitation is seconds, you're only fighting over the individual frame that switches it from :21 to :20 anyway. Anything else is now rendered meaningless despite the effort applied.
Tbf as a ge speedrunner I wish we could time levels to the millionth of a second. I need to know the data am I right?
2 decimal digits are already the max accuracy possible for games running at 100fps or less, specially when people time real time using video recordings that are (usually) at 60fps or less using the full second is crazy inaccurate tho lmao
Down to frames would be good
It wouldn't make sense to time to a smaller degree than a single frame.
That can be applied to Agent Under Fire and Nightfire to an extent. Though they are far more interesting that GE.
My "controversial" opinion is that they should just leave it as it is, since I kinda like traditions like these (despite not being a big Goldeneye viewer). Also keeping it to in-game time makes so that when WRs are broken videos such as [Karl Jobst's one about Runway Agent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWPGpeXpMhQ) (which now has more than one million views!) put a spotlight over the game that would probably never be there if new WRs were being set on the millisecond.
Turbo buttons > Carpal tunnel syndrome
It depends a bit on the game, but if a community allows free scroll wheels, then it's silly to not allow turbo buttons
Get your community to vote on it! Dragon Warrior/Quest voted to allow turbo a little while back. But for other games where the mashing is a huge part of the skill involved I can see them saying no.
And Carpal tunnel is exactly why I stopped doing gaming videos entirely.
This really needs to be talked about more. Mashing is bad for your health and should not be encouraged in speedruns. I would go even further and say that the problem needs to be addressed at the stage of game development.
Came here to post this. It's a ridiculous rule and Japanese speedrunners regularly use turbo, so it's absolutely possible to have a competitive scene without forcing people to destroy their hands.
there should be a glitchless category in the Baldurs Gate 3 page.
Now that nearly all of the speedrunning tricks have been patched I think there's a decent chance we get glitchless as a category, but I think a lot of people unfamiliar with the speedruns will probably be a bit disappointed when glitchless isn't playing it "as intended" anyway. Still think it should happen, though.
Is that even possible? 🤣
There are casual players beating the game solo glitchless in 8 or 9 hours. Long run but not the longest. Edit: Glitchless Honor mode is about an hour.
I haven't been in the scene in like 10 years, but i used to think people freaked out over the word "wr" too much. I knew a guy who had like 35 worlds records, but he would just take random uncontested games, beat them once, then claim wr. He had the "record" for some obscure super famicom godzilla vs fighter, and he literally lost the first round of his first fight. I just noticed people who like to brag about being wr holders are often talking about some random game that only three other dudes are competitive in. Anyway, i wonder if i still have the record for evil dead: hail to the king...
that sounds fun to do for a laugh but weird if you expect people to take it seriously. especially 35 times.
Yeah this guy was really into the fame of it.
The way I see it, as a runner you gotta push the record further by using passion. Maybe it sounds dumb, but without motivation you ain't going anywhere. The games where there is 1 runner, and said runner has optimized the record beyond crazy, are really fun to watch. Even if he is the sole runner. People who try to gain fame are more prone to pursue cheating in competitive games. They don't care about the hobby, their motivation is others opinion of them and some status. Like Tsuneo from Doraemon, you know I want to grind a certain game that only has 1 run, but my camera quality is awful and can't record for long. I've been thinking about using emulator.
It's even worse when it comes to Guinness World Records, where loads of people brag about having a lot. When technically all you need to do is give Guinness a lot of money and you can claim as many records as you want for stupid categories that yet did not exist yet.
A mate of mine at uni did something similar for a joke, we just randomly submitted a Sonic Free Riders all S rank run because he did it a casual playthrough in a single sitting on stream and nobody else had submitted one World Record by default isn't really that impressive For bad Kinect Sonic games, however, it is really funny
I've done this, but on games I'm actually passionate about. Maybe I inspired that guy who beat me on Until You Fall.
I believe that emulators should be allowed for 3ds speed runs and some other older systems that are becoming difficult to obtain due to failing disk drives or price. 3ds especially though because it is VERY HARD to get the necessary hardware to record 3DS footage directly.
Yeah, there's a ton of games that are basically locked out from anyone who doesn't already have the specific equipment for it. Like, as I understand it, finding a DS/3DS capture card is borderline impossible. I understand why a lot of people are probably hesitant to allow emulators for their games but at some point if you want people to get into them you need to let go a bit
Maybe they could add a filter to each category somehow? Like if it's any% there's a little checkbox that allows emulator records to display. That way you could say, "I have the emulated WR of Mario 64 in any%". It would have a distinction since sometimes emulation is inaccurate, but it would prevent the need to create five bajillion emulator categories.
This is already how the biggest speedrun.com leaderboards work. There are separate boards for each platform, and each are tracked independently to (try to) avoid arguments around differing load times and lag.
it differs from game to game. some leaderboards flat out do not allow emulator runs in any capacity. this is the case with most switch games
Though this doesn't help the larger problem and may introduce a price barrier to acquire the console, you can wirelessly stream your New3DS/XL to a computer with homebrew software pretty easily and with no hardware modifications. I hope that it's allowed for most games and categories. You can use it for DS, DSi, and 3DS games
wireless streaming your games is only possible with 3ds games. ds / dsi games don't work.
runners should have to submit emulator replays like they do for TASes. it's just a file that has a record of what their inputs were on that emulator during the run, which can then be tested on a real console to verify it's legit. similar to tasbot at gdq.
I agree
3DS footage doenst need to be recorded with a capture card, just record both screens with a cellphone and you should be set.
That's extremely awkward for a handheld console, though, especially for longer runs
That and the old 3DS’ controls are really uncomfortable
Wait. Phone recordings of your 3ds screen isn't allowed?
Community approved mods to make games more consistent/enjoyable to speedrun is an unambiguously good thing to keep communities around games alive. Anytime I hear of a community vote to allow some new tech I’m always on the side of fun
I was happy when super Mario Sunshine runners finally started using mods to skip the opening. made it so much more fun to watch.
15 card mod in forbidden memories is a fucking beauty
You don't always look down at the floor in Goldeneye....sometimes you look at the sky.
I don't think this unpopular, but it's definitely controversial Runs with a ton of RNG are awesome. I get how runs that are mostly deterministic with just a bit of RNG sprinkled in can be infuriating, but to me runs where everything is based around RNG are the most entertaining to play and watch. It's different every time! Granted, this is coming from a Plants vs Zombies speedrunner, so there might be a bittt of bias. (Although there's still some RNG I don't like in that run. Like, not all RNG is created equally. Which makes this less controversial, but I'd still say enjoying a ton of RNG in a speedrun over literally none is controversial.)
Honestly I feel this. It's definitely fun as a runner to have RNG that equates out to "I have to get good." Especially if you're not necessarily looking for WR. It's the unfortunate moments of like, "If I don't get this 5% drop an hour into the run we're screwed" that is unfun RNG to deal with.
I read somewhere (probably on Reddit) that there are two kinds of RNG - input RNG, where the *circumstances* are randomized, such as what enemies spawn in, and output RNG, where the *results* are randomized, such as what the defeated enemies drop. Input RNG is incredibly fun to watch a speedrunner deal with, IMO, because most of the time it's about how fast they can adapt to changing circumstances with a set toolkit. Output RNG isn't so fun to watch - either it doesn't matter, in which case it might as well not be there, or it does, and then the run lives or dies on getting that roll to proc. It can be fun in other circumstances, I suppose - I'm sure there are people who get hyped when their favorite streamer gets the +9001 AssBlaster Of Legend's Bane drop after sixteen hours of grinding a dungeon in an ARPG, or something - but it kills speedrun fun, IMO.
I think this summarises it well, the one thing I'd add is that the better the community gets at a game the more the rng shifts to output RNG. Eventually the shifting circumstances have all been so well practiced that whichever one they get they'll handle it just as well, so all that really changes is if it's one that can be handled faster or slower than a previous run
I mean, I'd disagree; the RNG is either input or output, getting better at working with it doesn't change what kind it becomes. Both kinds of RNG can be run killers, especially at the higher levels of play, it's just one of them tends to be a lot more boring of a run killer IMO. Plus, input RNG usually seems more recoverable from what examples I've seen. Bad enemy patterns or spawns usually cost seconds, and could potentially be made up down the line - a failed drop for a needed item might cost several minutes or even hours to re-farm if it can be farmed at all. (The Zell card from FF8 springs to mind - about a solid minute per farm attempt, and I have personally witnessed a runner burn three hours straight just trying to get the card to drop, just to prove he wasn't crazy and it *could* drop at that point.)
Yeah I'm not suggesting it goes all the way, if that makes sense, just that the tighter and tighter the times get the less room there is for recovery and clever play and the more it just becomes another value that has to line up for the run to succeed. There's always going to be an element of skill, a huge one really, but having that skill does mean it becomes less creativity and more executing on known solutions
This is a pretty good way to summarize it, yeah.
Totally agree. As much as I like Diablo 2 or similar, watching someone farm Countess for a while to get the run going is very tedious
I'll take an example of input RNG that sucks - Super Metroid Phantoon attack patterns. Typically a very skilled player on a premium pace will have to roll the dice twice on this fight (going to three rounds is probably a reset). It's very close to "roll 1d8 - on a 1 or 2, the pattern takes 1 second, a 3, 4 or 5 it takes 6 seconds, and on a 6, 7 or 8 it takes 11 seconds" Basically, a 1 in 16 chance for an optimal fight, which is 11.25 seconds faster than the mean (10 seconds faster than the median or mode). Assuming you execute correctly, which is actually (slightly) easier on the shorter patterns. I do agree there's times that input RNG is satisfying, but it's not always the case.
I think we can agree that the problem with RNG in general is swinginess more than anything. This is an example of input RNG with too much swing to it, which, yeah, would be frustrating to watch and probably just as frustrating for the streamer to perform. If that same spread of probabilities was more like 4 vs 5 vs 6 seconds, then perfect RNG is getting you ahead no more than 2-4 seconds, which is still a *lot* in a run as optimized as *Super Metroid*, to be fair, but it's something more feasibly recoverable. Only the absolute cutting edge runners are fishing for that perfect run, at that point - and people watch those to *see* the perfect run, so being annoyed at the bad RNG is a bit less of an interest killer I think?
More interesting, IMO, is when input RNG changes room strategies but doesn't really change room time. I don't think this would happen in normal game design - this would be more likely if a speedrunner mod was made for a game.
I suggest you watch randomizer race
I'd call a randomizer race a case of extreme input RNG, actually! Every item is available, and every drop is exactly where it always is and guaranteed - just the drops don't have the items they usually have. Which yes, leads to incredibly fun races to watch with both sides trying to adapt to their knowledge and predictions of the scenario as it unfolds and turning to backup strats when things don't work out as planned or skipping ahead thanks to a risky play that worked out for them. It's not like they have to sit and open the same treasure chest and soft-reset until it's the item they want.
The amount of times I've seen sm64 runners lose their rainbow split or worse even runs, because of coin rng is insane. It's absolutely infuriating to see.
> It's the unfortunate moments of like, "If I don't get this 5% drop an hour into the run we're screwed" that is unfun RNG to deal with. DAMPE PLS
Minecraft speedrunning is huge and it's hard to imagine more RNG heavy run than MC
Well untill you stary chrating like a lot of them seems to do.
I don't have a strong preference for them over other runs, but my RNG heavy game is Barbie Magic Genie Bottle CD-ROM & it's basically luck whether you get a 7 minute time or a 9 minute time, even with great execution across the board. It can be fun to have a short, silly reset game where sometimes the stars align!
Tbh, my opinion is kind of the complete opposite! I think the longer the run is, the better an rng heavy run is. Because, generally, the RNG is more likely to balance out. Going to use pvz as an example, just because it's what I'm most familiar with. Any% has a ton of RNG, and a lot of that RNG can outweigh execution - but the run is also 3.5 hours long. With so much RNG, it's pretty likely that it will generally balance out (other than money luck, which is the worst part of that run). Meanwhile, All Puzzles is probably the main category with the highest skill:luck ratio, but is 11 minutes long at wr level. As a result, the luck that IS there matters way more, because of how optimized it is. Although the great thing about pvz is that a better player will basically always get a better time than another player despite the RNG, even in a short category like All Puzzles. I really love PvZ...
Not unpopular. RNG is the whole point of Pokémon speedruns, which are very popular. Without RNG, Pokémon runs would be pretty boring
It's more exciting when there's a chance for RNGsus to throw a monkey wrench, RE3 speedrun races are often thrilling for this reason.
Too glitched runs may be impressive, but often they are too boring to watch
I think that depends very much on the game. Some glitchless runs are really boring because nothing exciting happens or they are just too long. On the other hand there are sub 5 minute speedruns of really long games that immediately skip to the end, making these also very boring to watch.
Ocarina of Time. Used to watch people set up a warp, break the fabric of reality, and fight Ganon as a kid. Now, its a stuck camera angle and 2 minutes of offscreen input....
Ultrakill glitch runs are boring to watch cause all the encounters are skipped, non glitch are way more interesting cause you get to see how they optimize encounters
Here are a few of my hot takes: - Super Mario Sunshine is one of those games that is more fun to watch someone perform a 100% run over an any% run. - The speedrunning scene on YouTube has been overrun with videos covering “drama” in the community and I feel like those videos hurt the community as a whole.
The Billy Mitchell lawsuit turning Karl Jobst into a drama channel is honestly one of the worst things to happen to the community
my controversial speed run opinion would be that if a run includes messing with another save file's data, the time to setup the other file should be included with the final time. My logic that I see it is that "If someone was to theoretically replicate every input with the same RNG on another hardware or emulator, they should be able to achieve the same record." So if one replicates every input- it wouldn't work since they don't have a specific save file pre-made beforehand. I believe Zelda Skyward sword and Twilight princess does this? I want to say there was another game or two that did some save state shenanigans by somehow tricking their game was another one and it unlocked items and progression they did not have at the time. Like, it's a really cool technique to be able to accomplish it in a run, just include the setup time in the final time.
I think for marathons, leaving out the setup is acceptable, but it should honestly be included in any verified runs on leaderboards.
Runs that use pre-made save files are often called New Game+ as a category, and if they aren't, they should be. An example would be FF7 PC NG+; that run uses a premade save, which is why it's called NG+ since it's not purely New Game. Twilight Princess (at least any%, that's the only category I ran) creates a total of 3 save files, and all of them are created during the run, so this is in line with what you wanted. Two of the save files are just quickly saving in specific areas to set your last known exit (I believe), so that you get specific outcomes from using the Back in Time glitch (and its variants). An example of something that doesn't abide by those rules would have been FF8 PSX with specifically the old WR steproute. The current rules ban pre-new game manipulation, but a few years ago, to contend for WR it was nearly mandatory to use a steproute that was only possibly by having a pre-made save file to manipulate the starting stepID for when you actually started the run. Fortunately, they did away with that, though.
Yakuza 0 has a thing where if you take out some goons in a particular part and then start a new game file they are still taken out whenever you get to them again. I always thought that was an odd thing that was allowed.
Definitely think it's the sort of thing that feels like a separate category yeah! First time I saw this was a spyro game at agdq (or similar event) where part of the setup was a completed save with some fairly specific conditions to it, then used the save in the run in order to clip out of the map for 90% of the duration. Thought it's really cool that they figured out how to do that, but also feels like hours ( or however long) of prep time required for your run surely is just part of your run at that point.
I dislike any kind of quitting and loading, changing settings like fps mid run for certain tricks, stuff like that. I love souls games and their speedruns but I hate all the quitting and loading in them.
I kinda respect it because the timing is fairly skill based (in Souls games, at least).
I hate it the most in souls games lol. It's not even faster a lot of the times they do it, but because it stops the timer they do it wherever possible. It makes runs take longer then the times would suggest, and it's annoying as fuck to watch. It would make souls games 10x, more enjoyable to watch if they couldn't save quit. Or at the very least, it didn't stop the dang timer so they could only use it when it's actually faster lol.
Quitting and loading is fine if it's quick, in the GBA Castlevania games doing a quicksave and reload to return to the start of a long room takes like... maybe 2 seconds? Mostly comes up in randomizers rather than actual speedruns though.
idk, there's a room in Celeste that you quit and reload after entering to skip a getup animation because the IGT doesn't track time outside of levels, and it saves like Half a second total And it just takes me out for a moment every single time
I didn't always hold this opinion but nowadays I feel that games "made" for speedrunning or with conveniences for speedrun are less interesting to watch. I can't really explain why, but knowing that the game was "tampered" or "prepared" so it could be speedrun makes me enjoy it less.
Speedrunners should be adapting to the games parameters, not games tailored for speedrunning.
AAA devs can add as many level timers and speedrun modes to their third person story focused over the shoulder action adventure games as they want, but if they actually want to appeal to speedrunners, I'd rather they make games that are interesting to run instead of trying to tack on features that are, quite frankly, pretty much just fluff
intro cut-scene skip should be allowed on the main SM64 leaderboards. i'm taking back my life 70 seconds at a time.
I know it would probably screw up the entire board but I wouldn't ever be mad if they had a "intro-less" category where you could just load a save state right where mario comes outa the pipe. That intro is a bit annoying to wait through every time. Same could be said for some of Banjo's unskippable bits.
How would this work on console? Practically speaking.
The thing is there’s no real clean way to do it on console. The game only lets you save after collecting a star or a key from Bowser, so the options to make intro skip a thing are very weird and save less time than you would think.
Intro cut-scene skip is actually allowed on the SM64DS leaderboards, but in DS you can save/quit from the overworld at any point, so setting up the file is possible and very easy (just watch the cutscene and immediately save/quit). Not sure how you'd make that work in 64 where you can't do that (terrible game design decision imo).
This should be true for a majority of games
If somebody wants to submit a time literally 12 times longer than the WR, who the hell ***actually*** cares as long as they have the decency to submit *some* form of proof, like an IGT screenshot or something? The bottom of the leaderboards is such a hilariously minute thing to get mad at that it's beyond not worth it to get worked up on it--and sorry to the sweats, but the RE4 Leaderboard Incident solidified my opinion on this even more actually.
Okay I know nothing about this incident and have never heard people complain about *bottom* placing times so. Please do enlighten me. I have to know now.
Iirc, the game's moderators basically made a rule where any time that's something like over 50% longer than the WR would be rejected from the leaderboard, in an attempt to make the game more "competitive" and force people to work for a better time It was not well received.
I’ll bet it wasn’t, if myself or others wanna compete for dead last then let them it doesn’t hurt anyone. Hell even if it just muddying up the main leaderboard then just make a category extension or meme board for it.
If anything, the idea of your run being rejected for being too slow would probably have the opposite effect of demotivating people from even trying
Part of what really made people upset about that decision is that after the vast majority of people were very clearly vocally displeased, the RE4 moderators got extremely defensive and some of them lashed out at people, and even after reverting the changes, they said they weren't in the wrong to make them and refused to admit it was a bad decision.
Wow, it's just as stupid as I imagined! Thanks!
I know they aren't gone, but I feel like "glitchless" or "no major glitches" runs are really underrated when talking about Any% or 100% runs. Like, I really enjoy runs that just look like REALLY optimized casual runs instead of runs that are glitches followed by more glitches and then roll credits. Also don't really enjoy runs that require previous preparations or RNG manipulation before even starting the run. I like to use Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie's runs as examples for these. I loved seeing early Banjo-Kazooie runs before they found out that you could manipulate one of the saves in Furnace Fun to start a new game with all moves unlocked. I loved seeing the optimized strats to unlock the moves as you went through the levels. And then, we have Banjo-Tooie, with that cutscene glitch to basically skip the whole game straight to the last boss. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it doesn't take skill to pull these glitches out, they're probably even harder to pull out than some tricks in a Glitchless/No Major Glitches speedrun... But I just don't find the joy in watching people speedrunning a game by not "playing" it. Anyway, that's my take on it, I'm ready and willing to get downvoted to hell for saying this lol
I like "Spirit of a casual playthrough" rulesets but you just need to accept that arbitrary decisions need to be made sometimes. Take Super Metroid. There's two movement skills (walljump, shinespark) that have in-game 'documentation'. Clearly those are in the spirit of a casual playthrough. But what about shortcharges, blue bomber, bluesuit, spike suit, mockballs, moonfalls and continuous walljumps, none of which are 'documented' in game in any way? Mockball in particular is central to several sequence breaks, but will happen by accident in casual playthroughs. The community has decided 'yep, those are all allowed', but draws the line at some other tricks such as out-of-bounds. This is an arbitrary decision, and had different decisions been made, the resulting runs would be different. The main thing that matters is consistent rules.
The problem with glitchless is that it very easily ends up being arbitrary, what is and isn't a glitch is often up to interpretation.
So much this. For me, the introduction to speed running was downloading quake done quick demo files form mailboxes. A speedrun is the game actually played as fast and efficient as possible, not avoiding the whole game altogether to somehow manipulate a code exception to dump you to the credit screen...
I agree with what you say, I think its all down to personal preference, I love watching any % dark souls 3 runs, seeing people skip some of the most tedious areas in the game which would take a solid 20-30 minutes, but a runner goes through the whole area in a matter of minutes is something truly amazing, but seeing someone glitch through the whole game I wouldn't say its boring to watch, but it defeats the purpose and the skill of a game like dark souls for example. Not to mention some glitchless runs can take ages, and personal preference again i cannot run a game if it exceeds an hour and a half
yeah elden ring runs basically encapsulate this feeling for me -Any% No Wrongwarp & Any% Glitchless .... just under an hour for both -Any% Wrongwarp .... 4 min now no disrespect to the people who figured out the wrongwarp but man is it boring to watch
All those tools and calculators ruined Minecraft speed runs.
Mine is that this sub should give more attention to ESA. Everyone loves to complain about GDQ but when the time comes, no one talks about ESA.
You can add most other speedrun events in general like the ASM events or dreamhack, etc.
Dreamhack has a speedrun component? Haha, I watch so much sc2 and never knew that
The various things hosted on RPGlimitbreak if you like RPG runs as well.
What is ESA
European Speedrunner Assembly esamarathon on twitch
Besides the apparent social issues they don't adress properly, as an EU viewer they always came across as a "boys club" - not generally welcoming but only for those in the know. That and production standards are way lower
Agreed, as an European I tried getting into it, but the runner often don't have an attitude as "newcomer friendly" as at gdq. It's more like guys hanging out, which to be honest is similar to the 1st gdqs, but at this point it evolved into something much more professional and in a format that makes you enjoy watching.
People who complain about TASes don't know anything about TASes.
[удалено]
Most dedicated speedrunners are on the spectrum.
I wish people get into glitch hunting more games, than speedrunning one. In the same vein, more people should venture out to other, less known games, especially games with 15 runners or less (basically 80% of the available games on speedrun.com)
I think speedrunning's mental itch is best scratched by TAS'ing, and human runs are less cool by comparison as soon as they become possible. Routing is the essence of what speedrunning is, not human input limitations.
Oh man, here's a couple: - 90% of speedrun races are boring and the outcome of the race tends to be set the moment one runner messes up a trick and the other doesn't, the one exception to this are roguelikes which make for great racing games - titanfall 2 being considered a great speedgame is a mass gaslighting campaign by bryonato and I'm not sure how the entire community fell for it - games "made for speedrunning" tend to be really boring speedruns - games with many movement options are less appealing to me than ones where you just hold W, i think optomizing simpler movement is a lot more interestng than chaining together 7 different types of jump
I hate that speedrun YouTube has turned into deifying every person that’s touched a game like they’re a fallen war hero or something. I think it bled into everything because of how popular Karl jobst and summoningsalt were, who both did it a bunch mostly because they were talking about very old games with big communities (even though it still annoys me when they do it).
I actually love this. It will always be funny to me to hear someone say "but poopslayer6969 wouldn't hold the record for long...because then...VaginaPenisCannon...did *this*" as though they're talking about the Yalta Conference
I was thinking about why so many in the radical left participate in "speedrunning" The reason is the left's lack of work ethic ('go fast' rather than 'do it right') and, in a Petersonian sense, to elevate alternative sexual archetypes in the marketplace ('fastest mario'). Obviously, there are exceptions to this and some people more in the center or right also "speedrun". However, they more than sufficient to prove the rule, rather than contrast it.
Shadow, what the fuck are you talking about?
You're a beta male Sonic.
Sir, is this a copypasta I haven’t seen before, or are you just doing the best you can with a single digit brain cell count?
Not only a copypasta, but I only posted like 1/8th of the entire diatribe
lmao
It's a copypasta
lol thanks, you never know these days
It was originally serious, unfortunately.
Truly mindboggling because of all the criticisms you can level at people who speedrun, lack of work ethic is NOT one of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n__GJuqLb00
I still remember being flashbanged by the realization of who Petersonian is referring to
speedruns where you use one glitch to skip 90% of the game are boring
It's super neat to learn about them and why they work and see it done! ...the first time. They do get stale *much* faster.
How about [that one speedrun where you literally boot into a glitched ending](https://www.speedrun.com/platoon?h=glitch&x=ndx3q7jd) if a particular cartridge pin is covered with tape?
Castlevania Aria of Sorrow fits the bill on that. Same with any% on hitman 2 (original) or contracts which I think has the same thing.
Certain cheats make the runs better. Like ones that get rid of rng and such. As long as it’s a community wide accepted cheat, and makes the run better, I think it’s better.
Dark Souls runners modding the game to make the Black Knight Halberd a guaranteed drop is a good example. All it does is prevent 70% of runs dying 5 mins in for no reason.
Bioshock Infinite comes to mind
I know there's a couple games that do this! Monster Hunter World (iirc) got some spotlight for people cheating, but it was for mods the community had not agreed on. For instance, due to the extreme rng of drops, they allow for a decent amount of drop table modification; as long as it's something that *could* actually happen... but they don't like mods that change monster attack patterns because a lot of the skill is in reading and responding and optimizing that.
Whoever originally came up with the idea that Mario Kart 64 leaderboards should convert PAL times into NTSC equivalents and vice versa and then rank them both together so that NTSC doesn't have an "unfair advantage" was A) definitely a PAL region player who was salty over not being able to play the faster version, and B) an idiot, because all this does is give PAL players an unfair advantage. If any other speedrunner of any other game suggested that the community play on a slower version of the game and then convert the times into what they would've been in the faster version so that anyone with the slower version could have easier World Records, they'd be the laughingstock of their respective community. MK64 records would be much cooler if all the top level runners actually pulled off these runs on the higher speed --- and, more importantly, the *dev intended* speed --- version of the game. Also ban Dan Burbank from the rankings.
The past participle of speedrun is "speedrun". Hearing people say "have speedran" hurts me physically.
Teleports to credits are not beating the game. When we used to finish OOT by killing Ganon, back when we warped to ganon's tower and killed him there, we didn't stop the timer when we hit the credits, but rather when we killed Ganon. If the timer is supposed to be based on hitting the credits, why didn't we time it that way before? I don't consider any game beat if I just watch the credits from the title, why is this any different? (yes, I know we have the beat Ganon % for this reason since warping now is fucking boring)
In most games, timing ends at last input.
Yes, I understand this as a courtesy is done. I think speedruns need to rethink that their true end-goal is for the run. If its a final “the end” screen after credits like Danny is saying it is for OOT, then the credits time should be added to the timer (and credits skips would still be superior by A LOT). If its defeating BBEG, then killing them should be the last frame. I like my Ganon properly skewered.
Killing Ganon in OoT is what triggers the ending credits cutscene. It's just A-presses to skip dialogue boxes from that point on.
Apparently, it's considered controversial and banned to allow RunAhead in speedruns done on emulators. My "controversial" opinion is that RunAhead must be allowed, as long you can measure the entire latency from Controller to Game Action appearing on the display, and the average latency is not lower than the average latency of a Console and CRT. Seriously. LCD screens have entire frames worth of "do nothing" time before the pixels even start to fade to the next frame.
RunAhead often makes the emulator less accurate when comparing to console, which is why it's usually not allowed.
Portal Inbounds runs have been somewhat ruined with edge / save glitch. They’re fun to watch, but a pain to learn and get good at.
I find the big-time GDQ events unwatchable these days. And it's not because they're sanitized or noxiously squeaky-clean, it's that less and less time is spent actually talking about the game or the speedrun. Also there's very little that makes me tune out a speedrunner than to hear them go "I don't know what happens in this game's plot or why things are occurring, I just speedrun it lol". Even if you don't watch the story scenes and/or actively go out of your way to skip them if you had a smidgeon of wit it should not be hard to at least look it up or something, doubly so if you're in an event and promoting the damn game.
Kinda similar: I remember GDQ had a runner play X5 and they just started trashing on the game. I immediately lost all interest and went to watch something else for a bit. 'Cause it's one thing to play a 'so bad it's good game', but if you're speedrunning a game that you apparently hate and don't enjoy, then why should I care about watching? (Not to mention I think the whole "X5 is bad" opinion is a bit of a dumb meme but that's besides the point).
ACE speedruns are bad and should be a category extension and not the default main category Watching OOT go from a cool decently long but not too long run to a “jump around in place to get free items/credits warp” game was terrible for that game and killed a lot of interest
Idk, any% is any%, do ANYthing to beat it as fast as possible. Does any% in oot suck ass now? Yes! But the old route is its own category now, just run/watch that now instead.
My hot take is that OOT was never that good of a speed game but it shared its legacy of being a goat video game with mario 64 so that's why it was so popular back in the early speedrunning days, and it was gonna drop off hard in active runners eventually no matter what. That said yea I kinda agree, any% with ACE should never be the main category (you barely play the actual game in the first place) but idk about category extension, shoving it to an any% subcategory should be enough. Very surprising that it's the main category of OOT, weird decision when 100% no SRM is right there.
ACE is the death of any% for a game. Other categories become the main category.
All games need a category where the goal is to reach the end as quickly as possible using only input presses, taking advantage of what the game has to offer. This may indeed create a short and boring glitchy category, but it's needed to make logical sense. An actual problem, in my opinion, is when leaderboards have a different category named "any%" which isn't actually aiming to beat the game as quickly as possible.
SMB3 any% no wrong warp is a shitty boring speedrun. Like over half of it is autoscrollers
I would say most in the SMB3 community agrees :D.
I don’t like runs where the goal is to break the game as fast as possible. I’d rather see an OOT speed run where all the levels are actually completed as fast as possible instead of just finding ways to skip straight to Gannon.
That's why categories exist!
You picked the worst game for this since Zelda normally has tons of categories. Any% gets the hype but stuff like SMT or all dungeons is way more entertaining
I feel you here. It isn’t that there aren’t other ways to beat the game but that these ones where it’s a fast break become the most popular and barely show the game at all. I used to compete on the glitchless OOT runs so I feel this one in particular to my core.
I prefer glitchless runs, because I find it more impressive to go through a game the way it was (more or less) intended as flawlessly as possible. I get that performing multiple frame-perfect tricks is not something to be sniffed at, but watching someone, for example, doing a perfect run on Metal Slug? I can just appreciate it more
my opinion is in the same vein as yours, which is that some games are just not compatible with speedrunning at all. Ive heard a few times that the only reason goldeneye is run at all is because it was one of the few game that had a timer for missions at the end. I feel the same for pokemon games too. I love them to death but ive seen werster lose his shit way to many times for me to think that the game is healthy to run at all.
It should be allowed to pause runs and the timer, like once an hour or something.
Fortunately many longer speedgames are becoming more allowing of that.
This is fine, under the condition that they are separate from and do not replace RTA runs. Being able to pause the timer is just such a huge advantage for many different reasons, such as taking time to figure out on the fly routing for games with lots of variables, or simply calming your nerves in the late game on a good run.
For long runs, like 3 hours plus ('movie' length), they should be on the same leaderboard as runs without breaks. We do that in all games I moderate. There is no reason to force people to strain themselves unhealthily just to remain competitive. Yes, there is a small advantage gained from planning during the break, just as there is in any sport, e-sport, board/card game tournaments, etc (which all allow breaks if the run is long), but I don't think it is a big enough deal to warrant the negatives. Plus, this 'advantage' is equal for all participants, as everyone gets this option to take breaks. If someone managed to do such a run without taking any breaks, good for them and everything, but they shouldn't be rewarded more for this show of 'endurance' than someone who used their break allowance appropriately.
When I was running REVillage, rules were that pausing was allowed (which froze IGT), but total time paused throughout the duration of the run had to be less than 5 minutes or the run was invalid.
Agdq and sgdq is nearly unwatchable these days. I get that they’re doing as much as they can to raise as much as they can, but when they’re appeasing companies by making the whole thing family friendly, it moves it so far away from what it was originally that I can’t watch it anymore.
I can't stand donation reading. I want to watch people speedrun and commentate, not listen to trauma dumping or tired memes.
runners in the old days didn't swear onstage so I'm not really sure what you're nostalgaing for. poor audio setups? bad layouts?
I haven't really watched very much since they started getting hotels, but in 2011 2012, they small white basement looking place, plus the sgdq at uyama's place, people use to swear all the time. Like they weren't potty mouthes but 100% they were swearing in the pre-hotel days. The other thing though, i nostalgia for the community feel of older agdqs. You'd see the same people, laughing together, inside jokes. It's hard to describe, really. Since they started doing the huge hotel room it feels more corporate and not nearly as much as "group of friends having fun". Its hard to pinpoint, i think agdq 2013 was the last one i got really into. 2010 11 and 12 were my jams. 14 and beyond i haven't gotten into it But also yeah the bad layouts were a lot less distracting and easier to read. Good point.
> The other thing though, i nostalgia for the community feel of older agdqs. You'd see the same people, laughing together, inside jokes. See, I feel the opposite because it makes you feel like you need to be in on something to actually understand what’s happening, especially the inside jokes. Stuff like the Bluey run from AGDQ this year are hard cringe for me.
I find them more watchable because my kids watch with me, being family friendly means I can watch a lot more runs live because I don’t have to worry about the kind of shit that’s gonna get said in the interest of being “edgy”
For me it just feels more stiff today. Back in like 2012 the events reminded me of the times i spent just playing video games with friends after school, like this super chill atmosphere with people just hanging out together and having a good time. I enjoyed that a lot and it's why i like to rewatch 2012 and 2013 from time to time. Tuning into the newer gdq marathons feels more like watching some channel on tv. The runs are still impressive but it feels more soulless and is not really enjoyable to watch if that makes sense.
If a game let's you skip a section when you've failed it x amount of times, that's not a real speedrun. My first speedrun memory was watching a Simpsons Hit and Run where you would spam restart until you could skip. Yes I know now they have another category for no skips but at the time I thought speedrunning was stupid.
Fallout 3/NV/4 Glitched Speedruns are vomit inducing to watch. Amazing skill and smart tricks, but unwatchable for entertainment
I think Tomatoanus did a really good job at keeping his GDQ rub (FO4 ) fun and interesting to watch.
This might not be that controversial, but this is what I personally think of leaderboards on speedrun.com: Leaderboard pages should have ALL the versions of one game on the same leaderboard page. For example, Majora's Mask and Majora's Mask 3D should be on the same page, but still split as their on categories. This would make it easier to find a remake, remaster, or port of an already existing speedgame on the website. "What if the two communities don't overlap that much?" Then make it overlap, we've found success in the Banjo-Kazooie series community with combining the XBLA ports of the Banjo games. Every speedgame is different, but generally I think having say Skyward Sword HD and Skyward Sword SD (etc.) on the same page would make it incredibly easier for viewers to see the differences of these versions and not hide these versions in the dark alley that is the search function of speedrun.com.
There's a good reason to not always group different versions togeathers. Sometime remasters are so different to the original that they're essentially another game. In the case of the Nintendo DS/3ds remakes they have a different engine so the times can't be compared to the console counterparts. Having too many categories in one page makes the website harder to navigate. This is the reason why a single game often has 2 entries with category extensions. They want to keep the main page clean and make it obvious that all the categories are respected, while the category extensions can be just sort of whatever
"Gamble" WRs, those that rely on grinding RNG bottlenecks that give you chances of 1/800 pass 799/800 restart, are basically worthless. They don't measure one's skill/mastery beyond a low threshold, they measure one's patience. In some games, a single such bottleneck causes most of the variance in run times, or at least hypothetical runs you'd continue instead of restarting (that's a good way to define a bottleneck, actually). Unfortunately, modding games/console commands/etc. to remove them also feels cheaty; 799/800 chance of -34s and 7/8 chance of -0.2s are on a continuum, there's often no principled way to separate them. If speedrunners collectively decide to remove one, they might as well remove the other. I think it's preferable to stick to a principle if possible, even if it leads to dumbed down gameplay in the rest of the game. For example, a "modded so all drop rates are 100%" category is preferable to "modded to make that one run-ending enemy drop that happens two hours in, and only that, into a 100% drop".
Coming from an RPG speedrunner, I am tired of people saying: "If you are an RPG runner, run at RPG Limit Break." This kind of argument, for me, is really non-sense for two reasons: (1) This sounds gatekeeping to any RPG runner (most especially if it is decently short enough, say at most 2 hour runs). (2) Afaik, RTA in Japan does not have any RPG Limit Break counterpart (or some associated channel that runs like it). This means that no one mentions the aforementioned argument at least in their community. Let's not go too far. ESA, in the geographical setting (Europe), has no such RPG marathon dedicated channel counterpart as well. Probably someone could enlighten or even correct me on this.
What's the context of the statement, though? RPG Limit Break is the top RPG-based marathon, I doubt people are saying to run there at the exclusion of other events.
Simply put: (1) Most RPG runs are from either a well known Square or a Nintendo game. (2) Back then, GDQ used to accept long RPG runs (case on point: 9+ hr FF8 and FF9 runs); and even some lesser known ones (like Dragon Quest and Legend of Mana, but these are Square games; Ys would be the best example of neither Nintendo nor Square). I believe these opinions surfaced once GDQ had become strict in their game choices. I truly understand that not everything can be accommodated. But the opinions pertaining that they redirect you to RPGLB sounds gatekeeping to me. Again, I may not understand something here, so feel free to correct.
Way too fucking late to this, but maybe someone sorts by new: major glitches (like out of bounds skip through the whole map) are fucking lame, I want people execute the game semi-normally with exceptional skill. I'm aware that glitches also take skill, but I just don't care for them. One of the reasons I love Quake speedrunning, the game is solid as hell, barely glitchable on the official maps. Just a wacky physics engine and beautiful movement and a _lot_ of planning, especially for 100% runs.
Lame may be, but all games need a category where everything is allowed in order to reach the ending as quickly as possible, as that is the most pure and logical ruleset you can have. As soon as you start disallowing things, or putting up requirements of what you need to do in the game, you go further and further away from the definition of what a speedrun is. But yeah, some runs may indeed become lame/boring, which is one of the reasons why lots of different categories exist.
This is a very specific problem but a game I used to run called "Escape the Backrooms" has skips that involve multiple tabs of the game being open at once in order to load into the save file twice, once on each tab. I really hate these glitches. As for wr runs, you have to have like 5 tabs open at once. I imagine this sucks for people who don't have very good PCs, and overall, it seems like a really cheaty skip. Plus, the RNG in this game is horrible, and some of the community is toxic, so i dont run it anymore.
If there's a glitch that allows you to warp to mid way through the credits, it's not a completed run. You ran around the finish line.
The only speedrunning I care to watch are Summoning Salt videos.