Timing method for campaign/nightmares will soon change
7 months ago
United States

Just a heads up here that the timing method is due for a change soon. I decided to return to the game recently and am currently digging throughout the game to potentially figure out strategies and get a better understanding with the campaign. One thing I discovered was exactly when missions are marked as complete, which is the moment when the mission complete dialog appears. Honestly is probably just common sense by everyone including me but after stumbling upon that, it reminded me what a few people mentioned in the CoD Discord, where they brang up how the split/IL finish times seem to be way too early. They also brang up that if that is truly the split time, couldn't they just exit the map and boot the next map straight up? And I agree with these points, the mission is not marked as complete during these splits times so it does make the current timing method innacurate. At that point, what would even considered completing the campaign (or a mission)? Even though I was certain exactly when the missions are marked as complete, I did some digging to verify. I can confirm that the mission data is saved exactly when the mission complete dialog shows up, or when it is supposed to show up (sometimes it doesn't show up if you 100%'d the campaign, but still saves your data). So on Black Ops, this appears shortly before loading into New World during the _exit skipto. From New World -> Lotus Towers this appears as soon as the safehouse loads, appearing over the fast loading screen. And on Life, this appears shortly after skipping the credits. I've included more info about it in the BO3 Timing Cheat Sheet. Now regarding all the current runs where their VODs are either unavailable or ends before this occurs, I don't want to be harsh to runs that occurred with different rules in mind. So in these cases, the runs will stay up but I will add an estimated penalty to the old time, which is fortunately pretty easy to calculate especially on missions like Provocation where it's just a long unskippable cutscene. However, when these rules are changed, runs in the future must include the end time. Another thing I wanted to change for a while is the Any% timing rule. I was thinking of starting the timer as soon as the campaign data is reset which happens to be the case on almost every game. Maybe even starting the timer when the reset button is pressed but I'm leaning more on option A. The newest version of my load remover & auto-splitter is adjusted with these rules in mind.

Additionally, I do want to add a category which allows all of the keypad codes, which includes the newer discoveries such as CAMPFIRE and GOTITALL. Something to note is that I did realize that inputting these codes actually mark the campaign as complete so it technically just completes the campaign for you in under a minute. So hopefully you can understand why I banned these in Any%. So it would literally be NG+ without 7 attachments, death warp class, and the level 20 cybercore wheel. Not adding this category until me (or someone else) runs this category because I don't want an empty category just sitting around. Yes, I do plan on running this soon but if anyone gets to it before me let me know because I will add the category in that case. I also have some thoughts about maybe creating a subcategory in this hypothetical category called "Manifest Only" where it aligns with the old Any% runs using the manifest keypad code, while banning the keypad entirely from Any%. I'm not planning on doing this yet because there are currently PBs on the Any% board which do use that Manifest code and I don't think it would be fair to jump to that yet. My recommendation is for everyone that does have a PB to try and beat it without the Manifest menu (which I plan on doing), which is entirely possible and doesn't lose really any time, it just forces you to do some of the stuff a little bit later. I don't have a guide on how to do that yet but check out Vn and Salon_Roll72's runs which do the UI Stack strategy manifest-less and align it with my old guide to connect the dots.

Last thing I want to say is that I know my guides are outdated now after discovering all those new strategies like infinity dashing and cutscene manipulation so I will get to that eventually when I have the time. If anyone dislikes the idea of these new changes or have any suggestions let me know. These changes won't come into effect for a little bit anyways since I am working on finding strategies and making guides but soon I will get to updating all of the times and the rules.

Game stats
Followers
315
Runs
1,334
Players
246
Latest threads
Posted 1 year ago
4 replies
Posted 1 year ago
2 replies
Posted 1 year ago
3 replies
Posted 1 year ago
2 replies
Posted 1 year ago
Moderators