Hello,

I don't regularly check these forums, so I happened to just see this thread for the first time.
I agree with mostly everything thereisnofuture and Thoday said, so thanks to them for the detailed explanations.
In the past, I have written extensively on this topic, so I would encourage Westernmango45 to read the essay that I wrote after AGDQ, which is listed here:
https://github.com/Zamiell/isaac-racing-client/blob/master/mod/Common_Complaints.md

No. Everyone speedruns on the PC version, so you could consider just buying that. Can you even reset the game on PS4?

While many players play The Binding of Isaac in different ways, the official categories on Speedrun.com reflect the most popular kinds of speedruns. Subsequently, before a category is added to the site, typically there needs to be at least 5-10 people running the category with recorded runs on Twitch/Youtube/etc.

If you want to speedrun Greed Mode yourself, feel free to do it. If you want the category to get added to Speedrun.com, then come up with official rules, encourage others to speedrun it with your exact ruleset, and then come back when there are 5-10 recorded runs.

Now to address Green Mode specifically: Historically, Greed Mode has not been popular as a speed category for two main reasons:

1) Consistency: In the "normal mode", the best speedrunners are extremely consistent - they almost always are able to complete a run in 10-15 minutes. Greed Mode is a different story - being able to win the run at all is not guaranteed, let alone achieve a specific window of consistency. Part of this is due to balance - DD/Angel rewards are not well designed, but part of it is just inherent in the mode, as you are not able to start an item from the Treasure Room pool.

2) Depth: Greed Mode is a simplified version of Isaac. It has less items than normal runs. DD/Angel rewards are less interesting. It removes a lot of the depth and strategy that goes into a normal run. And it gets boring faster than normal runs do.

A place to discuss strategy, share information on upcoming Isaac events, or just make new friends.

Join the Isaac racing & speedrunning Discord server:
https://discord.gg/JzbhWQb

A place to discuss strategy, find people to play with, or just make new friends.

Join the Hanabi Discord server:
https://discord.gg/FADvkJp

Read this: https://pastebin.com/kJFkFKz1

@Chaoskittyx The autsplitter will break after every patch, but it should work now. Also, you should know that almost no-one reads these forums anymore. Your best best is to join the Isaac Discord server and ask there: https://discord.gg/JzbhWQb

@thisguyisbarry
As Durden said, Isaac and Maggy only have the additional changes in the R+14 custom challenge.

@Durden
1) In the short term, I will implement a custom R+7 challenge if there is demand for it. Meaning specifically that there are 4-5 people interested in actively running that category.

2) In the longer term, note that the "S1" part of the challenge signifies season 1. In season 2, I was thinking of having R+7, with a mix of old characters from the R+9 category and new ones, as well as some new custom starting items to keep things fresh. Planning for that hasn't really started, but I think a good time to introduce it is July 1st.

Since it sounds like you want a strict vanilla ruleset with the original 7 characters and nothing else (booooring =p), this new season 2 challenge wouldn't completely align with your desires. However, depending on how the specific ruleset turns out, there might be some (or a lot) of overlap, so I figured I would bring it up so that you could check it out in the future.

3) Also note that most of this type of discussion happens in the Discord (as opposed to on these forums), so I'd encourage you to hang out in there as well.

Have you done any runs of it? You might want to try doing a few runs to make sure that it plays well / is actually interesting.

I talked to a bunch of people, and it sounds like most don't like the 9% Devil Deal thing, so I nuked it. Here's a copy of the patch notes:

Quote

Patch notes for v0.2.64:
- Isaac now starts with The Battery. (This is to make the R+14 speedrun category more interesting, but is experimental, and can be changed back to vanilla if people don't like it.)
- Maggy now starts with the Soul Jar, a new passive item. (This is to make the R+14 speedrun category more interesting, but is experimental, and can be changed back to vanilla if people don't like it.)
- The Soul Jar has the following effects:
- You no longer gain health from soul/black hearts.
- You gain an empty red heart container for every 4 soul/black hearts picked up.
- You always have a 100% Devil Room chance if no damage is taken.
- (The 9% Devil Room chance thing in the old Soul Jar is removed.)
- (Thanks to Gromfalloon for the custom Soul Jar graphics.)
- Eden now starts with the School Bag. She will start with her random active item inside the bag. (This is to make the R+14 speedrun category more interesting, but is experimental, and can be changed back to vanilla if people don't like it.)
- Lilith now starts with the School Bag. She will start with Box of Friends inside the bag. (This is to make the R+14 speedrun category more interesting, but is experimental, and can be changed back to vanilla if people don't like it.)
- Apollyon now starts with the School Bag. He will start with Void inside the bag. (This is to make the R+14 speedrun category more interesting, but is experimental, and can be changed back to vanilla if people don't like it.)
- [snip]

1) All characters in R+ should start with the D6.
2) All characters in R+ should be unique in at least one significant way.
3) In order to make a character unique, we don't necessarily have to buff it, because having all strong characters is uninteresting. It can also be a nerf, as long as the new character plays differently and is interesting.

This is the justification for my proposed change for Maggy, listed as follows:

Quote

Maggy starts with the Soul Jar, a new passive item. The Soul Jar has the following effects:
#1) You no longer gain health from soul/black hearts.
#2) You gain an empty red heart container for every 4 soul/black hearts picked up.
#3) You always have a 100% devil deal chance if no damage is taken.
#4) You always have a 9% devil deal chance if damage is taken.

If this Maggy is too hard / unfun, then we can remove bullet point #4. The reason why I included it in the first place is because Yevon said he wanted to keep at least 1 "hard" character in the 14 character category.

Originally posted by LobsterosityI suggested making DD penalty not so harsh

If the character is too weak, I would agree that changing DD percentage upon getting hit to vanilla (instead of 9%) is the simplest change.

My knee-jerk reaction to ANY build involving Goat Head or Eucharist is that it is a really bad idea. The primary skill-based component of speed runs is devil/angel deals - i.e. you use your skill to not take damage and are rewarded with power level increases from Devil/Angel rooms. Eucharist makes it so that you always get all angel deals, even if you get hit, so it ruins this mechanic.

How about this:
On every frame, soul/black hearts are removed from Maggie.
Every heart removed on this way gets added to a counter.
When the counter reaches 6 hearts, then she gains a red heart container.

Some updates.

R+9 was added as a category now, so you guys can submit your runs now.

I'm fine with Cyber's suggestion of only giving Lilith + Apollyon + Eden the School Bag. But can we make Isaac or Maggy unique in some other way without giving them the School Bag?

For Isaac, I was thinking that instead of the School Bag, maybe we should start him with the Battery? That's an intermediate solution between giving him the full blown School Bag, while still making him unique with the potential for double dice rolls. (Twice the rolls, twice the strategy?)

For Maggy, Cyber and I tried out giving her a new custom item called Curse of the Crow that would have the same effect as the Crow Heart trinket. This would solve the problem of Maggy not being unique without actually making her more powerful. However, this doesn't play very well. It's just very similar to Eve in that you avoid all red hearts. So essentially it plays the same as Eve, so it doesn't actually solve the problem of making Maggy unique. If anyone else has any ideas for Maggy, I'm open to that. We don't necessarily have to buff her. We can nerf her, as long as it makes a unique character.

After watching some runs of R+9 today (thisguyisbarry + Shatterglasslol), I think that the 9 characters in the R+9 category are all unique and somewhat interesting. Hopefully you guys agree. In this post, I'm not going to propose any changes to the R+9 category, but I do want to talk about something else.

Krakenos and I have been discussing the R+14 category. If you examine the 5 characters that are NOT in the R+9 category, I think you can find some problems. Well, maybe "problems" is not the right word, as the category is definitely playable the way is, without any additional changes. But there ARE unappealing things about these characters from a game design perspective. Consider the following things:

1. Apollyon - This is a character that Krakenos really has an issue with. His base stats are completely identical to Isaac, with the exception of only having 2 red heart containers instead of 3. Since Apollyon has the D6 now in the Racing+ mod, there is _nothing at all_ to distinguish him from Isaac (and the other characters) except for just having worse starting health. This is quite lame; all of the characters should probably have at least one unique thing about them. To solve this, we could give Void back to Apollyon, but that is also quite lame. Firstly, it breaks the symmetry of all of the characters in the mod having the D6. And secondly, Void kind of sucks - you can't really control which stats that you will get from Voiding items. (To be fair, you also can't control the items that the D6 rolls for you, but I think we can agree that the D6 really gives you a nice degree of control over the run, while Void really does not.)

2. Lilith - This character really sucks. The concept for the character is novel and somewhat interesting, but in practice it really doesn't play out well. I don't know of any speedrunners who actually enjoy playing Lilith. Having the D6 is obviously much better than having the Box of Friends, but Box of Friends is quite useful, and it really suits the character.

3. Eden - As we all know, Eden gets 1 random passive item and 1 random active item, which really makes the character unique and gives speedrunners a chance to use some items that they would never otherwise bother to pick up. In Racing+, Eden loses the random active item and gets the D6. Of course, Eden still gets the random passive item, but it isn't quite the same.

4. Magdalene - After using her speed up pill, Maggy has exactly the same base stats as Isaac. And now that she has the D6, she has the same problem as Apollyon in that there is absolutely nothing to distinguish her from the other characters.

5. Isaac - Again, now that every character in the game has the D6, Isaac has the exact same problem as Apollyon and Magdalene in that there is absolutely nothing to distinguish him from the other characters.

So each of these 5 characters has a pretty lame attribute about them. If you only play R+9, this isn't a problem. If you play R+14 and you want each character to provide a unique experience, then maybe it is worth entertaining a change to these 5 characters. So what am I proposing? Well, you may have guessed by now that there is a somewhat clean way to tackle all 5 of these problems at once - the School Bag from Antibirth. I propose that only these 5 would get the School Bag (not the 9 from R+9).

- Apollyon would get D6 + Void. This could lead to a lot of strategy about deciding which items to roll and which items to Void.
- Lilith would get D6 + Box of Friends. This gives her a somewhat-needed power-level boost, as the Box of Friends really synergizes with her.
- Eden would get D6 + her random active item, preserving one of the most important parts of the character.
- Magdalene would get D6 + Yum Heart, which isn't really useful besides getting to animation cancel all over the place, so with that said I still kind of like it.
- Isaac could start with D6 + an empty 2nd active slot, but that is kind of lame, and doesn't solve the problem of the character not having anything unique about it. I think it is better to give Isaac a D6 in both slots, which would be pretty zany and potentially a lot of fun, as well as add more strategy, since you can mix up where you want to spend your rolls.

So, School Bag could "fix" some of the lame characters. Beyond this, there is another big pro - it really increases the overall skill level of the game. You have to perform a lot of new inputs in order to play optimally, and its quite tricky + a lot of fun. It also gives rise to a lot of new strategies, since you might want to drop the D6 for 2 other active items.

But enough about the pros. Let's talk about the cons of this.

1. It makes the game too easy

School Bag has the potential to give a ton of defensive power to the run. You can take things like Satanic Bible and The Nail without having to sacrifice your D6, really ensuring that you won't kill yourself off in the last two floors. I'm sure that there are some people out there who enjoy playing through a "struggle" of a run sometimes. That can definitely still happen with the School Bag, but the chances are a lot lower. Overall, we want to make the R+14 category better, and for these types of people it might decrease the fun of the category instead of increase it, which is not what we want to do.

2. It is too much of a departure from vanilla

One of the goals of R+ is that it should be "pretty close" to vanilla in terms of playstyle. Introducing School Bag is not a small change; I talked earlier about the number of inputs + new strategies. So this might be a reason to leave it out of the mod. On the other hand, having the School Bag is not a humongous change either. In a weird way, it actually makes them more like vanilla, since we are re-giving them the items that they are intended to have. And in all likelihood, School Bag will be officially coming to the game at some point, either in one of the booster packs, or when Antibirth is officially integrated with Afterbirth+.

Anyways, these 2 cons are fairly sizable, so it is worth considering them. With that said, I think that it still might be a good idea to implement this. Ultimately, the most important question for me at the end of the day is this: how does it play? And after playing a bunch of runs with School Bag, I feel that it really does play well. But most of the people who plan on playing R+14 would need to be on board for this, obviously.

I don't like your proposed rule change. I think it makes more sense to be either "Beat Blue Baby" or "any%" (with a 1,000,000% save file).

Re: Which characters are in the new category?

- It looks like most people in the thread are PRO swapping out the characters to be new ones.
- It seems like the people who don't like Keeper don't like him because he is too weak. However, he is really strong now in the latest build of R+. (He starts with the D6, 50 cents, Greed's Gullet, and Duality.)

I've done some practice runs with Keeper, and I've noticed the following things:

1) I like Keeper having the D6. Without it, the run seems like it is too much "on-rails" and you have no choice in what happens. Furthermore, there is a nice symmetry in having every single character in the mod with the D6.
2) Without having the Wooden Penny, there is an interesting strategical trade-off between backtracking across the floor to gather a penny on the ground, and "risking it all" and continuing forward to save time.
3) There is a very cool strategical trade-off between shops and devil deals. If you buy an item in a shop, you might not be able to get a Mom's Knife in the Deal Deal anymore, for example, so you have to be careful about what you buy.
4) Duality makes you able to risk dropping to extremely low health if you go for Devil Rooms. Alternatively, you can go for lesser-power but "free" Angel Rooms.

Overall, there's quite a lot of strategy going on with this character! So I think Keeper is not too weak anymore, AND he is a lot of fun. I'm still open to making the character stronger or weaker, if you playtest him and feel that is necessary.

So, let's tentatively agree on the new 9 characters for the R+9 category:

1. Keeper (swapped with Isaac)
2. Eve (swapped with Maggy)
3. Cain
4. Judas
5. Blue Baby
6. Samson
7. Azazel
8. Lazarus
9. The Lost

And then all 14 characters obviously for the R+14 category.

Ok, it took me an entire day of messing around with it, but Keeper is fixed now with Greed's Gullet in the latest patch. Dead Cat also works now too! (I had to code that separately.)

Ok so the way you want to think about it now is that Keeper has 2 "base" coin containers. Any health ups you take will count towards those. If you are at 2, you can't get any more, but if you are less than 2, health ups will work normally again. Also, you can go into negative containers as far as you want, but just make sure not to spend any coins, or else you could kill yourself.

So finally you can enjoy Keeper in the way he was actually intended, so feel free to take all the Devil Deals.

Note that Dead Cat works differently than on the other characters - it will set your containers to 1 EXCLUDING the coin containers. (On the other characters, it will remove all of your base containers, which is pretty dumb, so I didn't want to replicate that part.)

starg09 - I thought that doing it that way would be more complicated. It's easier to understand I think in the way that I described above.

Building on what Dea1h said, the people who don't like Keeper are:
HauntedQuest, karolmo, SedNegi, and CrafterLynx

To the 4 of you, have you actually playtested the new Keeper at all in the past 20 days? Do you still feel like he is too weak?