United Statesajmer: In-game timer pauses with the pause menu and resets with turn resets. This allows for longer think times and making mistakes unpunished. Also, some runs go out of sync for currently unknown reasons (potentially due to framerate). Turn resets may be useful despite the real-time cost, so it's preferable not to ban resets. Judging by real-time solves all these issues for basically no cost.
Oof yeah, this is what I meant. You start with no ice artillery, you then go to deathless.
Until/unless this gets patched, the solution seems to be adding a Glitch% category, and banning major skips for other categories as they come out.
Creating a glitchless category should be done very very carefully. A glitch like this does not skip any major content and saves a minute at best. If it's patched out later but future more-polished runs still can't make up the difference, you can talk about adding a "Version" variable that suggests that early-version glitches were exploited -- but I don't see this happening.
A glitch that allows you to skip an entire island, or end every battle on Turn 1, is a different story.
I believe the heuristic to apply here is, only include a glitchless category if entertainment value is severely diminished (due to loss of gameplay, or relying on RNG, or requiring a tedious process).
I may be interested in running this game someday. I have several suggestions, some of which were covered here:
- Spleen's suggestion, i.e. list the 1st place for every team and difficulty on the front page.
- Categories: "Any%", "Any% Hard", "4-Island", "4-Island Hard".
- Place "Custom squad" at the top, and remove the "no ice artillery" category. Yes it's broken, but it won't be long before another broken strat comes by (Darn mentioned Rusting Hulks).
I don't see how this is substantively different from a typical Shadow Lord run. What "pressure" are you speaking of? Would you still be starting from a fresh character?
Traditionally, a speedrun aims for "completion" of a game, or at least reaching some milestone. Reaching level cap (either 50 or 99), defeating Maat, or finishing a major storyline (e.g. Shadow Lord fight) seem like perfectly fine goals. The ones you described, not so much. Unlocking support job doesn't even require skill anymore, you just get to 18 and then do RoV chapter 1-1.
There's no reason a category has to be ungodly long! If you can think of something that feels like a major achievement, feel free to suggest something.
As another idea, I would be 100% cool with adding an Individual Levels leaderboard for battlefields, if there is interest (and videos). Kill everything solo i119!
Rules have been expanded and made more explicit. Please feel free to ask any clarifying questions here, or discuss or recommend changes.
Please add the Level 99 category. I suggest also adding a category for Level 99 (EXP+) with altered rules.
The rules I followed are outlined on my speedrun notes. I'll submit my run properly once there's a place for it. In the meantime you can see it here:
I think EXP rings should be chargeable. A significant leveling benefit comes from timing the start of your run to take advantage of RoE limited-time challenges (Gain EXP, Phys. Damage Kills, Kill Vermin, etc). In the same way, if you decide to run right before Conquest Tally, that's a timing decision that anyone can make once a week.
I understand your reasoning regarding plugins. In my runs I only use plugins that give no tangible benefit other than information, though someone playing without Timers is going to have a much harder time optimizing DPS. It is against TOS, but, if I may be glib, every player knows the GMs only enforce grievous violations.
