Appreciate the feedback. This discussion has been had previously in the context of PoE1. No countervailing things have changed since that discussion was had. PoE2 does not change this in anyway. There is value in doing deathless runs. It is what I personally prefer. However, participation and more generally alignment with speedrun ethos, favors allowing death in runs. Moreover, we tried doing deathless runs only in PoE1 when we first redesigned the PoE1 leader boards and participation was very bad. We eventually moved away in participation/interest, went up significantly.
We cannot have separate categories for deathless as it would balloon leader boards to unacceptable amount. The best intermediate solution we have is to have a deathless annotation. Ultimately, with checkpoints being in campaign and flasks not being what they were in PoE1 (ie no utility flasks such as QS), intentional deaths to 'skip' or 'reset' flasks likely don't represent a significant enough of a difference (at least at this juncture) to warrant different categories. You also lose some amount of time when dying especially on boss fights, as an example, so there is punishment already to time for dying. Together then, a well executed deathless run should, in theory, be the fastest possible time. If a crazy death skip pops up, it is something the mods will discuss. The deathless annotation will remain and non-deathless and deathless runs will be accepted
I don't see the point of the argument, if you think runs whit deads don't count, don't count them. It's fine to be a purist but some people are not and that is also fine.
