@zoton2, is the amount of grinding the only (or most) important parameter for a game to be selected? I figure that entertainment value and quality/popularity of the game should at least be equally as important. And since the run is so long, it will feel relatively ungrinded for a looooong time, despite throwing 1000s of hours at it. You may need 7 times as much grinding as for a typical 1h run. Does this mean that if you grind it 5 times as much (instead of 7x) that the game is less grinded than this typical 1h run? I really don't think so; contrarily it would simply mean 5 times as much effort has gone into the run already.

Though I respect and can understand the decision (that goes without saying), I do think it is a missed opportunity. One of the advantages of not having a completely maxed WR, is that this would be a good chance to beat the WR live on the marathon (=extra layer of hype, I remember Josh getting the GTA SA WR @ ESA 13 and the nr of viewers & hype that brought with it, despite the fact it was far from maxed). And I estimate the nr of gamers (not necessarily hardcore speedrunners) that have affinity with GTA V and would want to watch it at a marathon is up the ying yang.

The other thing that I feel is maybe not fully appreciated is that this would have been a co-op run, meaning each team member would only have to focus his training efforts on ~33% of the run. To demonstrate how much impact this can have for the total time, you only need to look at the PR's Meridian & me have. My PR is 7h49m and I have only really grinded Michael. Meridian's PR is 8h22 and he has only grinded Trevor. Our co-op PR is 7h33m (16 mins faster than my solo and almost an hour better than Meridian's). This is without a well trained Franklin and obviously we would only have gotten better with our characters. With Zoton's Franklin thrown in the mix we would probably be targetting sub 7h.

I realise that non of these comments will really matter, for the decision has been made, but I feel like I needed to get that off my chest anyway.

@flicky, Yeah you're wrong alright. Taxis definitely don't win that much time (~20 mins). Furthermore the PS3 WR has a downloadable content chopper (which is not available on PC), which is a very fast type and can win a bunch of time throughout the run (which almost nullifies the taxi time gain, but let's say taxis are still 10-15 mins better). Either way, it's a severe case of apples and oranges, but I would stake my eyesight on it being (far) less than 40 mins.

EDIT: Forgot that Classic% is with a different ending, which is another 15 mins, so yeah 40 mins when also considering that sounds about right. Nevermind what I wrote earlier. :P These differences have to be taken relatively though of course (pardon the elementary school example, but it'd be like a 5 min difference on a run of 1h)...I see more than a few runs on the schedule that would not survive criteria as strict as that.

Found the reasoning for the GTA V cut a bit strange. "The times we found weren't up to standard for this game." Zoton2 has the bloody WR lol. If you cut it because of excess length, just say so. ;)

I've got a quick question about the Jewel Store heist...Anyone knows what triggers this mission fail? (roughly at 1h14m46s in the video if the timed link doesn't work).

Obviously the fact that there's only 1 biker, but that's always the case when you do the Sewer skip (I think?) and it doesn't always mission fail...

Didn't want to start a whole new topic for this, so I guess this topic felt the most appropriate.

Ah ok, so it has just gotten a lot harder for whatever reason. Strange. :/

Got a nice PB at GTA V any% no mission skips yesterday. 7h49m. Still a lot that went wrong (obviously, otherwise I would be closer to WR¤), but my IGT splits of main character (Michael) were slightly faster than WR lvl. Just lost a bunch of time with Franklin mostly. I think the 3 of us combined (Zoton, Meridian & me), each maining 1 character, would get around the 7h barrier on a good run.

EDIT: the video got rejected on YT for copyright claims, so I'm gonna have to mute it, then re-upload (for submission to speedrun.com ladder).

¤WR is 7h16m by prospected team mate Zoton2. :)

Really? I've mashed jump at like 60hz and he still didn't jump, so I figured it was impossible...

During the time it takes to do a run of this game, there is a lot of time for cool stuff to happen. Almost every run contains a few extraordinary moments (for better or for worse). I figured it'd be cool to have a topic to share these moments with other runners. I'll start with some notable moments from my run of yesterday:

I need a stunt double for Jimmy @ Father / Son:

Trevor Philips is an RPG Artist:

Getting rekt by Trevor Philips:

Worst txt message RNG ever @ Military Hardware (8th message!)

You can't jump in the jewel store (Casing the jewel store) for a quick exit through the glass door. There's other places where you used to be able to jump as well I think.

This is like a very minor thing, but while we're at it, we might as well keep track of all the changes.

How does it work exactly? Just jump and land on your front tire? Or do you have to keep sprinting as well? Looks tough to push that through for the entire ride.

Didn't 'discover' this myself, but still adding this for completions' sake. But if you're buying gauntlets for the final heist, you need to purchase the garage first. At least on PS3/360 you did not need to do this.

EDIT: I also saw a killerwhale. I'm fairly sure those are not in the old gen versions either. :D

Can you give me all the (graphic) settings you're using Zoton? Cheers.

@zoton2 What would also help, is if you could make a video of this drive and steer a little more on purpose (without exaggerating obviously). See if you can replicate my 'slowness' that way. If you have to try hard or even have to deliberately fuck up to reach my pace then the difference is likely not (solely) gameplay based.

This may seem like a weird request, but it would result in useful information, since the reverse experiment (me trying to match your speed) has failed constantly thus far (in the order of 30-40 attempts).

The only other thing I can think of (in addition to the 3 you suggested) is hardware (SSD type or whatever). The patch I find unlikely, would be quite a coincidence, but can't be completely ruled out yet either of course. I'll have a go and include Ryedawg's vids in the analysis later. Hopefully there'll be some variation there, which would point towards gameplay induced differences.

In this vid I compare a relatively straightforward drive (which is easy to measure and should always have equal circumstances) between Zoton's run and mine. Roughly 1 min into the video the driving part starts. Please ignore the Dutch talking / audio track in general. :D

So I played around with a lot of different graphic settings and it doesn't seem to impact it at all. Next I thought it might be camera angles (I set it to low, did license plate cam, etc.), but that doesn't seem to be it either. Then I figured it must be in the gameplay. After hours of trying and experimenting with different ways to hit that little bump (steering as little as possible, etc.), I still didn't catch a time as fast as Zoton's one on that drive. After a while I really got the impression that the car is articially slowed down at some parts (and for some reason this didn't happen in Zoton's run), like it can't quite switch a gear up (or even goes a gear down).

Could just be I'm imagining things here, but losing 3-5 secs everytime on such a short piece of road....I don't know, either I REALLY suck, or there is more to it than meets the eye, like a little gameplay ingredient I don't know about (certain part of the road not to drive on or whatever). What do you guys think?

Excellent finds Toriks, zoton and ryedawg! Keep 'em coming!

Sorry for being out of the loop in that respect; could you please explain how DLC has affected the run?

Just so it is clear, I have actually played the game quite a bit and probably completed around 10-20 full runs in the early days (not that this is very relevant information). Thanks to Guy for answering correctly most of the points Ryedawg has raised.

I'd like to make one point clear as well though, speedrunning a game does NOT make it YOUR game. If other people decide they want to have fun playing with a different set of rules, because they happen to think some of the current ones are based on thin air, then there's nothing you can do to stop that. Not sure why you would even want to in the first place though, just live and let live. ;-)

Just for closure, I will state one more time why I think the enforced ending C is unnecessary. This is a speedrunning community yes? Then let speedrunning dynamics guide you in the rule making process. For example, as follows:

-Do mission skips affect the run severely? YES, they reduce every mission to triple suicide. -Do ending A & B affect the run severely? No, they are run of the mill missions which happen to be shorter.

The arguments to support enforced ending C have so far exclusively been based on feeling and personal preference; not one of these has any ground in terms of speedrunning dynamics: -"This is a more complete ending the other endings are rushed and shitty" -"Dekap started to run this game and i gues he made these rules for a reason."

My guess is that Classic% will remain as it is though, so keep your panties on. ;-) The name Any% (Classic rules) will probably be used for the run which I (and Meridian, and I'm certain others in the future) will be doing. Once there are video' ed runs of it which are submitted of course. Thanks for that suggestion S.

So let me see...instead of removing artificial constraints you'd be in favour of including more? Yeah, no. Then you might as well not play GTA V at all and really play an older version.

Anyway I think S. elegantly solved it by calling the category without an enforced ending Any% (Classic Rules). I'm fine with that. Next time I'll finish a run I'll submit it for that.

Well spoken Kyle. Ideally I'd like to keep the name Classic% as well, just without the ending constraints. If that's not going to be the way of it, we'll have to just find another name for it eventually.