Western Australia, AustraliaWe have plans to add new categories as the game progresses, yes. Currently, we have had a lot of suggestions on what to change/implement on our discord server (which I highly recommend joining) so we are deciding which to implement. I'm sure every one of us are quite hesitant to create new categories as the last time we added a new category (Any%) we had to redo the entire variable system and manually sort through over 300 different runs which took far too long; but nevertheless we are listening and have heard that many people want new categories (Wipe%, Hunt%, Obj% and some others being the most common)!
As for how the new update will impact old runs: We are still thinking this one over as there have been changes to certain aspects of the game that people wouldn't notice initially but that cause significant changes to how speedruns will be performed. The most notable of which is the fixes to temperature where it fixed a bug where the temperature would drop much faster than it was supposed to: causing the ghost room to be much easier to find, freezing temperatures faster to see and making it possible to predict if freezing temps will be evidence within 5 seconds of finding the room. This was fixed in the Halloween update which means that the WRs on several maps are impossible to replicate (not saying impossible to beat but impossible to replicate). We are still discussing what will be done about this issue on our discord.
Again, I would highly recommend joining our discord for more frequent updates! You can also more directly contact the mod team and speak to other runners! Discord.gg/6yVZK6D
As far as I know, you have left the speedrun community for this game, however I will still answer in case you want to get back into it. We (the mods) have been thinking this over for some time now and so if this category becomes a reality then it will likely be implemented alongside an any% category, of which we are still working out the logistics. If we were to make an any% or full game category (which may be in the near future) then we would announce it on our community discord server which you can join here: discord.gg/6yVZK6D
This is a server for any speedrunners that want to hang out with other runners, make suggestions to the mods, find a group to speedrun with or just chill.
For me, watching top level speedruns has been similar to watching professional sports games. I love watching people at the top of their game performing some task to such a high degree of accuracy with so much knowledge and skill. For me, there isn't much difference between watching the 100 meter sprint at the Olympics than watching the world record holder on GDQ.
I also may be coming at it from a slightly different view from the regular person as I hold a record in one of my favorite games of all time, so watching people speedrun their favorite games I get to see the approaches to certain things such as timing, glitches and bunny-hopping for example.
Another part of it is that I enjoy watching people complete games that I DON'T speedrun but play casually. I love watching the Last of Us games being ran because I play those for the story and gameplay rather than seeing how fast I can complete it, meaning that I frequently watch the runners beat a section of the game in 30 seconds that may have taken me an hour. I remember a section in the first game where you needed to hold off a horde of zombies in one, small room with limited ammunition. I was not able to do this for some time as I was playing on the hardest difficulty (as I like to do with most games) and watching a speedrun after I had completed put me to shame as AnthonyCaliber fired arrows with surgical precision killing every zombie within moments of them appearing in the game before looking upwards and firing a rifle shot in a tiny crack directly after seeing a few pixels appear in that spot. That rifle shot killed one of the hardest enemies in the game with a single bullet, when it took me multiple magazines. I love seeing that sort of thing because I don't have the same level of knowledge to realise that its weakspot is the bottom of its foot, and that the only place in the entire game where you can utilise this was right there.
