It states that the person needs to have all evidence in the recording, does that mean it's against the rules to say what ghost it is based on how its behaving, if its between to 2 evidences?

I assume that you are allowed to if it is impossible to have the other one? like if there's no fingerprints on a door you know the ghost opened?

You must have all 3 evidence on recording. You can say what ghost it is knowing what evidence it can't be and what its gonna be to look for that evidence but you can't only see Orb and spirit box and call it a Yokai because you know it's gonna be a Yokai.

I'm curious why this is the case, considering in the game itself we now have the ability to rule out evidence, it is clearly an intended strategy by the devs. If using logic we can figure out what the ghost is via what it doesn't do, why can't that count? Don't mean to sound argumentative or anything, just confused why that rule is in place

Imagine we don't enforce that rule. People would just start the game, open the truck, close the truck, and guess the ghost randomly. That would be a very limited speedrun.

The main reason is because saying "you must have all three evidence" is very easy to understand. But saying "you CAN use deduction to figure out what ghost type it is, but only in situations like X, however if you are also in situation Y it is allowed but only if Z happens first" is very complicated and starts to get into a lot of grey area.

If it hunts at certain times, we can know what the ghost is without any evidence. Should that be allowed too? Both methods allow the player to know with 100% accuracy what the ghost is. But if that is then allowed, then it starts to get into speculative territory. "I heard that a ghost throwing objects across the room very far is a poltergeist, so I chose that. I knew it was a poltergeist because it had to be." That's something I used to hear a lot in public matches. Should that be allowed? Obviously not, because its not even true.

A blanket statement of "All runs must include all three pieces of evidence" is the quickest and easiest way to avoid confusion.

True that would open up a lot of grey areas, if its not a blanket statement every indiviual scenario would need to be specified so it makes a lot more sense to do it that way. Thank you for explaining!

Just to reply to VisionElf, I was specifying more to actually having reasoning for the ghost, such as using Salt to get Wraith for example, not just random guesses

So from I gather from these replies is that all 3 evidence need to be in the recording, meaning you would need to physically see each one at least once, even if you use deduction if there are some that don't appear.

Another question would be does this apply to obake? since it has a unique fingerprint texture with an extra finger, would you still need the other 2 evidence if you see this unique evidence?

Yes, we don't take into accounts ghost's traits & specificity, because of the same reasoning as Lemon described. It's easier to have this simple rule over the whole game.

Ah so that's the reason my solo 1m nightmare run was rejected because I didn't put the evidence up even though I knew it was a oni?

For all runs (except for extension runs): The person recording is required to select the correct ghost type in the journal. All evidences is required to be seen on the recording(s).

Im looking to do a small map 100% trio run with my friends, I’m wondering that since this category is in the extension leaderboards does it mean that I have to see all evidence or can my other two see one each and myself. I want to ask this before I make the run tonight so I know ahead of time.

Nvm, I’m dumb and was looking at it in the wrong place

I'm just here to say that I disagree with the ruling. There is a clear difference with "start map, guess and go, in the hope I am correct" and using deduction to guess the correct ghost, and a verifier can (should) see the difference. If it's evidence X and Y, and it clearly does trait B (the instahunt from demon would be very, very funny, but another example is the obake's clear 6-finger fingerprint) would still be "playing the game intentional". I'm actually practicing trio runs for a marathon showing, but I just disagree with not being able to go speedy while clearly showing a "minimum effort" in an any% run. If it were called "3-evidence", I'd be less inclined to question the ruling :^)

I'm not talking for the entire mod team, but for me it would be even harder to get good times. Just imagine if we allow guessing the ghost based on its behaviour. Any% world records would be all 30s or so, and the main strat would be:

• Enter the house, hope the ghost appear, take a picture, it disappear, it's a phantom, exit the house and leave That would be the best and only viable strat, and that would require a lot of restart (even more than today's strats) Making sure that all ghosts can offer a good time (more or less) is in my opinion a good way to have the game as casual-friendly as possible, even though today it's not really casual-friendly, we can't do less.

Just a reminder, the game since its released is not adapted for speedrun at all. 80% of speedrunning is just having good luck. I believe the rules we have today are as much adapted as it can.

I mean, you're right for IL's it would be resetting just to hope for an instant phantom.

But like if you're doing an all maps or small maps run, you aren't going to reset to have an instant phantom picture. Like having multiple good ghost locations and good and quick evidence with how random the game is, is almost impossible to get.

At a certain point you're going to look at ghost traits and deduction of evidence. Because you don't want to spend too long at a certain map waiting for a ghost to write into a book or showing dots. So maybe you want to have a difference between IL's and a multiple maps run.

And to prevent completely a guessing game, you can maybe require that it has to be a must that they have spend at least 1 second in the ghostroom(which can be checked at the endscreen)

Here is my point of view :

• IIRC the "time spent in the ghost room" stat isn't actually based on the ghost room, but it's based on the time spend in the same room as the ghost, and there are ways to teleport the ghost to your current room so it would be meaningless.
• There is already a category that requires deduction (2 evidences in Nightmare).
• Guessing with "minimal effort" is subjective, for example you could look at the board, call it "The Twins" cause of the activity even tho it doesn't mean it's 100% The Twins, or you could hear a lot of thrown object as you enter, so you instantly leave and call it a Poltergeist even tho it could be any ghost that is more active than it usually is.
• Guessing based on ghost powers would mean a few ghosts would become useless or garbage (ie. Solo Banshee), some would still need every evidence anyway (ie. The Mimic), and some would become busted, as Vision mentioned, everyone would reroll until they get that 1 ghost, and no one would ever try to find evidence anymore, which is kind of the point of the game in the first place.
• When running Small Maps/Launch Maps/All Maps, people would still reset until they get the ghost based on evidence for the first map anyway so it doesn't change much.
• If you can deduce what type of ghost it is early in the game, you can bring the items corresponding to their evidence so deducing is still a huge advantage for speedrunning.

My overall opinion is that it would remove the mechanics of evidences which are the main gameplay of this game, and bring even more randomness to a game that already has a lot of it, and is barely speedrunnable because of random it is. ILs (99% of the Phasmophobia runs) would become Head or Tails Simulator and wouldn't be interesting to play in my opinion.

On top of all of that, every players have their own experience with the game. I've met a lot of players who thought that "oh the ghost did X, therefore it's a Y" even though it was never confirmed that this Y ghost was the only one who could X. If we allow deducing based on abilities (or subjective mechanics) We would have a lot of subtmitted runs with players trying to argue why they are in the right, when in reality their argument doesn't even relate to a specific ghost.

I understand that there are a few abilities that are 100% confirming that the ghost is X, but it's not all of them, and as I said before, that would only means that some ghosts would be way better than others.

This rule was implemented very early in the speedrunning community, and at that time, they were nowhere near that much ghost with special abilities, plus most of them were bugged, so you could for instance get no footprints, but it wasn't a wraith, the footprints wouldn't show because of a bug, so that could not be used as valid evidence of a wraith.

Another thing is that at that time, having the ghost to interact was the only "skill" that could be measured. Using duplicate phrases and having a good knowledge of the game could impact the randomness of ghost interactions so much, that removing the requirement of having all evidences would break the speedrun altogether.

Since then, we kept that rule for consistency.

I guess this game being how it is and has evolved, indeed has way too many edge-cases that could ruin the fun of leaderboards, even though they are trivial in and upon itself just as many other RNG-like games. Not to discredit the work you are doing.

For the time being, we will keep playing the way we are right now, because it's more fun for us, understanding that won't compete with the boards. And hey, if we ever do have a streak where all 3 evidences are needed for all 6 small maps, who knows.

Thanks for a healthy discussion and your side of the story :)

Hello speedrunner friends.

My name is Misukun and it is a pleasure for me to be able to participate with this community of speedrunners.

I would like to participate and give my opinion on this forum thread.

From my point of view, I think the "3 evidences" rule is good and necessary so that this doesn't turn into a game of restarting maps until I take a picture of a phantom and get the WR, but I think it's too strict sometimes.

-There are ghosts that have special abilities that are unique and these abilities should be accepted as a substitute for these tests. For example, wraith is the only emf5 ghost with the teleport ability; If it's clear that the ghost did the teleport and returned emf5 in the emf reader, I think it should be accepted. I also think it's up to the moderators to accept or not that run if the ghost's ability is clearly seen in the video.

-Another thing that I think should be accepted is the discarding of evidence in standard. For example, if I am totally sure that there is no spirit box (which can be seen in the video that is checked), there are no temperatures (which can be seen in the video that is checked) and there are no fingerprints (which can be seen in the video that is check), it's a raiju yes or yes... I think it should be accepted.

-Regarding the emf of the truck, the emf5 can still be seen in it and should be accepted as evidence if the rise is 5 points and there is no one inside the map (that there are no paranormal events at the time that spot occurs ).

-Perhaps in individual maps the rule of showing the 3 pieces of evidence is perfect to avoid restarts until taking a picture of a phantom (for example) but I think that rule should not be so strict in an all maps (for example) since the The probability of being lucky enough to take a photo on all the maps is exponential and if someone gets it... let him play the lottery that day because he will not have more luck in his life.

In summary: I think the rule of 3 pieces of evidence is great but it is the responsibility of the moderators to interpret the video, the runner's explanations (whether they are correct or not) and have flexibility in it.

I say goodbye thanking you for being able to participate in this community and I wish you all a happy day. :)

Hello Misukun, welcome to the community and thanks for your questions.

As explain earliers, adding ghost abilities as evidence is a very though task. Especially for verifiers, which is already a hard task because most of the times the video qualities are not that good, and it's painful to even see DOTS or Orbs.

As you can guess, verifying DOTS and Orb is just a visual thing. It's there or its not. And even if the DOTS or Orb is here, but we can't see it because of the quality, we would reject it. This is that easy.

Verifying runs with ghost abilities in mind, it's even harder. We can't really tell which ability was used at which point in most cases.

For your examples, here are my answers:

• Wraith with EMF 5 teleport ability: I'm not sure what you suggest to check wether or not the ghost has teleported, but even if you had something, i'm pretty sure it wouldn't be 100% consistent.

• Discarding evidences: Enter the house, go in the wrong room, check the wrong door no fingerpints, get no spirit box and get no freezing temps, and claim it's not these, and you could be 100% correct, however the ghost was actually in an other room, and had other evidences. You've just guessed the correct ghost based on incorrect investigation.

• EMF in the truck was changed to be random: We all agree that most of times it's easy to see if it's EMF 5 just by looking at the board. However the key word is: MOST OF TIMES, if it's not 100% consistent, it's not an evidence.

• Abilities in all maps run: Yes you would be right. If someone tries that strat in all maps, and gets it, it should be rewarded. However as we already explained multiple times about the ghost abilities, that is still not an argument to add that rule.

In your summary, you speak about responsibility of verifiers to interpret a video. Runners are not supposed to be submitting essays where they explain what they did and how they did it. This is speedrun, we need actual real concrete visual/sound evidences and not players' interpretation.

You could have 2 runners, claim something and still be right, I don't know, for example some people claimed at the launch of the game that EMF 4 equals EMF 5, and maybe in all their games they had EMF 5 ghosts whenever they saw EMF 4. That's a very good interpretation, and they could be right in 98% of their games. However, that's a random guess based on interpretation. Interpretation is clearly not the best way to know if the guess is valid or not.

In few words, the 3 evidence rule is the strongest witnessing rule that exists inside the game. There is no interpretation needed for that. If the players sees A,B,C then the ghost is X, end of story.

There is no clear line between guessing randomly and being very good at the game, and because of that, we would not add that rule until the game changes these mechanics.

I hope it helped! Thanks again for your message, good luck in your runs :)

Hi, I just want to clarify something : it's impossible to be 100% sure an evidence is "not present" in Standard.

• You can potentially get EMF 5 after 20 interactions
• An orb can be missing for a good amount of time if it's visually stuck in a wall
• The ghost won't answer spirit box if it is not near it
• Freezing temps can take 2 minutes like it can take 10 minutes in Amateur, it also won't go down if the ghost is wandering in other rooms
• Ghost writing and DOTS can take 1 sec like it can take 10 minutes to proc
• Fingerprints aren't always shown (Obake)

You can say "it's most likely not X so it should be Y" but you can never say "it is 100% not X so it is Y" If you're not conviced, here is a live example of me being baited by Obake not leaving fingerprints 2 times in a row, making me think it's a Raiju : https://www.speedrun.com/phasmophobia/run/ydwp47qm