Hello,

I just looked at two runs in 6 quota category, and it appears to me that they seem to be using discord or any VC tool. Since mods that are altering the game are banned, how using a VC, which is altering a core mechanic of the game accepted?

Not a reproach or else, just trying to understand, there must be an obvious reason I'm missing

Thank you for answering

Speedruns in general negate certain aspects. One prime example is communication. Using Discord does not modify the game/game files at all, besides ignoring a core aspect of normal gameplay.

Usually runs are more focused on the run itself rather than communication. It would be hard to enforce a no external communication rule as there are several scenarios that would be hard to determine. Other games such as the Phasmophobia Speedrunning board do NOT have such rule banning the use of external comms.

Runs don’t really change, or become optimized, on external comms themselves either. You can clearly run without Discord if you wanted to, and it wouldn’t really change any strats.

I can't imagine the absolute chaos that would be trying figure out if people are using discord to communicate or not...it's not hard at all to filter that out of a recording. It also would just add more difficulties coordinating in an already RNG heavy game.

A massive part of speedrunning is that generally the rules are whatever the community agrees the rules are...The mods have extra sway in it only in that they can officially implement it, but that doesn't stop people from doing whatever they want regardless. In this community, we've all seemingly agreed silently that external communication is totally fine, just like how we view using beehives as illegitimate for a lot of run categories.

Thank you, both of you, for taking time to explain it to me. "You can clearly run without Discord if you wanted to, and it wouldn’t really change any starts."I think the strategies change a lot, because we take off some core mechanics of Lethal Company, since we don't have to keep track of who's alive who's not, who should go back to the ship or not, some players have an info regarding a monster, a turret, an item or else and can't share it to others. I understand external communication is normalized in many games when the game doesn't include a mechanic that implies a lack of communication, but when proximity chat is a core mechanic of a game, and we remove it, I just feel like we're not playing the same game.

"It also would just add more difficulties coordinating in an already RNG heavy game." I get it, and I agree, game is already hard, but I think I won't underestimate speedrunners saying that they could overcome this difficulty easily without dropping much in time using the tools the game provided.

Late thought on it but : "I can't imagine the absolute chaos that would be trying figure out if people are using discord to communicate or not" You're right, and I get why they allowed discord, but there's no way to prevent people from communicating outside, they could just send message but being muted and receive it on a second screen be in the same room and being muted mute their mic in the record or else like it's easier to monitor if we allow communication from the beginning

Thank you guys for helping :)

I slightly disagee with the in-game communication strat changes. All you would really need to do is coordinate how much scrap you bring back to the ship. You know beforehand how much you need for quota, so you could just tell each person to bring back a full inventory of scrap. You don’t need to communicate about sentries, enemies, etc. at all. Enemies are rarely encountered in lower quota runs. If one player dies, it’s essentially a run reset. So strats would not change.

I agree with Voidspace, I don't think much would change at all in how we run the game.

I cannot underscore just how big a deal that even if external communication wasn't allowed it'd be virtually impossible to enforce and people 100% would abuse that