Hey everyone. I am new to speedrunning and just posted my first video! I've watched the current WR on a speedrun, and based on my experience it looks like there has been some tampering with the game. Things like spells working (100%) , when they never work during a normal speedrun or playthrough. Going through a 4 hours speedrun without encountering the max number of enemies. I understand RNG is part of the game. However, the odds of these circumstances would be impossible. So how do we know if a speedrun is legit? Thanks!
I don't know what game you're talking about or what run you think is cheated, but it's possible that the game has some sort of RNG manipulation that significantly increases your odds of getting a run like that. If that's not the case, and you really the think the odds of getting THAT lucky are impossible, then it may be worth analyzing the video to see if it's spliced (I've never had to do that myself so I can't really help you there), or if there's something that happens in their video that can't be reproduced in the actual game, or something like that.
WRs can often look like that, especially when we just jump right to the top run of an old favorite game. I've been here a while, and I still feel that way sometimes jumping into a game I thought I was pretty good at. Each game has its own unique characteristics and runners, but one thing we share is that we approach games differently, almost objectively.
One of the paradigms here is that there's no such thing as a random number. Every number is calculated from something, and a lot of communities have dug deep into where these random numbers come from and how we can play so these numbers are calculated more favorably. In one of the games I run, there's a one in ten chance that a necessary event will occur, and we've found that the game makes the decision based on the precise amount of time that elapses from power-on to starting the event day in-game. Though the margin is absurdly narrow, we can get the number we want by correctly timing this in-game action.
Sometimes you see something that looks like a one-in-ten-thousand chance, and it turns out to be just that. As in, someone has literally played the same game ten thousand times over the course of an indeterminable amount of time and happened to get it just right precisely one time, and that's the one on display. What you don't see is the other 9,999 failed attempts, which makes it look insanely lucky out of context.
If there's something totally weird happening, I'm sure you're not the only one who is wondering what's going on. Bring it up in the game's forum, and you'll likely get a better answer there. We don't really keep secrets here and most communities welcome newcomers.
This is completely unrelated as others here have already covered most of what I would say related to your initial post, but it’s probably not a good idea to have your email as your username (if your current username is indeed your real email). You might want to change that, its not really a good idea to share something like that on a public forum.
Thanks everyone for the replies. I did change my username as suggested. The game in question is Inindo: way of the ninja. There were only 2 ever submitted runs, I am the third. I understand step counts, and manipulation. In fact, myself and 1 other engineer have done lots of manipulation and have found that encounters are based upon the actual frame you enter a dungeon which is impossible to manipulate during a 4 hour speedrun. I will keep running the game my best, i just don't understand how a spell that literally never works in the game (towards the end of game) works for him everytime. same character, same level. Thank you all for the replies!
@birdman I just took a look at the current first place run for your game, and the description mentions that the runner translated the game into Portuguese himself. Is it possible that the runner could have accidentally changed some crucial RNG variables while doing his translation?
Huh, well first thing is there is a 2 hour difference between your runs. Is that ALL coming from RNG? That is a pretty big difference to be honest. Why not send him a message and ask him why? Leave a comment on game comments etc. it was also verified by a moderator why not ask him as well?
Another thing is that there is a language difference here, I was originally thinking it was a language text difference, but not TWO hours. He mentions Snes 9x EX for Android which sounds weird. This may be an emulator thing too.