Should we use Real Time instead of In Game Time?
3 years ago
Missouri, USA

Concern about the potential for abuse of game lag has been brought up (again).

More than one person has expressed that the potential for abuse is greater than the 'pay to win' concern (better PC = less lag which makes it easier to get a better Real Time time) which had more adherents last time.

Please let me know what you think.

(edit: I'm going to wait for comments until 2020-01-17 to render the decision.)

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Avatark0 likes this
Brazil

Considering the current first run by Derium (with no disrespect to him whatsoever, it is a great run), I think that the problem you state is clearly exposed... Dropping the framerate gives much more time to take decisions and maneuver through the enemies and terrain, resulting in a somewhat unfair advantage, if we only consider the inGame time.

New York, USA

Personally, I do feel like real time would be better. The specs required to acquire a mostly steady 60fps most of or all of the time isn't actually as expensive as it seems. Sure you'll have minor hiccups here or there but I see no issue with switching over. I would -hope- that most people attempting to play a game such as this at a high skill level would have relatively decent hardware.

Edit: Another potential solution would be to not accept excessively laggy runs. My recent run, although the video looks choppy, was relatively smooth and the resulting times were within 30 seconds of each other. Maybe only accepting runs that have within a certain difference between the times would work. In fact, the more I think about it the more I like this idea more.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Ryanmon222 likes this
Missouri, USA

I'd have to argue against not accepting excessively laggy runs because making a fair definition of 'excessive' is going to be problematic.

for example: your suggestion that we only accept 30 seconds of lag would invalidate -all- of my runs and probably 95% of the board.

And at 30 seconds, you are already past the point of being able to abuse the game lag for an advantage in gameplay, so setting it longer just makes it worse.

New York, USA

Now that I've run the game more I have changed my stance. Keep it as is tbh. I don't really agree with purposely abusing lag to get good runs but I understand now.

United States

The unfortunate consequence with this is the winning times are most likely going to be made an a toaster running at 6 fps.... hmmm... There definitely has to be a solution or middle ground, I do like the idea of using real time more, but it seems either way you'll run into issues.

I dunno, the in-game timer lag run exploits seem pretty big to me. I'd be in favor of real-time.

Oregon, USA

Maybe there's other roguelite/roguelike games that have this figured out.

https://www.speedrun.com/afterbirthplus#1_Char

The rules for the binding of Isaac have been very defined for example.

I'm new to this community so I don't have weight to push around, but taking from communities that have been around longer and have had to address this issue seems like a good idea.

Personally I'd like everyone to be on equal footing in the reaction department, and using real time seems to be the best way to go about that. Using a lag wand to bring about insane destruction, great it just costs you a bit a of time that will need to be factored into your decision. Can do a frame perfect run with your 30 fps in 30 secs in game, but 3 minutes real life? Dope get your time up there man. It will increase the overall times of the game, but its more about the competition and honing of skill than it is the literal time. That of course is easy for me to say without much invested, but I believe a transition to equality will help the the community as a whole. I think looking at how other communities have handled this is the best way to start and will give us answers to how to better grow this community.

Lower Saxony, Germany

In my opinion, the consideration of using a Realtime-Timer aka. Livesplit, would be more accurate than having a laggy ingame timer, that could get abused in a way to lower the time even further from what we have right now. Of course I haven't been involved too much in the latest categories, since I've only speedran the Pre-Release on Setseed against PressJumpAndFall, but overall since we are trying to get to a conclusion here, I believe that the Moderation-Team shouldn't accept runs anymore, unless an accurate Timer has been given. *[Livesplit or using the first frame of where we can see the player, and the first frame of the end menu appearing.]

United Kingdom

It should be real time, if you can cause the game to lag and gain more time to react to surroundings and also slow down the timer, then the in game timer should not be used.

Missouri, USA

I'm going to wait for comments until 2020-01-17 to render the decision.

So get you say in now if you want it :D

Finland

I'm all for using real time. It would close the loophole that I abused. It would make people need a better PC to actually speedrun the game and get good times, but at least it wouldn't encourage playing the game with 20 FPS for optimal results.

I have first hand experience and it is not fun.

dadwrestler and ACoyPoet like this
Missouri, USA

Based on discussions here, in discord, and on various streams, I believe the consensus opinion is that we should use real time and I will change the setting presently.

Please note, we should continue to record the in game time, as some people think this is the relevant time and can choose to sort the board by this metric.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Canada

Honestly the game can run pretty well on old hardware given your processor is decent enough. At least in this way the meta isn't ruined by the lag exploit, then again it can restrict people from picking it up. To that then they could just go by IGT, but I believe actual is a better standard due to not having mouse lag as well like you pointed out Derium.

Alaska, USA

I get why we use real time, but I disagree with the idea that it's not hard to achieve steady FPS on this game. New processors, mobos, and RAM are expensive and some of us are not well off, not to mention the computer parts market is still over-inflated...