"Convert to Expansion" question
Deleted
5 years ago
Maine, USA

If, after an open discussion, the mods rule that this strategy is not allowed, then I would argue that the rules of the category would have to be updated to reflect the decision.

When players open the default game client for "Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction" and attempt to create a character, there are up to 3 boxes that can be checked (ladder, hardcore, expansion). These boxes represent different optional modes of gameplay, but they are all present within the same game. Blizzard chose to include the option of playing classic characters as a subset of the game they released title "Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction".

British Columbia, Canada

Is there a benefit in terms of speedrunning to this? Will it help you progress through the game faster?

Germany

[quote]Am I allowed to start a run as a non-expansion character, convert it to expansion during the run and kill Baal?[/quote] dunno, another question that was never asked...

the leaderboard is kind of a d2lod thing and wouldn't it be unfair for assassins and druids to be able to do that and compare your run with theirs?

imo that would not fit in the same category as you're literally starting in a different game/gamemode/whatever

Edited by the author 5 years ago
fuzziboy and Doni like this
United States

Are there any rules about what version (i.e. 1.06, 1.09, etc) can be ran?

Also I thought D2 just counted the number of acts you previously completed when you convert from classic to expansion (iirc you have to beat Act 2 in classic to get your expansion character into Hell at all).

And there's no runes in classic, so I'm not entirely sure it would be faster.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Germany

[quote]Are there any rules about what version (i.e. 1.06, 1.09, etc) can be ran?[/quote]

I'd say as with most speedruns you can run on the version you want to run on - I don't think a significantly different patch will end up being faster than 1.14 though (1.13 is basically the same, 1.12 is just missing some cool features (most notably respecs)

While leveling to 99 was way easier in like 1.09 and the game initially seemed very hard when 1.10 was released we have to remember that there's some other things in that version that makes speedrunning it very difficult - not being able to buy potions at vendors (that was added in 1.10). And there's more weird differences... Duriel on nightmare, for example, is immune to cold damage in 1.09.

http://i.imgur.com/1mwojJ2.jpg

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Germany

Again, please please please, anyone out there who thinks about running something that is currently not tracked here: Just because it's not listed here, that doesn't mean its not allowed, bad, not worth running, a waste of time.

If you want to run something - run it. That's the very spirit of speedrunning.

Just because I don't like adding everything anyone had ever thought of that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

Regarding the suggestion of this category:

What do other people (you!) think about adding the possibility to start a character in classic to convert it to LoD at some point in the run? Should we implement this option? As a miscellaneous category? As variable to the main categories? [small](Note: I dislike that option, as I find it hard to come up with a run that could potentially be faster when started in classic and that would result in the runs not being seen/recognized & all other runs having an extra variable listed - also it would be odd as not all chars have the possibility to do it in the first place..)[/small]

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Maine, USA

If the tactic is not allowed, then people aren't going to put in the effort to test it out. In that scenario, opinions on whether or not it would be a good thing for the competitive scene will always be speculation. If allowing the tactic turns out to be a bad idea, then it would not be out of the question to recategorize the runs (though having to do that would certainly be a regrettable circumstance).

I've seen the issue discussed in the twitch chats of a couple runners recently. One runner claimed that the tactic wouldn't even save time due to lack of runewords. Another claimed that allowing the tactic would be unfair because skipping Act 5 twice would save such a huge amount of time.

If opinions on the subject are so far apart, wouldn't be a good idea to encourage people to explore the possibilities? I mean, this is a speedrun board, right? Shouldn't we all be interested in discovering the fastest way to complete the game? The 'convert to expansion' button was included in D2:LoD as part of the default game.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
British Columbia, Canada

I do agree that it should be included in the rules that the character needs to be created in expansion mode, just for clarification. The name of the game in regards to this leaderboard IS d2lod, Dialblo 2: Lord of Destruction, which is the expansion and it should be understood that this is only for the expansion.

However, I say if you have an idea about a new category, by all means, play test it out, show us what could be better or worse, why it can be fun or challenging or even improving upon the current categories. If people didn't start running what they want to run, so many games wouldn't have the speedrun categories they have now. Pacifist wasn't a category until proofs of concepts and lots of discussion were made. Concept was 7 hours long, now the record is 2.5 hours since it became a category. Same for act5%, there's a new thread about it, and even though it's not an official category, I ran it anyways, and plan to run it more on top of my normal runs when I get back from my vacation

Just do it. I'm personally interested in seeing the outcomes of those runs

Germany

@IndrekLeede: We have yet to decide whether it is allowed or not.

And be sure: When we make a decision we'll post something about it here and adjust the rules accordingly if necessary.

@Kong: "act5%" is what they call runs that use the "-act 5" launch parameter, which causes new characters to spawn in Harrogath on level 33 instead of the Rouge Encampment at level 1. Also be sure that arbitrary categories like "no map" or "abigail%" won't be seen here.

There's other games out there with a ton of categories: https://www.speedrun.com/smw + https://www.speedrun.com/smwext

As I said initially, the issue I see with converting characters it that 1) not all characters can utilize this option and 2) you don't start your run in d2lod, you start in d2c.

That being said, when I was involved in the planning of multiplayer speedruns we thought about starting and classic and would have done it if it would have been faster. (Though that was in the context of fastest ladder-reset-completion)

On the one hand I am curious to see if that option could actually improve contested(!) times, on the other hand I don't want to add all sorts of categories and/or variables to the page that make it look messier than it already is.

Actually I have to correct my previous comment regarding the possibilities to add this feature: Not only can we add it as misc category or variable to any%, we could also just accept runs without an indication whether they were started in classic or LoD.

And again: Just because I don't like something or, because it's not listed as category here that does not mean your idea is bad or that it can never be submitted as a speedrun record here.

Run it. Give it a try. Show people that you can beat their non-conversion-pure-LoD-times.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Germany

@Kong: nightfall/void has done a lot of weird runs early on. He wanted runs with all classes but didn't want to do full any% runs so for example his barb run was getting the hammer for charsi (iirc) and the paladin run was "fastest suicide by sacrifice" (that was like 5 years ago, before there was a lot of competition; it was a different, boring time back then.

// Back to topic:

Are there any precedents in other games? I know there's some games out there that have "DLC / no DLC" as variable, but I don't know how different their final runs are and they are adding extra content to the game, not removing content that would otherwise be unskippable.

Finland

I don't think the converting tactic changes insanely much on how the run goes, like Indrek said it needs more testing to figure how much it actually does help you. But stuff like converting characters or even opening game in TCP/IP or Open battle.net to reset maps I think are still features that exist in the game and are available to everyone.

So in my opinion I don't see anything wrong about using them, and if people are worried about druid or assassin not gaining advantage from it, those 2 already are basically the strongest early level classes in-game and don't really care about the converting tactics anyway which I believe is supposed to make the early levels just slightly easier pre-tower.

When it comes to the version of the game, I'd definitely say that the basic speedrunning should only be done on latest versions of the game, I don't think difference between 1.13 and 1.14 are massive when it comes to single player so either of those should do, but I've personally only used 1.14 for my speedrunning unless I wanted to test stuff out on my PlugY version of the game.

But I'd also be at some point interested seeing how much faster some earlier versions could be, but those definitely would be falling under different category because some of the changes drastically change the game and getting access to the earlier versions in the first place is bit trickier than just buying the game from battle.net and starting to run it.

Finland

I've never had much luck with the downgraded versions of the game, usually just finding older version of the game install files and then upgrading it has been the most fail proof way for me.

Downgrading usually causes mess with the installs and tends to just error out.

Finland

Ah the CD requirement might've been what's been giving the error message then. I guess I should hunt down some older non-CD patch, or just install my CD drive back.. Haven't had it on my PC for years, but I still have my original D2 CD's.

But for most parts, just finding 1.12 install files and then upgrading the game from there has worked flawlessly for PlugY, PoD and multiple vanilla versions with different CD keys.

I'll probably try downgrading again at some point, but don't want to mess up with my currently working system, and if playing version like 1.09 would mean using CD's, well that's again one more step further which will limit the access to many people. And probably requires you to hunt no-CD patch which sometimes have been known to contain keyloggers etc.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
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