I really love Paradox's grand strategy games. I've played since the launch of Europa Universalis 4 and have several thousands of hours of playtime on them. I generally don't watch videos/streams of the games as they are very long and not that fun to watch, but I make an exception for speedruns.
But if you look at the games on speedrun.com you would think these games are barely ever run, despite it actually being very popular. Why? Because speedrun.com's rules, catagories and time format doesn't fit these games at all. Firstly, each game has tons of nonsense catagories that no one wants to run, take a look at Europa Universalis 4 as a good example of this. The categories should be divided into each patch (like Minecraft), not all these (frankly) dumb categories that no one cares about.
Secondly, speedrun.com needs to drop "time" for these games. You compete by what the in-game year is, not real time. Right now there is just a very crude work-around where you convert the in-game to a hh-mm-ss format which is confusing and makes little sense. Just drop the time entirely and only use year.
These improvements would really help make speedrunning of these games viable to do on speedrun.com instead of the current format of using screenshots, youtube videos, or streams. Its very disorganized so being able to have it on speedrun.com instead would help a ton.
I don't know if this is the right sub forum or such. I just really hope the mods see this and decide to make the changes.
Alternate time schemes is an idea that's been floated before in the feedback thread. Stating it again there won't necessarily help, I'm sure the mods are considering it in some form, but since we don't have any way of knowing the status of it without annoying site moderators, we're left in the dark.
(Someone recently floated the idea of a site features spreadsheet which would get rid of this issue. That's a good idea...)
Well hello there, I'm a mod for EU4, Vic2 and MotE. If you have feedback for the Paradox speedrun leaderboards, then why not bring them up in each game's respective forums, or better yet, join the Discord servers and discuss it there (each game's Discord server is linked on their respective leaderboards as well). The current layout of the leaderboards are the result of multiple revisions and input from the people who actually run the games, so if you're going to come along and deem that it's just dumb then you might want to motivate it in a constructive manner.
@Sigurdd You mentioned HOI4 in the title so i feel compelled to reply here, even if i dont see how most things apply to us.
Your main arguments cut short are:
- Many small Categories inflate the games (I assume this is what you meant with that)
- Patches are a good way to divide categories
- Timing doesnt fit the games
- Ingame Time is confusing
"Many small Categories inflate the games": All Paradox Games need arbitrary goal to have a speedgame at all. It would be beneficial to try to concentrate the players on few categories to make competative leaderboards, but that is easier said than done. We in HOI4 have concentrated most of the effort in "Capitulate" and because we use the misc. system to draw more of the runners into fewer categories. Much better optimisations cant be done besides a level leaderboard which is honestly even worse. And to categories i hope its obvios that "any%" is no proper main category like the civilisation series lets you think. If you have another problem with the categories which are mostly based on achievments and other goals please ellaborate on that.
"Patches are a good way to divide the categories": This is straight up not the case, you know why minecraft is able to do that? A far far greater playerbase and patches which can be seen as generations. Most patches of Grand Strategy games play quite compareable because they are somewhat based on history. There was never a split in the Historical games you could really call. And making arbitrary splits or splits for every version just worsens the problem of your first point of balkanising the leaderboard. The goal of every Paradox leaderboard should be to allow for a updated "any patch" board and maybe a temporary "current patch" board if the size of the player base allows for it. (In HOI4 we have for Capitulate a New% board). The end goal would obviosly be a "Last Patch/All DLC" Leaderboard once the game is finished.
"Timing doesnt fit the games": Most Paradox Speedgames currently try to go for both "Ingame time" and "Real Time", both timing methods have their problems but there isnt much to improve on that without making it overcomplicated. Both categories are equaly valid and have their own subcategory normally. We have this implemented in HOI4 for a long time and the other games also have implemented it with success, so you are always free to compete by the "Ingame time" of the game.
"Ingame Time is confusing": It. Is. Not. In. Our. Power. There is no way to sort the runs by date, we need to use those conversions to have times at all on the leaderboard. Additionally only using year would be extremely inaccurate that a proper leaderboard wouldnt be possible. Victoria II currently experiments with "Year/Month/Day" variables to make it more approachable, but this doesnt make the conversion unneccesary. Tempted to also do that in HOI4 but in the end it would only add a ton of variables which would make submission even more complicated.
@Lieutnant_Boo I assume your complaint is that he should have posted this thread in a specific game. Thing is this thread is for multiple games unfortunately not sharing a series. So on SRC it is accurate that he posts here, even if he should have probably tried to contact us via our discord or in one of the games forums, or at least tag us here.
If you find competing and comparing by real time dumb then you really have missed the entire point of speedrunning. It’s not relevant how greatness generally is measured within the non-speedrunning community of the game, it’s how fast can we possibly finish a predefined portion of the game.
In the case of EU4 (and other PDX games) in-game time is nowhere near comparable to real time. How do you rank a 12 hour 1785 WC against a 200 hour 1550 WC? You can’t. That’s why we split the leaderboards in two - one ranking by IGT and one by RTA. And why every Paradox speedgame does the same.
We’ve had this discussion quite a few times by now. You’re always welcome on our Discord server(s) if you want to take part in future discussions and maybe influence how the leaderboards will look.