Visual Novel Complaint Thread #9,001
1 year ago
Finland

the choises dont make enough difference to compete against someone (at least in a fun way). like i said previously youll hold skip and have your mouse where the next right option will be and when that option comes up you spam click to hit it as early as possible so the only way you can be faster than someone is if they clicked a tad slower than you did. but on one choice button the difference between two "top level" runners wouldnt be more than like 0.2 or something per choice and lets say the game has 10 choice parts so thatll be 2 seconds of time difference and the whole speedrun is just who can click 10 times the fastest with cutscenes in between.

of course like you said there may be glitches you can abuse and to that like merl said you need to explain those glitches in your game submission. at least i assume the people looking over the games will just quickly skim through the included video if its a VN since the chance of it being more than "hold skip" is low.

that text was a mess but hopefully youll be able to understand at least some of it

Germany

As someone that tried to get a leaderboard for an Idle Game (Melvor Idle) i can kind of relate since those games entirely consist of making choices. Personally i don't see the appeal but i also have never seen a (good) VN speedrun before. Do you have a recorded run we could take a look at?

Ohio, USA

I have a couple recorded runs, but they are not "good" runs by anyone in this thread's standards, so I'm not going to bother sharing.

North Carolina, USA

Well Low if you really feel that way then you wouldn't have responded to us as much as you have been. And no matter what you say, everything that you've been told won't help your argument. Like many of us have already said "it's just a visual book, you're just skipping text and clicking on a few choice boxes, there's no gameplay whatsoever"! Also glitches and "skips" wouldn't make any difference either since your STILL just skipping text with no gameplay.

Ohio, USA

"Well Low if you really feel that way then you wouldn't have responded to us as much as you have been."

I don't know what you mean. I'm responding to everyone because I started the thread, and we're discussing something I care about. If you're referring to my VN runs, I think that shit is cute, but no one else in this thread does, so I'm not going to bother sharing them just to have them get shit on.

Also, reading (or in speedrunning's sake, skipping) text, and making choices that determine the final outcome of the game, is, objectively gameplay. These claims that there is no gameplay in visual novels are just stemming people's personal ideas of what video-gameplay should be considered.

Finland

[quote=getlow]but they are not "good" runs by anyone in this thread's standards, so I'm not going to bother sharing[/quote] a run being good is different from a game being a good to run so just go ahead and link a video or two. would be interesting to see

[quote=getlow]I'm not going to bother sharing them just to have them get shit on.[/quote] we dont "shit on" runs here even if we dont agree with your opinion

Ivory, Merl_, and shenef like this
French Southern Territories

[quote]Also, reading (or in speedrunning's sake, skipping) text, and making choices that determine the final outcome of the game, is, objectively gameplay. These claims that there is no gameplay in visual novels are just stemming people's personal ideas of what video-gameplay should be considered.[/quote] People are making these claims because the gameplay can't be optimized. Speedrun.com's rules say that games need to have room for optimization to be added to the site, which makes sense because otherwise we'd get a lot more "NES Home Alone"-like games on the site. The "gameplay" of a typical visual novel doesn't lend itself to speedrunning, because the games would just be autoscrollers with mashing and a couple of timings maybe.

However, if you know of a VN that has interesting glitches, skips, or mechanics I would genuinely LOVE to see your run of it. I'm not necessarily opposed to VNs being added, it's just that most of them don't meet the standard for the site. But even a simple, minor glitch could raise the skill ceiling for the game and make the execution of the run more complex than just mashing skip. So post your run, we won't "shit" on it.

The best way to convince people that VNs can make for interesting/fun speedruns is to show us.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Ivory likes this
Germany

Can i just say that acts reponse was genuinely underrated? [quote=Act]I’ve heard better responses from @derric_young[/quote]

Also yes, as almost everyone already wrote, you can speedrun anything. But some games are less suitable or skill expressive. A VN that has only menuing is predetermined in length. You cannot be significantly faster than another person who knows how to menu. While menuing is a skill in speedruns, having pre determined menuing as the only aspect of a game with nothing else, the question is where one can improve. If I know the most optimal choices, I can do one run, and never touch the game again as I peaked and reached the skill ceiling. That is infact the definition of a bad speedgame. I have had a look at your youtube channel and looked at the speedrun. I mostly skimmed through it as it seemed to consist of waiting for minutes so autoplay comes to a point where you need to manually input a decision. That is a bad speedgame. On the contrary, lets look at other popular visual novels such as the no escape series or Ace Attoney. Those have more complex game loops with point and click elements sprinkled into those games. While it can be debated if those are also not well suited speedgames, those are most certainly much more suitable as those require much more than just simply skipping text and pressing one of 2 choices.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Merl_ and SioN like this
Finland

i want to add the danganronpa series to matse's list

Ohio, USA

Mods if you're out there just start adding visual novels. Ya'll ain't running on a limited capacity of the total number of games allowed on the site, and adding visual novels isn't gonna hurt anything.

Canada

Worse speedgames have been added to the site. Hell, I could name a few on this site that are arguably worse than speedrunning visual novels (eg. The Smurfs Dance Party, where the main category requires 0 input and is entirely dependent on load times). Furthermore, what people think is a good or bad speedgame is subjective.

GetLow likes this
Iowa, USA

Can we stop talking about visual novels now?

Gaming_64 and YUMmy_Bacon5 like this
French Southern Territories

[quote]Can we stop talking about visual novels now?[/quote] As long as conversation stays civil there's no reason to. I know you're only here to farm forum posts but discussion about stuff like this is why the forums are here in the first place.

[quote]Mods if you're out there just start adding visual novels.[/quote] There are plenty of visual novels already on the site, and there are no rules prohibiting visual novels in the game request rules. As already explained, there are many visual novels that have interesting mechanics that make for more complicated speedruns. However, in your case the game is just waiting for long periods of time with the only gameplay elements being choosing the optimal choice every now and then, which doesn't meet the site's standards for optimization, which is probably why it was rejected.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Ohio, USA

Yes Merl I am aware of all of this. (How tf do you quote people's posts on this forum?)

Iowa, USA

@Merl_ I'm not post farming. I'm taking part of a civil conversation.

@GetLow go to this thread

Gaming_64 and YUMmy_Bacon5 like this
French Southern Territories

@GetLow then what's your point? Visual novels are being added to the site, and your game was rejected for a legitimate reason.

Ohio, USA

I don't understand what YOUR point is. I don't understand why you keep bringing up my personal run when that has next to nothing to do with why I created this thread.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Somerset, England

[quote=Merl_]there are no rules prohibiting visual novels in the game request rules[/quote] @Merl_ are you okay? https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/993176547609559070/1072049888185024622/Screenshot_20230206_070322_Firefox.jpg

Edited by the author 1 year ago
grnts, CyanWes, and Gaming_64 like this
Ohio, USA

The "at this time" gives me hope.

Valhalla

Just request the game.

cheg, YUMmy_Bacon5, and SioN like this