Category Layout and Definitions
3 years ago
Sao Tome and Principe

After looking around a bit it would seem to me that the way specific categories are being shown whoever setup the leaderboards was not aware of how other games use the site functions to separate categories or how they are defined. Currently the Sort functions are being used as a way to sub categorize certain options (like Softcore/Hardcore, Players 1/8/x, and Class) in an Any% run. Here are a couple of examples for how games with many options available in an Any% run setup their boards on speedrun.com: https://www.speedrun.com/mc https://www.speedrun.com/piggy https://www.speedrun.com/diablo. Even your own Misc categories have the boards setup similarly to the games above https://www.speedrun.com/d2lod#Seeded_Any_Normal https://www.speedrun.com/d2lod#Seeded_Any_Hell https://www.speedrun.com/d2lod#PreLoD. The only difference being the number of submissions to the Misc are far fewer than Any%. The tabs are the category distinction (Any% Normal and Any% Hell in the case of D2LOD) and the buttons under the tabs are used to sort the table based on the columns and the columns are options available to the runner. This way you don't have to click 5 different buttons to find a run. When I hit the Any% tab for D2LOD one would expect the fastest time to complete the game to be shown at the top of the table with what class, player setting, and core were used to achieve said time. I can see not all classes would use the exact same player setting, core or strategy to achieve the fastest result, but the times can still be compared to each other since the goal is the same — killing baal. Choosing a slower strategy for this goal shouldn't mean no comparison can be made between class or core as the times are ultimately the end all be all. As it stands the fastest run does not seem to be the focus....which is odd for a speedrun. It is of my opinion Px should just be Any% as that seems to have the lowest times across any other combinations of options available to a runner. Killing baal would be completed much faster if a sequence skip for the ancients quest were found to bypass the level requirement. Thus making how one manages experience efficiently as they progress through the run a massive factor in how fast baal dies. I'm sure there are those that will say using the player setting command is a cheat code or not intended by game devs but "Are there any single-player cheats in Diablo II? No, Diablo II does not have any cheats. While there are undoubtedly some hacks on the web that allow you to alter your character, these are neither supported nor condoned by Blizzard Entertainment." (http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/faq/general.shtml) would prove otherwise. It is feature that the game offers and by strategically using it you can save a lot of time in your run. Here is an old post on speedemos archive (https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/questions_about_diablo_2_any__rta.html last reply by moooh) with a possible counter argument to disallowing Px based on it being a way to change difficulty in the middle of the run essentially, but if the option is available to the runner as the game devs intended it should fit under the Any % distinction. This still ignores the fact that setting the player count scales experience/loot/hp linearly so there are strategic trade offs when altering the player count. I failed to find a compelling reason to forbid the runner from strategically choosing when to raise/lower the player setting if their goal was to kill baal the fastest. Furthermore it reduces the cluttered look the leaderboard currently exists as. With that being said what to do with the P1/P8 only runs? Obviously these are slower but there are many submissions and runners for these "challenge" – for a lack of a better term – runs but you don't throw them away. That would be unfair to those who run these types of runs. Instead they should have their own sort option for the given Any% Normal/Hell category easily facilitated with a column called Player Count. This brings me to an interesting side discussion....Should a P1/8 only run be compared to a Px run on the leader board? My opinion is yes for a few reasons: first because it does seem there are competitive P1 only times to Px when you select certain options like class and core. That alone can show how good a runner is... when they are not getting easier experience gains and still keeping up its impressive regardless of other options chosen. Second the runner would then have the option to stay at p1/8 if they get an amazing start to a run or see something that gives them the opportunity to compete with Px times and change what submission type they want to pursue. Third and probably most relevant to moderators – validation.... How in the world do you verify someone didn't use the player count without going over every second of a 1+ hour long run?? If people want to try to get away with something in a run that would be quite easy to miss. Thus leaving the P1/P8 challenge type run an option left for the runner to decide as they see fit. In the same hand there is the hardcore vs softcore choice and how those options affect the final time. This distinction isn't as consistent from the available runs in determining how fast a run is as setting the player count, but as I see it hardcore should theoretically be slower than softcore because of death warping tactically in combination with portal usage to get quest items or countess loot. Any % should mean using any particular strategy or option to the runner to complete the goal (killing baal in this case) as fast as possible. That last part just doesn't seem to be the main focus and I found that odd was all. D2 is a game of decisions, game knowledge and mechanics giving runners as many chances to be flexible in an attempt to adapt to what the game gives just makes sense to me. I look forward to hearing what the logic was when first setting up the boards because a long time ago people thought Hell barb/necro just were not possible in an RTA style run and well... we know that to be wrong now. Hopefully that all made sense and I apologize for the wall of text.

Czech Republic

The leaderboards have recently been discussed and the way it is set up right now was agreed on by majority of the community. And yes, even people who have experience with multiple leaderboards participated.

As far as Minecraft leaderboards go, those are one of the worst leaderboards on this site, really not a good example.

How do you check if someone doesn't change players settings in P8 or P1? Well... quite simply. speedrun.com rules clearly say that you can verify worse runs with more leniency. So if a bad run has a /players change, it's alright to overlook. If it's one of the top runs, well... that's a thing you gotta lookout for. But that doesn't get solved by simply mixing up all /players options. Because you're still gonna check for other ways the person could've cheated, so the top runs are still gonna be watched carefully anyway.

New South Wales, Australia

As far as the PX stuff goes, i cant speak for everyone and my memory is a bit battered but when i initially stumbled across d2 speedrunning on speeddemos and saw segmented runs, i put a note aside to look into it and forgot. then about a year later i guess i stumbled onto it again but this time on youtube then twitch. The guys that stood out were Nightfall, Ryu, MrLlama and Teo. They all ran p1 (maybe nightfall started running px more im not sure).

I just assume most people initially ran p1 coz of those guys. it was the standard run. i dont think the boards had px till a while after. too much time invested into p1 for people to change.

United States

Yea, I think p1 was mainly the norm back then. It still kind of is now, but it's lost a lot of popularity... I think most runners right now prefer px over p1, p1 is just still ran because they are the most competitive. I agree with OP that I think it's about time the leaderboards are fixed to represent any% as px, and p1 as a subcategory of the true any%.

Daz86 likes this
Sao Tome and Principe

I saw no discussions just the results of how things were decided. Still no logic or reasoning to why though. If community involvement is happening away from speedrun.com you are likely losing out on people who have an opinion.

"As far as Minecraft leaderboards go, those are one of the worst leaderboards on this site, really not a good example" it is not a good example because...there are too many categories? I used the example to show how using the tabs for specific categories and then the black buttons underneath as a way to sort that categories board.

Right so we agree P1 is "worse" than a Px/8 run? Why do the boards not reflect that then? As far as cheating goes, is you argument because there are other ways to cheat there should not be Px in Any%? I still don't see any reason Px should have to be explicit in ANY% after all it is the fastest way to get experience thus the fastest way to kill baal. If anything p1/p8 (or whatever other slower strategies people want to use) are the ones that need to be explicit if they should even be their own category in the first place.

Czech Republic

@muffineater Minecraft leaderboards are a bad example for many reasons, but probably the most striking one is the fact that the leaderboards exactly show how sometimes these tabs don't work out really well. For example set seed having literally an empty category (which people do indeed play, you just submit the runs somewhere else), because they just designed it poorly.

Rule discussion happened on Discord with most of the active runners. And it was even announced on forums, for example here: https://www.speedrun.com/d2lod/thread/jj6a7 It was always open for discussing all kinds of different topics.

While I agree that Px is the "True Any%", it feels kinda weird having to type any commands during the run or to see that in a run, I think that's why P1 is the mainstream. Wouldn't mind if that was moved around, but we really don't need to reorganize these leaderboards to fit how other leaderboards look. The tabs right now are really not that hard to understand.

Germany

@muffineater P1 is still the main category for mostly historical reasons. a) it has been run for almost 8 years now as the standard way of running this game b) Looking at the leaderboards of px and p8 - There are way less runs submitted in these categories. I think that p1 is representing the interest of runners in this game a lot more currently. Especially looking at the hell categories, there are not a lot of runs whatsoever. Some leaderboards have 1 if any runs submitted there.

Talking about "True any%" - Where do you draw the line here?

  • Is Normal any% the true any%?
  • Is Hell any% the true any%? Other that are questions popping up:
  • Is TCP/IP, while being a multi player option, still an ok thing for the true any%?

Many of these things were discussed using discord. With that plattform we reach a lot more people than we do in here. My 4 day late reaction / acknowledgment of your original forum post is proof enough I guess. :)

To the point of the Leaderboard setup in general: I think you have a missunderstanding on how the leaderboards can be set up. To give you a quick crash course:

You can add "Full Game Categories" -> These are the "tabs" you mentioned. (In our case Any% Normal and Any% Hell, as well as all the Misc categories like Seeded and pacifist etc.)

You can add "Variables" These can be used in 2 ways: a) as a sub category, which makes them appear as a next line of tabs (Such as p1 / px / p8). Yes, we can change the priority here, however the community decided against this for now. b) as a Variable. This will give you the look of the Pacifist categorie, where all the variables are listed in seperate columns and you can use the filter to show the aspects that you want to see.

The reason why we use option a for the most part is because people were demanding a seperation of classes, player settings, hardcore / softcore, etc. In my opinion this is a good thing, otherwhise people would look at the leaderboard initially and only see Sorceress speedruns. To "compete on the top level" they would be forced to play that character - and a lot of them would leave when they see the 1/xxxx chance of a run even being runnable (jail strats yeay...) And why did we choose the other style on the Misc categories? Simply because in the a-style version you would have a lot of empty / only 1 runner categories that you can also find in px / p8 hell hardcore... It just doesnt look appealing untill a certain amount of people have completed runs on different characters.

Oh... Comparing characters... That is how Diablo 2 leaderboards started... And let me put it this way.. originally only Assassin speedruns existed. After a long while the Sorceress finally got to the level where she could easily pass the Assassin. And all the other classes? Lets be real... They just can not compete - Even if you find some major skip like an ancients skip... realistically this would just lead to an even bigger gap for the Sorceress due to Teleport and Static field - These skills are simply unrivaled in this game. Not comparing the characters just gives everyone the opportunity to play whatever character they feel comfortable on and have fun with.

Wafu likes this
Switzerland

"Right so we agree P1 is "worse" than a Px/8 run? Why do the boards not reflect that then?"

Two people agreeing doesnt mean it is agreed upon. If you check by number of runs, you would realize that probably 90-95% of all runs are P1, P1 is the dominant way this game is ran. If you compare it to Super Mario 64 (https://www.speedrun.com/sm64) , they sort by "120 stars on N64" as default, because more people care about it, while the fastest would be "0 stars on N64" If we sort by fastest normal for example, we would display a category with currently 2 submissions, of which is the fastest (48min) and the other is 40minutes slower.

About the layout: Other than most games, D2 is kind of a 7-in-1 Speedrun and with that in mind, I think our layout makes sense. If anything you can compare it to games like D1 or D3. D3 would probably look very similar if the game wasnt so stupidly easy that a HC tab there just doesnt make sense

"Should a P1/8 only run be compared to a Px run on the leader board? " In my opinion, no it should not. Regarding the options Px gives you, thats like asking if Bikes should be allowed in a running competition. Sure both are about covering distance as fast as possible, but one has by default a huge advantage

"My opinion is yes for a few reasons: ... Second the runner would then have the option to stay at p1/8 if they get an amazing start to a run or see something that gives them the opportunity to compete with Px times and change what submission type they want to pursue. "

You seem to lack some understanding what we do with PX. On pX you instantly go to P8 at the start to gain the first few levels faster and every character that does the first quest will lower the settings for that part. So you are already locked in pX within the first 2 minutes of the run

Discussing about "true any%" doesnt really get us anywhere in my opinion. We have a very popular P1 Any% which deserves its own leaderboard, we have Px Any% which deserves its own leaderboard (fastest way, but also easymode compared to P1) and P8 who currently also has its own leaderboard (which in my opinion doesnt hurt to have since layoutwise it is fine)

Daz86, Wafu, and BokserKabaty like this
Estonia

All these game comparisons don't make sense. Games like SM64 and Diablo 3 are exactly how I would like to see Diablo 2 categories sorted. Diablo 3 is literally sorted in "players x".

Even though SM64 doesn't show fastest category as default, it still shows fastest time in each category. In Diablo II that's not the case and that's the argument muffineater is making.

It would be a fair to compare to SM64 if the category setup looked like this for Diablo II: https://i.imgur.com/QNw6Se8.png

91RelaX likes this
Germany

@Indrek that literally just shifts up the Subcategory to a Maincategory or am I crazy? :) While I don't have anything against that, I think we once again have a problem with implementing that idea due to the current setup (due to the bug with the API - not sure if that got fixed yet) / way speedrun.com works.

I will hit up some speedrun.com staff to explore if they could make this change easier

Edit: I guess it gives the opportunity to show fastest run in each main category (maybe) - Gonna explore this option a little when I get home

Edit2: With the Help of scripts we can make this happen btw. no help needed from speedrun.com staff

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Indrek likes this
Estonia

I think it would be a really good change. Could actually link to px/p8 categories then. This change should overall resolve the px/p1/p8 debate.

I think we also don't need to split every main category into softcore/hardcore. Maybe only separate them when they become more popular and there's a demand for it.

It would be a good move towards less categories if we just combine sc/hc in px/p8 normal and hell. That change would already be like 28 less categories.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Russia

Omfg, historical reasons. Maybe the main historical reason is cuz YOU ban this category by 6 of this 8 years. It is appropriate to compare the number of runs in the category of which is 2 years old and in which category is 8 years old, according to the number of runs in the last 2 years, and not for the entire time.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Indrek and muffineater like this
Germany

Feel free to make a full statistics analisis on your facts here

From my perspective the spread between p1 and px/p8 runs is around 50/50 which makes "historical reasons" still a valid argument. Only because the "Top Runners" decided to switch over to other player settings doesn't mean that this is the only valid category. There are enough examples for p1 aswell. And please stop acting as if the historical reason is only coming from me... There are enough other games that use "amount of total runs" as a reason for their default selection - historical is just a different way of wording it. And once again, iirc we have voted on this specifically on the last voting tour. (Will check if we actually did when I get home)

And... I don't really understand why keep putting on such an agressive tone on every post you are doing, I clearly said I would look into the changes suggestted above.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Russia

What? "such an agressive tone on every post you are doing" https://www.speedrun.com/327/allposts That was my 3rd post for last 10 months, and I dont thnik all of them was such agression. I don't see much point in discussing my personality. Why then do I talk about you getting personal? Because you are the "Dictator" who did both a lot of good for the speedrun d2, and a lot of controversial. And Px "historical reasons", was one of controversial. Why was my last post so aggressive? It is clear that I am wrong, and it was possible to formulate my thoughts in a more correct form, but again there is a substitution of facts, mixed with smiles. For 6 years, when Diablo 2 speedruns were the most popular, Px was banned, when the hype passed, Px was added. Оbviously there will be more runners with 3+ hour normal runs by p1 (2 for Px and 48 for p1). You are great, you won, indeed the slower category is more popular than the faster one. But don't need to mock.

And I do not think that this Layout can be somehow improved, made more popular, its dead by "historical reasons".

Sao Tome and Principe

Tradition is silly just for the sake of tradition it's quite obvious there would be more p1 runs submitted because they have been around much longer. How long did Nightfallx have to bitch to get Px/P8 added? And why did it take so long if it were not "just you" teo? He had been running those categories with no board to put them on for quite some time before he took it up with the mods here. I get the impression if he were not such a respected sorc player Px/P8 would have never been added.

If Px/P8 had been around for 8 years just the same as P1 you could have a stronger argument that popularity is the main reason. That is not the case here... Your argument starts off with an invalid premise. If Px/P8 submissions are equal to P1 across the length of time Px/P8 has existed then by using your logic would it not be fair to say they are all equal in popularity? Thus making that whole case pointless getting us right back to "we have always done it this way."

None of this is to say popularity SHOULD be the focus for keeping things the way they are anyways. The focus should be going fast and facilitating opportunity to runners to go fast. These "historical reasons" were obviously never about going fast... They were about playing the game how someone (or probably more accurate a few people) felt everyone else should play the game and then trying to come up with solutions to problems that should not exist in the first place. That's the long and the short of how the boards got in this situation. The longer you wait to fix issues about timing method, hc vs sc, or keeping track of player count the more data you end up needing to reconcile with later.

Estonia

Category system is a lot better now, but could we please clean up the category names? Maybe something like this? https://i.imgur.com/QQkQMSl.png

Also category rules were never updated after this change. Should probably mention which players setting method allowed in each category to make it more clear for new runners.

Edited by the author 2 years ago
British Columbia, Canada

Is it necessary to remove "Any%" for the titles for the sake of a slightly cleaner layout? I only worry about the possibility of 100% runs in the future which still occasionally has some interest, and the naming convention for speedruns determining the completion requirements has always been this way. we might not have a 100% category solidified but the nature of completing our runs falls in line with "Any%" like any other game

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