I was wondering about the rules of using some of HD Mods features and I guess these need to be clarified. ATM the rules say that we can use HD Mod, updated to its latest version.
1.) So do we use HD+? It's an option in the launcher settings that fixes some gameplay bugs (mainly crashes) and makes some things easier (Replayable Quick Combat). I have been using it on my runs so far and I guess Long Live the Queens WR is made on HD+.
In my opinion HD+ should be enabled, since some of the bugs that HD+ fixes can easily ruin your run. The changes to gameplay are not that big in HD+ compared to HD, and you can't really use it for your advantage.
2.) Are we going to allow tweaking the game via launcher? Most of the tweaks change some options that can be found in the game also (e.g. Combat Auto Spells - Can be found in combat settings), so they don't have to be set during gameplay.
The one that I'm interested in is UI.Tavern.InviteHero, which I guess you cannot find in the game settings. Enabling this option from tweaks makes runs less RNG based and that makes some tactics more consistent.
For example in Liberation Mission 1, you can't get Summon Boat spell anywhere from the map, but hero named Gem has it ready. Using summon boat in this mission would save around 5mins. This tactic can only be considered by allowing Invite Hero mechanic, since it took me around 60 restarts to get Gem in tavern just with RNG based hero recruitment.
IMO using the tweaks or atleast Invite Hero mechanic should be allowed also, since Heroes 3 is already quite luck based game to speedrun and by being able to invite heroes you could make runs more consistent overall. Inviting heroes is still slower than getting it right away from tavern, but this mechanic would decrease the amount of restarts that runs require.
EDIT: Just wanted to make sure am I allowed to use these before I start playing with these settings.
Inviting a hero would make this game a lot better to speedrun. Currently bad rng with heroes in campaigns that require certain hero type or skill causes about 1/4 or 1/3 of my restarts. This has made routing the whole campaign very hard since most of the "fast" tactics require good RNG, and to make every mission work like intented requires amazing luck. This has discouraged me to come up with fast routes for the missions, since slow but consistent routes have worked out better in a long run.
Ha. I thought Gem was disabled in Liberation like any other exploitable spell seems to be. I tried what seemed like forever to get her in my so far failed attempts to route Liberation.
Regarding your suggestions I think that HD+ should be allowed. We’ve already taken the step to allow the HD mod, so the debate of whether to allow HD+ or not seems trivial to me. Tbh I think I’ve used HD+ in some of my runs.
However I think we need to be cautious about allowing the tweaking thing. To me it’s customising just a tad too much and moving too far away from the game’s core. BUT when we already allow the HD mod (and HD+), why shouldn’t we be allowed to use all of its features? And if we do ban it, what do we do when/if it is implemented by default by the HD modders?
So, for clarity, I am against adding the mechanic itself, but in this specific situation where it is a part of an already accepted mod I actually think allowing it would be the right thing to do. If not for anything, then to have a more sound and well-defined ruleset. But keep in mind that this will also allow adding any other and any future tweak that might be added to the mod in question, unless it's explicitly stated otherwise.
Yeah, Gem is not disabled in Liberation and neither is Summon Boat. You just cannot get summon boat from any Mage Guild. And Gem is the only hero who starts with Summon Boat :D
I think it should be allowed to use Invite Hero and other tweaks as long as there are not any gamebreaking tweaks available .Currently I think there is none, or atleast I havent seen any. If one comes, then we should discuss this again.
If moderators could give us some kind of conclusion here?
But you still need to farm for Advanced Water Magic, right? I mean that's an infinitely lesser struggle than doing casual or safe strats, but still.
To me the rules regarding versions and mods should be something like this:
"HD and HD+ mod (updated to their latest versions) and all their features and tweaks are allowed unless a specific feature or tweak is explicitly banned in the game rules or by mods in the forum. This includes but is not limited to; quick combat, invite hero to tavern, better army and items management, (...) ."
The whole "includes-but-not"-shenanigans can be omitted if it gets too tedious and ugly. And, you know, feel free to define your own rules and stuff. I'm just here pretending to know shit :P
For modern systems, it is necessary to use the HD Mod in order to easily record gameplay. As I've found out, the original game, as well as Heroes Chronicles, does not exit fullscreen to windowed without changing the color bitrate of the system. It is a hassle enough to record and make sure the video isn't corrupted, so let's use the HD Mod on that basis alone.
An issue for me as a moderator is how to judge a run when I have no idea of knowing what a player's settings are outside of the game. This stems from the issue of what should and shouldn't be allowed when using the HD Mod. As I see it, if a feature wasn't originally programmed in the vanilla game, a speedrun should not be accepted if it uses an outside feature. I think of using a GameShark on N64 games like this; it's useful for practice, but not what the game is originally.
So that leads to a big can of worms of trying to decide what's acceptable and not. The HD Mod provides a lot of quality of life features that make playing smoother, but there's bits that adjust/bypass some RNG elements and some that, to my knowledge, can't be disabled.
The Tavern Invite I believe shouldn't be enabled; not only it's not in the vanilla game, it cuts RNG out of saving and loading when many other speedruns have to deal with it, especially without the use of a 3rd-party mod. Troop management in castles: the HD Mod allows ease of recruiting by clicking on creatures' portraits and mass-recruiting on the castle portrait in the lower left window instead of clicking on the individual buildings. As much as I love this feature, it's not in the vanilla game DX. But I don't know if this can be disabled, so if it can't, how should a speedrun be judged?
EDIT: See my long post below to find newer information.
I understand the problem of adding new features to the game. HD Mod sure adds many unoriginal features to the game, including the army management, but the only thing you can control from the tweaks is do same creatures go in the same stack.
I guess it should be fine if we would play like we originally did, with the QoL upgrades from HD+, and decide about the Invite Hero mechanic.
The only problem I see with disabling Invite Hero feature is the time you can save with optimal Hero generation. It´s not like in some other games where you get good RNG and you save 10-30sec, it´s alot more. Only in liberations 1st mission the difference of safe strat and optimal hero strat is 4 minutes. You gain far too much time by getting optimal hero generation.
This wouldn't be such a big deal if I would run only Liberation, since I could easily just keep restarting the campaign until I get specific hero, but when running the whole campaign it will be a problem. Currently I have played 4 of the 6 campaigns in Restoration of Erathia and I know 3 missions (Around 5-6min gain) where I could gain time with good hero generation.
I guess we could think the Invite Hero mechanic this way: Do we want the speedruns of this game to be more original and luck based (Disabling Invite) or more technical (Enabling Invite). I understand if we want to stay as original as possible and I am totally fine with it since I have been playing my runs without Invite Hero mechanic, but I would prefer using it in the future runs. This is mainly because this way you can focus on the gameplay itself rather than getting good luck. It feels pretty overwhelming to get very good time in a long run, if you can save 3-4 minutes by getting 1 hero of the 122 available in one campaign.
To clarify a bit more my thoughts, one option is to make seperate categories for Invite Hero enabled and disabled. This way we could see which one could be the main way to play. This could be good since the interesting part is how much can you gain from other campaigns with this mechanic.
While I completely agree with you (Adam) in principle that a game should, if possible, always be vanilla (or any official released patch and/or DLC) the problem is that we already took the step into the HD Mod-world. And we, as you mentioned, already have accepted the use of neat small things like army/item management and easy town hiring. This is non-revertable stuff that is used in every single accepted run uploaded to this page.
This whole thing problems originates from allowing the HD Mod and not having a stricter ruleset. While I don’t think it should be disallowed it does bring the aforementioned problematiques. I understand the romantic argument, and in every other case I would be on your side. But since the HD mod is fully up and running I can’t see this feature being any more hacky than some of the others, i. e. replaying battle/quick battle seems just as non-vanilla as inviting to tavern.
And I’ll repeat: What happens when/if the HD modders decide to make “Invite Hero to Tavern” a default thing? Then is it allowed? Or do we have to tweak the game in that case?
I don't have time to read the three posts above since I'm pressed for time, but here are my two cents.
Similar to what Adamdotpng wrote I find the value in the HDmod to come in the resolution settings and in the troops/artifacts management. While all those tools are very clearly time saving quality of life settings I deem them very very different from an RNG manipulation tool.
Sorry for a short/bad post but I dion't have much time atm
Now that I have mapped most of the changes HD has made to the game, I can try to round up some of my conclusions:
On MiklMaar pointing out if Invite Hero would be build-in feature: Seems like Inviting Hero was a built-in feature in HD back in the day, now you just can turn it off if you want. This was referred from HD Google Site: "You can now invite heroes in taverns. -This feature is not considered as cheating or changing original game rules because it was also available in the original versions by loading the game multiple times till you get a desired hero; the only difference now is that with HD+ Patch you can do it faster and easier." And by my knowledge Tweaks were introduced later in the development, so I guess you couldn´t disable this back then.
About the overall ruling of speedrunning this game and rulings: I would agree with Adams idea to keep the game as vanilla as we can, but I think it is close to impossible at this point. HD has fixed many critical bugs, but also made many changes to the gameplay and I guess it could be considered the way to play today since the Ranked games are also played on HD+. The changes in HD are considered QoL improvement, but there is also built-in RNG manipulation and other major gameplay changes. Referred from HD+ google site: "Random game calculations, such as moral/luck proc, creature damage and their special abilities proc does not affect the course of combat anymore. This means that with the same conditions, actions taken by players on the same map, the course of the battle will go in the same way." The other change being replayable quick battle: If you aren't happy with the result, you can start the fight yourself, cast a spell and simulate the rest. As MiklMaar said, this is as non-vanilla that it can be.
So in my opinion IF we would want as vanilla as possible, then it should be played without HD+ and with either HD or completely original game. If we were to enable HD+ (which again has built-in non-vanilla features), then we should enable Invite Hero and other tweaks IF they do not break the game.
Maybe even have seperate categories for vanilla and HD+ with tweaks.
There is also possibility to add plugins, but I guess these should be banned. Not sure thought, didn't have time to check them out.
@snDRY : "Random game calculations, such as moral/luck proc, creature damage and their special abilities proc does not affect the course of combat anymore. This means that with the same conditions, actions taken by players on the same map, the course of the battle will go in the same way."
So, if I understand this correctly, the result of a quick battle should be exactly identical no matter how many times you do it. In fact, what they’re saying is that all battle-die-rolls are predetermined. I guess I knew this, but I always thought it was the quick battle-system that was badly implemented in vanilla. If it’s intentionally modded into the game it’s a major issue - or at least a major difference from HD to vanilla. It probably won’t really affect speedrunning as we optimally only should see every battle once, but still.
@DanielMauritz If I’m not completely wrong the army/artifact-management still is in the pure HD mod. So we can just disallow HD+ mod, but that will effectively mean banning replaying quick battles (or any battles) and iirc some of the runs on the leaderboards use just that. So this will create an unnecessary hassle of rejecting old runs. Or we can accept HD+. To me it’s a choice of either one or the other. And I guess neither of them is optimal.
I mean sure, we can just ban the invite hero to tavern tweak and leave the rules as it is, but then we’re left with a very vague ruleset having to decide whether each and every tweak/plugin/setting/whatever is accepted or not. And on what grounds other than convenience would you ban invite hero and not replayable battles?
I like the idea of a separate category for HD+, but I don’t really know if it’s necessary. Not yet at least. It will solve the problem of old records being deleted, though.
