Firstly, for anyone who is unaware, Phone skip is a skip in chapter 5 that allows you to skip entering 2 of the 3 phone numbers in the study room where you are ascending the sides before falling down.
It seems that there is an error in the game that if you fail this section and fall while playing casually (or in a run), your game will "remember" this, and on any subsequent travels through this section, regardless of if "New Game" is selected or not, the game still thinks you have failed the section and "Skips" you to the end of it, effectively savings 50-60 seconds.
Until recently I was "stuck" with this, and starting from a new game, ran with this issue happening. However, I have been shown that it is relatively easy to delete the console cloud save game, and reset it to an unused state, which in turn fixes this glitch.
After talking to lanzaa he has let my run stand, but I feel it isn't a true new game speedrun, as it has (albeit involuntary) setups created beforehand. It is sort of a New Game+ run in a way.
I started this thread to get a small discussion to have some clarification, I'm interested to hear what others have to say.
so i spoke about this to the other mod before i was actually a mod myself and he also agreed it was technically considered ng+ since it involves after game manipulation to get the skip. particularly on PC, you had no choice to to purposely kill yourself in that section, and then proceed with a new game run to get it. my thought process was that when you die, a flag is set to allow you to skip the first 2 phones. resetting the game and starting a new one appears to NOT reset that flag, aka allowing you to get the skip.
we originally had a rule that new games runs must start on a save fresh file but on PC, i am not sure there is a way to switch profile once the game is open. this means you would have to completely exit the game and reload it, something that can be very annoying when you end up resetting a minute or two in. speaking to you, at the time, it seemed equally as much of a pain to get a clean file on console as well.
i dont remember if other runs do it but i know the former WR guy had it in his run too.
i figured we could let you keep the run because a) barely anyone runs this game, b ) [at the moment] there is no high level competition anyways, and c) the former WR guy had it so you beat the run fair and square.
basically i think we need a way to enure this doesnt happen. so what are our options? we can require video footage showing a clean file? however on PC even when starting on a clean file, if the flag was set previously to skip it, you still get it. this is something i tested. also as i said before, if you tend to be reset heavy (guilty), the time wasted opening and closing the game can be a pain.
an alternate solution is to forget about requiring a new save file, and just not allowing it in a run period. if there is a phone skip in the run, boom, rejected. we can give the benefit of the doubt to the player. as far as we know, there arent any other glitches like this.
as for you and your run, in light of this conversation, what options do we have? if you feel it isnt clean then we can remove it. what about the other guy? his run should be removed too. looking at his obsoleted pb, he doesn't have the phone skip in that one.
anyways as usual, this is all open for discussion. given that there are like 3 active people here, i wouldnt expect much though lol.
Sorry for my absence, and no reply, but I have played around offline and had a look at things, and have come to the conclusion my run is not valid (So I have deleted it and resubmitted a new one). The reason for this is pretty simple - It seems I had 2 unfair advantages - one being phone skip was "set-up" on my profile and the other was my self portrait ending.
I came to the conclusion that the reason only I was able to get the self portrait ending with the steps I was taking was because I had completed the game with all the collectables - meaning I had all rat drawings. From what I can see online, collecting these has a helping hand in getting that ending -- along with the few extra steps I take in my those runs.
To put it into perspective, if I was to make a scale which determines which ending is chosen where your actions in game equate to either 1 point for 'family' or -1 points for 'selfish', and say 0 to 5 is the self portrait ending, 6 to 14 is the wife ending and 15 to 20 is the wife & child ending, a fresh file would start at 10. Having the rat drawings collected already as I start the run, my play through would start at like 6 or 7, making me have to do far less steps to push that limit to the self portrait ending.
With this discovery (prompted by me not being able to get self portrait ending after being able to completely start on a fresh untouched profile), it became clear I had an unfair advantage over everyone else, and despite the lack of activity in this game, my previous runs are pretty much illegal -- I'm not comfortable having what is essentially a new game+ run at the top of the leader boards.
I know this game has some weird things happen with how it manages its save files, and it makes runs hard to moderate, but the more I run the more of an understanding I get on how these hidden mechanics work.
For phone skip - unless someone can show me them completing chapter 5 without it and then immediately play it again getting the skip (and of course without falling the first time) - I will always believe it was 'set-up' beforehand.
Same goes with self portrait ending - if it is obtained, I would like to see the wall the collectables get put on in the easel room after the completion of the run. This will show if any drawings were obtained prior to the run being started.
I may have rambled on a bit, but a fair bit of this I have been looking at over the last month or so, trying to get my head around it all. Hopefully my scale analogy is easy to understand, its the best way I could word it. In the end, you guys as mods have the final say, but I thought I would share what i have learned with it all so far.
hey man. so yeah a few things. when you figured out the other ending route, i tried to the best of my ability to trigger the ending and never succeeded. at one point i even followed a self-portrait ending guide and still failed to get it. i love this game but yeah, its certainly a mess when it comes to save files and the endings. your theory on how the endings work is consistent with the dev's own words (https://steamcommunity.com/app/391720/discussions/0/405693392926968307/). that being said, i wasnt aware that the ending's points could be manipulated by previous runs (again, probably sloppy code on the devs part) but i figured as much since you seemed to get the ending with ease while i would replicate your steps and not get it at all. honestly i was wondering if you would do fresh file runs and that if you were, would you still be able to get the other ending. i suppose this answers that question.
so now, in light of all this, id say the rules should be updated to clarify certain issues. again i dont think there should be any rules that make it a pain on the runners part such as requiring the video to show a new save file being created, etc. i said this in the previous post but something like that on PC would be such a huge waste of time considering resets can happen numerous times in the first minute alone.
so i think with that said, we should just have a general phone skip ban. if phone skip is in a run, it is invalid (unless someone can prove they legitimately got it).
now regarding the ending, i think it would be extreme to limit the any% category to just one ending as that seems to defeat the purpose of any%. however i was not aware of this wall of collectibles you are talking about. i know when you get the loop ending, you get the 'finish it' option in the menu. i have never gotten a different ending either in casual play or speedrunning so im not sure what options there are after you achieve one of these. if there is a way to after getting the ending to load up the game back to the main room and show this wall as proof of no setup before hand, then this would be a great way to validate it. now my question is does this room update after a run is completed or would a drawing be there if you collected it, and then reset the run? maybe you can tell what was collected based off the route. these things would have to be tested. on a personal note, i really should try to get one of these endings.
anyways for now, i think we all can agree to ban phone skip completely, so i will update the rules accordingly. id like to see any players input on this as well. if the wall of drawings thing pans out then id say thats a reasonable way to have the runs accepted.
as always this discussion is open to anyone.
I do agree banning phone skip is the way to go at this stage (Until it can be proven otherwise). As for the wall of collectables, I will try and upload a small video showing it and explaining what I mean, as it’s not a huge amount of effort.
I don’t think this game needs different ending categories, as this community is so small, but the collectables wall show be a good way of validating any run with a different ending.
ok i see what you mean about the drawings.
so youre a console player. do you in your opinion think it would be a pain in the ass to start a new fresh file for seflie run attempts?
with the wall in mind, we can see if there were pre-run setups. however, what if you fail a run? would the drawings still be in their spots? if theyve been collected before then i assume they will no longer appear in game. this would obviously save time if you have been doing runs already, which is pretty much the same as having the game setup before hand.
my main concern is that its [probably] a pain to start with a fresh file everytime you screw up a run. or maybe its the price you pay for attempting selfie%?
a ng+ category would fix all of this, but i really do not want to add a new category in a game that has 2-3 runners at most. i mean look at the inheritance category. its an insanely easy, short run that people still dont run lol.
as a side note i been messing with the switch version and if i press the switch profile button, and press the back button, it prompts me to play with no profile which has no saving, essentially starting [to my knowledge] a clean file. i wonder if this is true for other consoles.
It’s the price you would have to pay for self portrait. There isn’t any other way around it besides deleting the entire save. It’s not a huge pain - it’s only minor. The Xbox version I would assume can be played without a profile which would prevent this from happening. This may be a full way around it.
if the functionality is the same as it is on the switch then id say thats the easiest way to go about it. now the PC version has 3 save profiles you can pick from but to my knowledge you can only select one when the game boots up. as for PS4, not sure if the game operates the same way.
