United StatesHey everyone, it's already time for March's state of the game! Pretty crazy that it's already March, but I suppose February does have less days than the other months. Earlier in the month I was planning on having a poll regarding if we should look at changing the timing rules, but after I discovered the old timing method was less optimal than we thought, noneleft and I decided it would probably be best to just change it asap.
Now for the major things that happened in February, the biggest thing would obviously be the aforementioned change to the timing rules for runs. We actually finalized retiming the runs, so everything on the leaderboard is currently up to date! Because of this, some pretty cool times have surfaced, so go look at the leaderboards when you have a chance :) Another thing you may not be aware of if you haven't looked at the rules since the change was implemented, is a new rule that coincides with the change. You must not cover the play button (or ensure it's visible enough,) so that we can properly verify times using the new method. Speaking of the new method, if you haven't checked the site in a while you can see the new method either in the rules of any category, or check this news post for a more detailed explanation! https://www.speedrun.com/btd6/news/1107
Regarding runs this month, I would like to give some recognition to a couple of players, similar to how noneleft did last month. I really want to give a shout out to Frostee, who has done a lot of crazy stuff. He's been tackling a lot of the harder maps and drastically improving the times on every map he touches. Especially Ravine impop, that was insane. To my knowledge, he hasn't even uploaded most of his runs, so there's quite a few we don't see on the site. He has also decided to do something pretty cool, which is speedrunning the entire game by going for all the BBs on a fresh account. Go check him do this on twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/frosteemate) I'm sure he would appreciate members of the community stopping by! Gl not losing your sanity Frostee, but it will definitely be a great accomplishment.
Another player I want to recognize is BurningFlames, who really improved the Cabin easy, medium, and hard WR times. Not only did he destroy the previous hard WR, but he got a :30. Not only is this seconds faster than the 2nd best hard time, but it is so close to a sub :30. Another thing he did is get an impressive beginner chimps run, just a second shy of first place. I hope to maybe see some more runs from him during March, and I'm sure we'll see some more great times!
Next, MrPietrek. What can I say but just wow. Not only did they get the first sub 14 impop run, but they did it with the pause bug, and on a non water map. Oh and not only did they do it once, but twice. Sadly the first run had to be rejected because of not showing the home screen, but they just straight up were able to replicate it with an even better time. If you haven't seen the run, I highly recommend checking it out, simply an amazing one. Really hoping to see them push the boundaries in more impop runs, and maybe even some other diffs?
Last but certainly not least, noneleft. She kind of just destroys any map she touches, and her runs this month certainly weren't any exception. She beat several easy and hard WRs this month, which the most notable I would say is her Resort easy WR. Ngl, I didn't think beating Iberian's time was possible with the new necromancer changes, but she just did it without even using necro. Before the new timing rules were implemented, she also beat the Monkey Meadow easy tie her and potatoes had. Sadly, after the timing change she lost it, but hopefully she can get it back! The new meta for future easy runs could be not using necro at all, who knows?
We've had some new runners come to the game during February, and I'm really hoping to see them do more! (also hoping to see even more, let's hope March brings some in!) It would be really cool if we could get more active runners, that way we can all have fun competing together. Maybe some new runners can help fill out some of the full game categories that are currently empty, or even one of the current ones. 😉
You may remember if you read the previous state of the game, but we are thinking of in someway making the bloons champion thing a reality. It probably won't be anytime soon, but I'm looking into some things to see if I can do the programming needed. If not, we are planning on trying to find someone who can.
Just a couple of questions to end off on:
- What do you think of the change to the timing rules?
- If we do make the bloons champion a thing, should full game runs weigh more on a persons score than an individual level run?
That's all I have for this months state of the game, I look forward to what March will bring us. Happy popping!
I don't know how others feel about this suggestion (and while I think it's a sort of cool idea, especially something different to do,) I personally think it doesn't work that well as a run overall. There's also some things to take into account if we did want this as a category, which would be 1: timing rules, and 2: how we would split the runs up into categories on the leaderboard. Getting Adora to level 20 on a beginner map basically requires you to get it just before reaching round 60, or literally at the end of the run which doesn't play out that differently compared to a normal medium speedrun from a couple of test runs I just did. Meanwhile, getting Adora to level 20 on say an advanced map or an expert map will def happen before round 60 if done properly due to heroes gaining more xp on those maps. This is also where a couple of timing questions come into play, as it would be different than any of the current rules. Furthermore, we would have to decide if we count the end time as the frame Adora hits level 20, or the end of the actual run. A couple of things to end off on, but restricting it to only medium would be a stale category imo (we obviously can't do easy,) maybe hard or impoppable as well? We would then also have to divide it into difficulty of the map (beginner, intermediate, advanced and expert) alongside the difficulty played (medium, hard, impop.) Which I feel at that point would just be oversaturating things.
I'd love to hear some thoughts about what we could do with this if people are interested and want it, but I'm not sure it works that well compared to the categories we currently have.
- Especially as things get more optimized, PC players easily have the advantage over mobile players for the most part. Uncapping FPS, loading time (mainly for the full game runs,) and not being able to do things as fast. Since there aren't many active runners for the game at the moment though, I don't think separate categories for each platform should matter currently. (It would also further separate what little runs there are for most of the categories) I do think once there is significantly more activity and runners on the scene it would be worthwhile to do.
- I agree with Potatoes that it probably wouldn't make things any more active, but it couldn't hurt to have a separate discord, especially for the future.
Gotcha, thanks. This run was kinda scuffed anyways so I'll probably go for a faster time eventually
forgot to add as desc, but I should've gotten crossbow earlier as it would've stopped the silly leaks I had early game
