Why I think Viewer Parking is unfair to small, unknown runners and what can we do to solve it.
6 years ago
California, USA

So, I decided, out of boredom, to look at the world record co-op run of TTC by GagStrategists. And I can't help to notice the many viewers that helped him by parking in a building or in a battle. Then when he needed to do something, he will teleport to that viewer and talk to the shopper or join the battle.

As a small runner, I feel like that is unfair to us. The reason why big name ToonTubers have the World Record to Co-op is because they have big viewer counts and can make most of the viewers to participate. I think that the spirit of the category is now "big following to win", instead of "strategy and coordination with friends to win" Small viewers have little to no chance to get a world record in co-op, and I think that not right for the original spirit of the category.

So how do we solve this? Well, I have some ideas. But I think as a community, we should vote for this.

  1. Ban Viewer Parking for Co-op. What do I think about this: I think this is not a smart move, because I think it will cause more trouble then it's worth. Most big name YouTubers can most likely never steam Co-op again without Parking, and overall, can negatively affect the speedrunning community.

  2. Make a Discord where runners can post their streams and get people to join. What do I think about this: I think this will solve the problem of not having enough viewers to do Viewer Parking, but I don't think that will solve the problem because the more popular ToonTubers can already do that for their fanbase. However, I think we can also combine this with the next and last idea.

  3. Split the category. What do I think about this: I think that this is the best option to take. We can have two categories for Co-op, one that allows Viewer Parking and one that does not. This will make the smaller runners, and the big Youtubers happy and this can give the smaller runners a chance to shine.

What do you think about Viewer Parking? What out of these 3 ideas do you think will solve the Viewer Parking problem? Also, please don't take this thread seriously yet. It's just a discussion of what I think should be done with co-op.

Thanks for reading. -RealPoltergoose

Michigan, USA

Honestly you could probably beat his time with probably 3 people, his stream was pretty hectic at times, if you allocate your resources to 2 people running to misc locations, and a third person to help you kill cogs. You could probably get a really quick time. The more people you have, could help you find cogs or spawn invasions. It isn't necessary that you have a large following, you just need to organize alot of people.

A group of 10 friends organized could probably beat his viewer park, but the game isn't ran enough for anyone to even bother, so it benefits livestreamers because they just have people in chat shout when they find something or they are at a location he needs to be

Edited by the author 6 years ago
RealPoltergoose likes this
California, USA

True, in fact, that what I want to see, people talking to each other. It's that I think it's not fun that bigger runners are relying on people on their friends list to get to point A to B. It makes the run boring and I think it's not fun for smaller streamers. Maybe we can have a discord to announce when runs are happening, and try to get the streamers to advertise it. That's something I will like.

Ontario, Canada

My own personal solution to the problem to Co-Op was going to be multi-logging two toons and have them duo throughout the entire game. Would that classify as.. 1P2C I guess?