United StatesGood question Lollipop. Using /played has been considered before or using an extension/app for LiveSplit which removes load screen times from the timer by reading the client.txt log file. The discussion on this was done quite a while ago (ie like 4 years ago) so my memory might not be the most up to date on discussion we had, but I'll try to provide some context at least. So there are two big issues/parts of 'loads' in PoE, the instance creation time and the load screen itself. Both portions can/have created issues for speed running in PoE.
The load screen portion, ie the grinding gear screen, is affected by a number of things including PC specs, whether you're running on HD vs SDD or trying to read from ramdisk (AFAIK only exile has tried this for some speedrun attempts at a sub 1h A5 any%), and the amount of MTX on your account. There are likely other factors, but these are the big three that get considered in terms of load screen time. The app/extension to livesplit can help equalize this as it can essentially remove the time from when the instance was loading to when you loaded in. The problem then comes down to something called instance creation time.
With instance creation time, its essentially the gap between when you click on the next zone and when you actually enter the load screen. From what we know essentially the further away from Texas you are the longer your ICT gets. There is no way currently for the app/extension to handle this issue and this time is included in /played. This amount can add up very significantly over the course of a run. For example, I believe Deadanddoom did a comparison between a run of his and exile and over the course of an A5 run lost something like 2minutes in ICT to exile as exile plays on DC/Texas and Deadanddoom is in EU.
Ultimately then, the app/extension can't cover the ICT issue and /played likewise only subtracts out of the actual grinding gear load screen portion. Using /played also does not align with how the practice of live races have been done in PoE since those are done essentially using real time to complete objective rather than lowest /played time. The fairest solution would be to manually account for ICT and manually account for load screens, but that would be an administrative nightmare as you would have to start being extrememly specific about frame timings and as you mention there are a lot of instances of loads you'd have to account for. Even if an app/extension or /played was used, you'd have to then remove the ICT manually. Additionally, another aspect to consider is that having a real timer going instead of /played can help admins detect splicing/clips/changes in a way a /played timer cannot. As an example, if a run is not done on a live streaming service/capacity an individual could use a load screen splice to get another character to put items in stash to reconcile if this actually happened on a /played you'd have to monitor every town interaction to see if some how player is using currency they don't have in inventory. /Played also does not account for muling which many players use and indeed the most popular meta racing build atm uses. While this is not the exhaustive list of reasons as to why we decided to use a real timer instead of IGT, quite a few of them are mentioned above. Hopefully this provides some context
In reference to Tyba we are discussing adding an eater/exarch category, but are waiting for 3.24 to see if any changes are happening that would affect the viability of it as a run category with atlas changes. We are also discussing how to format it appropriately/rules for it
Will bring this up to others. I see your point about merc ascend effectively functioning as another point for stopping run.
From Mod Team Involved: Upon reflection, we have decided that we want to see what interest SC will drum up with it available as a subcategory again. We will use whatever interest is generated to further inform our opinion about what to do as it relates to SC and how to implement it. We have some reservations still, but we want to give players a shot of showing their interest in SC by having them being part of the leader boards again as a filter subcategory. We will continue to monitor this issue and will revisit it again when necessary. However, we will 100% be revisiting this issue at the end of patch 3.14, which is in roughly 2 months from this posting.
General Note: Please be patient as we update various portions of the website to reflect these changes including game/category rules
Personal Thoughts: A majority of us voted in favor of having SC again each of us voting for with somewhat differing reasons. There is some disagreement in how to best implement SC when it was rolled out again. In full disclosure, I voted for implementing SC again and doing so for all categories, but my preferred way of implementing it across each of the categories we currently have was not adopted. From my current perspective, the required level of interest, as demonstrated by submitted runs into those categories, to justify the continued inclusion of SC is low. Rae’s point about there being some disconnect between rules and what we were saying on forums also made me reflect on fact that to show interest in SC people may not bother in coming to forums at all or even know what category to run to show interest in SC. Therefore, when making a decision relating to showing interest, it might behoove us to make it easy to do so by keeping those categories available while we evaluate this issue further. With that being said, I do want to see at least some SC runs. Ultimately, my main concern is not necessarily with having SC, but with how its implemented.
That is a valid point regarding the game rules especially since people may not always wander into the forums to see clarifications on that point. I will make explicit in the game rules that SC categories can exist if sufficient interest is shown. I will also make that clear near the top of those rules.
None of the changes mentioned above are the be all eternal rule for PoE speed running. We plan on meeting fairly regularly to review whats going on with the scene and making adjustments as necessary. We can do a much better job of communicating this, and I do apologize that this was not clearly and explicitly communicated.
Hey Rae! Great to hear from you again. To be abundantly clear we are open to SC runs, but we need to see sufficient interest first, and that means people doing runs, and posting them on the board or reaching out to us about the fact that they have runs. That is what we are asking for. Before any postings where even made from non-mods about new changes, we indicated in a sticky we're open to other categories if there is sufficient interest and its shown. This is not unreasonable. We are asking people to put some skin in the game, and being responsive to the community that is active. If you show your active and want to be active in PoE, great we love to have you and make space for you within the community if that space doesn't exist already
Hey Wafu, thank you for your heartfelt thoughts on the matter. I can tell you have a lot of passion for speed running generally. Every game has different standards, and every game chooses its goal differently. The goals must fit the context of the game and fit for those running the game. Each one of us who decided on these changes is primarily engaged in PoE as a speed runner or racer. Some of us also race in other games including games that have non-glitchless categories, so we do have perspective as to what speed running means in communities outside of PoE. Each one of us is dedicated to speed running and racing in PoE, and have put a lot of effort into creating resources, helping people learn how to speed run, promoting the speed run community, and being engaged in the community. On a personal note over the past four leagues, about 90% of my actual playtime has explicitly been for the purpose of speed running or racing. I have also spent enormous amounts of times screenshotting, studying, and solving layouts which I then push onto the broader community. Each one of these guides is a multi-day project. I am extremely passionate about speed running and racing in PoE, and I am heavily involved in pretty much every sub community within PoE that focuses on running or racing that is publicly available. Pretty much the only race/speed run format, I am not involved with is 100 pushes. This is just a small description of context from which I approach.
To move more back to the point, deathless runs for the PoE leader board categories we have right now was unanimously supported by those mods mentioned above involved the changes that were made. The community organized speed runs / races in PoE have, by an overwhelming majority, have been deathless runs. The submitted runs to PoE speedrun have, by an overwhelming majority, been deathless runs. If you tune into streamers who are heavily involved as PoE speed runners, the speed run the game deathless. If they die, they reset. These streamers include many people beyond those of us who made these changes.
Every game is different, but the way the speed run community has shaken out in PoE is with gale force winds supporting deathless runs, and barely a breeze for other approaches. If you speed run in games beyond PoE this may seem somewhat anomalous, but that doesn't mean its not speed running. It is merely a different take on speed running.
Edit: I also wanted to make clear that we are open to having SC runs as the community grows if there is sufficient interest. This was mentioned in one of my prior posts above and it is implied in another sticky about "Run Categories That Are Not Listed"
Absolutely! The point of speed running is definitely to go faster, but each speed running community acts in service of that goal in different ways that matches the context of their game. In my opinion, part of why I enjoy speed running so much is that going faster is in service of an even higher goal, mastery or skill. But more to the point, PoE also has a deep and rich history of deathless or HC being the standard for speed running and racing as another way or lever to demonstrate mastery or skill in addition to speed. Thus, for me it felt appropriate to honor that tradition while seeking to expand in other areas to allow for more flexibility such as first moving to archetypes then second broadening further to classes instead of archetypes. Other mods voting in favor in will have different answers than mine as to why deathless is preferred, but I hope my perspective can at least provide some insight. Ultimately, though as the speed running community grows things can change, and if there is enough interest in SC categories, then having some form of SC categories is a definite possibility from my perspective.
Great question, and we understand your concern about the deathless requirement being super punishing for players who are trying to get into speed running PoE or to just get better at the game. Ultimately, it is an answer that is motivated by many factors, some factors which motivated some mods and some factors which motivated others. I can only speak for myself as to what factors motivated me to vote in favor of the change.
Part of the reason involves the changes from archetypes to classes for organizing leader boards. When doing so, we went from having 3 leader boards to 7 leader boards for a particular category. Right now, the speed run board has 11 categories (only counting coop as 1). The old speed run board had 8 categories (only counting coop as 1). Thus, the old leaderboard system had 24 leader boards, which were further divided into HC and SC for a total of 48 discrete leader boards. The new system without accounting for SC/HC has 77. Even if we kept categories at 8, it would have 56. Accounting for HC/SC, the new system would have 154 or 112 leaderboards, which is a lot.
Another factor is the lack of SC specific runs submitted. Most runs submitted under the old system were deathless runs. We only had 4 submissions that have been archived in the SC runs section of the 81 runs that have been submitted since patch 3.5. If interest returns for SC, it is something that we might revisit in the future as we have indicated that we are open to run formats as long as sufficient interest is generated. Certain categories that exist on the PoE speed run website would seem to fall under this too where there is no enough interest, but the reason why those categories still persist even if they have small submission numbers is community races for those events have happened relatively recently. We do not auto-post runs for people that completed those events, and instead wait for them to post or we will from now on be working to either encourage them to post or to receive permission from them to post on their behalf.
An additional contributor is that racing and speed running in PoE is traditionally associated with deathless runs. While this may not be the best approach to onboarding new players, the expanded leader boards through class type and the fact that the first three acts and the first major boss (Brutus) are offered as racing categories can somewhat help with this as you can work in stages to reach deathless runs across a variety of classes you may be interested in playing.
Dying indeed would generally speaking be slower, but there are a number of "SC" skips you can make by having strategic deaths that would actually improve your time for certain categories. This is not something we necessarily want to encourage. Moreover, having some sort of standard penalty for a death can create issues regarding what is an appropriate penalty.
A mitigating factor to how punishing this can change can be is that there is no time threshold for a run to appear on a leader board (and there will not be one), which can allow players to go as fast as they can without dying while not having to worry about a time cut off for the leaderboard
One thing I am looking into and will be advocating for if it is feasible: is that for players interested in tracking progress / seeing relative performance is a “Progress Board” that tracks various runs and would have somewhat different formatting where players can submit a run that for some reason or other would not appear on other leader boards. For example, such as not showing migrate all, or because a death happened. This section would also not obsolete prior runs so you could track progress if you are interested at all. While this is not quite the same thing as a leader board, it also is a way to show off people working on making progress and getting better so they can eventually get on a leader board and would show up in the misc section. Whether this will be feasible or whether it will be approved by other mods, is unknown at this time.
Myself and the other mods are open to feedback and will revisit any issues that come up as necessary.
Following May 8 2021 PoE Speedrun Changes, it was decided to clear the forum section out of the few posts that were existing to ensure that posts were topical to new format. This thread serves as an archive for the few posts that existed on forum prior to that date. Linked below is a series of imgur photo links with the topic of the archived thread
We are open to seeing suggestions about various run formats that may or may not be present. One of the considerations that we have to take into account is how active such a category will be. If you are interested in trying to get a new category going, you can post a thread about the category indicating its a proposed category with an initial run under that categories rules and see if it drums up any interest. If it generates sufficient interest, the category may be added as an official category. The official categories that are currently listed on the website are those categories that are currently used or have been used relatively recently ( post 3.8 ) in community organized races. Otherwise, they are official categories because there are a fair number of runs submitted for them (Brutus Rush for example).
This post will detail all changes made to the PoE speed running website:
The format of PoE speed running is being changed after review by Balaar, Chip_Idiot, Havoc616, ImExile, Keld0rn, Tytykiller, and critical staff members from the PoE Community Racing Discord.
Among the major and most relevant changes: (1) Reverted: HC/SC as a filter subcategory will continue to exist to allow us to better evaluate interest in SC runs (2) All nontwink solo leaderboard runs must show migrate all (3) A5 and A10 skill point and lab categories have been added (4) A3 Any % category has been added (5) Runs require VoDs that do not expire. Please submit through youtube. If not make sure it is a twitch highlight (6) Leader Boards are now ranked by class within a category instead of archetype. Archetype will still be used but as an informational category rather than a ranking category. If you are unsure of archetype, a moderator will correct/select it for you on run submission (7) Occasionally there may be a PoE speed run event currently ongoing. If that is the case, the particular event will be the default selected category while it is going on. Otherwise, A5 Any % and A5 Pts+Lab will be the first two categories, followed by other categories. Brutus, Oversoul, Lvl 80, Twink A10, and Coop A10, can be found in misc category section
Minor Changes: (1) Old threads have been archived to give the board a fresh slate so topics are relevant to recent major changes. If you do not receive a reply to a question/thread within a few days, please reach out directly to a moderator. You can do so through a message or through the PoE Community Racing Discord by sending a message
Edit: Any and all rules and categories/formats or proposals to change rules/categories/formats, will be regularly reviewed by moderators. Please feel free to post a separate thread about any such requests.
If you want a format that is currently not on PoE speedrun, we are open to adding formats if sufficient interest is shown by the posting of runs for that category in this forum or in the PoE community Racing discord.
As of May 8th, 2021, SC runs will no longer count for leader board purposes. That is, all leader board runs must be deathless. Any SC only runs previously existing have been moved to an Archived SC Runs patch category. Any such runs have had their description updating to indicate what patch the run was originally from and what placement it was within the SC category.
Please note due to changes made on May 8th, 2021, runs will required to be deathless. As a result, SC runs have been moved to an "Archived SC" runs section in Patch/Version category.
