United StatesThis rule change is difficult because it leaves open holes in the verification process. I can’t think of a guaranteed way to verify a run is HC or not for a normal run except through death or requiring the runners to include s&e after killing baal. This will make us require a weirdly specific rule for HC runs to either show character creation or title reward for killing baal. Unless someone can show me a systemic way to know a normal run is HC, I fear that deathless SC runs cannot be differentiated with HC runs. There may be other drawbacks to not including character creation, but this is all I could think up.
Talking with the other mods, it sounds like the best solution would be to require player 1 (or at least one player) to show character creation. Player 1 is the person who creates game 1, and this will demonstrate the core the characters were created in.
Thoughts on this? Open for feedback.
My view is character creation is part of a speedrun, and generally this is a speedrun standard. I believe there has been a handful of online runs that have been approved with the missing character creation footage, but generally that requires a few extra steps of verifying the character is a new, level 1 character with no accidental tampering. If this was the case, an 8man run would require the verifier to watch up to 8 vods, wait for the character screen, inventory and/or party screen to open up and see everyone’s level, inventory, etc. and make sure new characters are used. I don’t think seeing a naked level 1 character in the lobby matches the burden of proof of creating a new character, however minute of an issue it may be.
I don’t think a run has been outright disqualified for not having character creation in the vod, but my preference is to have character creation through category finish all in one vod.
For the submission process, the person who is submitting the vod can provide a time stamped vod of when the timer starts, so if a viewer watches the vods they don’t have to click through a video to see when the run starts. Also, I think teams could be better coordinated when creating characters and starting the first game, too.
Hi 327, thanks for reaching out. I am not aware of a run you submitted but I think you are referring to Vela's submission. Within that submission one of the vods started at the wrong time so I asked for it to be resubmitted with a video pointing to the correct start time.
Thanks
Yea, this was part of the discussion we had over including the campaign rule "8. You are not allowed to allocate any paragon points." I think that phrase was thrown around a few times, hah, because this rule has no inherent meaning to it and some active runners have been pinging me about why we have that rule.
Does everyone agree with adding the rule "You can use all season mechanics"? If we want to allow using pre-farmed mats, then maybe add short phrase like "including pre-farmed Malignant materials."
FYI - it looks like you have to complete the first season quest to unlock the bench, and then it's a gamble which heart you get. Materials do not look particularly easy to farm, so it might turn into a significant bottleneck for those who like to grind out speedruns, especially if you're fishing for a specific heart.
Let us know. We tried crafting the eternal realm rules we thought would be popular with the most amount of speedrunners, but ultimately the community owns these categories and the most popular category ruleset should be front and center on this site. Also please discuss if you want another category that mimics a season start, that one has been discussed quite a bit recently on the D4 Speedrunning discord.
Just a clarification -
This is an RTA category, so a timer is not required for a speedrun. If a DC happens I think in most cases it's pretty explanatory, and I want to think that the mod team will be reasonably understanding... I know I've had plenty of DC's. I think it's fair to say that the timer is still going, even if it crashes or bugs out, however. Doing the campaign speedrun I think I averaged 2-5 minutes of timeloss from bugs within the game. I don't think I've DC'd yet, but I think I heard someone say that consoles crash often.
Edit - Submissions need to be one vod. If your internet goes out, make sure you are recording locally so you can upload one complete vod. Multiple vods will not be accepted (only exception I can think of is youtube only allows 10 or 12 hour videos and if the speedrun goes beyond that, you may need to create two or more videos...)
I generally think this site is for serious speedruns, in a well-defined category, that has some popularity to it. I don't think if only one or two people speedrun something in the diablo series, it should be on the site (exceptions can be for some truly epic runs like MacroBioBoi's Hell Pacifist Sorc run - https://www.speedrun.com/d2r?h=Pacifist-Hell-Sorceress&x=zd346oe2-wl3d70y8.qyzvn021-2lg1mr7l.lr3e5gml).
I love seeing people speedrun! Whatever gets people excited to do a run, I'm generally for it... It just needs to be beyond some barrier of entry... Popular categories generally take precedence on how visible it is on the site. I think the most difficult decisions we have for this site is what is in the rules and what isn't... D2R has some very simple rules to it because it's a true new game experience. D4 unfortunately is weird because mats, gold, altars, obols, etc. are all shared.
Some mods on the team requested this category and although I will most likely never participate--I'm hoping that it gains some popularity or I will recommend to remove the category.
I am aware of WoW speedruns where you just have to record all your gameplay, and prove your character was not tampered with in between VODs (i.e. probably show gear at the beginning and end of a session?). Wow has a /played feature, but unfortunately we do not have such a thing. We would have to hammer out rules for that... If it has some popularity I don't see why we couldn't add it.
This conversation has resulted in some good researching and studying. Yes, multiplying chance of event A from x attempts and event B from x attempts is not the scientific way to calculate probability, but what was presented to this forum as evidence is not "statistically impossible", and it's not even unrealistic. There is a lot of "not even closely understand[ing] how math works" in here, I agree. I already was able to replicate finding 2 amn runes, a sol, and a tir rune from normal trav in 19 consecutive runs on d2r bnet. All runes that would be useful in a hell barb run.
The more I look into this, the easier it is to find crazy (sounding) statistics for any speedrunner in any speedrun.
Thanks. I also wasn't aware that seed number can affect monster drop rates... I knew that like armor or weapon racks seem to be based on seed, and chests seem to be based on player count (and maybe seed?) but I had never heard that monster loot tables rates are affected by game seed, but I'll ask around and see if grailers have anything to say about that.
For your edited comment... It depends. If you are suggesting that the probability of dropping amn, thuls and orts were simply elevated, then the more data the better. Make as big of a sample size as possible I would think? Him NOT getting thul, amn, and ort in all the other runs is also meaningful data too. Unless you are suggesting that this was a fixed drop rate, as in no matter what, amn runes will drop every 50 kills, or amn runes will drop on the first kill and on the 69th kill (arbitrary numbers), but never else. I think the more data the better, but maybe I'm mistaken. You showed him doing 1.5 levels of council but seemed to only cherrypick the runs starting and ending with amn. I don't think that is fair analysis. If he got another amn rune or significant rune from lvl 24 to 24.5, it would be in this video too.
As for the statistically impossible... I decided to try and do some trav runs myself. I did 19 trav runs on d2r bnet (133 council members). In the first 19 trav runs I did, I got a Ral, eth, thul and tir. All runes that can be used in a hell barb run. I'm guessing that it's statistically improbable or impossible that edit: anybody else that reads this forum, or maybe even plays this game can replicate getting those 4 runes in 19 runs on p1. Is this similar in nature? Bender always forced an io rune, so there is a very high chance he's gonna see one or two amn runes in nm tower anyway before io drops.
Can you share the probability of getting exactly 1 amn, exactly 2 amns, at least 1 amn, and at least 2 amns?
Edit: using 1:1212 probability of an amn rune, and 132 monster kills.
I wrote this just before it was locked -- figured I would follow through and post it now that it's been unlocked. Hopefully the formatting still looks good.
Jym, I'd be very interested in someone coming up with such a program. If someone could come up with a program that validates LOD and/or D2R client is legit, that could be extremely valuable. Just an FYI - Diablo Interface/Diablo Run does show the command line for LOD. You can see vela's command line here:
https://diablo.run/Vela_RUS/VelaRUS256400.
I'm not an expert, but nothing looks suspicious or illegal to me in vela's command line. I don't think that necessarily means nothing else could be going on simultaneously (like another client with maphack running, which I've heard is a known thing some LOD players do), but once again I don't know. I've looked at the clips bender has shown of vela, and I've looked into the map hack allegations and I just don't see it. Vela seems to lack some skill in map reading, and in return does dumb and suspicious looking things sometimes. Get a good highlight real of the dumb and suspicious things that he manages to profit from, and suddenly we are on the forums all accusing each other of cheating. I don't know what vela looks at during his run, but I rarely see him profiting from doing non-optimized pathing. The "looking for monster groups" maphack thing only really works on assassin, and maybe druid, but the amazon example in the underground passage was just bad playing, or someone who is use to playing an assassin trying to make piles. But even with that, I don't see it. Also, vela has his map incredibly faded, that probably has a lot to do with his map reading. I don't agree with the maphack allegations bender has shown.
For the other stuff mentioned in this thread and the other 327 thread:
For the probability stuff -- I remembered that run where bender got both those amn runes doing council. I don't know how to calculate probability so someone will have to help me. Amn is a 1:1212 drop chance for all council members. Each council member is worth 3500 exp, and he gains about 426,493 exp (from 23 to 24.5). Maybe round down a little from other adds and experience shrines and he kills 400,000 exp worth of council members, or 114 kills. He horks most of them, maybe we can say he horks 2/3 of them with lvl 3 find item of 24%. 114x2/3x24% simulates another 18 kills (correct me if I'm wrong, this is a lot of math).
114+18 = 132. 132/1212 is 10.8%. 10.8% chance of getting one amn rune from council just like bender did. This is where I really need help with the math. For two amn runes to drop, is it like 5.4% (just divide by 2?), or is it like 10.8%^2 = 1.16% chance? Or maybe I'm just way off, when I took statistics 10 years ago I remember there being very non-obvious rules to calculating probability. But I think it's in the 1-5% chance of 2 amn runes dropping from this sample size. Probably not something worth bringing up in a forum.
I want to say that was the only time he tried council member strats because he found a +3 find item helm (and his sarina looked meh as seen in 327's video). What he did not have was io drops. I watched him smack his head against the nm tower the whole week and he never got black + strength + whatever faster than like an hour in the tower, or like 30+ runs. Trust me, I watched those barb streams like a hawk, and after about a week of 8-10 hour streams he beat my 7:24 time.
Look at his PB nm andy time in the timer, and look at the current run. His NM Andy time is garbage in both of those runs because he forced black runeword. He had to transmute 3 hel runes to make black.
Also silopen shows 1:21 chance of an io dropping. Not sure which database is more accurate or why they are showing different numbers. I'm not going to attempt to recalculate 327's numbers, but my gut feeling says we're looking closer to 3-5% chance of this benderluck(TM) (assuming 327's 1-3% number is accurate).
But calculating rng in diablo 2 is insane. I could easily pull out outrageous numbers like vela getting chromatic ire from hell izual. That's a 1:68,000 chance, and it's an incredible weapon for LOD sorceress to finish out hell CS and a5 with +3 skills, among other stats.
Do I suspect vela of altering drop rate chances? No. He got that ravenfrost on amazon that I mentioned earlier, also an incredible class-specific item. Over the past year he's gotten his fair share of sanders boots (and his chat instantly blows up everytime in laughter and memes). I know, because I enjoy watching vela streams. He's a great speedrunner, and we were friends (or at least friendly towards each other) up until when I told him to leave my stream for accusing bender of cheating several months ago--I was even a VIP in his channel. Maybe that's why he decided to throw the cheating allegations my way, I don't know.
RNG is incredibly complex to analyze, and finding runs from years ago (ironically in runs that didn't PB) is just going to turn into slander being thrown at everyone. Also, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we do have cheaters in the community. I just don't see it, and certainly haven't seen anything worth banning runs and/or runners over. The macro thing might have something to it, but otherwise I don't really suspect anyone of cheating, and without real evidence it seems counterproductive to plaster the forums with it. The macro thing would be a really dumb way to cheat; making a macro for casting frozen armor or to swapcast something that about anyone can achieve 90%+ success rate with seems like a lame way to disqualify your runs.
In the past several years the only analysis I've seen someone show of cheating was 327's video against aniceeggsample. 327's videos in the other thread are new to me, and now might explain why vela felt nobody took him seriously last year. Maybe he should have mentioned such a video exists. Maybe these videos were forwarded to other mods, but I was not made aware. Vela demanding an apology for the community/mods/whoever for not taking his cheating accusations seriously (because he provided no evidence) now kind of makes sense why he's mad, maybe, but once again, he never actually provided real examples and at least some of us weren't aware of 327's videos.
Vela, Just to clarify a couple of things - the 6:19:19 you are referring to is my LOD amazon time from almost 3 years ago. I would be very careful throwing out accusations or slights with inaccurate information.
It looks like either I didn't update my splits to whatever my current PB was, or my time was 5:29. If you have ever watched my stream, you'd know that "PB" and "WR" are often not my PB or the WR. It's times I put in there because I'm interested in comparing against those specific times/splits or I'm lazy.
I tend to think my time was in the 5:30 to 5:45 range. Just like almost every other race during the 8-week tournament, I did a no-reset run to get the mechanics of the run down. My final time, 5:14, put me in 2nd place (not the leader of the tournament?), 7s in front of bender, a minute behind kano, and 10 minutes ahead of 327 (whom competed in the same category). By the rules of the tournament, my run was 30 minutes in front of you, a newer speedrunner/competitor that never made top-5 the entire tournament.
I believe Bender did the 5:29 marked "WR" in my splits. He also did a no-reset run early that week and decided he wanted to try other classes. I think after I "did runs the whole week" it's not too reasonable to have a run with similar times as bender and 327, and to beat them with the gear I got. Accusing me of getting a 65 minute PB simply because I got good gear is a "sham" or blatantly ridiculous. My gear sounds similarly good to your 2nd fastest SC amazon run (a couple weeks ago?) which had a ravenfrost ring (which I could probably say I've gotten ravenfrost "only once (and not on amazon)"), which is significantly better for amazon than using titans revenge for plague javing hell ancients down. Also in that run you have duskdeep, nokozan, dwarf star, +2 jav gloves. Runs with good gear happens, and you are also a prime example. Sometimes good gear drops, and it happens more in runs where a 30mf nagel ring drops early on. We also watched you improve your hell amazon time significantly within a span of one or two weeks. My progress in D2R hell amazon mimics your progress in LOD hell amazon, and now you know how a hell amazon run can come abruptly to an end late in the run due to immunities or almost unavoidable deaths, hence why I agree with your statement "all is bad" for me that week, until my final time.
As for aniceeggsample, you can refer to the LOD mods for that decision, I was not involved. My understanding is the speedrun.com site mods got involved and recommended a course of action for his run.
Vela, you often accuse speedrunners of cheating often within your community. Me included. It gets around. You openly accused bender a while back, on this website, of getting a lot of sanders boots. Bender and sanders boots is a meme that comes up regularly in your chat. What is this about? Is it not even a little bit hypocritical to ask for an apology? I don't get it. You even just admitted to cheating in diablo 3, the game you are also known for and speedrun. I don't follow the logic.
For Bender--I will once again say I do not suspect bender of cheating. I learn from his streams, and I often watch what he does extremely closely, as a skilled speedrunner myself. He doesn't do things that make no sense, and profit from it. "Learn from Mekalb and try to beat his D2R Hell SC p1 Amazon" is an extraordinarily ironic statement, as you accused bender of cheating for having abnormally good gear. I think it's fair to say that any of the top 5-10 speedrunners could take a race or a world record at any point from another, and is what has happened all in the last couple of months. Kano, 327, myself, Llama, Bender, Bokser have all won, playing against each other in a race, in the last ~10 competitions (with cash prizes) we have had in the past 6 months.
I would support 2.4, if it's an option. Can we still do the advanced improve load times extract -direct -txt with PTR?
Sorry I missed this somehow.
Almost every top/active speedrunner has a discord. Pick your favorite flavor, go there and start asking questions. Most have some sort of questions or diablo 2 general chat channel where you can ask questions.
I personally think Teo has the most well-rounded starting point for speedrunning (https://pf-mail.wixsite.com/d2speedruns). Some of the talents are different than the current meta (like amazon is poison jav + exploding arrow until lvl 20), but overall a good guide. Other guides can be found https://www.speedrun.com/d2lod/guides.
In this guide section you can find spreadsheets, youtube videos and pictures, so you can pick your favorite way to learn.
My favorite option is just watching speedruns live. Go follow a couple of speedrunners on twitch and wait for them to go live. Or look for live streams here: https://www.speedrun.com/d2r/streams. Ask all the questions you want. Most speedrunners welcome questions and answer them the best they can.
what if you do it faster than 10 - 12 hours
looks fun!
