This is incredibly well done. Thank you so much for the quick response and I will definitely be attempting this in the future!

I’m interested in speedrunning PvZBfN, but having to create new console accounts or wiping the game data every time to meet the “new game” criteria is troublesome for livestreams, especially Mixer which is tied to an Xbox Account.

I understand that “new game” ensures that dialogue/scenes/quests are the same for all runners and that there are no bonus upgrades for high-levels accounts, but other than that, there shouldn’t be any factor than a level 100 player has over a level 1 player.

My question / idea is would it be possible to have speedrun categories of each zone ( all quests, or individual quests) where they are not run as “new game” but instead run as “no upgrades”? If we eliminate the use of any upgrades (I don’t think cosmetics matter but you could ban those too) then we give runners of any level the opportunity to play on an even playing field.

Overall, these would be categories for players who have already completed the quests but now want to go back in and do the quests as fast as possible. Yeah, some scenes are non-repeatable, but there has got to be a way to develop a category of this nature.

Thank you for listening to my TED Talk