AustraliaI literally went to run assassin on LoD this morning and had to disable 3dfx because I only have D2DX and not plain glide, because I didn't think it would be allowed. I think if you run in an old aspect ratio (4:3, so whatever equivalent to 800x600) it should be fine. I'm very supportive of bringing this in.
A few people have bandied about 1-80 speedruns over the years, as after 80 it becomes a real grind. The other smaller categories seem less interesting than standard runs, 1-25 levelling was pretty standard in the old P1 Hell runs in LoD (to get past the experience penalty) and 26-45 just seems like a subset of the Eldritch/Pindle grind in the singer barb hell runs.
From a viewer's perspective I get annoyed trying to guess where the actual speedrun starts - the "glimpse" function in autoseek on twitch/youtube is often misleading on long videos.
From a runner's perspective, when highlighting part of a vod it's much easier to find the start of the timer counting (since you can just pick a point in the vod and do some basic math based on what RTA timer says) than it is to find the character creation, which may be 5 seconds hidden among 10-15 minutes of "downtime" in lobby screens etc. This only gets worse when there is a 30 second run in the middle of everything where someone accidentally created a ladder character or something so you have to re-create with even more lobby time to navigate.
At least for me highlighting vods is sometimes buggy, so the less finetuning I have to do in that editor the better.
Can we remove "include character creation" as a requirement for online runs? Coordinating start times is a pain so often it will be minutes between character creation and "player taking control of character". Seeing naked level 1 in the lobby should be sufficient. Seems like a win all around for both mods and runners.
I think it makes sense for single player (to avoid preloaded runs) but online is different. Cheers.
Did another I'm slightly less embarrassed by (spoiler alert - saved by a 1st way arcane and marsh skip).
Okay I did a complete normal run and I gotta be honest, I don't think many people will play this category. It's everything you hate about Players 1 runs vs Players X, but worse.
Okay so I've been playing around with this for a couple of days and I think there is a more subtle but extremely valid point in here: there should be a category for ladder runs.
After 2 attempts running with a ladder character speedrun style, the difference in monster power is actually noticeable. I only did Zon, but fighting Andy at level 13 felt the same as fighting her at level 12 on single player, and same with Duriel, fighting him at 17 felt similar to 16 on SP. I actually didn't think ladder messed with normal difficulty monster stats at all, but it certainly felt different so I'm sceptical.
The old LoD multiplayer runs all used to be done on ladder, and we know from the latest ladder reset times that it definitely makes a difference.
So my point is -resetofflinemaps wouldn't represent the same as doing bnet without lag, because ladder actually bumps up the monster difficulty as well as adding the spice of rubber banding and ping issues. Also @Slivenius, we should switch to doing our duos non-ladder ;)
I'm going to ignore the glitchless ideas, because I think Jym addressed them pretty well above.
I support the addition of solo bnet runs as a subcategory similar to NG+, not sure how to best integrate ladder vs non ladder for multiplayer runs.
Hey all - so as I'm sure most of us are aware, back in patch 2.3 Llama had a "weekly" speedrun event with different classes (1st event here: https://arena.gl/events/7MrN6P ).
A bunch of the runs submitted for this event aren't on the leaderboards - some of which would actually hold 1st place currently in the P1 leaderboards (e.g. Barb ). I'm happy enough to go through these and give details to Indrek in maintaining his WR history document in the "Resources", but not sure if anyone else has any ideas?
I still have 1.06 unpacked - it was working for me the day I posted this thread (which was after the latest patch had installed), but stopped working a couple of days ago (just launches to black screen and then immediately crashes). I'm not sure if this is a me issue or a more general thing. Haven't unpacked the latest patch yet.
With the release of patch 2.3 I'd just like to mention it's probably worth people who have the ability to set up backups of the existing TXT extracts for potential "optimisation"/"time travelling" by future runners.
I noted in one of the many Discords that I already wish we had an archive somewhere of the version on release for faster character deletion, fast potion buying and potentially easier hell runs due to the initial "immunity breaking" mechanics. If anyone has this (or knows someone who might!) that would be awesome to share at some point (even just the assurance that it exists would be cool).
Not sure if this is the place for bug reports but my game crashes/hangs indefinitely occasionally when it is in a load screen, and when that happens I need to restart the plugin otherwise IGT stays paused the whole time after restarting the game. Is there a way to address this so if the Diablo 2 instance itself closes during a load screen, the timer keeps rolling, and then resets its status?
For an example see 2:14:27-2:15:00 in my HC necro run https://www.speedrun.com/d2r/run/z07vqnoy (I'm happy to have a minute penalty applied here or whatever, it's not like my time is competitive, I'm mostly using it as a record of my own changes in ability over time).
That move to use the +10 energy Bone Wand is genius! And that weaving through the mobs in the Arcane? Beautiful. Wish I could do that half as well as you. What an amazing run.
Hey everyone, inspired by the breaking of the 2 hour barrier I've begun work on a script for a video outlining the history of 8 man runs. First of all, massive thanks to @LaV who shared some resources with me a while ago when working on the Kill Baal Normal P1 history - every time I think I've found something outside his history I end up at the same place.
In my last videos I got a bit rushed at the end and missed a couple of things (TPScrollbot's work on Top Left town exit and A3 Jungle maps are the most prominent) as well as neglected to properly emphasise some important factors (the most important thing in Teo's sorc runs to beat assassin time was grinding XP early, rather than pushing forward as soon as he has Tal Eth). Plus I only just barely caught that Indrek was first to do Beetleburst strats and misattributed shield dropping to Nightfall when it should have been Agguh (though I corrected this in a pinned comment).
What I'd really appreciate is anyone willing to help out in reading over my scripts in progress and giving feedback. I've set up the google doc as open for view only for everyone with the link, but since it's in my real name I'd rather share that through discord or something similar.
I know this forum is a little quiet so I'm not expecting any responses quickly. Fortunately I'm not in a huge rush to complete this project - I'm only about half way through writing up the earliest 8 man available on YouTube after a week of research.
Sadly, I think this argument falls into a general argument about category uses of launcher command line inputs. In general the principles of speedrunning are around using the inbuilt features of the basic game, and this one feels like more of a dev/debug tool than an actual game feature (unlike TCPIP in LOD).
Which is annoying because we all know the jails map is a pain to find and is the optimal strategy at present, so it forces a grind over the first 13 minutes or so of the game. Plenty of other communities have gone through similar things (MK64 clips, Windwaker battleship game, Goldeneye lookdown), and come through the other side so I have faith this one will make it through.
Edit - throwaway thought about commandline arguments: rather than create 50 million different categories, I guess you could create another top level split for "uses command line" vs "standard" (like the PD2 category extension in LOD) and then the "uses command line" category has a field where you include all the command line arguments you used. 🤷 Commandline was complicated in LOD because you needed it for non-game changing effects like windowed, background sound and different shaders. Is this a problem for D2R?
I think mixed SC/HC makes sense at the start of records, but keeping track of the statistics at the same time can help if we want to split it later. One thing I have in mind is should we be tracking version/patch reference as well? I hear there was a hotfix to stop cold mastery breaking cold immunes in a recent patch, which could impact some times (I don't see your HC Hell runs on the leaderboard @Indrek, but this would potentially have had an impact).
Not that there is currently a way to change the patch you're playing in, but it's prevalent in other communities and might come up in the future. D2LOD just had the habit of making the game easier with every patch, so this was never really a big deal because the optimal patch to run on was always the most recent. I wouldn't put it as a "category" (D2 has a lot of these already), but perhaps something to include. Food for thought.
