Restricted vs Unrestricted has been the cause of a fair bit of drama due to the arbitrary decisions of which bugs are or aren't allowed in restricted. Moving all bugs to unrestricted would cause the category to be inaccurate, as almost all bugged runs do follow the typical restrictions. Changing the categories to Glitchless and Glitched will have almost no impact on how people currently play the game, but will have a great impact on the organization and integrity of the leaderboards.
All runs appearing on the site will follow basic restrictions:
- No racial skills
- No prestacked on-kill sigils
- No precasted rune pets
- No revive enhancements
- No precasting LoyF if you swap off the trait
- No interface bug abuse Interface bug abuse is just as uninteresting as the other items on the list, and it simply is not comparable to other bugs. Abusing Anet's garbage hero panel code is not gameplay. Examples of interface abuse include:
- Soulbeast merge + pet out
- Multiple signet
- Casting skills and swapping them without the slot going on cooldown due to traitline movement
Runs may not include usage of extreme bugs which de-legitimize the run, such as:
- Precasting multiple preparations
- Dealing dps far beyond what should be possible, such as with the shadow flare or renegade trait bugs
- The boss deciding to despawn before the win condition is met
It is clear at this point in our speedrunning scene that a run which does not follow these basic restrictions is exceedingly rare, and it simply makes sense to apply the rules globally. Runs which do not follow these rules will be collected in a google sheet in order to have a complete collection of speedruns. New runs can still be submitted to the site and rejected for the purpose of creating a link to be added to the google sheet.
What constitutes a glitch? There may be arguments over the definition of glitch, or what Anet's intentions are. However, for the purposes of sorting the leaderboards, anything that could be perceived as notably different than a typical run (and therefore not comparable to a glitchless run) should be placed in the glitched category.
Examples of what causes a run to be placed in the glitched category:
General: Going out of bounds Gorseval: Pulling the spirits during the small time window that they can be pulled Keep Construct: Causing the boss to skip a phase by CCing him at the same time as a phase transition Xera: Skipping the 40% or 20% platforms through CS or being off the platform Cairn: Preventing agony from spawning Samarog: Causing the split phase to function abnormally (Samarog should only come out when Guldhem dies) Deimos: Escaping the demonic realm with CS (You should only escape by bringing saul to 50% hp) Dhuum: Preventing or escaping spirit form (You should only exit spirit form by reaching 5 Energy Threshold) Conjured Amalgamate: Using Continuum Split to use Conjured Slash multiple times (This is a key fight mechanic which relies on the swords being a limited resource) Sabir: Forcing a loading screen which causes portals to forget their restrictions. Sabir again: Standing off the boss platform in order to prevent him from casting major abilities for the remainder of the phase