This game has been out for a year and unlike the other Bethesda games that came before it, we have been playing through the intro, an intro with little to no tech or skill required to do faster than anyone else.
Much like Skyrim, there are arguments to be made about you doing inputs to create your character and such, still the time investment to watch the intro cutscene is not required to do a any% run of the game.
Fallout 4 admittedly is abit more expansive in this aspect, but the idea still counts. This is something we should have done a year ago (when it wouldn't have been such a pain to implement).
As a community we did a poll a few months back, wherein we overwhelmingly decided that it is ok to start your runs when you get full player control. This being after the freezer cutscene. (This poll was conducted on the Fallout Discord server which is linked in the "Resources" tab on speedrun.com)
Now comes the problem about how to time this into runs. One solution would be to remove the intro from everyones times on the leaderboard, i don't have a problem watching everyones runs and doing so by hand.
There are other solutions that would be more messy. Like starting from a set time, adding time after completed runs.
Like i said, the poll was conducted more than two months ago and has been available to vote on for that length of time. So as a community we have officially agreed that this is ok. I have therefore added a standardized autosave for the start of the run, you can find this in the "resources" tab. You may make your own autosave to start the run from, how to do so is explained there.
I simply want input now on how to fix everyones times.
-Havrd
I kinda agree on starting at 0 after the freezer and just cutting away the intro for good. In my mind it makes much more sense to start the run "where the run actually begins" makes a lot more sense, to me atleast. From my brief moment of running Skyrim Marriage, it's much for enjoyable (despite the runs being crap) to being able to reset after 20 seconds. Despite this I wouldn't mind if anyone wants to keep the intro, but I doubt anyone will miss it.
I like starting the timer at 0 there, however this kind of takes away from people that grinded through tutorial for a good time. But you can please everyone, and i think starting at 0 from the freezer will please the most people.
I'm sure if we would start the timer at 0 after freezer, we would go through all the runs from the leaderboards and adjust them aswell so there would be virtually no difference.
@ManBun See, i do agree with you about the grindy bit, but those runs have out-dated language packs. Those runs were done on English, while French is significantly faster. So they are actually not losing anything at all. Their Intro times have been obsolete for a while. @Jinjenia knows exactly how much time French saves.
Fair enough. Will times be retimed? if so there is probably 0 reason to not start at the freezer.
If we decide to completely cut away the start of the runs, seems like the most viable option, all submitted PB's would be retimed. From what I can tell, we have two options:
- To start at freezer but add time at the start. This makes doing the entire intro doable, and possibly faster if we decide for a time penalty.
- To cut away the intro completely, and start all runs after freezer at 0 seconds. This means retiming runs, and makes doing the intro stupid. My opinion is to do the second option, as the first one would be just confusing, and even with a time penalty for start after freezer, im sure nobody would start at the house ever again.
I don't think we should give runners a time penalty because they want to have fun with the speedrun rather than do... yknow... THAT. If we choose as a community to start at the freezer and retime all runs i would be happy to help.
I think the fact that "this is a hobby" is kind of important. I didn't really think about that initially when thinking about this new rule, but it isn't some really important thing, it's just a speedgame, it's for fun, there's no point in making runners suffer just to keep the authenticity of the run.
I don't disagree with any of the above but I would suggest that you may want to ask the top 3 runners what their view is!?
I don't think a better time should make your opinion any more valid than the guy on the bottom of the leaderboard.
I agree with Manbun and J00lsn at the same time. That is why the poll has been out for two months and why i made this forum post. If those runners care, they have their say like everyone else. They are also all members of the Discord Server where the voting took place. (actually BT might have left, because he is done with the game) They have had more than enough time. I have tried to make this as fair and smooth as possible, although it really is ashame this was not done sooner. But i hope it is absolutely clear that this is something everyone agrees with, which would obviously cause little to no complications or drama.
We have two options, cut away the start or start at a set time. I suggest we have a vote for that aswell and get done with this.
I'm not a runner of this game, but this is ridiculous. Starting a run from a different point than the actual beginning of the game just because that beginning is frustrating and long is simply wrong. You may as well start anywhere else in the game and make up some new argument to justify that decision.
"an intro with little to no tech or skill required to do faster than anyone else."
From what I have seen, you have to do some precise button mashing and it's not like everyone is getting consistently same times.
Unfortunately I didn't notice the poll on Discord, but since it was overwhelmingly decided to accept this rule, it's not like my vote would make any difference.
Would you say the same thing about Skyrim Ewil? It really is a shame we did not do this earlier, this misunderstanding about it as a "change" wouldn't even be a thing then.
"From what I have seen, you have to do some precise button mashing and it's not like everyone is getting consistently same times. " There is no precise, its regular pressing a button when you see the npcs start talking (this is impossible to mess up on and everyone does it as fast as everyone else). You mash conversation with the salesman, this is also consistantly as fast as everyone else. The rest is literally watching cutscenes.
The reason some times are different are the fact that the newer runs are on french which saves time in the intro and the entire game.
Calling this "simply wrong" is kind of ironic when you do not know or understand why we are doing it, and as you can see. This has been a long process, although it really should have been done a loooooong time ago, just like they did for Skyrim. There are certainly alot of other games with the same rules, only that they had the rule in place from the begining.
I do appreciate that you would take your time to lay out your opinion on the matter though.
I don't follow Skyrim community, so I didn't know they do something similar.
Maybe the button mashing is consistent as you say (it never is, but whatever), but there's still the matter of running around, which can result in different times, although it's not that huge of a difference. If this would be an auto-scroller like the intro part of Half-Life, then why not, but not when you as the runner actually have to do controller inputs.
"There are certainly alot of other games with the same rules, only that they had the rule in place from the begining."
I'd really like to know which ones, because I haven't seen any.
