¤ Separate categories or leaderboards for each difficulty: Easy, Normal, Advanced, Expert Speedrunning on easy is not impressive IMO. Expert is. So let's add new leaderboards for each difficulty just like there are for a game like Mario Maker.

There are people who want to speedrun this game on harder difficulties, so let's let them.

¤ You may not change the difficulty. If we have separate categories, an easy one wouldn't be easy if you keep changing to expert. Mixed if anything.

¤ Purist/Glitchless speedruns. At least create a separate category/leaderboard for it. You're using exploits that are fixed in later versions to skip parts of the game. This should at least count like an any% category/leaderboard.

¤ Add a category/leaderboard for autoexec.cfg scripts. There are some that definitely make this game a bit easier. Example: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=487027371

Also, hi. I'm new here. I saw the speedrun on AGDQ and this one: Which is the reason I'm hoping to see these changes.

Btw I've shared this post to a few places, so you might be seeing a lot of new accounts here.

I agree with what you have said mostly... the only thing I'd have to say is instead of banning autoexec/lerp scripts, maybe have another category/leaderboard for that too?

Good idea, more runs like that would be great.

@katielumb123 Yeah, only reason I added the ban of autoexec was because of the example I used. I forgot to remove the "ban" part. Fixed now.

I personally don't see it or want to see it banned or have a separate category/leaderboard for it. I wouldn't see myself playing without lerp either. I can't even think of anyone I know who aren't using lerp.

I'm sure there are some people who speedrun this game who aren't using lerps, so it would at the very least be a little tooltip note that say: "No lerps used" or something. But even then nobody really cares. Only works as a way for them to make their runs just a little more impressive.

¤There aren't enough differences between the difficulties to warrant separate categories. It's been this way since L4D1. This is why difficulty changing is allowed. The only things that change are reaction times of infected, as well as damage scaling for survivors and infected. Although I'm not fully opposed to having separate categories for different difficulties, some skips would be very hard or damn near impossible to do on harder difficulties consistently, such as ones that include hopping on the infected. Speaking frankly, running on anything other than Easy would be stupid. You could also be swarmed by a horde at any point and lose the run. There's no reason to run on a harder difficulty as we're trying to see who can get the best time in the category, not trying to show off.

¤If we do get separate categories for difficulties, I agree with this point. An Expert run should be a full Expert run, and vice versa.

¤There hasn't really been an interest in doing glitchless speedruns, but I can understand the appeal and I wouldn't be opposed to this if it were implemented.

¤Add-ons are frowned upon as it is. We don't have a general consensus on if add-ons should be banned entirely, however we do have a list of frowned-upon add-on types. As for that specific add-on, if you're good at the game, you'll already be able to hear everything you need to hear, and if you don't, many people opt to use captions to pick up what their ears don't.

¤I don't understand how changing lerp gives you a huge advantage. As far as I know, it just makes animations less or more jerky, and doesn't really have much of an affect on solo runs. It does nothing to the hitboxes, deadstopping is the same, etc. However, we should be keeping the game as vanilla as possible, so keeping the game at a standard lerp should be enforced, maybe by having net_graph on future runs. (Net_graph shows lerp, right?)

I disagree with you on that there aren't enough differences between the difficulties: "...rare to see a Horde outside of the occasional Crescendo Event, whereas on Expert, it's likely you'll face a Horde around every corner." On easy difficulty they receive just 1 damage per hit, 0.5 if attacking a Survivor's back. Meanwhile you receive 20-40 damage for every hit in expert. The AI overall is much smarter on expert and the tank also becomes a mobile witch (instant incaps on any hit). More info: http://left4dead.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty

It's a completely different experience in the game you're playing, just like any other game with harder difficulties which people also speedrun on. Losing to a horde comes down to skill. Like I mentioned before: you're likely to face hordes on every corner in Expert. That's just the nature of the difficulty. Sure, the run may overall be slower than an easy one but that's why it should be in a different leaderboard/category.

So why not have both, get the best time for all the campaigns or individual ones and to show off that the time you just got was on expert. We shouldn't be having easy and expert runs on the same leaderboard when they are so different.

There hasn't really been an interest in doing glitchless runs on this site, but I've seen plenty of comments elsewhere where people frown upon exploiting so much on easy difficulty. Most of the pro competitive players that I've seen certainly think so at least.

Yeah, I think I've been convinced at this point to remove the lerp part all together. I guess you're right about it not giving that huge of an advantage. It makes it less jerky for special infected and more jerky for common infected. It's a bigger advantage when playing in versus than against bots if anything IMO. I feel like so many people already use lerp I feel it's unnecessary to change it specifically.

Yeah, net_graph does show lerp.

Here are some comments from the Left 4 Dead 2 subreddit who didn't bother creating an account:

3yebex (Twitch.tv/3ybx): If it's a huge advantage and anyone can use it then why don't you just damn well use it. There is zero need to have a different category for something like this, which is actually a preference and not a requirement.

There is no need though for a separate category for the special snowflakes. More categories will just add to confusion for people looking through. The only thing I would want a separate category for is current and past versions. Using the most recent version should be a category separated from using the older versions.

HighCookie: This game is too old for people to still not understand /use lerp. Lerp makes no difference to the run and you arnt a special because you used 100+ you're just raising the chance of random shit ruining run and its certainly not in the same pool as scripts.

Here's another idea: How about Realism too? I simply see no harm in more categories/leaderboards. :^)

I mostly agree with Canterlott. The amount of categories this'll give will just cause empty leaderboards, or perhaps a run at most in each category. Pretty biased here, because I really don't care for LMOE and bhop script so I already think it's clogged up. In addition, only expert seems worthwhile. I assure you it'll be very, very enjoyable due to the randomness of this game!

Also, nice to see actual competitive players go fast. Didn't know Dawkins & Co. did that run. I always thought it'd be far more interesting to watch than just a bunch of scrubs.

But what's the harm in having empty leaderboards? Every leaderboard starts out empty at some point, right. Who knows, people who usually do easy runs might start doing runs on normal difficulty.

But yeah, if only one leaderboard could get added, it should be expert.

If I came across as shitting on your ideas without even thinking about them, that's not what I meant at all. I'd have no problems with glitchless/expert/more runs in general. However, for a category to be created it would make more sense to have runs to post first. Not only that, but a lot of the categories, as well as the IL runs, only have one or two submissions because barely anyone speeds this game as it is. This is why we're somewhat against adding more categories; it's just overwhelming. Some leaderboards have been up for a very long time and we still have yet to see some modern runs. (Main/All Campaigns Bhop, some ILs, LMoE Main/All Campaigns, and so on.) It all comes down to whether or not the community as a collective considers it a good idea and if the mods aren't dead and feel like editing the categories. People can still run expert/glitchless/etc. at their own leisure without it being featured on the board, as well. Don't let a leaderboard, or a lack thereof, stop you from playing what you want to play.

Just ask Me for a new category or anything

i am going to kill myself

edit: it does not matter how impressive a speedrun is. it is about speed, not challenge. i'd even argue the ability to change at any time adds a significant amount of depth to the run and makes each attempt more dynamic and interesting. feel free to jerk yourself off over how good you are at expert mode, though. i won't stop you

edit 2: why give console commands that make the game easier if you won't even play on the easiest difficulty smh rn fam

shut up

Honestly, the current way the game is run relies on changing difficulty. I can't see any possible need for more categories to keep difficulties separate. Complaining about easy is just pathetic.

Good talk guys.

I'd say an Expert category would be cool, I'd always wanted to try it myself. However, again, as Yashi stated, speedruns are about speed, not challenge, foremost, so your first post just dissing speedruns because of the difficulty was rather brash and rude. Also having intermediate difficulties would be stupid and pointless. Hardest, and fastest is how it should be.

Although I do like the idea of glitchless/exploitless runs, there'd need to be a clear consensus on how and what is allowed/disallowed before runs are done of any kind. I'd say grouping Expert with glitchless for maximum challenge mode would be fine as well, since glitchless is already an arbitrary challenge addition, so might as well add it to expert as well.

I'm not sure what all the fuss is about not having a separate difficulty category. Just because a previous game in the series has categories set in stone doesn't mean another game in the series needs one. Just like how some games have "Any%" and "100%", I see no problem having a "AnyDifficulty" and "ExpertDifficulty" category.

The A.I. doesn't get smarter on higher difficulty by the way, it stays pretty garbage. Increasing difficulty does the following:

☼A shorter time-span between natural Hordes. ☼A reduction in health items freely spawning outside of checkpoints. ☼Increased damage of the Infected, as we as increased health for common infected. ☼Reaction time is shorter across all the A.I. It's still the same, just a console variable(CVar) determines how quickly they are allowed to calculate responses. Includes survivor bots, common infected, and special infected. ☼Director is more likely to spawn things during supposed difficulty, in an attempt to damage/finish you off. ☼Friendly-fire damage.

No where does it make the A.I. any smarter, but rather just makes the game less forgiving. If you play Easy mode and don't get hit, then switching to Expert mode won't be any different because you weren't getting hit in the first place.

[quote="3yebex"]whoa nelly[/quote]

I'm not sure what all the fuss is about not having a separate difficulty category. The fuss is that we already have a complete clusterfuck of categories that barely anyone runs in the first place and nobody really cares about. Adding more categories isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

The A.I. doesn't get smarter on higher difficulty by the way, it stays pretty garbage. While I do agree the A.I. is wonky, the fact that so many factors are changed about how the A.I. works corresponding to the difficulty level means that the A.I. does indeed get smarter or more stupid depending on which difficulty you play on. How else would you describe the A.I. change? You even listed the changes to the A.I. yourself right after stating that it doesn't change. I don't understand what you're trying to say here, so some elaboration or a different explanation would be great.

If you play Easy mode and don't get hit, then switching to Expert mode won't be any different because you weren't getting hit in the first place. You're directly contradicting yourself there. More zombies at a faster pace that react quicker to your movements, hit you harder, take more damage to kill, and swarm you faster definitely means that the way you play the game will be completely different as opposed to playing on Easy. You also forgot to add that difficulties use the z_common_limit cvar, which change the amount of zombies allowed on the map at once that can swarm you and destroy you; overall this makes the game even more difficult for anyone doing Expert runs, which proves my point even more.

tl;dr holy fuck calm down everyone its just a speedgame leaderboard

[quote=Canterlott] ... [/quote]

How else would you describe the A.I. change? As I said, the A.I. doesn't get smarter. The special infected (and common infected) follow the exact same procedures, paths, spawns, regardless of difficulty. Difficulty simply reduces the time in which they're allowed to react, as they see you (their target) but the game is telling them; "Okay, it's normal mode. Delay using primary ability by 2000 miliseconds.".

That's not smarter, it's the same A.I. as easy mode just simply being told it can react quicker. If you were to start up easy mode and just change the CVar controlling their reaction time, they'll still act like the same ole A.I. in easy mode just with expert-mode reaction time.

One of many examples of how the A.I. does not, in fact, get better.

The only thing that will definitely smarter is the Director. He is much more punishing on expert mode and is more willing to spawn Tanks/Witches in your way while rushing and spawn hordes during struggling times.

You're directly contradicting yourself there. (ect) I play expert mode and versus mode quite often. Versus mode uses a modified version of normal difficulty, and putting it simply they are near identical. Common Infected do not notice you quicker/later on different difficulty levels unless easy mode has that completely unique.

Also it's my understanding that z_common_limit is set to 30 on PC and 25 on Xbox/Promod and doesn't change with difficulty. The only thing that might changed is the amount of reserved zombies (which I don't remember which CVar controls that while writing this post) that might change with difficulty.

[quote="3yebex"]words and stuff[/quote]

That way of putting it makes more sense, then, as opposed to saying that the A.I. gets smarter. We both had the same meaning in mind, though; I was just articulating incorrectly because I'm a retard.

I have noticed that on Easy mode it is a lot easier to run past commons without being detecting as fast, but I haven't tested it out on other modes except Expert. I mainly noticed this in the beginning of blood harvest, because on easy you can get a good head start running through the beginning of the map, they tend to stagger a bit or stand up slowly at times before charging, but on Expert they tend to swarm you quickly after entering their vision.

And I'm fairly certain that the z_common_limit changes along with difficulty, but I just don't feel like updating/opening L4D2 right now to test it. Not like it really matters that much, anyway.

But to get back to the main subject at hand, I agree with Cyberdemon. I'd assume that any skips that break the linear path, such as the elevator skip in Dead Center or common hopping route in The Parish, along with any crescendo skips, such as the Dark Carnival and No Mercy finales should be ruled out right off the bat. I would also venture to guess that bunnyopping wouldn't be allowed, as well, considering it's a physics exploit. (Not that bhopping in L4D2 is consistent enough to be viable in a run without a script, regardless.) What else am I missing?

just submit your expert run as it is, i really dont see a point to add a new category.