Timing rules have been updated as we now have GLcoder's excellent autosplitter available. Runs using old timing will not be re-timed outside of top 3.

No Major Glitches has been added.

I've had this up for a couple weeks now, unless we get further feedback within the next few days, I'll add the category NMG with the following rules.

All normal game rules apply. All story quests must be completed. All three weapons must be obtained. Breath Mask and Underwater Charge must be obtained. No use of Battery grab glitch.

Ok, so after double checking the Underground Lake quest, the rules would need to explicitly require Whip, Breath Mask, and Underwater Charge to prevent Early Key or Drown Cancelling from having major impacts on routing.

So, improved proposal: All normal game rules apply. All story quests must be completed. All three weapons must be obtained. Breath Mask and Underwater Charge must be obtained. No use of Battery grab glitch.

Do we see any ways for drown cancelling to add value anywhere in a run if both the breath mask and underwater charge are required by category rules?

Like, it's pretty hugely unintended, but the only thing it does is allow an early spark key to skip underwater charge and breath mask.

I'm looking at No Major Glitches as an additional category, my current thoughts on rules would be as follows:

1: No skipping story quests with early spark key 2: No Battery-carry glitch

Does anyone see anything else that should be included as a major glitch? I'll be considering input both from here and the discord.

Due to GLcoder's hard work on the autosplitter, is there any objection to changing the rules to require start at the difficulty selection input for consistent timing?

Due to Koatal's impressive ongoing work hunting for new Any% tech, it's about time to talk Categories, I guess.

I'm looking at a No Major Glitches category, but this means we'll need to decide what qualifies as "Major".

Nice run. I'd love to see that with the faster Mine route and the Robot Snake skip.

Firebug, unranked, 1:38 in trade waves, ~15:49 RTA, 15:58 IGT. Not multiple attempts, spent a decent amount of time chasing terrible spawns, bad perk for the level, first game as Firebug in well over a week.

Survivalist, 1st place, 1:35 in trade waves, ~16:01 RTA, 15:23 IGT. Multiple attempts were made at the time, solid RNG through the run, not max level on the perk, but it makes marginal difference for that loadout.

The "Not Firebug RTA Tax" takes a 35 second IGT lead and converts it to a 12 second RTA loss. These are both me running, I lost some time on trade with the firebug run by comparison, I honestly don't feel I even played WELL in the Firebug run, but I didn't need to since it demonstrates the point even better that way.

As long as RTA just sorta exists as a second metric that people can look at to find out how much time they lose by not being a firebug, it's not really a big deal, but any attempt to swap the time used for leaderboards would have these sorts of ramifications on EVERY run on the boards, since every perk interacts differently with Zed time, and relies differently on mechanics that are likely to trigger it.

By the way, the Victory splash to IGT stop time is 15 seconds rounded to nearest IGT second, so it's consistent, and not problematic.

1: Probably age of empires 2, but I have no interest in speedrunning it.

2: for speedruns, I'm only really interested personally in games where you do still kind of experience something like intended gameplay quickly, only thing I've run so far is killing floor 2.

3: definitely not, especially in killing floor 2. It's got RNG, different perks with wildly different playstyle, and different settings that affect viability of different styles.

I'm certainly the most prolific current runner, and I'm trying to be the best at my favorite settings, but functionally that's just the same as just wanting to improve since there's not a "perfect" time for anything yet and there's no real way to establish a practical "floor" time due to RNG.

Yeah, I'd seen those threads and been generally interested in the concept and was poking around with runs along those lines.

Wouldn't make much sense to add as a category until there's dialogue and some amount of community feedback on best map pool and rules, but it's something I'm generally willing to do if it's not too many maps.

I do think if we go much past the originals, than anything above hard is going to be grotesque time investment for medium or long runners just to string together 3 wins in a row.

Explain again how adding somewhere between zero and 90 seconds depending on a semi arbitrary combination of perk, category, and an element of RNG is going to somehow improve consistency in run timing?

Making it differently inconsistent in a way that removes from contention every run that isn't firebug or berserker just flat doesn't sound like a better version of inconsistent.

So, pretty much what it says on the tin, I've been trying some runs at going back-to-back-to-back on the 3 launch maps, Outpost, Burning Paris, Biotics Lab.

As a category, I think it has some things going for it.

For one, if we require map vote to swap maps, it puts RNG bosses on at least 2 out of 3 maps even for PC, making for a great equalized run for console vs. PC competition.

For two, it gives us one of those meatier categories people had wanted at various times, but without having so many maps that a long duration at higher difficulties becomes an insane reset-fest automatically, or an endurance marathon.

Also, finally, it's just fun. Bouncing between several games quickly, not forcing a speed-choice boss based on quick kills gives us something a little higher% feel within the bounds of the game's original design.

So it's been a couple weeks of quiet on this front.

Watch the condescension. There's nothing "hard to grasp" about the issues with IGT.

There's just also serious issues with RTA.

Dealing with zed time is part of "solving" the game. It's not entirely a benefit, particularly in solo categories, as evidenced by the fact that berserker and firebug are solid perks. Switching to RTA is not just "fixing timing", it's adding thirty to sixty seconds to dozens of times on the leaderboard from about half of the perks, on a game that's been timed with IGT for a couple of years now.

There's definitely not some zed time abuse strat that breaks the game for IGT.

In fact, I think the best argument against IGT is pausing to collect thoughts in solo. That's something people can do, and it's far more problematic, but also easily dealt with in verification if we wanted to.

At the end of the day, I'm open to actual dialogue on the problem, but so far that effort seems to be getting tossed to the wayside, which is why I've contacted site staff for assistance with the problem as you yourself suggested.

Killing Floor 2 currently has a moderator essentially stating an intent to unilaterally change timing from IGT to RTA over a host of objections from active runners, due to that mods apparent dislike of how a game mechanic impacts IGT.

While there's absolutely an argument on both sides, the mod stated clearly that any further objections should be brought to site staff because this is happening whether anyone wants it or not.

https://www.speedrun.com/killing_floor_2/thread/fjvwq/2#omonf

I strongly disagree with the assertion that I don't care about "fair timing".

I'm actively advocating for staying with a timing convention that benefits my competition over myself.

Do me a favor. Compare first and second place in hard/long burning Paris at rta vs igt.

My hard work into a sixteen second win will become me winning by more than a minute if we swap to RTA.

I'm actively arguing against a timing system that distinctly favors the perk I run with, and being accused of "not wanting fair timing". That's crap. Firebug is one of the only perks that can go entire runs with almost no benefit earned from zed time, and I run it nearly exclusively.

Disagree with my logic and conclusions all you want, but do NOT falsely malign my motives.

I really do feel like pulling zed time out of run timing is going to give my flamethrower a bit of an unearned edge here. The second place run in burning paris, as commando, RTA is going to go from 16 seconds behind me to over a minute behind me, by a rough check of times on clear videos.

I get the concern with Zed time giving people a bit of free time to work with, but since it's random, capitalizing on that as best as possible is just another skillset we can factor in on IGT, instead of having it be a pure liability RTA.

At RTA, several perks go completely nonviable, and while I'm entirely ok with "Some strats are suboptimal", I do feel like how perks interact with Zed time should be considered part of the game's speedrun identity, which works best if they get that benefit of IGT during Zed time.

I mean, there is the very real zed time concern. I admit, I don't have any team run times, but as a firebug main, I do feel a bit like anything RTA strongly incentivizes what's already a strong perk based around what's generally considered a gameplay weakness.

I think it's the part where it gets underfoot of a mechanic, even though the timer inconsistency is an issue.

Zed time already comes with weirdness for speedplay, and I don't love adding another drawback, so "Open IGT as soon as you're in match, subtract the first time visible on screen rounded up from final IGT" might be the most elegant workaround to preserve the spirit of the game mechanics reflected in speedrunning.

Are you running coop, or does your platform not have offline solo, @windshieldsnatch?