Just picked up the game, but coming from a background of loving roguelikes I would love a category like this. It sounds very similar to a category we have in another game I moderate for called BPM: Bullets Per Minute where we have Clear All Rooms vs Any percent runs, or Metal Hellsinger's All Forced Encounters vs No Restrictions categories.
It'd be almost impossible to verify if you cleared all enemies, given that there are hidden areas in each biome.
If you mean to just clear the optional reward arenas instead of skipping them, then that feels like a very minor difference from Any%, IMHO.
@shreshthanigans I can respect that. But that just means we need to find the right balance for the community and moderation/verification team. As fun as current runs are, It looks like there's a definite desire for a more combat heavy run category as opposed to the current categories which all basically dash to the forced encounters.
I completely felt that while doing runs. Not to sound too fatalist, but perhaps that is the nature of the run? Every game has its own flavour. I love adding fun categories, but I feel a category forcing extra encounters doesn't work very well in this RNG-ridden game. For example, I am trying to imagine the fast strats for this hypothetical category - to get a top time, the runner would just be hoping to get RNG that leads to no enemy encounters (or as few as possible). This devolves into the current Any% category as it exists. The top runs in both categories would optimally be the same. That isn't great.
I'm curious - how does it work in BPM? Are the number of rooms always consistent? I am trying to understand if there are any learnings to be applied here.
I'm not opposed to a reasonable approach to bring the combat to the fore. My 2 cents - add subcategories for the difficulty levels. Doing Any% on Tempestuous is a whole different ballgame and you might want to do extra combat to be able to level up.
Currently in BPM our 2 main categories are Any%(Hopefully self explanatory) and Clear All Rooms. Conveniently for us, every combat encounter Displays a Clear message which helps us for verification there, and we have a constantly updating minimap we can also use to verify map completion. But you're absolutely right when you say that some WR attempts turn into Reset Fests pretty quickly, especially for Any% runs of BPM. Maps are not consistent, and can vary wildly in size and Boss location. It's less impactful in Clear all Rooms than with Any% due to the requirement of clearing the floor anyways, but a single bad map can change the outcome of a run.
At least here we have the guiding circles to point us in the right direction to the main required encounters. Though perhaps those could also be used as some form of Verification assistance in the future? (Though I know that may be difficult with how fast runs move.)
I do certainly agree with the subcategories for difficulty levels though. Difficulty LEvel based runs are always a staple of any game, and I'd love to see them here too.
for me a more fight oriented run would be more fun and interesting. my thought was maybe all optional and all enemies on the main path must be fought but also ignore all secrets, this way there isnt a question on if you missed something. This isnt like a 100% run idea i guess, more like a fight run.
I've thought about this before, too. I think such a category would be nice, but was struggling to find a short definition of what 'all encounters' exactly means.
First, I think that runs on higher difficulties would be a welcome addition in general, but I don't think they would be the solution to this. They would still include skipping over many if not most regular enemies, especially in later biomes.
(And this Skipping will generally only increase with the rise of the skillcap of players. For example, on base difficulty Any%, I like to take an HP-boost, simply to increase the chance of a successful run, even though taking a different boost or skipping that optional elite would be faster. If I were to become better and more confident to beat the game with 100HP, I would consider skipping more. I could see a similar thing happen on higher difficulties).
So, what should count as an encounter for the purposes of the new category?
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Including Challenges and the Optional Reward Gates is easily verifiable and in line with the spirit of the category, so yes.
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Including every hidden area seems to be quite the hassle for both the runner to keep track of and the moderator to verify, so limiting to the main path would be the way in my opinion. And I don't think it would be too difficult to define what 'main path' means for most rooms.
However, there are situations in which I am not too sure, like the room MushroomC01 (see pictures). Opening the blue gates is mandatory, so I think the enemies behind both blue doors should be considered on the path. But what about the one behind the red door? That one is purely optional, so I reckon it's not on the main path. Further down, but still in the same room, there's that golden door which would definitely not be on the main path, imo.
I see that it would require some detailed ruling for rooms like this, and would result in rules that cannot exactly be called concise.
But there are also more merits to it than just fulfilling the role of a combat-heavy category. In the upcoming AGDQ 2025 there will be a run in this - so far a bit loosely defined - 'All Encounters' category.
I was quite happy to hear that. Because I wasn't expecting to see a run of this game there, due to the fact that the current categories are not really fitting for such a marathon event due to the very high risk of dying well before the final boss.
(An Any% run there would either be very likely to end before showcasing the whole game or would need so many changes to safer strategies that it would no longer resemble an actual any% run.)
The 'All Encounters' category is very different in that regard.
Overall, I think this category would be a good addition, even though it might need a more detailed ruleset.
Ozmourn has the "All Encounters" submission video available publicly on their YouTube channel, so perhaps we could base anything further off of that? Build off of what has been created?
I ended up trying a run for this myself. Its very similar to ozmourns video, however in incubator he does one extra fight that i do not. That one is technically optional so i didnt do that. I ended my time upon leaving the level not at the end of the fight so it should technically be a 26:27. what do you guys think?
If the community agrees, I definitely think that this may end up being the solution we've been looking for. Super solid run btw. For the heck of it, I'm assuming we may end up implementing a normal vs seeded category split for this as well? Since it seems that enemy spawn density and difficulty can vary from run to run?
a seeded and unseeded for this category also sounds like a fun idea. would really be a test on how good your mechanics are for seeded.
Oz, ateatree, and I defined 'All Encounters' as
- Fighting every enemy in a given biome
- Taking as many optional gates for fights/rewards as possible (if there's a junction with 1 gate and one free path forward, you take the gate, if there's 2+ you just take whichever gate you prefer)
This ends up requiring us to look for as many hidden paths as possible, as there could be enemies hiding behind wind funnels or in little nooks, but realistically speaking, there's no true way to track this on anything unseeded. Some of the hidden paths I've found don't seem to have literally any indication that they're spawned in, especially one I found tonight that had me dashing through the corner of a completely solid wall to find a chest.
If something akin to this came into being as a new category, it'd likely have to be reworked to not require seeking out side paths as encounters but does require gates, if y'all wanted to stick to the core idea of what we were going for.
We just really wanted to run the game in a way that shows off what the devs are cooking, even in early access, vs the current categories blasting past anything that doesn't force them to stop. Plus doing the run with a full squad allows for even more synergy and cooperation that lets builds go a bit crazier than they would in single player.
Especially curious to see what comes out of the update from Sudden Death to Revenge, because the December update is gonna be super interesting for us to adapt to. We really hope it comes out before we're a week or two out from AGDQ
Edit: Blessed be the beta branch opening up today, Revenge already feels so much better and matches the idea of the cinematic reveal. Gonna experiment a ton with all the new stuff that's been added, hoping it all makes the run next month that much better.
Xenadir what do u think of that same run but essentially not doing the optional paths, just the main path. And still doing the optional gates and challanges. I feel like that would help with being able to verify the run, but still incorporate a heavy fight run
