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
First of all, I would like to thank all of you for submitting so many great ideas and thoughts, and I wish you all a happy new year.
I'd like to apologize for not having replied earlier to the thread. I haven't been able to invest as much time as I would have liked on this speedrun page. I should have a bit more time now. And in any case, if anyone wants to get more involved and be part of the moderation team for example, feel free to contact me and I'll be very happy to discuss with you about it.
Concerning adding new category, I'd be very much in favor of adding a more combat-oriented category to better highlight the core of the game.
From my first attempts at speedrunning, it was very clear to me that any% runs would be more of a boss rush than a full combat run. So you soon find yourself dashing through the entire level, stopping only momentarily to clear the obligatory encounters.
This can quickly lead to the feeling that runs are heavily impacted by the RNG of the level generation, and this can surely become frustrating for some runners and not very attractive for the public.
New run category suggestion
- All Encounter / Clear Main path / 100% run :
The problem with such runs is, as you've already mentioned on the thread, the possibility of verifying them.
As far as I'm concerned, the question of clearing optional paths isn't even a possibility. I see absolutely no way for moderators to verify that all hidden paths have been taken during a run. (except using a seeding tool which we don't have for now)
So about main path run, how can we as moderator, verify that a run is indeed valid and that all the enemy on the main path are cleared.
First and as you said, there would be a need for us as a community to define for each possible section of a level to define what is considered as optional or not.
Quick screenshot of an example of main path / optional path where you have to choose whether the red path is optional or not :
Here, for example, we clearly know that the path on the left leads to a chest in a cul de sac, so for me it is not part of the main path. The circular stone arrow behind the player clearly indicates the direction of the main path, so in this situation the choice is pretty obvious to me. But there might be some other chunks where the choice would require us to agree on what we want.
So there would definitely be a need for a specific thread/page to use as a guide on how to run this category listing all the possible path, or defining clear ruling that would define the path to follow. This would require some work, but it's perfectly feasible.
Second point, I think there are certain chunks or combination of chunks that could induce some visibility issue when it comes to verifying runs. For example there is this pattern of chunks where you can clearly pass the enemies without them being displayed on the screen :
Here, it's clear that the two enemies are not visible on the first pass, and yet, from my point of view, they're clearly part of the main path. So, in this case, a run would be instantly invalidated as soon as it was seen not to be killed.
For me, one of the best tools we could have for moderating these runs would be to be able to select the seed during a game, so that moderators could, in case of doubt, generate the same game as the runner and check any points that might be ambiguous. This would certainly be a lot of work for the moderators, but without it I can't see any real way of checking the validity of a run.
We could always agree that runs should only be validated on the basis of the video extract, and that as long as an enemy visible on the screen is not left alive, the run is considered valid. This may indeed lead players to develop strategies to minimize the number of on-screen enemies, but I think it's a good solution until we find something better.
In any case, I'd be very much in favor of adding such a category.
- Difficulty as sub-category:
This is certainly something we can do. I had chosen not to create too many categories from the start to try to focus the few people who wanted to run the game on a few identical categories to create competition. But it might make more sense to create the different categories that players might want to participate in, in order to determine which ones are the most popular.
- Version as sub-category:
I'm taking this opportunity to talk about this subject and ask for your opinion.
You already know that a new version of the game was released over a month ago. It has brought new weapons, boss updates in the third biome, new chunks in the second and fourth biomes, as well as a whole series of weapon/trinket balancing and other new features.
This has a direct impact on speedrunning and, in my opinion, requires the creation of a new sub-category for all runs.
The game is still in early access, and it is to be hoped that there will be many more developments before its final release. This means that with each update, the rankings of previous versions will be frozen and no one will be able to submit a run on the previous versions. This basically means that all active rankings will start from scratch with each major update.
What are your thoughts on this? At what point can we determine that an update requires the creation of a new sub-category, and can we ignore small changes such as balancing to focus solely on major updates? Perhaps this will have to be done on a case-by-case basis, and we can discuss it on the forum with each major or minor update.
And o you think this could create an incentive at every major update to make some new runs?
Thank you all for being here, and sorry again for the weeks of silence on my side.
See you soon in the game,
Mars.
When it comes to verifying, most chunks are straightforward, but yea there are a few specifics that can be unclear. i think if we can identify and document the more difficult chunks it would be easier. Although yea noting the seed of the run and verifying it manually may have to be done only in the case of doubt, like if those complex chunks come into play. i feel the 3rd biome has a lot more of those unclear ones than other biomes.
