Hey everyone!
Early access for PoE2 begins today (12/6/2024). The Path of Exile 2 speedrun.com category and leaderboards will be established on 12/23/24. We are doing a 2 week gap between start of early access and publishing of the categories/rules to (1) give players time to play/explore PoE2 and (2) allow mods to start figuring out categories/run lengths. It is expected that there will be similar categories to those existing in PoE1 with the speedrun boards mainly focusing on campaign related speed leveling.
Take Care and Good Luck Blasting In Path of Exile 2,
Balaar and Rest of Mod Team
Hey everyone, so we are going to be debuting with 3 categories, Act 1 Any %, A3 Pts+Ascend, and A6 Pts+Ascend. Runs will be accepted starting 1/2/25 to allow mods some extra time to figure out how to deal with certain EA issues/finalize rules around ensuring proper run timing, freshness, bug avoidance, and other such considerations that have popped up as we have begun testing/exploring/playing PoE2. We are also trying to ensure that categories will be adaptable/responsive to the future release of the later acts and changes that will come down the pipeline. Like PoE1, the PoE2 leaderboards will be class based, we will add classes that are not currently available as they become available. Similarly, the leaderboards will be patch-based for major releases/leagues.
With the game being so new and subject to constant patching, how will fairness be preserved after inevitable nerfs?
Regarding Pts+Ascend, we'll have a more definitive answer on that on Sunday (12/29) as there is still some ongoing discussion relating to that. At a minimum, however, you will need to get all passive points and do the first four ascendancy points. In future, if in later acts the 3rd set of ascendancy points has a consistent access mechanism that will also be included in Pts+Ascend runs, but that will be caught/seperated out by the major patch-by-major patch nature of the boards
Regarding preserving fairness, there are a lot of factors that go into and, unfortunately, it may not something that can always be sufficiently achieved. But, the goal is that by having leader boards where (1) its separated by class, (2) its seperated by major patch (including EA patches), and (3) the progressive nature of speedruns (ie players/runs get better over time typically as skill/information icnreases) will help maintain some baseline level of equity/fairness within a particular patch/class. Now, obviously (3) doesn't really do much if there is a giga busted skill that gets blasted from the sky by GGG with a mid-patch nerf/hotfix. I also assume the concern about fairness is not really related to mid-patch buffs since (a) its unclear to extent of which GGG will continue to do them in EA, and (b) you still get rest of patch to benefit/compete/play with buff skilled.
So then, as it relates to mid-patch giga nerfs, I think two things are relevant. First, in the case of a nerf due to a bug exploit/abuse of that skill then that skill should be removed from boards as PoE runs are intended to be glitchless runs due to the nature of PoE1/2 being actively maintained live service game where it is understood/expected that bug exploits/abuses will get hotfixed. Second, in the case of a mid-patch nerf due to a skill being simply numerically overtuned, then it will need to be a case-by-base evaluation of what we want to do in such a scenario. Often numerical adjustments are more so targetted towards the endgame use of a skill with less impact on early game portion of it, but this is not always the case and so evaluation of impact on skill should be undertaken. Speaking for myself here, if such a case is found where it would clearly impact fairness to not to remove the run, I'd be in favor of moving the run to an archive post or something similar to denote run performance still, but indicate something along lines of no longer part of active leaderboard for patch due to major numerical nerf (or something akin to that). I'd have to get feedback from other mods on that though. In case where its determined that fairness really isn't overly impacted (minor nerf), then run might be allowed to stay up.
As a consideration to help avoid most major nerfs impacting fairness, we can consider doing embargoes on run completion/submission until like a week or two after patch for the most obvious cases to be caught. This typically happens, by practice, rather than as a by regulation type thing as most players for a couple weeks after a major release are not doing speedruns yet.
With the Migrate character function not working to move a SSF char to Standard, I'm struggling to find a way to start with 0 gold. If I were to buy another account and delete every character after every run, would the items/gold all disappear from the stash?
Since gold persists for the whole league, I've been clearing my gold down to 0 by buying and selling until I get a multiple of 25 in my gold. Then just buying wisdom scrolls at 25 a piece since the migration feature isn't available. It does basically lock out a whole league for practice though in the current state.
Yeah unfortunately until they fix migrate all, essentially you will have to show tabs/0 gold prior to a run start for freshness. However, GGG is aware of the issue and its supposed to be addressed at some point. Who knows how soon that will be given holiday break and other stuff that is probably higher on the priority queue for them to fix
Just update on the stat buffs question, likely will be part of run requirements for Pts+Ascend (or whatever we end up calling it)
I would like to add some opinion to the discussion:
- Pts+Ascend runs should include all permanent buffs like stats and skillpoints. It makes the runs more useful and appealing to a wider audience of poe2 players and can be used as a baseline to actual leaguestarts. "leaguestart%" is a nice term, I find.
- Until migrate all actually works, im voting to keep the freshness requirements a bit less critical. resetting gold is fine and needed, but showing all tabs might be more annoying than it is worth. especially since an additional account with no or little extra tabs is 30$ right now. you obviously can't use anything from stash and it is not feasible for admins to check the entire run if that happened or not. until migrate all is a thing, it sounds fine for me to rely on the community to detect "cheating" by using stuff from stash. that being said, it is VERY easy to accidentally use wisdom scrolls from stash while identifying in town. so we might need a ruling that invalidates the run in this case, instead of straight up banning someone.
- resetting to exactly 0 gold is kinda annoying without a stash with shards that sell for 1g as well. same with other stuff than can help you get over or to 25g.
- not to mention people that actually play SSF and would need to destroy everything.
How are we supposed to reset to exactly 0 gold without it taking ages sometimes? I try selling stuff until its a multiple of 25, but sometimes its not possible and the only way would be to farm gold out of town, taking ages
wisdom scrolls sell for 2g a piece and most shards (like transmute shards) sell for 1g each. you can go below 25g first, get it back to 25 by selling scrolls and if needed a shard. once at 25, buy a wisdom to reach 0. there is a bug tho, that selling more than 1 of any currency will only give you the gold of one. so 1 wisdom sells for 2g and 10 wisdoms also sell for 2g. you have to split them to stacks of 1 first.
Gem skills also sell for 1 gold, at low enough levels at least. I've just got a character that sits in act 1 town with extra skills/wisdoms to vendor and to prepare for the rule about showing tabs prior to starting.
Its when your character first moves away from the starting position after your character has stood up
"A6 100%" for naming doesn't work because there are bosses that drop support gems that obviously aren't mandatory like passive tree points or resists are. The idea is anything that is only available as a reward and permanently buffs your character should be mandatory to get. Call it something like APR (All Permanent Rewards)? Similar to how other games have NMG (No Major Glitches) or AUM (All Unique Moons) for example. LeagueStart% also works although its not as obvious what it means without reading the rules.
For now, we'll name the category simply A1 Pts/A3 Pts/A6 Pts and so on. Pts signifying need to collect all things that provide some sort of permanent stat/passive point. We'll revisit this later as needed/if needed
For now Lolliprop. However, we are discussing something that might allow us to have it still as there is value to have any % categories I feel, but the issue is any % categories outside of a few select players have been a bit of a deadzone as they are less relevant to PoE gameplay and they are harder for players to get into. While these are not the only considerations, they are some. Nonetheless, I am personally in favor of trying to find a way to allow some any % run categories but to do so in such a way that tries to capture the goal of any % while balancing it with other considerations
