It seems that all this mod does is make the game easier. A real Speedrun of this game should include all the random elements that are included within Isaac. Seems like you all just got easy mode and used that.

You are absolutely right. All those people running with this dumb mod should be ashamed to call themselves "speedrunners".

I agree. This game is meant to very RNG based and the characters that are horrible are supposed to horrible. They’ve completely fucked it up in my opinion. This is just like using a seeded run as far as I’m concerned and shouldn’t even be a leaderboard just for fun within a different community

I have research the pros and cons of the mod. There are defined benefits to the mods and even seems fun but it’s also seems to taking away a lot of the hard things involved in the Binding of isaac. Many things in the mod such as hot keys, and the actual multiplayer races, and the change of when rooms actually end, so those all great things. But then they start giving character so much buffs that it’s a bit ridiculous. The keeper starting with greeds gullet 50 coins and duality is insane.All character started with schoolbag? Just seems like it’s just taking away RNG on every update. In the end I like the multiplayer applications that come with the mod but the single players one seem to make it too easy. Sorry if that angers you bud.

For real now.

1. Racing+ does make game easier. No one really can argue with this. Having D6 for all chars, having some "broken" deals fixed - when you will have 0% chance cos boss layout is broken in vanilla, having somewhat better devil/angel deals. All these things make game easier BUT you're missing a point WHY it's like that. Almost all of these changes were made to either speed up a game or to make speedruns/races more consistent + more fun as well. Like, for example, curses make game a bit more difficult but in seeded race it will be just a dumb luck if someone will go the wrong way or right way with curse of the lost. So in the end almost every change is justified within a community that you're not a part of that's why you can't understand why Racing+ made this way.
2. "The keeper starting with greeds gullet 50 coins and duality is insane" it's only for 2 custom challenges within a mod (s1 9 chars and s1 14 chars). Keeper got this buff cos it's extremely unfun to play as a Keeper in a speedrun.
3. Schoolbag is not available for every character = it differs between Racing+ seasons/race modes.
4. "This is just like using a seeded run as far as I’m concerned and shouldn’t even be a leaderboard just for fun within a different community" do you really think you can say that when this whole category were made by the speedrun/racing community and everyone is happy with it all this time? There's a reason why Racing+ is a main category now. You can see for yourself how many people do "vanilla" runs and how many people keep doing Racing+ runs and upload new runs every day. People decide what they want or don't want to play. Vanilla AB+ is EXTREMELY unfun to race/speedrun (for majority of people) that's why almost no one doing vanilla runs for like years now. Racing+ is more fun to speedrun than vanilla so this is why Racing+ is the main mod for the whole speedrun/racing community of Isaac for almost 4 years now.

Attacking a whole community that you're not even a part of is not very nice especially when you don't even know what you're talking about and only know that vanilla is "harder".

Big +1 for thereisnofuture, and i would add: unfairness and frustration doesn't make the game harder, just unfun.

I think complete 7/9/14/15 chars in 1-2h aprox is hard enough and challenging, don't you think?

Also, you can always run Vanilla Speedruns, nobody will stop you.

I can understand how vanilla afterbirth+ is very unfair and be very hard, but idk how you can play Isaac and say Vanilla just isn’t fun is blasphemous. I mean to each his own I guess brothers. Personally I felt as those the mod was making too many thing easy, thank you for informing me about how things were season to season based, make it more understandable for sure. I don’t plan to change anyone’s opinion on here, just simply wanted to state why I personally thought the mod make things to easy for isaac standards. Peace be with you sir

Also man I didn’t mean to attack you guys. Sorry if came off that way. I am a very educated and talented player when to comes to isaac, love the game play it everyday, just wanted to see real isaac Speedrun but that’s besides the point. Have fun buds

Hello Westernmango45, and welcome to the Binding of isaac leaderboards!

Racing+ existing doesn't discredit or de-legitimise that of vanilla runs. If it really does bother you that Racing+ is used then you are more than welcome to peruse the Vanilla speedruns and possibly even participate in them yourself!

To answer your original question though, the reason it is used is:

• It has made racing isaac more accessible to that of newbies and veterans alike. Newbies are able to see their improvement easily with the use of the R+ client as well as allowing them to even get some experience against and advice from veterans of isaac racing. For veterans it allows them to create races seamlessly as well as making a better environment for tournament play.

• It creates a less frustrating (and in turn more fun) version of isaac to speedrun. Even if this makes the game easier.

• As for this final point I think future put it best "People decide what they want or don't want to play.". The people of the community have decided that this is the best path forward. If it wasn't for R+ then these leaderboards would be all but dead aside from the 1 or 2 vanilla runs that get submitted.

Hopefully this answers your question, would love to see you participate in the vanilla leaderboard in the future if you are as educated and talented as you say!

If you have any more questions please feel free to ask!

You need to differenciate speedrun and casual. Vanilla game is fun to play, vanilla speedruns are not because we don't play the same way. We care about RNG way more than in casual because we don't only need to win, we need to win fast. There always was a war between casuals and speedrunners because they don't understand that point and casuals find the game too easy so they want it to be harder (which is bad for speedruns)

Hello,

I don't regularly check these forums, so I happened to just see this thread for the first time. I agree with mostly everything thereisnofuture and Thoday said, so thanks to them for the detailed explanations. In the past, I have written extensively on this topic, so I would encourage Westernmango45 to read the essay that I wrote after AGDQ, which is listed here: https://github.com/Zamiell/isaac-racing-client/blob/master/mod/Common_Complaints.md