Hi, I was wondering why there is no category for 100 Waves Defense Speedruns including popular mission nodes like ODD, Belenus and perhaps 2 others like Hydron, Proteus (to cover the enemy factions). Are there already plans to create such a category? If not, I'd like to ask for it because I think it would be well-liked.
As for the rules: • Wave count must be 100 on the Mission Success Summary. • Time begins when the Mission is selected and ends on the first frame when the Mission Success screen appears.
The rest of the rules would be pretty much a copy-paste of the Endurance ruleset.
Edit: to make this category more popular it might help to introduce another category of this kind but with a lower wave count of let's say 20 waves, because that's much easier and doesn't require much of a time investment it would be like a gateway category for the 100 waves.
Nobody requested for a category like that in the past, probably for various reasons I could think of on top of my head (or was shut down fairly quickly).
Personally, I'm alright with trying it out. My biggest concern is with popularity. If there are people ready to run this category, I'll be more than happy to throw up a test category under Level Leaderboard. I've become hesitant since releasing the Eidolons category and there being zero submissions since bringing it out.
To make this category more popular it might help to introduce another category of this kind but with a lower wave count of let's say 20 waves, because that's much easier and doesn't require much of a time investment it would be like a gateway category for the 100 waves. (i will also add this to my post above)
The issue is: With 20 waves, its already common enough.
You'd have to go at least 50 for it to not be something that already happens semi-naturally.
It's common yes, that's why I think it would increase the popularity of this category. Many people are doing 20 wave runs but not so many are actually speedrunning them with the fastest possible setups.
The issue is, there is no way to tell what is WR and what isn't, because its fairly common.
But that's also the point of these leaderboards, to showcase what people argue is the world record and to allow others to try to beat them. It's up to either for us to find these fast runs or to tell our friends about them and for them to try to beat it. Think of these leaderboards as a glorified Google Drive document (not intended to downplay how awesome this site is).
Edit: After discussing this with some more endurance-heavy individuals, the problem lies at 20 waves is too easy and 100 waves ramps up too high. Where is the "Goldilocks zone" for the ramp up?
Like I said, my issue was with 20. (It was just too common of a wave to leave at, that it'd be a mess to try to keep straight.)
Same thing I said with Raids, not something I'll do, but if you want to, do it.
I don't understand the problem with 20 waves being "too common" or "too easy". I mean how is doing the Planet Mercury not common or easy but it's the default category of the full-game leaderboard anyway. Same goes with pretty much every other category, most of them are easy and commonly played but once people try to speedrun them they are not easy anymore because beating the top speedrunners is usually a hard thing to do, regardless of the objective's difficulty. I also don't understand why 100 waves would ramp up "too high", aren't speedruns supposed to be challenging? The top runs in the Endurance Defense and Survival category reached enemy level 9999 or so but it's no problem for them because they used weapons/abilites where the damage scales with enemy health. Killing lvl ~1000 enemies at wave 100 isn't so hard with a proper squad, I've done it many times already.
Because going to 20 waves, is fairly common. You can do them with PuGs. (Most go to 20 waves to begin with.) The difficulty isn't there. As opposed to going in with a group of people you know, and play well with. 20 waves means suddenly the board gets swamped by anyone who is doing multiple rotations trying to get loot. Good exposure, but also means that we end up overwhelming our moderators.
Speedruning Mercury is fast, yes, but also comes down to tile knowledge. It comes down to making sure you are doing what you need to.
Speedruns are either fun, or challenging. Or a mixture of both. I don't speedrun for challenge, I speedrun cause its fun. I want to show my skills off in Warframe. I can do that via speedrunning, more than I can, for say Fashionframe. If you want challenge, you may want to find a different game.
So basically you are worried that there would be too many submissions for the 20 wave category than the moderators could handle? I'm not sure of that because only a very few people actually record and submit their runs here to begin with and after a few submissions the top times would already be quite tough to beat for many players so they won't even go through the hassle of recording and submitting their runs when they already know beforehand that it won't be enough for a top spot. In the end the number of submissions per time should turn out to be manageable. Anyway, if this really is such a potential problem then 40 waves would also be sufficiently short as a gateway category.
There's rarely a point where the moderators become overwhelmed for verifications. If it gets to that point, I simply onboard extra verifiers. With the release of in-game times, our job has actually become easier.
The "Goldilocks zone" I was referring to is where most attempts will be made. Would 20 waves of defense bring in a vested interest for other players to try to compete? Or are there people out there that'll say "this is too easy, give me something harder?" Personally, I don't see an issue with having multiple stages available, but at what point do players stop saying "ok, no more after this?"
Basically:
I just finished 20 waves, but I can go to 40. Eh, 40 wasn't bad, let's try 60. 60 is pretty good, how about 100? Resulting in a dead 20 wave leaderboard. I just don't have sufficient data available and would require actual submissions to see where the bell curve of comfort for players is at. If I was to quickly put together some categories, I'd set benchmarks at 20 waves as easy, 60 waves as medium, and 100 waves as hard.
I think most people are saying "no more" after 20 waves, not because it gets too hard but because they got their C-Rotation reward and doing 40 waves for a 2nd one usually takes longer than doing 2x 20 waves. Many people would be interested in knowing how to complete 20 waves as fast as possible and therefore the competition should be brisk. Having an intermediate category of 60 waves is a good idea for people who don't know how to beat lvl 1000+ enemies when going for 100 waves. I'm unsure if it would be popular because a 60 waves run is neither short nor mentionably challenging but it's worth a try.
I'll be collecting data for only the easy option to gauge popularity. I highly recommend you get some word out to some more people to give it a try.
https://www.speedrun.com/wf/Test_Defense_Wave_Rush
Category will be removed on May 8 if popularity is not sufficient enough.
That's kinda discouraging and not beneficial for the popularity of a new category if it potentially gets removed so soon. Then there is a big update announced to come this week with a new Gamemode, Warframe & Weapons so I doubt many people will be interested in speedrunning for the next weeks. There should also be other nodes than Belenus like ODD and Hydron because they are a lot more popular and the category name should include the amount of waves for example "Defense Rush 20 Waves".
It really depends on how you sell your product for it to be popular, but I have created categories in the past where I spent hours to fully flesh out and everything, only for it not to have any submissions, the latest being the Eidolons category with a huge ruleset that had to be collaborated with at least 20 individuals on explaining how to run the category fairly and then I tried selling the idea to the Eidolon Recruitment Hub. So I am trying a deadline schedule to see if this method is convincing enough for me.
Nearly a year ago, the previous method of setting a new category was for people to submit runs before the category was created. This is how the Assault: Koro level was created and I might be returning back to this method.
Good but still a bad point of time due to the upcoming big update. It would be more conducive to delay the test period until summer holidays begin because then more people will be active and extend the period to 2 or 3 months. If only 1 mission node will be available during that period it should be rather ODD than Belenus since it's more popular.
Edit: also whether a new category can stay or gets removed should not depend on my public relations and marketing ability.
Added ODD based on your recommendations. I'm still only asking for 20 waves to provide it as a hitch to others to try first before I add in 60/100 waves.
Deadline date is still open for discussion, but I'm still firm with my decision about it.
Okay, but it's of almost no use if I try to convince others to run this new category now because they're farming the new items in (Elite) Sanctuary Onslaught and it will take a lot of time until they are done with that.
