This is a TAS, the game is modded, scripts and speedhacks are being used, all to gain an unfair advantage over playing the game normally. Resets and time invested are part of running roguelikes, you don't get to cheat that and claim it's okay because the actual run was not affected. It does not matter that "no one" cares about 1 character anyway, it does not matter that the run itself was executed without tools and cheats when getting the run used both.

That's a completely uncalled for response, but I'm not expecting anything else at this point. Self-Victimization in a purely factual topic, really?

Thanks to the people that gave advice. I messed around with the settings a bunch yesterday. The options that at first slowed down the reset times hard actually ended up speeding up the game by like a factor 2 on a second try, speeding up the IGT too. Something I did notice in the past and noticed again is that reset times just seem to differ between PCs/runners, no matter what settings you try. For example, death has very fast resets, the game itself is running at normal speed though.

Thanks for the quick answer.

Funnily enough, I found exactly that thread just earlier, trying to speed up reset times. For whatever reason, adding that options file mentioned that is supposed to make things better makes things worse for me, drastically increasing reset times. Will try just the lighting setting.

At the linked time stamp, there is a curse of darkness floor with no effect. Can anyone explain how that happens/what settings accomplish that?

1. You can't just up and change something people have invested 100s of hours in. At some point someone started using it, then more people did and no one spoke up.

Absolute, sorry, bullshit. We spoke up again and again about this, but all efforts were either ignored or fruitless. Saying no one spoke up is just factually wrong and honestly insulting.

And you argue about how a change will affect the community? How about reverse that point of view and look at how it already affected the community, sapping the enjoyment of running this game out of the runners and viewers that are opposed to this being allowed in runs? Why is that never looked at, the only people that seem to matter are the poor runners that are using this trick and would lose their countless hours in running this game while ignoring what many of other runners want.

The risk is dying on a run that otherwise was dead anyway because you couldn't afford a carry item from a devil deal. The comparison needs to be done no coop vs coop, not coop taking devil deal vs coop deciding not to take the devil deal. In the former, there is no risk.

You completely misinterpreted (on purpose?) what I said. Skillful play regarding conserving health for a devil deal is removed, nothing else. You even quoted the very second part of the sentence and then dropped it to misinterpret it. How you jump from that single point to reading it as "the whole game requires no skill at all anymore because of this so why don't random people have the WR" is absolutely beyond me. Pointless question. What's your agenda here?

I don't want it in speedruns and still don't use it for the reasons mentioned. Every speedrun is inherently single player until mentioned otherwise, games that use multiplayer functions do so in different categories (secret of mana 2 controller).

Coop baby doesn't make the game less RNG based at first, it makes it way easier. Both a Shadow and a Lazarus' Rags respawn start with an additional heart AND can use the coop baby for the first devil deal on top of this, for example. Without even picking up any health, a shadow start can now take 2 devil deals already instead of 0 if you don't use coop baby. Get hit 3 times on a blue baby run? Whatever doesn't matter, can cheat me my devil deal anyway. That's not an insurance against bad RNG anymore, that just removes any requirement for skillful play to not get hit, conserve health, bomb tinted rocks, etc. It dumbs down the speedrun experience and makes it less fun to me. And I agree with the general perspective that speedruns are not about "anything goes, as fast as possible", inherently. Every community bans exploits that greatly reduce the amount of skill and/or fun.

And as I said in the other thread, there is a general trend in running this game lately where the newest to addition to running the game aren't about making the game more fun or skill based to run, they are about trying to get away with as many loopholes as possible, with exploits that aren't about exploiting the game mechanics in a clever play that speedruns are about, but instead with exploits that try to exploit the rules of what is allowed and how things should be done (2 player mechanic, crashing the game to revert mistakes are the two most recent examples). I don't like this general trend and would like to see it gone.

You didn't post using this 6 days ago at all, you posted using the same idea to reset devil deal outcomes, not correcting mistakes like cheating death (which is another application of this that wasn't used here though) or undoing what happened here, a major execution mistake that would have possibly costed a run and has no impact instead. Not everyone checks this forum regularly, like I said, I only learnt about this today, watching your stream, which happened to be this run, and I posted about it here already before the run was finished and turned out to be a WR.

You asked for the opinion of people, which was mixed already on that way less significant usage of this glitch/exploit/strategy/whatever. You still decided to use it in a run anyway without having a real answer to the question in a way more impactful and way more sketchy way. Sorry, that's on you.

I very much appreciate asking about this in advance, don't get me wrong, but if that is then ignored and done anyway, what's the point really?

To add to what kicking said, there are way more examples of using this exploit. Some greatly reduce skill and RNG, some are maybe even somewhat interesting. You can turn an emperor into a compass by using it at the start of a floor, seeing where the boss room is, crashing the game, knowing the boss room location and keeping the emperor card. A bit like an external glowing hourglass with a sun card (which this would also work with). Spending all your hearts on sac rooms hoping for angel room carry and undoing it when it didn't pay out. The possibilities are endless, but in the end, it comes down to undoing something that's not intended to be undone. This is pretty much using a savestate in a speedrun. That's just ridiculous. For any application, the time loss is something to account for, but all those examples and more are a possible result of this.

As a general final note, I would very much appreciate it if new strategies in this game where for once again about actual gameplay and not about bending the rules and trying to get away with as much as possible.

This "strategy" was now used in the new 11 char WR by Dea1h and we need to have a discussion if that invalidates the run. I think it does. I described how he used it above. Copying it:

As an example, I just learnt about this because I saw Dea1h using it in a run. Here is the situation:

He had an Emperor and a Broken Remote+Red Candle. He used the Emperor on a lost curse cathedral, then accidentally teleported out. He then undid the mistake by forcing the game crash, reverting back to the cathedral and using the emperor again. Yes, it costs time compared to doing it correctly in the first place, but in this example, it just seems to cheat the in game rules to undo a mistake and get away with it, thereby lowering the skill ceiling. This is also quite obviously way different to the proposed strategy in the initial video of this thread.

Link to the moment: watch from here until 5h01m30s or something like that.

I don't think this should be a thing. This is not normally closing the game, it's crashing it with external tools to avoid the normal auto save feature, this has to be kept in mind when comparing it to other games doing similar things that then turn out to not be similar at all.

As an example, I just learnt about this because I saw Dea1h using it in a run. Here is the situation:

He had an Emperor and a Broken Remote+Red Candle. He used the Emperor on a lost curse cathedral, then accidentally teleported out. He then undid the mistake by forcing the game crash, reverting back to the cathedral and using the emperor again. Yes, it costs time compared to doing it correctly in the first place, but in this example, it just seems to cheat the in game rules to undo a mistake and get away with it, thereby lowering the skill ceiling.

The run he used this on is now 1:09 after 6 chars, potentially a 7 char WR and likely a PB, and has this strat in it that we didn't agree upon. That's...unfortunate, to put it mildly. Edit: not a 7, but heavily on pace for 11.

The way you're trying to create drama with this just shows that this is a correct decision.

But in general though, why is there no actual runner of any of the categories in rebirth or afterbirth a mod of these forums and leaderboards? I respect Hyphen a lot, I haven't seen Fluor ever participate in any discussion so I don't know his role, and my opinion on sillypears should be obvious by now; but completely independent of these, shouldn't at least one and possibly multiple of the best/most involved/most respected runners be in charge of these, like in pretty much every other speedrun community on this site, too?

So are we just gonna do this now and ignore that like 20 people and among them many prolific runners (I'm not even counting myself to those) were fundamentally against it? Nice community-based decision.

Alright, since the post with probably the most people agreeing in the history of this forum got locked and thus is gonna disappear without a resolution, might as well post my thoughts here again.

Thanks, btw, sillypears, for your excellent moderation. You claim to not attack me personally, yet you ignore my reasonable points, claim I'm just out to have an argument for the sake of an argument, threaten to remove my insignificant runs because they used the way less impactful missinghud while not addressing the question of the world record run being removed at all, and then lock down the discussion without it being resolved. I question your neutrality on this subject based on the previous points.

For the record, remove all my runs if you want IF it also means removing the TAS WR, I don't care.

Original post:

1. It's not running the vanilla game. You cannot hold R on Eden, and thereby see like what, 5x as many seeds as anyone playing the vanilla game, drastically reducing your time investment to get a viable seed, creating an unfair advantage.
2. The first input of the run, holding R to start it, is done by a tool. The run is thereby clearly a TAS. End of discussion.
3. Resetting is part of the time investment for a run, whether it counts towards the time or not. In Spelunky, an any% run takes 2 minutes, but finding the good shop needed for it takes maybe 2 hours, so during the run, you feel incredibly pressured because the total time investment for this run was 2 hours. Finding the perfect seed is part of the time investment, you gain a huge advantage in terms of your resources by letting a tool do this, even if the tool had to normally reset Eden by going back to the menu. Let me make a comparison. In Dark Souls 1, you need to get a random drop weapon to start a speedrun. How about I just mod my droprate to 100%? On the actual run, there is no difference to any other run that actually has the weapon, so this is totally fine to do right? No, it's not, because it gives me a huge advantage cutting out the time spent on failed attempts, which are part of running the game.

I really don't understand how anyone can be fine with this run. It's insulting to the runners who actually did invest their own sweat and time into getting their runs, and thereby disrespectful and insulting to the whole community.

1. It's not running the vanilla game. You cannot hold R on Eden, and thereby see like what, 5x as many seeds as anyone playing the vanilla game, drastically reducing your time investment to get a viable seed, creating an unfair advantage.
2. The first input of the run, holding R to start it, is done by a tool. The run is thereby clearly a TAS. End of discussion.
3. Resetting is part of the time investment for a run, whether it counts towards the time or not. In Spelunky, an any% run takes 2 minutes, but finding the good shop needed for it takes maybe 2 hours, so during the run, you feel incredibly pressured because the total time investment for this run was 2 hours. Finding the perfect seed is part of the time investment, you gain a huge advantage in terms of your resources by letting a tool do this, even if the tool had to normally reset Eden by going back to the menu. Let me make a comparison. In Dark Souls 1, you need to get a random drop weapon to start a speedrun. How about I just mod my droprate to 100%? On the actual run, there is no difference to any other run that actually has the weapon, so this is totally fine to do right? No, it's not, because it gives me a huge advantage cutting out the time spent on failed attempts, which are part of running the game.

I really don't understand how anyone can be fine with this run. It's insulting to the runners who actually did invest their own sweat and time into getting their runs, and thereby disrespectful and insulting to the whole community.

1. It's not running the vanilla game. You cannot hold R on Eden, and thereby see like what, 5x as many seeds as anyone playing the vanilla game, drastically reducing your time investment to get a viable seed, creating an unfair advantage.
2. The first input of the run, holding R to start it, is done by a tool. The run is thereby clearly a TAS. End of discussion.
3. Resetting is part of the time investment for a run, whether it counts towards the time or not. In Spelunky, an any% run takes 2 minutes, but finding the good shop needed for it takes maybe 2 hours, so during the run, you feel incredibly pressured because the total time investment for this run was 2 hours. Finding the perfect seed is part of the time investment, you gain a huge advantage in terms of your resources by letting a tool do this, even if the tool had to normally reset Eden by going back to the menu. Let me make a comparison. In Dark Souls 1, you need to get a random drop weapon to start a speedrun. How about I just mod my droprate to 100%? On the actual run, there is no difference to any other run that actually has the weapon, so this is totally fine to do right? No, it's not, because it gives me a huge advantage cutting out the time spent on failed attempts, which are part of running the game.

I really don't understand how anyone can be fine with this run. It's insulting to the runners who actually did invest their own sweat and time into getting their runs, and thereby disrespectful and insulting to the whole community.

Thanks for taking some time to draft these rules and giving us the opportunity to discuss them.

The timer stuff seems to harsh, you shouldn't have a streamed run become not legitimate because...you accidentally pause the timer, but retime later...you want to save your sanity and don't start the timer on each reset, but only when you find an item...you want to loop or continue to 11/13 but your timer stopped automatically after the 7th char because you're only using splits for 7 chars, in which case the timer automatically stops. (that's how my 11 and 13 char PBs happened for example, continued a 7 char run and retimed from the vod later, exact down to a second.)

The timing rules are clear and good (after we decide the chest drop vs enter chest part), so it should be no problem to just retime a run if there is a complete vod from streaming.

If your concern is manipulation by having a offline run have the timer stop suddenly and then start again (after actually cutting things out and messing with stuff in the background), I'd be fine with having the no timer stop rule for non-streamed runs, but for streamed runs, I don't see any harm. Maybe I'm missing something?

Additionally, I'd like some wording on the use of certain external tools, like using a reset tool to find a seed. We are not gonna allow that for any category, right? It's a TAS, whether it's used in the actual run or not; the game is modified to allow the fast eden resets; and it would completely break the spirit of running this, give one person an unfair advantage while forcing other people to do the same or demotivate them from even trying. No one in their right mind can think this is fair game. For the record, Zam is still intending to do this and claimed Hyphen said it's ok to use. I'd like some clarification on that.

Title gore, I know.

vod of the whole thing.

Summary: He wrote a script to grind out resets on Eden fast, originally for Heart/Blood Rites, but apparently stopped for Brimstone/Tammy as good enough. I quite like that approach honestly for grinding out a SEEDED run. This is not what happened here though?

He then practiced the seed a bunch of times for optimal movement/perfect mapping/additional item pickups.

He then did a "legit" run of it, without having the seeded marker on screen somehow, finished in 4:13 RTA and claimed that this was a non-seeded run because the seed marker wasn't on screen, and a non-TAS because he didn't use any tools for the very run itself. We all know this is technically correct only in a completely twisted way and complete nonsense in any reasonable way you look at it.

I want to have a premature discussion about this, it's not uploaded yet but he said he will upload it and apparently thinks there is nothing wrong with his approach. He also highlighted the run on his profile as an UNSEEDED 1 Char PB already, so there is that.

If this is not a joke and you intend to upload it as a 1 char WR like you said, you cannot be serious. This is wrong on so many levels and genuinely upsetting. I don't think I need to explain why exactly this is wrong, it's evident to anyone who read the upper description.

If this is just a joke, it still raises a bunch of questions. How was he able to replay the seed without it appearing as seeded? If there is a way to do it, apparently, it means we pretty much cannot trust any offline runs anymore because you can play a known seed without the marker appearing on screen, meaning you can't trust any submitted runs that weren't streamed and, depending on how the setup worked, maybe none at all if you can just do the preparation offline and then pretend the run was done legit. So, if someone still cares about this game and the legitemacy of its run, it's a problem for them.

Edit: The run is indeed submitted as a 1 Char WR as of right now.

I expect it to be taken down immediately and that there will be some kind of consequences to him cheating like this. Because that's what it is.

Edit2: It was indeed rejected, thanks for the fast work, mods.

Sure Kraken, technically being able to read a log file while running is absolutely the same thing as having immediate on screen information about what item Eden or Eden's Blessing starts with or a D100 rolls your build into or or or before the information even appears on screen.

Xelnas, I never said missinghud doesn't give you additional informations, I said so does the itemtracker, so you can't ban one and not the other without being hypocritical. I was making a logical arguement, either both A and B or neither. Can you not put words into my mouth? Read what I said, not what you want to read.