Yeah I can't wait for people to get mad when people use the tool to find WR runs with a plausible amount of inputs to execute and be in the main leaderboards, almost as if deterministic games all get solved one way or another and a game who's only catergory is any% for each track won't get the perfect human run
@@mgks2784 you cant frame perfect execute a plausible amount of inputs, lets say you get each frame perfect input 1/10 of the time , at 6, you need 100,000 runs to get one through, with 30 frame perfect inputs, that number would be in billions, thats why they keep the inputs so low
If you perfectly memorize the inputs, any map is just pressing the right keys at the right time. This one map just happens to be short enough for that to be feasible.
Have you seen Pointcrow beat Breath of the Wild blindfolded? That was a very long time with memorized inputs. Granted he spent tons of time learning it, but it just goes to show that some of these guys will be determined enough to beat longer and longer maps with LIS just because they would get the WR on it or "just because"
@@Xeamesh I haven't seen that particular run, but surely there are plenty of 'reset' points where he walks into a corner/wall etc to re-establish orientation? Just like Wirtual's blindfolded TM run.
@ correct! But he was in a category of his own, nobody else would dare to try such a silly concept. Same for Wirtual’s blindfold campaign run. So as LIS comes further into TMNF (and eventually TM20), people will be taking TAS inputs and as Wirtual said, playing a rhythm game. Not to say it won’t be difficult, but it’s feasible for many, many more maps
@tysoncrosby3915 super mario 1-1 has been optimized down to the inputs with the help of tas, and that's the most iconic speedrun ever probably. Any level in any game will eventually be the same way.
Mom, I am famous. Low input strat is definitely a controversial topic. For me, speedrunning was always about being first in the finish no matter the means (and within the rules). But what matters is the decision of the community as a whole, and I will respect that. Finding LIS is like solving a puzzle, beating the map the fastest way with the lowest possible number of moves. And I very much enjoy that. Of course, this is far from the way this game was meant to be played, so I definitely understand the other side of the argument. I just want to highlight that even LIS takes a lot of time and effort. In the end, we just want to enjoy this awesome game :)
>this is far from the way this game was meant to be played I don't think so. I don't see it as any different from watching any top time and trying to mimic it.
@@RAWRWAFL Copying lines is not the same as copying inputs to the frame. Additionally, LIS can only be done on keyboard and can be done without even looking at the car but instead whatever visual reference you have for the timing. I think if there is a way to verify that a record isn't cheated, then LIS should be on the leaderboard, though it is certainly distinct from normal driving where the game is more of an art than a science.
I really think that only the first run driven with any given LIS should count at all. That way all the prestige of the run goes to the first person to drive it, and a leaderboard of LIS runs would show improvements in the LIS as opposed to just the best current LIS. If it's in a separate category, I think that's also for the best as it's essentially human replicable TAS.
@@RAWRWAFL I agree with Pasta that it's not the way the game was meant to be played. The difference is you can drive the top run on a track without ever looking at Trackmania itself, or any runs on that track.
Same. People hunt maps like this because they can turn them into slot machines and just brute force it in the first place. LIS only is a problem on trash maps.
Yeah, I would agree, but at the same time it's not fair on the moderators with the ridiculous amount of proof that's needed. Like I'm pretty sure I could fake a LIS run undetectably with any kind of sane proof standard.
I have literally never played Trackmania, nor know anything about its community, and this sentiment is objectively correct. "Lengenary Map ruined!!1!!!" If it's so legendary, maybe it shouldn't take 6 inputs to beat?
LIS is a very natural endpoint for a game that's fully deterministic and features digital inputs. Players *will* optimize the shit out of these games and the results may not lead to very interesting competition (like mentioned, you're playing a rhythm game rather than a racing game), so I think this is a great example of how introducing some slight randomness to your game can actually have very positive effects on the longevity.
Well, "longevity." TM has been a thing for a minute already. As a nonplayer, I think it's had its time; however, the TM speedrunning community will highly likely never like LIS because it will absolutely diminish the game. Evening with them banning LIS, the game will likely go downhill since speedrunning is finding time saves
I think that instead, there should be more precise timings (like to the thousandth of a second instead of the hundredth). That would allow (basic) run verification and TAS, while being MUCH harder to apply LIS. But your idea is also used across many non-run based games, so nice thinking.
Other than raising the bar for submission requirements (video which records audio/keyboard/hands/monitor/maybe even the wall and ceiling BEHIND the monitor) due LIS being harder to distinguish from TAS-ers/cheaters, can you really call the fastest time, the fastest time if you exclude LIS? Also there were quite a few comments around saying it might just be the old guard trying to gatekeep their records, afraid that new tech would be faster. Also, is TM completely deterministic? I saw a vid on another channel (Yosh, the latest vid) where there are miniscule, but noticeable (in certain scenarios) variability.
The counterpoint to LIS runs being hard to police is that by banning it as a strategy, you open a can of worms in trying to police regular runs against LIS. Lowering the degree of chaos in a run by minimizing the amount of inputs is a natural and logical development in the process of optimizing a track. At what point is someone invariably using an LIS versus just having a very clean run? Are runs with very low inputs invalid even if they were achieved naturally as opposed to planned out, and can the distinction realistically be documented and enforced? The community is shooting itself in the foot further down the line when the advent of actual LIS comes to pass. Which brings me to the next point: LIS aren't really strategies. They're manually performed macro runs. They're solutions with distinct steps and a guaranteed outcome, not strategies. I would differentiate them from an actual strategy that tries to minimize inputs in the interest of consistency versus constructed sequences. Those sequences may very well be valid as well but the former is, again, a logical progression in optimization, and I believe either only affect very short tracks, so this is altogether an unfortunate knee-jerk reaction. (No one will read this but I think it a good exercise)
While I don't play trackmania, I think the biggest issue with LIS is that the player who found the low input strategy used a tool to find the set of inputs and timings needed for a run to be wr. That changes the whole concept from workshopping ideas and strategies and tweaking them with game knowledge, skill, and dedication, into a game of "who is the best human macro" since they don't even have to figure out timings themselves. As for the point on normal runs being indistinguishable, I don't think that will ever be the case personally. The car control and physics of trackmania are so insanely precise and nuanced, that I dont think even if given 1000 years, that trackmania players would stumble upon these low input strats without a tool. They are brute forced by a tool to optimize the fastest time with the least inputs requardless of how precise it is or how little visual queue there is. Jst speculating since I don't play myself, but that's my take
I don't think there's a risk of LIS runs being confused for optimized runs that happen to have few inputs, because there's a few important differences between them: 1) The difficulty of achieving an LIS run increases exponentially with the number of inputs. Right now, we're talking about 6 or 8 input runs. Maybe in the future, 10 or 12 input runs will be done. Meanwhile, as you can see at 8:47, none of the fastest keyboard times driven traditionally have less than 25 inputs. There's a massive gulf between these, and I don't anticipate that closing. 2) Driving traditionally means not throwing away a run if a single input is off by .01 seconds - you adapt. If someone somehow gets a LIS-mimic run, they'll surely have plenty of replays or other evidence of them doing similar but slightly different runs to present. Anyone pursuing an LIS strategy will not. 3) Optimizing for LIS requires trading time for inputs - he drives the start suboptimally, because driving it optimally would cost extra inputs. If you aren't going for LIS, you'll drive (your best approximation of) the optimal route.
yeah exactly and like if you just upload a run without much context how does the community even know if it's LIS or not? what's the number where you draw the line, in like inputs per meter or whatever
clean run very rarely equals LIS, pretty much never. What these players are performing arent clean runs, they are TAS runs with the help of external visualisation tools to help them time the inputs. Also, a clean run would not just drive off the start block without doing the start trick, losing about 0.02s.
Yup, very strange comparison. A better one would be if one swimmer gets to the end in 6 kicks and the others doing 33 kicks. In what world would that be cheating?
I think that comparison was meant to highlight the drastic shift LIS brings in measuring skill levels (by turning TMNF from a racing game to a rhythm game to achieve quicker times) - it’s just that there’s no skill involved in beating swimmers by just running along the side of the pool so the comparison doesn’t work
@@JayJaySH I don't think anyone considers it cheating. It's about the required skill going from having to master the game to mastering timed button presses. There's no real world comparison but I guess it's a bit like in stead of mastering swimming, you don't even learn how to swim and you just focus on repeating a pre-determined sequence of optimal body movements. So someone who has spent years learning to swim could lose to someone who's never touched water before but just knows the optimal sequence. Maybe a better comparison are puzzles. Everyone in the game is using their experience and mastery to come up with their own solution, and then some guy walks in with one that was figured out beforehand by brute-force on a computer so now the game is no longer about solving the puzzle but simply about how fast you can implement the one optimal solution. Not that I necessarily agree with that view, but it is a discussion worth having.
No, since you can't time all button pushes beforehand. In Non-LIS the player reacts to whats happening and adapts to it, the only exception being the very beginning.
You can do it blind; you don't need to know how the game works or what is happening, you only need to know whether you failed or succeeded. You're playing a different game entirely, it needs to be a separate category.
No it's not. There's a difference between hitting buttons at very precise times, and understanding the game well enough to figure out those precise times on the fly.
I mean is very strange that the community that proudly says the game they speedrun has the same outcome with the same input, take so long to figure out it can be converted into a really hard rhythm game.
@@simmerke1111Actually watch speed run record replays from before LIS. Watch all top 10 runs from each track. Then watch the 10 top runs from LIS leaderboards. The regular runs are different from each other, they used skill to make those runs happen. LIS though all they do memorize a few inputs and execute them. Still takes skill to do an LIS run, but you need no knowledge track mania to do them. You could overlay a black screen over the game with a visual indicator for the inputs and achieve the same results. A real run actually takes knowledge of trackmania, meaning you need to have played trackmania and became great at it. I can guarantee nobody would have ever found a LIS strategy naturally. It requires computer algorithms to find LIS strategies, and no game knowledge whatsoever. A speed run is supposed to be an exhibition of peak human skill. Not a display of average computer computational ability.
I think people are thinking about this from the wrong angle. LIS is not a fault of the gameplay nor with the players using it. LIS is fundamentally a mapping issue. If you intend to create a map that requires knowledge of the game and precise, high level gameplay to complete and exceed at but the map can be completed in 5 keyboard strokes, I'm afraid the onus is on you. A12 has been an iconic map for a long time, though not for the reasons the mappers intended. The Uberbug was popularised on this map and is a part of Trackmania history. However, it may be the case that it does not stand the test of time. That's fine. The mappers weren't to know about the ways the intended beta could be broken, but broken they were and it has become renowned because of it. If they had the foresight to add a third checkpoint later in the map, none of this would have occurred. Furthermore, and this may be besides the point, but LIS still isn't optimal. It's a simple way of creating a great world record but in theory the map can still be beaten. I wouldn't ban a sub-optimal strategy, and even if LIS were strictly optimal, again, why is that the fault of the player? That's a mapping issue.
Hard disagree. You could build an LIS for any map, convert it into a DDR song of Guitar Hero song, give it to a master of one of those games and get a world record in a few hours without them ever looking at a Trackmania screen. That's the problem: that you're fundamentally playing a different game. There are people who can 100% Through Fire and Flames in guitar hero 3 on expert. That's hundreds if not thousands of inputs over around 4 minutes. Compared to a few dozen Trackmania inputs it would be easy.
@@squashiejoshie200000 Rythm game paterns are designed a certain way to make them executable. Also cheating in that way is undetectible and can already be done. So not much point in banning it?
@@squashiejoshie200000I agree in principle with your point, but I doubt in guitar hero you need to have 1/100 timing precision to get a note right. Even 1/10 of a second is impossible for humans to get consistent. So even if we have a super human getting 1/100 second taps right 99% of the time, for longer tracks it quickly accumulates to being impossible
Okay a couple of issues/questions that I thought of and I have seen brought up by others in the comments here: - From what point is a run defined as LIS? How few inputs are enough to get it into that category? - Who defines that? - What about different maps? They'll all need seperate rulings in regards to the previous points. What will the criteria be for that? - What about "mixed runs"? E.g. if you start with LIS but drive the other half normally? What are the criteria for that? How much of a run has to be LIS to get it into that category? - What about certain maps with techs or bugs that require very specific, fixed inputs for parts of it? Overall I see some problems with enforcing this but I am not an Expert when it comes to that game...
Run is LIS the moment you've used the bot to show you the least amount of keystrokes without using your driving abilities. The number itself means nothing. Plus, something like LIS is used on other maps at start up but then you have to play the rest of that map. LIS is nothing new but it should be necessary for the run to contain at least something human otherwise everyone will have the same times in the leaderboards.
I think categorizing a LIS is pretty easy, if you have a list of imputs you need to perform to complete the map, and thats the only thing you care about then it's a LIS. No matter the map, no matter the amount of imputs. Mixed runs are a different thing and I dont think that is an easy one to categorise
For the thing about mixed runs, I know there was a map that had a start overwall where you'd press left at like 2.61s or smt to consistently get over it
Copying someone else's inputs and being the best at being a human macro is not outsmarting someone. It's not even them coming up with the right set of inputs, they are just copying something preset based on a program outside the game that could be seemed as cheating software
I think comparing this record with Super Mario Bros speedruns is a good idea. They have been trying to match TAS for years, and I think this run is basically that -> take a TAS run, and do it for real. This map is good for that, but I don't think this approach would work for all the maps. In my opinion it's weird to ban this strategy, since a version of something like this has been done in other speed games for a long time. Every speed game has been improving, and the records have been lowered countless times, it's natural, that some games would be maxed out. Trackmania maps are much shorter than full speed games, so matching TAS is practical for some of them. I get the argument that trackmania isn't about timing button presses, but SMB isn't about timing button presses and they do it anyway. Even in kacky, players try copying a succesful run as close as they can to finish maps, so I don't think it's a big deal, if the same approach was used for official records. Just my opinion. I'm just a viewer, I don't play that much anymore, so I don't care that the strategy is banned, I just think it is a natural way forward. Want to optimize? --> Match TAS.
Exactly. Especially in any deterministic game like this one, this is literally the exact thing players SHOULD attempt to do if they intend to compete at the highest level. Achieve TAS-level input accuracy. Using external tools to cheat to make it easier is what I consider inappropriate for legitimate competition.
There's 2 parts to this: the leaderboard issues and the way the run is driven. The solution to the leaderboard issue is easy: Only the first replay of an LIS should be displayed. That gives all the credit to the person who did the pathfinding without turning the leaderboard into 200 copies of what they did. The way the run is driven is the problem. You can drive LIS without ever actually looking at Trackmania. Even in the SMB speedruns, they do look at the game for cues. In Trackmania LIS, you don't. You can literally just watch a timer and hit the rhythm markers and you're done.
In this specific case, I'd say its less Mario and more Zelda. Like A Link to the Past where you can beat the game in 1 minute because of specific glitches. If all you care about is who can beat the game the fastest, then warping straight to the credits from the start is definitely it. And unsurprisingly, a lot of people don't find that fun. They want to compete in a way that involves actually playing the game instead of grinding one specific glitch that cuts it all out. That's why pretty much any speedrun leaderboard has multiple categories. If you like the credit warp, you do Any% runs. If you don't, there's a Glitchless variation. If you like glitches but hate the credits warp one, there's a Restricted Glitches category that bans that specific glitch. If you think all of those are too short, you've got a plethora of other options like 100% or All Dungeons. Speedrunners have learned that hyperfocusing specifically on "Only the fastest method matters" will only alienate the community when it doesn't line up with what they want to play.
@@user-yv6xw7ns3o The sentiment is fine, but keeping from people cheating with LIS is the real issue here imo, it seems extremely likely that there would be many additional cheating scandals in the future if these strategies are allowed on the main boards.
Outside looking in: I personally understand the cheating reasoning behind wanting to ban it, but even before those reasons came out it was funny to me watching people from a group called "Fastest Way Only" getting upset at a new way of going fast being found and wanting to ban it. Seems counterintuitive to the group but I guess that's just me and appeared from outside looking in that they were just salty their precious records were getting taken.
@@squashiejoshie200000 i dont know, bugsliding into a wall and praying its gonna catapult you into the finish line specifically doesnt seem like skill and more like a lottery already... So imo, that argument is out of the window for years by now... And no, i dont consider knowing which wall you need specifically to bugslide into for a 1 out of a million chance to end up in the finish line faster than anyone else to be a skill either... and even if i do that would still be true to LIS, this entire debate is a giant "not a real scotsman" argument fallacy circus imo. And mind you, im a completly outsider who never played trackmania and honestly, never gonna, simply because racing games are not really my cup of tea... and neither are arbitrary standards while we are at it...
@@attilaedem101 If you didn't have the skill, you wouldn't even be able to get the bugslide on this map. The fact that they can semi-consistently get a uberbug with non-frame perfect inputs is a testament to their skill. There's 3 extremely difficult tricks and the difference between LIS is if you make any mistake earlier in the run, it's just over while the other good drivers can achieve a solid run from a multitude of starting positions.
@@squashiejoshie200000 Non-frame perfect inputs... the TM pros are way more consistent, they can consistently get frame perfect inputs... they're known for minute left taps in a right curve... just to prevent oversteering...
LIS are only useful in very short maps. It's already so hard to have a few consecutive inputs, and almost every maps would require a lot more inputs to finish. Separating it is stupid, what's the difference with copying a TAS run? Nothing, there's just more inputs. If a particular map is so short it's beaten by LIS, then it is what it is.
The idea that only short tracks can be beaten with LIS is just incorrect though, especially when relying on specific bugs. It's certainly easier on smaller maps, but LIS can be applied to longer tracks as well. Also, attempting to copy a complex TAS run is different than designing a TAS with the focus of reducing total inputs, then copying the TAS. TAS runs are not designed with a focus on least possible inputs, and instead focus on complex inputs done perfectly as more frame perfect inputs can provide those extra time gains. Yes, they are both TAS runs, but there are certainly differences between the two. You can make a TAS of literally anything, it's the purpose of the TAS that's important.
@@TheHeadincharge it's not true that LIS can be used on longer maps because of the way the tmnf engin works. you can't just drive to a spot and set up and then start LIS for a trick and then finish normally because the driving you did before changes the deterministic physics, even if you start LIS from a perfect position. the entire run up until the trick needs to be LIS so there are two options for LIS runs: short tracks or long tracks with major trick in the first two ish turns
@@rydenkaye9735 LIS already exists on longer maps, in the form of a start trick on D10-race, the meta used to always be for years to press left at the exact right time to get the perfect overwall for a cut, and it was recently beaten by dennis090 who used a more complex but faster starting trick the only reason why it's an exception to the ban is because players were technically already using LIS on that track for years (it just wasn't controversial back then)
@@TheHeadincharge to me, the differentiation lies in using a brute-force tool to generate a cheat-sheet for use during human play. I would consider that a tool-assisted speedrun by definition. If the precise inputs were found through manual effort, that would correspond to developing normalized strategies in a fair way
I'm a speedrun moderator for small games, and not a trackmania player. Here are my hot takes: 1) the LIS routes will be more and more optimized. Rn it's 6 inputs, but as time passes players will go for harder and harder routes, and probably be able to nail more optimized routes of 30+ perfect inputs, which will not be easy and can't be considered 'low input'. My point is, there WILL be a skill ceiling until people equal the TAS, just like it was before LIS was used on the track. 2) In an individual level setting where you're replaying the same 10-sec level over and over again in a deterministic environment, it seems logical to try and approach what a TAS does. LIS is the logical and more effective way to achieve this result, even if it shifts the gameplay of these small maps into rythm-based play. For pure trackmania driving, I think real-time races are just the way to have competition. Or longer tracks where LIS isn't viable. 3) never heard of a rule that bans an external source of visual/sound cues to help your timing. The concept makes sense, but how do you define it? If I found a music that gave me the exact rythm of the inputs, I wouldn't be able to listen to it while playing? Also, that would not be viable for verification by the mods. Would it hurt to get rid of it? 4) It was mentioned that LIS needing an external camera footage would be a barrier for new players, but I doubt new players would go for optimal LIS routes right away? I think that this requirement would be a good thing. Since WRs are so highly regarded, let's have a strong guarantee of their integrity
I really doubt that in a longer maps LIS is adaptable, because with more time the consequence of the very first inputs will become more and more crucial and affect the next ones and so on.
Did you know that freestyle swimming is not really a freestyle swimming? In 2015 Ryan Lochte had a technique where he would do dolphin kicks upside down. It was so dominant that FINA made it illegal and introduced a rule that you need to be on your stomach during freestyle leg
How does that in any way make freestyle swimming not freestyle swimming exactly? Freestyle swimming is a defined swimming style, not literally "free style swimming" (swimming that is free of rules). Freestyle swimming is more colloquially referred to as the "front crawl" or "front stroke". Just like swimming on your "front" is not allowed in the backstroke, swimming on your back is not allowed in freestyle.
@@TheHeadincharge Technically in freestyle you can do any type of stroke that isn’t another Olympic Event (butterfly, breaststroke, or backstroke), but front stroke is the most common since that’s typically the fastest and most accessible.
Love that JaV was against Bugsliding at first, when I mainly know him through crazy tricks, Uberbugs, TAS content and theorycrafting new skips. Really shows a world quite different to the one today
"Okay, let me use my third party software to simulate millions of runs to solve the fastest way to beat this track that a human can replicate" sounds a lot less flattering than you're implying.
@@kylekleiter3854 "bUt A hUmAn StIlL hAd To Do ThE iNpUtS!!!!!!!" like cheating on an exam but stating you still had to manually write down answers or check boxes LUL
@@variok finding a strategy with a TAS and then use it in a "real" run is not tool assisted. I am pretty sure, even in Trackmania, there are maps that were optimized with some tool and then the strategy was converted to human runs.
To me, the community opened the gates to this when allowing buggy physics over raw driving. People complained about bug slides and other things and were overturned. I think it's a little ironic and hypocritical that now its a big deal that a better strategy overules the current meta appears and now those who overuled talented lines driving now don't want their form overuled.
It's a question of what enhances competition. TM's bugs and their execution increase the complexity of play, demand more from the top players and widens the skill set a player needs to develop to become a top player. LIS runs are the opposite. They remove the need to understand the game and its systems at all. You just push the buttons when the computer tells you to. This happens in virtually every speed game at some point. Someone finds an easy-to-execute bug that skips the whole game which may be cool, and undoubtedly the fastest way to play, but it also makes competing in said game not very fun or competitive. So people make a category where they aren't allowed to use that bug and suddenly your game is more competitive again. For example, imagine if nobody ever ran the longer categories of Mario 64 because... well... they're longer. Instead of having one of the best speed games ever made with a rich competitive scene and countless strategies, improvements and competition, you make it boring as hell.
I don’t see the problem with LIS because they only apply on maps such as a12. A low input strategy will not be faster on more precise maps that do not involve a single trick. So I think that if a map has a faster low input strategy then it should be counted.
And if the reason is because "it's not how the game is meant to be played" why allow runs that use Bugslides, Uberbugs, noseslides and any other physics exploit that gains an advantage, because I guess when trackmania was first made, they didn't make it for those tricks to be used, thus not being "the way the game is intended to be played"
The solution to preventing these strats even on very simple maps with one trick, is to add some obstacles at the start that you have to go around. A lot of kacky maps do that. So players cant find a solution that is a couple of inputs with PF for most of the map. Of course that cant really be done on legacy maps but, if low input strats become more common, going forward, there is already a solution available to make them at least much harder, if not impossible to execute, without making maps much harder to play normally.
I agree. Trackmania from what i seen on some map stops being a racing game and become "how do i fling my car into the finish line as fast as possible". Why bans the tool to find the most optimal way to do that
As someone who has never played Trackmania before, I'm far more impressed by someone figuring out 6 centisecond perfect inputs and executing them by hand being the record than I am players yeeting themselves into a wall over and over until they get lucky enough for a WR.
It sure is a much more efficient way to go about this. Many speedruns rely on knowing mechanics and thinking of ways to execute them with this understanding, like, say, if someone brute forced the fastest way to beat a level in Celeste I would've given them a side eye -- as a good speedrunner you should understand how hyperjumps etc work and how to combine these tricks into a coherent speedrun, but like... If the goal is to hit this wall and then the game bugs out and sends you flying wherever it wants to, I really do get brute forcing. I applaud people spending hundreds of hours trying to get the fastest fly bug, but there's not much strategy for that, you can't eventually get "a sense" of where the car will fly, if I undertood it correctly. In that sense, maybe the LIS thing is better speedrunning-wise
But that's the problem. They didn't figure it out through playing. They figured it out via a code. And then they just need to replicate it. There's no trial and error or learning
its not just luck. as a newbie you would still need to learn a ton about how to play the game before you can even have a reasonable chance to hit these tricks. There's a reason the top players on these kind of tracks are also top players in other tracks.
@@rainyprac Yep, but you're still essentially farming the tech over and over like a boss in an MMO waiting for that one drop. Is it cool and impressive as a test of determination and endurance? Sure. But there's less pure skill in the record itself (not the journey to attain that level of skill) to me than being able to execute something like this.
@@VodkaHellstorm "there's less pure skill in the record itself" This is incorrect, IMO. You're misjudging the difficulty of these tricks. Top players are able to perform them more consistently and adapt appropriately to the pseudo-random results. That's what makes them still competitive, and it's why top players are the ones holding the records for these kinds of maps, rather than random people. A bad player isn't going to beat a record like this even if they had a lifetime to dedicate to it, unless they actually improve their ability. Conversely, hitting a LIS isn't hard. It just requires a little bit of timing a luck. Which is precisely why it took relatively no time at all to obtain the record once the tool spit out the strategy.
It's stupid to ban it. A good amount of ideas for WR come from TAS which is essentially LIS. That's like saying if someone created a TAS and Perfected a TAS run with human inputs isn't allowed because it's "not skilled" or "stupid". A record is a record no matter the dedication. It's the same thing for shortcuts and bugs alike. On the same coin though this is the reason why there are different speed run categories because certain players are just way better when it comes to LIS/TAS like runs due to being insanely consistent as far as button mashing and just having that rhythm built in their head due to training or constantly doing it. I was waiting for this to happen, for someone to perfect a "TAS" like run and waiting for the complaints to start rolling in. Here we have it a reason to separate those categories because too many people can't agree on one thing.
it's more simple than that though. A LIS run, runs very similarly to a TAS run. Although a human is doing the inputs, the amount of loops to jump through to be able to submit a legit run would have to be immense. TAS leaderboard is separate, and all TAS's are fair to each other, there are no hoops because it is all TAS. however for LIS to be legit it can't be done in turn with any 3rd party software. So for a LIS submission onto the regular leaderboard, you would need a close up hand cam + a camera overshoulder showing everything that the player can see + in game sound and in game footage + a sound recording device outside of the computer to record (so that player can't cheat via sound cues). You may also need a much more intrusive software setup that logs any other software that is open at the time of the run. However then you also run into the "what if said software is running on a separate device." And then you may even get to a point where they are sitting on something that vibrates, to be the tell, when they need to put a new input, so you will need a recording prior to the player sitting down. And you would need all of this for every submitted run. Now after all that because of the nature of LIS runs, they would have to all be hand checked by people, to check for cheating using any methods above, or even new methods created. Compare that to a regular run that only needs the comp patch, to upload a run, and it is done. The workload for both player and leaderboard side would be mountainous
@@darksky1628my first thought was basically this. How do you stop a modded keyboard that just does the precise inputs at the exact times. Obviously, you would need a decent approximation of the inputs for it not to be obvious, but you could make a script that checks if your input is within a tenth of a second of when it should happen and then executes the button press correctly. To an outside observer it's basically invisible, but instead of a 1/100 timing you only need to get 1/10 or even lower depending on how obvious the difference is on camera
What surprises me is that the community exudes the image that achieving a record is a feat of pure driving skill and endless grinding. In other racing games and real motorsport, analyzing inputs, reviewing replays, and studying telemetry (yours and those of your competitors as well) are all part of the process of getting better and faster. I cannot imagine that trackmania players aren't studying the replays of past records, nor using plugins to watch their inputs, or using TAS (including AI tools) to find better strategies. What matters is that the driving is done by a human on an unmodified client, right? The way a strategy is found shouldn't matter. On the other hand I agree that using a tool to show the perfect timings on another screen while driving is going overboard and should be outlawed.
"On the other hand I agree that using a tool to show the perfect timings on another screen while driving is going overboard and should be outlawed" why? Per your own reasoning, "what matters is that the driving is done by a human on an unmodified client." These two sentiments are inconsistent.
@@xXPoopWorldXx But you don't see real life drivers have a HUD display showing them the perfect line like in racing games. The point was that the driving should be done manually and no outside help during the run should be used, meaning it is all up to you and your skill. So they just phrased it badly, making the statements sound wack.
Sports ban new tech and strategies all the time btw. Doing a somersault in long jump is banned for instance, even though it's the best way to jump longer. There are banned Swim suits, shoes, balls. Real racing leagues restrict tech and strategy all the time - Like Nascar banning wall hugging.
Speed runs are literally about hitting all the right inputs at the right time. Just because someone figured out a better way to find those exact inputs doesn't mean their records aren't valid. There are literally speed runs for Mario 64 based on fewest inputs/jumps. The only reason they get their own category is because they're slower than a straight up speed run would be.
That's his point though. There are other games that do this - including rhythm games - but trackmania has skill expression, which this minimises (and as mentioned, is very easy to cheat)
They aren’t finding the inputs is what you’re missing. The program checks countless runs until it finds the fastest one, then the driver just has to replicate it. If they were finding the inputs on their own it would be a different story, but given the millions of potential outcomes in any given area of a deterministic game, that can’t happen the same way a Mario 64 run can done.
@@MrMichalMalek My man, if you give evidence of you doing a uberbug legit, I'll happily accept your point. Otherwise, I'll assume you have no idea what you're talking about.
@6:34 Yes, which is what striving for the record means. This is why TAS's were created. Who cares if everyone can perform precise inputs and get the same record? That's just how it works. LIS is literally the same mentality that every speedrunner uses. Less inputs means more consistency, i.e. "setups". A foundation of speedrunning. This "controversy" is only due to speedrunner egos getting hurt because someone else found a lower input count than them. It screams, "No, YoU'rE nOt AlLoWeD tO bE fAsTeR tHaN pEoPlE wHo PlAy mOrE hOuRs!"
Tbf I don't think that's the reason for the controversy, I think trackmania is a game focused on mastering countless skills and changing and adapting constantly to the different positions of each run, even getting the Uber bug from different setups is a difficult feat, however this strategy is not something that rewards skill or knowledge of the game it's a tap 6 buttons trying to get the correct timing and repeating till you get it, that doesn't take experience or skill in game it simply takes time. This is why they're worried about the competitive aspect of the game, timing 6 clicks doesn't show who the best players on the map are, it just shows who can sit at the screen and press 6 buttons without even thinking the longest. It's entirely brainless.
I see both sides and personally think the best decision would be to delete the game forever because the community is always complaining about every little thing
@@arieltm4925 Because people often act like large paradigm shifts "ruin the game." LIS seems to be the natural conclusion (for now) of a deterministic racing game. Perhaps LIS-able maps should simply not be regarded with the same prestige as others by the people who hate LIS. If the map can be used and abused in this way, that is just the nature of the game. Hunt another map.
That's not what makes it LIS. The difference between normal and LIS is that LIS has the inputs predetermined and the player is driving with the intention to hit the keys at exact times. In a normal run, the player just drives to go the fastest they can but don't have inputs predetermined to be exact times. LIS is just only used for low amount of button presses because it's very difficult to do anything more than 10 perfect presses in a row, especially on longer tracks. It's hard to allow it because its basically just a TAS run and would be impossible to moderate and keep in check. It's only really a problem on very short tracks but still a problem never the less.
@@TBNRnoob14 NOWAY people use tool to solve any% runs in deterministic games, its the community's own fault that this happened, they only cared about lowest time, never added categories like cutless, glitchless, etc. Of course as tools develop deterministic games are gonna get solved in a way for humans to be able to execute, it's always been about being the fastest so why should LIS be banned if it's just the fastest human way to drive. To avoid the TAS issue you can always find ways around that, handcams (everyone has a phone to record with), make TAS runs have a signature inputs, have a separate client and so on it's a non issue that people use to fearmonger
@@TBNRnoob14 For super short tracks players already DO know the fastest way to drive, and it's called a TAS, and if copying a TAS on short maps is against the rules then many many short maps would have their leaderboards wiped. For example: A10 Acrobatic is a map with like 10 inputs where the best strategy is to try to copy the TAS as well as possible. Why isn't that an LIS? Just because it was found by TAS not by a brute forcing LIS software? Because that is stupid as hell. If the optimal solution to your map is under 10 inputs, maybe fix your map instead of complaining.
@@TBNRnoob14 All the inputs on short maps are more or less predetermined. Hell even on minute long COTD tracks all the world records look almost the same in most cases. The longer it is the more different they are, but it wasn't like Hefest didn't already have a set idea of how exactly to play A12. It's a drive down hill into RNG uberbug. Rinse and repeat until you get it. All LIS does is optimize the problem for easier execution, and effects like 2/65 maps. Banning it is unreasonble imo.
This is a game where the sole objective is to improve the times of a run. When there already exists tools like TAS and TMInterface, using such tools to assist you is perfectly normal in my opinion. Banning such times on the leaderboard would mean gatekeeping the game from potential new players. Also, given the nature of TMNF players, it won't be too long before they find a non-LIS run which would beat the LIS run. So crying for removal of such times is never a viable option.
"You're beating the world record wrong". Honestly, this and the 92BOB thing show how the community only allows records when they're being done by runners that someone deems as good at the game. Sure, this is bordering tas use, but a person did it with their own hands, without hacks. Why do we draw the line at remembering the input timings, how is it so different from using tas to find new bugs, strategies and lines?
@@CrashCubeZeroOne Exactly, this is simply bad for the betterment of the game. Someones going to go and grind for a new wr just for the all mighty "pros" to deem it not worthy enough for their leaderboards
That isn't the sole objective, though. Otherwise TAS would be allowed on the leaderboard. The Trackmania leaderboard has something to do with the game Trackmania. That's why simply hacking the leaderboard to add a time of 0.01 is not considered valid. With the right setup, LIS can be done without knowing that the game Trackmania exists. At that point, the game has been optimized out of existence, and is no longer being played.
@@CrashCubeZeroOne It's so obvious no one here plays the game. Every single person opposing it does not play the game, or is at least not good at it. It's not a coincidence a majority of players voted to remove LIS. That last sentence makes no sense, LIS is insanely different from using tas to find new lines to take. One Is directly copying a set of inputs, which requires zero game knowledge or understanding of the car. The other, is simply finding a new method, which you still have to grind for many hours even with tons of experience in the game. Only people that actually play tm can understand this, the whole point of the game is removed with LIS, why even play the track at that point? If LIS is allowed, the tracks it is used on become meaningless, and so do the leaderboards, so why waste the tracks?
@Travixty sure, I may not be good at the game, but why would that make my point less valid? I've beaten the track the most intended way possible, and I'm not butthurt that people use bugs and shortcuts to achieve better times. The pros are allowed to be frustrated that there is a faster way to beat the track that involves less game knowledge, but a person actually did beat the record. If anything, they should do what games like SM64 and Spyro do: create a "16 star" or "14 talisman" categories. Make a separate "no LIS" category instead of taking down the record and *maybe* considering giving it a category. Your response showcases exactly the elitist mindset I was talking about. A person did grind that specific track, they don't have to prove they're good at other tracks for the record to be accepted.
2010: Bugslide? That's stupid. 2013: Uberbug? That's stupid. 2024: LIS? That's stupid. I don't have a stake in this and the decision may be the best for the speedrunning community but I definitely see a comparison between these things. Flying through the air via uberbug isn't exactly a racing competition either.
id argue that a uberbug still takes skill (and luck) to execute, which is why its taken so long to beat the record through normal means. LIS on the otherhand is purely skill in timing and not much else, and think its too far of a reduction of the game to count in this comparison.
At least with Ubers and bugslides the whole game isn't dead after a few weeks of LIS, so not comparable at all to me... As he said, if out of the 65 tracks we find like 7 of them where LIS can be used, then that's 10% of the whole campaign that isn't usable at all anymore. How would you want that?
The thing here is that a normal WR driving player can be put on almost any cup of the day competition and will probably be div 1 or 2. A LIS player would never get that unless they we're also already a great player.
A legendary skip in Super Mario 64 was discovered with what is essentially LiS (carpet skip AKA Carpetless). After some initial agitation (mainly with how difficult it was to perform) now all serious 120 star world record contenders have began to use it, and that game has a speedrunning status that far exceeds Trackmania. If you ban LiS just because a few tracks get busted wide open by it, in my eyes you’re not a true speed game anymore.
Carpetless is completely different though, in 120stars carpetless takes up a RIDICULOUSLY low amount of inputs compared to the rest of the run. On a12 it's 6 seconds of inputs and that's it. LIS's defeat the whole purpose of trackmania.
@@arieltm4925 people are only complaining because there are tracks which are so simple that people found that you can beat them faster than the current records using a low amount of inputs. Even if its shown that those LIS methods might not even be faster than someone driving normally, as often they are done to beat a current record with the least inputs vs the theoretical best time for a track.
@@obvious_failiure5764 not sure what your point is but LIS by nature is finding the lowest inputs that yield a world record in order to beat it more easily than with more inputs. that's not playing trackmania, that's just going off timings
Bang on with the final point. Wirt has been very keen to say lately that Trackmania is a speedrunning game so that he can be considered for a speedrunning streamer award. If you told a speedrunner in any other game that their any% run wasn't valid because they "just did 6 frame perfect inputs and that's not playing the game the *right* way", you'd be quite rightly laughed out of the room. Giving players that were already on the leaderboards a vote to ban a more effective strategy is also a comical conflict of interest. It's not like it's a new bug or control method, which is the kind of thing that does result in spun-off leaderboards. It's literally just a more efficient way of playing the game.
@@arieltm4925 Okay, so if I play the map using LIS, and then just say I didnt use it, its a coincidence, can you prove I didn't do it? You can't. It's just stupid to ban it, if there are tracks that can be beaten using LIS, so be it.
I don't really play the game anymore, so I couldn't care less about the actual decision from the leaderboard managers. A ban for LIS records still seems stupid. IDK how people can call A12 a "legendary map" (you literally just flip a coin every single attempt), but at the same time despise LIS. I think people at some point will find ways to get more consistant at LIS and be able to pass LIS records on simple maps like D11, B09 or even A12, that naturally don't have a lot of inputs, as driven normally by simply using a more complex string of inputs. Hitting 30 frame perfect inputs in a row doesn't sound absolutely inhuman, especially not with the potential help of most likely prohibited tools. Rhythm game, stopwatch, macros, etc. Gamers from all games have often enough done stuff thought to be inhuman.
at the end of the day, it still is just playing the game and 30 100Hz tick-perfect inputs is nowhere near impossible. I'm not even among the best geometry dash players and i regularly play levels demanding multiple frame-perfect inputs, which i can pull off with high consistency. at some level of optimization of any time-based competition in gaming, speed will come down to tick-perfect inputs at some point, and trackmania has been around for a very long time. maybe its day has come
its weird that people get so defensive over their records. someone drove faster than me, im mad, and ill do ANYthing to f k that person over and not let them have any joy or pride in driving the best run possible. crazy how selfish they can be and i wouldn't want to be apart of that anyways.
@@ouroya It's something new for the Trackmania community. While such a strat has technically been known in Trackmania for many years already, anyone actually willing to try LIS will most likely need some time to get somewhat consistant at this, before they try to beat actual records having to hit many frame perfect inputs in a row. Mastery of other games, especially rhythm games like GD for example, can surely help here.
LOL. Kind of a joke. Keeping BUGslides on leaderboards that are practically impossible to control the aim off. In that sense the competition rules are just plain better for sportsmanship. No cuts, no wallbangs, no bug using that’s suddenly considered fine by the same top players that now don‘t want their records to be taken… lost quite some respect for the recordholders as it stands. Second fastest way only, as someone else here said.
Right ive never played the game but nice to watch. From an outsiders perspective, how are bugslides and uberbugs allowed, but not this? One is a lottery of bruteforce, how exactly is that skill?
im not going to be rude because it's obvious you are not good at trackmania. bugslides are insanely skilled-based and 100% able to controlled, LIS is far different from anything else
So what would be the line between LIS and normal runs? The Hefest run had 33 inputs, so would a 15 Input run be allowed on the leaderboards? Or maybe 20?
It's not only that it's an arbitrarily low number of inputs, but that they are decided by an algorithm and the player focuses on hitting keys with exact timings rather than playing the game
I have 3500 hrs on a single stage in dirt rally and I'm still like top 3k I guess that's what it takes to get decent? (altough I guess the run is longer)
This feels like TM elitist are complaining that the game has gotten so dissected people can optimise stuff like that... Which tbh took longer than expected, the real competion of TM should be on live runs that REALLY shows your actual ''In Game Knowledge/Capabilities'' and not just ur stuborness and amount of time you can spend on the game. This is speedrunning, it's normal for these things to happen. This will also most likly not rly affect a lot of maps since like not many require only 6 inputs...
Idk, I'm not an elitist or even slightly competitive player, but I still think it's wrong, cause it basically turns TM, which is supposed to be an arcade racing game, into guitar hero just with cars. And if you use a visual tool, the racing part is taken away too. You just follow your indicators and smash tthe buttons. Kinda takes the soul out of the game for me.
@@xXiceArr0wXx But it's not cheating by any reasonable definition of the term. Attempting to make a TAS strat viable for human attempts is a thing speedrunners do all the time. It's a bunch of people who like a deterministic game complaining that certain levels of it are now "solved".
@@deggy42 the issue here isn't that the strat is cheating, it's that people can basically just tas low input strategies and there's no way to know that they didn't cheat. i don't think this is necessarily a good reason to outright ban them, but it is a completely valid concern as it's already happened with a low input strat in kacky, and we're lucky that was caught at all.
As an outsider its crazy that low input is "not the way the game is meant to be played" but jumping over the track and skiping the course is totally fine
because the one way you LOOK AT THE GAME the other way you LOOK AT THE OTHER SCREEN! its so obviously not playing the same game, the skillset is so different that it shouldnt even matter whether the game was "meant" to be played that way.
@shoe7281 I don't disagree with you but using bugs and skipping the track are different skills other than running the track as intended. Again I'm not in the community so there could be other categories and drawing line of what is and isn't acceptable is up to the community
@@evanjohns795 one different skill is utilized IN CONJUNCTION with the game as normally played, and the other outright REJECTS playing the game and substitutes a pseudo-rhythm game in its place. this is not even close to similar. im glad you agree that it needs a different leaderboard, but the comparison of it to glitches is uncalled for and an entirely uninformed perspective. wirtual began the video with a chronological progression of strategies each with certain community members' dissent to show hwo the game has evolved and to highlight how controversy is formed, but the rest of the video makes it clear that this is strategy is a fundamentally new breed of its own. people got so hung up on the first few minutes and took it as an admission of similarity rather than a simple aid to gaining at least some of the needed context to this game.
@shoe7281 this is clearly very important to you, and my first comment could be seen as glib and I apologize for that, but in the future I would temper that passion and try to see others perspectives and not assume that they are acting in bad faith
I am a big fan of the "if it is done by a human, it is legit, that is the only speedrunning rule" mantra. But I have no issues with a new category. A lot of games have special categories for game-breaking glitches.
Yeah without RNG pretty much all game speedruns boil down to this. I honestly think this strategy only really ruins shorter maps so I don’t really see the issue anyway. I don’t think grinding shorter maps like this is fun or really that interesting to watch.
Part of me thinks this is a case of ‘work smarter, not harder’ where no actually cheating has taken place. The video is laid out really well because it does show how people were against the uber bugs etc to start with which are now the shortcuts being beaten by this new strategy… which is slightly ironic. In my opinion if this should have its own category then so should any cut method on any track, as that is a different skill than just driving as fast as you can using perfect racing lines. That obviously would never happen and I think it would be a lot of work to go back and change all of the leaderboards but it would be an interesting change and open trackmania to having a more diverse selection of speedrun categories on each track. Good video wirtual
There are already "no-cut" versions of Nadeo tracks with added walls to prevent shortcuts but I think it would be cool if it was a tab you could see on the leaderboard of the maps themselves, though people would probably argue on what counts as a cut in some cases.
Agreed. Use tags, not categories. This one could be tagged "LIS + Uber". Want to compete glitchless? Just filter out those tags. The main category is for valid human runs without external assistance provided during the run, I don't see why we should add some ad-hoc criteria just for LIS which affects very few maps anyway.
IMO, LIS should be accepted as "normal" runs. There are tons of world record levels/games in the speedrunning world that can be tied beause they're easy (low number of inputs) to replicate. It's just part of the game. My arguments are: 1) We don't even know if LIS is the fastest way possible. Maybe more complicated inputs will result in a better time in the future. 2) Even if it's the fastest; it just shows a flaw in the map design, not in the players. 3) If the wr can easily be tied, it could be a nice incentive for new people to try to enter the speedrun world by getting a tied wr.
Trackmania leaderboards have always been a testament to Trackmania skill. That is why TAS times are separate from player leaderboards. LIS is not a measure of Trackmania skill. It is a measure of rhythm game skill (push button 1,2,3,4 at a precise time) The visual difference is that in a regular Trackmania run, if you mistime an input (oversteer a turn, eat a gear, or release too early) you can try to save the run. With LIS, if you mistime *any* input, you immediately restart, because if you mistimed the input, the rest of your strategy is simply gone. But from a skill perspective, the leaderboards as they are display Trackmania skill and using external tools as aids during gameplay is against the rules of the leaderboard. LIS is against that rule because you are using TAS tools to build the input list, then the timer to execute the input list. People aren't really saying ban it completely, but it's a completely different skillset being tested, so it should have it's own leaderboard.
@@squashiejoshie200000 regular speed runs are not a test of skill either, it's just doign the same thing over and over until you fluke out a record time. skill is repeatable.
@@GraveUypo I never said it's not a test of skill. I just said it's a completely different skillset from normal Trackmania, which it is. And very few speedruns are no skill. You're free to go beat some world records to prove me wrong, but I doubt anyone who does speedrunning seriously would agree with you.
The moment the leaderboard starts banning specific types of cuts they can be considered a joke. Either allow all cuts, ban all cuts, or move runs with cuts to a different leaderboard.
If I'm to be honest, then at the absolute height of mastery we would arrive at LIS since it's the pinnacle of no wasted movement. The real controversy is just how LIS is being discovered through brute force simulations. It's like memorizing a specific line in Chess from Stockfish, you would still be bad at the game and have no idea why exactly it's these inputs that works.
There was that one guy(Nigel Richards) that won French Scrabble without knowing the language after 9 weeks of studying the best words. He didn't get banned for it either. Would love to see the butthurt if all those 20+ years drivers got their records stolen by kids that played the game for 2 weeks.
Problem is that its not as easy with the no wasted movement. Yeah he used less inputs, but if you watch the comparison against hefest you can see how he loses time in the start. Like the start trick that makes for a faster start.
@@Wisewolf_of_Yoitsuif the tool didn't even consider hefest's faster start in the analysis, then i guess it's just really slower? we only got a hefest run but with tas ending example in the video, but no hefest faster start + lis continuation example
@@DashMan-g7z I know about this Scrabble tourney, but you have to understand that Scrabble isn't about language mastery, it's about pattern recognition and Nigel proved he was an expert at this, without any external software. I am a fan of TAS, these are runs done by people who have intricate knowledge of the game to map all the best inputs. This is also the core reason why glitches are widely respected by the speed-running community it's a deeper mastery of a game. And this brings me to your last point, do you really think the 20+ years drivers don't have the skill required to perform simulated LIS themselves? They wouldn't even need 2 weeks, they'd get it done in less than a day. But do you think anyone would be excited to watch a new WR happen? Would be pretty boring to see the top 50 runs being 100% identical.
@@Wisewolf_of_Yoitsu I'm not sure what you mean. It could just be that the faster start by hefest is actually an overall time loss that you pay for after the jump. I could totally see someone doing the calculations to figure this out in TAS, I have seen speedrunners doing crazier stuff than that. I have seen people in SM bros slow down at certain points to line up jumps or prevent bonks.
With uberbugs and shortcuts you have to use judgement. If you allow LIS you turn the game into a rhythm game and it’s no longer a racing game. In theory you don’t even need a monitor.
@@tonixborghi2171 Yeah for sure. Its because of the cheating stuff definitely, surely they have no incentive to ban it considering they are the top speedrunners and record holders
@@aidenrylott6688 In theory you don't even need a monitor... that applies to normal gameplay as well. TM is deterministic. But so is DOOM, and you don't even need a monitor to play that. With the right inputs you can beat the entirety of Doom, in under an hour, without a screen once. You can also do the same with the normal campaign in TM. All the way from A01 to E05. You don't need a monitor to play it. It makes for a horrible gaming experience, but since TM is 100% deterministic it's still possible to do so.
LIS are completely fine imo. If you drove it manually, then why should it matter how many presses you made? If you can execute such a precise sequence of presses that it achieves you a record, I'd argue that's just as impressive and difficult as doing it any other (legitimate) way. You said "a leaderboard with low input records would just determine who is the best at timing button presses" - but isn't that essentially how every leaderboard in Trackmania is? When you're playing Deep Dip, isn't is just about timing your button presses in a way that gets you to the finish without falling? This is just a different form of timing. It still requires strategy, research, skill and many many tries to execute. In my eyes the run is completely legit, it's the same people crying about it who cried about records done with bugslides or uberbugs years ago. Punishing someone just because they found a more effective way to finish a map quicker, just because they used fewer inputs, is just weird to me.
I understand your point but the thing is what the pros are annoyed about is the fact that trackmania records should just solely rely on the pure driving and positioning of the car skill rather than a visual cue like staring at a time that you hit (for example) the left button at 3.21 seconds exact. I understand even hitting that button requires skill but then due to this being allowed on the normal leaderboard what will happen is that people who have not been grinding and learning the mechanics of the game for multiple of 1000's of hours will start flooding the leaderboard and the people who have devoted they many 1000's of hours to master the mechanics of the game will now be left with no choice but to choose the same path and then Trackmania which is a racing game will turn into a game where people will be using in game timer to get WR's rather than deciding on what inputs to do in split second. So I think the moderators decided to do the right thing and give it a separate leaderboard.
While I agree that LIS runs take a lot of skill and strategy to pull off, I think the problem with them is that those runs aren’t actually playing the game. The skill involved is the same as would be in a rhythm game, which is very impressive but not what track mania is. Also, yes, technically every track mania run is just timing button presses, but there is a difference between LIS and regular runs. For example, deep dip is essentially timing buttons, but the timings aren’t given to you beforehand. They require the player to understand the physics of the game and how to make small adjustments if something isn’t perfect. They are based on what the player sees and how the player interprets what’s going on in the game instead of just looking at the timer and pressing the button based on the number. Regular runs require immense knowledge and understanding of the game in order to time the presses correctly, whereas LIS does not. Basically, I think LIS is impressive, but it essentially makes track mania a rhythm game, which defeats the point. I think giving LIS its own leaderboard is the best option.
10:41 Knowing that the TAS world record is way faster, it only needs someone to get lucky enough to break the 10.40s world records. It's possible, so no point in banning the 10.40s time.
I think it should absolutely be allowed. Replicating exact inputs is also a type of skill, and the more complex a map gets, the harder it'll be to finish it this way!
@@arieltm4925 Because going for the same exact bug 10000 times in a row hoping to win the physica lottery is SO much funner. LIS is only feasible on thise kinds of maps
@@arieltm4925 A12 grind is not the fun part of the game. And LIS isnt easy applicable on maps with any more length. And if some player will try LIS for a months to try beating long map, I say he deserves the record
Ok, this seems kinda silly. I dont have experience with competitive Trackmania but i like the game enough to care. In the example with the swimmers, no one on Earth would blame Phelps for winning a medal because he reapeted the right movemements of his arms and body to achive the best time in the race, reapiting the right set of movements is the only input that swimmers get to achive their times and medals. In this example Bolt would be a person that e.g. used a schortcut, and i dont see any wide outrage about that, in contrary the comunity seems to applaud the use of such techniques.
He used a terrible example tbf. The difference is that LIS is indistinguishable from TAS and basically removes all types of skill from the run besides timing. It wouldn't be such a big deal if it was clear whether it is cheated or not but it is essentially just a TAS run. The thing with shortcuts is you are still playing the game in a way where you are the one driving the lines and deciding the inputs, not letting a computer find the best solution and then copying it exactly.
@@TBNRnoob14isn't the game already about timing? When repeating a map over and over you're only trying to repeat the same sequence over and over. The difference one you're basing your run based on how you're driving and the other on your inputs What I see is a bunch of manchild crying because the abuse of the games physics suddenly isn't done the way they do it
@@azerty1933 there is a lot more going into a run than just repeating a sequence. Although A12 doesn't give much you can even see even there. When hefest has to reduce airtime in the start or release enough to fly into finish. These sort of things cannot just be repeated and are part of the skill of the game. Same goes for air control, reducing air time, adjusting lines, and yes timing. The thing with LIS is that it strips all that down to just timing when to press the keyboard 6 times. It strips the game down so much and removes 90% of the skill. Yes it does take skill to do an LIS but it's a difference sort of skill than play tmnf The biggest problem however is that it is impossible to moderate without sacrificing the low barrier of entry that the game is known for. There is no way to tell if an LIS run is done properly or with TAS because it is so simple in its inputs. Imo the best way to fix this is to just make a seperare category that allows for LIS
@@TBNRnoob14 isn't trackmania nowaday just random luck hoping you get thrown away in the random right direction? A12 is a shit map to being from, considering the "right" way for the record is not ignore 2/3 of the map i'd say we can stop being hypocritical about what is skill and what is abusing the game
@@azerty1933 A12 is probably the worst map to judge trackmania on. It is so far stripped down that it is faster to complete than A01. Trackmania is still very skillful and LIS will really only effect 1% of all tracks. That's probably why it's easier to just make a new category for it instead of changing the verification process for something that won't really be applicable on most tracks
The difficulty to detect cheating is the only good argument, the other arguments are just a hypocritical way of saying "i don't like this way of playing the game so i want to ban it so i don't have to adapt". It's not like frame perfect LIS is going to break the whole game either, it's only realistic for tiny maps. Several speedruns use this kind of frame perfect tricks that are inspired from TAS, Trackmania is not an exception.
Easy way to remove the cheat , don't allow the same input...they will always be a better imput(proof in the video), it's dumb but at least it will not punish this player to be the better... and no The difficulty to detect cheating is not a good argument to punish this guy to be better NEVER.
I actually didn't have the bell on for this channel, so even the algorithm was surprised by the upload and recommended it to me. Because TAS shows that much faster WRs are possible, LIS runs are as close to running TAS as humanly possible for some maps. Having a separate category would be a nice addition, but maybe add also an overall category to see how the LIS runs stack up to the TAS runs. And if there are duplicate runs, build a drop down that groups anyone that has that time into one place on the leaderboard: All Tied for 3rd place. This way, even if there are a hundred runs that same time, 4th place that is a hundredth slower can still be on the leaderboard.
From an outside perspective, banning low input strategy from the leaderboards seems like just a way for the old guard to protect their current records from a new strat. If the goal is to set the fastest time using any way possible found in game, it should actually mean any way possible. Having a bunch of old time players vote on it is pretty weird since they clearly have a stake in keeping their records and preserving how they see the game should be played. Its pretty selfish imo to claim that their way of playing is more legit than another way. Also, the cheating using an external tool isn't just a problem for this game, so it shouldn't be a reason to ban low input.
You're very right here, even if they are doing it unintentionally. As runs stagnate things that were once banned becomes allowed, all they are doing is delaying the natural death of these types of competitions while ironically making any record they get pointless.
Thing is you aren't actually playing the game. You're just telling a tool to come up with a human reproducible TAS run and then you're playing a rhythm game instead. I mean sure, you could play speed chess using a 3600 elo chess engine; you still have to move the pieces quickly right? That's a skill. But you're not really playing chess anymore, you're just mimicking what a computer is telling you to do with zero actual game sense. This strat is basically a tool that turns Trackmania maps into DDR maps. Does anyone actually want that?
@@osenmosen He is literally playing the game. He just found a more efficient way to train, and that makes the people who spent 1000s of hours on the old way feel like they wasted their time.
@@SarahMaywalt He isn't training; he's telling a tool to generate all inputs for him and then tries to mimic it down to a 100th of second, effectively turning it into a DDR map. That's the point. There's no trial and error or training involved. If you can tell a tool to generate a DDR map and then play it on secondary monitor without even looking at the game, do you honestly not think that ruins the spirit of the game? This is basically a "TAS but with human reproducible inputs"-category and it makes sense that it's separated.
I agree, speedrunning is very serious. It's not something we do to have fun it's a divine mandate from god to try and get the fastest possible time on every game ever created, no matter the cost. We should nationalize the speedrunning community and impose strict rules like that in order to protect this sacred activity. In addition, to truly safeguard the correct way to speedrun we should consider any breach of this laws to be an act of treason punishable by death.
@@TheHeadincharge Then why have they not made categories for cuts and no cut runs? Surely now that they want to make a category for LIS, they make one for cuts/no cuts right
Yeah. From the video it seems like this is the only map that it's relevant for. Seems like it should be allowable until/if it's the dominate strategy on more maps. If it only matters for a couple maps, who cares, that's kind of neat. If it's like half of all maps, that would be boring.
Agreed. If players have an issue with it then create a separate leaderboard for each type of strategy, but the overall WR leaderboard should still include LIS runs. Any other setup just doesn't make sense as you would be pretending that slower runs are the WR.
Furthermore, LIS’s real problem is that you are passing off button pressing as skill. The miraculous thing where LIS is an improvement over driving on A-12 is not going to be there for every track. LIS’s thing would be more a test if you can press any less buttons. And if later on LIS = TAS, then it can be entirely disregarded.
Problems with the LIS ban: - Drivers will have to actively avoid using lines and strategies that they now know to be the fastest - Banning the use of extra tools is pointless as eventually drivers can just use the race clock to time inputs - prevents seeing the evolution of the game in response to this new strategy
EXACTLY! That third point is so important Mods are stunting the growth of the game as a whole because they don't like one random strategy. Worried about cheaters? Mandate a hand cam for Lis. Worried about certain maps being trivialized? Hunt a different map, or play on a category dedicated for Non-LIS No other major speed running game has EVER banned a strategy that lowers time for Any%
I also see another problem : what do you even count as low input strategies ? Do you have to press at least 10 buttons for your record to count ? 12 ? Where is the line ? What if someone drives normally for the first part of the run and then only does low input strategies for say the second half of the run ? On longer maps there could be viable strats where you run normally to a certain point then have to hit a precise position and start low inputting from there. How could you even moderate that ?
@@enkn - not actively, no. LIS is very easily distinguishable from natural driving and would never be matched by a person using regular strategies. - yes, they can, but it's much harder to use the clock than a visual tool. And at least it's part of the game. It usually takes great excuses to allow tools in speedruns, not to disallow them. If it's "pointless" it should be disallowed by default. - not if they add it as a separate category. Disallowing or allowing LIS *entirely* stunts the development of using/not using LIS. Having separate categories ensures the continued development of both, naturally, as people choose which leaderboard they want to pursue at any given time.
@@daftwulli6145 it's impossible to switch to LIS mid run, it's always at the start. While the game is deterministic, even slight variations can mess up the physics a lot
This is extremely similar to something that was found around a year ago in the fnaf scene, one of the main ways players compete in fnaf is saving the most power possible during their runs, the record for fnaf 1 was slowly increased over the years by people just getting better and understanding the game more, learning to abuse characters movement timers and such. But about a year ago a bug was found that made it possible to get the literal perfect run in basically 4 inputs (extremely easy inputs). It took away all need to be good at the game, and required practically no prior game knowledge, someone who had never touched the game before could beat the non bug WR within 10 minutes of trying. The non bug record was broken within 30 mins of this being found and the perfect run was done the next day. We consider this bug method a separate category, and the actual record is just .5% behind the bug methods perfect run. Competition in fnaf is much much smaller than trackmania, but I fully understand banning something like this to preserve the integrity of competition. New tech and strats being discovered can be one of the most exciting things that can happen within a dedicated community, which is why i think separate category's are almost always the way to go as to not discourage people from experimenting. Cool video i enjoyed! I love watching the development of games even tho im not super familiar with said game!
Perfect example and I'm glad that someone is taking into consideration the health of the competition in the community. At the end of the day it is about enjoying the game and being able to have fun challenging yourself to do better. LIS sort of takes that away completely so it's far better to just make it a seperate category.
Good point! However, I think biggest difference here is that fnaf is only one run (or a couple of runs?), while Trackmainia has 65 different tracks to drive (plus many community maps). LIS is only viable on shorter tracks, and probably not all of them, meaning there are still a lot of tracks to compete regularly on if you don’t like LIS.
except these aren't extremely easy inputs, you have to hit them at the exact 100th of a second. Its a speedrunning game, and people are mad about the speedrunning strat. Doesn't mean it isn't valid. Sometimes the best strat is found, and yeah, its bittersweet. But that is the nature of speedrunning.
@@Morhpocelionate Trackmania isn't only about speedrunning just because tracks have leaderboards. It's about competing in THAT game with an overall agreed on playstyle which is defined by it's community.
Never played trackmania but banning it doesn’t make any sense. The community clearly doesn’t care about extorting the games physics and quirks yet LIS is where the line is finally crossed? Nearly every game has speedruns requiring precision inputs where players spend hours trying to get frame perfect timings. This is no different and it is asinine that people think his “driving expertise” is lacking thus he doesn’t deserve the record. Why does someone’s ability to bug slide affect whether or not the record is legitimate? Most importantly, this record CAN still be beaten. Seems like a pretty arbitrary place to draw the line based more on people’s emotions than reason. To me it sounds like a bunch of veteran player feel slighted they spent hours practicing just to get beat by a dude who plays the game differently. They want to make someone’s game experience a barrier to entry so that their records don’t come under fire and the time they’ve put into the game isn’t for nothing. Lastly, asking the people affected by whether or not this is a record to choose if it should be allowed is the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard. This decision HAS to be made by a committee who will be impartial. It’s ridiculous this is how the decision was made. I could rant about this for hours but coming from other speedrunning communities, I can’t believe this is even a debate. Every game with deterministic speedruns works like this and it’s mind boggling that this wasn’t figured out 10 years ago. Times change. It’s clear the old guard aren’t happy about it, and that they’re willing to rewrite the books to make sure everyone knows it
@@hihitherethere1 i know that pokemon runners do this all the time with manipulating encounters. They reset the game and try to press certain buttons on exact frames. This makes them able to manipulate random events like wild pokemon encounters.
There is a very important difference that stands out with this strategy specifically, as it doesn’t actually require you to play the game, or be good at it. All the actual effort is done by an algorithm beforehand, not people theory-crafting (btw, many often forget that TAS are crafted by actual people who put hours tweaking every little detail of a run, and do still require some amount of user input). There is no skill expression, or adaptation in the fly, it’s not YOUR record, it’s a machine’s
The whole “barrier of entry” argument reminds me of the early discussions of AI art, and how it “democratizes art.” Y’all don’t actually care about inclusion, you are just lazy, and want to do speedruns without the skill required to do them.
1. I don't think that LIS should be banned, but I do understand the likelihood of cheating with it. But from an outside perspective and all my speedrunning friends from other games also say that it's insane to ban something like this. The likelihood of cheating is the only reason that makes any sense. 2. I've also asked about the use of visual/audio cues such as metronomes being banned, something my other speedrunning friends have also been puzzled by. I've personally never understood why this is banned, as it's used in so many other games. Using a TAS tool to find more optimal starts has always been allowed in many other speedrunning games too, as long as its not directly impacting the run. Hell, Minecraft speedruns allow a literal calculator to find the stronghold. I really don't think they should be banned. 3. As someone who's been around Axell a ton and seen his personality, most of that "suspicious" behavior is just him. Let me be clear that I'm not defending his lying here, but I wanted to clear some things up. He does very often delete things for harddrive space, am he does very often say "I got it" before something actually happens. These things, while suspicious, definitely aren't reasons he cheated. On the other hand, yes ofc he lied about the second monitor. Though considering that LIS was already banned from TMX at this point, him getting a run that utilized a visual metronome also would've been against a TMX rule anyways. Lying about it wasn't okay though, and he has since apologized for it, and is now grinding A12 without LIS legitimately. I only say that because I don't think hate should be spread around it. The community is often very specific about how it wants things run for 'fair and reasonable' competition, so there's not much room for us to say much. Either way, this whole A12 situation is absurd, and I do hope the record is beaten non-LIS very soon.
believe me it is almost impossible for a non-LIS record to beat it... hell even 1 hundredth of a change in record takes years and is celebrated throughout the community .... but i still don't understand where to oppose or to support the ban😒😒
this is why should exist a run categories in trackmania exchange like no-cut runs, cut runs, tas runs etc. and i think in that categories still should we have a goats (especially no-cut runs on tracks that are greatly known from cuts and the cuts are mandatory to get a absolute world record)
this whole thing really highlights a difference in values between the speedrunning community as a whole and racing game communities, as most speedrun communities would allow it because it's generally accepted that the main category is anything goes, even if it makes the run terrible, unfun, or uncompetitive and that the category with the strat banned is the second category
I am not sure if banning LIS from leaderboards was the best solution, because it will further split Trackmania community. Some tracks, like troll cups of the day, are usually completed with LIS, so we have to keep that in mind. In my opinion, if a track can be completed with 6 inputs it is a mapper's problem, not a drivers one. The easiest solution to me on how to prevent LIS on your track is placing a few turns before the main part. The difficulty of timing your inputs increases exponentially with their amount. This ban raises a lot of controversial questions, for example: • what if you do a precise wiggle in start and finish by timing the rest of inputs. Should this run be banned? • How many inputs do you have to press for your run to be on leaderboards? and many more... Summing up, I Think that a mapper should decide whether his map's leaderboards should have LIS times or not. I will be glad to hear you thought and ideas in comments. There is a lot to discuss.
>In my opinion, if a track can be completed with 6 inputs it is a mapper's problem, not a drivers one. exactly! do we separate the leaderboard for shortcuts or pf setups? no, instead we build our maps with the techniques in mind, avoiding them if desired.
It won't split the TM community. As explained in this video, LIS runs aren't a competitive category. You either do the LIS right (and get a WR) or you do it wrong and get nothing. LIS leaderboards will just be a list of people that did the LIS run once.
To me, the cheating concern ist the only valid one, all the other arguments against LIS seem pretty toxic. I don't think anyone gets to decide, what is or is not "Game-related skill" - that basically defies the idea of speedrunning. Opening up new record categories with restrictions imposed? - Sure, why not! But the overall ban of otherwise perfectly legitimate runs just seems absurd. Also: The vote mentioned at 10:41 gives off uncanny "Ruling Elite" vibes.
@@minkmiau Its about getting the fastest time. Homie knew the car would react based off six inputs. Just because dude had the info, doesn't mean the record is invalid. Again, its just elitism, and that people don't like that someone memorized some inputs.
@@Morhpocelionate i never said its invalid, i just said my opinion. I personally think LIS should be a seperate leaderboard, because it seems unfair to the others.
it should have its own category because it is a fundamentally different way to play the game. a glitch or strategy that can be utilized in conjunction with the skills needed to drive the car and drift etc. as intended is one thing, but to look at an entirely different monitor for timing and only pressing buttons when that screen tells you to is NOT trackmania. at most it is playing tm indirectly through a rhythm game-like medium. how is this not common sense?
@@shoe7281 It's not "common sense" because you don't get to decide how others play a game just because you don't like their method. The client and keyboard and mouse are unmodified, no cheats are being used. You might as well ban anyone who uses Discord because another person could send you strategies there, which you could then use to improve your times. This is silly.
13:55 Honestly, I agree with Axl. Using a metronome is not unprecedented in speedrunning. What difference is a custom built DDR interface that does essentially the same thing?
@@leovang3425 I think what he's essentially saying is there is a visual cue in game that would allow people to make a run based off it that isn't external. whether or not it'd make it the fastest run is another thing.
“Kills creativity?” Pasta coming up with this new, outside-the-box approach IS creativity. “Competing becomes less accessible?” Like how accessible it was for the previous decade when the wr went unbeaten? And to the point about how LIS doesn’t distinguish the best drivers but rather the best-timed button-pushers, those two things are effectively the same: isn’t racing about trying to time your braking, accelerating and steering as precisely as possible to lower your time? For a channel that usually embraces unconventional innovations, i dont see why you suddenly draw the line here
There can be competition in a category without anyone achieving a new WR, you know. People still compete for 2nd place, or 3rd, or just to improve their PB and get as close to the top as possible. With LIS, this all becomes pointless, because you might as well just spend a few hours doing that and getting tied WR. "those two things are effectively the same: isn’t racing about trying to time your braking, accelerating and steering as precisely as possible to lower your time?" No, they really aren't. One involves playing the game, taking the audio and visual feedback, incrementally improving on your driving lines and steering to get the lowest time possible. The other involves trying to press 6 inputs an external tool has given you, and resetting immediately if you mistime one even slightly. You don't even need the monitor on. If you hit all the inputs correctly, you're guarantee a WR that is identical to everyone else's. Also, Wirtual often explores unconventional innovations, but isn't automatically a staunch advocate for them. Most of the time, he's just shining a light on grey areas in the TM ruleset that need better definition.
100% agree. Like sorry this guy figured out the right buttons to press at the right time in a game that’s entirely about pressing the right buttons to press at the right time…?
@@AversoD he didnt figure it out, the program did it for him. just like you cant say you wrote an exam by yourself because you manually wrote down the answers from a cheat sheet
@@shoe7281 You are right. The map can be historically relevant even if the record is not beaten, just as a record can be historically relevant even if its beaten by a new technique. All the introduction of LIS did was innovated on an otherwise stagnant map. It does not in any way invalidate the accomplishment of people driving the normal way.
@@Joowmama The map was not "dead," I apologize for that bad choice of words. However, it was stagnant and LIS was an innovation. Records driven the normal way are still just as respectable as before.
Players can compete for more than a WR, though. Even if no one topples the WR, you can still go for 2nd place, or 3rd, or just try to climb the ladder as high as you can. The problem with LIS is that everyone can just get the exact same run and, especially if it's WR (or just better than your PB) why wouldn't you? Then you end up with what is essentially a meaningless leaderboard because everyone has the exact same time. And you lose the diversity of runs and old scores, and diminish the significance of new scores that do genuinely beat the classical WR, but still end up buried under hundreds of identical LIS runs.
As spmeone outside ofncompetitive trackmania, i think having a seperate catagory and increasing proof sandards is the way. In many games, the main competitive scene isnt strictly about the catagory that gives the best results. In Hollow Knight Speedrunning for example, the main catagory is any% no major glitches. Despite these glitches giving a faster time, they were disallowed from the main catagory because runners found them unfun to do, and viewers found them unfun to watch. Any% All glitches records are cool, but they arent what most people do, and I feel that as a viewer, LIS records are still cool, but entirely different from normal records.
Furthermore, the goals with LIS are different. LIS people would want to look for the fewest amount of presses; regular speedrunners would look to manipulate the car controlled in a manner akin to driving a car. Furthermore, if LIS becomes a dead end, Trackmania speedrunning becomes an Uberbug paradise via skillful driving again.
"One of the best things about Trackmania is that all you have to do is install the game and patch and then anyone can compete." "Your world records are only valid if they take thousands of hours of experience to create."
anyone can compete, not anyone can be the best. THINK! do you really want a world where literally EVERYONE can be the simultaneous best and worst at certain tmnf maps?
@@cebulak941 Did you watch the video? It's literally about how the community decided that some records and techniques aren't valid because anyone could do them.
How many inputs is do the leaderboard define as low input. You mentioned other games having players who could do hundreds but the track showed averaged in the low 30’s. Even with less cues for players it still seems like someone could use the method albeit with more difficulty.
Probably something that isn't in the same range, if most inputs for leaderboards are like 30-50 and you see 6, thats pretty low lol. Just comparatively, just like if there were only 3-5 inputs and someone only did 1-2, that seems low to what is done on average.
@@The_Viktor_Reznov pasta didnt just "ask" the tool to find the lis, he manually went through each possible outcome through tmi until he eventually found the perfect one, took him 70+ hrs iirc, and then he also had to drive the perfect lis run aswell, lis is very time consuming
It isn't a matter of the number of inputs, but rather how those inputs were determined. "regular" runs involve players deciding what inputs to press during the run, based on game experience and decision making, LIS runs involve players planning out every button press prior to starting the run. Even if some absolute god gamer managed an "LIS" run with 100 inputs, it would still be LIS if they were all preplanned, and even if some normal runner only ended up pressing their keyboard 5 times, if those 5 times were invented in the moment, it wouldn't be LIS.
I think you presented the arguments well, and a separate category seems like a good approach. That's what all other speed running leaderboards are doing, too.
crazy gatekeeping from the mods. if the bugs are allowed, so is low input. There should be a separate category called "you actually have to drive the track" instead and leave the bugs and LIS and whatever other gamebreaking shit in the main fastest time category. Dude just found a better way to beat the WR and old heads are salty they grinded 1500 hours to lose to 6 PERFECT inputs.
The difference is those glitch setups and executions are usually a relatively small part of a larger run. If the entire speedrun was pressing 6 buttons frame-perfectly it wouldn't be a very interesting game to speedrun, would it?
What about the map where everyone has the same start to get the perfect over-wall. I know the rest of the run obviously isn't LIS but the start can be considered LIS. How do you detect someone running a macro for the first few seconds on that map? If LIS is banned from the leaderboard because it breaks the spirit of speed running, then should that LIS start strat also be banned. If yes, then that's the entire leaderboard removed. If no, then what % of a run can be LIS? And when can LIS be used. Just pointing out possible gray areas.
The difference with a run where the start is LIS but the rest is normal, is that you aren't going to end up with a leaderboard full of completely identical records from completely identical inputs. The LIS portion of that map may be uncompetitive, but the rest is still competitive and worth competing on.
@googa9689 any rhythm game can be played without music, that’s not what makes a rhythm game a rhythm game, it just makes it significantly more interactive. geometry dash is literally just memorizing button press timings on an autoscrolling linear chart with zero external factors, it doesn’t get any more “rhythm game” than that 💀
So, you figure out the optimal combination, then you figure out how to add 20 inputs that don't change the result, and you can maybe still get a record but have it look like a real attempt.
That would most likely not be a directly viable approach as even tiny input difference can and do have drastically different results. just pressing forward a couple of frames sooner or later at the start of the race can break some tights "press forward" maps, so for something already as precise and sensitive to slight differences as a record, it sounds not super likely. (but maybe I'm missing something obvious) But this will definitely still be very impactful no matter what, the genie is now out of the box, and there is no way to truly put it back in...
Adding 20 inputs before the Uber bug that don't affect the vehicle path would be exceptionally difficult. The only real place they could be added is after the Uber bug, at which point it's still obvious that you're using a LIS
Axell didn't cheat. In fact, he genuinely improved what he and many others thought to be a TAS-executed WR time using the exact same in-engine tools and unmodded software as the current record holder. That is still a regular copy of Trackmania. They are using the same LIS method. The only difference is one player has a more advanced tool for implementing timing queues. If it's not a modded game. It should be a valid run.
ALSO. RANT COMMENT INCOMING. An otherwise perfectly executed run using the same skills and strategies as the current holder was performed to beat an actual machine, yet because he had a timing program, which doesn't make 0.001 of a second input any less easy, the run was invalidated? There are plenty of different speed runs with tools serving the EXACT same purpose as Axell's created by runners. I can think of several games off-hand where runners implement tools for perfectly timing inputs and use external monitoring data that tracks various states in the game, The only difference between the current WR and the unjustly banned one is that Axell created a program dedicated to making his runs faster, but not his inputs any less easy. The other guy had a fucking sticky note-pad on his PC with 6 inputs on it, right? Guess he should have been banned too. CLEARLY an outside apparatus, right? Like 100 characters on a notepad? Axell makes a whole program, and he's a CHEATER??? All he had to do was share the software and every other player could implement this time if they could execute the inputs. I couldn't even imagine beating a TAS created by a player who besmirched the map you love and converted the game into a glorified DDR map using your own method and HUMAN execution, only to be accused of being a cheater...The sheer hubris of it all. The Hypocrisy. With all due respect to the speed-running community and every category in any game, the committee who dismissed Axell's run and declared it illegitimate can sincerely go fuck themselves.
My first thought when watching this was “why not make a separate category” considering many games have low% and categories for completion with the fewest inputs.
Commented directly to pasta too, but I think this has a pretty standard solution in most other speedrun games. Give the game-breaking strategy its own category, respect that category for its own merits. Great video and interesting topic! Thanks Wirt and Pasta =p
Or do the opposite, keep the "default" category to allow the new strat and create a new category that doesn't allow it. The default should be to allow any technics the game engine can offer imo
@@yamato1691 Ultimately, both solutions would result in two separate leaderboards: one allowing LIS alongside the default strategy, and one excluding LIS. However, in my opinion, the leaderboard based on the default strategy shouldn’t be considered the “new” or secondary one. The majority of the community agrees that LIS doesn’t belong in the same category, and this consensus should guide the prioritization of leaderboard standards.
Another thing this would do is prove if LIS is actually an avenue to grind Trackmania maps for at all. imo, it won’t, because unless they are all as dramatic as a-12 LIS they will not get attention except by one person who will grind it just because and then never again.
I play trackmania casually, but am also involved in several other scenes that have similar situations. Outdoor bouldering is a good example. Sometimes, boulders that are quite hard (V10+) have alternative betas (beta = sequence of movements) found that make them more or less trivial for someone who climbs at that grade. There is one I can think of that got downgraded from V11 to V6 with a tricky knee bar and reach. Some people still try the original beta to try something hard, but something just feels... artificial all of a sudden. The experience is different even though you are doing the same thing as those before the discovery. You feel like you are just climbing worse for no real reason. The accomplishment feels more contrived. There are other V11s, so I would personally rather go do those. I'm not a competitive player, so I won't make a judgement as to legallity, but I would imagine the same thing will be true here. The hard truth is that A12 is just not as interesting as it once was. If you are trying it unoptimally, you will always know in the back of your mind that you could have done better for less effort. Whether or not you put the LIS record in another place, the time still exists. You will always know someone got a better time by hand and your "record" of 10.45 is still really 4th place. "Fastest Way Sometimes" just doesn't have the same ring to it. In a similar way that there are other V11s, there are other maps. No one is going to LIS D13. And this isn't to downplay the accomplishments of those who still grind without LIS, but I do think the community will gradually lose interest in those types of improvements on maps like A12.
This is really dumb. I am not convinced LIS is viable for longer and uncut tracks and this is literally just a strategy, not even anything unintended and i agree with what others have pointed out about it being an obvious gray area of judgement. I hate that this kid who had a novel idea that worked when nobody else could do it is essentially being punished for it.
Low input runs need there own category and should have steeper requirements to be official in that category. My suggestion is having at least two camera angles. One on the keyboard to show movements and another wide angle camera to show that there are no other screens.
woah main channel jumpscare
*2nd channel
@@firedell1031 lmfao true, i looked at it popping up on my feed and rlly thought it was a vid from the clips channel cus similair pfp
Not a jumpscare if you follow on twitch. He posted a story the other day saying he was working on main channel content
@@isaacmiller5811 He also said 2024 would be "The year of the main channel" unless that was last year lmfao.
@@firedell1031 *third, because of clips
Bro found his main channel password
Seems like he won't remember It for long
hahahahahahahaha lolololol
Ah yes, the same damn comment on every new video here in this channel.
Yes he did
I assumed this was TV lol
Step 1: Do the 6 inputs
Step 2: while in the air spam left and right for more inputs
Step 3: Profit
the kid named countersteer:
Yeah I can't wait for people to get mad when people use the tool to find WR runs with a plausible amount of inputs to execute and be in the main leaderboards, almost as if deterministic games all get solved one way or another and a game who's only catergory is any% for each track won't get the perfect human run
That would chage the from the TIS run and lead to a different outcome.
@@AlphaHenriksen It would only change the very ending and not by much.
@@mgks2784 you cant frame perfect execute a plausible amount of inputs, lets say you get each frame perfect input 1/10 of the time , at 6, you need 100,000 runs to get one through, with 30 frame perfect inputs, that number would be in billions, thats why they keep the inputs so low
If you perfectly memorize the inputs, any map is just pressing the right keys at the right time. This one map just happens to be short enough for that to be feasible.
Have you seen Pointcrow beat Breath of the Wild blindfolded? That was a very long time with memorized inputs. Granted he spent tons of time learning it, but it just goes to show that some of these guys will be determined enough to beat longer and longer maps with LIS just because they would get the WR on it or "just because"
@@Xeamesh I haven't seen that particular run, but surely there are plenty of 'reset' points where he walks into a corner/wall etc to re-establish orientation? Just like Wirtual's blindfolded TM run.
@ correct! But he was in a category of his own, nobody else would dare to try such a silly concept. Same for Wirtual’s blindfold campaign run. So as LIS comes further into TMNF (and eventually TM20), people will be taking TAS inputs and as Wirtual said, playing a rhythm game.
Not to say it won’t be difficult, but it’s feasible for many, many more maps
But the inputs weren't found organically by playing the game. They were brute forced by a external tool.
@tysoncrosby3915 super mario 1-1 has been optimized down to the inputs with the help of tas, and that's the most iconic speedrun ever probably. Any level in any game will eventually be the same way.
Mom, I am famous.
Low input strat is definitely a controversial topic. For me, speedrunning was always about being first in the finish no matter the means (and within the rules). But what matters is the decision of the community as a whole, and I will respect that.
Finding LIS is like solving a puzzle, beating the map the fastest way with the lowest possible number of moves. And I very much enjoy that. Of course, this is far from the way this game was meant to be played, so I definitely understand the other side of the argument. I just want to highlight that even LIS takes a lot of time and effort.
In the end, we just want to enjoy this awesome game :)
>this is far from the way this game was meant to be played
I don't think so. I don't see it as any different from watching any top time and trying to mimic it.
A new category is definitely best. It's impossible to detect cheated LIS runs, which is the biggest problem.
@@RAWRWAFL Copying lines is not the same as copying inputs to the frame. Additionally, LIS can only be done on keyboard and can be done without even looking at the car but instead whatever visual reference you have for the timing.
I think if there is a way to verify that a record isn't cheated, then LIS should be on the leaderboard, though it is certainly distinct from normal driving where the game is more of an art than a science.
I really think that only the first run driven with any given LIS should count at all. That way all the prestige of the run goes to the first person to drive it, and a leaderboard of LIS runs would show improvements in the LIS as opposed to just the best current LIS. If it's in a separate category, I think that's also for the best as it's essentially human replicable TAS.
@@RAWRWAFL I agree with Pasta that it's not the way the game was meant to be played. The difference is you can drive the top run on a track without ever looking at Trackmania itself, or any runs on that track.
I think it should be allowed, I think Granady said it best: „If a map can be be beaten in 6 inputs, maby it‘s just not a good map to hunt“.
Same. People hunt maps like this because they can turn them into slot machines and just brute force it in the first place. LIS only is a problem on trash maps.
Yeah, I would agree, but at the same time it's not fair on the moderators with the ridiculous amount of proof that's needed. Like I'm pretty sure I could fake a LIS run undetectably with any kind of sane proof standard.
I have literally never played Trackmania, nor know anything about its community, and this sentiment is objectively correct. "Lengenary Map ruined!!1!!!" If it's so legendary, maybe it shouldn't take 6 inputs to beat?
if Granady said so then so be it 😆
I agree with this if it was a newly released map, but I don't want to see a TMNF maps with many years of competition destroyed
LIS is a very natural endpoint for a game that's fully deterministic and features digital inputs. Players *will* optimize the shit out of these games and the results may not lead to very interesting competition (like mentioned, you're playing a rhythm game rather than a racing game), so I think this is a great example of how introducing some slight randomness to your game can actually have very positive effects on the longevity.
Well, "longevity." TM has been a thing for a minute already. As a nonplayer, I think it's had its time; however, the TM speedrunning community will highly likely never like LIS because it will absolutely diminish the game. Evening with them banning LIS, the game will likely go downhill since speedrunning is finding time saves
But how will runs be "verified" then? And also, how will TAS work?
I think that instead, there should be more precise timings (like to the thousandth of a second instead of the hundredth). That would allow (basic) run verification and TAS, while being MUCH harder to apply LIS. But your idea is also used across many non-run based games, so nice thinking.
Other than raising the bar for submission requirements (video which records audio/keyboard/hands/monitor/maybe even the wall and ceiling BEHIND the monitor) due LIS being harder to distinguish from TAS-ers/cheaters, can you really call the fastest time, the fastest time if you exclude LIS? Also there were quite a few comments around saying it might just be the old guard trying to gatekeep their records, afraid that new tech would be faster.
Also, is TM completely deterministic? I saw a vid on another channel (Yosh, the latest vid) where there are miniscule, but noticeable (in certain scenarios) variability.
@@creativecarveciteclimb5684just seed + combination of inputs :)
The counterpoint to LIS runs being hard to police is that by banning it as a strategy, you open a can of worms in trying to police regular runs against LIS. Lowering the degree of chaos in a run by minimizing the amount of inputs is a natural and logical development in the process of optimizing a track. At what point is someone invariably using an LIS versus just having a very clean run? Are runs with very low inputs invalid even if they were achieved naturally as opposed to planned out, and can the distinction realistically be documented and enforced? The community is shooting itself in the foot further down the line when the advent of actual LIS comes to pass.
Which brings me to the next point: LIS aren't really strategies. They're manually performed macro runs. They're solutions with distinct steps and a guaranteed outcome, not strategies. I would differentiate them from an actual strategy that tries to minimize inputs in the interest of consistency versus constructed sequences. Those sequences may very well be valid as well but the former is, again, a logical progression in optimization, and I believe either only affect very short tracks, so this is altogether an unfortunate knee-jerk reaction.
(No one will read this but I think it a good exercise)
While I don't play trackmania, I think the biggest issue with LIS is that the player who found the low input strategy used a tool to find the set of inputs and timings needed for a run to be wr. That changes the whole concept from workshopping ideas and strategies and tweaking them with game knowledge, skill, and dedication, into a game of "who is the best human macro" since they don't even have to figure out timings themselves. As for the point on normal runs being indistinguishable, I don't think that will ever be the case personally. The car control and physics of trackmania are so insanely precise and nuanced, that I dont think even if given 1000 years, that trackmania players would stumble upon these low input strats without a tool. They are brute forced by a tool to optimize the fastest time with the least inputs requardless of how precise it is or how little visual queue there is. Jst speculating since I don't play myself, but that's my take
I don't think there's a risk of LIS runs being confused for optimized runs that happen to have few inputs, because there's a few important differences between them:
1) The difficulty of achieving an LIS run increases exponentially with the number of inputs. Right now, we're talking about 6 or 8 input runs. Maybe in the future, 10 or 12 input runs will be done. Meanwhile, as you can see at 8:47, none of the fastest keyboard times driven traditionally have less than 25 inputs. There's a massive gulf between these, and I don't anticipate that closing.
2) Driving traditionally means not throwing away a run if a single input is off by .01 seconds - you adapt. If someone somehow gets a LIS-mimic run, they'll surely have plenty of replays or other evidence of them doing similar but slightly different runs to present. Anyone pursuing an LIS strategy will not.
3) Optimizing for LIS requires trading time for inputs - he drives the start suboptimally, because driving it optimally would cost extra inputs. If you aren't going for LIS, you'll drive (your best approximation of) the optimal route.
yeah exactly and like if you just upload a run without much context how does the community even know if it's LIS or not? what's the number where you draw the line, in like inputs per meter or whatever
I've read this, for what it's worth.
clean run very rarely equals LIS, pretty much never. What these players are performing arent clean runs, they are TAS runs with the help of external visualisation tools to help them time the inputs. Also, a clean run would not just drive off the start block without doing the start trick, losing about 0.02s.
The swimming comparison is a bit weird because then anything that isnt normal driving would have to be banned
Yup, very strange comparison. A better one would be if one swimmer gets to the end in 6 kicks and the others doing 33 kicks. In what world would that be cheating?
Disingenuously weird
I think that comparison was meant to highlight the drastic shift LIS brings in measuring skill levels (by turning TMNF from a racing game to a rhythm game to achieve quicker times) - it’s just that there’s no skill involved in beating swimmers by just running along the side of the pool so the comparison doesn’t work
@@JayJaySH I don't think anyone considers it cheating. It's about the required skill going from having to master the game to mastering timed button presses. There's no real world comparison but I guess it's a bit like in stead of mastering swimming, you don't even learn how to swim and you just focus on repeating a pre-determined sequence of optimal body movements. So someone who has spent years learning to swim could lose to someone who's never touched water before but just knows the optimal sequence.
Maybe a better comparison are puzzles. Everyone in the game is using their experience and mastery to come up with their own solution, and then some guy walks in with one that was figured out beforehand by brute-force on a computer so now the game is no longer about solving the puzzle but simply about how fast you can implement the one optimal solution.
Not that I necessarily agree with that view, but it is a discussion worth having.
@@thisusernamewasnttakensomehow A far more apt comparison would be the shot clock in basketball, but that isn't really a race
Is FWO going to change its name to Second Fastest Way Only?
FWO*
Fastest Way Only
*but actually...
FWOEWWDLTFW
Fastest Way Only Except When We Don't Like The Fastest Way
Lmfao
FWOWMTXI
Fastest Way Only With More Than X Inputs
LIS is never Fastes Way. It's only often Fastest feasible way.
@@andy02q you could say that for most human records
"would just determine who is best at timing button pushes"
Technically that's all that has ever mattered in time trial games...
No, since you can't time all button pushes beforehand. In Non-LIS the player reacts to whats happening and adapts to it, the only exception being the very beginning.
And how is reaxting to what is happening any different from reactimg to a bad press at the wrong time and restarting? @@malumy
You can do it blind; you don't need to know how the game works or what is happening, you only need to know whether you failed or succeeded. You're playing a different game entirely, it needs to be a separate category.
No it's not. There's a difference between hitting buttons at very precise times, and understanding the game well enough to figure out those precise times on the fly.
I mean is very strange that the community that proudly says the game they speedrun has the same outcome with the same input, take so long to figure out it can be converted into a really hard rhythm game.
The ban is a bit silly. The top players of a game with a deterministic engine are upset when their game is solved deterministically.
Basically gramps yelling at you that in his prime everything was much more difficult and that the youngsters have it way to easy
Needing to get the perfect seemingly random uberbug? Fine. Perfecting a run and executing it? Bad.
Don't really understand the argument here.
Ong
@@simmerke1111Actually watch speed run record replays from before LIS. Watch all top 10 runs from each track. Then watch the 10 top runs from LIS leaderboards. The regular runs are different from each other, they used skill to make those runs happen. LIS though all they do memorize a few inputs and execute them. Still takes skill to do an LIS run, but you need no knowledge track mania to do them. You could overlay a black screen over the game with a visual indicator for the inputs and achieve the same results. A real run actually takes knowledge of trackmania, meaning you need to have played trackmania and became great at it. I can guarantee nobody would have ever found a LIS strategy naturally. It requires computer algorithms to find LIS strategies, and no game knowledge whatsoever. A speed run is supposed to be an exhibition of peak human skill. Not a display of average computer computational ability.
I think people are thinking about this from the wrong angle. LIS is not a fault of the gameplay nor with the players using it. LIS is fundamentally a mapping issue. If you intend to create a map that requires knowledge of the game and precise, high level gameplay to complete and exceed at but the map can be completed in 5 keyboard strokes, I'm afraid the onus is on you.
A12 has been an iconic map for a long time, though not for the reasons the mappers intended. The Uberbug was popularised on this map and is a part of Trackmania history. However, it may be the case that it does not stand the test of time. That's fine. The mappers weren't to know about the ways the intended beta could be broken, but broken they were and it has become renowned because of it. If they had the foresight to add a third checkpoint later in the map, none of this would have occurred.
Furthermore, and this may be besides the point, but LIS still isn't optimal. It's a simple way of creating a great world record but in theory the map can still be beaten. I wouldn't ban a sub-optimal strategy, and even if LIS were strictly optimal, again, why is that the fault of the player? That's a mapping issue.
completely agree
Hard disagree. You could build an LIS for any map, convert it into a DDR song of Guitar Hero song, give it to a master of one of those games and get a world record in a few hours without them ever looking at a Trackmania screen. That's the problem: that you're fundamentally playing a different game. There are people who can 100% Through Fire and Flames in guitar hero 3 on expert. That's hundreds if not thousands of inputs over around 4 minutes. Compared to a few dozen Trackmania inputs it would be easy.
@@squashiejoshie200000 Rythm game paterns are designed a certain way to make them executable. Also cheating in that way is undetectible and can already be done. So not much point in banning it?
@@squashiejoshie200000 There's a saying I've heard, "Every speedrun eventually becomes a rhythm game."
@@squashiejoshie200000I agree in principle with your point, but I doubt in guitar hero you need to have 1/100 timing precision to get a note right. Even 1/10 of a second is impossible for humans to get consistent. So even if we have a super human getting 1/100 second taps right 99% of the time, for longer tracks it quickly accumulates to being impossible
Wirtual finally posting on his second channel
pls stop
Facts
3:27
Facts indeed
Fr
Okay a couple of issues/questions that I thought of and I have seen brought up by others in the comments here:
- From what point is a run defined as LIS? How few inputs are enough to get it into that category?
- Who defines that?
- What about different maps? They'll all need seperate rulings in regards to the previous points. What will the criteria be for that?
- What about "mixed runs"? E.g. if you start with LIS but drive the other half normally? What are the criteria for that? How much of a run has to be LIS to get it into that category?
- What about certain maps with techs or bugs that require very specific, fixed inputs for parts of it?
Overall I see some problems with enforcing this but I am not an Expert when it comes to that game...
Run is LIS the moment you've used the bot to show you the least amount of keystrokes without using your driving abilities. The number itself means nothing. Plus, something like LIS is used on other maps at start up but then you have to play the rest of that map. LIS is nothing new but it should be necessary for the run to contain at least something human otherwise everyone will have the same times in the leaderboards.
@@satoshimayo4242 How TF do you enforce that? You can just create your own TAS run behind closed doors and replicate the inputs of that.
I think categorizing a LIS is pretty easy, if you have a list of imputs you need to perform to complete the map, and thats the only thing you care about then it's a LIS. No matter the map, no matter the amount of imputs. Mixed runs are a different thing and I dont think that is an easy one to categorise
if he makes a new LIS run and its 20 or 15 inputs and didnt say he copied a TAS how would u know?
For the thing about mixed runs, I know there was a map that had a start overwall where you'd press left at like 2.61s or smt to consistently get over it
wow imagine an entire community crying because a single guy outsmarted them all
Copying someone else's inputs and being the best at being a human macro is not outsmarting someone.
It's not even them coming up with the right set of inputs, they are just copying something preset based on a program outside the game that could be seemed as cheating software
I think comparing this record with Super Mario Bros speedruns is a good idea. They have been trying to match TAS for years, and I think this run is basically that -> take a TAS run, and do it for real. This map is good for that, but I don't think this approach would work for all the maps. In my opinion it's weird to ban this strategy, since a version of something like this has been done in other speed games for a long time.
Every speed game has been improving, and the records have been lowered countless times, it's natural, that some games would be maxed out. Trackmania maps are much shorter than full speed games, so matching TAS is practical for some of them.
I get the argument that trackmania isn't about timing button presses, but SMB isn't about timing button presses and they do it anyway. Even in kacky, players try copying a succesful run as close as they can to finish maps, so I don't think it's a big deal, if the same approach was used for official records.
Just my opinion. I'm just a viewer, I don't play that much anymore, so I don't care that the strategy is banned, I just think it is a natural way forward. Want to optimize? --> Match TAS.
Exactly. Especially in any deterministic game like this one, this is literally the exact thing players SHOULD attempt to do if they intend to compete at the highest level. Achieve TAS-level input accuracy. Using external tools to cheat to make it easier is what I consider inappropriate for legitimate competition.
Totally agree, hope more people will see this comment
There's 2 parts to this: the leaderboard issues and the way the run is driven.
The solution to the leaderboard issue is easy: Only the first replay of an LIS should be displayed. That gives all the credit to the person who did the pathfinding without turning the leaderboard into 200 copies of what they did.
The way the run is driven is the problem. You can drive LIS without ever actually looking at Trackmania. Even in the SMB speedruns, they do look at the game for cues. In Trackmania LIS, you don't. You can literally just watch a timer and hit the rhythm markers and you're done.
In this specific case, I'd say its less Mario and more Zelda. Like A Link to the Past where you can beat the game in 1 minute because of specific glitches. If all you care about is who can beat the game the fastest, then warping straight to the credits from the start is definitely it. And unsurprisingly, a lot of people don't find that fun. They want to compete in a way that involves actually playing the game instead of grinding one specific glitch that cuts it all out.
That's why pretty much any speedrun leaderboard has multiple categories. If you like the credit warp, you do Any% runs. If you don't, there's a Glitchless variation. If you like glitches but hate the credits warp one, there's a Restricted Glitches category that bans that specific glitch. If you think all of those are too short, you've got a plethora of other options like 100% or All Dungeons. Speedrunners have learned that hyperfocusing specifically on "Only the fastest method matters" will only alienate the community when it doesn't line up with what they want to play.
@@user-yv6xw7ns3o The sentiment is fine, but keeping from people cheating with LIS is the real issue here imo, it seems extremely likely that there would be many additional cheating scandals in the future if these strategies are allowed on the main boards.
Outside looking in: I personally understand the cheating reasoning behind wanting to ban it, but even before those reasons came out it was funny to me watching people from a group called "Fastest Way Only" getting upset at a new way of going fast being found and wanting to ban it. Seems counterintuitive to the group but I guess that's just me and appeared from outside looking in that they were just salty their precious records were getting taken.
should be renamed to "fwobjow" (fastest way only but just our way)
The difference is one requires skill at Trackmania. The other requires skill at DDR.
@@squashiejoshie200000 i dont know, bugsliding into a wall and praying its gonna catapult you into the finish line specifically doesnt seem like skill and more like a lottery already... So imo, that argument is out of the window for years by now...
And no, i dont consider knowing which wall you need specifically to bugslide into for a 1 out of a million chance to end up in the finish line faster than anyone else to be a skill either... and even if i do that would still be true to LIS, this entire debate is a giant "not a real scotsman" argument fallacy circus imo.
And mind you, im a completly outsider who never played trackmania and honestly, never gonna, simply because racing games are not really my cup of tea... and neither are arbitrary standards while we are at it...
@@attilaedem101 If you didn't have the skill, you wouldn't even be able to get the bugslide on this map. The fact that they can semi-consistently get a uberbug with non-frame perfect inputs is a testament to their skill. There's 3 extremely difficult tricks and the difference between LIS is if you make any mistake earlier in the run, it's just over while the other good drivers can achieve a solid run from a multitude of starting positions.
@@squashiejoshie200000 Non-frame perfect inputs... the TM pros are way more consistent, they can consistently get frame perfect inputs... they're known for minute left taps in a right curve... just to prevent oversteering...
LIS are only useful in very short maps. It's already so hard to have a few consecutive inputs, and almost every maps would require a lot more inputs to finish.
Separating it is stupid, what's the difference with copying a TAS run? Nothing, there's just more inputs.
If a particular map is so short it's beaten by LIS, then it is what it is.
The idea that only short tracks can be beaten with LIS is just incorrect though, especially when relying on specific bugs. It's certainly easier on smaller maps, but LIS can be applied to longer tracks as well. Also, attempting to copy a complex TAS run is different than designing a TAS with the focus of reducing total inputs, then copying the TAS. TAS runs are not designed with a focus on least possible inputs, and instead focus on complex inputs done perfectly as more frame perfect inputs can provide those extra time gains. Yes, they are both TAS runs, but there are certainly differences between the two. You can make a TAS of literally anything, it's the purpose of the TAS that's important.
@@TheHeadincharge it's not true that LIS can be used on longer maps because of the way the tmnf engin works. you can't just drive to a spot and set up and then start LIS for a trick and then finish normally because the driving you did before changes the deterministic physics, even if you start LIS from a perfect position. the entire run up until the trick needs to be LIS so there are two options for LIS runs: short tracks or long tracks with major trick in the first two ish turns
To me the biggest problem is that anyone can TAS it and say they beat it with no way to check for cheating
@@rydenkaye9735 LIS already exists on longer maps, in the form of a start trick
on D10-race, the meta used to always be for years to press left at the exact right time to get the perfect overwall for a cut, and it was recently beaten by dennis090 who used a more complex but faster starting trick
the only reason why it's an exception to the ban is because players were technically already using LIS on that track for years (it just wasn't controversial back then)
@@TheHeadincharge to me, the differentiation lies in using a brute-force tool to generate a cheat-sheet for use during human play. I would consider that a tool-assisted speedrun by definition. If the precise inputs were found through manual effort, that would correspond to developing normalized strategies in a fair way
I'm a speedrun moderator for small games, and not a trackmania player. Here are my hot takes:
1) the LIS routes will be more and more optimized. Rn it's 6 inputs, but as time passes players will go for harder and harder routes, and probably be able to nail more optimized routes of 30+ perfect inputs, which will not be easy and can't be considered 'low input'. My point is, there WILL be a skill ceiling until people equal the TAS, just like it was before LIS was used on the track.
2) In an individual level setting where you're replaying the same 10-sec level over and over again in a deterministic environment, it seems logical to try and approach what a TAS does. LIS is the logical and more effective way to achieve this result, even if it shifts the gameplay of these small maps into rythm-based play.
For pure trackmania driving, I think real-time races are just the way to have competition. Or longer tracks where LIS isn't viable.
3) never heard of a rule that bans an external source of visual/sound cues to help your timing. The concept makes sense, but how do you define it? If I found a music that gave me the exact rythm of the inputs, I wouldn't be able to listen to it while playing? Also, that would not be viable for verification by the mods. Would it hurt to get rid of it?
4) It was mentioned that LIS needing an external camera footage would be a barrier for new players, but I doubt new players would go for optimal LIS routes right away? I think that this requirement would be a good thing. Since WRs are so highly regarded, let's have a strong guarantee of their integrity
Even if they would go for that right away, you can get a cheap webcam for what , 15 bucks ?? I would hardly call that a barrier to entry
Keep in mind Wirtual got the blindfolded WR using music to listen to the track, so that would backfire on him too.
I really doubt that in a longer maps LIS is adaptable, because with more time the consequence of the very first inputs will become more and more crucial and affect the next ones and so on.
Would you agree that there is no scenario in which a faster time should be banned just because it happens to be also LIS?
Did you know that freestyle swimming is not really a freestyle swimming?
In 2015 Ryan Lochte had a technique where he would do dolphin kicks upside down.
It was so dominant that FINA made it illegal and introduced a rule that you need to be on your stomach during freestyle leg
E
🤣🤣🤣🤣
How does that in any way make freestyle swimming not freestyle swimming exactly? Freestyle swimming is a defined swimming style, not literally "free style swimming" (swimming that is free of rules). Freestyle swimming is more colloquially referred to as the "front crawl" or "front stroke". Just like swimming on your "front" is not allowed in the backstroke, swimming on your back is not allowed in freestyle.
@@TheHeadincharge
Technically in freestyle you can do any type of stroke that isn’t another Olympic Event (butterfly, breaststroke, or backstroke), but front stroke is the most common since that’s typically the fastest and most accessible.
There’s also a rule against swimming too much underwater, since that is also too fast.
Love that JaV was against Bugsliding at first, when I mainly know him through crazy tricks, Uberbugs, TAS content and theorycrafting new skips. Really shows a world quite different to the one today
"hey beat this track as fast as possible"
"Ok"
"No not like that, press more buttons"
"Okay, let me use my third party software to simulate millions of runs to solve the fastest way to beat this track that a human can replicate" sounds a lot less flattering than you're implying.
@@kylekleiter3854 "bUt A hUmAn StIlL hAd To Do ThE iNpUtS!!!!!!!" like cheating on an exam but stating you still had to manually write down answers or check boxes LUL
It's tool assisted.
@@variok finding a strategy with a TAS and then use it in a "real" run is not tool assisted. I am pretty sure, even in Trackmania, there are maps that were optimized with some tool and then the strategy was converted to human runs.
@@kylekleiter3854 this happens in other speed games constantly.
To me, the community opened the gates to this when allowing buggy physics over raw driving. People complained about bug slides and other things and were overturned. I think it's a little ironic and hypocritical that now its a big deal that a better strategy overules the current meta appears and now those who overuled talented lines driving now don't want their form overuled.
It's a question of what enhances competition. TM's bugs and their execution increase the complexity of play, demand more from the top players and widens the skill set a player needs to develop to become a top player. LIS runs are the opposite. They remove the need to understand the game and its systems at all. You just push the buttons when the computer tells you to.
This happens in virtually every speed game at some point. Someone finds an easy-to-execute bug that skips the whole game which may be cool, and undoubtedly the fastest way to play, but it also makes competing in said game not very fun or competitive. So people make a category where they aren't allowed to use that bug and suddenly your game is more competitive again. For example, imagine if nobody ever ran the longer categories of Mario 64 because... well... they're longer. Instead of having one of the best speed games ever made with a rich competitive scene and countless strategies, improvements and competition, you make it boring as hell.
I don’t see the problem with LIS because they only apply on maps such as a12. A low input strategy will not be faster on more precise maps that do not involve a single trick. So I think that if a map has a faster low input strategy then it should be counted.
And if the reason is because "it's not how the game is meant to be played" why allow runs that use Bugslides, Uberbugs, noseslides and any other physics exploit that gains an advantage, because I guess when trackmania was first made, they didn't make it for those tricks to be used, thus not being "the way the game is intended to be played"
if your allowing lis, there is a massive cheating scandal waiting to happen.lis runs are practicly uncheckable for cheating even with footage
The solution to preventing these strats even on very simple maps with one trick, is to add some obstacles at the start that you have to go around. A lot of kacky maps do that. So players cant find a solution that is a couple of inputs with PF for most of the map.
Of course that cant really be done on legacy maps but, if low input strats become more common, going forward, there is already a solution available to make them at least much harder, if not impossible to execute, without making maps much harder to play normally.
@@liamthomas9622 Because all those are in the game's engine unlike LIS using a third party tool to brute force to find the best input's.
I agree. Trackmania from what i seen on some map stops being a racing game and become "how do i fling my car into the finish line as fast as possible". Why bans the tool to find the most optimal way to do that
As someone who has never played Trackmania before, I'm far more impressed by someone figuring out 6 centisecond perfect inputs and executing them by hand being the record than I am players yeeting themselves into a wall over and over until they get lucky enough for a WR.
It sure is a much more efficient way to go about this. Many speedruns rely on knowing mechanics and thinking of ways to execute them with this understanding, like, say, if someone brute forced the fastest way to beat a level in Celeste I would've given them a side eye -- as a good speedrunner you should understand how hyperjumps etc work and how to combine these tricks into a coherent speedrun, but like... If the goal is to hit this wall and then the game bugs out and sends you flying wherever it wants to, I really do get brute forcing. I applaud people spending hundreds of hours trying to get the fastest fly bug, but there's not much strategy for that, you can't eventually get "a sense" of where the car will fly, if I undertood it correctly. In that sense, maybe the LIS thing is better speedrunning-wise
But that's the problem. They didn't figure it out through playing. They figured it out via a code. And then they just need to replicate it. There's no trial and error or learning
its not just luck. as a newbie you would still need to learn a ton about how to play the game before you can even have a reasonable chance to hit these tricks. There's a reason the top players on these kind of tracks are also top players in other tracks.
@@rainyprac Yep, but you're still essentially farming the tech over and over like a boss in an MMO waiting for that one drop. Is it cool and impressive as a test of determination and endurance? Sure. But there's less pure skill in the record itself (not the journey to attain that level of skill) to me than being able to execute something like this.
@@VodkaHellstorm "there's less pure skill in the record itself"
This is incorrect, IMO. You're misjudging the difficulty of these tricks. Top players are able to perform them more consistently and adapt appropriately to the pseudo-random results. That's what makes them still competitive, and it's why top players are the ones holding the records for these kinds of maps, rather than random people. A bad player isn't going to beat a record like this even if they had a lifetime to dedicate to it, unless they actually improve their ability.
Conversely, hitting a LIS isn't hard. It just requires a little bit of timing a luck. Which is precisely why it took relatively no time at all to obtain the record once the tool spit out the strategy.
It's stupid to ban it. A good amount of ideas for WR come from TAS which is essentially LIS. That's like saying if someone created a TAS and Perfected a TAS run with human inputs isn't allowed because it's "not skilled" or "stupid". A record is a record no matter the dedication. It's the same thing for shortcuts and bugs alike.
On the same coin though this is the reason why there are different speed run categories because certain players are just way better when it comes to LIS/TAS like runs due to being insanely consistent as far as button mashing and just having that rhythm built in their head due to training or constantly doing it.
I was waiting for this to happen, for someone to perfect a "TAS" like run and waiting for the complaints to start rolling in. Here we have it a reason to separate those categories because too many people can't agree on one thing.
it's more simple than that though. A LIS run, runs very similarly to a TAS run. Although a human is doing the inputs, the amount of loops to jump through to be able to submit a legit run would have to be immense. TAS leaderboard is separate, and all TAS's are fair to each other, there are no hoops because it is all TAS. however for LIS to be legit it can't be done in turn with any 3rd party software.
So for a LIS submission onto the regular leaderboard, you would need a close up hand cam + a camera overshoulder showing everything that the player can see + in game sound and in game footage + a sound recording device outside of the computer to record (so that player can't cheat via sound cues). You may also need a much more intrusive software setup that logs any other software that is open at the time of the run. However then you also run into the "what if said software is running on a separate device."
And then you may even get to a point where they are sitting on something that vibrates, to be the tell, when they need to put a new input, so you will need a recording prior to the player sitting down. And you would need all of this for every submitted run.
Now after all that because of the nature of LIS runs, they would have to all be hand checked by people, to check for cheating using any methods above, or even new methods created. Compare that to a regular run that only needs the comp patch, to upload a run, and it is done. The workload for both player and leaderboard side would be mountainous
@@darksky1628my first thought was basically this.
How do you stop a modded keyboard that just does the precise inputs at the exact times.
Obviously, you would need a decent approximation of the inputs for it not to be obvious, but you could make a script that checks if your input is within a tenth of a second of when it should happen and then executes the button press correctly.
To an outside observer it's basically invisible, but instead of a 1/100 timing you only need to get 1/10 or even lower depending on how obvious the difference is on camera
@@darksky1628 please copy and paste this message under every comment.
@@darksky1628 best answer possible, well done!
Thank you for putting this into word, commenting for visibility
3:26 HE SAID THE LINE AGAIN!
Years of watching you Wirtual, glad you got recommended again in my new account. Missed this videos.
yes but he put a different music :(
legit got goosebumps lol
What surprises me is that the community exudes the image that achieving a record is a feat of pure driving skill and endless grinding. In other racing games and real motorsport, analyzing inputs, reviewing replays, and studying telemetry (yours and those of your competitors as well) are all part of the process of getting better and faster. I cannot imagine that trackmania players aren't studying the replays of past records, nor using plugins to watch their inputs, or using TAS (including AI tools) to find better strategies. What matters is that the driving is done by a human on an unmodified client, right? The way a strategy is found shouldn't matter.
On the other hand I agree that using a tool to show the perfect timings on another screen while driving is going overboard and should be outlawed.
"On the other hand I agree that using a tool to show the perfect timings on another screen while driving is going overboard and should be outlawed"
why? Per your own reasoning, "what matters is that the driving is done by a human on an unmodified client."
These two sentiments are inconsistent.
@@xXPoopWorldXx But you don't see real life drivers have a HUD display showing them the perfect line like in racing games. The point was that the driving should be done manually and no outside help during the run should be used, meaning it is all up to you and your skill.
So they just phrased it badly, making the statements sound wack.
@@xXPoopWorldXx because there is a secondary tool and it can't be considered "unmodified client" anymore
Sports ban new tech and strategies all the time btw. Doing a somersault in long jump is banned for instance, even though it's the best way to jump longer. There are banned Swim suits, shoes, balls. Real racing leagues restrict tech and strategy all the time - Like Nascar banning wall hugging.
@@xXPoopWorldXx you know you can have opinions that are conflicting right?
3:27 He said it! He said the line!
"Hefest got this run...."
Everyone: *happiness noises*
Wooooooooooooooooo🎉🎉
Followed by a white timer smh
@dxtrum ?
its not the same without the music 😢
Speed runs are literally about hitting all the right inputs at the right time. Just because someone figured out a better way to find those exact inputs doesn't mean their records aren't valid. There are literally speed runs for Mario 64 based on fewest inputs/jumps. The only reason they get their own category is because they're slower than a straight up speed run would be.
This is the ingenuous answer that appeals to idiots who know nothing.
That's his point though. There are other games that do this - including rhythm games - but trackmania has skill expression, which this minimises (and as mentioned, is very easy to cheat)
They aren’t finding the inputs is what you’re missing. The program checks countless runs until it finds the fastest one, then the driver just has to replicate it. If they were finding the inputs on their own it would be a different story, but given the millions of potential outcomes in any given area of a deterministic game, that can’t happen the same way a Mario 64 run can done.
@@gibblefoon399 What skill? Car driving skill? Or abusing the game mechanics and taking shortcuts skill?
@@MrMichalMalek My man, if you give evidence of you doing a uberbug legit, I'll happily accept your point. Otherwise, I'll assume you have no idea what you're talking about.
@6:34 Yes, which is what striving for the record means. This is why TAS's were created. Who cares if everyone can perform precise inputs and get the same record? That's just how it works.
LIS is literally the same mentality that every speedrunner uses. Less inputs means more consistency, i.e. "setups". A foundation of speedrunning.
This "controversy" is only due to speedrunner egos getting hurt because someone else found a lower input count than them. It screams, "No, YoU'rE nOt AlLoWeD tO bE fAsTeR tHaN pEoPlE wHo PlAy mOrE hOuRs!"
Tbf I don't think that's the reason for the controversy, I think trackmania is a game focused on mastering countless skills and changing and adapting constantly to the different positions of each run, even getting the Uber bug from different setups is a difficult feat, however this strategy is not something that rewards skill or knowledge of the game it's a tap 6 buttons trying to get the correct timing and repeating till you get it, that doesn't take experience or skill in game it simply takes time. This is why they're worried about the competitive aspect of the game, timing 6 clicks doesn't show who the best players on the map are, it just shows who can sit at the screen and press 6 buttons without even thinking the longest. It's entirely brainless.
I see both sides and personally think the best decision would be to delete the game forever because the community is always complaining about every little thing
Can we not strive for competitive fairness? LMAO, how is complaining about something that potentially ruins the game bad?
@@arieltm4925 Because people often act like large paradigm shifts "ruin the game." LIS seems to be the natural conclusion (for now) of a deterministic racing game. Perhaps LIS-able maps should simply not be regarded with the same prestige as others by the people who hate LIS. If the map can be used and abused in this way, that is just the nature of the game. Hunt another map.
Couldn't have put it better
@@arieltm4925 How is it not fair? You can't do it?
@@arieltm4925 This is complaing about the whole essence of the game - get to the finish as fast as possible.
"You didn't push the buttons enough times" is a super weird reason to ban a run
That's not what makes it LIS. The difference between normal and LIS is that LIS has the inputs predetermined and the player is driving with the intention to hit the keys at exact times. In a normal run, the player just drives to go the fastest they can but don't have inputs predetermined to be exact times. LIS is just only used for low amount of button presses because it's very difficult to do anything more than 10 perfect presses in a row, especially on longer tracks.
It's hard to allow it because its basically just a TAS run and would be impossible to moderate and keep in check. It's only really a problem on very short tracks but still a problem never the less.
@@TBNRnoob14 NOWAY people use tool to solve any% runs in deterministic games, its the community's own fault that this happened, they only cared about lowest time, never added categories like cutless, glitchless, etc. Of course as tools develop deterministic games are gonna get solved in a way for humans to be able to execute, it's always been about being the fastest so why should LIS be banned if it's just the fastest human way to drive.
To avoid the TAS issue you can always find ways around that, handcams (everyone has a phone to record with), make TAS runs have a signature inputs, have a separate client and so on it's a non issue that people use to fearmonger
@@TBNRnoob14 For super short tracks players already DO know the fastest way to drive, and it's called a TAS, and if copying a TAS on short maps is against the rules then many many short maps would have their leaderboards wiped. For example: A10 Acrobatic is a map with like 10 inputs where the best strategy is to try to copy the TAS as well as possible. Why isn't that an LIS? Just because it was found by TAS not by a brute forcing LIS software? Because that is stupid as hell. If the optimal solution to your map is under 10 inputs, maybe fix your map instead of complaining.
@@TBNRnoob14 All the inputs on short maps are more or less predetermined. Hell even on minute long COTD tracks all the world records look almost the same in most cases. The longer it is the more different they are, but it wasn't like Hefest didn't already have a set idea of how exactly to play A12. It's a drive down hill into RNG uberbug. Rinse and repeat until you get it. All LIS does is optimize the problem for easier execution, and effects like 2/65 maps. Banning it is unreasonble imo.
Watch the video first
This is a game where the sole objective is to improve the times of a run. When there already exists tools like TAS and TMInterface, using such tools to assist you is perfectly normal in my opinion. Banning such times on the leaderboard would mean gatekeeping the game from potential new players. Also, given the nature of TMNF players, it won't be too long before they find a non-LIS run which would beat the LIS run. So crying for removal of such times is never a viable option.
"You're beating the world record wrong".
Honestly, this and the 92BOB thing show how the community only allows records when they're being done by runners that someone deems as good at the game. Sure, this is bordering tas use, but a person did it with their own hands, without hacks. Why do we draw the line at remembering the input timings, how is it so different from using tas to find new bugs, strategies and lines?
@@CrashCubeZeroOne Exactly, this is simply bad for the betterment of the game. Someones going to go and grind for a new wr just for the all mighty "pros" to deem it not worthy enough for their leaderboards
That isn't the sole objective, though. Otherwise TAS would be allowed on the leaderboard.
The Trackmania leaderboard has something to do with the game Trackmania. That's why simply hacking the leaderboard to add a time of 0.01 is not considered valid.
With the right setup, LIS can be done without knowing that the game Trackmania exists. At that point, the game has been optimized out of existence, and is no longer being played.
@@CrashCubeZeroOne It's so obvious no one here plays the game. Every single person opposing it does not play the game, or is at least not good at it. It's not a coincidence a majority of players voted to remove LIS. That last sentence makes no sense, LIS is insanely different from using tas to find new lines to take. One Is directly copying a set of inputs, which requires zero game knowledge or understanding of the car. The other, is simply finding a new method, which you still have to grind for many hours even with tons of experience in the game. Only people that actually play tm can understand this, the whole point of the game is removed with LIS, why even play the track at that point? If LIS is allowed, the tracks it is used on become meaningless, and so do the leaderboards, so why waste the tracks?
@Travixty sure, I may not be good at the game, but why would that make my point less valid? I've beaten the track the most intended way possible, and I'm not butthurt that people use bugs and shortcuts to achieve better times. The pros are allowed to be frustrated that there is a faster way to beat the track that involves less game knowledge, but a person actually did beat the record. If anything, they should do what games like SM64 and Spyro do: create a "16 star" or "14 talisman" categories. Make a separate "no LIS" category instead of taking down the record and *maybe* considering giving it a category.
Your response showcases exactly the elitist mindset I was talking about. A person did grind that specific track, they don't have to prove they're good at other tracks for the record to be accepted.
This ban is so dumb,literally just the kings men’s crafting the rules in their favor
2010: Bugslide? That's stupid.
2013: Uberbug? That's stupid.
2024: LIS? That's stupid.
I don't have a stake in this and the decision may be the best for the speedrunning community but I definitely see a comparison between these things. Flying through the air via uberbug isn't exactly a racing competition either.
id argue that a uberbug still takes skill (and luck) to execute, which is why its taken so long to beat the record through normal means. LIS on the otherhand is purely skill in timing and not much else, and think its too far of a reduction of the game to count in this comparison.
just like wirt said, bolt running against phelps swimming isn't competition, with this logic why the fuck are flying cars still here.
@@g4vg4v_both literally requires skill and luck. Racing always has been mainly about timing
At least with Ubers and bugslides the whole game isn't dead after a few weeks of LIS, so not comparable at all to me... As he said, if out of the 65 tracks we find like 7 of them where LIS can be used, then that's 10% of the whole campaign that isn't usable at all anymore. How would you want that?
The thing here is that a normal WR driving player can be put on almost any cup of the day competition and will probably be div 1 or 2. A LIS player would never get that unless they we're also already a great player.
A legendary skip in Super Mario 64 was discovered with what is essentially LiS (carpet skip AKA Carpetless). After some initial agitation (mainly with how difficult it was to perform) now all serious 120 star world record contenders have began to use it, and that game has a speedrunning status that far exceeds Trackmania. If you ban LiS just because a few tracks get busted wide open by it, in my eyes you’re not a true speed game anymore.
Carpetless is completely different though, in 120stars carpetless takes up a RIDICULOUSLY low amount of inputs compared to the rest of the run. On a12 it's 6 seconds of inputs and that's it.
LIS's defeat the whole purpose of trackmania.
@@arieltm4925 people are only complaining because there are tracks which are so simple that people found that you can beat them faster than the current records using a low amount of inputs. Even if its shown that those LIS methods might not even be faster than someone driving normally, as often they are done to beat a current record with the least inputs vs the theoretical best time for a track.
@@obvious_failiure5764 not sure what your point is but LIS by nature is finding the lowest inputs that yield a world record in order to beat it more easily than with more inputs. that's not playing trackmania, that's just going off timings
Bang on with the final point. Wirt has been very keen to say lately that Trackmania is a speedrunning game so that he can be considered for a speedrunning streamer award. If you told a speedrunner in any other game that their any% run wasn't valid because they "just did 6 frame perfect inputs and that's not playing the game the *right* way", you'd be quite rightly laughed out of the room. Giving players that were already on the leaderboards a vote to ban a more effective strategy is also a comical conflict of interest. It's not like it's a new bug or control method, which is the kind of thing that does result in spun-off leaderboards. It's literally just a more efficient way of playing the game.
@@arieltm4925 Okay, so if I play the map using LIS, and then just say I didnt use it, its a coincidence, can you prove I didn't do it? You can't. It's just stupid to ban it, if there are tracks that can be beaten using LIS, so be it.
I don't really play the game anymore, so I couldn't care less about the actual decision from the leaderboard managers. A ban for LIS records still seems stupid. IDK how people can call A12 a "legendary map" (you literally just flip a coin every single attempt), but at the same time despise LIS. I think people at some point will find ways to get more consistant at LIS and be able to pass LIS records on simple maps like D11, B09 or even A12, that naturally don't have a lot of inputs, as driven normally by simply using a more complex string of inputs. Hitting 30 frame perfect inputs in a row doesn't sound absolutely inhuman, especially not with the potential help of most likely prohibited tools. Rhythm game, stopwatch, macros, etc. Gamers from all games have often enough done stuff thought to be inhuman.
at the end of the day, it still is just playing the game and 30 100Hz tick-perfect inputs is nowhere near impossible. I'm not even among the best geometry dash players and i regularly play levels demanding multiple frame-perfect inputs, which i can pull off with high consistency. at some level of optimization of any time-based competition in gaming, speed will come down to tick-perfect inputs at some point, and trackmania has been around for a very long time. maybe its day has come
You didn't have to mention you don't play anymore, we could tell
its weird that people get so defensive over their records. someone drove faster than me, im mad, and ill do ANYthing to f k that person over and not let them have any joy or pride in driving the best run possible. crazy how selfish they can be and i wouldn't want to be apart of that anyways.
LIS is barely playing the game. It's the equivalent of a speedrun by doing a value overflow to skip to the credits.
@@ouroya It's something new for the Trackmania community. While such a strat has technically been known in Trackmania for many years already, anyone actually willing to try LIS will most likely need some time to get somewhat consistant at this, before they try to beat actual records having to hit many frame perfect inputs in a row. Mastery of other games, especially rhythm games like GD for example, can surely help here.
4:49 "We all do it this way, but he did it another way and got a faster time, illegitimate" What nonsense is this?
LOL. Kind of a joke. Keeping BUGslides on leaderboards that are practically impossible to control the aim off. In that sense the competition rules are just plain better for sportsmanship. No cuts, no wallbangs, no bug using that’s suddenly considered fine by the same top players that now don‘t want their records to be taken… lost quite some respect for the recordholders as it stands. Second fastest way only, as someone else here said.
Right ive never played the game but nice to watch. From an outsiders perspective, how are bugslides and uberbugs allowed, but not this? One is a lottery of bruteforce, how exactly is that skill?
im not going to be rude because it's obvious you are not good at trackmania. bugslides are insanely skilled-based and 100% able to controlled, LIS is far different from anything else
@@Travixty to me its just boo hoo someone found out a new speedrun method and this whiny ass community cant take it
So what would be the line between LIS and normal runs? The Hefest run had 33 inputs, so would a 15 Input run be allowed on the leaderboards? Or maybe 20?
9 is inhuman for lis, unless you spent a LOT of hours and had insane luck then maybe you can get 9, but thats about the limit
It's not only that it's an arbitrarily low number of inputs, but that they are decided by an algorithm and the player focuses on hitting keys with exact timings rather than playing the game
So to be on the leaderboard, you just ask the tool to find [minimum allowed limit]+1?
@@The_Viktor_Reznov well, the more you need to press, the harder it is, and it grows exponentially
@@The_Viktor_Reznov You also need to execute those inputs which gets just impossible with enough inputs.
1400+ hours on a single track is diabolical.
Insane dedication
I have 3500 hrs on a single stage in dirt rally and I'm still like top 3k I guess that's what it takes to get decent? (altough I guess the run is longer)
@@CyberCreeper22 that is amazing. I never was interested in something for THAT long enough. You guys are insane (in a good sense)
@@NickMaovich no not in a good sense 🤣🤣 that is bum behavior
@@johnfisher4262 hate to agree but when there are 4 digits involved it's hard to think anything else.
*Insane addiction
Gotta love "pros" of any game getting uppity and demanding to ban whatever tech or piece of equipment made them obsolete
Quote him on this 16:03
Very soon = 2026
nah he said on stream he is busy editing 2 videos for the main channel so another vid coming soon
This feels like TM elitist are complaining that the game has gotten so dissected people can optimise stuff like that... Which tbh took longer than expected, the real competion of TM should be on live runs that REALLY shows your actual ''In Game Knowledge/Capabilities'' and not just ur stuborness and amount of time you can spend on the game.
This is speedrunning, it's normal for these things to happen.
This will also most likly not rly affect a lot of maps since like not many require only 6 inputs...
Literally just people being butthurt because their record which required 1000+ hours to get, getting beaten in less than 5 hours
@@theunknowman12 they are complaining about people cheating lmao
Idk, I'm not an elitist or even slightly competitive player, but I still think it's wrong, cause it basically turns TM, which is supposed to be an arcade racing game, into guitar hero just with cars. And if you use a visual tool, the racing part is taken away too. You just follow your indicators and smash tthe buttons. Kinda takes the soul out of the game for me.
@@xXiceArr0wXx But it's not cheating by any reasonable definition of the term. Attempting to make a TAS strat viable for human attempts is a thing speedrunners do all the time. It's a bunch of people who like a deterministic game complaining that certain levels of it are now "solved".
@@deggy42 the issue here isn't that the strat is cheating, it's that people can basically just tas low input strategies and there's no way to know that they didn't cheat. i don't think this is necessarily a good reason to outright ban them, but it is a completely valid concern as it's already happened with a low input strat in kacky, and we're lucky that was caught at all.
As an outsider its crazy that low input is "not the way the game is meant to be played" but jumping over the track and skiping the course is totally fine
because the one way you LOOK AT THE GAME the other way you LOOK AT THE OTHER SCREEN! its so obviously not playing the same game, the skillset is so different that it shouldnt even matter whether the game was "meant" to be played that way.
@shoe7281 I don't disagree with you but using bugs and skipping the track are different skills other than running the track as intended. Again I'm not in the community so there could be other categories and drawing line of what is and isn't acceptable is up to the community
@@evanjohns795 one different skill is utilized IN CONJUNCTION with the game as normally played, and the other outright REJECTS playing the game and substitutes a pseudo-rhythm game in its place. this is not even close to similar. im glad you agree that it needs a different leaderboard, but the comparison of it to glitches is uncalled for and an entirely uninformed perspective. wirtual began the video with a chronological progression of strategies each with certain community members' dissent to show hwo the game has evolved and to highlight how controversy is formed, but the rest of the video makes it clear that this is strategy is a fundamentally new breed of its own. people got so hung up on the first few minutes and took it as an admission of similarity rather than a simple aid to gaining at least some of the needed context to this game.
@shoe7281 this is clearly very important to you, and my first comment could be seen as glib and I apologize for that, but in the future I would temper that passion and try to see others perspectives and not assume that they are acting in bad faith
@@evanjohns795 you're probably right
I am a big fan of the "if it is done by a human, it is legit, that is the only speedrunning rule" mantra. But I have no issues with a new category. A lot of games have special categories for game-breaking glitches.
Ever since the introduction of tas, adding in the fact that the physics is deterministic, i know eventually Trackmania would become a rhythym game
Yeah without RNG pretty much all game speedruns boil down to this. I honestly think this strategy only really ruins shorter maps so I don’t really see the issue anyway. I don’t think grinding shorter maps like this is fun or really that interesting to watch.
Like, even in games like Asseto Corsa flying laps can feel like a rhythm game
Part of me thinks this is a case of ‘work smarter, not harder’ where no actually cheating has taken place. The video is laid out really well because it does show how people were against the uber bugs etc to start with which are now the shortcuts being beaten by this new strategy… which is slightly ironic. In my opinion if this should have its own category then so should any cut method on any track, as that is a different skill than just driving as fast as you can using perfect racing lines. That obviously would never happen and I think it would be a lot of work to go back and change all of the leaderboards but it would be an interesting change and open trackmania to having a more diverse selection of speedrun categories on each track. Good video wirtual
There are already "no-cut" versions of Nadeo tracks with added walls to prevent shortcuts but I think it would be cool if it was a tab you could see on the leaderboard of the maps themselves, though people would probably argue on what counts as a cut in some cases.
Agreed. Use tags, not categories. This one could be tagged "LIS + Uber". Want to compete glitchless? Just filter out those tags. The main category is for valid human runs without external assistance provided during the run, I don't see why we should add some ad-hoc criteria just for LIS which affects very few maps anyway.
Your comment is the reason why you shouldn't let people outside of the community to decide the rules😂😂
@@mricci07 read: you enjoy gatekeeping. cool story.
@@mricci07 Read, i'm a crybaby
IMO, LIS should be accepted as "normal" runs. There are tons of world record levels/games in the speedrunning world that can be tied beause they're easy (low number of inputs) to replicate. It's just part of the game.
My arguments are:
1) We don't even know if LIS is the fastest way possible. Maybe more complicated inputs will result in a better time in the future.
2) Even if it's the fastest; it just shows a flaw in the map design, not in the players.
3) If the wr can easily be tied, it could be a nice incentive for new people to try to enter the speedrun world by getting a tied wr.
Cheat problem - that's the reason to ban it.
Trackmania leaderboards have always been a testament to Trackmania skill. That is why TAS times are separate from player leaderboards.
LIS is not a measure of Trackmania skill. It is a measure of rhythm game skill (push button 1,2,3,4 at a precise time)
The visual difference is that in a regular Trackmania run, if you mistime an input (oversteer a turn, eat a gear, or release too early) you can try to save the run. With LIS, if you mistime *any* input, you immediately restart, because if you mistimed the input, the rest of your strategy is simply gone.
But from a skill perspective, the leaderboards as they are display Trackmania skill and using external tools as aids during gameplay is against the rules of the leaderboard. LIS is against that rule because you are using TAS tools to build the input list, then the timer to execute the input list.
People aren't really saying ban it completely, but it's a completely different skillset being tested, so it should have it's own leaderboard.
i would accept it, but accept no ties with the same inputs.
@@squashiejoshie200000 regular speed runs are not a test of skill either, it's just doign the same thing over and over until you fluke out a record time. skill is repeatable.
@@GraveUypo I never said it's not a test of skill. I just said it's a completely different skillset from normal Trackmania, which it is.
And very few speedruns are no skill. You're free to go beat some world records to prove me wrong, but I doubt anyone who does speedrunning seriously would agree with you.
The moment the leaderboard starts banning specific types of cuts they can be considered a joke. Either allow all cuts, ban all cuts, or move runs with cuts to a different leaderboard.
If I'm to be honest, then at the absolute height of mastery we would arrive at LIS since it's the pinnacle of no wasted movement. The real controversy is just how LIS is being discovered through brute force simulations. It's like memorizing a specific line in Chess from Stockfish, you would still be bad at the game and have no idea why exactly it's these inputs that works.
There was that one guy(Nigel Richards) that won French Scrabble without knowing the language after 9 weeks of studying the best words. He didn't get banned for it either. Would love to see the butthurt if all those 20+ years drivers got their records stolen by kids that played the game for 2 weeks.
Problem is that its not as easy with the no wasted movement. Yeah he used less inputs, but if you watch the comparison against hefest you can see how he loses time in the start. Like the start trick that makes for a faster start.
@@Wisewolf_of_Yoitsuif the tool didn't even consider hefest's faster start in the analysis, then i guess it's just really slower? we only got a hefest run but with tas ending example in the video, but no hefest faster start + lis continuation example
@@DashMan-g7z I know about this Scrabble tourney, but you have to understand that Scrabble isn't about language mastery, it's about pattern recognition and Nigel proved he was an expert at this, without any external software.
I am a fan of TAS, these are runs done by people who have intricate knowledge of the game to map all the best inputs. This is also the core reason why glitches are widely respected by the speed-running community it's a deeper mastery of a game.
And this brings me to your last point, do you really think the 20+ years drivers don't have the skill required to perform simulated LIS themselves? They wouldn't even need 2 weeks, they'd get it done in less than a day.
But do you think anyone would be excited to watch a new WR happen? Would be pretty boring to see the top 50 runs being 100% identical.
@@Wisewolf_of_Yoitsu I'm not sure what you mean. It could just be that the faster start by hefest is actually an overall time loss that you pay for after the jump. I could totally see someone doing the calculations to figure this out in TAS, I have seen speedrunners doing crazier stuff than that.
I have seen people in SM bros slow down at certain points to line up jumps or prevent bonks.
Banning low input strategy runs because its faster is like banning uberbugs or shortcuts bcs its not the intended way imo
in fact they are not banning it because it faster
With uberbugs and shortcuts you have to use judgement. If you allow LIS you turn the game into a rhythm game and it’s no longer a racing game. In theory you don’t even need a monitor.
@@tonixborghi2171 Yeah for sure. Its because of the cheating stuff definitely, surely they have no incentive to ban it considering they are the top speedrunners and record holders
@@aidenrylott6688 In theory you don't even need a monitor... that applies to normal gameplay as well. TM is deterministic. But so is DOOM, and you don't even need a monitor to play that. With the right inputs you can beat the entirety of Doom, in under an hour, without a screen once. You can also do the same with the normal campaign in TM. All the way from A01 to E05. You don't need a monitor to play it. It makes for a horrible gaming experience, but since TM is 100% deterministic it's still possible to do so.
@@livedandletdie Almost like someone could beat TM blindfolded...
LIS are completely fine imo. If you drove it manually, then why should it matter how many presses you made? If you can execute such a precise sequence of presses that it achieves you a record, I'd argue that's just as impressive and difficult as doing it any other (legitimate) way. You said "a leaderboard with low input records would just determine who is the best at timing button presses" - but isn't that essentially how every leaderboard in Trackmania is? When you're playing Deep Dip, isn't is just about timing your button presses in a way that gets you to the finish without falling? This is just a different form of timing. It still requires strategy, research, skill and many many tries to execute. In my eyes the run is completely legit, it's the same people crying about it who cried about records done with bugslides or uberbugs years ago. Punishing someone just because they found a more effective way to finish a map quicker, just because they used fewer inputs, is just weird to me.
I see what you're saying and agree with a lot of it. I think the main problem for me though is using a 3rd party to aid you. Doesn't that seem unfair?
@@avito4179why would that be unfair? An LIS run is just a small list of inputs. You could execute it with your eyes closed.
I understand your point but the thing is what the pros are annoyed about is the fact that trackmania records should just solely rely on the pure driving and positioning of the car skill rather than a visual cue like staring at a time that you hit (for example) the left button at 3.21 seconds exact. I understand even hitting that button requires skill but then due to this being allowed on the normal leaderboard what will happen is that people who have not been grinding and learning the mechanics of the game for multiple of 1000's of hours will start flooding the leaderboard and the people who have devoted they many 1000's of hours to master the mechanics of the game will now be left with no choice but to choose the same path and then Trackmania which is a racing game will turn into a game where people will be using in game timer to get WR's rather than deciding on what inputs to do in split second. So I think the moderators decided to do the right thing and give it a separate leaderboard.
While I agree that LIS runs take a lot of skill and strategy to pull off, I think the problem with them is that those runs aren’t actually playing the game. The skill involved is the same as would be in a rhythm game, which is very impressive but not what track mania is. Also, yes, technically every track mania run is just timing button presses, but there is a difference between LIS and regular runs. For example, deep dip is essentially timing buttons, but the timings aren’t given to you beforehand. They require the player to understand the physics of the game and how to make small adjustments if something isn’t perfect. They are based on what the player sees and how the player interprets what’s going on in the game instead of just looking at the timer and pressing the button based on the number. Regular runs require immense knowledge and understanding of the game in order to time the presses correctly, whereas LIS does not. Basically, I think LIS is impressive, but it essentially makes track mania a rhythm game, which defeats the point. I think giving LIS its own leaderboard is the best option.
Agreed.
10:41 Knowing that the TAS world record is way faster, it only needs someone to get lucky enough to break the 10.40s world records. It's possible, so no point in banning the 10.40s time.
I think it should absolutely be allowed. Replicating exact inputs is also a type of skill, and the more complex a map gets, the harder it'll be to finish it this way!
They should just allow it. Banning it feels like banning the use of shortcuts.
That's such a reach LOL, shortcuts are part of the game, LIS removes the fun part of the game
@@arieltm4925 LIS removes the whole game. You wouldn't even have to know which game you're playing to get a world record time.
@@arieltm4925
Because going for the same exact bug 10000 times in a row hoping to win the physica lottery is SO much funner.
LIS is only feasible on thise kinds of maps
@@41-Haiku I think you meant to reply to the other dude
@@arieltm4925 A12 grind is not the fun part of the game. And LIS isnt easy applicable on maps with any more length. And if some player will try LIS for a months to try beating long map, I say he deserves the record
Ok, this seems kinda silly. I dont have experience with competitive Trackmania but i like the game enough to care. In the example with the swimmers, no one on Earth would blame Phelps for winning a medal because he reapeted the right movemements of his arms and body to achive the best time in the race, reapiting the right set of movements is the only input that swimmers get to achive their times and medals. In this example Bolt would be a person that e.g. used a schortcut, and i dont see any wide outrage about that, in contrary the comunity seems to applaud the use of such techniques.
He used a terrible example tbf. The difference is that LIS is indistinguishable from TAS and basically removes all types of skill from the run besides timing. It wouldn't be such a big deal if it was clear whether it is cheated or not but it is essentially just a TAS run. The thing with shortcuts is you are still playing the game in a way where you are the one driving the lines and deciding the inputs, not letting a computer find the best solution and then copying it exactly.
@@TBNRnoob14isn't the game already about timing?
When repeating a map over and over you're only trying to repeat the same sequence over and over. The difference one you're basing your run based on how you're driving and the other on your inputs
What I see is a bunch of manchild crying because the abuse of the games physics suddenly isn't done the way they do it
@@azerty1933 there is a lot more going into a run than just repeating a sequence. Although A12 doesn't give much you can even see even there. When hefest has to reduce airtime in the start or release enough to fly into finish. These sort of things cannot just be repeated and are part of the skill of the game. Same goes for air control, reducing air time, adjusting lines, and yes timing. The thing with LIS is that it strips all that down to just timing when to press the keyboard 6 times. It strips the game down so much and removes 90% of the skill. Yes it does take skill to do an LIS but it's a difference sort of skill than play tmnf
The biggest problem however is that it is impossible to moderate without sacrificing the low barrier of entry that the game is known for. There is no way to tell if an LIS run is done properly or with TAS because it is so simple in its inputs. Imo the best way to fix this is to just make a seperare category that allows for LIS
@@TBNRnoob14 isn't trackmania nowaday just random luck hoping you get thrown away in the random right direction?
A12 is a shit map to being from, considering the "right" way for the record is not ignore 2/3 of the map i'd say we can stop being hypocritical about what is skill and what is abusing the game
@@azerty1933 A12 is probably the worst map to judge trackmania on. It is so far stripped down that it is faster to complete than A01. Trackmania is still very skillful and LIS will really only effect 1% of all tracks. That's probably why it's easier to just make a new category for it instead of changing the verification process for something that won't really be applicable on most tracks
The difficulty to detect cheating is the only good argument, the other arguments are just a hypocritical way of saying "i don't like this way of playing the game so i want to ban it so i don't have to adapt". It's not like frame perfect LIS is going to break the whole game either, it's only realistic for tiny maps.
Several speedruns use this kind of frame perfect tricks that are inspired from TAS, Trackmania is not an exception.
Easy way to remove the cheat , don't allow the same input...they will always be a better imput(proof in the video), it's dumb but at least it will not punish this player to be the better... and no The difficulty to detect cheating is not a good argument to punish this guy to be better NEVER.
I actually didn't have the bell on for this channel, so even the algorithm was surprised by the upload and recommended it to me.
Because TAS shows that much faster WRs are possible, LIS runs are as close to running TAS as humanly possible for some maps. Having a separate category would be a nice addition, but maybe add also an overall category to see how the LIS runs stack up to the TAS runs. And if there are duplicate runs, build a drop down that groups anyone that has that time into one place on the leaderboard: All Tied for 3rd place. This way, even if there are a hundred runs that same time, 4th place that is a hundredth slower can still be on the leaderboard.
This seems like a good compromise to me, but also I'm not a Trackmania player, my racing game experience is Forza and Gran Turismo.
From an outside perspective, banning low input strategy from the leaderboards seems like just a way for the old guard to protect their current records from a new strat. If the goal is to set the fastest time using any way possible found in game, it should actually mean any way possible. Having a bunch of old time players vote on it is pretty weird since they clearly have a stake in keeping their records and preserving how they see the game should be played. Its pretty selfish imo to claim that their way of playing is more legit than another way. Also, the cheating using an external tool isn't just a problem for this game, so it shouldn't be a reason to ban low input.
You're very right here, even if they are doing it unintentionally.
As runs stagnate things that were once banned becomes allowed, all they are doing is delaying the natural death of these types of competitions while ironically making any record they get pointless.
Thing is you aren't actually playing the game. You're just telling a tool to come up with a human reproducible TAS run and then you're playing a rhythm game instead. I mean sure, you could play speed chess using a 3600 elo chess engine; you still have to move the pieces quickly right? That's a skill. But you're not really playing chess anymore, you're just mimicking what a computer is telling you to do with zero actual game sense. This strat is basically a tool that turns Trackmania maps into DDR maps. Does anyone actually want that?
@@osenmosen He is literally playing the game. He just found a more efficient way to train, and that makes the people who spent 1000s of hours on the old way feel like they wasted their time.
@@SarahMaywalt He isn't training; he's telling a tool to generate all inputs for him and then tries to mimic it down to a 100th of second, effectively turning it into a DDR map. That's the point. There's no trial and error or training involved. If you can tell a tool to generate a DDR map and then play it on secondary monitor without even looking at the game, do you honestly not think that ruins the spirit of the game? This is basically a "TAS but with human reproducible inputs"-category and it makes sense that it's separated.
It's like the Musician's Union voting to ban synthesizers and drum machines.
It should be out right illegal to ban a strategy that improves time.
Have y'all never heard of speedrun categories before? My goodness...
I agree, speedrunning is very serious. It's not something we do to have fun it's a divine mandate from god to try and get the fastest possible time on every game ever created, no matter the cost. We should nationalize the speedrunning community and impose strict rules like that in order to protect this sacred activity. In addition, to truly safeguard the correct way to speedrun we should consider any breach of this laws to be an act of treason punishable by death.
cheating is a strategy that improves time. you think it should be legal then?
@@TheHeadincharge Then why have they not made categories for cuts and no cut runs? Surely now that they want to make a category for LIS, they make one for cuts/no cuts right
@@madichelp0 Hack the leaderboard, then. 0% is a %.
Lis should be allowed. The old TrackMania community needs to stop bitching just because the meta for a very few tracks has changed.
Oldheads ruin everything😂😂😂
Yeah. From the video it seems like this is the only map that it's relevant for. Seems like it should be allowable until/if it's the dominate strategy on more maps. If it only matters for a couple maps, who cares, that's kind of neat. If it's like half of all maps, that would be boring.
Agreed. If players have an issue with it then create a separate leaderboard for each type of strategy, but the overall WR leaderboard should still include LIS runs. Any other setup just doesn't make sense as you would be pretending that slower runs are the WR.
@@OmairArif Or create a modified version of the map with a third checkpoint added...
Furthermore, LIS’s real problem is that you are passing off button pressing as skill. The miraculous thing where LIS is an improvement over driving on A-12 is not going to be there for every track. LIS’s thing would be more a test if you can press any less buttons. And if later on LIS = TAS, then it can be entirely disregarded.
Problems with the LIS ban:
- Drivers will have to actively avoid using lines and strategies that they now know to be the fastest
- Banning the use of extra tools is pointless as eventually drivers can just use the race clock to time inputs
- prevents seeing the evolution of the game in response to this new strategy
EXACTLY! That third point is so important
Mods are stunting the growth of the game as a whole because they don't like one random strategy.
Worried about cheaters? Mandate a hand cam for Lis. Worried about certain maps being trivialized? Hunt a different map, or play on a category dedicated for Non-LIS
No other major speed running game has EVER banned a strategy that lowers time for Any%
I also see another problem : what do you even count as low input strategies ? Do you have to press at least 10 buttons for your record to count ? 12 ? Where is the line ? What if someone drives normally for the first part of the run and then only does low input strategies for say the second half of the run ? On longer maps there could be viable strats where you run normally to a certain point then have to hit a precise position and start low inputting from there. How could you even moderate that ?
@@enkn
- not actively, no. LIS is very easily distinguishable from natural driving and would never be matched by a person using regular strategies.
- yes, they can, but it's much harder to use the clock than a visual tool. And at least it's part of the game. It usually takes great excuses to allow tools in speedruns, not to disallow them. If it's "pointless" it should be disallowed by default.
- not if they add it as a separate category. Disallowing or allowing LIS *entirely* stunts the development of using/not using LIS. Having separate categories ensures the continued development of both, naturally, as people choose which leaderboard they want to pursue at any given time.
@@daftwulli6145 it's impossible to switch to LIS mid run, it's always at the start. While the game is deterministic, even slight variations can mess up the physics a lot
Comparing extra tools to looking at the clock... LOL
Usain Bolt goated swimmer confirmed
This is extremely similar to something that was found around a year ago in the fnaf scene, one of the main ways players compete in fnaf is saving the most power possible during their runs, the record for fnaf 1 was slowly increased over the years by people just getting better and understanding the game more, learning to abuse characters movement timers and such. But about a year ago a bug was found that made it possible to get the literal perfect run in basically 4 inputs (extremely easy inputs). It took away all need to be good at the game, and required practically no prior game knowledge, someone who had never touched the game before could beat the non bug WR within 10 minutes of trying. The non bug record was broken within 30 mins of this being found and the perfect run was done the next day. We consider this bug method a separate category, and the actual record is just .5% behind the bug methods perfect run. Competition in fnaf is much much smaller than trackmania, but I fully understand banning something like this to preserve the integrity of competition. New tech and strats being discovered can be one of the most exciting things that can happen within a dedicated community, which is why i think separate category's are almost always the way to go as to not discourage people from experimenting.
Cool video i enjoyed! I love watching the development of games even tho im not super familiar with said game!
Perfect example and I'm glad that someone is taking into consideration the health of the competition in the community. At the end of the day it is about enjoying the game and being able to have fun challenging yourself to do better. LIS sort of takes that away completely so it's far better to just make it a seperate category.
Good point! However, I think biggest difference here is that fnaf is only one run (or a couple of runs?), while Trackmainia has 65 different tracks to drive (plus many community maps). LIS is only viable on shorter tracks, and probably not all of them, meaning there are still a lot of tracks to compete regularly on if you don’t like LIS.
except these aren't extremely easy inputs, you have to hit them at the exact 100th of a second. Its a speedrunning game, and people are mad about the speedrunning strat. Doesn't mean it isn't valid. Sometimes the best strat is found, and yeah, its bittersweet. But that is the nature of speedrunning.
@@Morhpocelionate Trackmania isn't only about speedrunning just because tracks have leaderboards. It's about competing in THAT game with an overall agreed on playstyle which is defined by it's community.
How does this kills creativity? This is the most creative thing i've seen in a while..
Never played trackmania but banning it doesn’t make any sense. The community clearly doesn’t care about extorting the games physics and quirks yet LIS is where the line is finally crossed? Nearly every game has speedruns requiring precision inputs where players spend hours trying to get frame perfect timings. This is no different and it is asinine that people think his “driving expertise” is lacking thus he doesn’t deserve the record. Why does someone’s ability to bug slide affect whether or not the record is legitimate? Most importantly, this record CAN still be beaten. Seems like a pretty arbitrary place to draw the line based more on people’s emotions than reason.
To me it sounds like a bunch of veteran player feel slighted they spent hours practicing just to get beat by a dude who plays the game differently. They want to make someone’s game experience a barrier to entry so that their records don’t come under fire and the time they’ve put into the game isn’t for nothing. Lastly, asking the people affected by whether or not this is a record to choose if it should be allowed is the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard. This decision HAS to be made by a committee who will be impartial. It’s ridiculous this is how the decision was made.
I could rant about this for hours but coming from other speedrunning communities, I can’t believe this is even a debate. Every game with deterministic speedruns works like this and it’s mind boggling that this wasn’t figured out 10 years ago. Times change. It’s clear the old guard aren’t happy about it, and that they’re willing to rewrite the books to make sure everyone knows it
Which other games have LIS? Genuinely curious
Seems a bit like gatekeeping. They didn't make a new board for shortcuts. But I don't play.. So...
@@hihitherethere1 i know that pokemon runners do this all the time with manipulating encounters. They reset the game and try to press certain buttons on exact frames. This makes them able to manipulate random events like wild pokemon encounters.
There is a very important difference that stands out with this strategy specifically, as it doesn’t actually require you to play the game, or be good at it. All the actual effort is done by an algorithm beforehand, not people theory-crafting (btw, many often forget that TAS are crafted by actual people who put hours tweaking every little detail of a run, and do still require some amount of user input). There is no skill expression, or adaptation in the fly, it’s not YOUR record, it’s a machine’s
The whole “barrier of entry” argument reminds me of the early discussions of AI art, and how it “democratizes art.” Y’all don’t actually care about inclusion, you are just lazy, and want to do speedruns without the skill required to do them.
1. I don't think that LIS should be banned, but I do understand the likelihood of cheating with it. But from an outside perspective and all my speedrunning friends from other games also say that it's insane to ban something like this. The likelihood of cheating is the only reason that makes any sense.
2. I've also asked about the use of visual/audio cues such as metronomes being banned, something my other speedrunning friends have also been puzzled by. I've personally never understood why this is banned, as it's used in so many other games. Using a TAS tool to find more optimal starts has always been allowed in many other speedrunning games too, as long as its not directly impacting the run. Hell, Minecraft speedruns allow a literal calculator to find the stronghold. I really don't think they should be banned.
3. As someone who's been around Axell a ton and seen his personality, most of that "suspicious" behavior is just him. Let me be clear that I'm not defending his lying here, but I wanted to clear some things up. He does very often delete things for harddrive space, am he does very often say "I got it" before something actually happens. These things, while suspicious, definitely aren't reasons he cheated.
On the other hand, yes ofc he lied about the second monitor. Though considering that LIS was already banned from TMX at this point, him getting a run that utilized a visual metronome also would've been against a TMX rule anyways. Lying about it wasn't okay though, and he has since apologized for it, and is now grinding A12 without LIS legitimately.
I only say that because I don't think hate should be spread around it. The community is often very specific about how it wants things run for 'fair and reasonable' competition, so there's not much room for us to say much. Either way, this whole A12 situation is absurd, and I do hope the record is beaten non-LIS very soon.
believe me it is almost impossible for a non-LIS record to beat it... hell even 1 hundredth of a change in record takes years and is celebrated throughout the community .... but i still don't understand where to oppose or to support the ban😒😒
this is why should exist a run categories in trackmania exchange
like no-cut runs, cut runs, tas runs etc.
and i think in that categories still should we have a goats (especially no-cut runs on tracks that are greatly known from cuts and the cuts are mandatory to get a absolute world record)
this whole thing really highlights a difference in values between the speedrunning community as a whole and racing game communities, as most speedrun communities would allow it because it's generally accepted that the main category is anything goes, even if it makes the run terrible, unfun, or uncompetitive and that the category with the strat banned is the second category
I am not sure if banning LIS from leaderboards was the best solution, because it will further split Trackmania community.
Some tracks, like troll cups of the day, are usually completed with LIS, so we have to keep that in mind.
In my opinion, if a track can be completed with 6 inputs it is a mapper's problem, not a drivers one.
The easiest solution to me on how to prevent LIS on your track is placing a few turns before the main part. The difficulty of timing your inputs increases exponentially with their amount.
This ban raises a lot of controversial questions, for example:
• what if you do a precise wiggle in start and finish by timing the rest of inputs. Should this run be banned?
• How many inputs do you have to press for your run to be on leaderboards?
and many more...
Summing up, I Think that a mapper should decide whether his map's leaderboards should have LIS times or not.
I will be glad to hear you thought and ideas in comments. There is a lot to discuss.
>In my opinion, if a track can be completed with 6 inputs it is a mapper's problem, not a drivers one.
exactly! do we separate the leaderboard for shortcuts or pf setups? no, instead we build our maps with the techniques in mind, avoiding them if desired.
It won't split the TM community. As explained in this video, LIS runs aren't a competitive category. You either do the LIS right (and get a WR) or you do it wrong and get nothing. LIS leaderboards will just be a list of people that did the LIS run once.
To me, the cheating concern ist the only valid one, all the other arguments against LIS seem pretty toxic.
I don't think anyone gets to decide, what is or is not "Game-related skill" - that basically defies the idea of speedrunning. Opening up new record categories with restrictions imposed? - Sure, why not! But the overall ban of otherwise perfectly legitimate runs just seems absurd.
Also: The vote mentioned at 10:41 gives off uncanny "Ruling Elite" vibes.
Imo the game is all about skill and knowing the car, like wirtual said, and not about pressing buttons at a specific time.
@@minkmiau Its about getting the fastest time. Homie knew the car would react based off six inputs. Just because dude had the info, doesn't mean the record is invalid. Again, its just elitism, and that people don't like that someone memorized some inputs.
@@Morhpocelionate i never said its invalid, i just said my opinion. I personally think LIS should be a seperate leaderboard, because it seems unfair to the others.
it should have its own category because it is a fundamentally different way to play the game. a glitch or strategy that can be utilized in conjunction with the skills needed to drive the car and drift etc. as intended is one thing, but to look at an entirely different monitor for timing and only pressing buttons when that screen tells you to is NOT trackmania. at most it is playing tm indirectly through a rhythm game-like medium. how is this not common sense?
@@shoe7281 It's not "common sense" because you don't get to decide how others play a game just because you don't like their method.
The client and keyboard and mouse are unmodified, no cheats are being used. You might as well ban anyone who uses Discord because another person could send you strategies there, which you could then use to improve your times. This is silly.
13:55 Honestly, I agree with Axl. Using a metronome is not unprecedented in speedrunning. What difference is a custom built DDR interface that does essentially the same thing?
Different community, metronome is an external tool.
@@leovang3425 The game has an ingame timer...
@@luminica_ and that's not a metronome. It's and in-game tool
@@leovang3425 I think what he's essentially saying is there is a visual cue in game that would allow people to make a run based off it that isn't external. whether or not it'd make it the fastest run is another thing.
@@leovang3425 So is a notepad or an internet browser that is telling you when to press which keys. What's the difference?
“Kills creativity?” Pasta coming up with this new, outside-the-box approach IS creativity. “Competing becomes less accessible?” Like how accessible it was for the previous decade when the wr went unbeaten? And to the point about how LIS doesn’t distinguish the best drivers but rather the best-timed button-pushers, those two things are effectively the same: isn’t racing about trying to time your braking, accelerating and steering as precisely as possible to lower your time? For a channel that usually embraces unconventional innovations, i dont see why you suddenly draw the line here
There can be competition in a category without anyone achieving a new WR, you know. People still compete for 2nd place, or 3rd, or just to improve their PB and get as close to the top as possible. With LIS, this all becomes pointless, because you might as well just spend a few hours doing that and getting tied WR.
"those two things are effectively the same: isn’t racing about trying to time your braking, accelerating and steering as precisely as possible to lower your time?"
No, they really aren't. One involves playing the game, taking the audio and visual feedback, incrementally improving on your driving lines and steering to get the lowest time possible. The other involves trying to press 6 inputs an external tool has given you, and resetting immediately if you mistime one even slightly. You don't even need the monitor on. If you hit all the inputs correctly, you're guarantee a WR that is identical to everyone else's.
Also, Wirtual often explores unconventional innovations, but isn't automatically a staunch advocate for them. Most of the time, he's just shining a light on grey areas in the TM ruleset that need better definition.
9:37 Dude, what?? Thats the worst comparison you have ever made on your channel wtf???
Yeah, with that logic then everything thats not normal driving would be the same as getting out of the pool and run
100% agree. Like sorry this guy figured out the right buttons to press at the right time in a game that’s entirely about pressing the right buttons to press at the right time…?
@@AversoD he didnt figure it out, the program did it for him. just like you cant say you wrote an exam by yourself because you manually wrote down the answers from a cheat sheet
@@igoris_batonas6922 Dude, what?? Thats the worst comparison you have ever made on your channel wtf???
@@chimer51 what? you just copied the original comment
Thanks for the upload Wirtual, see you in half a year (optimistcally).
Nobody beat the record for five years. Without LIS the map was essentially dead. Nothing was lost by introducing the new technique.
why MUST a record be beaten for the map to be historically relevant?
the map was not dead, the only reason this LIS was found is because the hype around it grew again, when players started hunting for the wr
@@shoe7281 You are right. The map can be historically relevant even if the record is not beaten, just as a record can be historically relevant even if its beaten by a new technique. All the introduction of LIS did was innovated on an otherwise stagnant map. It does not in any way invalidate the accomplishment of people driving the normal way.
@@Joowmama The map was not "dead," I apologize for that bad choice of words. However, it was stagnant and LIS was an innovation. Records driven the normal way are still just as respectable as before.
Players can compete for more than a WR, though. Even if no one topples the WR, you can still go for 2nd place, or 3rd, or just try to climb the ladder as high as you can.
The problem with LIS is that everyone can just get the exact same run and, especially if it's WR (or just better than your PB) why wouldn't you? Then you end up with what is essentially a meaningless leaderboard because everyone has the exact same time. And you lose the diversity of runs and old scores, and diminish the significance of new scores that do genuinely beat the classical WR, but still end up buried under hundreds of identical LIS runs.
HE SAID THE LINE!! 3:27
As spmeone outside ofncompetitive trackmania, i think having a seperate catagory and increasing proof sandards is the way.
In many games, the main competitive scene isnt strictly about the catagory that gives the best results.
In Hollow Knight Speedrunning for example, the main catagory is any% no major glitches. Despite these glitches giving a faster time, they were disallowed from the main catagory because runners found them unfun to do, and viewers found them unfun to watch.
Any% All glitches records are cool, but they arent what most people do, and I feel that as a viewer, LIS records are still cool, but entirely different from normal records.
I agree on this one! Even the speedrunners of 4b2c seem to understand that :D
Furthermore, the goals with LIS are different. LIS people would want to look for the fewest amount of presses; regular speedrunners would look to manipulate the car controlled in a manner akin to driving a car. Furthermore, if LIS becomes a dead end, Trackmania speedrunning becomes an Uberbug paradise via skillful driving again.
"One of the best things about Trackmania is that all you have to do is install the game and patch and then anyone can compete."
"Your world records are only valid if they take thousands of hours of experience to create."
anyone can compete, not anyone can be the best. THINK! do you really want a world where literally EVERYONE can be the simultaneous best and worst at certain tmnf maps?
no lol... your record are always valid... but you can't really beat world records without thousands of hours of experience...
@@cebulak941 Did you watch the video? It's literally about how the community decided that some records and techniques aren't valid because anyone could do them.
@@TheLetterJ0 so go ahead and do that... ;)
How many inputs is do the leaderboard define as low input. You mentioned other games having players who could do hundreds but the track showed averaged in the low 30’s. Even with less cues for players it still seems like someone could use the method albeit with more difficulty.
not possible, lis is extremely hard and as was said in the video, it took pasta 80hrs for 6 input, and pasta is also crazy good at lis
So to be on the leaderboard, you just ask the tool to find [minimum allowed limit]+1?
Probably something that isn't in the same range, if most inputs for leaderboards are like 30-50 and you see 6, thats pretty low lol. Just comparatively, just like if there were only 3-5 inputs and someone only did 1-2, that seems low to what is done on average.
@@The_Viktor_Reznov pasta didnt just "ask" the tool to find the lis, he manually went through each possible outcome through tmi until he eventually found the perfect one, took him 70+ hrs iirc, and then he also had to drive the perfect lis run aswell, lis is very time consuming
It isn't a matter of the number of inputs, but rather how those inputs were determined. "regular" runs involve players deciding what inputs to press during the run, based on game experience and decision making, LIS runs involve players planning out every button press prior to starting the run. Even if some absolute god gamer managed an "LIS" run with 100 inputs, it would still be LIS if they were all preplanned, and even if some normal runner only ended up pressing their keyboard 5 times, if those 5 times were invented in the moment, it wouldn't be LIS.
I think you presented the arguments well, and a separate category seems like a good approach. That's what all other speed running leaderboards are doing, too.
NEW MAIN CHANNEL JUST DROPPED GUYS.
But then the main channel got this run (An aften ved svannefossen starts playing)
crazy gatekeeping from the mods. if the bugs are allowed, so is low input. There should be a separate category called "you actually have to drive the track" instead and leave the bugs and LIS and whatever other gamebreaking shit in the main fastest time category. Dude just found a better way to beat the WR and old heads are salty they grinded 1500 hours to lose to 6 PERFECT inputs.
I watched your video A12 3 years ago, i am shocked you keep on uploading, your a legend bro ✌️
LIS seems very much a speedrun mindset. People spend ages looking for consistent setups to execute glitches in speedruns.
The difference is those glitch setups and executions are usually a relatively small part of a larger run. If the entire speedrun was pressing 6 buttons frame-perfectly it wouldn't be a very interesting game to speedrun, would it?
Pasta's accomplishments deserve respect, but I will follow my own path.
**Insert Sisyphus meme**
wirtual definitely did you dirty with the 10.79 edit xD
What about the map where everyone has the same start to get the perfect over-wall. I know the rest of the run obviously isn't LIS but the start can be considered LIS.
How do you detect someone running a macro for the first few seconds on that map?
If LIS is banned from the leaderboard because it breaks the spirit of speed running, then should that LIS start strat also be banned.
If yes, then that's the entire leaderboard removed.
If no, then what % of a run can be LIS? And when can LIS be used.
Just pointing out possible gray areas.
The difference with a run where the start is LIS but the rest is normal, is that you aren't going to end up with a leaderboard full of completely identical records from completely identical inputs. The LIS portion of that map may be uncompetitive, but the rest is still competitive and worth competing on.
3:22 is what we all came for
Hefest got this run
Hefest got this run
This game turned from "Who can drive faster" into "Who can exploit the bugs better"
6:58 Geometry Dash confirmed as a rhythm game, thank you for settling the debate
As a geometry dash player, I can do 12 100fps frame perfects easily
First wirtual L 💔
@@googa9689you think any insanely hard demons can be beat without music then?
@@mhansku7152 yeah they can and lots of top players literally play it without music
@googa9689 any rhythm game can be played without music, that’s not what makes a rhythm game a rhythm game, it just makes it significantly more interactive. geometry dash is literally just memorizing button press timings on an autoscrolling linear chart with zero external factors, it doesn’t get any more “rhythm game” than that 💀
So, you figure out the optimal combination, then you figure out how to add 20 inputs that don't change the result, and you can maybe still get a record but have it look like a real attempt.
But it would be way harder to do 20 more tick-perfect inputs.
That would most likely not be a directly viable approach as even tiny input difference can and do have drastically different results. just pressing forward a couple of frames sooner or later at the start of the race can break some tights "press forward" maps, so for something already as precise and sensitive to slight differences as a record, it sounds not super likely. (but maybe I'm missing something obvious)
But this will definitely still be very impactful no matter what, the genie is now out of the box, and there is no way to truly put it back in...
Adding 20 inputs before the Uber bug that don't affect the vehicle path would be exceptionally difficult. The only real place they could be added is after the Uber bug, at which point it's still obvious that you're using a LIS
So to be on the leaderboard, you just ask the tool to find [minimum allowed limit]+1?
It gets exponentially harder. So not really viable.
Axell didn't cheat. In fact, he genuinely improved what he and many others thought to be a TAS-executed WR time using the exact same in-engine tools and unmodded software as the current record holder. That is still a regular copy of Trackmania. They are using the same LIS method. The only difference is one player has a more advanced tool for implementing timing queues. If it's not a modded game. It should be a valid run.
ALSO. RANT COMMENT INCOMING.
An otherwise perfectly executed run using the same skills and strategies as the current holder was performed to beat an actual machine, yet because he had a timing program, which doesn't make 0.001 of a second input any less easy, the run was invalidated? There are plenty of different speed runs with tools serving the EXACT same purpose as Axell's created by runners. I can think of several games off-hand where runners implement tools for perfectly timing inputs and use external monitoring data that tracks various states in the game, The only difference between the current WR and the unjustly banned one is that Axell created a program dedicated to making his runs faster, but not his inputs any less easy. The other guy had a fucking sticky note-pad on his PC with 6 inputs on it, right? Guess he should have been banned too. CLEARLY an outside apparatus, right? Like 100 characters on a notepad? Axell makes a whole program, and he's a CHEATER??? All he had to do was share the software and every other player could implement this time if they could execute the inputs. I couldn't even imagine beating a TAS created by a player who besmirched the map you love and converted the game into a glorified DDR map using your own method and HUMAN execution, only to be accused of being a cheater...The sheer hubris of it all. The Hypocrisy.
With all due respect to the speed-running community and every category in any game, the committee who dismissed Axell's run and declared it illegitimate can sincerely go fuck themselves.
My first thought when watching this was “why not make a separate category” considering many games have low% and categories for completion with the fewest inputs.
Commented directly to pasta too, but I think this has a pretty standard solution in most other speedrun games. Give the game-breaking strategy its own category, respect that category for its own merits. Great video and interesting topic! Thanks Wirt and Pasta =p
Or do the opposite, keep the "default" category to allow the new strat and create a new category that doesn't allow it. The default should be to allow any technics the game engine can offer imo
@yamato1691 sure yeah, that's fine with me
@@yamato1691 Ultimately, both solutions would result in two separate leaderboards: one allowing LIS alongside the default strategy, and one excluding LIS. However, in my opinion, the leaderboard based on the default strategy shouldn’t be considered the “new” or secondary one. The majority of the community agrees that LIS doesn’t belong in the same category, and this consensus should guide the prioritization of leaderboard standards.
Another thing this would do is prove if LIS is actually an avenue to grind Trackmania maps for at all. imo, it won’t, because unless they are all as dramatic as a-12 LIS they will not get attention except by one person who will grind it just because and then never again.
I play trackmania casually, but am also involved in several other scenes that have similar situations. Outdoor bouldering is a good example. Sometimes, boulders that are quite hard (V10+) have alternative betas (beta = sequence of movements) found that make them more or less trivial for someone who climbs at that grade. There is one I can think of that got downgraded from V11 to V6 with a tricky knee bar and reach. Some people still try the original beta to try something hard, but something just feels... artificial all of a sudden. The experience is different even though you are doing the same thing as those before the discovery. You feel like you are just climbing worse for no real reason. The accomplishment feels more contrived. There are other V11s, so I would personally rather go do those.
I'm not a competitive player, so I won't make a judgement as to legallity, but I would imagine the same thing will be true here. The hard truth is that A12 is just not as interesting as it once was. If you are trying it unoptimally, you will always know in the back of your mind that you could have done better for less effort. Whether or not you put the LIS record in another place, the time still exists. You will always know someone got a better time by hand and your "record" of 10.45 is still really 4th place. "Fastest Way Sometimes" just doesn't have the same ring to it. In a similar way that there are other V11s, there are other maps. No one is going to LIS D13. And this isn't to downplay the accomplishments of those who still grind without LIS, but I do think the community will gradually lose interest in those types of improvements on maps like A12.
This is really dumb. I am not convinced LIS is viable for longer and uncut tracks and this is literally just a strategy, not even anything unintended and i agree with what others have pointed out about it being an obvious gray area of judgement. I hate that this kid who had a novel idea that worked when nobody else could do it is essentially being punished for it.
Low input runs need there own category and should have steeper requirements to be official in that category. My suggestion is having at least two camera angles. One on the keyboard to show movements and another wide angle camera to show that there are no other screens.