@@Juanpopspacks Any game of moderate popularity has at least a handful of sub categories in speed running and the rules are chosen by the community that runs that game. It hasn't been a problem so far. If someone disagrees with the categories they can run it how they want and if that gets popular others will also run it. End of story.
2:31 I just wanted to point out that people who climb mount Everest take multiple days and stop to sleep. There's doing something for the challenge but there's also the concept of not killing yourself by overdoing it.
Good analogy. Some people might consider speedrunning to be a race, but that is not the metric used for most mt. climbing. Climbing Everest for most Isn't even about the challenge (there are much, much harder climbs, even compared to Everest's hardest route), it's just a matter of reaching the tallest height.
They only do that because they pretty much have to. Ultra marathoners don't take breaks. But they probably would if it was a "run across the United States" marathon. But that's because they literally would have to.
@@maybedos Because you don't understand how analogies work. I can compare a puddle to a huge lake just fine. They have plenty of similarities even though one is much larger than the other.
Personally, I find the amount of pause buffering in Perfect Dark to be one of the main reasons why I much prefer watching GoldenEye content than PD content. A pause or two to gather one's nerves is fine, and in your SpeedLores you've highlighted memorable moments involving pauses in GoldenEye (Rützou waiting in the pause menu while trying to decide which route to take through the vents on Aztec on a record-pace run, for instance). But a speedgame with significantly more pausing than that is much less entertaining and much more difficult to relate to for me as a viewer.
No offense, but who cares what you think about someone elses accomplishment? Do you normally go to sports events and tell the athletes to entertain you more? If you don't like it feel free to do it your own way.
@@lifeinvader1016 So.. most of the rest of speedrunning shouldn't be acknowledged then? I certainly don't see how HL1/Portal 1 speedrunning could be where it is today without fairly extensive knowledge of how buggy early Source's engine was.
I usually find myself biased towards any rules that would benefit a player's health. Ultra Marathons like the Barkley Marathon do permit having short breaks for food and energy, although their timers aren't paused.
You can do whatever you want if the timer isn't paused. It's not a difficult concept but people want to literally eat their cake mid run and still say they accomplished a similar feat because their times are close. I fully disagree in that the human factor has always been an aspect and shouldn't be removed. The ability to concentrate that long is part of the entire appeal of speedrunning to me. Do a segmented run if you don't want to run single segment.
Or...just let people do whatever they want. If enough people want a "no pauses" category, even if the majority will still play in the "pauses allowed" category, then let them. I am not their babysitters...if they want to run a 24 hour game, let them.
@@zym6687 how is having a clear schedule related to physical ability? I think accessibility is important too. With that being said, it should still be a balance. I think the way the 100% botw run is done is pretty good.
@General Jiggler Again, I'm not their babysitter, I'm not the moral police and I'm not "encouraging" anything. I'm allowing people to be big boys and girls and make their own assessments of what they do or do not want to do. I watch Formula 1 racing (when Covid-19 isn't ruining it, at least) and no matter how many safety related rules, requirements and technologies they implement, there is always the chance of death when you are racing at over 200 mph inches from each other. The only "safe" thing would be to simply shut down the sport permanently. Same with just about every sport. Yet we all seem fine with those. But playing a video game too long? Whew, gotta step in and play mommy and daddy on that one!
@@matt0198922 "But playing a video game too long? Whew, gotta step in and play mommy and daddy on that one!" Please! Please! Protect me from myself! I can't be responsible for myself! And while you are at it, please protect everyone else from themselves too, because clearly some people will make the "wrong" decisions.
I wasn't really on board with the notion of bringing back segmented runs at first, but you've sold me on it. Love the time you provide for viewers to give some thought to some of the questions you raise, the natural imagery is stimulating.
He mentioned HL21 in his greatest speedruns of the last decade. Some segments if you listen to the commentry track took them 20-50 hours over a few weeks. ruclips.net/video/qmxyrbPpBIg/видео.html
Then why dont you make your own Video then soo you can mention its sad how goose gives us good content he worked hard on for someone like you to come bicth about one thing that he has mentioned 1000 times before
@@snirtgonzo354 he didn't tell goose to make a video about it, he gave a suggestion that it would have worked well with the theme of this video. Misguided rage.
Imagine if speedrunning is your job and for one fortnight(14 days) you have bad diarrhea. You play an RPG to pay your rent (pick any you like :)) and you will get banned if you have to pause while the game is running. Because said RPG is super long the periods between one shit and two is under an hour; clearly a problem. Do you wear an adult diaper or become homeless? Or do you just make a speedrun with pauses, mods be damned. I think it would be the ultimate powermove if your channel is super popular, you get banned for pausing to take a shit, and you continue to speedrun anyways, getting that twitch, streamlabs, and youtube $$$. Means powerhungry mods have a humbling experience.
@@toastyarmor6858 you don't get banned, it's just your run that gets disqualified. but most long games have sections of the run where you don't have to do anything with the controller so you can go to the toilet if you're quick enough. there is also the peebottle strat of course.
"How weird would it be to use real-time...when the in-game timer is right there?" In-game timers don't account for lag and the like, so, depending on what skills you're trying to test, they won't always suffice. Lag reduction is, for example, an extremely important skill in Super Metroid speedruns. But yeah, I've never had any interest in watching speedruns for categories in which pausing is strictly beneficial. This is an important topic to discuss, so thanks for the video. ^_^
@@Dingle.Donger Most *are* affected by lag; that's the problem. There are some games that can account for lag frames by using the system clock, but most IGTs (for older games) just count frames, which means they'll lag when the game lags, so real-time measurements will be totally different from the IGT. I'm not at all familiar with GoldenEye's IGT, so I don't know if Shaun's counter-example is valid, but I assume he's correct. :P Many modern games are also counter-examples (Strike Suit Zero, fr'ex, doesn't just count frames when determining your time on a level). But the majority of retro console games just counted frames for their IGTs.
that thumbnail made me laugh. i've watched wind waker HD speedruns a lot, and basically the first 5 minutes is just the player spamming the pause button, while in the water to gain some sort of backwards momentum that then shoots them across the entire ocean, after gaining enough momentum going backwards.
When I first clicked the video I was like “but there is a good chunk of glitches that use pausing so why would it be banned “ less that a minute later I was like “ohh that’s what he means by pausing”
I always wondered in modern times why we use in game timers. That's my biggest issue with pausing Edit: Super long categories included. If a game is 40+ hours then you do it and put yourself at risk like climbing mount Rushmore. You can create a pause category but there should be a main no pause category. Double edit: all that pausing is gross. Dont use in game timer. If you use a split timer then the pauses become part of the game and have pros and cons
Having tried to watch a Wind Waker speedrun from GDQ that involved 20 minutes straight of spam pause buffering I can safely say that whether it's allowed or not, it certainly affects whether someone would ever be interested in running or watching the game, which can be just as big a problem
@@Doom1491 why need to bring it up, a couple games pausing literally breaks the timer so it makes perfect sense to not allow it. Also super smash Bros board the platforms/break the targets
@@UltimaKeyMaster It's a thing for all levels, it's just extremely broken for one o them in particular (and only slightly broken for the rest of them).
the Problem with that is that super Long categories usally are not that popular to begin with so splitting that relatively small category in 2 is not ideal
@@NickSeide sometimes is needed, but anyways you can have both categories in the same leaderboard, I don't think is the best in this case but it's an option. Also long categories that use in game timers are really rare, if they do, most of the time they also have RTA
Any speedrun that's long enough that it can cause you physical harm absolutely shouldnt be limiting you to a single session imo, 18 hours straight of playing a game is quite bad for you to do a single time, if you're grinding that world record you're gonna be in really bad shape by the time you're done with it. As for other stuff, I think it's fine to allow pausing personally. Speedrunning is about trying to optimize a game you love, if the way you personally can optimize it down to near-perfection includes you having to pause between tricks, so be it. Perhaps a pause limit makes sense to implement, but that very much seems like something that would have to be decided when someone tries to take the rule to its limit (such as pausing every frame for an entire lap on mario kart or something to that effect)
@@logansmith2703 Isn't Baten Kaitos one of those? If i remember currectly for the 100% run there is a item which needs to be developed and it takes like 3 weeks in real time to do it.
I think that it is much more important for a speedrun to be accessible than to be prestigious. Speed running is usually more for showing your love for a game so changing which game you speedrun is not a good answer either. Also if maybe millions of people speedrun games then it would make sense to try to have some speed runs have more endurance but since it's more important to show awareness and community building than to break up the endurance levels of speed runs.
But the question is...WHY do we need more people to start speedrunning? What is with this...urge...to have as many people doing it as possible. I think it's silly to structure your community for the people who AREN'T even part of it rather than catering to the ones that already are.
@@matt0198922 the more people who do something, the more competitive it is. A larger community also has other benefits, like letting tops runners get more money, and possibly doing it professionally, meaning ever more incentive to run and more time spent running, meaning better times. Other reasons are that it honestly makes the leaderboards look better to have more than 6 times on them. More runners also means more potential to have their game played at speedrunning events (something that everyone in the community likes). There are other reasons too, if you want me to go on
@@andrewut7ya511 Prestige only exists if there are people to acknowledge those feats. And the degree to which something is held as prestigious directly correlates to the overall amount of competition and difficulty of achieving that prestigious title. According to your answer, viewership, accessibility, and total participation should be very important to you?
even though the ingame timer is convenient, I still suggest to simply use real time. this would also avoid timer lag tactics. in many of these retro titles the ingame timer is not really reliable.
Irie Butler that link really doesn’t add to what’s in this video. He makes the same points in both: it comes down to what the speedrunners prefer. In the case of goldeneye it seems very clearly to be a preference in a niche community despite the fact that the goldeneye in game timer erases skill differences except at the very top. As indicated in this video though, it’s an open question how much that should matter.
When racing games count down to the hundredth, you need to rely on the ingame timer for consistency You could literally set the WR by stopping your clock faster
I'm all for segmented speedruns! I actually kinda invented segmented speedruns in my head before I knew it was a real thing because I've been curious about getting into speedrunning but there's no way I'm going to spend several hours straight on one run just for the run to die because of a stupid mistake. For example, speedrunning a single kingdom in Mario Odyssey is way more appealing and doable than speedrunning the whole dang game just to slip up on the last Bowser section and be sent all the way back to the Cap Kingdom. Segmented speedruns would also make it possible to do a time travel-less speedrun of Animal Crossing, with each day being a different segment. If segmented speedruns came back I would legitimately consider getting into speedrunning.
"What if you had to pause 10,000 times in the final six seconds..." Well, given that pausing always advances AT LEAST one frame in PD we don't have to worry about that. The most you could pause in six seconds is 180 in theory, or probably more like 50 or so in practice. Funnily enough, pausing as frequently as possible for ~6 seconds is already a strat on Maian SA/PA for the lab lure.
It's even less than that. To register a pause within a game, you need one frame on, one frame off just to register the button press within the game. In Contra (NES), a perfect pause buffer would be 3 frames, but for humans it looks more like 5-7. If a human can pause any game more than 10 times in a second, that's actually really impressive on the mashing.
@@Optimum45 Pausing more than 10 times in one second wouldn't be impressive for Sonic Adventure 2, for example, where pause buffering is pretty simple and theoretically possible to pause buffer 60 times in one in game second (60 FPS). It's very easy to do it 20 times a second if you know how to (pause, then press A->pause consecutively) lol. So it depends on the game of course :)
@@Pixiuchu That's not how it works. If a game runs at 60FPS, one frame on, one frame off, one frame on still applies, as the game still needs to register your inputs. Frame perfect doesn't apply to human beings, no matter how fast we get, even at 60FPS, let alone anything higher that would allow for more inputs. It's a human limitation. Elite Level single button mashing caps out near 15 per second as it is, and 2 inputs must be registered to effect any pause buffer in any game (on/off).
@@Optimum45 You're likely referring to pausing and unpausing 10 times in one real time second. I am referring to pausing and unpausing 10 times in one in-game second. If we are talking about one in-game second, then yes, it is very very feasible for a human to pause 10 times within a second in the game I am talking about. And you said "any game". You didn't mention whether it was real time or in-game time, so I assumed you meant in-game time. For real-time it would heavily depend on the game anyway because some games wouldn't even allow for pausing more than once a second due to pausing animations. In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for example, it takes but a second to pause and another to unpause, making it impossible to pause more than twice a second.
Just keep pausing enough and it looks like this: ruclips.net/video/s71fdakC2WQ/видео.html goose actually talked about that topic in another video: (about 24 mins in) ruclips.net/video/JZhKEBwCfTs/видео.html
Pausing should not stop the timer. Defeats the purpose of speedrunning, and like you mentioned, it's supposed to be a feat to speedrun an ultra long category. At the end of the day, I really don't care what they do with this category, because for me, it's about as unwatchable as the 2 weeks run of that one rpg, but for categories that a lot of people care about, I don't think pausing should stop the timer. Making speedrunning more accessible past the hardware limitations is simply lowering the skill ceiling. It's like making the iron man triathlon more accessible by having a 3 hour-long break between categories. You would be able to step away from the game to sleep and take breaks, but it wouldn't stop the timer.
I avoided speedrunning Perfect Dark for the longest time because I thought the pausing in many levels felt lame. Recently I started running it and I now love pausing in every opportunity that benefits me. It feels crazy to execute a difficult trick and then pause after to let myself calm down or to use pausing to help me aim. Not only does it allow top players to accomplish things that are incredibly difficult but it also opens up the game to newer runners who would otherwise have a very difficult time making the game more accessible at all skill levels.
Anyone who thinks runners should do 20 hour 1 segment run should be forced to watch the run without any breaks. I personally think every run despite the game should have a universally agreed upon external timer.
Segmented runs seem very close to what the "casual" player would do. Having a bit time in the evening, playing some games, and maybe focusing on a certain task like grinding specific things or working on a specific level.
“Just make two categories” always comes up when these kinds of debates happen. It can’t be the solution to everything. Do that for more than one disagreement and suddenly you are up to 4 sub-categories for every run. You don’t want to get to a point where people are running Super Mario Sunshine: Any%: Peach File: Hoverless: Pausing Allowed.
MToms 127 I disagree man. You make a good point that it will inevitably categorize most/all speedruns into very specific titles like the example you gave. But I say that isnt necessarily a bad thing because you can still run whatever you want. If you want to to SMs any% peach file: hoverless pausing BANNED vs your example. The runner can choose what they are comfortable with running and then they would have their records in whichever niche category. Or they could still run the “overall” category with whatever rules that has :) Not a runner myself so not super duper versed, just my thoughts
rwhitegoose cool that you replied! (Even if to the thread not me specifically) but that is a cool idea for a vid! Keep up your awesome work man I have learned SO much about speedrunning in literally the past month, mainly thanks to you!
@@GamerFolklore Too many categories could become a problem for sure. If Speedrunning is to survive outside of the small community of actual runners, then the games and categories have to be atleast somewhat familiar and viewer friendly. The competetion between runners would also be less if there is too many categories (unless we see a MASSIVE influx of new runners). But i mean, if you want to have a record in a game category "nobody" else cares about, then go for it.
I still propose there be separate category for this. If you pause, your run is a "Segmented Run" and if you do it in one sitting, your run is a "Single-Segment Run". And put PB and WR in the respective category.
You're dramatically over-simplifying the terms "segmented" and "single-segment." Does a reset count as a pause? What about a save and quit? Deathwarp? You're missing a large number of different things that can occur in games that may or may not affect the way the game is played. Most importantly, we use the term "RTA" (Real-Time Attack) to define doing things in "one-sitting" and using a separate timer. Also, the historic use of the term "segmented" refers to re-doing sections of the game repeatedly until you get a desired result and using the best results. Basically, it was splicing. Segmented was the original version of "Human Possible" TASing. It was a demo (Speed Demos Archive) of what could be performed, ideally. For example, Final Fantasy 1 (NES) single-segment runs have this rule: "Resets and Powering off and on are NOT allowed." It doesn't say anything about dying and continuing, though you'll never see it in a single-segment run. In Final Fantasy 1, you save when you visit an Inn or use particular items (which also heals your party). When you die, nothing "in-game" (things you can see or track normally) is saved and you are returned to the title screen to continue from your last save. When you reset, the exact same outcome is achieved. In normal Any% (RTA, not segmented), you save/reset often to progress the battle counter and avoid harder enemy groups in certain locations. If the RNG/random encounters are tracked the same regardless of resetting or dying, why would it matter if you reset?
Some games have unskippable cutscenes.... are they to be considered segmented? Because some of them are 5 minutes long, the runner can do all manner of things during that time.
You don't get your run thrown our if you don't stop the timer. Limitations of the human body are part of it learn to work around it. And if you can't find time for a break in 20 hours of running then you're probably not cut out for it anyways.
Ultimately, it's up for every community to decide. Pause buffering to make a trick work shouldn't be up for debate if it isn't the "majority" of the run. Timer pauses for marathon runs should be common courtesy. Segmented runs will probably remain less common for their time investment. And lastly, entertainment is only a factor if the community intends it to be.
To the Mike 'TSA' Damiani - Wind Waker in 6:42 run… I think it’s this one: www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/11481063 On nico its in 23 parts. but its named and tagged Wind Waker in 6:42 from speeddemosarchive.com. So, I guess it’s the right one? But not sure since i don’t spot the runner name anywhere. Maybe someone can confirm it?
I think as long as the timer keeps going during a pause I'm ok with it. For speedruns over several hours you should be able to pause the clock too, depending on the game.
@@erikheijden9828 that's the point. For instance on Zelda or other games where pause is used to more easily get frame specific tricks to land. As you get better at the trick, you need less pauses, saving time. That's my point, no one wants to pause in a game if timer keeps going.... unless you need to to make certain tricks more viable for your current skill. If you're a master you don't need to pause at all.
About the Mario Kart 64 pausing segment, there was actually something similar that came up last year I think in Mario Kart Wii. One player had been using pauses but then I believe he alone decided he didn't want it to happen, and then the decision from there to ban pausing during time trials came mostly from him. Could be entirely wrong on that, but... Bottom line (and tl;dr) is that pausing has already been banned in MKW TTs.
Sounds like the kind of thing that would spawn a "no pause" or "limited pausing" category. For the most part the running community itself seem pretty good at figuring out how they would like to run these games. I remember "look down" in goldeneye being a controversial issue. And I am all down for segmented speedruns as a thing. Whether segments/checkpoints are specified by game, or up to the runner themselves.
Id suggest just making the rule that you can segment the run but not redo segments, but i suppose that would be hard to execute in most games outside of ruling that all segmented runs must be done on stream.
Should ultra runners have the same rule? The health risks are FAR greater in running 100 miles. The best athletes always risk their health, that's why they're the best and we want to see them perform
@@latuman very few people can complete long speedruns in one sitting. A lot of people have jobs or have health issues like diabetes or asthma. Should pauses be banned becauses runners don't? No, sports are way more forgiving than speedruning because if you won't have to start from the begining if you mistake in a game of football. If you make a big mistake in a 20 hour speedrun then that's it you have to start over. Sure more skilled people aren't likely to take breaks during long speedruns but it allows for more people to get into the category without missing anything important or becoming homeless.
@@zestyvoyage2188 No sport or competition should be made easier to include people who otherwise couldnt participate due to health issues, it's unfair to everyone else.
Some games speedruns are like 240 hours straight. You simply either have to sleep with the timer on, or pause the timer. No human being can be awake for that long.
I've been going for the world's longest speedrun and I've had super Mario world on pause since 1996 but I aint been recording the whole run so far. I ran out of vhs tapes quick
i mean it sounds like these should just be different categories tbh when you're pausing every frame you're basically attempting to TAS for the real-time timer with human inputs, which is an interesting challenge that should be allowed imo when you're doing the OoT-style pauses to set up for specific real-time things that's a specific thing that some people might not like but it is fine, and then there could also be categories that specifically disallow pausing at all (obviously not feasible in OoT unless you define a pause as being a pause where you don't equip a **necessary** weapon or item or something) when you're doing segmented speedruns that's obviously its own category, like it was in sda
I recall there was some Yu-Gi-Oh game where the 100% category took like 80 hours to complete and some dude was sent to the hospital after attempting a run. I'm glad the BotW community has given runners the option of not being ridiculously self-destructive
Yugioh forbidden memories. I also remember watching some SRL races of it where the runners took breaks, but then the whole thing ultimately got closed down after a day or two in because SRL doesn't allow afk for too long.
for me as a non speed runner its depends on the purpose of the pause, i thin it make a lot of sense to pause in 100%botw, unless you are willing to die in the processes, and also make sense to use the pause to your adv to be faster,.. but there should be a limit, and for me segmented runs of any source is that limit, and ofc if the pause doesnt add to the improve the speed or in botw case, if you are in a any%, then pausing to take a break make 0 sense at all, its like doing some rl xtreme sport and pausing mid air to answer the phone,...
Pausing for in-game timer runs should be allowed, no matter how many pauses there are. To not allow it completely would be to undermine the integrity of using IGT itself. That being said, I'm glad I speedrun GE where this is not an issue
I think that pausing should be allowed up to the point where it stops looking like actual gameplay. The singular pause examples are perfectly fine. Taking a dump, answering the phone etc. Clearly, there is a limit to this and I for one think the amount of pausing I see in Perfect Dark speedruns is ridiculous. I don't play the game myself but the videos are just completely unwatchable if you pause like the example given of 18 pauses in 6 seconds for one and two a matter of LTP if it is a matter of "ensuring", well, anything really. As for a solution, I think pausing should be limited to bio breaks for longer games and actions that actually require you to access the pause menu for all games. I also think segmenting runs is a great idea.
Segmented runs, sure. They're a category in many games. But don't put them on the same leaderboard as single segment runs. Allowing pauses for long games also makes sense, but then use real life time as a benchmark. You mention the health risks: that's up to the player to decide how far they want to push themselves. Ultrarunners that run 100km in one go don't pause either, nor is it healthy for their bodies. Nobody is forcing you to speedrun 50h in one go. Pausing in short levels or games like they do in perfect dark, F. that. Especially if it's to make your life easier and to line up shots. Isn't it a true testament to skill and the grind if someone beats the record while not pausing?
Pause buffering is used for some glitches though. Maybe implement a "Pause threshold" where the run is invalid if the player is pause buffering for more the 5% of the run or something.
No pause the timer when paused for long games and runs. Simply because swatters could then potentially ruin your run. Maybe in a universe where assholes didn’t exist but still things can happen in realife that need immediate attention.
@@ultimaterecoil1136 Swatting is absolutely disgraceful, but it happens so little and the guys who do it usually get caught. That's a very niche argument. Things happen in real life, sure. But if the marathon runner trips and sprains his ankle? That run is over. We're talking about a very elite club here. People that want to dedicate months and years of their life to get the perfect run. Similar to people living up to the olympics. I don't want to make it easier to get there either.
I’d say make segmented speedruns a separate category. As for pauses if you’re speedrunning and using an IRL timer then the pauses automatically add time and punish the player itself. If you’re using the in game timer then it’s only for certain levels/sections of the game, not the entire game so I think it’s fine. There’s reasons why certain categories have certain rules, no reason to change them now! (PS I’m not a gamer, and definitely not a speed runner! This is just my opinion)
pasusing itself is an ingame feature so no and pausing the timer during an RTA timer no what BotW is doing is shifting from RTA to a seqmented run but without the playing over and over thing to perfect segments and its a bad decision through and through
I loved the part about segmented speedruns, this is how I started watching and got interested. Way before streaming, live events etc. - speedrunning was more like a puzzle or a ship in a bottle you piece together yourself as a fun project over the span of many months. And the concept is welcoming enough for everyone to try. Yet when I read the title of this video, Perfect Dark was first what I thought about - from a viewer's point of view the pausing will most likely be annoying, especially when its purpose won't be communicated properly. Pausing is crucial for reloading, calibrating of many shots and throws etc., but slows things down for the casual enthusiast of speedruns by a lot.
Interesting video, and a take I hadn't considered. This is a topic that gets brought up in the SA2 community somewhat frequently considering both our IL speedruns and full game speedruns are timed in IGT, and it's interesting to see other communities such as the MK64 community dealing with these same issues. In the end, I think, as you've said, it depends. There are some points where these pauses are fine and sensible, but much like anything I think they can be abused to an excessive degree if one isn't careful.
For Genesis Sonic runs, the rule is this: "Pausing without unpausing for more than 20 seconds or pausing for more than 10 minutes in total voids the run." Runners would pause to help line up on a specific pixel for glitches. Pausing would have to be addressed on different categories since this kind of policy might not work for everything.
I'm not a speedrunner but all games aren't created equal. It should go by a game by game basis. Depending on glitches, length of the run, categories, it should be allowed.
Would love to see the time difference in these games with lots of pause buffering between RTA and In-game. I personally dont get bothered seeing an in-game timer but going off an RTA timer, specially since growing up and watching speedruns over the years ive seen and even attempted plenty of games that have a perfectly good in-game timer but still use RTA for one reason or another. It would kind of be a split in pushing a game times as far down as it can go vs pushing yourself as a player to beat something quickly through precise execution. Sure you could land all these super tough tricks and timings really consistently with pause buffering but it would be much harder without it so I guess it would just depend what each player is looking to get out of the experience.
Another topic worth noting here is when a game has some mechanic that slows down the in-game timer, such as Perfect Dark's Combat Boost used on the Air Force One and Defense stages. It slows down the gameplay allowing runners to be more precise with shots and movement, even more so when combined with frequent pausing, but also slows down the in-game timer thus making the run take more real time to complete. The community uses in-game time to measure the runs despite pauses and the slowed in-game timer (which I think is fine), but one could argue that someone who slowed down runs by pausing or making the game run slower took more time to complete the stage than someone who didn't.
We pre-emptively banned having more than one pause in a run in the 1080 community to stop pause buffering from ever becoming a thing. The decision was brought about from watching perfect dark runs
If anyone is curious what Mike TSA Damiani is up to these days, he's part of Easy Allies (Formerly the Gametrailers crew), he does technical work, editing, streaming, & hosts a Nintendo Podcast called Friend Code.
Interesting takes, thank you for making this. A part of me misses segmented runs, but I see how many would consider them to be basically TASes. Segmented runs of Metal Gear Solid games where the category requires a certain rank are interesting, because some MGS ranks have a cap on the number of times you can save the game, which creates an interesting compromise there.
Pausing in RE2 and RE3 Remake would be an interesting discussion. Pausing is used to save time in a couple of places since some animations that you have to wait for still take place while paused, yet the timer doesn't increment.
I think it should be handled on a community by community basis. One point I don't think you mentioned about PD/GE was that some of the mission critical items can only be accessed via pausing. There would have some rules if pausing was entirely banned to allow "one pause is allowed for the tracker bug" which would be a little arbitrary - but again, I think the communities should handle it on a case by case basis. Whatever makes their game fun to watch/play. When/if pausing becomes prohibitive then rules against it should be made. Great video as always, keep it up!
6:48 This exists for Mario Odyssey btw, in case you were interested. (Since it is currently impossible to make a tas on a switch, and no emulators or smo exist)
The main problem with this is that if we allow any amount of pausing or small segments in a speed run, then there isn't a huge difference between that and a TAS. We don't want to allow so much that it just devolves into being a tas with not much skill at all to actually perform.
I run Killzone Shadow Fall for PS and a single segment run initially took me 5 hrs. I did have bathroom and stretch breaks during 1-2 long cut scenes but finding 5 hrs to do this was definitely a challenge. I’ve gotten the run down to 3 hrs or so now so it is a lot more manageable. But there is something about a single segment run in terms of the endurance necessary to maintain focus and execution in the face of fatigue that can’t be replicated any other way and makes it a category worthwhile in and of itself.
I wouldn't exactly call it a segmented speed run, but my cousins and I used to compete in OOT by seeing who could do a section the fastest. We never took the best times and made into one whole run, we would just take turns seeing who could get it quickest. We'd do sections like child dungeons, Ganon's Tower and fight, or individual adult dungeons. We used to have a blast doing those, and we did similar things with other games too even though I wouldn't really consider it speedrunning as we weren't submitting times or full game runs or anything like that. We just enjoyed competing with each other in whatever ways we could come up with. I wouldn't mind seeing a resurgence of segmented speedunning. I think I would gravitate more to giving that a shot than trying to do a single segment run.
I literally just realized that on the side of the racetrack in MK64 has "ads" for Marioro that look suspiciously like Marlboro ads from back in the Formula 1 days before they were banned. I've been watching some old F1 races in the past few weeks but I never noticed those in MK64 before. How funny
My opinion on this matter (as it is on most A or B / Black or White issues) is why not both? Why not a Pausing category and a Pauseless (RTA) category? Then everybody is happy.
The Mario Kart Wii time trial community has had their own problems with pausing. There's a frame perfect trick called "chain wheelies" which can provide a decent speed advantage, but the problem is that pausing mid-game allows you to more easily perform the trick. They ended up making a rule where players cannot pause their games to exploit a game mechanic (like chain wheelies) but you can pause if it's not exploited. The MKWii community uses time trial ghosts to record times, and those are easily shared through a mod called CTGP. There are tools that allow you to look at the inputs the player made in their ghost, so potential pause abuse can be found through analysis. There's a video about it called "Pause Buffering in Time Trials | New Rule Explained ", I recommend giving that a look. You can also find more documentation on the mkwrs website.
in the source game scene (portal, etc), segmented runs are pretty common, and pretty well-respected. since they're such long games, having segmented runs allows for some extremely difficult or inconsistent tricks to be attempted during runs
JustinDM just completed a 3 year segmented run of Metroid Prime in 0:46. Back in the early 2000s, Kip's 1:04 segmented run, and Prime segmented runs in general are part of the very genesis of speedrunning and segmented speedrunning. I recommend that you check out JustinDM's segmented run playlist on his youtube channel. The run is of an incredible caliber.
This reminds me of the one runner that tried to speed run the Jrpg with real time waiting mechanics and who had to give up because multiple 48 hour runs were making him go cra cray
I'm a top Diddy Kong Racing time trialer, pausing is banned in our game. I support it because the point is to get the best run in 1 go. Also since we require video proof for WRs it just looks nice without pauses. I am also on the-Elite for pd and ge, and I support pausing there because it's almost integral to the game. I can't imagine playing pd or ge without pausing for the menu for example. It has to be on a game by game basis.
I'm somebody who enjoys watching people who are the best at what they do. It doesn't matter what they do, just that they exhibit such mastery of it that you cannot help but feel awe. I have the utmost respect and appreciation for speedrunners in general, and those at the top in-particular. As such, I feel a bit cheated when endurance in any sport or E-sport is worked around. You mention about a marathon runner but propose being able to do segments. If I ran 26 miles by running 1 mile a day for 26 days, I have not run a marathon, I've just done 26 1 mile runs. It's considerably harder to run a marathon, and there's something amazing and worthy of our respect. It's a big frickin deal in short, because you have to apply serious time and energy to perform it, especially if you want that 10 minute a mile sub 4 hour mark. That Zelda 100% needs 20 hours to complete a category is OK, if you don't want to run marathons, go compete in the 1500m race. I guess I just have no sympathy for running it as segments. I am a fairly serious poker player, and you wouldn't believe the amount of people who make mistakes after 6, 12, or more hours of play. When looking at my cash game data I realised after 8 hours my hourly winnings drop off materially, so I no longer play +8 hour sessions. I also noticed I was less winning in
All of these comments in favour of pausing long runs... makes me think about werster's amazing Pokemon Emerald all gold symbols run in 19 hours. Half of what makes this run impressive is the routing, but the other half is the endurance. I think taking away the endurance required to perform these runs removes a lot of what makes them interesting/impressive. On the other hand there are runs which are simply unfeasible to be done in one sitting (that botw 100% run is definitely not one of them). One that springs to mind is the Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Memories "all cards" speedrun which takes around 70 hours and uses pretty much a segmented ruleset, but people don't retry segments. There's more than meets the eye with this discussion.
I think there are 3 or more questions to be addressed here. 1. Regarding Segments; I find a run is more impressive and cohesive with less segments especially if its a short game. But a 10 hour game with 5 segments is better than a 3 hour game with 2 segments because the segments are longer. 2. Real Time vs In Game Time: While it is nice to use ingame timers, I think speedrunning has evolved passed them. Not only with the pause buffering described in this video but records are being contested for seconds on popular games that don't record past the minute mark like pokemon. As a universal standard, Real Time is a necessity or a necessary evil if you prefer. 3. Regarding Pause Buffering: I think a few can be tasteful for certain tricks but its a slippery slope that I argue with myself about at times. As I said above, speedrunning has evolved to counting seconds for better or honestly counter to what I said above; worse. I enjoy seeing a game played quick and smart; especially an RPG where they might use a spell or piece of equipment you think is useless; but because they're low leveled it exploits a certain strategy. On the otherhand; stepcounting to avoid random battles, and pausebuffering too much? Isn't fun; its tedious. Speedrunning is too competitive for its own good, unfortunately competition is the definition of the word.
I feel some onus ends up being on the development side -- programming games that avoid weird grey areas and edge cases (such as adding a small time penalty when initiating a pause) helps keep things tidy. of course that doesn't solve the problems of games that are already released.
In Postal 2, we actually dont use the in-game time because the timer goes back when you load a save, effectively making the in-game timer a segmented timer without having to splice stuff together.
Nice bit on the segmented speedruns mate, it would indeed be nice to see them return. Single-segment runs are basically the live albums of speedrunning, which is why they're best when the runner is playing in front of a live audience or at least streaming from home. And single-segments are the studio albums of speedrunning, which is why you don't care about seeing the runner's face, it's all about the game in the same way a studio album is all about the music.
An appealing aspect of speedrunning is seeing the runner display their knowledge of the game and execution skill to complete an objective as fast as possible. A timer gives a quantitative value that can be used to compare how well one run is executed compared to another run. It is convenient that some games have an in-game timer, but it does not accurately measuring the time a runner spends to complete an objective when they are pausing the in-game timer. Pausing exploits how the in-game timer tracks time in this case. When pausing is used in games where the pause does nothing other than halt the game, giving the runner time to think and setup for the next action, which are qualities that are no longer being represented by time as a measure of skill, it becomes unfair to compare to a run without pausing. A runner completing some objective with pausing in the same amount of in-game time and with the same route as another runner without pausing would not have demonstrated the same level of skill at decision making and execution, and to a viewer they certainly would not look as skillful. A few seconds of pausing does not make in-game time saved look good either when it comes to record times. Competing for the lowest displayed in-game time is a valid way to compete, but the reasons above make it inferior to competing with a timer that closely represents real runtime and a distinction should be made between runs that aim for these two different goals. I find it interesting that pausing could affect how a score attack looks, as these are generally not timed at all. But looking back, high score competition started out on arcade games, where there is no pause button (this also applies to speedruns). What makes pausing different from other content in console games that are classified as in game cheats such as level select? Reviving segmented speedruns sounds like a fun idea, but I think they fell out of popularity as single segment speedrunners pushed competition to the point of matching, or coming close to matching, what segmented speedrunners were accomplishing and tool-assisted speedruns make for a more impressive product to watch. Stories can be built on speedrunners working over a long stretch of time to put together amazing segments, but the same sort of stories happens with single segment speedruns and that is tough to compete with.
Had a crazy-long rambling post before that didn’t come together well in the end, so I deleted it and started over. I didn’t splice any of the old post to this one. 🙃 When pausing reduces the skill required to pull off strats, I’m against it. I watch speedruns to see talented players beat games I like with a skill level that is inspiring. When there’s a downside to pausing, it highlights the skill required. A runner who pause buffers something has to admit that another runner who doesn’t pause buffer will eventually surpass them. I know that’s a gross oversimplification of the reality of pause buffering. There are things that humans are legitimately not able to do without pause buffering, and there are also instances where a runner has a moment of extreme luck that has nothing to do with skill. But it’s the best answer I could come up with.
If pausing is a mechanic that is built into a game, why would pausing be cheating or banned in a speedrun of it? Whatever you need to do to beat a game faster, do it.
Because pausing makes the game slower, but in some the in game timer shows it as faster/unaffected. So the question is, are you trying to beat the game as fast as possible, or are you trying to manipulate the game to get a high score(faster time)
@@someguy227 I know that certain speedrun communities use in-game timers to track times (which in itself is weird because in-game timers aren't always accurate, but I digress), so I can understand for those games why pausing might not work or be allowed if you're submitting a time to a leaderboard, but for games that use an outside timer, I don't see why pausing would be an issue.
This is actually a really good video. I myself and a runner on twitch.tv but because of life I spend more time running the same parts of games over and over to accumulate the best possible time that I can simply just pausing the game after acquiring leaving stream on and going about life until coming back later and putting down some more of it. It’s almost like human TAS “good concept. Cheers.
I think this is something for each community to decide on their own. Some categories only take a few minutes to complete while others take hundreds of hours, which is just to unrealistic. Then you should also consider what kinda impact it has on a game. Some games heavily rely on pause buffering to perform certain major skips and without them any% wouldnt be any%.
The problem is that segmented runs and taking breaks would undoubtedly just create a new category. The runs done with no breaks will still be more fantastic and open more opportunities for the runner, even if the run with no breaks is slightly slower.
i would love a resergence of segmented speedruns. i used to speed run Monster Hunter, because you dont speed run the whole game, its just a single mission of about 3 minuts, so i could just sit down and do a run untill i got a good run, without having to dedicate hours for it. Maybie i sould become the change i wish to see.
I'd say just use a real timer, but then there's the problem that some games ingame timer is often disconnected from real time (like GoldenEye, where looking down makes for a faster time). So... I duuno. :( I don't think a lot of pauses makes for an enjoyable run to watch, but I see that it's needed for maximum performance. I don't see any good answer. Maybe the Jolly Joker "Just make different categories"?
Really depends on the game. Pause strats go completely hand-in-hand with IGT optimizations, so should be generally allowed. If the pauses get far to excessive, the community should draw a line and possibly make a new category. For breath of the wild, I would (if I ran it) advocate for splitting the leaderboard for 100% into RTA (breaks) and RTA (no breaks) so that those mad enough to attempt a 20 hour gauntlet could ensure their time isn't bested by someone who slept / ate / rested to ensure peak performance. As far as segmented runs (like, the traditional kind, not the current BotW version) goes, I'd wager it depends on the game. The most important rule would be that a segmented run needs to be theoretically possible in RTA (which I'm pretty sure is already how it works in most cases)
In the classic Sonic community, pausing doesn't lose any time on the in game timer either. The leaderboards are currently sorted by IGT, but with a second column of RTA time just to be seen, or as a tie breaker (as IGT is only in full seconds). Recent tricks (huge timesaves) are only viable with pausing allowed AND there are examples of causing real-time to be slower while IGT is saved. The community is split about 50:50 and the discussion of timing methods comes up again every couple of months. Another problem not mentioned with using real time instead of provided in game timers is console and version differences, meaning players may have to buy obscure releases/etc. if they want to save real time.
I personally think a general speedrunning rule for pauses should be added for single-segment runs. A good thumb of rule is that a up to 12 hour pause is allowed for each 12 hour of run time (no pools or things like that, but a simple rule that a 12 hour pause is allowed, for eating, toileting and sleeping, for each 12 hour of playtime, if you choose to not use all hours, its your fault. BUT you should also be able to chain 2 pauses together, if you play for 24 hours in succession, you can take either 2 pauses of 12 hours, or 1 pause of 24 hours), but provided with a specific rule - and that is that the camera MUST be running the whole time even during pause time, the controller or keyboard or input device, must be visible at all times, AND you are not allowed to save or exit to some main menu, AND the game must have a constant movement or similiar that does become inconsistent if a recovery from a savefile is done. If the game has a game timer that also runs during pause, this is acceptable, as this game timer should then be the total time including the pauses. However, to make it fair, its also important that a cap of number of pauses is determited, regardless of runtime, so if a runtime is close to a boundary, this doesn't grant an extra pause. This must then be determited during the creation of the game in the scoreboards, and then be consistent across all runs. So if a game has a WR of like 23 hours and the longest time is lets say 30 hours, its good that number of pauses is capped to 1, so the person doing a 25 hour run doesnt get a extra pause just to complete 1 hour extra, because he could instead do a 12 hour run, then have a 12 hour pause, and then do 13 hours without problem.
just break it up into categories, imo. pause and no-pause. ESPECIALLY for games like perfect dark. For something like zelda BOTW, I don't think it really makes a huge difference in gameplay. But being able to pause to perfectly line up shots is a big difference in what skill is required.
Pausing the game to help with doing tricks is a very different thing than pausing the speedrun timer. The question here is whether speedruns should remove the element of biological needs by pausing the speedrun timer whenever the runner needs to sleep/eat or go to the bathroom, which yeah I don't think there's a problem with that at all. The only purpose of making a separate category for this would be if you cared about the runner's physical endurance abilities rather than just their gaming skill.
Males a huge difference in botw mate. Pause breaks are allowed... Now... the current wr holder has never NOT been the wr holder and any sleep breaks were added to the time. Point being he's been doing it for years and you can instantly tell when he's feeling tired cause 5 splits in a row lose time, he takes a break then starts getting green and gold splits again.
![NLE Choppa - Or What ft. 41 (Orchestra Mix) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/biOFASEgSOM/mqdefault.jpg)
I think like most things in speed running it comes down to what game and what kind of run it is
Couldn't have said it any better m8 ^
That's exactly what I think
Then you are just makin sub categories at that point
@@Juanpopspacks Any game of moderate popularity has at least a handful of sub categories in speed running and the rules are chosen by the community that runs that game. It hasn't been a problem so far. If someone disagrees with the categories they can run it how they want and if that gets popular others will also run it. End of story.
memespace you right
2:31 I just wanted to point out that people who climb mount Everest take multiple days and stop to sleep. There's doing something for the challenge but there's also the concept of not killing yourself by overdoing it.
Good analogy. Some people might consider speedrunning to be a race, but that is not the metric used for most mt. climbing. Climbing Everest for most Isn't even about the challenge (there are much, much harder climbs, even compared to Everest's hardest route), it's just a matter of reaching the tallest height.
They only do that because they pretty much have to. Ultra marathoners don't take breaks. But they probably would if it was a "run across the United States" marathon. But that's because they literally would have to.
Idk how mt everest compares to speedruns but ok 😂
@@maybedos Because you don't understand how analogies work. I can compare a puddle to a huge lake just fine. They have plenty of similarities even though one is much larger than the other.
What about sherpas? Those guys are beasts. All those maggots climbing and they don't even take their stuff up there themselves. They are a disgrace.
Personally, I find the amount of pause buffering in Perfect Dark to be one of the main reasons why I much prefer watching GoldenEye content than PD content. A pause or two to gather one's nerves is fine, and in your SpeedLores you've highlighted memorable moments involving pauses in GoldenEye (Rützou waiting in the pause menu while trying to decide which route to take through the vents on Aztec on a record-pace run, for instance). But a speedgame with significantly more pausing than that is much less entertaining and much more difficult to relate to for me as a viewer.
💯
Totally agree!
No offense, but who cares what you think about someone elses accomplishment? Do you normally go to sports events and tell the athletes to entertain you more? If you don't like it feel free to do it your own way.
agreed, you shouldn't have to find out how the games engine works. Ope
@@lifeinvader1016 So.. most of the rest of speedrunning shouldn't be acknowledged then? I certainly don't see how HL1/Portal 1 speedrunning could be where it is today without fairly extensive knowledge of how buggy early Source's engine was.
I usually find myself biased towards any rules that would benefit a player's health. Ultra Marathons like the Barkley Marathon do permit having short breaks for food and energy, although their timers aren't paused.
You can do whatever you want if the timer isn't paused. It's not a difficult concept but people want to literally eat their cake mid run and still say they accomplished a similar feat because their times are close. I fully disagree in that the human factor has always been an aspect and shouldn't be removed. The ability to concentrate that long is part of the entire appeal of speedrunning to me. Do a segmented run if you don't want to run single segment.
Or...just let people do whatever they want. If enough people want a "no pauses" category, even if the majority will still play in the "pauses allowed" category, then let them. I am not their babysitters...if they want to run a 24 hour game, let them.
@@zym6687 how is having a clear schedule related to physical ability? I think accessibility is important too.
With that being said, it should still be a balance. I think the way the 100% botw run is done is pretty good.
@General Jiggler Again, I'm not their babysitter, I'm not the moral police and I'm not "encouraging" anything. I'm allowing people to be big boys and girls and make their own assessments of what they do or do not want to do. I watch Formula 1 racing (when Covid-19 isn't ruining it, at least) and no matter how many safety related rules, requirements and technologies they implement, there is always the chance of death when you are racing at over 200 mph inches from each other. The only "safe" thing would be to simply shut down the sport permanently. Same with just about every sport. Yet we all seem fine with those.
But playing a video game too long? Whew, gotta step in and play mommy and daddy on that one!
@@matt0198922 "But playing a video game too long? Whew, gotta step in and play mommy and daddy on that one!"
Please! Please! Protect me from myself! I can't be responsible for myself!
And while you are at it, please protect everyone else from themselves too, because clearly some people will make the "wrong" decisions.
I wasn't really on board with the notion of bringing back segmented runs at first, but you've sold me on it. Love the time you provide for viewers to give some thought to some of the questions you raise, the natural imagery is stimulating.
it's a shame you didn't mention Half-Life 2 Done Quicker, a HL2 speedrun performed by a group of people consisting of 506 segments.
He mentioned HL21 in his greatest speedruns of the last decade. Some segments if you listen to the commentry track took them 20-50 hours over a few weeks. ruclips.net/video/qmxyrbPpBIg/видео.html
Then why dont you make your own Video then soo you can mention its sad how goose gives us good content he worked hard on for someone like you to come bicth about one thing that he has mentioned 1000 times before
@@snirtgonzo354 he didn't tell goose to make a video about it, he gave a suggestion that it would have worked well with the theme of this video. Misguided rage.
@@snirtgonzo354 LOL
[Pauses game to go take a shit]
Speedrunner community: That's a criminal offense, cheater!
Well it's shiter in that case :°)
Imagine having to provide evidence that it was urgent
can't we make a toilet speedrun split?
Imagine if speedrunning is your job and for one fortnight(14 days) you have bad diarrhea. You play an RPG to pay your rent (pick any you like :)) and you will get banned if you have to pause while the game is running. Because said RPG is super long the periods between one shit and two is under an hour; clearly a problem. Do you wear an adult diaper or become homeless? Or do you just make a speedrun with pauses, mods be damned.
I think it would be the ultimate powermove if your channel is super popular, you get banned for pausing to take a shit, and you continue to speedrun anyways, getting that twitch, streamlabs, and youtube $$$. Means powerhungry mods have a humbling experience.
@@toastyarmor6858 you don't get banned, it's just your run that gets disqualified. but most long games have sections of the run where you don't have to do anything with the controller so you can go to the toilet if you're quick enough. there is also the peebottle strat of course.
"How weird would it be to use real-time...when the in-game timer is right there?"
In-game timers don't account for lag and the like, so, depending on what skills you're trying to test, they won't always suffice. Lag reduction is, for example, an extremely important skill in Super Metroid speedruns.
But yeah, I've never had any interest in watching speedruns for categories in which pausing is strictly beneficial. This is an important topic to discuss, so thanks for the video. ^_^
Depends on the game. Lag reduction is an important part of Golden Eye using in-game time (look down and killing enemies to reduce lag).
@@88porpoise Oh, that's true, there are some cases where the in-game timer is affected by lag reduction too. Fair point.
@@MisterNohbdy what game has an in-game timer that isn't affected by lag?
@@Dingle.Donger Most *are* affected by lag; that's the problem. There are some games that can account for lag frames by using the system clock, but most IGTs (for older games) just count frames, which means they'll lag when the game lags, so real-time measurements will be totally different from the IGT.
I'm not at all familiar with GoldenEye's IGT, so I don't know if Shaun's counter-example is valid, but I assume he's correct. :P Many modern games are also counter-examples (Strike Suit Zero, fr'ex, doesn't just count frames when determining your time on a level). But the majority of retro console games just counted frames for their IGTs.
Good point anon, pause buffering is not fun to watch idd.
if only I could "pause" in real life and rewind to before everything went wrong
watch the movie Click hehehe
When your falling off a building try to throw a stick and unequip the stick before hitting the ground
You’d need to rewind to before birth lmfao
I would have never even pressed "Start"...
I paused what I was doing to immediately watch this video!
guess you got banned
BANNED LMAO
I paused to send this comment
Pause
Run invalid. Restart your life.
that thumbnail made me laugh. i've watched wind waker HD speedruns a lot, and basically the first 5 minutes is just the player spamming the pause button, while in the water to gain some sort of backwards momentum that then shoots them across the entire ocean, after gaining enough momentum going backwards.
Right i got jebaited too
When I first clicked the video I was like “but there is a good chunk of glitches that use pausing so why would it be banned “ less that a minute later I was like “ohh that’s what he means by pausing”
I always wondered in modern times why we use in game timers. That's my biggest issue with pausing
Edit: Super long categories included. If a game is 40+ hours then you do it and put yourself at risk like climbing mount Rushmore. You can create a pause category but there should be a main no pause category.
Double edit: all that pausing is gross. Dont use in game timer. If you use a split timer then the pauses become part of the game and have pros and cons
Segmented runs are best to watch closest to perfection. But i feel like this whole question can be solved by adding another category.
Having tried to watch a Wind Waker speedrun from GDQ that involved 20 minutes straight of spam pause buffering I can safely say that whether it's allowed or not, it certainly affects whether someone would ever be interested in running or watching the game, which can be just as big a problem
Speedrunners: Pausing is fine, it doesn't affect the timer
The World Is Not Enough: Hold my beer
funny that he didn't bring that up^^
@@Doom1491 why need to bring it up, a couple games pausing literally breaks the timer so it makes perfect sense to not allow it. Also super smash Bros board the platforms/break the targets
@@goldenirie with 007 they should just use RTA and it's runnable again
@@Doom1491 I mean, he already did an entire video on it, plus it's only a thing for one level because it's effectively a rail shooter.
@@UltimaKeyMaster It's a thing for all levels, it's just extremely broken for one o them in particular (and only slightly broken for the rest of them).
Just make two distinct categories: "Pausing allowed" and "Iron Man" or something like that
the Problem with that is that super Long categories usally are not that popular to begin with so splitting that relatively small category in 2 is not ideal
@@NickSeide sometimes is needed, but anyways you can have both categories in the same leaderboard, I don't think is the best in this case but it's an option. Also long categories that use in game timers are really rare, if they do, most of the time they also have RTA
Any speedrun that's long enough that it can cause you physical harm absolutely shouldnt be limiting you to a single session imo, 18 hours straight of playing a game is quite bad for you to do a single time, if you're grinding that world record you're gonna be in really bad shape by the time you're done with it.
As for other stuff, I think it's fine to allow pausing personally. Speedrunning is about trying to optimize a game you love, if the way you personally can optimize it down to near-perfection includes you having to pause between tricks, so be it. Perhaps a pause limit makes sense to implement, but that very much seems like something that would have to be decided when someone tries to take the rule to its limit (such as pausing every frame for an entire lap on mario kart or something to that effect)
Indeed, also it is impossible for people that work full-time to make a full 18h segment.
Meanwhile there are runs that are hundreds or even thousands of hours...
@@logansmith2703 Isn't Baten Kaitos one of those? If i remember currectly for the 100% run there is a item which needs to be developed and it takes like 3 weeks in real time to do it.
I think that it is much more important for a speedrun to be accessible than to be prestigious. Speed running is usually more for showing your love for a game so changing which game you speedrun is not a good answer either. Also if maybe millions of people speedrun games then it would make sense to try to have some speed runs have more endurance but since it's more important to show awareness and community building than to break up the endurance levels of speed runs.
Disagree, speedruns are all about the prestige.
But the question is...WHY do we need more people to start speedrunning? What is with this...urge...to have as many people doing it as possible. I think it's silly to structure your community for the people who AREN'T even part of it rather than catering to the ones that already are.
Speedrunning is accessible, but I don't think every category needs to be.
@@matt0198922 the more people who do something, the more competitive it is. A larger community also has other benefits, like letting tops runners get more money, and possibly doing it professionally, meaning ever more incentive to run and more time spent running, meaning better times.
Other reasons are that it honestly makes the leaderboards look better to have more than 6 times on them.
More runners also means more potential to have their game played at speedrunning events (something that everyone in the community likes).
There are other reasons too, if you want me to go on
@@andrewut7ya511 Prestige only exists if there are people to acknowledge those feats. And the degree to which something is held as prestigious directly correlates to the overall amount of competition and difficulty of achieving that prestigious title. According to your answer, viewership, accessibility, and total participation should be very important to you?
even though the ingame timer is convenient, I still suggest to simply use real time. this would also avoid timer lag tactics. in many of these retro titles the ingame timer is not really reliable.
ruclips.net/video/CqW-Z8BWsD8/видео.html
Irie Butler that link really doesn’t add to what’s in this video. He makes the same points in both: it comes down to what the speedrunners prefer. In the case of goldeneye it seems very clearly to be a preference in a niche community despite the fact that the goldeneye in game timer erases skill differences except at the very top. As indicated in this video though, it’s an open question how much that should matter.
ruclips.net/video/RaMGf1V3MMM/видео.html
It should be on a case by case basis based on the game and community.
community history and established rules are of course more important. no sense in throwing every record overboard just to avoid problems of this kind.
When racing games count down to the hundredth, you need to rely on the ingame timer for consistency
You could literally set the WR by stopping your clock faster
I'm all for segmented speedruns! I actually kinda invented segmented speedruns in my head before I knew it was a real thing because I've been curious about getting into speedrunning but there's no way I'm going to spend several hours straight on one run just for the run to die because of a stupid mistake.
For example, speedrunning a single kingdom in Mario Odyssey is way more appealing and doable than speedrunning the whole dang game just to slip up on the last Bowser section and be sent all the way back to the Cap Kingdom.
Segmented speedruns would also make it possible to do a time travel-less speedrun of Animal Crossing, with each day being a different segment.
If segmented speedruns came back I would legitimately consider getting into speedrunning.
"What if you had to pause 10,000 times in the final six seconds..." Well, given that pausing always advances AT LEAST one frame in PD we don't have to worry about that. The most you could pause in six seconds is 180 in theory, or probably more like 50 or so in practice. Funnily enough, pausing as frequently as possible for ~6 seconds is already a strat on Maian SA/PA for the lab lure.
It's even less than that. To register a pause within a game, you need one frame on, one frame off just to register the button press within the game. In Contra (NES), a perfect pause buffer would be 3 frames, but for humans it looks more like 5-7. If a human can pause any game more than 10 times in a second, that's actually really impressive on the mashing.
@@Optimum45 Pausing more than 10 times in one second wouldn't be impressive for Sonic Adventure 2, for example, where pause buffering is pretty simple and theoretically possible to pause buffer 60 times in one in game second (60 FPS). It's very easy to do it 20 times a second if you know how to (pause, then press A->pause consecutively) lol. So it depends on the game of course :)
@@Pixiuchu That's not how it works. If a game runs at 60FPS, one frame on, one frame off, one frame on still applies, as the game still needs to register your inputs. Frame perfect doesn't apply to human beings, no matter how fast we get, even at 60FPS, let alone anything higher that would allow for more inputs.
It's a human limitation. Elite Level single button mashing caps out near 15 per second as it is, and 2 inputs must be registered to effect any pause buffer in any game (on/off).
@@Optimum45 You're likely referring to pausing and unpausing 10 times in one real time second.
I am referring to pausing and unpausing 10 times in one in-game second. If we are talking about one in-game second, then yes, it is very very feasible for a human to pause 10 times within a second in the game I am talking about. And you said "any game". You didn't mention whether it was real time or in-game time, so I assumed you meant in-game time.
For real-time it would heavily depend on the game anyway because some games wouldn't even allow for pausing more than once a second due to pausing animations. In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for example, it takes but a second to pause and another to unpause, making it impossible to pause more than twice a second.
Just keep pausing enough and it looks like this:
ruclips.net/video/s71fdakC2WQ/видео.html
goose actually talked about that topic in another video: (about 24 mins in)
ruclips.net/video/JZhKEBwCfTs/видео.html
Pausing should not stop the timer. Defeats the purpose of speedrunning, and like you mentioned, it's supposed to be a feat to speedrun an ultra long category. At the end of the day, I really don't care what they do with this category, because for me, it's about as unwatchable as the 2 weeks run of that one rpg, but for categories that a lot of people care about, I don't think pausing should stop the timer. Making speedrunning more accessible past the hardware limitations is simply lowering the skill ceiling. It's like making the iron man triathlon more accessible by having a 3 hour-long break between categories.
You would be able to step away from the game to sleep and take breaks, but it wouldn't stop the timer.
I avoided speedrunning Perfect Dark for the longest time because I thought the pausing in many levels felt lame. Recently I started running it and I now love pausing in every opportunity that benefits me. It feels crazy to execute a difficult trick and then pause after to let myself calm down or to use pausing to help me aim. Not only does it allow top players to accomplish things that are incredibly difficult but it also opens up the game to newer runners who would otherwise have a very difficult time making the game more accessible at all skill levels.
@@TiagusB but a speed run is about the time, and skill. Its not about an aestheticly pleasing video.
Anyone who thinks runners should do 20 hour 1 segment run should be forced to watch the run without any breaks.
I personally think every run despite the game should have a universally agreed upon external timer.
this dude really calling for the comeback of segmented speedrun
Segmented runs seem very close to what the "casual" player would do. Having a bit time in the evening, playing some games, and maybe focusing on a certain task like grinding specific things or working on a specific level.
“Just make two categories” always comes up when these kinds of debates happen. It can’t be the solution to everything. Do that for more than one disagreement and suddenly you are up to 4 sub-categories for every run. You don’t want to get to a point where people are running Super Mario Sunshine: Any%: Peach File: Hoverless: Pausing Allowed.
This guy is an absolute idiot but I agree with him here.
MToms 127 I disagree man. You make a good point that it will inevitably categorize most/all speedruns into very specific titles like the example you gave. But I say that isnt necessarily a bad thing because you can still run whatever you want. If you want to to SMs any% peach file: hoverless pausing BANNED vs your example. The runner can choose what they are comfortable with running and then they would have their records in whichever niche category. Or they could still run the “overall” category with whatever rules that has :)
Not a runner myself so not super duper versed, just my thoughts
rwhitegoose cool that you replied! (Even if to the thread not me specifically) but that is a cool idea for a vid! Keep up your awesome work man I have learned SO much about speedrunning in literally the past month, mainly thanks to you!
Nah - that's not a problem. There would still be the "main" categories that attract the bulk of the population.
@@GamerFolklore Too many categories could become a problem for sure. If Speedrunning is to survive outside of the small community of actual runners, then the games and categories have to be atleast somewhat familiar and viewer friendly. The competetion between runners would also be less if there is too many categories (unless we see a MASSIVE influx of new runners). But i mean, if you want to have a record in a game category "nobody" else cares about, then go for it.
I still propose there be separate category for this. If you pause, your run is a "Segmented Run" and if you do it in one sitting, your run is a "Single-Segment Run". And put PB and WR in the respective category.
You're dramatically over-simplifying the terms "segmented" and "single-segment." Does a reset count as a pause? What about a save and quit? Deathwarp? You're missing a large number of different things that can occur in games that may or may not affect the way the game is played. Most importantly, we use the term "RTA" (Real-Time Attack) to define doing things in "one-sitting" and using a separate timer. Also, the historic use of the term "segmented" refers to re-doing sections of the game repeatedly until you get a desired result and using the best results. Basically, it was splicing. Segmented was the original version of "Human Possible" TASing. It was a demo (Speed Demos Archive) of what could be performed, ideally.
For example, Final Fantasy 1 (NES) single-segment runs have this rule: "Resets and Powering off and on are NOT allowed." It doesn't say anything about dying and continuing, though you'll never see it in a single-segment run.
In Final Fantasy 1, you save when you visit an Inn or use particular items (which also heals your party). When you die, nothing "in-game" (things you can see or track normally) is saved and you are returned to the title screen to continue from your last save. When you reset, the exact same outcome is achieved.
In normal Any% (RTA, not segmented), you save/reset often to progress the battle counter and avoid harder enemy groups in certain locations. If the RNG/random encounters are tracked the same regardless of resetting or dying, why would it matter if you reset?
Some games have unskippable cutscenes.... are they to be considered segmented? Because some of them are 5 minutes long, the runner can do all manner of things during that time.
@@ChaosRagorA MGS4 speedrun!
And you have to go through this cutscene!
And the timer keeps counting!
ruclips.net/video/OeHgrf5z4C0/видео.html
Just let people pause if I'm playing a 20 hour speedrun and 18 hours in I need to take a shit I should be able to pause it and not get disqualified
No! Bucket or GTFO!
You wouldn't get disqualified, that would just be a timed part of the run.
No poopsock? What a casual.
You don't get your run thrown our if you don't stop the timer. Limitations of the human body are part of it learn to work around it. And if you can't find time for a break in 20 hours of running then you're probably not cut out for it anyways.
@@zym6687
People have shit to do and can't just dedicate 20 hours to 1 thing constantly
Ultimately, it's up for every community to decide. Pause buffering to make a trick work shouldn't be up for debate if it isn't the "majority" of the run. Timer pauses for marathon runs should be common courtesy. Segmented runs will probably remain less common for their time investment. And lastly, entertainment is only a factor if the community intends it to be.
To the Mike 'TSA' Damiani - Wind Waker in 6:42 run…
I think it’s this one: www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/11481063
On nico its in 23 parts. but its named and tagged Wind Waker in 6:42 from speeddemosarchive.com.
So, I guess it’s the right one? But not sure since i don’t spot the runner name anywhere. Maybe someone can confirm it?
I speed run RUclips by watching at 1.5x (sometimes 1.75x or 2x) playback. Depends on the video though.
The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker / ゼルダの伝説 風のタクト
speedrun video list on niconico 23/23 parts
www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/11481063
thx
Beat me to it. I've saved all of TSA's runs that I could find.
*truly remarkable*
good man
🍻🥳💙
Amen brother, I've long thought that segmented speedruns need to make a return.
I think as long as the timer keeps going during a pause I'm ok with it.
For speedruns over several hours you should be able to pause the clock too, depending on the game.
Lol who is gonna pause when the timer keeps going?
@@erikheijden9828 that might just be his point if you think about it
@@erikheijden9828 that's the point. For instance on Zelda or other games where pause is used to more easily get frame specific tricks to land. As you get better at the trick, you need less pauses, saving time.
That's my point, no one wants to pause in a game if timer keeps going.... unless you need to to make certain tricks more viable for your current skill. If you're a master you don't need to pause at all.
About the Mario Kart 64 pausing segment, there was actually something similar that came up last year I think in Mario Kart Wii. One player had been using pauses but then I believe he alone decided he didn't want it to happen, and then the decision from there to ban pausing during time trials came mostly from him. Could be entirely wrong on that, but...
Bottom line (and tl;dr) is that pausing has already been banned in MKW TTs.
almost all speedrun controversies about if something should be allowed or banned could be settled by just making seperate categories
Yeah, for the most part. I'm pretty sure Goose has a video about that already, though lol
no, because you then open the door for endless categories.
@@JHMninja89 That's pretty much already the case, though.
@@StoutShako like in what major game?
They could also be settled if speedrunners acted collectively as adults with common sense and respect
Sounds like the kind of thing that would spawn a "no pause" or "limited pausing" category.
For the most part the running community itself seem pretty good at figuring out how they would like to run these games. I remember "look down" in goldeneye being a controversial issue.
And I am all down for segmented speedruns as a thing. Whether segments/checkpoints are specified by game, or up to the runner themselves.
"Segmented Speedrun" - In other words, authorized legitimate splicing :)
I find the "molding a statue from clay" metaphor especially ridiculous. Competitive speedrunning is a sport, not an art.
Can we have drug tests for runners then? In any serious competitive sport there are tests to make sure the athletes aren't influenced.
Id suggest just making the rule that you can segment the run but not redo segments, but i suppose that would be hard to execute in most games outside of ruling that all segmented runs must be done on stream.
commented segmented runs are how i pass the time while im working on things, commentary is pretty important to me for segmented personally
Of course, you must be allowed to pause while performing a long speedrun. It is a health issue.
Should ultra runners have the same rule? The health risks are FAR greater in running 100 miles. The best athletes always risk their health, that's why they're the best and we want to see them perform
@@latuman very few people can complete long speedruns in one sitting. A lot of people have jobs or have health issues like diabetes or asthma. Should pauses be banned becauses runners don't? No, sports are way more forgiving than speedruning because if you won't have to start from the begining if you mistake in a game of football. If you make a big mistake in a 20 hour speedrun then that's it you have to start over. Sure more skilled people aren't likely to take breaks during long speedruns but it allows for more people to get into the category without missing anything important or becoming homeless.
@@zestyvoyage2188 No sport or competition should be made easier to include people who otherwise couldnt participate due to health issues, it's unfair to everyone else.
@@TheMegaRin And it's not unfair to the people who can't compete because of something they can't control?
Playing video games for 20 hours is a health issue for every human though
Some games speedruns are like 240 hours straight. You simply either have to sleep with the timer on, or pause the timer. No human being can be awake for that long.
I've been going for the world's longest speedrun and I've had super Mario world on pause since 1996 but I aint been recording the whole run so far. I ran out of vhs tapes quick
i mean it sounds like these should just be different categories tbh
when you're pausing every frame you're basically attempting to TAS for the real-time timer with human inputs, which is an interesting challenge that should be allowed imo
when you're doing the OoT-style pauses to set up for specific real-time things that's a specific thing that some people might not like but it is fine, and then there could also be categories that specifically disallow pausing at all (obviously not feasible in OoT unless you define a pause as being a pause where you don't equip a **necessary** weapon or item or something)
when you're doing segmented speedruns that's obviously its own category, like it was in sda
I recall there was some Yu-Gi-Oh game where the 100% category took like 80 hours to complete and some dude was sent to the hospital after attempting a run. I'm glad the BotW community has given runners the option of not being ridiculously self-destructive
Yugioh forbidden memories. I also remember watching some SRL races of it where the runners took breaks, but then the whole thing ultimately got closed down after a day or two in because SRL doesn't allow afk for too long.
being a member of the yugioh fm community i dont remember anyone going to hospital after doing that run, lol. it got pulled from SRL once
Those pause clips of perfect dark made me never want to watch or attempt a speed run of perfect dark ever again
easy solution: two categories, one with pausing one without.
Easy peasy
Exactly
One for people with white privilege and one without
Too easy, lets fight about it.
came here to post this
Easy peasy? More like Ausy pausy
for me as a non speed runner its depends on the purpose of the pause, i thin it make a lot of sense to pause in 100%botw, unless you are willing to die in the processes, and also make sense to use the pause to your adv to be faster,.. but there should be a limit, and for me segmented runs of any source is that limit, and ofc if the pause doesnt add to the improve the speed or in botw case, if you are in a any%, then pausing to take a break make 0 sense at all, its like doing some rl xtreme sport and pausing mid air to answer the phone,...
Pausing for in-game timer runs should be allowed, no matter how many pauses there are. To not allow it completely would be to undermine the integrity of using IGT itself. That being said, I'm glad I speedrun GE where this is not an issue
I think that pausing should be allowed up to the point where it stops looking like actual gameplay. The singular pause examples are perfectly fine. Taking a dump, answering the phone etc. Clearly, there is a limit to this and I for one think the amount of pausing I see in Perfect Dark speedruns is ridiculous. I don't play the game myself but the videos are just completely unwatchable if you pause like the example given of 18 pauses in 6 seconds for one and two a matter of LTP if it is a matter of "ensuring", well, anything really. As for a solution, I think pausing should be limited to bio breaks for longer games and actions that actually require you to access the pause menu for all games. I also think segmenting runs is a great idea.
Segmented runs, sure. They're a category in many games. But don't put them on the same leaderboard as single segment runs.
Allowing pauses for long games also makes sense, but then use real life time as a benchmark.
You mention the health risks: that's up to the player to decide how far they want to push themselves. Ultrarunners that run 100km in one go don't pause either, nor is it healthy for their bodies. Nobody is forcing you to speedrun 50h in one go.
Pausing in short levels or games like they do in perfect dark, F. that. Especially if it's to make your life easier and to line up shots. Isn't it a true testament to skill and the grind if someone beats the record while not pausing?
Pause buffering is used for some glitches though.
Maybe implement a "Pause threshold" where the run is invalid if the player is pause buffering for more the 5% of the run or something.
No pause the timer when paused for long games and runs. Simply because swatters could then potentially ruin your run. Maybe in a universe where assholes didn’t exist but still things can happen in realife that need immediate attention.
@@ultimaterecoil1136
Swatting is absolutely disgraceful, but it happens so little and the guys who do it usually get caught. That's a very niche argument.
Things happen in real life, sure. But if the marathon runner trips and sprains his ankle? That run is over.
We're talking about a very elite club here. People that want to dedicate months and years of their life to get the perfect run. Similar to people living up to the olympics.
I don't want to make it easier to get there either.
@@WolfDeity Glitchless runs are usually a seperate category.
I’d say make segmented speedruns a separate category. As for pauses if you’re speedrunning and using an IRL timer then the pauses automatically add time and punish the player itself. If you’re using the in game timer then it’s only for certain levels/sections of the game, not the entire game so I think it’s fine. There’s reasons why certain categories have certain rules, no reason to change them now!
(PS I’m not a gamer, and definitely not a speed runner! This is just my opinion)
segmented speedruns are already a separate category. One that's not even tracked anywhere though.
Solution: just make a pause% category
Minecraft: Java Edition Any% Random Seed Glitchless Co-op 3 Players Pre1.9 No F3 pause% no major coffee
@@HappyBeezerStudios major coffee LUL
would be better to do a pauseless%
I agree with the same sentiment and would love to see a resurgence of segmented soeedruns!
pasusing itself is an ingame feature so no and pausing the timer during an RTA timer no what BotW is doing is shifting from RTA to a seqmented run but without the playing over and over thing to perfect segments and its a bad decision through and through
I loved the part about segmented speedruns, this is how I started watching and got interested. Way before streaming, live events etc. - speedrunning was more like a puzzle or a ship in a bottle you piece together yourself as a fun project over the span of many months. And the concept is welcoming enough for everyone to try.
Yet when I read the title of this video, Perfect Dark was first what I thought about - from a viewer's point of view the pausing will most likely be annoying, especially when its purpose won't be communicated properly. Pausing is crucial for reloading, calibrating of many shots and throws etc., but slows things down for the casual enthusiast of speedruns by a lot.
"Should pausing be banned in speedrunning"
Super Monkey Ball speedrunners who use pause buffering to do tricks that would otherwise be impossible:
Exactlyyy I was gonna say the same
Interesting video, and a take I hadn't considered. This is a topic that gets brought up in the SA2 community somewhat frequently considering both our IL speedruns and full game speedruns are timed in IGT, and it's interesting to see other communities such as the MK64 community dealing with these same issues.
In the end, I think, as you've said, it depends. There are some points where these pauses are fine and sensible, but much like anything I think they can be abused to an excessive degree if one isn't careful.
For Genesis Sonic runs, the rule is this:
"Pausing without unpausing for more than 20 seconds or pausing for more than 10 minutes in total voids the run."
Runners would pause to help line up on a specific pixel for glitches.
Pausing would have to be addressed on different categories since this kind of policy might not work for everything.
18 hour game. Let the speedrunners sleep.
Wanna sleep? Play faster, then!
I'm not a speedrunner but all games aren't created equal. It should go by a game by game basis. Depending on glitches, length of the run, categories, it should be allowed.
Would love to see the time difference in these games with lots of pause buffering between RTA and In-game. I personally dont get bothered seeing an in-game timer but going off an RTA timer, specially since growing up and watching speedruns over the years ive seen and even attempted plenty of games that have a perfectly good in-game timer but still use RTA for one reason or another.
It would kind of be a split in pushing a game times as far down as it can go vs pushing yourself as a player to beat something quickly through precise execution. Sure you could land all these super tough tricks and timings really consistently with pause buffering but it would be much harder without it so I guess it would just depend what each player is looking to get out of the experience.
Another topic worth noting here is when a game has some mechanic that slows down the in-game timer, such as Perfect Dark's Combat Boost used on the Air Force One and Defense stages. It slows down the gameplay allowing runners to be more precise with shots and movement, even more so when combined with frequent pausing, but also slows down the in-game timer thus making the run take more real time to complete. The community uses in-game time to measure the runs despite pauses and the slowed in-game timer (which I think is fine), but one could argue that someone who slowed down runs by pausing or making the game run slower took more time to complete the stage than someone who didn't.
We pre-emptively banned having more than one pause in a run in the 1080 community to stop pause buffering from ever becoming a thing. The decision was brought about from watching perfect dark runs
If anyone is curious what Mike TSA Damiani is up to these days, he's part of Easy Allies (Formerly the Gametrailers crew), he does technical work, editing, streaming, & hosts a Nintendo Podcast called Friend Code.
Interesting takes, thank you for making this. A part of me misses segmented runs, but I see how many would consider them to be basically TASes. Segmented runs of Metal Gear Solid games where the category requires a certain rank are interesting, because some MGS ranks have a cap on the number of times you can save the game, which creates an interesting compromise there.
Pausing in RE2 and RE3 Remake would be an interesting discussion. Pausing is used to save time in a couple of places since some animations that you have to wait for still take place while paused, yet the timer doesn't increment.
I think it should be handled on a community by community basis. One point I don't think you mentioned about PD/GE was that some of the mission critical items can only be accessed via pausing. There would have some rules if pausing was entirely banned to allow "one pause is allowed for the tracker bug" which would be a little arbitrary - but again, I think the communities should handle it on a case by case basis. Whatever makes their game fun to watch/play. When/if pausing becomes prohibitive then rules against it should be made.
Great video as always, keep it up!
6:48 This exists for Mario Odyssey btw, in case you were interested.
(Since it is currently impossible to make a tas on a switch, and no emulators or smo exist)
To require people to not take breaks is to require them to risk their health for what is at the end of the day; a video game.
The main problem with this is that if we allow any amount of pausing or small segments in a speed run, then there isn't a huge difference between that and a TAS. We don't want to allow so much that it just devolves into being a tas with not much skill at all to actually perform.
I run Killzone Shadow Fall for PS and a single segment run initially took me 5 hrs. I did have bathroom and stretch breaks during 1-2 long cut scenes but finding 5 hrs to do this was definitely a challenge. I’ve gotten the run down to 3 hrs or so now so it is a lot more manageable. But there is something about a single segment run in terms of the endurance necessary to maintain focus and execution in the face of fatigue that can’t be replicated any other way and makes it a category worthwhile in and of itself.
I wouldn't exactly call it a segmented speed run, but my cousins and I used to compete in OOT by seeing who could do a section the fastest. We never took the best times and made into one whole run, we would just take turns seeing who could get it quickest. We'd do sections like child dungeons, Ganon's Tower and fight, or individual adult dungeons. We used to have a blast doing those, and we did similar things with other games too even though I wouldn't really consider it speedrunning as we weren't submitting times or full game runs or anything like that. We just enjoyed competing with each other in whatever ways we could come up with. I wouldn't mind seeing a resurgence of segmented speedunning. I think I would gravitate more to giving that a shot than trying to do a single segment run.
I literally just realized that on the side of the racetrack in MK64 has "ads" for Marioro that look suspiciously like Marlboro ads from back in the Formula 1 days before they were banned. I've been watching some old F1 races in the past few weeks but I never noticed those in MK64 before. How funny
My opinion on this matter (as it is on most A or B / Black or White issues) is why not both? Why not a Pausing category and a Pauseless (RTA) category? Then everybody is happy.
The Mario Kart Wii time trial community has had their own problems with pausing. There's a frame perfect trick called "chain wheelies" which can provide a decent speed advantage, but the problem is that pausing mid-game allows you to more easily perform the trick. They ended up making a rule where players cannot pause their games to exploit a game mechanic (like chain wheelies) but you can pause if it's not exploited.
The MKWii community uses time trial ghosts to record times, and those are easily shared through a mod called CTGP. There are tools that allow you to look at the inputs the player made in their ghost, so potential pause abuse can be found through analysis.
There's a video about it called "Pause Buffering in Time Trials | New Rule Explained
", I recommend giving that a look. You can also find more documentation on the mkwrs website.
in the source game scene (portal, etc), segmented runs are pretty common, and pretty well-respected. since they're such long games, having segmented runs allows for some extremely difficult or inconsistent tricks to be attempted during runs
JustinDM just completed a 3 year segmented run of Metroid Prime in 0:46. Back in the early 2000s, Kip's 1:04 segmented run, and Prime segmented runs in general are part of the very genesis of speedrunning and segmented speedrunning. I recommend that you check out JustinDM's segmented run playlist on his youtube channel. The run is of an incredible caliber.
This reminds me of the one runner that tried to speed run the Jrpg with real time waiting mechanics and who had to give up because multiple 48 hour runs were making him go cra cray
48 hours? Baten Kaitos calls those rookie numbers.
There was a guy trying to do a Digimon game 100%, which would take 350 hours. He quit relatively early from headaches.
I'm a top Diddy Kong Racing time trialer, pausing is banned in our game. I support it because the point is to get the best run in 1 go. Also since we require video proof for WRs it just looks nice without pauses. I am also on the-Elite for pd and ge, and I support pausing there because it's almost integral to the game. I can't imagine playing pd or ge without pausing for the menu for example. It has to be on a game by game basis.
I'm somebody who enjoys watching people who are the best at what they do. It doesn't matter what they do, just that they exhibit such mastery of it that you cannot help but feel awe. I have the utmost respect and appreciation for speedrunners in general, and those at the top in-particular.
As such, I feel a bit cheated when endurance in any sport or E-sport is worked around. You mention about a marathon runner but propose being able to do segments. If I ran 26 miles by running 1 mile a day for 26 days, I have not run a marathon, I've just done 26 1 mile runs. It's considerably harder to run a marathon, and there's something amazing and worthy of our respect. It's a big frickin deal in short, because you have to apply serious time and energy to perform it, especially if you want that 10 minute a mile sub 4 hour mark. That Zelda 100% needs 20 hours to complete a category is OK, if you don't want to run marathons, go compete in the 1500m race. I guess I just have no sympathy for running it as segments.
I am a fairly serious poker player, and you wouldn't believe the amount of people who make mistakes after 6, 12, or more hours of play. When looking at my cash game data I realised after 8 hours my hourly winnings drop off materially, so I no longer play +8 hour sessions. I also noticed I was less winning in
All of these comments in favour of pausing long runs... makes me think about werster's amazing Pokemon Emerald all gold symbols run in 19 hours. Half of what makes this run impressive is the routing, but the other half is the endurance. I think taking away the endurance required to perform these runs removes a lot of what makes them interesting/impressive. On the other hand there are runs which are simply unfeasible to be done in one sitting (that botw 100% run is definitely not one of them). One that springs to mind is the Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Memories "all cards" speedrun which takes around 70 hours and uses pretty much a segmented ruleset, but people don't retry segments. There's more than meets the eye with this discussion.
I think there are 3 or more questions to be addressed here.
1. Regarding Segments; I find a run is more impressive and cohesive with less segments especially if its a short game. But a 10 hour game with 5 segments is better than a 3 hour game with 2 segments because the segments are longer.
2. Real Time vs In Game Time: While it is nice to use ingame timers, I think speedrunning has evolved passed them. Not only with the pause buffering described in this video but records are being contested for seconds on popular games that don't record past the minute mark like pokemon. As a universal standard, Real Time is a necessity or a necessary evil if you prefer.
3. Regarding Pause Buffering: I think a few can be tasteful for certain tricks but its a slippery slope that I argue with myself about at times. As I said above, speedrunning has evolved to counting seconds for better or honestly counter to what I said above; worse. I enjoy seeing a game played quick and smart; especially an RPG where they might use a spell or piece of equipment you think is useless; but because they're low leveled it exploits a certain strategy. On the otherhand; stepcounting to avoid random battles, and pausebuffering too much? Isn't fun; its tedious. Speedrunning is too competitive for its own good, unfortunately competition is the definition of the word.
This had happen very recently with Super Smash Bros. Brawl All-Star as well since pausing affects character spawn rates while the category uses IGT.
I feel some onus ends up being on the development side -- programming games that avoid weird grey areas and edge cases (such as adding a small time penalty when initiating a pause) helps keep things tidy. of course that doesn't solve the problems of games that are already released.
In Postal 2, we actually dont use the in-game time because the timer goes back when you load a save, effectively making the in-game timer a segmented timer without having to splice stuff together.
Nice bit on the segmented speedruns mate, it would indeed be nice to see them return. Single-segment runs are basically the live albums of speedrunning, which is why they're best when the runner is playing in front of a live audience or at least streaming from home. And single-segments are the studio albums of speedrunning, which is why you don't care about seeing the runner's face, it's all about the game in the same way a studio album is all about the music.
An appealing aspect of speedrunning is seeing the runner display their knowledge of the game and execution skill to complete an objective as fast as possible. A timer gives a quantitative value that can be used to compare how well one run is executed compared to another run. It is convenient that some games have an in-game timer, but it does not accurately measuring the time a runner spends to complete an objective when they are pausing the in-game timer. Pausing exploits how the in-game timer tracks time in this case.
When pausing is used in games where the pause does nothing other than halt the game, giving the runner time to think and setup for the next action, which are qualities that are no longer being represented by time as a measure of skill, it becomes unfair to compare to a run without pausing. A runner completing some objective with pausing in the same amount of in-game time and with the same route as another runner without pausing would not have demonstrated the same level of skill at decision making and execution, and to a viewer they certainly would not look as skillful. A few seconds of pausing does not make in-game time saved look good either when it comes to record times.
Competing for the lowest displayed in-game time is a valid way to compete, but the reasons above make it inferior to competing with a timer that closely represents real runtime and a distinction should be made between runs that aim for these two different goals.
I find it interesting that pausing could affect how a score attack looks, as these are generally not timed at all. But looking back, high score competition started out on arcade games, where there is no pause button (this also applies to speedruns). What makes pausing different from other content in console games that are classified as in game cheats such as level select?
Reviving segmented speedruns sounds like a fun idea, but I think they fell out of popularity as single segment speedrunners pushed competition to the point of matching, or coming close to matching, what segmented speedrunners were accomplishing and tool-assisted speedruns make for a more impressive product to watch. Stories can be built on speedrunners working over a long stretch of time to put together amazing segments, but the same sort of stories happens with single segment speedruns and that is tough to compete with.
Had a crazy-long rambling post before that didn’t come together well in the end, so I deleted it and started over. I didn’t splice any of the old post to this one. 🙃
When pausing reduces the skill required to pull off strats, I’m against it. I watch speedruns to see talented players beat games I like with a skill level that is inspiring.
When there’s a downside to pausing, it highlights the skill required. A runner who pause buffers something has to admit that another runner who doesn’t pause buffer will eventually surpass them.
I know that’s a gross oversimplification of the reality of pause buffering. There are things that humans are legitimately not able to do without pause buffering, and there are also instances where a runner has a moment of extreme luck that has nothing to do with skill. But it’s the best answer I could come up with.
If pausing is a mechanic that is built into a game, why would pausing be cheating or banned in a speedrun of it? Whatever you need to do to beat a game faster, do it.
Because pausing makes the game slower, but in some the in game timer shows it as faster/unaffected. So the question is, are you trying to beat the game as fast as possible, or are you trying to manipulate the game to get a high score(faster time)
@@someguy227 I know that certain speedrun communities use in-game timers to track times (which in itself is weird because in-game timers aren't always accurate, but I digress), so I can understand for those games why pausing might not work or be allowed if you're submitting a time to a leaderboard, but for games that use an outside timer, I don't see why pausing would be an issue.
This is actually a really good video. I myself and a runner on twitch.tv but because of life I spend more time running the same parts of games over and over to accumulate the best possible time that I can simply just pausing the game after acquiring leaving stream on and going about life until coming back later and putting down some more of it. It’s almost like human TAS “good concept.
Cheers.
I think this is something for each community to decide on their own. Some categories only take a few minutes to complete while others take hundreds of hours, which is just to unrealistic. Then you should also consider what kinda impact it has on a game. Some games heavily rely on pause buffering to perform certain major skips and without them any% wouldnt be any%.
The problem is that segmented runs and taking breaks would undoubtedly just create a new category. The runs done with no breaks will still be more fantastic and open more opportunities for the runner, even if the run with no breaks is slightly slower.
i would love a resergence of segmented speedruns.
i used to speed run Monster Hunter, because you dont speed run the whole game, its just a single mission of about 3 minuts, so i could just sit down and do a run untill i got a good run, without having to dedicate hours for it.
Maybie i sould become the change i wish to see.
I'd say just use a real timer, but then there's the problem that some games ingame timer is often disconnected from real time (like GoldenEye, where looking down makes for a faster time). So... I duuno. :( I don't think a lot of pauses makes for an enjoyable run to watch, but I see that it's needed for maximum performance. I don't see any good answer. Maybe the Jolly Joker "Just make different categories"?
Really depends on the game. Pause strats go completely hand-in-hand with IGT optimizations, so should be generally allowed. If the pauses get far to excessive, the community should draw a line and possibly make a new category.
For breath of the wild, I would (if I ran it) advocate for splitting the leaderboard for 100% into RTA (breaks) and RTA (no breaks) so that those mad enough to attempt a 20 hour gauntlet could ensure their time isn't bested by someone who slept / ate / rested to ensure peak performance.
As far as segmented runs (like, the traditional kind, not the current BotW version) goes, I'd wager it depends on the game. The most important rule would be that a segmented run needs to be theoretically possible in RTA (which I'm pretty sure is already how it works in most cases)
In the classic Sonic community, pausing doesn't lose any time on the in game timer either. The leaderboards are currently sorted by IGT, but with a second column of RTA time just to be seen, or as a tie breaker (as IGT is only in full seconds). Recent tricks (huge timesaves) are only viable with pausing allowed AND there are examples of causing real-time to be slower while IGT is saved. The community is split about 50:50 and the discussion of timing methods comes up again every couple of months.
Another problem not mentioned with using real time instead of provided in game timers is console and version differences, meaning players may have to buy obscure releases/etc. if they want to save real time.
I personally think a general speedrunning rule for pauses should be added for single-segment runs. A good thumb of rule is that a up to 12 hour pause is allowed for each 12 hour of run time (no pools or things like that, but a simple rule that a 12 hour pause is allowed, for eating, toileting and sleeping, for each 12 hour of playtime, if you choose to not use all hours, its your fault. BUT you should also be able to chain 2 pauses together, if you play for 24 hours in succession, you can take either 2 pauses of 12 hours, or 1 pause of 24 hours), but provided with a specific rule - and that is that the camera MUST be running the whole time even during pause time, the controller or keyboard or input device, must be visible at all times, AND you are not allowed to save or exit to some main menu, AND the game must have a constant movement or similiar that does become inconsistent if a recovery from a savefile is done. If the game has a game timer that also runs during pause, this is acceptable, as this game timer should then be the total time including the pauses.
However, to make it fair, its also important that a cap of number of pauses is determited, regardless of runtime, so if a runtime is close to a boundary, this doesn't grant an extra pause. This must then be determited during the creation of the game in the scoreboards, and then be consistent across all runs. So if a game has a WR of like 23 hours and the longest time is lets say 30 hours, its good that number of pauses is capped to 1, so the person doing a 25 hour run doesnt get a extra pause just to complete 1 hour extra, because he could instead do a 12 hour run, then have a 12 hour pause, and then do 13 hours without problem.
just break it up into categories, imo. pause and no-pause.
ESPECIALLY for games like perfect dark. For something like zelda BOTW, I don't think it really makes a huge difference in gameplay. But being able to pause to perfectly line up shots is a big difference in what skill is required.
Pausing the game to help with doing tricks is a very different thing than pausing the speedrun timer. The question here is whether speedruns should remove the element of biological needs by pausing the speedrun timer whenever the runner needs to sleep/eat or go to the bathroom, which yeah I don't think there's a problem with that at all. The only purpose of making a separate category for this would be if you cared about the runner's physical endurance abilities rather than just their gaming skill.
No one would run single levels with different categories
Males a huge difference in botw mate. Pause breaks are allowed... Now... the current wr holder has never NOT been the wr holder and any sleep breaks were added to the time. Point being he's been doing it for years and you can instantly tell when he's feeling tired cause 5 splits in a row lose time, he takes a break then starts getting green and gold splits again.
How about making a separate category for pausing speedruns and non-pausing speedruns?