Guild Wars Speed Clear Records

We have a recurring issue with tool assistance features being arbitrarily split between allowed for "standard" and "tool assisted".
We should get rid of the category all together or rename the categories and make them follow strict, logical rules.

My first proposition is to just abolish the "standard" category itself, because the idea of a set of tool assisted features being okay to use and another set is not is laughable. This would mean that all standard records become TAS records and pure records stay pure records.

The second proposition is to rename the categories and change rules as follows. Standard becomes TAS (because it is tool assisted). TAS becomes "cheating" or another word we can think of, that encapsulates features with an effect that are otherwise impossible to achieve by running the game without modifications. These include things such as targeting miniature pets or ghosts in the box or accepting quests while the game would not usually allow you to (this means sending a dialog while a reaper spawns is fine, but sending it after it spawns and is in aggro is not fine). All other tool assistance will only count to tool assistance. Another noteworthy mention: coindrop and slow load should no longer be banned to the TAS or "cheating" category, if performed without tool assistance.

If there are features deemed too extreme to be part of the TAS or cheating category (such as the controller circuit in 00Agent) we should ban these features all together.

EDIT: Note, this is not an official decision and just a poll to capture the general opinion on this. Let's see how many monkeys we have.

What's the logic of calling TAS "Cheating"? Standard becomes TAS, TAS stays TAS. Pure is called standard ez.

Just a suggestion in case people want to keep a differentiation between using tool assistance to do things faster or with less effort, compared to using tools to do things that are otherwise impossible in the game.

Cheating is what you call that in other games.

What people want is to "differentiate" TAS runs and "pure" aka non-TAS runs. No one cares what tools you used or what tools you didn't use in your TAS run. Oh, I didn't use a minimap so it should be a different category is actually retarded because you're still using tools that make the run a TOOL ASSISTED RUN. Like why don't we just break the categories up further? Like no-hotkey-standard category or only pcon-popper-standard Are you getting the point here yet or do I need to break it down further? People also want more than 1 mod who does shit like fuck of people we have flo like how does that even happen?

Are you trying to get me to understand the point I myself made? I only included the possibility of changing the record rules to a differentiation between tool assistance to make things easier and tool assistance to enable doing things that are otherwise impossible (cheating). I myself don't care, but people might, and the above classification allows for non-arbitrary, objective decisions on what is banned to the "cheating" category and what is not.

My opinion:
1. Merge standard and TAS: I actually like this, because the current ruleset is terribly arbitrary. However, I expect people will complain that this basically forces people to use the "bad" stuff (e.g. targeting minipets, minimap targeting) to be competitive.

2. Renaming categories: why? it's just confusing for no reason.

2.1 Coindrop and slowload in PURE: yes, I always thought that was dumb.

In general people want the standard main record category to be whatever they like playing. And different people play in different ways. Only PURE and TAS categories are well defined. Standard was created for continuity and consistency with previous records, and represented a community vote as of June 2017. Almost everybody thinks that the Standard ruleset is bad because almost everyone will disagree on some detail, but it's a middle-ground that was voted for. It is possible that the opinion of the community has changed in the past 3 years, and I'm not opposed to running a new poll, but keep in mind that it takes effort to design and run a poll, with the reward usually being hate from the community.

haskhasin wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 21, 2020 1:24 pm

My opinion:
1. Merge standard and TAS: I actually like this, because the current ruleset is terribly arbitrary. However, I expect people will complain that this basically forces people to use the "bad" stuff (e.g. targeting minipets, minimap targeting) to be competitive.

First, why is minimap targeting "bad"? As long as you don't target anything you couldn't target otherwise, that's completely fine and no more tool assistance than say popping pcons is. Only if you use it to target things you otherwise couldn't target it would count to the next category outside of just "tas". In other games tool assistance is fine as long as it *only* uses things that are achievable in the game. That's why every TAS record in other games must be replayed on a console to be validated. Things such as targeting ghosts in the box/minipets or sending dialogs to attacking reapers break this. Using the minimap to target does not.

haskhasin wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 21, 2020 1:24 pm

2. Renaming categories: why? it's just confusing for no reason.

It's for the reason that having a "standard" category that uses tool assistance not being the "tas" category that literally means tool assisted speedrun makes absolutely no sense. In other games, "cheating" features would be completely banned from records. We have the choice to either allow these in tas although it goes beyond that, create a new category for them, or ban the features entirely like all other games do.

haskhasin wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 21, 2020 1:24 pm

2.1 Coindrop and slowload in PURE: yes, I always thought that was dumb.

In general people want the standard main record category to be whatever they like playing. And different people play in different ways. Only PURE and TAS categories are well defined. Standard was created for continuity and consistency with previous records, and represented a community vote as of June 2017. Almost everybody thinks that the Standard ruleset is bad because almost everyone will disagree on some detail, but it's a middle-ground that was voted for. It is possible that the opinion of the community has changed in the past 3 years, and I'm not opposed to running a new poll, but keep in mind that it takes effort to design and run a poll, with the reward usually being hate from the community.

Well fuck what the community wants, having a completely arbitrary ruleset for a category is stupid when you could instead define the categories by objective measures. Every speedrunner facepalms when he hears about this. This doesn't need a poll to decide what tool assistance doesn't count as tool assistance, this needs common sense. Only then will the drama stop because only then we can have well defined categories.

These ridiculous arguments keep happening because nobody agrees on what "standard" is supposed to mean. Perhaps we could hear from some of the people who care about standard records... what do you guys think about removing the category?

IMO if you used some third party tools (so you don't qualify for PURE) but want people to know that you didn't use the "bad" ones, make a list in your record post. No doubt everybody will read it (and carefully check your videos). You don't need a special tier on the record table. You definitely don't deserve a place on the table just for turning off the minimap and doing a record slower.

Unless pure will be allowed to use texmods I am completely against this. I refuse to submit records in a category where everything is allowed simply because I don't want to play with the horrendous default interface.

So what are the features against your taste? Targeting ghosts and sending dialogues to unresponsive reapers are amongst the only things impossible to do without cheating in the unmodified game, hence the second poll option of "changing categories". Features as they currently are make no sense because some tas features aren't any "worse" than "standard" features. You can't keep a category based on purely arbitrary random decisions.