Speedrun Frameworks

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    Introduction


    Greetings,


    this thread is aimed to discuss how to build a speedrunning framework or rule-set of this game and whether it is worth doing that in the first place. I myself am a player tending towards competition, but in the history of Elsword this was always a hard thing to live by, if we look at class balance, connectivity issues and gear impact as an example. Those lead to a fairly useless PvP Matchmaking in regards to competition. And PvE wasn't forgotten either, the power level of players always met a situation, where enemy's got killed in seconds, the usage of pots made any Health/Mana Management easier and easier and it is clear to me that this won't change, because of legitimate monetary reasons. Those players who are willing to spend time or money for direct advantages could be a big amount of money income. I'm not saying this is good or bad in any regards, everyone here should be allowed to have their own ways, the question is just how we handle it. I speak English and German alike, but I decided to write this in English in order to be more accessible. And I am .as you already saw or will see. a terrible writer, communication is an art and I'm more of a shut-in person having less experience on that end, sorry for that. I mainly write my information for myself, because of my bad memory.


    I always begin with abstract concepts first and then go into implementations of those. if you don't like to discuss in abstract terms then you can always just bring up implantation based stuff. I tend towards writing here in Part-thoughts and rather than fully fleshed out ones, because I don't see myself ever getting there by myself and hence never posting something.


    Important Values


    1. Individual Performance must have maximum impact
    2. Archive the fastest time to finish the game or a part of the game with regards to the first value


    Goals


    1. RNG Prevention
    2. Instant Access


    Reasoning


    1. RNG Prevention


    A random number generator (RNG) is a device that generates a sequence of numbers or symbols that cannot be reasonably predicted better than by a random chance. The important part is that it cannot be predicted, therefore any tricks that call themselves ‘RNG Manipulation’ are essentially just tricks on predictable behavior that just ‘seemed to be unpredictable’ in the past. The reason to prevent any RNG is that it influences the time (the result) without the influence of the individual speedrunner.


    Examples of occurring Issues with RNG

    • fluctuating results with same perfomance
    • time wasting – if as an example the significant RNG only occurs 1 hour into the run, making a certain percentage of runs until that time pointless
    • performance based actions might begin to be called RNG – making it a mental challenge for some


    2. Instant Access


    Making the speedrun accessible to everyone will drive competition and therefore center the focus on individual performance. How ‘good’ did a speedrunner really perform if only a handful of people even ran it in the first place? There shouldn’t be case where an individuals performance was overshadowed, because there were items under paywalls/grinding that he should’ve used in order to improve his time.





    General Attitude


    If a behavior of speedrunning with such rules might become popular, what are the consequences for the game itself? (under developer perspective)


    Pros


    • Generate Attraction
    • Better chance to sell non-game impacting cosmetics
    • Chance of assistance on solutions for bugs and exploits


    Cons


    • Experimentation of game mechanics
    • Higher knowledge for exploits
    • Higher chance for outcry on bugs


      • If outcry has impact on money income, then those bugs and exploits need to be fixed, which will cost a significant amount


    So if we players would want to have such behavior, we tend towards tolerating bugs and exploits and assisting them on those issues rather than complaining about it. Also it depends on the players attitude who are the money income of the game, if we manage to shift their attitude towards our goals then we can prevent negative monetary impact on the game itself. We need to have such an attitude, because if we don't. developers or essentially representatives will try to shut us down to prevent damage.


    Edit: I didn't mean to post this under suggestions, pretty sure I hit the 'create thread`button under discussions, if a moderator would read this, I would appreciate moving my thread on there, sorry for the inconvenience.

    Edited once, last by Gaudeon ().

    I've personally considered the possibility of speedrunning myself, however, not in a particularly serious manner. More out of curiosity than anything else, and as a possible event suggestion. However, the game is heavily dependent on RNG and honestly, it is too easy to cheat/hack if you really wanted to. Gameguard is a joke, and after you pass that, I'm certain there's no server-side detection whatsoever. Not forgetting the disconnections and bugs.. but that's a widely known issue so no need to talk about that. Now, assuming all that was resolved, the best approach would have to be as a specific game mode with in-game rankings like Henir. The game itself would have to impose gear restrictions etc, and it would have to be broken down into character/class rankings. Allowing players to decide.. very bad idea, even with video footage as evidence. Even actual record speedruns in other games have been ripped apart and analysed for splicing and other methods used for fake runs so we'd need to hold it to the same standards for it to even be plausible. For the best chance of success, we'd need the developers to actually do something (but if you've been around for years, you'd know you've probably more chance of winning the lottery than anything actually coming out of any suggestion).



    Though maybe if you're persistent, you'll see something happen eventually. Took over 3 years for magic wardrobe and multiple excuses, maybe if you're lucky, you'll have developer support in a similar timeframe.

    Maybe I came out to be directed to the devs, but I'm rather talking to the players here. It certainly would be nice, but it isn't a necessity.


    Deception is only an issue if we put value into results of others, there isn't really a money reward to be the best speedrunner in elsword. If someone wants to set up such a reward, then it would be his responsibility to make sure that there is no deception. My goal is to form a framework that any person that wants to attempt a speedrun can use, so that there is better tendency to compete against each other. Of course it is impossible to mark a speedrun as legitimate, but we can still attempt to use the information in it, which makes the speedrun community move forward. We just test the strategies out for ourselves and learn to be better, rather than always attempting to verify some run. Even if a run would have been done by a bot and deceptively shown as a performance, we still might get something out of that.


    I do agree with you that there is a lot of RNG in this game, it is an issue. Thats why I would like to discuss what solutions (by player setup rules) we can come up with to minimize the issue as much as possible, if even those solutions aren't enough, then it is clear to anybody that this game is not worth speedrunning. I did not find any resources regarding those solutions, so I created this thread here in an attempt of clarity.

    Quote from Gaudeon

    Edit: I didn't mean to post this under suggestions, pretty sure I hit the 'create thread`button under discussions, if a moderator would read this, I would appreciate moving my thread on there, sorry for the inconvenience.

    I think this Topic is fine in the Suggestions but if you want to move it to Discussions I will do so. =)


    I think this Topic really opens an interesting Discussion.


    Its not that long I just used alot of space, the main topic question is: How should we players build a ruleset for speedrunning and is it worth it? My abstract ideas: Prevent Rng (essentially making it like a marathon run) and make the run itself as accessible as possible to everyone (which prevents p2w). You can go either question my abstract ideas, bring some new ideas to the table or go into specifics.

    I think it would be very interesting to split the runs into categories like "Buffless, Buffed, Lv.99-Run, ...". That way you would create a system where you really can compare results.


    The idea of frame-working speedruns for Elsword really sounds promising!