What makes Doom speedrunning so appealing? (split: Dreamskull-Bob COOP nonsense-derail [WR!!])

[Dreamskull]

As much as I hate to say it, speedrunning is an integral part of making maps because if you have holes in your design, enitre sections of a map can be bypassed outright by speedrunners. Its something the community has to learn to do to improve their own maps. If you know what youre doing, both as a speedrunner and as someone who builds to make things harder to speedrun, map quality will greatly improve. Too many people overlook this.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Dreamskull

[GarrettChan]

8 minutes ago, Dreamskull said:

As much as I hate to say it, speedrunning is an integral part of making maps because if you have holes in your design, enitre sections of a map can be bypassed outright by speedrunners. Its something the community has to learn to do to improve their own maps. If you know what youre doing, both as a speedrunner and as someone who builds to make things harder to speedrun, map quality will greatly improve. Too many people overlook this.

 

Not sure I understand what you meant. You meant don't leave tricks to perform in map?

 

If so, then that's not a fun way to design maps. If you left a hard enough trick to be used in a map, it would be fun to figure out the trick, but it doesn't prevent you from doing the map casually.

[Dreamskull]

1 minute ago, GarrettChan said:

 

Not sure I understand what you meant. You meant don't leave tricks to perform in map?

 

If so, then that's not a fun way to design maps. If you left a hard enough trick to be used in a map, it would be fun to figure out the trick, but it doesn't prevent you from doing the map casually.

 

Yeah, you dont understand what I mean. Speedrunners turn maps into jokes. People who dont speedrun their own maps get their maps shattered.

[GarrettChan]

2 minutes ago, Dreamskull said:

 

Yeah, you dont understand what I mean. Speedrunners turn maps into jokes. People who dont speedrun their own maps get their maps shattered.

 

Then I understood what you meant correctly, so I don't understand why you said "I don't understand what you mean". Then if your design philosophy is like this, then it's not really a "quality improvement" for maps. You just make it airtight and unfun.

 

I don't know why people like to try hard to block speedrunners from performing any kind of trick since they probably put in more effort in looking at your maps than other casual players. If you felt this is not an appreciation or a respect to the map, then I don't know what to say.

 

Also, this shows you have no idea what speedrunning is. There's Max category out there, not just Speed.

Edited June 16, 2023 by GarrettChan

[Fluuschoen]

20 minutes ago, Dreamskull said:

As much as I hate to say it, speedrunning is an integral part of making maps because if you have holes in your design, enitre sections of a map can be bypassed outright by speedrunners. Its something the community has to learn to do to improve their own maps. If you know what youre doing, both as a speedrunner and as someone who builds to make things harder to speedrun, map quality will greatly improve. Too many people overlook this.

 

Sequence breaks are not necessarily bad things.

I LOVE maps with clever/skillful sequence breaks. It can even move a shitty/mediocre at best map up to the actual fun category. Like Plutonia map 10 window jump, for example.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Fluuschoen

[Dreamskull]

No you dont understand what I mean, tricks are fine. You can build for tricks. I am a speedrunner. I am also a secret playtester.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Dreamskull

[Electro Rage]

1 minute ago, Dreamskull said:

No you dont understand what I mean, tricks are fine. You can build for tricks.

Then what the heck are you talking about?

[GarrettChan]

2 minutes ago, Dreamskull said:

No you dont understand what I mean, tricks are fine. You can build for tricks.

 

Then I guess either me or you need to check for English skill since your sentence sounds like a big complaint about tricks to sequence break.

Edited June 16, 2023 by GarrettChan

[Dreamskull]

Its really simple, if you make it too big a thing, if speedrunning ever becomes more popular than regular play, no one will ever want to build another map again.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Dreamskull

[GarrettChan]

1 minute ago, Dreamskull said:

Its really simple, if you make it too big a thing, if speedrunning ever becomes more popular than regular play, no one will ever want to build another map again.

OK, It seems that's what you meant to begin with and everybody knows that, but somehow you just denied that others understand what you meant, for some unknown reason. However, it's your ignorance about speedrunning when you talked about this.

 

I'm both a speedrunners and a playtester and I've playtested a handful of non speedrunning community projects. Open minded mappers in the community don't get butt hurt when a trick is found in their maps. As I said before, it's a respect and an appreciation to the maps instead of speedrunners are assholes who actively try to break the map and remove its fun.

 

Again, as I said, if you are not a fan a Speed category, there's Max category, but I guess at this point, I don't really hope that you'll actually look into what these mean.

[Electro Rage]

Just now, Dreamskull said:

Its really simple, if you make it too big a thing, if speedrunning ever becomes more popular than regular play, no one will ever want to build another map again.

Why WOULDN'T people want to build more maps? The large majority of wads that are likely on the Archive probably suck, and I don't even need to play a full percent of them to say that, it's just the nature of an old game with easily to make mods. It only makes sense for people to still want to make new, better maps! Also, you think speedrunners load up a game, or wad, and just immediately start routing? They (usually) play it casually first! 

[Dreamskull]

Speedrunning serves a purpose to improve the quality of a map while its being made. If you do not seek the break a map to increase speed, youre not a good speedrunner. The true benefit is finding cool unintentional things that you then pick up to make official again. If you dunk someone so underhandedly that their entire map is tarnished, that guy will be salty, but theres nothing they CAN do about it but try to play it off. Speedrunning is inherently disrespectful, but disrespect and gaming go hand in hand. There is tremendous work that goes into making maps and like all things there will always be contention on those things that nub it into mere seconds. I am not even an art guy and I understand this. Ill tell you what others wont. 

 

Ill let you have the last word.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Dreamskull

[GarrettChan]

11 minutes ago, Dreamskull said:

Speedrunning is inherently disrespectful, but disrespect and gaming go hand in hand.

I really like this sentence so I made my title into this. Thanks a lot.

[Electro Rage]

15 minutes ago, Dreamskull said:

Speedrunning serves a purpose to improve the quality of a map while its being made. If you do not seek the break a map to increase speed, youre not a good speedrunner. The true benefit is finding cool unintentional things that you then pick up to make official again. If you dunk someone so underhandedly that their entire map is tarnished, that guy will be salty. Theres nothing they CAN do about it. Speedrunning is inherently disrespectful, but disrespect and gaming go hand in hand. There is tremendous work that goes into making maps and like all things there will always be contention on things that nub it into mere seconds. I am not even an art guy and I understand this.

You need respect for a map to enjoy playing it. Over and over. Just to lower the amount of seconds in that map. If your map gets "dunked", then it probably wasn't that hard to begin with, or was already short. Your mapping career isn't over because someone did your maps fast, it's over when you make shitty maps. Plain and simple. (Though calling it a career is acting as if it isn't a fucking hobby, which means they did it for FUN.) How do you even dunk someone underhandedly by playing a map quick though? 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Electro Rage

[GarrettChan]

34 minutes ago, Dreamskull said:

I am a speedrunner. I am also a secret playtester.

Sorry to be inherently disrespectful, what handle do you go for on DSDA?

 

Also, I'll actually actively stay away from whatever you maps you tested.

[Dreamskull]

Theres no need for that. Ive said about all I had to. Things can continue the way they were before I got here. Its just a sidenote.

[Daniel, the NCR Veteran]

1 hour ago, Dreamskull said:

As much as I hate to say it, speedrunning is an integral part of making maps because if you have holes in your design, enitre sections of a map can be bypassed outright by speedrunners.

I don't see how that's a bad thing.
Autophagy by the lovely Andrea Rovenski has plenty of maps where glides aren't ccompletely intentional and they basically skip the maps but there's a lot more things that make it harder for a speedrunner:
Objects placed perfectly after a turn so that you have to time your SR50 so you don't bump into it or the wall
Keys placed in locations that need more careful movement like Autophagy's MAP01 where you can't just go full speed or you'll jump off the "cliff" and miss the yellow key
Tight areas that if you make a mistake you can get stuck in the walls and lose time

Fixing map bugs and getting overtly bothered by them like pcorf isn't exactly the way to go imo. Just look at other games that have speedrun-paranoid devs and ask the speedrunners what they think of said devs.
I have someone so traumatized by this experience that they say the only relationship a dev and a spedrunner should have is not knowing each other and ignoring each other and what they do.

[Fluuschoen]

1 hour ago, Dreamskull said:

Speedrunning is inherently disrespectful, 

 

I'm tempted to find disrespect in grinding a game, or even just a single level for hundreds, if not for thousands of hours, and get to know it inside-out and backwards during the process. But I just can't, so I assume it was a typo on your part.

 

1 hour ago, Dreamskull said:

but disrespect and gaming go hand in hand.

Not in my book, and even played a few years competitively. Well, not, unless you are a whiny tool potato, like MANY guys were on public Quake Live or CoD 4 servers. But those people then got their own taste of disrespect by being mercilessly mowed into oblivion in a quick fashion. : D Friendly leech-banter is a completely different thing.
 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Fluuschoen

[Bob9001]

Here's a hot take;

 

Speedrunning Doom used to be easy now there's too many people doing it so the value is gone.

[Andromeda]

If anything the "value" should be higher now, since there's more competition.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Andromeda

[MFG38]

On 6/16/2023 at 6:23 PM, Dreamskull said:

Speedrunning is inherently disrespectful

 

Would you be able/willing to elaborate? I'm legitimately curious as to why you think this way.

[RataUnderground]

As a mapper, but not a speedrunner, I care so little about the shortcuts found by speedrunners that my maps are often full of optional content that you can not only skip, but must look hard to find. It's my way of saying, "if you're liking the map and want to stay a little longer, welcome. If you're just passing through, go ahead, there's the direct route".
On my map for Solar Struggle, which can often drag on for more than twenty minutes, someone found a way to get there in just over ten seconds. I thought it was beautiful: )

[Andrea Rovenski]

average thread about speedrunning that ignores uv max runners 😭

[Bob9001]

4 hours ago, Andromeda said:

If anything the "value" should be higher now, since there's more competition.

The "Value" WAS higher when there was less people because you didn't have people making meme wads to increase their index.

In my opinion the competition died when more people started speedrunning.

[BigBoy91]

23 minutes ago, Bob9001 said:

The "Value" WAS higher when there was less people because you didn't have people making meme wads to increase their index.

In my opinion the competition died when more people started speedrunning.

I think it's more fun now than it's ever been. Just because someone's index is higher doesn't necessarily mean there's more merit to their running. It's just a little number. The big achievements still get much more noticed than any meme runs.

Edited June 17, 2023 by BigBoy91

[GarrettChan]

3 hours ago, Andrea Rovenski said:

average thread about speedrunning that ignores uv max runners 😭

I've heard Max runners like to use weird techniques to skip all the contents of the maps and want to screw over the mappers, don't they? /j

[SleepyVelvet]

10 minutes ago, Bob9001 said:

The "Value" WAS higher when there was less people because you didn't have people making meme wads to increase their index.

In my opinion the competition died when more people started speedrunning.

I was about to comment on this after reading your previous post, but saw this mid-typing.

 

Hmm sorta.  I've personally enjoyed the Dubzzz5DA series a lot, more than I should've and more than should be considered reasonably healthy.  But when you get more and more speed-wads like Junkfood, ode2poopbutt, etc, piling up back to back, the genre can burn out.  Though, that's a personal "me" issue with that subgenre itself, and thus solves itself by me just playing less in that genre.  It's less of an issue than the never-ending cycle of speedrunners pumping out community meme-wads for eachother to run - they will enjoy it as long as they enjoy it, and there's always new blood...

 

But yah, it's interesting to think about "table-fill inflation" and the internal economics of Doom Speedrunning and stuff.  I don't entirely know what "index" is on DSDA.com other than it's a point system (someone should tell me).  But the thing is, the meta-game around point systems itself are fun.  It's fun to see number go up.  Does that number itself have less value the more meme-wads are table-filled? I guess so, and the meta-point game is still a different game than the game itself, albeit intertwined a bit.  I don't think "index" is set up to be taken that seriously in the first place from the context I see, but yah, it would be foolish to deny it having value wrt everyone's monkey-brain and speedrunning pride, etc.

 

On a similar note: It'd be cool/funny to let people spend points on demo bounties.  I want to see the D5DA industrial complex kick into real gear, we'll be at D5DA69 by next week.  Though if a bounty-point system were to be taken seriously, I'd imagine incremental table fills would give you diminishing points or structured in a way that makes sense - you can't just print money.  For example, the bulk of the bounty economy would be made of existing points.  Or maybe even that rings as impure for some people, and you don't want your humble hobby of Doom speedrunning corrupted in some way or whatever.  Dunno, but fun to think about.

[Nefelibeta]

6 minutes ago, NoisyVelvet said:

I don't entirely know what "index" is on DSDA.com other than it's a point system (someone should tell me)

you get a index for every demo that you have beaten with yours (within the same category) so more maps will greatly affect the system.

[Bob9001]

56 minutes ago, NoisyVelvet said:

Hmm sorta.  I've personally enjoyed the Dubzzz5DA series a lot, more than I should've and more than should be considered reasonably healthy.  But when you get more and more speed-wads like Junkfood, ode2poopbutt, etc, piling up back to back, the genre can burn out.  Though, that's a personal "me" issue with that subgenre itself, and thus solves itself by me just playing less in that genre.  It's less of an issue than the never-ending cycle of speedrunners pumping out community meme-wads for eachother to run - they will enjoy it as long as they enjoy it, and there's always new blood...

 

But yah, it's interesting to think about "table-fill inflation" and the internal economics of Doom Speedrunning and stuff.  I don't entirely know what "index" is on DSDA.com other than it's a point system (someone should tell me).  But the thing is, the meta-game around point systems itself are fun.  It's fun to see number go up.  Does that number itself have less value the more meme-wads are table-filled? I guess so, and the meta-point game is still a different game than the game itself, albeit intertwined a bit.  I don't think "index" is set up to be taken that seriously in the first place from the context I see, but yah, it would be foolish to deny it having value wrt everyone's monkey-brain and speedrunning pride, etc.

 

On a similar note: It'd be cool/funny to let people spend points on demo bounties.  I want to see the D5DA industrial complex kick into real gear, we'll be at D5DA69 by next week.  Though if a bounty-point system were to be taken seriously, I'd imagine incremental table fills would give you diminishing points or structured in a way that makes sense - you can't just print money.  For example, the bulk of the bounty economy would be made of existing points.  Or maybe even that rings as impure for some people, and you don't want your humble hobby of Doom speedrunning corrupted in some way or whatever.  Dunno, but fun to think about.

Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head with "speed-wads like Junkfood, ode2poopbutt, etc, piling up back to back, the genre can burn out.".

That's all i seem to see on the DSDA homepage, so you can see why i have this opinion lately.

You say the index isn't setup to be taken seriously, but that's not quite what has been happening; When I first started speedrunning, you would be correct nobody cared about index and it was more about making quality runs that people wanted to watch and of course tablefilling some of the older 'good' wads.

But some where along the line (Maybe from 2019-2021?) the notion seemed to shift towards 'Oh number goes up, cool'.
I can agree with your suggestion of redoing the index system so it seems appealing to EVERYONE, not just new runners with notion for numbers.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Bob9001

[GarrettChan]

The index points are still not seriously taken. I don't know why you have to focus on the system. Yeah, the system is flawed and there are potential to be improved, but honestly, what's your real evidence for people caring about the index number?

 

Now it's just you saying "oh number goes up, cool" while I almost never saw people treated it this way. Also, MP runs don't provide any index, but I've seen more people actually trying to do MP runs lately, so this is obviously against the people only caring about index number mindset.