Question for Mappers who are also speedrunners

[Telehack]

As a Mapper and Speedrunner do you purposefully make exploits like being able to skip a section if you SR50 over a platform or do the doom2 speedrunning trick where you can slide through the 24px wide spaces in the starting area, to cater towards other speedrunners and or for yourself, or do you make sure to plug up exploits like that so speedrunners can play the full level without "cheating" because you know those common exploits

[besus]

I used to block them but now I actively put glides (also they're 32px gaps not 24)and deathslides in if they either make for a fun or challenging enough speedrun that isn't an RNG gambling run because they never actually affect the first playthrough experience of the map if hidden well enough. SR50s are common knowledge to an extent so they would either be way too simple to not be mistaken for intended secret progression or way too precise to be fun so personally I don't put them in. Same for item bumps. If I'm mapping for something that the player would expect tricks then ofc I would put in tricks, even the obscure ones.

[Ravendesk]

In short, I don't add skips intentionally, but if I notice a potential skip, then, if I think it might be fun, I leave it in and make sure it doesn't result in a softlock. But I don't specifically test it - it might be possible, might be not - I don't care as long as its not a softlock. If it's not fun (e.g. leads to a boring cheese), I often remove it. I also usually remove glides because I don't find them fun (but not always). I also try to avoid a simple sr50 being enough to skip progression, because for many people sr50 is a very normal thing to do as a part of normal gameplay.

 

I think part of the fun of speedrunning is discovering those skips yourself, so when mapper intentionally adds them, it's less interesting. Also that's why speedrunners often don't report bugs and skips they found in early RC versions of wads. Don't want mappers to remove fun stuff :p

 

All of this is about "normal" maps of course. Mapsets like d5da are different because these are explicitly designed around tricks and exploits.

[Jacek Bourne]

Most of the time I won’t add exploits but what I do with them is the same regardless of whether I made them or someone else found them. If an exploit is possible, then it is a trade off. If, it lets you deal with something faster then it will also be harder than the section is normally. If it allows you to do something safer then it will also have to take longer than the usual methods. I like this kind of design because it treats exploits in the map as game mechanics and balances around them meaning that knowing the exploits doesn’t exactly make the map easier to speedrun or trivialize encounters. Instead it just broadens your choices to deal with fights while maintaining the time or difficulty balance.

[Kinetic]

Most of the time I find it better to leave in speedrunning tricks, and there are sometimes where I specifically aim to make a map very speedrunnable, which doesn't just include adding tricks and skips, but also focusing on map length, relative difficulty of the map, and how nonlinear/looping the map design is.

 

I don't usually like plugging up exploits, especially skips, since it only benefits speedrunners, and the only people who are aware of such skips and/or skilled enough to execute them are speedrunners...you wont find your average doomworld citizen doing a Thingrun against an enemy to skip a gap, and if there is someone doing that, it's 1/100. The average player doesn't even know what a glide is or how to do one if they do know of it, they probably don''t think to use archvile jumps or rocket jumps to skip very often either. If there's a cheese, I also leave it in since people really like cheese usually from a player perspective, since if the fights too hard they can feel good about outsmarting it, but the people who are good enough to actually do it will still enjoy playing the encounter or fight. Also cheese can be very bad for speedrunning at times, like a cheese that makes a fight super easy and consistent but is super slow.

[BiZ]

speedrunners may be the only people to play your map more than once, so I tend to leave skips in if they are found since they are fun to watch in demos. I generally don't make the skips on purpose though. I will also leave in cheese strats for fights if they are slower than doing the fight normally..

[Andrea Rovenski]

I don't understand removing skips because most people will play it once and not know its there, and speedrunners will love it. For me, when designing a map, if there's a trick discovered I will leave it in unless it breaks the map in some way (like lineskips can). Sometimes I will also add bonus areas that require speedrun strats or other things. I like/want to motivate people to learn how to speedrun the game, too, or at least learn some of the techniques. 

[SleepyVelvet]

It depends on how cool the skip is vs how cool the content is that they are skipping. 

 

In sandbox maps in particular, ones with a lot of routing options (where the route planning is a large part of the fun as well), I would usually plug the skip here that lets you just exit in under 30 seconds.

 

It also depends on how different-vs-redundant the UV-Speed vs the UV-Max playthrough is on the map.  The Max playthrough will usually cover the cool content anyways, so consider that.

 

It also depends on how much the mapper should really care about these things in the first place.  If one is sweating over this decision, they are overthinking it.  If it's not worth it, don't let distractions over community hivemind opinion bog down your focus, nor let it make you skittish.  Just make the map!

[kvothesixstring]

I only just recently started mapping. Currently working on a project that requires speedrun tricks lol. So I am a fan of leaving them in. If a skip can be done accidentally then I would fix it. Like Andrea said, lineskips can break things making a map unmaxable or softlocking the player. That stuff should probably be fixed. But I think that the majority of runners would agree that we would rather have a trick to do than not. And Biz makes a good point, speedrunners are the ones who will be playing your maps the most, so leaving something for us to have fun with is a great way to have a group of people always waiting for you to release new maps. 

 

I don't think that any map I've played has been hurt by having skips. Glides are a good one. Locking off fights with 32 unit gapped bars will allow you to keep the majority of people locked into the experience you are looking to create while still leaving the option for speedrunners. 

 

Trying to appease everyone however is a losing game. So make the map you want to make and let the speedruns sort themselves out. 

[Sesamia]

It's rare for me to intentionally add a skip in a level, but if I find them I tend to leave them in if I can.  If I think it's too easy to pull off, if it results in a soft-lock, or if it causes a game breaking sequence break then I usually remove them.