Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos

You are vastly underestimating my levels there Tenka. One party had average level of 15, but the other two parties had levels over 20. I actually barely ran at all for the first three zones (the lower leveled party just found what they needed more quickly). It may have been the perception that I barely prepared at all, but I really just ignored messing around with Espers for a long time, a decision I still defend.

I agree that a race to the switch room (finding all nine shops, I'm assuming?) would be better, but I think that there needs to be more incentive to actually fight and not just run away, since there would be less if we're not going as far, and simply running and hoping for the best might be too good a strategy. Perhaps limit the number of times we are allowed to run from fights (no running would probably be pretty brutal)?

I almost think the difficulty of speedcave shouldn't try to ramp up to endgame difficulty. It does seem to be made for racing, so I think it should be reasonably completed in a race scenario.

The thing about a three hour race is that honestly, nobody was even prepared enough in the four hour race to take on the final segment. Abyss rushed through and made it (maybe he avoided the inescapable encounter that killed me the three times I tried the centre route?), but his characters were not adequately prepared to make it through either, I suspect. I don't see what it would add.

I think the idea was that the shops wouldn't be required, since there's a doable end goal.

Anyway yeah, I didn't really expect anyone to make it through the endgame in four hours, but I don't want to take the final segment out of the cave. Ostensibly the speedcave is supposed to be balanced around vanilla settings and if that's the case I don't think an experienced player would have much trouble with the final segment at all.

Regarding me getting to the 10th shop, I did get the game over on that inescapable encounter once. On my second attempt I forced an extra encounter before that map so I would be able to walk through it without falling into that trap again.

I like the idea of limiting the number of fights we could run from, as part of a race to reach the 3 switch room. Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly how we could efficiently limit the number of fights we could run from. Sure, we could say, we can run from 0 battles, but there are times I've legitimately run from battles out of danger, not out of speedrunning. Additionally, sometimes there are encounters that are basically impossible for the area they can show up in, though that might have been phased out by this version. I remember in one of my first runs, there was an enemy with 30k-ish HP, Atomic Ray, and 800 damage physicals outside of Kohlingen in the WoB. If something like that were to come up in a no running race, we'd just have to pick a god and pray that we never see it at all.

On the other hand, limiting number of escapes to x might be difficult as well, because there's no way I'm going to be able to keep track of that AND the dungeon layout all at once without some paper or something.

I really have no suggestions as to what the ideal option should be, I just figured I'd point out the possible obstacles with the methods I could think of.

I don't really like restrictions that are designed to enforce a certain playstyle, but if I had to come up with one, I'd say that you would only be allowed to run by using items or the Warp spell.

I think the idea was that the shops wouldn't be required, since there's a doable end goal.

Yeah, I guess that's fair, it would end up probably the same length as Kefka @ Narshe.

Anyway yeah, I didn't really expect anyone to make it through the endgame in four hours, but I don't want to take the final segment out of the cave. Ostensibly the speedcave is supposed to be balanced around vanilla settings and if that's the case I don't think an experienced player would have much trouble with the final segment at all.

Yeah, but does anybody actually race with near vanilla settings? If most people aren't doing that anyways, perhaps you should balance around the speedcave settings we are using (or make a separate mode altogether). Otherwise it ends up like how Nintendo seems to consider Time mode somewhat of a "default" mode for Smash Bros. even though everybody plays Stock.

Regarding me getting to the 10th shop, I did get the game over on that inescapable encounter once. On my second attempt I forced an extra encounter before that map so I would be able to walk through it without falling into that trap again.

I hard reset to change encounters up completely every time (which is essentially equivalent). No dice, my luck was just bad.

EDIT: It's not really forcing a playstyle, more just forcing you to play the game at all. If you can play through with team 1 (which is set up to be the best team you can make), get some good equips and the Warp spell, then rush everybody else up to level 5 and run through the rest with a perfect defense character or something it would get stupid quickly IMO. All you'd need is a little luck to avoid some inescapables and you wouldn't really even be playing the game.

Cecil, you voiced pretty much all the qualms that I had with my own idea, but didn't have time to mention when I posted that. My only thought on a way to keep a counter was to adjust the colour settings in the config menu (say, set Blue to 0 at the start of the race and increment it each time you run), but that would be awkward as all get out, I'll admit. It would have the advantage over paper of resetting it when you die though.

Only warping by Items would be cool, except that buying them in shops might be too much. Warp spell being a limiter is right out IMO. That would probably do almost nothing.

Well, Warp isn't too common of a spell to be obtained by Espers, it might not save a lot of time if the commands are good(consider Warp vs. R-Water if enemies don't absorb water element), and people aren't going to go too far out of the way for Warp, I don't think. Probably the biggest deal is the MP cost, unless you get Osmose AND Warp, you're probably not going to be able to cast Warp too many times with an MP cost of 20. However, I will readily admit that Economizers are not that difficult to find(I've got 1 or 2 in my current run). However, I think with all of these variables, in addition to the fact that Warp is only super helpful if the battle is a pincer attack/hard to escape, the usefulness of Warp would vary a lot and consequently not be that big of a deal.

Fair enough, I'll admit I don't really know Speedcave enough to judge easily.

@Lockirby2: sorry about that, appearently i was too much focused on chat, so i misread your avg lvs...

Anyway here's my considerations about running away restrictions...

- No running away -> impossible to win;

- Limited running away -> hard to count, impossible to win if the limit is too low, meaningless if the limit is too high, the avg number of times you have to run away is too much vague and difficult to be determinated and the same for a proper limit number

- Run with warp -> chances you manage to reach the first shop with one of the 3 parties(to save and rest and eventually buying) before you even succeed in finding/learning warp/warp stone are really low and i think the worst thing that can happen in speedcave is dying before saving the first time...
It would be a terrible race both for racers and watchers, trust me.


And that's why searching shops + attempting last 3 shops(theorically the research of the 10th shop) will make you play the mode with a good number of fights, without even setting limits to running away.

The thing about a three hour race is that honestly, nobody was even prepared enough in the four hour race to take on the final segment. Abyss rushed through and made it (maybe he avoided the inescapable encounter that killed me the three times I tried the centre route?), but his characters were not adequately prepared to make it through either, I suspect. I don't see what it would add.

So what's the point here? 4 hours are too much for racing because you spend your time getting walled from bosses; 3 hours are not enough to do anything after the gate you say...
Now what you really should do is find the 10th shop and eventually the others: that's more than enough to make the challenge... then what shall we do? 3 hours and half? As Abyss said we can't just toss away the last part, even if we will just search for the 10th shop. (and this shop really makes the difference)


About racing until the switch i actually don't mind if you keep running away without any limit, if you decide to put this one instead of Narshe race (switch room race as final stage really sucks to me)

Except that the last part of the race after the switch room is not something that anybody really needed to prepare for, so much as rush through and try to get lucky. From our experience before, merely not seeing the inescapable fights was, by that point, more important than everything that had happened to that point (including preparations that were done for the fourth zone, as nobody was truly prepared to do much there). A race past the switch room feels to me like a race to the switch room, then you put whatever time you have left into a slot machine and hope to get something.

We spent nearly three hours just getting to the switch room there. That's why I'm saying a three hour race to the tenth shop is pointless, since we'll probably just get to the switch room anyways unless we're lucky, so we might as well plan around that.

Honestly I still believe that the best option is the race we just did, with the fourth zone being toned down to be doable in a speedrun setting. But of course, that's the hardest option on Abyss even if he agrees with it.

Assuming that it would not require too much effort, Abyss might implement this nerf using another code, rather than modifying speedcave mode, something like "race" code... that would mean that if you input as flag:

1) speedcave -> it will be made a normal speedcave;
2) speedcaverace(speedcave + race) -> it will be made a speedcave with 4th part
nerfed somehow
3) race -> dunno... the best would be that "race" is valid only with speedcave code
or it won't be valid(unless using "speedcaverace" as unique word code isn't too
much heavy to implement)