Fastest Retcon Time

[blackmatter615]

Im interested in hearing opinions on this. Should fastest retcon be organized according days or time?

I myself lean towards time, therefore someone who is doing a food restriction as an equal chance as someone who isn't.

[TeKRunneR]

Time might make some sense in no-pull runs. But as soon as you've got at least some pulls, the fastest runs time-wise would involve pulling a Scottish kilt to run away from everything while you slowly crawl up the levels with SQUID discs. At the very least, a 10-day run with some pulls would have a massive advantage over a 4-dayer.
None of that really sounds right to me.

[Corrupt Shadow]

Days.

[Ryme]

I myself lean towards time, therefore someone who is doing a food restriction as an equal chance as someone who isn't.

Some thinking did go into this. As others note, going days>time requires overall efficiency, while time>days essentially boils down to gimmicky runs that take months to be "perfect." I'd rather encourage the former and discourage the latter.

Don't worry, in the advanced retcon history pages (that I'll eventually come out with) you'll be able to search by various factors and can compare in many different ways, depending on your interests.

[Satan]

I myself lean towards time, therefore someone who is doing a food restriction as an equal chance as someone who isn't.

Some thinking did go into this. As others note, going days>time requires overall efficiency, while time>days essentially boils down to gimmicky runs that take months to be "perfect." I'd rather encourage the former and discourage the latter.

Don't worry, in the advanced retcon history pages (that I'll eventually come out with) you'll be able to search by various factors and can compare in many different ways, depending on your interests.

Um, that doesn't make sense. The gimmicky runs are likely to consist of 1 day or perhaps a few more (see first and most troublesome gimmick run). Why would the gimmicky runs take more days? The only thing that affects days is, you actually hit the 7 AM cap on a non-Frayday and have to finish afterwards, or you have limited caffeine/sugar and it simply took more days to get enough turns... Frankly, if a run takes 5 days due to a caffeine restriction, but I took half as long to complete the run as a guy who did the run in 3 days without the caffeine restriction, I'm the more efficient one. The absolute only time the number of days should factor in to the board is if two people somehow have the exact same run time >.> Again, you keep gimmicky runs off the boards by preventing gimmicky runsfrom succeeding. Punishing legitimately strategized runs simply because they took more rollovers doesn't make sense :/

[TeKRunneR]

Why would the gimmicky runs take more days? The only thing that affects days is, you actually hit the 7 AM cap on a non-Frayday and have to finish afterwards, or you have limited caffeine/sugar and it simply took more days to get enough turns...

As I said not very long ago in this thread, more days = more free runaways, pulls, squid discs, etc. Basically you'd take away pull management from speed runs.

I do agree that it makes little sense that 1-dayers will dominate all but the 15+ tier. However, my feeling is that it's more of a point system problem (all-item runs are not penalized heavily enough) than anything else.

[TeKRunneR]

gimmicky runs

I personally don't have a problem with gimmicky runs. I do however think it's too bad that there's a unique optimal way (I suppose there might be some variations, but the gist of it is always the same) to get to the top of 3 of 4 leaderboards. Kinda defeats the point of having separate boards in the first place, don't you think?

[Ryme]

The gimmicky runs are likely to consist of 1 day or perhaps a few more (see first and most troublesome gimmick run). Why would the gimmicky runs take more days?

The current 1-day run isn't a gimmick. It's a run played normally under the constraints of the run. I understand you have objections to it, but that doesn't make it a gimmick. I agree with some of the others that it's a little troublesome how far up the boards you can get with all items, and we're looking into that.

But we've already said it twice in this very thread how the gimmicks work. Take two months. Pull everything you need, even at 5 pulls/day. Use red eyes and kilt runaways, and squid discs for leveling. Have a run with the bare minimum amount of time. It'll be something like 60 days and 11 hours, and isn't something I believe should be on top of a proper leaderboard. That's far more a gimmick than anything you're talking about.

Note that I have no problem with people doing these runs, and in fact there's a challenge to them, but I don't think they should top the leaderboards, as basically encourages players to do everything they can to take as long as they can, and I don't think that'd be satisfying for most people.

Perhaps make it so that each additional day counts as a penalty, in terms of ranking. IE: 5 days = +10 hours to the overall run, or something like that. It wont actually be 10 hours extra, but would be ranked as such for the board.

In theory something like this might make a little sense. In practice, it's a no-win situation. Nobody will agree on what the "fair" conversion rate is. It adds enough math to the boards it'll confuse the hell out of a lot of players as they try to figure out how things work.

My suggestion overall though, is that maybe there should be a retcon board based over the past X days, or Months of completion.

Yes. This is 100% the plan, and always has been. But it's so early, I don't know what X is. It's certainly longer than we've been playing so far, so I'm waiting for some crowded boards before turning this feature on.

[Harry Dresden]

I think a board based on the last 60 days would be sufficient. A person can do 3 Maso runs in that time, and 12+ <15 mettle runs in that time. And as people get more skill points from prior runs, even the >15 mettle runs will be accomplished in 3-4 days I think.

As for Valera's run...... it would take months to farm/buy enough SQUID disks to repeat that. The only reason she could do it was because she was farming them for a stunt 1-50 without turns transmog run.

[Satan]

Clearly my understanding of a gimmick run is different than yours, Ryme.

"But we've already said it twice in this very thread how the gimmicks work. Take two months. Pull everything you need, even at 5 pulls/day. Use red eyes and kilt runaways, and squid discs for leveling. Have a run with the bare minimum amount of time. It'll be something like 60 days and 11 hours, and isn't something I believe should be on top of a proper leaderboard. That's far more a gimmick than anything you're talking about."

I'm not sure how it's suddenly a gimmick for a run to take 60 days and 11 hours, and it's not when it took 1 day and 11 hours, simply because it took longer to pull the items. The actions performed are exactly the same, it just took more real-life time to do it because of pull limits.

And in response to Val, I'm not sure what you're going on about. This is something I've discussed with Ryme before, I haven't brought it up on the public forums. It's not your run I'm criticizing. I have no problems with your run. I have problems with it taking up board space, but that's not what this thread or that post is about. My main argument in the post is that run time should be the merit by which runs are judged. It's been my argument all along that anything which cheapens that shouldn't be allowed, but that's a tangent.

And, you probably don't recall this, but I was also the one who said a cap should be put on xp gains from robots. My initial point in doing it was to see how far it would go. When Ryme said he wasn't going to put a cap on it because it couldn't effect retcon, I continued to do it because I had nothing else to do in the game. Since those boards are mostly a function of time and mindless effort, I don't see anything wrong with gimmicks on them... I'm certainly not going to be wasting my time on it, but anyone who wants to is welcome. The difference is that the run time boards should be a function of skill (and RNG, but mostly skill). So yeah, it bothers me that a gimmick run can be on the board. If I was to do a gimmick run like that, I wouldn't want it to be up there either.

But back to the original topic, there's a difference between two people with the same pull restrictions haven't different day kinds because they didn't strategize pulls, and one person having a lower day count because they had a lower pull restriction than the other. Clearly there's no reason for the guy who had lower restrictions to be placed ahead of the guy who had higher restrictions, it should be based on run time. But in the case of the former, I've found that even at 5 pulls per day, all vital items will be pulled well before you get to the mick. There really is very little gain in postponing to get more pulls. But meh- that's my opinion. I'm working on minimizing both, so it doesn't really matter to me.

[Corrupt Shadow]

There's no such thing as a "gimmicky run", in my opinion. If someone has item(s) that help their run go faster, that's just a benefit from donations, continual playing, etc.

[Ryme]

Well, that's why I consider a 2-month, 12-hour run gimmicky. Any time you're intentionally wasting available turns to get more advantages from extra days (especially in a case where you're doing this for months to hyper-optimize something), I'd say it's not normal play.

I also don't want to encourage this kind of play. I think most people would get bored with it and want to leave. It's a silly sort of competition to foster.

[blackmatter615]

I also don't want to encourage this kind of play. I think most people would get bored with it and want to leave. It's a silly sort of competition to foster.

So most people would get bored with their own stupid decision? Thats why they arent locked into run restrictions and can drop them at any time. Obviously the best run is one that minimizes both days and time, but there will always be runs like Vals, and there should also be people who take the other extreme. Both take so much planning, time acquiring goods, and optimization that I would say both are valid run types to do, but could easily take a month or more to setup. So with the regular boards being reset every now and then, I dont forsee these runs dominating the boards because most people would rather do a 3 day run than a 20-30 day run. If I can choose to view the runs by time (or class or any other of a dozen options) rather than day in retcon boards v 2.0 then I will gladly shut up about this discussion.

[Strlikecrazy]

There's no such thing as a "gimmicky run", in my opinion. If someone has item(s) that help their run go faster, that's just a benefit from donations, continual playing, etc.

Nicely put CS.

[Ryme]

I also don't want to encourage this kind of play. I think most people would get bored with it and want to leave. It's a silly sort of competition to foster.

So most people would get bored with their own stupid decision?

If my game rewards that kind of play, it's not *their* decision, it's my decision, and it goes from "stupid" to "optimal." That's why I don't want to do anything to encourage it. The current setup is thus better in my eyes because of that.

[Cristiona]

Oh! Oh! Oh! I get to say it!

Ahem.

The leaderboards are not the game.

Woohoo! Oh! And while I'm at it: This makes maso easier!

[Ryme]

Damn it, Cris. Now I'm going to have to make a mini-game called "The Mall" so when all the people say "the mall is not the game" I'll have to say, "Uh, actually it is."

[Jesus]

The Mall...

...is not the Event.


(snicker)

[TeKRunneR]

So, if "optimal" is entirely a choice of the player, why would the structure of the leaderboards matter to anyone?

[Harry Dresden]

Because people can't feel good about themselves unless they're better than at least several other people?

[Ryme]

Stop thinking like you're the only type of player there is, Ryme...

I'm not thinking like any type of player, Val. I'm thinking like the game designer, who has to cater to lots of different types of players, has to do his best to keep as many people interested for as long as possible, and has to deal with the complaints when something doesn't work.

It's not at all an issue of doing it the way I would want it done if I played--I don't play here, and don't have a stake in the game that way. I'm just trying to make it more fun for more people. Inevitably that makes some things less fun for some people, and sometimes it's hard to know which way to go, but this particular case isn't anywhere near a close call.

[Hawksmoor]

However, my feeling is that it's more of a point system problem (all-item runs are not penalized heavily enough) than anything else.

I agree that there are some problems with the point values in the system. I feel like caffeine (and maybe sugar) restrictions aren't valued highly enough, and that pull restrictions are very difficult to value correctly. A player such as myself that has all the donation items and a stock of various other items from my time playing the game gets a lot more value out of having pulls, while someone who's only been here a month and is on their first retcon run won't get the same level of help from pulling items. In addition, I'm not sure that not being able to use sugar is necessarily equivalent to having to wait until level 9 to recruit your sidekick, for example. I don't think the existing leaderboards do a very good job of comparing runs within a given bracket because of these different issues.

I'll probably get hated for this, but is there any chance that the current leaderboards could be done away with (or perhaps shuffled off behind a link) once the expanded leaderboards are instituted, so that the people that care about such comparisons see a better comparison as the default? I feel that players are done a disservice by having their runs lumped in with other runs that have chosen the most optimal set of restrictions for speed, just because the restrictions they selected crossed some arbitrary threshold.

[Cristiona]

A player such as myself that has all the donation items and a stock of various other items from my time playing the game gets a lot more value out of having pulls, while someone who's only been here a month and is on their first retcon run won't get the same level of help from pulling items.

Well, yeah, but there's not really much that can be done about that short of assigning different pull values to every item in the game, which would be... weird. I guess it could be as simple as simply assigning two points to donation items, but that would probably raise complaints of "Why does a King's Boomerang have the same value as a Hero's Cape?" Which would then lead to placing values on IotM individually, which would be an even bigger pain, and would probably lead to valuing non-donation items as well (a cup of coffee the same as Exigen-C? A bundle of kindling the same as the Golem's Glock?). Yeah, I'm building a slippery slope here, but I more trying to illustrate that old cliche that "The perfect is the enemy of the good".

In other words, yeah, the points-to-pulls system is a little screwy, but it's not really possible to improve it in any meaningful way. To be even more blunt: donation items are pretty much always going to be better, and 5 pulls of IotM are going to beat out 5 pulls of non-IotM. Frankly, I don't see it as an issue. Especially since there's a no-item option to level that playing field.

In addition, I'm not sure that not being able to use sugar is necessarily equivalent to having to wait until level 9 to recruit your sidekick, for example.

This is a reasonable point, but I don't see an easy way to fix this, short of dramatic means. I mean, if we doubled the mettle awards (and thus the Nocturne prices), we'd have more wiggle room, maybe making no sugar 3 points while no sidekick is 4, but I don't think that'll make a huge difference. Maybe 5x for more ranges, but that's getting silly.

I'll probably get hated for this, but is there any chance that the current leaderboards could be done away with (or perhaps shuffled off behind a link) once the expanded leaderboards are instituted

Hated? Nah. That's not a bad idea, depending on what the enhanced boards look like. I mean, if they're just text input boxes or something, then they'd make a bad front page, but if they displayed some kind of meaningful boards as a default, then it'd be fine.

[Strlikecrazy]

From how it sounds Ryme has foreseen all this and is prepared to initiate some new boards once he's seen how a few months of retcons play out. Cheers for that and also cheers to Val. I think her one day run is far from a gimmick and showed us perfectly just what a well planned run done under a certain set of choices can be.

Agreed!

[Satan]

Well planned? She was gathering the supplies for another stunt thing entirely removed from retcon :/ You guys make me want to set one of these gimmick runs up more and more, just to show you how easy it is - RNG permitting, I can get close to Val's time or better.

[Cristiona]

If you think the only reason she managed the run was because of Squid discs, then you're utterly clueless. And this is the third or fourth time you've made this boast about how awesome you are. Put up or shut up already.

[Satan]

Pay attention, Cris. I've specifically been saying that /anyone/ with enough squid discs can do it. After that, it's all RNG. I'm specifically /not/ boasting about it because I'm saying it's something anyone with /any/ clue how to play can do it. Why do you intentionally misunderstand what I say?

[blackmatter615]

e its a lot more than just squid discs and rng satan. There is a lot of planning necessary. You need certain supplies that are dfficult to get to minimize time. We are all sitting here listening to you say that you cna do better, but if you dont plan it out effectively, and dont get close to her time, then you will just blame the RNG, when it is poor planning, or not using certain items that help speed the run up greatly. Things like, do you get a boatload of overclocking chips, or will xentrium equipment be sufficient? What level do you level up to, 15, 20, 30, 50? What order do you run the quests in? Do you bring in bonus skill points, and how many? Which class will you run in? There are a lot of choices here, and this isnt even going into IoTM gear like flouncing and red eye mind tricks. Its not just squid discs+rng. It has more planning involved than a maso run imo.

[Cristiona]

You guys make me want to set one of these gimmick runs up more and more, just to show you how easy it is - RNG permitting, I can get close to Val's time or better.

Yeah. How could I possibly interpret that as boasting?

[Satan]

(Repeating this at the top because it's the most important point to this post, for tl;dr:
Not boasting. Not saying it is an achievement to be able to do this in the slightest. Farm some squid discs, use the attache case and some +items to speed it up. Retcon. Use squid discs. Proceed through quests as fast as possible, wasting time only for RNG. Retcon. Done. Simple. Formula. People. *ragesmashignorance*)

That sentence is saying that it is a ridiculously easy task, and that its main barrier is RNG. This strategy assumes you have all pulls. There are basically two ways to go about it, and if you use the squid discs before even adventuring, it eliminates the need to bring in skill points. If, on the other hand, you wait- well, there aren't too many skills that can help you anyways. The only ones that you need to speed up the run are the +/- combat/noncombat, but even those aren't too necessary. It gets easier if you have iotm's, but it's not necessary. Using red-eye mind tricks makes it a hell of a lot easier, and I'd consider that out of the reach of most people. But what you're not seeming to get is that if you're level 7/8 when you start the quests, you won't need skills even if you don't have iotms. It's fairly simple- listen up now- Use discs to get up to level 6, 7, 8- even 9 if you wanted to, although that seems a bit much- and then go do the quests. Even without minus time equipment, you're guaranteed 4.5 minute turns by level 5, and if you chose to keep the sidekick, you could have -turn time from that. The only stumbling block /at all/ is that you can't find the turn you're looking for, which is where combat/noncombat manipulation comes in. But /if/ RNG is good, you wouldn't need those anyways, and you'd just find the turns you're looking for, kick the enemy's ass because you're well over-powered, and be on your way. As you mentioned red-eye mind tricks, the effect is a small price to pay if you have lots of them to ward off useless time wasting, but that's an entirely different level from what I'm talking about. Most people don't have enough turn saving items to pull off anything too fancy with that.

So do you understand now? How do people /not/ get how frickin' simple this is? It's no more complex than any other run. You don't worry about dying, you find the turns you need, and hope RNG blesses you. RNG will hit you hardest at the casino quest and possibly the level 8 quests, and from there, it's pretty smooth (although level 10 can be a bitch as well). If you think it's so much more complex than that, please, explain to me how you have to worry about dying... Only concern is that it takes too long to get the quest related turn you're looking for. Even with only the 4.5 minutes/turn from heroic efficiency, you're not going to have too terrible of a run time if RNG is good :/ Sure, someone with all that -time will end up with a better time by several hours, but not a huge difference. It'll still be apparent how close it is.

I'll say it one more time for people, since they don't seem to get it if I only say it once. This game make sure you don't die, RNG until you get right turn(s)/item(s), XP grind to level up, get chips if you have to for level up (this is rarely an issue even in limited pulls runs), get next quest, repeat until retcon device acquired. Of course it helps to not make stupid mistakes, but that's true in /any/ run. The dying issue is solved in these runs because one, you're bringing in equipment from previous runs so you can start out decently equipped, iotms or not, and two, you start out with a few levels on you due to squid discs. The chips issue is also solved if you have even a small stockpile built up, since these are necessarily all pulls runs. The largest bottle neck is the XP grind to level up, which can take many, many turns, so if you remove that by using squid discs which don't consume the time necessary for the XP grind, low run times are easy to achieve. Low run times are easy to achieve. Low run times are easy to achieve. Why are low run times easy to achieve? Because most of getting through the quests is just waiting for an adventure to pop up, with a few exceptions. Even those exceptions will work out well RNG permitting. Low run times are easy to achieve. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Not boasting. Not saying it is an achievement to be able to do this in the slightest. Farm some squid discs, use the attache case and some +items to speed it up. Retcon. Use squid discs. Proceed through quests as fast as possible, wasting time only for RNG. Retcon. Done. Simple. Formula. People. *ragesmashignorance*

[the SUPERnaturalist]

just a few of my cents, please dont bite my face off

-all pull runs require essentially no skill to get the LOWEST POSSIBLE timecount OR daycount (which will always be 1).
-some pull runs require iotms but optimization nontheless: yes you can kill everything, but what's the strongest thing you can kill in the least time to get the most exp? how do you finish quests? (and plus in case noone has realized this yet, someone still needs to figure out at which point it becomes better to pull a real item than a best memory ;D)
-no pull runs require a lot of optimization. everyone starts the same and the choices you make determine the run, and it's hella difficult
-rng swing has a lot to do with it but a consistent speedrunner should be able to beat it in the long run (you only need ONE really good run to pwn the leaderboard)
-the fact however that there IS a formula for a run DOESNT make it require no skill. EVERY run with ANY possible combination of items has a "solution" so to speak to get the fastest run given those items. the "no skill" accusation comes in when the formula for a run becomes what 2nd grade arithmetic is to modern algebra.

attempts at a solution:
obvious ones:
no pull runs vs pull runs: separate leaderboards
increase mettle penalties/rewards (yes i know people will argue about it forever, but you can keep tweaking it until turncounts between similar mettle runs are roughly the same, at which point you'll know you're doing it right)
have more leaderboards all displayed on the same page, or just a whole bunch of sections, like Kol does.
more unlockable items for different run types (hell make an unlockable for EVERY run type there is, yeah it'll take a hella long time to come up with stuff but it's not like we're going anywhere)

opinions:
-dont limit squid discs. just because something works doesnt always mean it needs a nerf
even iotm choices will begin to become debatable as more iotms are implemented
-"put up or shut up" isn't a nice thing to say
-suboptimal or "cheap" runs should ALWAYS be allowed, but never required, and, perhaps more importantly, not as rewarding
-like it's been said: the leaderboards aren't the game.
-a personal opinion: currently, runs from 0-14 might as well be put together, and 15-17,17-20, and 22 mettle runs in separate brackets. (because just because ryme doesnt wanna try to make amount of mettle given reflect difficulty doesnt mean he can't make the leaderboards do so)
-another personal opinion: squid discing in 1 day is just as gimmicky as waiting 3 months so that the only turns you've spent are on quests. both deserve to be viable choices, but neither should be the best one
-satan has a problem with val's run taking up leaderboard space: there is absolutely no reason why it should not, however it does seem pretty lame to have that kind of run be what anything under the 15 mettle bracket requires to be speedy (see above point about new brackets)
-if you can commend someone for having a lot of squid discs or ouch items you can also reward people with the sheer inner strength to be able to play only 4 or 5 dozen turns a day
-retcon will probably never be perfect. nbd, play on.

a note to those decrying how overworked ryme is:
i'm glad ryme even spends any time making TH, knowing how tiring it is. but however ryme having too high of a workload should be a reason for something not to happen. i'm sure i'm not the only person who can wait for a new/changed game mechanic. (i dont want to say we because people always disagree with me) *I* personally never ask ryme for any agme mechanic NOW, just thaat it gets done eventually. hell, retcon took years, but it got done in the end and that's what matters

questions:
did val even use squid discs or did she just smack everything to smithereens with her iotms? (because if the latter is true it goes to show that there's more than one way to even perform a really easy 1 day run, and that it SHOULD have a leaderboard)

the question of the thread was: days or hours?
my question is, why not both? one for days one for hours, let the people who wanna play by each way have at it.

now if you'll excuse me i have a 20 page physics lab writeup due in 5 hours

[Satan]

Not sure how and I don't see why this turned into a issue with Val's run discussion but what it seems Satan is offended by is that Val came up with a pretty damn good pulls run. Equipment in general and Discs in particular are the key ingredients to having the "optimal" pulls runs. How is it a gimmick to use your equipment in a run that allows equipment? There seems to be some chapped ass that it could be done again or even better, well, isn't that what leaderboards are for? Do it! I don't want to see leaderboards for the fastest run types that have footnotes that say "ohh, but she used this bit of non-hacked, non-broken equipment so I don't think it should really count." If ya want ta see fast runs that don't use discs then wait til Ryme gets out the no pulls boards or the other search factors he has hinted at. Or, if ya want to have different runs with various equipment on the nil then beg poor overworked Ryme to generate us a few more retcon choices in addition to fielding all our leaderboards complaints.

I've been saying since the introduction of SQUID discs that they would be broken and allow people to do very fast runs if Ryme didn't limit them. Val certainly was not the first person to think of this. The point is that it's entirely broken if you can save xp in item form for all pulls without it at all affecting your run time. It doesn't make sense that one can be level 30 before even spending a single turn (this is what Val did). There /should/ be a limit to SQUID disc uses. I mean, are you going to argue that caffeine and sugar shouldn't be limited? They give you time, which is largely used to get xp during retcon, and items and chips. The fact that you can get an infinite amount of xp in 0 time doesn't make sense in terms of gameplay balance or narrative.

[the SUPERnaturalist]

they're not broken because you need a lot of em and because they do exactly what ryme intended them to do: give exp

they're not even like iotms where only donators have em. anyone can farm up a whole bunch throughout the course of their normal runs and just decide to take a run off and squid disc through it all