Well there's always the chance someone will complain about something. But let's say a run like Warp describes is submitted. What would there be to complain about re: difficulty that couldn't be easily dismissed? I'm not thinking of anything.
Probably half the runs on this site, if not more, fall under what Warp described: Runs where the difficulty makes no discernible difference aside from a few extra seconds of repetition. The problem is that people are complaining in the first place, not that their claims can't be easily dismissed. If it makes no difference, why do people complain often enough to necessitate a discussion thread? Shouldn't people want the faster, smoother looking run over the slightly slower and slightly more repetitive version? When a TAS ultimately trivializes the difficulty to the point where all runs look the same, it makes no sense that people would still try to enforce using the hardest difficulty.
I don't want to see the guideline/rule itself changed, because I do believe there are obvious cases where easier difficulties should be forbidden: For example, if the game ends early and tells you to play on a harder difficulty for the true ending, then that's a solid reason to reject a run on Easy. I want to see the attitude of the audience changing to become more relaxed, so that we don't have more prolonged arguments over why a run uses Easy when Hard just means you attack bosses two or three more times.
I probably missed something, but after rewriting this post about 10 times I've stopped caring about making sure it's perfect.
If someone says "I chose easy because it's easier than hard", that's not a good enough reason. That's the definition of an easier difficulty. If someone says "I chose easy because this trick is impossible on hard," and that statement is false, it should be pointed out, not left to cause further misunderstandings.
There seems to be the attitude that any reason given for choosing a lower difficulty has immediately and conclusively dismissed all further discussion on it, and any further mention is a personal affront. I would say that is the bigger problem than people disagreeing and expressing their opinions in a forum specifically for that. If the desired outcome is to squelch all discussion on why a difficulty decision was made and keep people from having to justify why they chose it, then the guideline should be removed entirely.
I'm with Mothrayas on this one. If there is little difference between easy and hard, use hard. If there is significant difference and you choose easy then the onus is on you to justify your choice.
However, I don't like that using easy mode can be used as an argument not to publish, given that, for the majority of TASes (especially platformers) there is minimal difference.
However, I don't like that using easy mode can be used as an argument not to publish, given that, for the majority of TASes (especially platformers) there is minimal difference.
Joined: 4/17/2010
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Warp wrote:
thatguy wrote:
However, I don't like that using easy mode can be used as an argument not to publish, given that, for the majority of TASes (especially platformers) there is minimal difference.
What good is a rule if it's not enforced?
Just use google, okay?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guideline
A guideline is a statement by which to determine a course of action. A guideline aims to streamline particular processes according to a set routine or sound practice. By definition, following a guideline is never mandatory. Guidelines are not binding and are not enforced. ( U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, http://www.va.gov/trm/TRMGlossaryPage.asp )
Guidelines may be issued by and used by any organization (governmental or private) to make the actions of its employees or divisions more predictable, and presumably of higher quality.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
It's because I'm getting closer to things that were my goals for such a long time, and in their intensive light I can more clearly see things I had to deal with earlier, and could not change, because they were part of me. Now I see how their sources were getting into my soul and it helps me preventing that in future. Does that make any sense to you?
Otherwise, being hostile to something counter-productive is a good thing in my eyes. How do I know it's counter-productive? From knowing what being productive is.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I will try, I hope it won't happen again soon after the recent discharging. But gosh those guys called for it.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
The best choice is what makes the best runs, which sometimes (usually) is the hardest difficulty, but in some cases it's not. If choosing a higher difficulty prohibits using certain TAS tricks like damage-taking strategies (because of reduced player HP/increased enemy damage) or only makes boss battles more repetitive (because of reduced player damage/increased enemy HP), then choosing an easier difficulty could be preferable.
I'm in full agreement with this general line of thought. Goals are best chosen with entertainment in high priority, and difficulty choice stems from this.
Mothrayas wrote:
EDIT: What may also need to be taken into account is whether the opportunity of more damage boosting strategies would outclass the harder mode's greater emphasis on health management. This might be a contentious issue.
It might depend on how much of a difference it makes on general gameplay and how high a game's overall potential for variation/entertainment is. For instance, it might be warranted to have an anything-goes easy mode any% that uses all the resources and speed tricks and completes the game quicker, and a more entertainment-oriented hard mode any% that demonstrates the concept of an "invincible" character who never gets hit at all. If the difference would be too subtle to let such runs coexist, it might be worth it to discuss it with the community first and, ideally, run by a judge before committing the main effort.
Mothrayas wrote:
One point I do believe should be discussed is the enforceability of the guideline as it currently stands. As Samsara said, sometimes runs are rejected for not using the hardest difficulty, and sometimes they are not. Currently the difficulty "rule" is only a guideline so it need not be enforced in its current state. However, we'll probably want to handle this more sensibly than "sometimes do enforce it, sometimes don't".
[...]
Personally, I think a better solution would be to enforce playing on the highest difficulty, unless a good case can be made for an easier difficulty run that it would make for a better watch than a highest-difficulty run. Runs that use easier difficulties without good reason would be rejected. I think this is what we already have been doing, but having it fixed on paper as a rule might be good. On the other hand, it might also be considered too restrictive. Thoughts?
Sounds fine to me, but I would point out that the default choice should be the hardest difficulty selectable from power-on. Sometimes, as is the case with arcade-style looping games, the hardest difficulty is offered as an unlockable/second quest/second loop-type option, in which case accessing it immediately requires dirty SRAM (which is not a preferable thing). At one point several years ago we had a very silly situation where all of the Castlevania: SotN started from a dirty SRAM. I think this went way past the line at the time.
Like you said, enforcing hardest difficulty is largely what we've been doing all this time. Difficulty choice is important, and historically defaulted on hardest for a good reason, but similarly there have been good enough reasons for not choosing it in many individual cases. I, too, feel it should be open to variation but without needless laxity. Thus:
1) choose the hardest mode by default;
2) if there are compelling reasons to choose an easier mode, or if the hardest mode cannot be selected from power-on, discuss it using factual examples and illustrations and see what the consensus is (or risk having it scrutinized at the time of submission). Without meaningful consensus, fall back to #1.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
People seem really focused on entertainment, but that seems like a discussion that's over before it begins to me. Any goal choice using any game setup that's sufficiently entertaining has always been acceptable. I think there are two more important things to be focusing on; the situation where there's a run on both an easy difficulty and hard difficulty, and the Vault.
I don't think that anybody has ever tried to obsolete a run on a harder difficulty with a run on an easier one, but if we're going to say that all that matters is speed and entertainment as judged by whatever subset of users is around that month as compared to the original one's, I can certainly see it happening that a run on easy would end up with a higher entertainment score. Obsoleting a run that was more challenging to create simply because of that seems completely wrong.
As for the Vault, its description says that the guidelines for difficulty still apply, but the guidelines are along the lines of "choose the most entertaining". It's contradictory. It's meant to be purely speed records, and if we're focusing solely on speed, that's almost always going to be on the easiest difficulty.
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell)
Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
Obsoleting a run that was more challenging to create simply because of that seems completely wrong.
This would a valid concern, but speedruns in general are agnostic to the precedent challenge. Hundreds of runs were at one point improved (oftentimes by different players) by fixing a relatively simple oversight, or a strategic change, or by utilizing a newly discovered skip, allowing easy gains for comparatively less effort. For the sake of the progress this is a necessary evil. The only reason at all that we have all the different categories aside from any% (and 100% where applicable) is because it's entertainment that demands it.
If a run on easier difficulty allows more impressive character choreography or resource management, and the audience and judge find them as such, then it shouldn't be a problem. It would only be a problem when choosing the easier difficulty amounts to trivializing the content, achieving the goal opposite to the situation in my previous example. In fact, an easy mode run that requires more resource planning and more precise choreography would take more effort to create as well, resolving your concern.
To give you another example of a hard → easy obsoletion, that would be Contra: Hard Corps. The initial runs were done on the US version where a single hit equaled death. In 2007 the TASers doing this game, starting with Ash Williams, switched to the Japanese version that had a lifebar allowing several hits to be taken before deaths. While normally it would be considered easy mode (it is significantly easier when played in realtime), nobody complained because they got to see additional damage boosts, and it was deemed entertaining enough to reestablish the obsoletion chain.
Tangent wrote:
As for the Vault, its description says that the guidelines for difficulty still apply, but the guidelines are along the lines of "choose the most entertaining". It's contradictory. It's meant to be purely speed records, and if we're focusing solely on speed, that's almost always going to be on the easiest difficulty.
It's because TASVideos's purpose is not that of a catalogue or a sports authority. We're an entertainment site first and foremost. First the difficulty is chosen, and the chain of obsoletion that follows is thereby constrained to the initial choice; a precedent law of sorts. It seems contradictory at first, but as soon as the initial submission is established, it doesn't have to change unless there's a very compelling case that would probably even be enough to take it out of the Vault in the first place.
There are two reasons the concept of Vault has been created at all: 1) oftentimes, even in the case of an extremely bad/linear game, sufficient competition may breed content that becomes generally entertaining; 2) if there are people willing to exert effort TASing those games, then surely there is an audience that might be interested in seeing those games, bad as they are. That audience is also valuable, and discarding it outright was something that interfered with the site's progress. (I, for one, am very pleased with its present content structure.)
No matter how you look at it, TASVideos's goals and rules have always relied heavily on entertainment. This is, in my opinion, the right way to go.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Derp.
It doesn't look like there was any difference as far as the gameplay went there though, so I'd consider it an edge case against one where there WOULD be actual differences impacting things.
moozooh wrote:
Tangent wrote:
As for the Vault, its description says that the guidelines for difficulty still apply, but the guidelines are along the lines of "choose the most entertaining". It's contradictory. It's meant to be purely speed records, and if we're focusing solely on speed, that's almost always going to be on the easiest difficulty.
It's because TASVideos's purpose is not that of a catalogue or a sports authority. We're an entertainment site first and foremost. First the difficulty is chosen, and the chain of obsoletion that follows is thereby constrained to the initial choice; a precedent law of sorts. It seems contradictory at first, but as soon as the initial submission is established, it doesn't have to change unless there's a very compelling case that would probably even be enough to take it out of the Vault in the first place.
It's practically mantra that decisions of the past aren't binding precedent for future decision, so this seems both wrong and counter to what most decisions that have been made for games played on the easiest difficulty have stated re: runs on a harder difficulty would obsolete, even if slower.
I've changed my opinion over time on the topic of difficulty, I used to think hard mode was the way to go, but now i'm convinced that for just health and enemy count differences easy is a better choice.
I did a non-optimal ssw run on hard and it wasn't nearly as good as the easy run that was published later.
My original thought process is that the tas can do everything so putting the game in the hardest mode should be the most impressive. I think that statement is generally good, but it falls apart for games like ssw that took the lazy way and just gave the enemies more health for hard mode and nothing else
It's practically mantra that decisions of the past aren't binding precedent for future decision, so this seems both wrong and counter to what most decisions that have been made for games played on the easiest difficulty have stated re: runs on a harder difficulty would obsolete, even if slower.
But... this is exactly how categories work on every speedrun site ever. A category is established by a local authority figure and it remains the same unless there is a compelling reason for it to change. It makes perfect sense, what's so hard to understand about this? It's exactly because certain aspects of speedruns are unquantifiable and that the voters are an ever-changing vocal minority that judges exist to decide what works and what doesn't, making decisions that are supposed to make the site better.
With regards to easy mode runs accepted with a purported future reestablishment of an obsoletion chain, that typically happened because they improved upon runs so heavily outdated that by that virtue alone they were far more technically impressive than their predecessors. It is a populist decision of sorts, but it is a special case that is not granted on a daily basis. It furthers the goals of entertainment and improvement of the site's content while trying to make the proper rule set known.
What exactly is your stance on the subject, anyway? You seem to be worried about things that are already in (relatively) working order. In your six years on the site you must have familiarized yourself with its workings enough so I don't have to recite them.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
But... this is exactly how categories work on every speedrun site ever. A category is established by a local authority figure and it remains the same unless there is a compelling reason for it to change. It makes perfect sense, what's so hard to understand about this? It's exactly because certain aspects of speedruns are unquantifiable and that the voters are an ever-changing vocal minority that judges exist to decide what works and what doesn't, making decisions that are supposed to make the site better.
Perhaps what would help is if we nailed down what "very compelling" means, because I assume you were referring to something like additional tricks or major differences, which won't be the case for most difficulty changes. Most difficulty bumps upward will be more or less the same gameplay, only tighter, better managed, and with less room for error, but by and large will not produce drastically different runs. And to reiterate, that's not how it has seemed to historically ever work for going from easier difficulties to harder. That in and of itself is reason enough and breaks the 'precedent.'
With regards to easy mode runs accepted with a purported future reestablishment of an obsoletion chain, that typically happened because they improved upon runs so heavily outdated that by that virtue alone they were far more technically impressive than their predecessors. It is a populist decision of sorts, but it is a special case that is not granted on a daily basis. It furthers the goals of entertainment and improvement of the site's content while trying to make the proper rule set known.
And like I said, I think that's a poor way to handle it as it depends by and large on who happens to be around at the time. On top of that, aside from the top beloved runs, the novel is always going to win over the old. I'd specify only in very few cases should the difficulty be allowed to go backward from harder to easier.
What exactly is your stance on the subject, anyway? You seem to be worried about things that are already in (relatively) working order. In your six years on the site you must have familiarized yourself with its workings enough so I don't have to recite them.
You're conflating disagreement with ignorance. Of course I know how it works. I disagree with some parts of how it works, and even above and beyond that, I want it to work better. See also the poll question.
In my own personal idyllic dream world, that hardest difficulty should be mandatory for the Vault, and should be required elsewhere unless the only thing that an upper difficulty adds is a test of endurance/patience. I'm 100% sure that's not going to be what comes of this (these discussions seem more of a venting grounds anyway). I disagree with some of the reasons people have been given and don't believe that it's as simple as they're making it in regards to just entertainment and speed. For example, Nobunaga's Ambition for a recent example, as many hours as I lost to it when I was younger, is basically devoid of entertainment in a TAS setting. Obsoleting that run for one on Easy because the Easy run is faster and more entertaining (ie less tedious/repetitive) is entirely inappropriate to me, but if the runs look basically the same and use the same strategies, but we prefer the faster and more entertaining one, that's what'd happen.
What I'd reasonably hope to see come from this discussion is if this were more codified one way or the other and not applied as haphazardly as it is now. eg, if easy difficulty cuts out entire stages, game mechanics, or major sections of gameplay, it's not acceptable to use.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Started writing this a few hours ago but had to step out. Oh well.
I'd like to reiterate that the guideline we have in place is fine, and we should continue to encourage people to use the hardest difficulty. I just don't want to see this guideline too strictly enforced. The difficulty shouldn't have to be a precedent that's set by one run or another. Harder difficulty runs have obsoleted easier difficulty runs, and easier difficulty runs have obsoleted harder difficulty runs. It should be a case-by-case, game-by-game basis for the most part.
What I want to know is what, precisely, people find entertaining enough to warrant a difficulty switch. Do we judge how impressive the run is on its own, not taking the difficulty into mind? Or is our entertainment based on seeing the word HARD flash up for a moment before the run? What we need to start seeing is more runs done on easier difficulties so that we can properly compare them to hardest difficulty runs to see just how similar they are. TASers usually make the right judgement calls in regards to difficulty, whether it be using Hardest because it's vastly more entertaining or using Easiest because it allows for insane routes and tons of speed that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
How about this: Use the difficulty that makes the TAS look most like a TAS.
If Hardest gives you an opportunity to dance around tons of enemies like it was nothing, or if it puts the player in constant danger that is always narrowly avoided, then that would absolutely be preferred to an Easy difficulty run that just walks through a bunch of enemies to save time. If Easiest gives you more opportunities for damage boosting or lag reduction or allows you to pull off some weirdly specific trick or glitch, while also not removing any content from the game, then use Easiest.
Otherwise, you're mostly okay to use whatever you want, since it doesn't matter in most cases. The difficulty shouldn't even really play into a run's publication at all in these cases: We wouldn't publish a run that's only faster because it's on Easy. Likewise, we'd publish a slower run on Hard if it was overall more optimized than a run on Easy. For the most part, what we need are people who are actually willing to take the time to provide test cases on harder/easier difficulties for these runs instead of just having threads full of people assuming that one difficulty is "better" than the other.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
For the most part, what we need are people who are actually willing to take the time to provide test cases on harder/easier difficulties for these runs instead of just having threads full of people assuming that one difficulty is "better" than the other.
I like this idea. I'm willing to volunteer to make a test case if the run is sufficiently short (ideally under 10 minutes, so rejection wouldn't be a big deal) What runs are best suited to this?
'One can argue endlessly about anything.' Sometimes you just have to actually do something and see what happens.
Joined: 12/8/2012
Posts: 706
Location: Missouri, USA
I wanted to come in and briefly share my mindset when it comes to judging runs that don't use the hardest difficulty.
As a still relatively new judge, I've referenced the TASing guidelines and the movie rules, which include the following lines of text (cropped together, below):
Now, I pulled these two statements from within two separate documents, of which each contain considerable content. Perhaps it would be a good idea to give the subject of 'Difficulty' its own highlighted section (i.e. better visibility) in order to draw more awareness to it when somebody is looking through them? I also believe it would be good at this point to expand on the text more to address some more fine-tuned points (which have been brought up in this thread).
With that stated, I have approached the subject of 'hardest difficulty' as a guideline, and have both carefully watched certain runs I've judged, and have read the specific author's submission comments, in order to determine whether or not using an easier difficulty was permissible. So far, I don't believe I have yet come across a submission where I thought using an easier difficulty was significant enough to warrant a rejection, in favor of going with the higher difficulty. At least for the runs I've judged, the reasons given have been acceptable.
Example runs I've judged[2904] SNES Disney's The Jungle Book by Newpants87 in 14:41.25[2908] SNES Run Saber "1 player" by Samsara in 13:05.27
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Alyosha wrote:
I like this idea. I'm willing to volunteer to make a test case if the run is sufficiently short (ideally under 10 minutes, so rejection wouldn't be a big deal) What runs are best suited to this?
I think there are a lot of good test cases. Not many games change the difficulty in ways other than affecting enemy/boss HP, so you have a pretty good shot of choosing one that does if you just take any random game.
In the meantime, I've already got an example up. Credit goes to Exonym for initially testing this, and apologies for the horrible video quality. It should still get the point across:
Link to video
Seems that the only things that change are the RNG, as the section after that has different (but still just as avoidable) enemy placement, lower character health (36 HP on Easy, 28 on Hard, confirmed via RAM Search) and more damage taken (1 HP from the birds on Easy, 3 HP from the birds on Hard).
This is the entertaining part of the game, and apart from maybe needing to let an enemy or two spawn to collect health drops, they literally would be 100% similar. The boring parts of the game (vehicle sections) would actually take longer, as you'd be required to kill more enemies, dragging the movie out by several minutes and killing the fast paced action of the run. So I'd say that this series should absolutely remain TASed and speedrun on Easy difficulty.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
I think that statement is generally good, but it falls apart for games like ssw that took the lazy way and just gave the enemies more health for hard mode and nothing else
But the thing is, even if the difficulty level only affects enemy HP and nothing else, it still makes the game more difficult to play, and thus a perfect TAS more impressive.
There is much less challenge in playing a game in the easiest difficulty, and thus it's not as impressive.
Many people talk like all that matters is what it looks like, perhaps from the perspective of somebody who has never played the game and knows nothing about it. I don't think this is a principle that should be followed too religiously. I think there is great value in assuming that the viewer knows the game, and can thus enjoy seeing it being beaten at its hardest difficulty.
It's not like this is unique. For example, a casual viewer who knows nothing about a particular game may not realize how unlikely it is to get an item drop with each kill. However, somebody who knows the game will appreciate it.
=
But the thing is, even if the difficulty level only affects enemy HP and nothing else, it still makes the game more difficult to play, and thus a perfect TAS more impressive.
What, no it wouldn't. It just gives them more HP. That just makes it longer, not more difficult.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
