Weird question, but why isn't there more DST speedrunning going on?

[loopuleasa]

I noticed the area is quite barren

https://www.speedrun.com/do_not_starve_together

Also, why is there no main category: All bosses

It seems speedrun.com has categories for specific bosses only

 

I wonder if categories couldn't be spread on characters instead

- All bosses (Any Char)

- All bosses (Wolfgang)

- All bosses (Wes)

etc.

 

I saw many people doing all bosses runs. I think it could be fun to watch.

 

[thegreatJash]

I know, it has slowly become less popular over time. I have been rushing Dragonfly as Wortox and killing her pretty consistently, maybe I'll do a guide on some strategies and tips I have found, for all characters.

[MondayNight]

Perhaps lack of mentioned speed-runs has to do with the highly RNG nature of DST, especially in the WorldGen department: sometime you can have DF desert for example right next to spawn, other times it might be at opposite side of map (same with rest of them resources/mobs). Being a non-competitive game might weight in as well. You may point at seeded worlds, yet people can also underline how easy is to console "cheat". And then there's DST popularity - or rather lack of it in such competitive communities.

[thegreatJash]

2 hours ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

Perhaps lack of mentioned speed-runs has to do with the highly RNG nature of DST, especially in the WorldGen department: sometime you can have DF desert for example right next to spawn, other times it might be at opposite side of map (same with rest of them resources/mobs). Also being a non-competitive game might weight in as well. You may point at seeded worlds, yet people can also underline at how easy is to console "cheat". And then there's DST popularity - or rather lack of it in such competitive communities.

Yes, it is the most influential part of the entire run. About 90% of my ended runs I gave up on because of non ideal world generation.

[GetNerfedOn]

From what I've gathered on Misuto's streams (he does speedruns to this day anyroad) the DST board was cleared due to the interference of cheaters, on both seeded and unseeded runs iirc. I'll have to ask again to clarify, though.

[loopuleasa]

12 hours ago, thegreatJash said:

Yes, it is the most influential part of the entire run. About 90% of my ended runs I gave up on because of non ideal world generation.

the rng nature does not stop people trying for Minecraft speedruns

that's actually what makes it fun

[viberr]

4 minutes ago, loopuleasa said:

that's actually what makes it fun

it also cause people to cheat at times when they're frustrated 

not trying to disagree with you just thought that this info was important 

 

[Ohan]

My favorite speedrun 

[Cheggf]

23 hours ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

Perhaps lack of mentioned speed-runs has to do with the highly RNG nature of DST, especially in the WorldGen department: sometime you can have DF desert for example right next to spawn, other times it might be at opposite side of map (same with rest of them resources/mobs). Being a non-competitive game might weight in as well. You may point at seeded worlds, yet people can also underline how easy is to console "cheat". And then there's DST popularity - or rather lack of it in such competitive communities.

What competitive games have speedruns? Off the top of my head every game I can think of that people like to speedrun are non-competitive PvE games like Mario 64. The closest to a competitive game that's speedran off the top of my head is the RNG reliant Pokemon, although they speedrun the singleplayer campaign.

There's plenty of speedruns with a lot of RNG, too. I wouldn't be surprised if most speedruns had at least some RNG in them. Minecraft is a good example, it's a non-competitive game that has a lot of RNG in it but it's speedran a lot.

[MondayNight]

14 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

What competitive games have speedruns? Off the top of my head every game I can think of that people like to speedrun are non-competitive PvE games like Mario 64. The closest to a competitive game that's speedran off the top of my head is the RNG reliant Pokemon, although they speedrun the singleplayer campaign.

There's plenty of speedruns with a lot of RNG, too. I wouldn't be surprised if most speedruns had at least some RNG in them. Minecraft is a good example, it's a non-competitive game that has a lot of RNG in it but it's speedran a lot.

Biggest and most long-lived speed-run games are series like Doom, Quake, Metroid, Super Mario, and Legend of Zelda. All of them are classics (FPS, Action-Adventure or Platformer) and by now all of them have multiplayer component, PvP and being highly competitive in one form or another, with big youtubers/twitch streamers constantly covering them and more. Meanwhile DST is more geared toward relaxed PvE co-op play sessions (check list of servers, vast majority are Co-Op and Social; PvP in DST context is almost non-existent, being very unbalanced). Also am referring in more colloquial terms to "non-competitive game": go on pubs and see how most players aren't doing any type of action even remotely close to "competition towards a clear goal" - no contest/rivalry for bosses take-down, no massive competitive Ruins rushes, and so on (aside basic resource gathering if you take the "competition" in absolute meaning/acceptance).

I don't know about the RNG system in those other games you mention, but DST's seems pretty wild. Else one can again point at DST total player-base numbers in relation to highly-and-moderately popular speed-run games to try and explain said lack of speed-run popularity; likewise mentioned coverage by popular youtubers/twitch streamers - I think DST is lacking in this department as well.

DST sessions can be on average quite long and repetitive, perhaps this is a deterrent for big audiences to form around potential youtubers/twitch streamers too.

 

Else what is your explanation for current DST's speed-run disinterest situation?

[ZTheNecromancer]

7 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

Else what is your explanation for current DST's speed-run disinterest situation?

I guess it's because there's no real way to truly beat the game unless you have a specific goal in mind.

[Cheggf]

10 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

Else what is your explanation for current DST's speed-run disinterest situation?

Well all the games that you listed are games that go back 20-40 years that are part of long game series that have spanned those decades made by enormous companies like Nintendo. Don't Starve is a relatively small game made by a relatively unknown company not even a single decade ago.

Those games you listed also all have a bunch of flashy tricks to them, both intentional and not, along with fast movement. Don't Starve speedruns just look like Don't Starve gameplay where they aren't wasting time.

If I had to guess it's a combination of Don't Starve speedruns being relatively boring, Don't Starve being relatively obscure, and Don't Starve being relatively new. I don't think it's because it's too RNG reliant or uncompetitive, since even in your list of games 3/5 of them are uncompetitive and I'm not extremely versed in those games' categories but I do know that there's at least some RNG in at least some of them, with Doom and Zelda in particular having some categories that can be completely ruined with RNG.

[wigfrids hat]

please also keep in mind a lot of players are in a country where the first or second language someone speaks is unlikely to be english(if my numbers are up to date only about one in ten chinese people know any english without even accounting for fluency) so it isnt statistically likely that primarily-english-speaking sites will be used by non-english-speaking chinese players as opposed to sites that are in a han language like mandarin or cantonese.

 

of course what do i know? a lot of my inference comes from older mario communities where there are often gaps in the records between ntsc and ntsc-j speedruns

[ShakerGER]

I think what people reference as in "competetive" is not all that much PvP multiplayer hardcore style but Wr wise.

There is noone running the category so no strats to share and nobody to compete against exept yourself which can become quite lonely. I started running a bit myself but only for practical purposes.

[Bird Up]

speed runs in vanilla dst are very boring and entirely rng. it can take you 30 seconds to find the biome you're looking for or it could take you a couple days. i've done personal speed runs with mods to remove a lot of the explorative rng, it's a lot more fun for me, and it makes runs far more consistent. that or using a world seed would make speed runs far less dreadful

[Misuto]

I'm the mod of that board so I can answer a few questions here:

 

On 1/2/2021 at 3:22 AM, loopuleasa said:

I noticed the area is quite barren

The board was cleared due to cheating. It's a long story, but basically check here for a bit more context as well as PeterA stating that there was really nothing Klei could do due to the open nature of DS/T's code. 

 

Long story short: the unseeded (random world gen) category had to be entirely scrapped thus all unseeded runs were removed as the category no longer exists. In their place we created new seeded categories a few months ago, so only runs submitted since October-ish are on the board and that's why it looks barren. 

 

Personally, I tried to get on board with the changes that were forced on us, but I don't have any interest in seeded runs. I submitted a few to make the board less empty and help encourage another runner, but it's just not a category for me. I enjoyed rolling into a random world and hoping that this would be an awesome world gen and we could use it to its fullest. I just don't get the same satisfaction hunting for a good seed with map reveal, then memorizing the map and going through the motions to see if my key inputs are mechanically better than last time so I can shave off a second or two from the run. 

 

On 1/2/2021 at 3:22 AM, loopuleasa said:

Also, why is there no main category: All bosses

This category was not carried over after the wipe as it only had a single run submission in the nearly 5 years since DST came out (and that run was from me btw). Due to a massive lack of interest in the category, combined with the fact that the run is a minimum of 10 hours long with no breaks allowed due to recording restrictions and Klei is actively adding new bosses to the game thus any old runs would have to be removed when a new boss is added anyways... Yeah, too many problems with this category. Maybe when DST stops getting frequent updates we'll revisit it if any active runner's request it. 

 

On 1/2/2021 at 4:21 AM, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

Perhaps lack of mentioned speed-runs has to do with the highly RNG nature of DST

For unseeded, that was a problem. SRC is only accepting seeded runs now though, which removes all the RNG from a run and moves the RNG into good seed hunting. So it's trading one random problem for another. 

 

Personally, I enjoyed unseeded runs. There is luck in the world gen RNG, but you have to be skilled enough to utilize a good world gen and adapt to the resources and biomes that you find. It is true that a lot of my time was spent rerolling bad world gens though, so DS/T has never been a speedrun for everyone. 

 

---

 

Oh and quick edit. 

 

Another likely reason that DST is unpopular to run is due to Klei patching bugs and exploits that many previous runs existed. Essentially each new patch that most of the player base is excited for, speedrunners are disappointed and old runs have to be deleted. It feels awful to invest time into a speedrun just to get a good time, and then suddenly your effort is wasted as a certain bug or exploit is patched and your run has to be deleted since there is no down patching in DST. 

 

For example in my (and the only ever submitted) all boss category run (posted in 2019)m it would have to be deleted and disqualified for several reason: 2 new bosses have been added to the game and I used a glitch on chesspieces to automatically finish the statues without having to move the suspicious marbles which has since been patched.

This was a run I spent a 4-5 months training for (as remember, it is a 10 hour long endurance run first and foremost) and all that effort just gets deleted as patches continue to roll out. So yeah, DST is currently a feels bad kind of speedrun. Maybe it'll pick up when Klei is done patching it constantly. 

 

[loopuleasa]

1 hour ago, Misuto said:

snip

Thanks for the answer Misuto.

 

I think the only way to revive the speedrunning scene is to pair up with some modders to make an official DST speedrun mod.

 

A mod that could be the arbiter that would allow presets and challenges, and make it easier to speedrun, will be the way to go.

I feel there is interest in random seed DST speedrunning, it's just that the infrastructure is not there yet.

 

Would be nice to have a mod and a process to validate there is no cheating during recording (must have only the speedrun mod enabled, and do a checksum on it to see there are no changes before run starts, and also show the client mods enabled so you have none)

There is also potential for team based speedrunning (how people speedran forge/gorge in a team)

 

For example, I had a team challenge thread (Full moon everything rush) basically to get everything useful by day 11 full moon

That one also needed some mod support, to make it easier to track and not cheat. Because of the lack of a mod to allow for that (and because you need 7 other friends mainly) there was no follow up and few attempted it.

 

 

I think it would be a nice shot to pitch this idea in the mod forums and see some coders do the magic.

 

The requirements of a speedrunning mod would be:
- Be able to track various objectives (like Bingo mod does for items, or other mods for boss kills)

- Be configurable so that you can set the objectives yourself via some xml files most likely

- Have a nice UI that could show natively the objectives (probably at the top of the screen) as you speedrun

- Show a time

- Log your progress in a file, that could be useful for the review on submitting a run

 

As for the speedrunning process:

- Have a defined process to follow before submitting speedruns (recording your mods, your world settings, showing seeds, showing task manager, doing checksums, etc.)

 

If those two things would be in place, and awareness would be spread, I think it will turn into an excellent speedrun game.

 

I think people would be glad to contribute to the cause, if you know how to rally the troops.

Many large modding projects have been finished by starting with a dream and asking for help.

 

I would start by making a DST Speedrunning Discord, making a "modders" channels and then starting a thread in the modders forums.

There is a way to achieve this.

 

If I wasn't a full time coder at my job, I would've personally contributed.

[Hornete]

39 minutes ago, loopuleasa said:

snip

Oh, funny coincidence but I actually started work on a "Speedrun Counter" mod a month or two ago, I haven't worked on it in a while but I've got a base for it. I had planned some features like being able to add your own segments such as "Craft [Item]", "Beat This Mob/Boss" and etc and the mod would automatically time you on that stuff. Also planned to do some features other features like Presets e.g. "Defeat Fuelweaver" preset has segments like "Defeat the Shadow Pieces", "Defeat Ancient Guardian", "Get 8 fossils" and etc. And a personal leaderboards which would record your times and display the seeds of the forest/caves world of those runs.

 

 

Maybe I'll finish this mod sometime, I'm more interesting in making and finishing my content mods as of now.

[loopuleasa]

1 hour ago, Hornete said:

 

Maybe I'll finish this mod sometime, I'm more interesting in making and finishing my content mods as of now.

THIS

 

This will be more than a mod, it will be a framework and a platform for many to use.

[Misuto]

8 hours ago, loopuleasa said:

I think the only way to revive the speedrunning scene is to pair up with some modders to make an official DST speedrun mod.

We looked into both this and hosting official servers in the year leading up to us finally deleting the unseeded category.

 

Mods have the same problem as the base code - they're completely open and easy to edit. A mod might make it slightly harder than simply changing 1 line of code as you need to change the mod too, but it's still not much that you'd have to change. Even if you made the mod super complex and tried obfuscating things or tried using email verification, a copycat mod could be made to look exactly the same and just send out the OK signals without doing any of the checks. A mod to "verify" a dst speedrun would be like a lock on a glass door. It'd help keep honest runners honest, but it wouldn't stop the ones who really want to get inside; it's just security theater sadly. 

 

When mods get shot down most discussions on runs went right over to official hosted servers that way we know the files probably are safe (they could be hacked of course, but that'd be way harder than just opening a text file on your own computer). The only two active runners (myself and Binary who started running after the board reset) from SRC are in Japan, so if we hosted just 1 server would it be over here? What about all the English speaking community that would have 300+ ping to play on a server in Japan? So we'd have to host multiple servers around the world? That raises the cost and work a lot to maintain and run X amount of servers. A cost being paid for... sadly, basically no one given that we've only seen fewer than 10 different runners submit to DST on SRC in the past 5 years. 

 

I know that has to sound super pessimistic, but we looked into things for a year before finally removing the category. Solutions were either too expensive, too restrictive, or ineffective. DST is not the only speedrun having these issues though, many games and even famous runners have been caught cheating in one way or another. Minecraft is in the middle of one now actually. Basically, people are realizing that there are many ways to cheat runs for an advantage and that some people care so much about having their name on a board on a random website enough that they'd work hard to cheat to get it. 

 

 

Not to mention, even if there were a magic bullet solution to ensure runs could not be cheated, we still have the issue of frequent updates. No one is going to do a current patch Bee Queen speedrun vs old runs where Wolfgang could walk on water and just face tank her. Wendy is good, but she isn't glitched Wolfgang good. Unless Klei wants to be awesome and set up a system where we could down patch (similar to how 7 days to die does it where on the beta tabs you can opt into any of the old builds) then it's probably best to just wait out the updates until we have a more stable version of the game. We'll revisit the issues when DST reaches a stable final version if there are any runner's still interested. 

 

For the time being though, I'm still doing for fun unseeded (funseeded?) runs and just not submitting them to SRC. That's not a great answer for everyone, as many people want recognition. I just have fun doing random runs so I don't care if my name is on a board. 

[Mike23Ua]

Just want to add my two cents here after the speed runner guy or gal made their comment: I hope that Klei is never planning to slow the patches & updates to DST, I am hoping they now see DST as their own personal version of GTA Online or Minecraft Aka: Games that do not get Sequels because they continue to expand and update and improve upon the concept they already have.

I also think that if Klei wants to patch out a glitch, exploit or just nerf a broken/overpowered gameplay feature that those are changes that I have to admire & respect, even if i disagree with some of it- In the end, it is still THIER Game, and without mods- we’re playing their vision of what they want their game to be/play like & we have to accept that.

Speedruns in open world sandbox games never really made any sense to me anyway: a Sandbox game means you can go where you want, do what you want, play how you want- and whatever goals you want to set out to do is entirely up to you.

I guess: you can maybe set up personal challenges: But it would be hard to tell who is playing by those personal challenge rules and who is taking shortcuts.

You (generally) see more game speed runs for games that have a linear point to point story with a start to finish.. and DST just doesn’t have one.

Even Solo DS Adventures mode runs are reliant entirely upon luck of the 5 randomly generated worlds you are given.

Its not that people don’t play DS/DST (I’m sure they do) it’s just as that other guy pointed out: it’s kinda hard to “SpeedRun” a game with an infrastructure like DS/DST.