Why People on the Forums Seem to Dislike Speedrunning Players?

[Xu XiuHong]

Many other sandbox games have their speedrunning communities. Terraria, Minecraft......But in many threads of DST, I have seen many people tell speedrunning players to shut up. Why not respect them?

Speeding runnning players have more game experience than us. Especially the combat system. If a quick-pass player feels that a character whose position is to fight has a bad combat experience, then the average player who wants to fight with this character should have a hard time. But in the threads for these characters like Wendy, Wigfrid......Many people in the threads don't treasure their suggestions. 
Wendy and Widfrid's position is to fight right? Am I wrong?

[Walrusst]

Its less an outright disdain for it, more just that over highlighting its importance misses a large bigger picture.

The bulk of this game as is experienced by new players repeatedly experiencing the world, slowly unwinding your fears of parts of it and mastering them.
Speedruns are very influenced by who can flip world triggers quickly, which can give a distorted picture of whats important for the game.

Your ability to manipulate pre-known boss mechanics and flip triggers is sort of demphasizes the survival sandbox experience that is the games sort of core up front feature, something we should never kill off. Since focusing on who uses the fewest resources, moves the fastest, and struggles the least with large inventories and heavy objects while quickly killing bosses is reduces the game down a lot.

Updates have given the game more ARPG features to make boss-fights and progression more interesting, and I strongly respect these elements but attempts to present them as the forefront of what the game is and the core of its balance is something that feels inappropriate.
Yes, its cool, its great for the portion of the player base that experiences it, and it should get appropriate bug fixes that help the game mature as a whole. It shouldn't eclipse the core game and presentations of that being the first thing I'll put a reality check towards.

This is to say, I want it to get better, but never at the cost of the games spirit.

Similar to how when walter got a strong minmaxy DPS skill tree I said "Hold the phone where is his character flavor?"
His skill tree speaks to what the games about a lot more now that he has his character flavor.

This illustrates how I see maturing the combat and progression. Sure shoring up leaks in the system is great! Just don't compromise on this being a spooky light hearted resource driven survival sandbox first.
Wendy getting control refinements is fine, just like how fixing boss pathfinding issues to counter ranged weapons is fine, but radically compromising the survival sandbox with statistical number changes that focus purely on speedrun performance is offputting to me. Since improving the maturity of the controls to make a playstyle fun and robust under stressful conditions is great, dbz power scaling isn't.

[YouKnowWho142]

You created this topic as a direct result of what I and Guille said. Disregarding the fact that he is a well known speedrunner, I cannot speak for him, but I highly doubt what he has to say is too different from what I have to say.

I never told anyone to shut up. I also never said that their voices should not be heard. I simply said that characters should not be built around their ability to speedrun, plain and simple. Some characters gain natural advantages in their ability to complete the game faster than others, but that has no correlation to the strengths of these characters. Speedrunners require optimization and often that includes the use of large numbers of exploits, which I have stated repeatedly have no place in balance. Wurt is a very powerful character but she has a very slow start, it is nothing against her character but her perks are not active at the start of the game.

The average player is not going to rush through celestial champion or fuelweaver within the first year, let alone the first season. Speedrunners are incredibly talented and capable of doing extremely impressive things, but that is far from representative of the community as a whole. If balance changes were made only with speedrunners in mind that inherently requires characters to be more innately powerful, which isn't the right approach to a lot of situations. If the game was balanced around speedrunning they wouldn't still be trying to patch out fuelweaver cheese, or would have kept voidwalking in the game, but Don't Starve Together is not made with speedrunning in its primary focus for balance and therefore shouldn't be treated as such.

If your belief was in relation to talented players and veterans in general, that would be very slightly more agreeable, albeit still strange. However, I find that creating this thread with the belief that speedrunners are being given a hard time for "having more game experience" to be entirely missing the larger picture and just comes off as rude and misguided.

[Guille6785]

???? did you seriously make this thread because I said nobody cares that chinese speedrunners think wendy should be buffed because of her poor performance in CC speedrunning lmao, my point wasn't that speedrunning sucks, it was that speedrunning shouldn't be the basis for balancing characters

this thread also makes no sense because I'm literally a speedrunner myself and the founder of the western speedrunning community so ???

Spoiler

 

 

Also might as well give my opinion about Wendy's balance from a speedrun/speed-play perspective: I obviously understand that in this environment Wendy feels pointless because she deals significantly lower DPS than Wolfgang (in real world scenarios her DPS is closer to Wilson's than it is to Wolfgang's) while being significantly more difficult to play at a high level since she has her own skill ceiling, and even in competitions where Wolfgang is banned she's just fine, but I completely fail to see how exactly you'd address it beyond just giving her Wolfgang-tier damage. Don't get me wrong, Wendy's unique boss strats certainly aren't easy for new players to do, but they are almost certainly also not difficult for speedrunners to do, so if Wendy got turbobuffed so that she can outDPS Wolfgang from day 1 if played well that would just result in her simply taking Wolfgang's place as the de facto high-direct-DPS character but that takes a bit more effort to get good use of. The end result of this is that nothing really changes in the speedrunning scene beyond Wolfgang being replaced by a Wolfgang clone, but at least the people who are obsessed with playing nothing but Wendy would at least get to show her off in a scenario where they'd otherwise be forced to play a different character so yay I guess ???

Personally this would just feel off to me because Wendy also has a lower skill floor than Wolfgang, sure, Wolfgang isn't a hard character by any means, but Wendy is also the character that hard carries every noob that installs this game, so I feel like her not having as much max potential isn't exactly unbalanced

[Xu XiuHong]

1 hour ago, Walrusst said:

Its less an outright disdain for it, more just that over highlighting its importance misses a large bigger picture.

I know that. But speedrunning players' advice may be just the same as simple player. 

They just put too much emphasis on speedrunning in their speeches. For Chinese speedrunning players(I come from China), they have a hard time because of the different language.

In fact, If you like to go into some Chinese sites to talk about DST, you will find many ordinary players also find Wendy hard to play, just the same as speedrunning players. Speedrunning players, the most experienced players among us, only want to be responsible for ordinary players so they come here. Come here, and find some DST Video writer, you will know that. 哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

Why is it that almost all you see are Chinese Speedpass players? Because it is difficult for ordinary players in China to enter this forum.

52 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

If balance changes were made only with speedrunners in mind that inherently requires characters to be more innately powerful, which isn't the right approach to a lot of situations.

No no no.We know that. So do speedrunners in my country. Only talk about characters whose position is to fight. Speedrunners can use woomwood to speedrun, but none of us suggest that woomwood should be designed for speedrunning. We only talk about characters whose position is to fight. Because the normal players who play fighting characters is very similar to speedrunners as they all focus on better combat and less resourse consumption. As a result, when speedrunners suggest that a character for fighting is weak for fighting, many normal players agree them.

47 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

???? did you seriously make this thread because I said nobody cares that chinese speedrunners think wendy should be buffed because of her poor performance in CC speedrunning lmao, my point wasn't that speedrunning sucks, it was that speedrunning shouldn't be the basis for balancing characters

this thread also makes no sense because I'm literally a speedrunner myself and the founder of the western speedrunning community so ???

As a speedrunner, if you don't like wendy's combat, many wendy's players also don't like it. Try to find why wendy is not suitable for fight, and give your Valuable Advice, making wendy's design better as a combat character. So stop saying "who cares" any more. Many speedrunners in China have been doing that.

[_mylilsunshine_]

minecraft speedrunning: no balance because you play as one character, heavy RNG (piglin trade, world gen, mob drops etc.), only one final goal and it can be blow up with beds

terraria speedrunning: dynamite for pre-hardmode, jousting lance glitch/exploit/feature/whatever the frick for hardmode, just as much glitches/bugs/exploits as DST

would you want to know why these communities "respect" speedrunners? because their speedrunners are purely entertainers, they contribute nothing to the balance discussion because there is nothing to balance. they are not asking for ender dragon explosion immunity, they are not asking for wall of flesh explosion immunity, etc. "respect" = the playerbase doesn't care

once again, speedrunning is a different playstyle that is very competitive, min-maxing, and meta-reliant. therefore, speedrunners often have very different perspectives of the game and what "balance" is. not everyone who plays the game is a speedrunner or think like a speedrunner. speedrunners might think wolfgang is the undisputed speedrun goat but to another casual player, he's just a funny haha gymbro character.

now that you know what speedrunning is, why are speedrunners in DST "not respected"? because some of them may have very different perspectives of the game and what "balance" is, and then contribute suggestions that are unhealthy for the game (but not for speedrunning) or incompatible with the rest of the playerbase. speedrunners might think wes needs a buff to be a speedrunning-viable character but to another casual player, wes is meant to be the frail, unfortunate character, the punching bag of the constant, not a speedrunning character.

just to clarify, everyone is respected by everyone here, whether they are casual players, speedrunners, or the chinese communities. as long as we are all civil and respectful. but about speedrunners specifically,

Quote

"Speeding runnning players have more game experience than us"

just like the old saying, 'intelligence doesn't equal wisdom", game knowledge doesn't equal understanding of the nuance of the game. your words have more weight, sure. but speedrunners can also be out of touch. also speedrunning doesn't make a person a higher class of player that needs to be respected and heard.

the only DST speedrunner i know is Guille, and it's only because he represents himself also as a normal player. he doesn't say "i'm the top speedrunner and i think XYZ', he even clarifies "this discussion has nothing to do with speedrunning". his opinion comes from the same perspective as me, a casual player (but maybe with a bit more passion and enthusiasm).

[Xu XiuHong]

48 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

Also might as well give my opinion about Wendy's balance from a speedrun/speed-play perspective: I obviously understand that in this environment Wendy feels pointless because she deals significantly lower DPS than Wolfgang (in real world scenarios her DPS is closer to Wilson's than it is to Wolfgang's) while being significantly more difficult to play at a high level since she has her own skill ceiling, and even in competitions where Wolfgang is banned she's just fine, but I completely fail to see how exactly you'd address it beyond just giving her Wolfgang-tier damage. Don't get me wrong, Wendy's unique boss strats certainly aren't easy for new players to do, but they are almost certainly also not difficult for speedrunners to do, so if Wendy got turbobuffed so that she can outDPS Wolfgang from day 1 if played well that would just result in her simply taking Wolfgang's place as the de facto high-direct-DPS character but that takes a bit more effort to get good use of. The end result of this is that nothing really changes in the speedrunning scene beyond Wolfgang being replaced by a Wolfgang clone, but at least the people who are obsessed with playing nothing but Wendy would at least get to show her off in a scenario where they'd otherwise be forced to play a different character so yay I guess ???

Yifei's English is not good. you can see him post in chinese many times. He may not know how to give his opinion in a right way. I will tell him to notice the point of problems

2 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

because some of them may have very different perspectives of the game and what "balance" is, and then contribute suggestions that are unhealthy for the game (but not for speedrunning) or incompatible with the rest of the playerbase.

Read below, thank you. Some of their suggestions matters for causal players.

8 minutes ago, Xu XiuHong said:

No no no.We know that. So do speedrunners in my country. Only talk about characters whose position is to fight. Speedrunners can use woomwood to speedrun, but none of us suggest that woomwood should be designed for speedrunning. We only talk about characters whose position is to fight. Because the normal players who play fighting characters is very similar to speedrunners as they all focus on better combat and less resourse consumption. As a result, when speedrunners suggest that a character for fighting is weak for fighting, many normal players agree them.

 

5 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

just like the old saying, 'intelligence doesn't equal wisdom", game knowledge doesn't equal understanding of the nuance of the game. your words have more weight, sure. but speedrunners can also be out of touch. also speedrunning doesn't make a person a higher class of player that needs to be respected and heard.

just in combat characters, sorry make you feel confused. My first post is not that clear.