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These are IL runs on hard difficulty.

Verifier Responses

Quote:
In terms of timing, I figured it would be easiest to count it from the mission title display to the time the screen displays the last objective as completed  (or the trigger for the mission to be complete in missions 5 and 11).  I actually don’t know how to calculate exact frame lengths of videos. Sorry if that hurts the timing side of things, I’ll be more than happy to correct if necessary.

No audio or video complaints anywhere, apart from a minor amount of slowdown, although I couldn’t stop that from happening on my copy (admittedly my laptop is not very powerful...).  Although I didn’t know that you couldn’t cancel the autosave feature. That must have got annoying...  HP levels seem to check out as well as far as I can tell, although the runner certainly does not make it LOOK like hard mode!

Mission 1. (Title appears 00:01, last objective complete 06:16.  Length: 06:15)


Excellent use of shortcut keys.  I had no idea the FC was so good at tanking on the first levels, and in fact even later!  In addition, I like how precisely your power needs were calculated so that you could destroy the plasma generator so conveniently.  I find it amazing how little of the map you actually need to visit. If it was me running this game, I would have stacked improvements rather than waiting until the runner had enough requisition to manually add more attackers, although that is a matter of style as it wouldn’t have saved any time.  Very quick

Mission 2 (Title appears 00:01, last objective complete 16:39. Length: 16:38)


Great skip at the start, basically ‘failing’ the stealth part.  Teleporting Force Commanders are very cool!  Again taking a direct line through the map, upgrading the necessary weapons as enough requisition becomes available until the army is able to split in two and rocket several buildings with no fear of retaliation.  Shame he couldn’t get all four of the rockets firing at that range, but pretty cool nonetheless, and worked very well with the probe.

Mission 3 (Title appears 00:01, last objective complete 05:47. Length 05:46)


I always found this mission annoying, as like the runner says in the notes, even if you finish the machine cult, you can’t really do anything with it until you spend ages getting more requisition.  It had never occurred to me simply to delete it for resources, which was very effective.  For some reason the FC declares the machine cult operational just after it is deleted.  Bad timing on his part I guess...  Very impressive display of not getting the Dreadnought shot at and enabling it to do a LOT of damage throughout this mission.

Mission 4 (Title appears 00:02, last objective complete 20:32. Length 20:30)


Seems much longer than the other missions... then you watch it and wonder how it was done so quickly. Battle against squiggoth was especially good (read: fast), and here we get a show of the extreme levels of multitasking involved.  I did wonder if the runner needed to wait quite so long before engaging the squiggoth, although those numbers are very handy in quickly stomping the final base to the ground, plus the looted tanks did NOT go down easily, even with those numbers!

Mission 5 (Title appears 00:02, last gate destroyed 11:31. Length 11:29)


Soloing the heroes for the first part, which I didn’t realise was possible, ignoring the ‘need’ to move about in transports was nice. Also, very clever trick towards the end of ignoring a gate to allow troops to attack the next ones without being constantly bombarded with reinforcements!  Very good use of what I presume to be a combination of excellent ability use and persistent luck manipulation here. For some reason destroying the gate isn’t considered an objective, so I took the time the gate was destroyed.

Mission 6 (Title appears 00:02, last objective complete 17:31. Length 17:29)


Here we see the otherwise useless scouts put to use taking strategic points while the rest of the army fights the Eldar.  Assault Marines also put to very good use here, showing off how fast they can be when jumping.  The level is a little boring, but that’s by far more about the level itself than the run.

Mission 7 (Title appears 00:02, last objective complete 8:16. Length 8:14)


Again making great use of the ability to delete buildings for fun and profit, and for healing/teleporting heroes. Excellent Avatar fight, which certainly beats watching nothing happen, which would have taken just as long with none of the entertainment!

Mission 8 (Title appears 00:02, last traitor dies 6:32. Total time 6:30)


Just beautiful.  Wonderful tactically. Turns out, all that needs to be done is to bust the doors open, and it does not say from which side they should be opened Very nice work taking advantage of this. Meat shielding was very good, although that stray Land speeder presumably cost some time there. However, still extremely quick overall. Nice work!

Mission 9 (Title appears 00:02, last objective complete 15:38. Total time 15:36)


Taking relics while the Chaos temples stand is a great way to lose the relics to infinite chaos forces in my experience.  Although you don’t need to wipe out the temples for an objective, you won’t hold the relics without a ridiculous amount of reinforcements otherwise.  Again, this shows a great execution of tactics and pays off by not having the runner’s relics overrun during the countdown. 

Mission 10 (Title appears 00:02, last objective complete 16:21. Total time 16:19)


OK, given that the objective of this mission is to wipe out ALL Chaos units (with a couple of exceptions) it shouldn’t be possible to do that this quickly.  Moreover, exacting revenge against the librarian is never as fun as it sounds...  I’m not sure how it was possible to get away with taking so little resistance towards the middle of the cleanup process, but well done for that!  Small mistake losing the squad towards the end, but still a great time, and a good bloodthirster battle too.

Mission 11 (Title appears 00:02, Prince dead at 4:21. Total time 4:19)


A fantastically anti-climactic way to kill the prince.  Get an army, lure him within rocket range and wait for him to fail to do anything devastating with extremely slow attacks.  Very nicely ripped apart by the runner. RIP Dreadnought, for your sacrifice was essential to the runner’s strategy and the mission worked out very well for it!

Verdict; accepted


Reasons: Because I detected no cheating or major quality issues, because the level of strategic understanding of what was required was very detailed (both in terms of completing objectives and what you needed to destroy to complete those objectives the fastest), and because so many neat tricks were used to great effect (the main ones that spring to mind as I’m writing this are the tanking and teleporting of heroes, deleting buildings for the resources and the well-utilised jumps from land speeders (esp. in mission 8) and assault marines. Also, it was very fast.

Final Total Time: 2:09:05


Quote:
I watched them, quality is good, didn't notice anything that seemed out of place and I saw some nice strats. The verifier above pretty much covered everything so I'd just be repeating it for no reason.


Quote:
Don't really have much to add. Strategies were excellent, micro was good, missions were fast, speedruns were accepted.


Quote:
I thought since I took so long, I'd do more than just agree with Verifier 1

Mission 1: Nothing out of the ordinary

Mission 2: Start could have gone a little better, got into melee a few times, and seems like a few lost seconds due to micro. Don't you hate autosaves? Not sure why runner takes until 7 minutes in to start using control groups. ~9:10 unlucky auto into melee, lost some heavy bolter fire time. Unspent REQ could be used on reinforcing the tac squads. The planning and strategy is fine, but possibly a minute or so could be taken off the time due to idle units or having unspent resources

Mission 3: Very nice control. Still not sure why there is no auto-reinforce. Not much else to be said about this mission.

Mission 4: Good idea jumping past and capping the points, minimises losses.

Mission 5: Well executed, again not much to say

Mission 6: Good strategy, idle servitors could have been used to accompany dread though, not seeing why it had to die.

Mission 7: Some of the focus on the commanders wasn't needed, and a few jumps could have been avoided, move and shoot works fine.

Mission 8: No mistakes, few micro slip ups, nothing that cost any real time.

Mission 9: All went smoothly.

Mission 10: The commander movement seems a bit odd, not much else worth mentioning apart from the runner comments. Towards the end, a TSM squad could have helped, resouces were there, as was the time.

Mission 11: Thought aggro on Sindri could have gone a bit better, but mostly unlucky. Lost maybe 10 seconds.

I'd accept.


Decision: Accept

Reason: These are some well planned/executed ILs

Congratulations to 'Sinochek!'
Thread title:  
Edit history:
Sinochek: 2011-07-03 07:20:39 am
Sinochek: 2011-07-03 07:14:35 am
Wow thanks! I thought it wont get verified in this year :p

I want to clarify few things.

Reinforcing units to the maximum in DoW is ineffective on most maps, because, due to terrible pathing system in this game, the units tend to stuck more as their number increase. Especially on mission 2, the maxed tsm squads become hard to micro and avoid being tied in melee by enemy units. That's why the best option is to save resources to make an additional tsm with heavy weapons - it will give range and damage advantage.

Using autoreinforce is a good way to get out of resources early. Wasting all resources on autoreinforce would've let me without anything to buy heavy weapons on missions 2 and 3.

Edit: Also there is no legitimate way to disable autosaves in dow. It can be done through game modification, but i'm sure SDA won't accept it.
Edit history:
IcedCube: 2011-08-16 07:50:57 am
Time to dig up this skeleton one last time. I was absent, but I had discussed this before and Sinocheck in his obnoxious arrogance both combated and then ignored me. I therefore feel no grievance sharing this in a now already verified run. I have no intent of getting this run detracted, I would just like to make the point clear this is a not a run you would have accepted under any circumstance in which the verifiers were aware of what occurred.

I made a private thread with Mike discussing how Sinocheck was accusing me of cheating on DoW, having found a glitch that would abolish all his times because of the fact that the hitpoints on every unit in the game would decrease; this is done simply by pressing retry.

During this event, Sinocheck was already submitting his virgin run despite my requests for him to demo his times (as is custom when more than one runner wants to run; otherwise, who would know the legitimate times?) so that I could first attempt to better them. (Something I also showed I actually did, most notably an entire minute taken off on the very first mission.) My final say on the matter to Mike was this:

Quote:
I won't verify a run I already know shouldn't be accepted, and in addition I had faster times and I was waiting for him to demo his so I could improve them. The difficulty might be reset as far as the ingame engine is concerned, but if that's the case then I do wonder why it still signed as Hard in the config. Furthermore there'd be no point in any RTS ever decreasing the difficulty automatically, as RTS designers intend for you to be able to complete a game as you like it. All CNC, SupCom, and DoW games aside from this one particular game function perfectly, so assuming it's a glitch is a pretty legitimate course of action.

Note: I always only play on Hard, and I play on Hard when I retry, so it switching to Normal would be quite silly. In fact, it's possible the stats are similar to easy, otherwise people playing on easy on retry would get a harder difficulty.

Whatever, I'll post this in the verification topic and that's that. The run is sub-par (which I've also shown), the runner is hostile and refuses to let anyone beat his times (which makes me suspicious about how optimized it is in ANY regard), and even if those reasons would not substantiate at least a temporary retraction the same does not go for refusing to use an obvious glitch. (And he's made no attempt to correct me on that note nor to try the glitch himself.)

Concluding I find that he really wanted this run for him alone (which is not how SDA is supposed to work), which this whole ordeal is a testimony to.


In the end, this run (despite what the verifiers state, who could've at least taken five minutes of their freaking time to read the thread -- which goes to show how little they actually know about the run and routing per se) is not optimized. If you could glitch a Diablo 2 boss to have half his HP and with it save 30 seconds of fighting, who in their right mind wouldn't try it? In fact, the entire attitude of the runner in regards to speedrunning is no more than appalling, going as far as insulting and degrading other users for doubting his grandiosity. An apology is the least I should have gotten out of this.

Apparently, behaving like an undignified 12-year old is an accepted sure-fire way to bully other runners out of your game here.

(On that note: the times, within the constraints of the HP levels, do look really slick.)
Waiting hurts my soul...
I read the thread. It was suggested this isn't a glitch, it's a feature that lowers the difficulty on a retry. You haven't addressed that claim. I don't know the game personally, but it would be a simple matter if the difficulty can be checked via the menu after a retry to see if in the GUI it reflects a change.

There seemed to be hostility and immaturity on both sides of the arguments that occurred in that thread. I encourage you to read EC's post from that thread:

Quote from ExplodingCabbage:
Quote from heledir:
So this isn't even in your run, Sinochek?


Correct. Sinochek says his run is on Hard, without the retry glitch.

I just thought I'd say something briefly about the conflict between IcedCube and Sinochek in this thread since neither has addressed the other since the cause of the misunderstanding was figured out. I guess there's two issues here, firstly the misunderstanding itself over IcedCube's run being on Normal without him realising, and secondly the incivility of the dialogue from page 2 onwards. The situation that's happened here is pretty unfortunate since Sinochek came to this simply wanting to do and share a run and IcedCube came to it simply wanting to help out. To my reading it looks like there were comments from both parties that could potentially be construed as rude as early as page 1 (but hey, this is the internet, and very often what people write can be construed as rude), which escalated into blatant incivility at the start of page 2 and from there into hostility. I'm not sure I'd put more blame on either side. Of course I understand why both sides thought they were justified, but I think you were both too quick to assume ill intent from the other party.

Over on Wikipedia they have a policy 'assume good faith' which I consider a good one for most internet discussions. Alternatively you may wish to phrase this in terms of Hanlon's Razor, 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.' Until it's clearly someone is trolling or being needlessly hostile without any real or perceived justification, it's not a good idea to be uncivil or to escalate an argument, and when someone posts something that isn't true it's better to assume it's a mistake than a lie. If it weren't for the hostility, when you two noticed things like hit point discrepancies between your two games you would've immediately tried to figure out why, would've got there within a couple of posts and then constructive discussion could've resumed. Instead you both accused the other of lying, and a needless dispute dragged on for weeks.

There's probably also a lesson here about posting videos early, especially when the times or strats that other people are describing don't match up with your own experience of the game.

Anyway, as things stand I trust IcedCube to be able to fairly and objectively judge this run in verification despite what has happened. I hope that all involved are prepared to kiss and make up.
.
Difficulty lowering on retry is not a glitch, nor should you abuse it if you want the run on Hard mode.
Edit history:
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 04:43:41 am
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 04:42:58 am
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 04:42:54 am
Quote from ZenicReverie:
It was suggested this isn't a glitch, it's a feature that lowers the difficulty on a retry.

Quote from ShadowWraith:
Difficulty lowering on retry is not a glitch, nor should you abuse it if you want the run on Hard mode.


From what I recall it's still a glitch rather than a feature because the game still claims that it's on Hard, and gives no indication of lowering the difficulty. I haven't looked at this personally though.

IcedCube:

Quote:
I won't verify a run I already know shouldn't be accepted

Quote:
the verifiers ... could've at least taken five minutes of their freaking time to read the thread -- which goes to show how little they actually know about the run and routing per se


Verification not being thorough is pretty common here, and there isn't much we can do about it besides demand higher standards and more time investment from verifiers. And that isn't a good idea when many runs already struggle to get any. If you wanted to make sure this issue got considered, it would've been better to become a verifier, give a reject vote and give your reasons, and thus have Mike take it up with the runner and other verifiers. Just disengaging from the process of verification because you think there are strong reasons a run shouldn't pass doesn't exactly help your cause.

Quote:
The difficulty might be reset as far as the ingame engine is concerned, but if that's the case then I do wonder why it still signed as Hard in the config. Furthermore there'd be no point in any RTS ever decreasing the difficulty automatically, as RTS designers intend for you to be able to complete a game as you like it.


Two things.

1) There'd be no reason for an RTS to decrease building HP automatically either. In the absence of any evidence to decide either way, a glitch that starts a mission on the wrong difficulty after hitting 'retry' seems to me MUCH more likely than a glitch that specifically modifies building HP values on a retry.

2) Sinochek said that the difficulty was getting lowered when you Retry, rather than only building HP, and I saw no reason at the time not to believe that a) he was being honest and b) he knew what he was talking about. I don't really want to drag out my old copy of the game and install it to check this. Can't you just do some tests to check which hypothesis is correct (by seeing if whatever other stuff is different between Medium and Hard has its Medium values or its Hard values after a retry)? While you're at it, you could check if retrying when playing on Easy ups the difficulty / HP values to their Medium values.*

For the record: I did very much feel that Sinochek was being rather a dick in that thread. Doesn't automatically mean he isn't right about the behaviour of the Retry command, though.

* EDIT: When I wrote this post, I hadn't realised that Easy difficulty does not exist. Normal is the lowest difficulty. Sorry for my confusion here.
It's actually a crustacean!
Still beating this dead horse? I agree, the genesis of this run was far from nice. Many people asked Sinochek to show his progress, which he never did or only very limited. Then the mentioned thing about the difficulty, which left me very confused (and it still confuses me).  It might be handy if someone could look for a thread about this in the official forum for DoW, there might be some answers there.

The saddest thing about this argument is that it started over the spelling of "orc". Well, I guess that's internet for you.
Edit history:
RoboSparkle: 2011-08-16 02:32:56 pm
Magical. Flying. Bathtub
Quote from heledir:
Still beating this dead horse? I agree, the genesis of this run was far from nice. Many people asked Sinochek to show his progress, which he never did or only very limited. Then the mentioned thing about the difficulty, which left me very confused (and it still confuses me).  It might be handy if someone could look for a thread about this in the official forum for DoW, there might be some answers there.

The saddest thing about this argument is that it started over the spelling of "orc". Well, I guess that's internet for you.


You mean "ork", right?

Sorry

Also it did seem like the conclusion was that retrying lowered the difficulty, it certainly seemed like the confusion had been cleared up by ExplodingCabbage's post.  But then IcedCube disappeared and he was the only one arguing otherwise anyway, so the debate more or less fizzled out.
sda loyalist
I was reading the thread actively as this run was being made and I agree that this 'lowering HP glitch', whether a bug or a glitch or intentional or whatever, does not matter when considering this run. Either the run uses it, in which case future runs should also, or it does not use it, and a run which did use it would constitute a different category.
train kept rollin
Quote from Lag.Com:
I was reading the thread actively as this run was being made and I agree that this 'lowering HP glitch', whether a bug or a glitch or intentional or whatever, does not matter when considering this run. Either the run uses it, in which case future runs should also, or it does not use it, and a run which did use it would constitute a different category.



Hear, hear.
The retry button isn't a bug, glitch, whateveryouwantittobe. It's an intentional feature made by the game developers, I've already explained "why" and "how" here

Anyone not believing that, can verify it if he wants to kill few minutes of his precious time just follow the steps:
1) Buy the DoW game on steam(or simply find it on torrents). Install it. Start the game.
2) Go to campaign menu and start new campaign with the difficulty set to Insane or Hard.
3) Move your units through the map to get sight on the hp values of ork units and buildings. Remember those.
4) Delete all your structures and units. On a mission failed menu click Retry.
5) Go to step 3 and make a conclusion.
Sinochek, the test you have proposed is pointless. You, IcedCube, and everyone else here agree and have always agreed on what the outcome of the test will be (i.e. enemy HP reduces to the amount it would be on Normal difficulty). Why are you asking people to verify a fact that you and IcedCube agree on?

The only points of disagreement between you and IcedCube, as far as I can see, are as follows:

1) IcedCube says the behaviour is a glitch. You say it is an intentional feature.
  - I don't see any way of testing this one way or another. However, I don't see why any developer would deliberately put in a feature that reduced the difficulty of a level when you clicked 'Retry' without telling you about it or giving you the option of continuing on your chosen difficulty. Thus it seems much more likely than not to me that it is a glitch. Regardless, it doesn't matter in any way.

2) IcedCube says Retrying reduces all enemy units' and buildings' HP to that of Normal difficulty. You, on the other hand, say Retrying reduces the difficulty to Normal.
  - From what I can find on the internet, the only difference between difficulty levels in this game is the enemy units' and buildings' HP values. So (unless there is some other difference I don't know about) you've effectively both been claiming the same fucking thing since this argument began.
Quote:
You, IcedCube, and everyone else here agree and have always agreed on what the outcome of the test will be (i.e. enemy HP reduces to the amount it would be on Normal difficulty).


No. The difficulty will be set to Normal. The amount of hp is just a simple way to see on which difficulty you are playing. Difficulty level affects hp, ai strategy and units damage.


Edit history:
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 08:13:38 am
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 08:12:56 am
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 08:11:08 am
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 08:11:07 am
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 08:07:56 am
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 08:07:53 am
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 08:06:55 am
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-22 08:06:52 am
Quote from Sinochek:
No.


Yes.

Quote:
The difficulty will be set to Normal.


I didn't say it wouldn't. Whether this is true is what we're trying to figure out. Looking at HP values alone can neither confirm nor falsify this claim.

Quote:
The amount of hp is just a simple way to see on which difficulty you are playing.


I don't know how I can be more clear here than I already have been, or why you don't understand. The difference between what you claim happens when you press Retry and what IcedCube claims happens when you press Retry is that he (implicitly) claims that only HP values change, and you claim that the actual difficulty level changes. You obviously cannot test which of those claims is true by looking only at HP values and not at anything else, which is what you have just told people to do, because they will change in exactly the same way no matter which of you is right. So the test you proposed does not tell us who is right, and is therefore pointless.

Quote:
Difficulty level affects hp, ai strategy and units damage.


Right, if this is true, then IcedCube's (implicit) claim that pressing Retry just changes HP values, and your claim that it changes the difficulty level, are genuinely different hypotheses and we can test which is true. Someone just needs to find a difference between unit damage on Normal and unit damage on Insane, plus a difference between AI strategy on Normal and AI strategy on Insane, and then play on Insane, delete all structures and units, click Retry, and see whether the unit damage and AI strategy change to the way they would be on Normal, or remain the way they would be on Insane. If they change, you are right. If they remain the same, IcedCube is right.

My point is that you can't test between two hypotheses by checking the one thing that they have in common. You need to check the points on which they differ. This is just basic common sense.
I've already told what needed to be told. You are free to express your fantasies concerning this matter, I won't interfere.
Quote from Sinochek:
I've already told what needed to be told. You are free to express your fantasies concerning this matter, I won't interfere.


*Bangs head against wall*
sda loyalist
read my post again
Edit history:
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-23 01:12:32 pm
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-23 01:12:02 pm
ExplodingCabbage: 2011-09-23 01:11:51 pm
Lag.Com - not sure who that's directed at, but I've read your post and agree that there's no reason to care either way about whether it's a glitch or a feature, or what its exact behaviour is, since even if it's a glitch and all it does is affect HP, it'd STILL be a separate category. I just thought that since Sinochek does care, I'd point out what's needed to figure out the answer one way or another. Apparently trying to help just gets me insulted, though, so fuck it and fuck him.