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Luis20: 2015-03-13 11:15:02 pm
Luis20: 2015-03-13 11:14:17 pm
Hey everyone, I've recently reached out to a few veteran runners about this issue and currently have gotten some pretty good advice in response so I decided to post this publicly and see what I can get.

So I've currently been interested in running Super Metroid. I'm not necessarily going for a WR or speedrun pace, but I am going for my personal best through the game in a manner mostly consistent with the progression the developers had originally intended. 

I am trying do 100% all item collections run and best ending since I have played the game for about 7 years now, and therefore have a memory of all the item locations. Also no major sequence breaks as I previously stated, however I will do a mock ball for early super missiles, otherwise that is it.

The main issue is that I am constantly nervous through the entire run that I will mess up or miss a trick, so keeping a consistent pace through the run is really difficult for me. Wall jumping is easy but also difficult to do consistently, and mockballing is a 50/50 for me. I usually get it after a couple tries but doing it on the first try is insane luck.

So my question is, how do I stay consistent through the run without loosing it?

I previously said that I've beaten the game from time to time now for about 7 years, but only I started running the game just last week. I'm sure that might also have something to do with it. I've also gotten advice to loosen up on myself and enjoy myself better during the run, which has surprisingly helped me progress further without worrying about a simple mistake.
Thread title:  
Obscure games ftw
My biggest piece of advice would be don't restart when things go badly unless you absolutely have to.  Just keep playing runs through to the end in the beginning to get experience with the later parts of the run, and when you get there in an actual attempt you might still get nervous, but you already know how to handle it well from the other attempts.
Intruding N313 and F014
My advice is to pretend that you are not ahead of your best/current WR so you don't end up anxious and lose your focus.  I lost a WR pace run the other night because of that (and I was also tired, which didn't help).  One dumb mistake ended the run.
berserker status
The most important thing I think is to not be demoralized when you fail late in a run or make a few uncharacteristic mistakes.  For longer runs that test your endurance it's bound to happen.  I personally view attempts in terms of rounds like in a boxing match or a fighting game:  you may lose a few rounds here and there, but the goal is to win the match.  Staying mindful of maintaining good fundamentals and being able to improvise when a plan goes awry are keys for consistency.  Heck even getting more comfortable by shifting in your seat/correcting posture or controlling your breathing pays dividends
Edit history:
mrprmiller: 2015-03-15 05:05:50 pm
Everyday is puppies and sunshine...
Quote:
For longer runs that test your endurance it's bound to happen.


Holy cow this is a VERY true statement.
General rules of thumbs for long runs and nerves

A)If your timing it, don't look at the clock... if your ahead you'll play uncharacteristicly safe which can actually be worse than playing average, and if your behind you'll play excessively agressive and throw more time away trying to make up whats already gone

B)Let small stuff go, stuff happens that will go against you at some point... as long as you don't die... or (because you said your doing SM 100%) you cannot find an item you forgot you should try to get full runs under the belt.

C) Nerves should go away with time, they should spring up when small things will end a run like running out of energy etc. not everytime you go to do something.

Now keeping pace for a long run, unless your at the pinnacle of your games skill cap (generally 1% for every hour game length) you will always have slack in terms of movement, optimization, strategy that can always be worked on... I was helping a friend improve his Metroid Prime 1 100% and I told him to watch a VoD, or to jot down rooms that if you seem to stumble or bump your head on time and time again take note of it and then go back and practice after. He doesn't like to grind, but usually if you success rate on a trick, room, or strategy takes a dive (like 9:10 to 1:2)... your cutting one too many corners and you need to go back and figure out which one to paste back in. Your just starting so don't worry about missing tricks at this point, just work on getting through a game and one last thing

Make sure you enjoy what your doing, otherwise you'll never be satisfied once you accomplish it. Always celebrate your small steps of progress, because those small steps will become harder as your time gets lower and your goal gets higher (or should it be even lower? I don't know Tongue )
This is a tough one.  One thing that people always (rightfully) yell at me for is resetting too much.  Get good at the end of your game.  Do whatever it takes to practice late game stuff and be confident that you have a strong chance to pull off your major tricks and movements successfully.  Being able to do something 10 times in a row doesn't mean you'll be able to do it in a real run coming out of a contextually different setup.  I know that it should feel drastically different from practice, but somehow it does.  So practice your stuff, but practice it in longer sections and finish up your runs from time to time even when they're quote unquote dead.

Nerves are a real-ass thing.  I've never found a great solution to being on WR pace coming into difficult end-game content other than to do it over and over and over.  You just have to take the pressure off of yourself however you can... even if you have to tell yourself jackassy things to get your brain under control such as "Yeah... I'm the master at this.  If I miss this last trick, it's whatever... I'll be on WR pace again in a few more attempts and I'll get it one of those times.  I'm just so good that being on WR pace happens all the time so it's nothing to be stressed about." thumbsup  And yeah... it sounds douchey... but once I convince myself that getting a certain time is inevitable given my skill level and a little bit of repetition... I feel less worried about this being the run because I know the run is coming soon.
HELLO!
There's a saying: "Act like you've been there before."

And well, the best way to act like you've had a good run before, is to have had good runs before.

So practice.
Insanity Prelude
As somebody who does runs that are about 4+ hours on average, my two cents:

1) Practice. Make saves of certain portions of the game (such as in 10 minute parts), then just practice drilling those parts over and over. With every try, you get to see something new, which is important the longer the run is. Seeing more scenarios gives you a better wealth of experience of how to handle the unexpected situations. This in turn, means during an actual run, you will be less surprised if something goes wrong (and it will for longer runs)

2) Have notes. Especially for games you aren't as intimately acquainted with. Even if you don't plan on using them, having them around is good if you need a quick refresher on something critical so you don't accidentally choke. If you have notes, practice using them too. You don't want to waste time looking at things during a run. Over time, you can streamline your notes for only the critical things, which should help relieve some stress too cause you know your notes will remind you of the critical run-enders.

3) Don't get discouraged by runs going badly or times you aren't satisfied with. As Hsanrb mentioned, enjoy your small steps of progresses. Rome wasn't built in a day, so you shouldn't expect yourself to PB on every attempt.

4) Don't run with splits. This sounds weird, but its true for several people that I know, myself included. If you find yourself getting really nervous because you're ahead that you start double checking everything and become paranoid, then don't have splits open when you run. OBS can produce local recordings so you can always time the run afterwards. One of the runners I know actually uses a post it to hide his splits on his laptop as he runs so he can't see his time (but audience can).

5) My personal preference is to always carry the run as far as I can, even if its a bad run. If you keep resetting over every little mistake early, you're going to find your late game is lackluster compared to your early game. And this can be very troublesome. A -5 min lead can suddenly turn into a 6 minute time loss because you didn't play through the late parts and are just caught off guard.

6) Evaluate your runs when you are done. Many runners I know do this. At the time, complaining about a small mistake may be natural, but when you put the whole run together, it might not even be the worst mistake or source of time loss in your run. So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to beat yourself up over it. Evaluating your run at the end helps you focus on what you need to practice, whether you lost time because of bad RNG and it weeds out the smaller mistakes that had less impact overall. When you go back in the future, it'll help calm you down because you know what to focus on.

7) Think a few screens or situations ahead if possible. Again a personal thing for me. For several of the games I run, I tend to think of the situation in battles about 2-3 turns ahead so I am ready when the boss gives me some unfavourable RNG. I also tend to think of what I need to do in rooms about 2-3 screens ahead so I know what my approach is before it loads.
Jumping Turtle
I'm not quite top-tier, but I've noticed I improve drastically if I have the attitude of "this is simply fun," rather than obsessing over personal bests. PBs are just a thing that happen often at first, and never completely stop happening.

This is of course assuming you don't quit. I used to do segmented runs, thinking I could never maintain focus for over 5 minutes.I got impatient quickly, and settled for an okay time. After going back to run it for fun in races, I beat my best segmented time in a single segment. I guess simply having fun lead to more practice than I used to force on myself.
I generally practice until the run becomes second nature but with people watching from streaming or just the recorder on it can still be difficult to shake the pressure that you're trying for a record. If it's a really bad day with shit luck I take a break if I start getting pissed and come back later. That usually fixes it.

Pretending that it's another practice sessions also helps. Kinda like tricking yourself that you've lowered the bar for an acceptable run.

I don't stream properly yet but I can't imagine having the clock and gold splits on screen help with the pressure.
umad
When I used to stream my Majora's Mask attempts back in 2010-2011 I used to choke on the smallest things and fail runs constantly. The pressure of streaming not only messed up my concentration, but also got me more angry and embarrassed over small mistakes, so I was much more likely to reset over small things. Once I started doing runs without streaming, I got a good run to put on SDA pretty quickly. The problem with streaming is that I tend to focus more on entertaining my audience than on actually playing well, and the knowledge that I'm being watched live stresses me out a lot (probably social anxiety), both of which ruin my ability to play well and concentrate on what I'm doing. I wish it weren't like that, but there's not much I can do about it. I know a lot of other people who are the same way.

I don't usually use splits, but when I do I keep them to a minimum and only put them at the end of major boss fights and stuff like that. Having a lot of splits makes me more likely to forget to hit them, and also causes a lot of demotivation when I see myself a few seconds behind too many times in a row. I do like using a timer though, since it lets me kind of gauge how far into the run I am and how much longer i have to go.

I can also vouch for letting runs continue even if you've lost a lot of time. If you reset over everything, you won't have enough experience with late game outside of practice, and you'll be more likely to choke when you get there. My MM run on SDA is a good example of this; the last dungeon and final bosses went relatively poorly compared to the rest of the run, and I'm fairly certain that had a lot to do with that being one of the only one of my runs that ever actually made it to that point.
Edit history:
Mishrak: 2015-03-23 11:02:38 am
Mishrak: 2015-03-23 11:02:24 am
Mishrak: 2015-03-23 11:02:17 am
Mishrak: 2015-03-23 11:01:45 am
As many others have said, practice.  If you have practiced enough, when the nerves set in, your muscle memory will take over.  If you find yourself thinking "ok I need to spin jump, then press up, then press right, then press jump" by the time you're done thinking you've already missed the shinespark.  If you ever watch top SM runners, you'll see that they practice and practice and practice.

Also it will get easier the more you do runs under the clock and with an audience.  It is a little nerve wracking, but that's part of why it's so fun.  Failing is part of it.  I've seen Kottpower and Zoast lose many WR pace runs in Tourian.  I've also seen them immediately reset and start the next run.  We've all lost pb-pace runs to nerves and chokes.  That's how you know you're a speed runner tbh.
Quote from presjpolk:
There's a saying: "Act like you've been there before."

And well, the best way to act like you've had a good run before, is to have had good runs before.

So practice.

Nailed it.
Reset rarely. Only reset if the run is completely and utterly dead (it would take you so much to get back on track it's not worth doing so), this way your end-game doesn't end up being absolute crap because you're never playing it.
Practice. Make saves for yourself at various key points in the run so that you can play them.
Figure out the hardest tricks for you to do in that game/run. Ask yourself (and others) either good ways to learn them or routes around them until you can nail them. Sometimes this is impossible. But not having to do the most difficult tricks your first few runs is better than spending six months not doing any runs because you can't get Trick X. And then you incorporate in Trick X once you *do* learn it and the rest of your run is still good, because you've been running.

Most importantly, after knowing what you're doing (you've had a few runs under your belt already), tell yourself "I got this" or "All I need to do here is X/All I need to avoid here is X" and give yourself a mental round of applause for doing what you need to.