Order of the Griffon - October 9, 2014

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2014-10-09 12:40:47 pm

UraniumAnchor: 2014-09-22 12:20:51 pm

2014-09-07 03:34:46 pm

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

Order of the Griffon (Any %) (Single Segment)

Decision: Reject

Reason: Needs a bit more polish in the execution aspect.

https://queue.speeddemosarchive.com/queue/verificationfiles/1226/

This run will be available for a month. After that these link(s) will no longer work.

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2014-09-07 03:35:05 pm

Run Information

Order of the Griffon (Any %) (Single Segment)

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/ootg/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting. Verifications are due by Sept. 21, 2014.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

After 2 weeks I will read all of the verifications and move this thread to the main verification board and post my verdict.

Sonikkustar

Edit history:

Sonikkustar: 2014-09-23 06:06:52 am

2014-09-22 01:30:07 pm

The Great Farming Empire

Hmm...This is a long one. I'll scope out a few parts as RPGs aren't my strong suit.

Edit: Ok, I took a glance at this one.

A/V Quality - Good
No cheating here.

Fights seemed to be planned well and movement was good. The route also looked solid.

Accept

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-09-23 08:57:56 pm

Wake up and be awesome

I'll also be doing this game as well, just give me time, I'm about 10 minutes in.

Looks good so far, Magic really is OP

LotBlind

Edit history:

LotBlind: 2014-09-26 11:20:35 am

LotBlind: 2014-09-26 11:19:59 am

LotBlind: 2014-09-25 01:58:46 pm

LotBlind: 2014-09-24 02:18:51 pm

LotBlind: 2014-09-24 02:18:00 pm

2014-09-24 12:48:37 pm

(BTW I don't know the game to be clear)

All in all I like the way this was made into SS w/ resets (which it is by the way) to be able to counteract a lot of bad RNG that would be happening otherwise, and apparently this causes a certain type of fight to occur every time it's possible.

8:29
Mistake costing 8 seconds.
15:22
Not sure at all but I was thinking maybe could have waited for the un-grouped monsters to get closer without bothering to sleep them until they're right next to you. Less cursor movement that way?
17:02
A few seconds lost to starting the scribing twice.
17:55
Double Kill!...Multikill!... Ultrakill!... M-M-M-MONSTER KILL!!!
29:14
Casting the wrong spell? 15 seconds lost.
48:55
Here kinda looks like sleeping the elf (and trying to sleep the myrmidon) would've been less risky. Unless I'm mistaken that could have saved time over what happened.
57:25
Does any game have a lighting bolt effect more awesome than this?
1:12:11
There's literally a 7 second time here where the runner is just reading their notes. More of these at 1:13:43, 1:19:40 (here the runner resets after having WON a fight because they went the wrong way earlier).
1:33:06
Should have saved before taking this fight (easy to say in hindsight).
1:53:56
I'd like to hear the runner's answer to this: is the fight happening at this time a particularly unlucky one or could this have been happening a lot more throughout the run?
1:59:11
One little mistake with this attack: could have targeted a third enemy at the same time.

I get the dungeons look samey in this game (and they really do and the one under the Specularum looks pretty atrocious) but that's something you need to plan for. Whether it's someone acting as your co-pilot or doing a segmented run first to really grind the path-finding or having the maps hanging on the wall ahead of you. Another thing is the runner doesn't seem to be keeping track of which spells are available to which characters at what time as much as he could have been, often resulting in having to cancel actions. It's not something impossible to follow and the fighting isn't very complicated in the end.

The RNG: ofc this could have been worse (hard to say how good this is overall) but the runner IS continuously manipulating it as well with the saves and loads. So my logic might be off by does that temper it somewhat no matter where the unlucky encounters happen?

There's some hesitation about where exactly to place the reticle to target the most enemies at once which I felt was mostly a visualisation thing (I bet I could train myself to be quicker with that) - this is unless the spells are more effective round the middle of the AoE which might explain a few things. If not, though, the runner is taking the reticle too far almost consistently. Is it clumsy to control it precisely, does it have a lag? Same thing goes for other types of menu mistakes, selecting the wrong action etc... tough to say if it's hastiness or something to do with the controls. If it's the latter this is a non-issue.

SO

Generally speaking, and despite losing track of the right way in many places, the runner seems to know his way around the game quite well. If this gets accepted, I wouldn't mind seeing a segmented run for this game that irons all those creases away. I say "if" because, good luck or bad, lots of time is lost to what has to be considered the runner's insufficient preparations which makes the run look quite unprofessional at times. This is why I'd like to draw the runner into the discussion here to tell me a bit more about the RNG in this game, what kind of empirical probability has he observed for the overall luck to be as it is here? Also I want to ask him about the controls, do they have lag? Are inputs being lost sometimes when he moves the battle targeting reticle around? However, no matter what they say, I'm probably gonna veer towards a reject because of the following.

So there is this mistake happening somewhere before 1:56:10 causing the runner to get bounced back by the invisible barrier that was supposed to have dropped after flipping all the switches. This adds some 1:50 to the time all in all. The other major single mistake is probably gonna be the 1:19:40 one, or rather going the wrong way before the fight. Looks like around 1:20 lost there before the save game is loaded. So that and the other less weighty mistakes add up to >4 minutes surely. The thing is I'd rather see a run with somewhat worse luck but much less execution hassles than this one, and that run could conceivably be a faster one too.

For the note, the people below me who are saying "what LotBlind said" wrote their replies BEFORE I'd finished writing this so don't take it to mean they considered all the same things I wrote above necessarily.

reject (unless runner shows up and can convince me otherwise)

(BTW I don't know the game to be clear)

All in all I like the way this was made into SS w/ resets (which it is by the way) to be able to counteract a lot of bad RNG that would be happening otherwise, and apparently this causes a certain type of fight to occur every time it's possible.

8:29
Mistake costing 8 seconds.
15:22
Not sure at all but I was thinking maybe could have waited for the un-grouped monsters to get closer without bothering to sleep them until they're right next to you. Less cursor movement that way?
17:02
A few seconds lost to starting the scribing twice.
17:55
Double Kill!...Multikill!... Ultrakill!... M-M-M-MONSTER KILL!!!
29:14
Casting the wrong spell? 15 seconds lost.
48:55
Here kinda looks like sleeping the elf (and trying to sleep the myrmidon) would've been less risky. Unless I'm mistaken that could have saved time over what happened.
57:25
Does any game have a lighting bolt effect more awesome than this?
1:12:11
There's literally a 7 second time here where the runner is just reading their notes. More of these at 1:13:43, 1:19:40 (here the runner resets after having WON a fight because they went the wrong way earlier).
1:33:06
Should have saved before taking this fight (easy to say in hindsight).
1:53:56
I'd like to hear the runner's answer to this: is the fight happening at this time a particularly unlucky one or could this have been happening a lot more throughout the run?
1:59:11
One little mistake with this attack: could have targeted a third enemy at the same time.

I get the dungeons look samey in this game (and they really do and the one under the Specularum looks pretty atrocious) but that's something you need to plan for. Whether it's someone acting as your co-pilot or doing a segmented run first to really grind the path-finding or having the maps hanging on the wall ahead of you. Another thing is the runner doesn't seem to be keeping track of which spells are available to which characters at what time as much as he could have been, often resulting in having to cancel actions. It's not something impossible to follow and the fighting isn't very complicated in the end.

The RNG: ofc this could have been worse (hard to say how good this is overall) but the runner IS continuously manipulating it as well with the saves and loads. So my logic might be off by does that temper it somewhat no matter where the unlucky encounters happen?

There's some hesitation about where exactly to place the reticle to target the most enemies at once which I felt was mostly a visualisation thing (I bet I could train myself to be quicker with that) - this is unless the spells are more effective round the middle of the AoE which might explain a few things. If not, though, the runner is taking the reticle too far almost consistently. Is it clumsy to control it precisely, does it have a lag? Same thing goes for other types of menu mistakes, selecting the wrong action etc... tough to say if it's hastiness or something to do with the controls. If it's the latter this is a non-issue.

SO

Generally speaking, and despite losing track of the right way in many places, the runner seems to know his way around the game quite well. If this gets accepted, I wouldn't mind seeing a segmented run for this game that irons all those creases away. I say "if" because, good luck or bad, lots of time is lost to what has to be considered the runner's insufficient preparations which makes the run look quite unprofessional at times. This is why I'd like to draw the runner into the discussion here to tell me a bit more about the RNG in this game, what kind of empirical probability has he observed for the overall luck to be as it is here? Also I want to ask him about the controls, do they have lag? Are inputs being lost sometimes when he moves the battle targeting reticle around? However, no matter what they say, I'm probably gonna veer towards a reject because of the following.

So there is this mistake happening somewhere before 1:56:10 causing the runner to get bounced back by the invisible barrier that was supposed to have dropped after flipping all the switches. This adds some 1:50 to the time all in all. The other major single mistake is probably gonna be the 1:19:40 one, or rather going the wrong way before the fight. Looks like around 1:20 lost there before the save game is loaded. So that and the other less weighty mistakes add up to >4 minutes surely. The thing is I'd rather see a run with somewhat worse luck but much less execution hassles than this one, and that run could conceivably be a faster one too.

For the note, the people below me who are saying "what LotBlind said" wrote their replies BEFORE I'd finished writing this so don't take it to mean they considered all the same things I wrote above necessarily.

reject (unless runner shows up and can convince me otherwise)

AlecK47

Edit history:

AlecK47: 2014-09-25 07:49:35 pm

AlecK47: 2014-09-25 07:48:52 pm

2014-09-24 11:00:46 pm

A/V fine, no cheating detected

This run seems far from trivial for both remembering where you are and dealing with all the rng. It's definitely improvable though, what with missing the switch right before the final fight, having to check notes (yes it's complicated, but it's still time wasted) and placing the reticle. These mistakes make me a bit leery, but given how much of an rng fest this game seems to be (my intuition says the luck could be FAR worse than this), and the generally good menuing, movement and crisis management I can't justify rejecting it either. I'll give it a weak accept, but I really hope that the runner comes back to this with a bit more work on those three issues and drops the time under 2 hours.

LotBlind

2014-09-25 11:15:47 am

for the record 3 people is usually enough (I believe this is a guideline UA is going by) for any game that's looking to be a relatively strong accept. Just saying in case there's other games that need verifying right now and unless you know something about the game.

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-09-25 05:37:04 pm

Wake up and be awesome

So I finished watching the run. Lotblind pretty much pointed out everything I was going to say.
Accept

JLohman711

Edit history:

JLohman711: 2014-09-26 07:45:12 am

2014-09-26 07:42:39 am

A/V looks good.

No cheating I could detect.

The things I could point out as small mistakes in the run already have been by LotBlind.

Yes it could be improved with some work, but there are some RNG elements that can easily kill a run.

Accept.

UraniumAnchor

2014-09-26 10:14:58 am

Not a walrus

Just gonna wait for LotBlind to finish before I post this. Unless he takes more than a couple of days. Wink

LotBlind

Edit history:

LotBlind: 2014-09-26 11:24:05 am

2014-09-26 11:23:07 am

Finished, the comments were edited pretty heavily throughout.

What Aleck is saying about crisis management is true on the one hand but what the combat has been reduced into for the purpose of this run doesn't actually make it rocket science. The fights looked pretty clever to me at first (the runner's done their research) but in the end I felt I could have pretty much made the same little tactical decisions myself.

AlecK47

2014-09-26 06:31:07 pm

On that note, I'll clarify that I'm basically assuming controls are clunky for placing the reticle. If they're actually easy to manipulate I'd probably switch to a weak reject.

For the "crisis management" thing I meant that when things went wrong, the runner generally seemed to act in a logical and decisive manner. Not always, but generally. Even if the combat is simple, you would need to adapt to the conditions of every fight. Looking through the fights I only found a few decisions that I disagreed with that weren't cursor placement, and IIRC none of them necessarily changed the overall outcome of a fight (I don't feel like digging through for them, but at worst it caused one quick reset near the end). Also, I would consider dealing with this game trolling you to be a skill that is absolutely necessary, given what I've seen, and in that regard I would say the runner performed acceptably.

Probably the biggest thing, though is the rng; as in just how good or bad was it in this run? Like I said my gut tells me this was far above average luck, and that is honestly the primary reason I even gave this run a weak accept.

tl:dr: I don't know this game well enough to verify it by non-public standards, so I gave the runner the benefit of the doubt on a few key issues.

On that note, I'll clarify that I'm basically assuming controls are clunky for placing the reticle.  If they're actually easy to manipulate I'd probably switch to a weak reject.

For the "crisis management" thing I meant that when things went wrong, the runner generally seemed to act in a logical and decisive manner.  Not always, but generally.  Even if the combat is simple, you would need to adapt to the conditions of every fight.  Looking through the fights I only found a few decisions that I disagreed with that weren't cursor placement, and IIRC none of them necessarily changed the overall outcome of a fight (I don't feel like digging through for them, but at worst it caused one quick reset near the end).  Also, I would consider dealing with this game trolling you to be a skill that is absolutely necessary, given what I've seen, and in that regard I would say the runner performed acceptably.

Probably the biggest thing, though is the rng; as in just how good or bad was it in this run?  Like I said my gut tells me this was far above average luck, and that is honestly the primary reason I even gave this run a weak accept.

tl:dr: I don't know this game well enough to verify it by non-public standards, so I gave the runner the benefit of the doubt on a few key issues.

UraniumAnchor

2014-09-26 07:54:50 pm

Not a walrus

Sounds like there's some contentious stuff here so I'll see if I can pull the runner in.

UraniumAnchor

2014-10-02 09:48:32 pm

Not a walrus

Runner hasn't been on the forums in over a month and isn't responding to PMs.

Can I get a bit more discussion on this one since it seems a bit borderline at present?

LotBlind

2014-10-03 10:15:10 am

To summarize my position: the mistakes/time loss that happens in this run is of the worse kind - execution/own fault type even if it may have been something that hadn't happened before... I just got the feeling the runner needed to find a way to be a lot better prepared for navigating the brown samey-nesses of the dungeons. I fully believe it's doable. With the constant saving before battles getting bad luck once of twice is a non-issue. Still don't know what kinda luck we're looking at here overall.

JLohman711

2014-10-09 06:52:59 am

This was a borderline accept for me, as many of the things that aren't perfect are due to execution rather than RNG.

After watching it again I'd say Reject. This could be much better with a bit more work.

UraniumAnchor

2014-10-09 12:39:49 pm

Not a walrus

Alright, I'm going to give this a "provisional reject". If something shows up to change my mind I might reconsider, but for now this goes into the "needs more polish" pile.

SDAVerification

2014-10-09 12:40:50 pm

Decision posted.