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I did read what you wrote, but you can't just limit the RTS genre to base destroying missions... that doesn't make any sense. Yeah it's true that some games are dominated by such missions (C&C, Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander and probably some of the AoE games), but a lot of other games (especially newer) are being more creative with the missions. SC1 as you keep mentioning consists of maybe 20-25% base destroying missions and SC2 even fewer, and both games are heavily scripted as well. Now I have yet to watch the Dune 2000 runs and I don't doubt that the game contains many and long base destroying missions but that's just one game and I feel like you can't generalize the genre based on that.
The thing that comes to detriment the RTS genre is that in the majority of cases, routing is 90% of the run. Once you know exactly how many of which specific unit you need to be able to clear the objective with the lowest possible investment, you just do that. Until it works. It's often very mathematical in that sense. Every unit has a build time and a resource cost, versus a health level and a DPS number. Optimize for X. Apply micro of a suitable level in order to succeed.

This is especially the case in WC3 Hard ILs, which are some of the hardest RTS runs out there. Some of Liderharen's runs are literally "I have a 1 in 1000 chance to beat this level using these units, and I'm gonna do it until I win." The routing shaves off the seconds; the execution only makes the run exist.
Edit history:
Partystar: 2015-08-21 09:46:17 pm
Partystar: 2015-08-21 09:45:47 pm
Partystar: 2015-08-21 09:41:48 pm
Racing games: Mario Kart's, F-Zero's, Wave Race 64, Golden Eye and Perfect Dark! For some reason I'd put Golden Eye and Perfect in there. I think that's because like the other racing games, they have similar and a long competitive history. I have the same reason as Hsanrb. I feel racing games especially the ones I mentioned, never get old. They are easy to learn but take a life time to master. The skill ceilings for them just never ends. Most of them have been pushed since their release and the communities for them are as old. As up to this day, records get broken for even the most trivial tracks. This while I hear RTA speedruns often declared dead.

While a lot of speedrunners jump from one game to another, people that are in to racing games specialize and are extremely dedicated. They stick with the game for years and some even decades. Some players barely play other games at all. The amount of input and precision for these games is also very tense and compact. I feel racing games have a continuous nature whereas many 2D platform games are very discrete, especially if they are missing an input heavy speedup mechanic. I see a 2D game as a straight line whereas a racing game would be more like curve approximation. In many 2D platform games it is about getting all crucial spots successfully, but since their discrete nature it is a fail/success situation instead of graduations you would find a racing games.
Freezard: If I included SC games in the ones I was talking about that's my mistake since I already knew SCII has many other things than base destroy having seen a run. I guess I kept thinking of the one mission I posted.

You're saying I can't generalize, and that's fair. I don't know enough RTS games to be able to do that and maybe I am assuming too many of them to be like D2K. On the other hand I felt I should generalize and idealize just in order to be able to answer the question in the first place, and also because I expected others to do the same. I suppose if we wanted to we could name D2K as some kind of sub-genre of RTS (because isn't metroidvania a subtype of platformers? There's not THAT that many of them or is there?) and then what I said would make more sense.

It's the difference between a pure game (i.e. all returns to single but convoluted set of mechanics) and a more authored, scripted one, and the way I saw it "destroy everything" was the most basic gameplay of RTSes especially up to some point as you say, and thus you could argue becomes the archetype for usage in discussions like this.

Onin: Yeah, again that's not the kind of RTS I was talking about but I'm starting to think I should have emphasized more I wasn't looking at the average but what I saw as the ideal/archetypal RTS format. Even D2K has missions that don't fit the description at all.

Partystar: I don't know how much more or less dedicated players of other genres really are. It would be true to say the kind of skills required by racers don't carry over as much as generic fast and precise mouse movement skills do. The only reason I chose another genre myself is because racing games have long stretches where intensity of execution slows down, but it is ofc easy to see what you mean. RTS (ideal RTS) and racing games are both very complicated to optimize in TASes as well.

And hi!
Edit history:
reality: 2015-08-23 07:54:23 pm
Nostalgia Kills
I'll vouch for tetris-likes.

Block puzzle games have crazy APM and in their main score attack or vs cpu modes you have to think on the fly almost the entire time, especially on the more popular categories against the max AI. Pokémon puzzle league is one of the more watchable runs.

Even though FPS have moments where you are In a corridor and have to continue going down it, the time window to act is so small on the other parts that having breaks in the action like that can throw you off your game and ultimately make it harder. I don't see any reason to put a goldeneye or perfect dark runner down a peg.

Any JRPG demands you know the game inside and out, and then follow the plan (to manipulate things) or follow the plan (with exact %s known so that resets are less annoying). As a whole, lots of them are unfriendly to spectators, even though they tend to take as much work as other speedruns.

I love platformers because you can look at a game backwards from the end credits and then pick the fastest way to collect the triggers needed to open each specific new area, or in the case of mass collectibles (70 star mario64, psychonauts) you can measure which are faster to get than the the others, with the big appeal being how you time an entirely different route (or segment of route) many times before real grinding starts, and even then you can often hope to come up with a new route. It's definitively the freshest speerun.

Racing games are the bomb, even the bad ones.. they just grow on you so much when your playing them as hard as they can be done. Although on the flip side, horrendous fights between wr going just a few tenths or even hundredths of a second down happen there more often than anywhere else, and I don't see how you can sleep at night many runners hang onto their records except by beating their own times constantly. I think more racing games have a competitive spirit, but for some people the charm of speedrunning is doing it for games that most people don't know can be done fast.

RTS is difficult to speedrun, but it's murder to spectate without prior knowledge, what with the camera darting around and not needing to be on the fighting for it to work out. I think it could be argued as one of the better RTA speedruns, but it's abominable in IL. I can think of quite a few IL's across Warcraft 3 and starcraft that boil down to following a "perfect plan" for when the AI uses it's rare pattern and leaves itself open/reacts weirdly. It is possible to get TOO reset heavy, even in speed running>
I didn't think about tetris games. They do seem pretty non-stop, that's true. During a match that is. Which can be equated to the RTS scenario.

This isn't about putting "runners down a peg". Just answer the question posed (you're telling us everything) Tongue
For me old FPS games or action adventures (Tomb Raider) are the best games to speedrun, because there is a lot of potential for shortcuts via weapons/enemies/movement boosts and they're usually very fast-paced. While I agree racing games are sort of "made" to speedrun, they are probably the least entertaining to watch if we're talking about career/tournament mode since hardly any racing game has any shortcuts or glitches that could significantly shorten the run unless we're talking about forfeiting races in tournaments because we already have already enough points to proceed further.

Platformers are also very good, but usually only when they're 2D (Contra, Jazz Jackrabbit, Sonic, SMB)
The real king is racing I reckon. With most games, only a small fraction of the playerbase ever tries to beat them really fast, but with racing games every player is trying to go fast. If a racing game has demo recording and/or an online leaderboard, you are fighting for a record against millions of people, and even being faster than the average fan will take a lot of practise.

Having spent a lot of time running Hostile Waters, a strategy game, I'd say there isn't actually much need for improvisation. Usually, your plan either works or it doesn't. Unexpected events usually cost too much time and ruin the run. But one thing I do like about RTS games is that a lot of levels have creative speed strats.
Edit history:
LotBlind: 2015-10-11 01:38:59 pm
LotBlind: 2015-10-11 01:38:08 pm
I'm currently thinking:

1) Ideal RTS
2) Racing
3) Platformers and FPS
4) Average RTS - there usually is more microing you could be doing than you actually can but also lotsa boring and repetitive stuff.