Watch Dogs

Edit history:

King_Flipsta: 2014-06-04 01:01:10 am

2014-06-04 12:54:48 am

Quote from HoboWithaShotgun:

King Flipsta, for Nicky's call in mission 2, what I do is I stand in her room when the call starts, walk towards the door (I doubt this is required) then leave the room and it always gives me the hack the phone line. I think the trigger is somewhere in her room

I'll try it later today. Unfortunately I forgot to backup my save file after completing mission 1, so I get to sit trough the opening cutscene again, haha.

Quote from Random_Machine:

@King_Flipsta:
I used OBS with the video source plugin. You can find that plugin here:https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/video-source-plugin.20/
Add multiple video sources. You can move the sources and change their sizes to what I have.

The timer that I used was WSplit(But there are probably some better ones). Then I captured the different sub-regions of Wsplit in compact mode.

This is a cheap way of doing video comparisons, but it works.

Thanks.

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-06-04 01:29:40 am

Wake up and be awesome

Alright, did my first Act II speedrun and boy was it a doosy. 3:24:44, now don't worry, sub three is SUPER DUPER possible due to how many times I died. Hell, I'd go as far as to say that sub 2 is also possible. Knowing the mistakes I made, I'm positive on that assumption

This run didn't include Act I. I wanted it to, but I had such a terrible Act I as well (over an hour just to get to mission 7, are you kidding me?). My timing started as soon as Mission complete comes up for mission 9, and ends when it says mission complete for mission 24 (mission 15 in Act II). Technically you could put the 2 acts together and we're looking at a decent run so far. From what I heard though, things kind of go downhill after Act 2, that's our only hope happy

King_Flipsta

2014-06-04 08:53:19 am

I found a spot where you can get a sniper rifle for the Racine skip:

It's in act 1, mission 6.

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-06-04 06:01:31 pm

Wake up and be awesome

Did another act II run and brought my time down to 3:04:24. I'm a little pissed off because I think I made more mistakes in this run then the pervious, this was just cleaner. Anyway, sub 3 should come in the next run and I still firmly believe sub 2 is also possible

Random_Machine

Edit history:

Random_Machine: 2014-06-04 06:04:30 pm

2014-06-04 06:03:00 pm

Here are bike strats for mission 7 of act I. Blackout works very well here just like darkodion said.

I also looked into act 2, mission 1 and you can kill the fixers at the train station before they drive off. You can kill them after hacking the train. But I need to figure out how to kill them quickly without them killing you.

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-06-04 06:47:16 pm

Wake up and be awesome

Thats cool random, definetly faster then what we do right now. As for act 2 mission 1, i run them over with my car before they can get in their car. I also get the blocker perk as it took out the other car very fast

Also, i discovered a skip for act 2. On the mission where you set up an ambush, after you take out everyone, get outside and there should be a bike. Bring it inside the building close to the phone and then hack the phone. Get back on the bike and go back the way you went to get the bike and run over the guy next to the car. This skips a cutscene and a chase.

Also, for the mission where you tail bedbug, let rabbit get caught immediatly. Rabbit will drop his phone which you can hack MUCH faster then helping rabbit get out

BystanderTim

2014-06-04 10:05:29 pm

I'm just getting into routing this game, and the mission where you try to get access into Clara's bunker, I found a fast route.

BystanderTim

2014-06-04 10:05:36 pm

Will have it soon.

HoboWithaShotgun

Edit history:

HoboWithaShotgun: 2014-06-05 12:34:14 am

2014-06-05 12:23:14 am

Wake up and be awesome

Nice Tim. Looking forward to your video, that mission in particular always gives me issues.

Did yet another run of Act II and brought my PB down by 17 minutes. New time is 2:47:xx (I don't remember the exact time, just know it was 2:47). Still had A LOT of deaths in this run, so sub 2:30 should be possible without actual routing. I might have to rethink my sub 2 goal, but who knows. My friend wants to post more tricks and skips we found in the game tomorrow, will have them soon as well

Edit: By the way, King Flipsta, I found another really reliable way of getting a sniper before the Racine Skip. Before mission 2 of Act 2, you have to go to this ctOS building and hack some stuff. Put your waypoint on the place and follow it. It should take you to an alley. Eventually you'll see a garage door. Open it and go upstairs. A guy with a sniper is standing at the top. Kill him and continue by jumping out the window

Random_Machine

Edit history:

Random_Machine: 2014-06-05 01:38:04 am

Random_Machine: 2014-06-05 01:37:53 am

Random_Machine: 2014-06-05 01:34:43 am

Random_Machine: 2014-06-05 01:13:16 am

Random_Machine: 2014-06-05 01:11:53 am

Random_Machine: 2014-06-05 01:07:36 am

Random_Machine: 2014-06-05 01:06:21 am

2014-06-05 01:05:38 am

Quote from HoboWithaShotgun:

As for act 2 mission 1, i run them over with my car before they can get in their car. I also get the blocker perk as it took out the other car very fast

My problem with this strat is that you have to run around a lot more to kill all of the fixers. I have a couple of harder, riskier, and faster strats. I don't know if you can execute them correctly and consistently.
Also, parking a car behind the train allows you to use it after the mission to go to the next one.

My drive to the next mission wasn't perfect(The route wasn't either).

I'll be looking forward to seeing those skips.

danni225

2014-06-05 01:24:20 pm

I like to share an alternate strat for the racine skip.
an alternate strat to the one Streetlights.. already have provided.

This strat uses a grenade launcher instead of a sniper rifle, it should be faster due to the fact that you don't use focus and you only have to partially aim.
although this might be considered a "yolo" strat if you will.
I've provided a youtube video to show what talking about here.

The best way to get the grenade is to buy it as you are buying the 416 rifle.
The grenade launcher costs 4000 so upgrading the ATM boost early might be needed for this.
There is an atm across the street from the weapon store/shop where you need to buy the 416.
I advice using that to get money before buying the weapons.
(also there is a phone call with badboy17/clara at that moment, so using the atm should not loose you any time).

Although this might not a viable strat due to the fact that you need 4000 before or during the end of Big Brother.

I like to share an alternate strat for the racine skip.
an alternate strat to the one Streetlights.. already have provided.

This strat uses a grenade launcher instead of a sniper rifle, it should be faster due to the fact that you don't use focus and you only have to partially aim.
although this might be considered a "yolo" strat if you will.
I've provided a youtube video to show what talking about here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hPIrGZhiTE

The best way to get the grenade is to buy it as you are buying the 416 rifle.
The grenade launcher costs 4000 so upgrading the ATM boost early might be needed for this.
There is an atm across the street from the weapon store/shop where you need to buy the 416.
I advice using that to get money before buying the weapons.
(also there is a phone call with badboy17/clara at that moment, so using the atm should not loose you any time).

Although this might not a viable strat due to the fact that you need 4000 before or during the end of Big Brother.

Random_Machine

Edit history:

Random_Machine: 2014-06-05 04:09:20 pm

Random_Machine: 2014-06-05 04:07:46 pm

Random_Machine: 2014-06-05 04:07:06 pm

2014-06-05 04:05:44 pm

Your video is private, danni225.

That grenade launcher strat is not viable due to skill points as well. Spending 3 points on ATM hack boost is a bit too much at that point. We need some points for helicopter disable and blackout later. Bullet resistance and stealth sprint might be necessary as well, but we could probably work without them. Getting the grenade launcher later doesn't work either because the gun shop is too far out of the way. There are already ways of getting the sniper rifle conveniently without going to the shop.

However, the grenade launcher could be useful for other missions in the future. We'll just have to see if some things in this game are worth going out of the way for, to save even more time.

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-06-05 05:55:37 pm

Wake up and be awesome

Did a run today and got 3:28:57... of Act I and Act II Grin

First off, I ended up PBing on my Act I and got 56:24 but ended up dying twice in the same area, weird. As for my Act II run I got 2:33:16. I also died still A LOT in that run, so sub 2:30 SHOULD be next. I do believe that sub 3 hours for Acts I and II is possible, but with better strats it would help

King_Flipsta

2014-06-06 11:59:16 am

Act 1 Mission 6 routed. This mission is annoying. I could not find a 100% consistent strategy for the escape section, the pursuit car spawns are somewhat random. Here's some potential outcomes:

Random_Machine

Edit history:

Random_Machine: 2014-06-06 01:54:07 pm

2014-06-06 01:53:45 pm

Quote from King_Flipsta:

Act 1 Mission 6 routed. This mission is annoying. I could not find a 100% consistent strategy for the escape section, the pursuit car spawns are somewhat random.

You can use blackout for this mission as well. But you need 4 system keys if you want to use it for mission 6 and mission 7. Mission 2 should give you 2 system keys at least. I forgot if some other missions have system keys. Mission 7 has a system key inside the fixer boss place.

The car spawns won't matter if you use blackout. You can drive past an enemy car without detection if you don't crash into it or slow down.

King_Flipsta

Edit history:

King_Flipsta: 2014-06-06 04:57:47 pm

King_Flipsta: 2014-06-06 04:29:11 pm

2014-06-06 04:16:12 pm

Quote from Random_Machine:

Quote from King_Flipsta:

Act 1 Mission 6 routed. This mission is annoying. I could not find a 100% consistent strategy for the escape section, the pursuit car spawns are somewhat random.

You can use blackout for this mission as well. But you need 4 system keys if you want to use it for mission 6 and mission 7. Mission 2 should give you 2 system keys at least. I forgot if some other missions have system keys. Mission 7 has a system key inside the fixer boss place.

The car spawns won't matter if you use blackout. You can drive past an enemy car without detection if you don't crash into it or slow down.

Wow, I did not know this, up until now I somehow confused blackout with jam coms. I'll try to create a better route. There is a wooden pole in the alleyway you start the mission at. If you break it, it causes a blackout. I hope it can be used to prevent having to kill everyone.

Random_Machine

Edit history:

Random_Machine: 2014-06-08 01:56:30 pm

Random_Machine: 2014-06-08 01:56:14 pm

Random_Machine: 2014-06-08 01:55:43 pm

2014-06-06 07:57:59 pm

Here is what I have for Brandon Docks ctOS ~~mission 2 of act 2~~ Edit:It is not mission 2.

You can buy some crafting components at the store to craft IEDs for later missions.

Quote from King_Flipsta:

There is a wooden pole in the alleyway you start the mission at. If you break it, it causes a blackout. I hope it can be used to prevent having to kill everyone.

It only creates a small blackout compared to the one you craft. I don't know if that is enough.

BystanderTim

2014-06-08 08:42:27 pm

Currently on Act IV Mission II, I have noticed two things. The News Truck you have to find is in two locations, rng dependent, and that getting on the train is the easiest way to escape the cops.

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-06-09 12:07:52 am

Wake up and be awesome

The truck is rng, however, if you happen to get it in the right place, you can activate a steam pipe below almost immediately to stop it.

On a side note, I have finally finished the game! Now it's off to the races, lets see what time we can get. Just a quick question, when should we stop the timer for the run? When the "big thing happens at the end and the credits roll," or after that when another big thing happens (I don't want to spoil the game for anybody, if you've beaten the game, you know what I'm talking about)
I vote for that thing before the credits roll. Cause then if you choose the other ending, you have to sit through a lot of FUCKING credtis that I don't believe you can skip. Besides, the game says that you've completed the game and gives you the progression award after the credits roll.

And finally if I have to guess a time, I'd say sub 5:30 without actual routing for Acts III -V. All three are pretty short and I was able to get most of them out of the way pretty quickly

The truck is rng, however, if you happen to get it in the right place, you can activate a steam pipe below almost immediately to stop it.

On a side note, I have finally finished the game! Now it's off to the races, lets see what time we can get. Just a quick question, when should we stop the timer for the run? When the "big thing happens at the end and the credits roll," or after that when another big thing happens (I don't want to spoil the game for anybody, if you've beaten the game, you know what I'm talking about)
I vote for that thing before the credits roll. Cause then if you choose the other ending, you have to sit through a lot of FUCKING credtis that I don't believe you can skip. Besides, the game says that you've completed the game and gives you the progression award after the credits roll.

And finally if I have to guess a time, I'd say sub 5:30 without actual routing for Acts III -V. All three are pretty short and I was able to get most of them out of the way pretty quickly

Ouga

2014-06-09 07:45:51 am

Hi!

I'm curious in getting into this, but my perspective has been to just do full casual runs, hopefully at some point would start remembering where to go and know the fastest routes from A to B within city. I timed my 4th playthrough. Time was 1:11 after A1, 4:21 after A2, 5:34 after A3, and 7:19 in the end. This is still super casual ofc, I'm sure sub6 is fairly easy to access once some proper strats have been thought for full run.

I read though most of this thread, but I haven't really seen the few basics talked over. Difficulty? Only mention I saw was someone sticking with normal. I feel like normal cannot become standard. Speedruns are generally played on the hardest, or easiest, depending on game. I'd think realistic is something that would take out from the fun in this game, so it'd fall between easy and hard imo. I personally have ran this at easy after first playthrough, but I can't honeslty even say what the differences are. Probably related to how easily you're spotted, how many hits you can take and so on. I'd have argued easy was the sensible choice here?

Run should end once you're done at lighthouse, when you lose control of character as usual. I feel like the epilogue isn't part of the any% - well, at least it'd make a boring 5min wait at the end of each run, where only thing you could do wrong is if you go afk when all you need to do in the run is to press mouse once after long wait.

Anyway good job with some A1/A2 mission ideas!

Hi!

I'm curious in getting into this, but my perspective has been to just do full casual runs, hopefully at some point would start remembering where to go and know the fastest routes from A to B within city. I timed my 4th playthrough. Time was 1:11 after A1, 4:21 after A2, 5:34 after A3, and 7:19 in the end. This is still super casual ofc, I'm sure sub6 is fairly easy to access once some proper strats have been thought for full run.

I read though most of this thread, but I haven't really seen the few basics talked over. Difficulty? Only mention I saw was someone sticking with normal. I feel like normal cannot become standard. Speedruns are generally played on the hardest, or easiest, depending on game. I'd think realistic is something that would take out from the fun in this game, so it'd fall between easy and hard imo. I personally have ran this at easy after first playthrough, but I can't honeslty even say what the differences are. Probably related to how easily you're spotted, how many hits you can take and so on. I'd have argued easy was the sensible choice here?

Run should end once you're done at lighthouse, when you lose control of character as usual. I feel like the epilogue isn't part of the any% - well, at least it'd make a boring 5min wait at the end of each run, where only thing you could do wrong is if you go afk when all you need to do in the run is to press mouse once after long wait.

Anyway good job with some A1/A2 mission ideas!

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-06-09 10:42:32 am

Wake up and be awesome

I think the reason why most of us play on normal is that we kind of forgot there was a way to change difficulty Tongue

Anyway, by the looks of it, every act 1 and 2 run have been done on normal, so maybe we should just try to keep things were they are for consistency sake.

A couple things I think we all forgot about is the fact that we can order cars. You get a shit ton of money close to the end of the game, and ordering cars might eliminate car RNG. Also just a note about reputation. Don't worry about killing civilians, there are enough missions where you increase your reputation by a lot so no needs.

One last thing. Someone find out a way to skip that boss fight at the end of act 3 (again no spoilers for anyone who hasn't gotten that far) please find a way, I hate that part

Ouga

Edit history:

Ouga: 2014-06-09 05:46:46 pm

2014-06-09 05:39:20 pm

No. That's a terrible reason to keep at normal. Game is <2 weeks old, rules won't be based on first days' failure to make sense with difficulty settings. Current records are not going to stand for long time, and a1/a2 runs won't be the main category. I don't mean to be bitchy about it, there just has to be clear reason why one difficulty will be chosen. It's stupid to start discussing about this when more persons will start running on hard and calling normal runners underdoers, or people running on easy because, well that would make the most sense to me in speedrunning sense. It really comes down to does easy take something out of the game, such as is dodging opponents too easy and so on. I really don't care what the difficulty is, but it has to have strong arguments for it so that next whiner won't have upper hand on claiming it should be changed Smiley

The worst thing would be if people ended up doing runs at different difficulties and there'd be different categories on that :/

Did another run, 6h30. After A1 1h02, after A2 3h41. It's still really casually scrubby in many places, I prob could cut 6 by just doing 2 runs more without actual big new strats. I'd argue my a5m1 in 30mins might have something to improve on Wink

A3 boss fight is indeed quite terrible. Just the idea of long speech, followed by easy wave of 3 mobs, followed by ANOTHER speech is dumb. Specially when it's nobody's favorite kind of gangsta blahblah. Anyway I don't think you should care about spoiling anyone, anyone doing speedruns of a game is expected to have completed the game before running parts of it, let alone find themselves on page6 of this thread Smiley

No. That's a terrible reason to keep at normal. Game is <2 weeks old, rules won't be based on first days' failure to make sense with difficulty settings. Current records are not going to stand for long time, and a1/a2 runs won't be the main category. I don't mean to be bitchy about it, there just has to be clear reason why one difficulty will be chosen. It's stupid to start discussing about this when more persons will start running on hard and calling normal runners underdoers, or people running on easy because, well that would make the most sense to me in speedrunning sense. It really comes down to does easy take something out of the game, such as is dodging opponents [i]too[/i] easy and so on. I really don't care what the difficulty is, but it has to have strong arguments for it so that next whiner won't have upper hand on claiming it should be changed :) The worst thing would be if people ended up doing runs at different difficulties and there'd be different categories on that :/

Did another run, 6h30. After A1 1h02, after A2 3h41. It's still really casually scrubby in many places, I prob could cut 6 by just doing 2 runs more without actual big new strats. I'd argue my a5m1 in 30mins might have something to improve on ;)

A3 boss fight is indeed quite terrible. Just the idea of long speech, followed by easy wave of 3 mobs, followed by ANOTHER speech is dumb. Specially when it's nobody's favorite kind of gangsta blahblah. Anyway I don't think you should care about spoiling anyone, anyone doing speedruns of a game is expected to have completed the game before running parts of it, let alone find themselves on page6 of this thread :)

Random_Machine

Edit history:

Random_Machine: 2014-06-09 07:14:52 pm

2014-06-09 07:11:41 pm

Alright, I just finished the game a second time. Now I have saves for all of the missions in the game. Time to get to work. I would like to see more videos of people doing runs if that is possible. Then I can use them to see what we need to improve.

For A3M6: You can use the grenade launcher from A2M15 to knock the enforcer down then kill him with IEDs. And for a possible skip, try finding a way off the roof
(I still doubt that would skip the fight though).

Easy difficulty should be fine because we can still execute all of the strats that we found.

HoboWithaShotgun

Edit history:

HoboWithaShotgun: 2014-06-09 07:52:29 pm

HoboWithaShotgun: 2014-06-09 07:49:21 pm

2014-06-09 07:43:08 pm

Wake up and be awesome

That's what I thought about the rooftop skip. Eventually you make you way back down. What I noticed is that some of the windows on the side are open. If we could somehow leapfrog our way down from window to window, then we might have a shot. I wouldn't expect much though, I doubt it would work

Edit: I forgot to mention, just got 51:40 for Act 1 Grin

. I believe sub 50 is possible because even though it was the best run I've ever had for Act 1, I still made a lot of stupid mistakes, including having to reload last autosave to escape chasers in mission 7. Was going to do a run of the whole game, but I died three times in Act II before mission 3, and I just wasn't in the mood for a really long run with absolutely no practice with anything after Act II

Ouga

2014-06-09 09:01:18 pm

GJ hobo \o

Noob question: where is the save file exactly? :O I should get those prac saves too, and specifically get a save to skip the damn 5min intro. I have PC version but not on steam. Removing gamerprofile.xml only messed up game gfx totally, and didn't spot the savefile on install folder.

How does the grenade launcher (the version of A2M15) work against enforcers? Is it only good for knocking down effect, or does it do explosive dmg? I somehow thought direct hits were the same as if grenade popped, foolishly had forgot about the whole weapon. Damn, need my own save files to test stuff Smiley