Tempus Feedback - Doors and breakables

[Rob123]

To make times more consistent and fair with multiplayer servers, we have the ability to strip doors and breakables from maps, where they would normally interfere with the player. We have the option to remove:
- Any door that opens so slowly that you will hit it and stop.
- Any door during a transition that requires a series of buttons to be shot.
- Any breakable floors/walls that a player normally has to stop and shoot through.

Maps like orbital currently have the slow, sliding doors removed from them. On a short map where times are extremely close, having a player ahead of you open the doors, or shoot buttons can save a significant amount of time. To avoid this happening accidentally or on purpose, the doors are no longer there. This is done plugin-side, so the .bsp is exactly the same.

I imagine over the course of a run, several seconds could be saved if you happened to have lucky timing. Obviously this is quite a big change, so I'm looking to get people's thoughts before we do anything drastic.

EDIT: Breakables and doors in transitions that can slow you down will be removed.

[John]

It's definitely a good idea to make speedrunning as smooth as possible, especially on multiplayer servers. People running on local servers will have a disadvantange (but 0 ping) but no one really cares about them anyways. +1

[obsidiian]

This is a very interesting problem.  The most significant thing that I see with this is the change between listen servers and public servers.  Runs on a public server would have a significant advantage because they would have no doors or anything, but if you leave them, it's very easy for people to cheat by using other people to help their time.  I would probably leave them in just so listen servers are still usable for speedrunning.

[RNC1839]

I feel like the real problem with this and the prespeeding is simply that we don't have much of a meta for what is and isn't allowed in a speedrun. So someone else get on that.

[Rob123]

I hadn't really considered the impact on local speedrunning. What we could do is make all stripper configs (for the plugin that does this) available to anyone. Other servers can then run this plugin, or people using dedicated servers locally.

I'd be happy to do a tutorial on how to setup a dedicated server locally, with stripper running to match our map setups. Hopefully this would help consistency.

[Dr. Heinz]

Tbh, I don't like it, If you remove certain doors, you pretty much have to speedshot/speedpogo everything. That's makes everything pretty boring. And if you have to rely on people keeping doors open for you, you're doing something wrong. It's just a certain aspect of some maps I think.

I do like it where things are already broken, like the metal bars in all the vents or the big fall on soar. That's not really a problem since those stay broken after the first time you break it.

[ll]

I don't see any reason to include this. Hypothetically, everyone should have to deal with slow doors and breakables evenly. I know that you could have someone hold doors open or break things before the run starts, but trying for a 100% controlled environment is just going to feel restrictive to jump in. It's the same problem with prespeeding. I haven't gotten to read all of the rest of this stuff because I've got to get to Easter dinner, but I don't think that adding this function is worth creating inconsistencies with offline jumping. If it's in the map it''s untouchable imo.

[Exile]

I think we should leave the maps the way they were made because nature should not be tampered with as it is not the will of God.

[jondy]

I think we should leave the maps the way they were made because nature should not be tampered with as it is not the will of God.

http://i.imgur.com/u0hbHCz.jpg?1?2139

[Dr. Heinz]

I think we should leave the maps the way they were made because nature should not be tampered with as it is not the will of God.

http://i.imgur.com/a3LyyKD.jpg

GTFO

[eleven]

It'd be the best if mappers didn't put all this bullshit in the first place. As it stands I'm all in for removing all of the stuff.

Sure it will be inconsistent with LAN speedrunning, but at least it will make times consistent within the system they are being compared in. LAN and server times can't be compared 1:1 anyway cause of different starting and ending positions, and all that.

Sometimes people can get a better time just because someone opened the door earlier accidentally for them, and what they are supposed to do then, just reset the run cause it's unfair? Sure it wouldn't matter in the beginning when times are 7-11 seconds apart, but when it'll come down to fraction of the second who holds the WR, runners will have to use all the advantages they can, especially if the current #1 is held by someone who had help.

I'm all in for making it as competitive as possible. I wouldn't want to know someone has, for example, beaten my time just because someone held the door for him or called the elevator. Even though it's pretty shitty to mess with people's mapping, it's better than the alternative, and mappers called it on themselves for making pointless breakables and slow opening doors.