dew
Feral Kid
Posts: 1702
Registered: 05-08 |
fair questions.
first of all, the cold brutal truth is that some players just don't try hard enough at optimization. they will just max the level at their natural skill level and won't press much further. this is, of course, much more comfortable, doesn't drain your runner stamina and keeps you interested in recording, because you can hop across maps/wads at a steady pace. from the current demo scene, i'd say blob and jario are perfect examples. when they bite lip and press forward, they produce top notch demos, however most of the time they're in cruise mode, because they feel like there's so much stuff to record on. at the opposite extreme you have looper and sav, those guys are ridiculous perfectionists and you will have hard time spotting ANY slack in their demos, but on the downside you get just a handful of demos per month/year from them. what i'm trying to say is that many players KNOW they aren't solving situations optimally, but they don't bother with improving, because the necessary grind is past their pain threshold.
the other issue is route optimization. first max submissions on even slightly non-linear maps will do something 'wrong' and the player doesn't even realize it. then the next guy will tweak something and everyone goes 'oh, of course.' this is most notable on doom and doom2 compet-n max demos. waldon, anders or radeg were world-class runners and some of their stuff is nigh unbeatable, yet you can find other stuff from them improvable by minutes. it takes collaborative effort to find optimal max routes, which also leads to a challenge for the record. that drives people to a) find something new, b) risk more or grind for a luckier outcome. the latter means some people will simply lose interest, because it takes far too long to get everything in the whole run right.
now to your examples:
optimally, i'd probably saw (or shoot) the second caco to death, then proceed to kill both of the other guys if they're still standing. waiting for the HK to finish his job and provoking a second infight is definitely slower and "shouldn't" be done unless the map suffers from severe ammo drought.
in the second scenario, i'd shoot my current weapon as much as i could, optimally to weaken/distract archviles, bait some monsters into provoking infights, etc. you only shouldn't fire if you need all the monsters to infight/not follow you, or it's important to stay silent (eg. easily beat a teleporter ambush at the bfg, because monsters are asleep).
anyways, you're right when you assume it's one thing to want to do things one way and it's something else to actually achieve it. :)
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11-02-11 01:13 
