Pacifist Ruleset Reform Debate 2020

[baja blast rd.]

6 hours ago, kraflab said:

Should we have some kind of vote? What does everyone think? I'd love to have this settled once and for all in either direction 🙂

 

2 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

I think a vote is a definitely the best way to collect ideas.

 

Might as well...

 

Like my post with a soulsphere to express a preference for dew's proposed ruleset. 

 

Like my post with a partial invisibility to express a preference for the current status quo.

 

Like my post with a megasphere to express a preference for banana on pizza. 

 

Like my post with an invulnerability to say "rd shut up this needs to be a new poll thread with clearly defined parameters and perhaps more granular voting choices, and you are... [dramatic evil voice] like baiting." 

[j4rio]

1 hour ago, GrumpyCat said:

Again, old records will stay regardless of new rules, isn't it?

 

They will stay acceptable only if rules change in a direction proposed by OP, otherwise there will be a clash of old and new rulesets, which would just cause utter confusion. If we were to prohibit telefrags, we absolutely can't have old demos accepted while keeping everything under the same category. That's, like, the core reasoning behind the reform proposal.

[GarrettChan]

35 minutes ago, ‹rd› said:

Like my post with an invulnerability to say "rd shut up this needs to be a new poll thread with clearly defined parameters and perhaps more granular voting choices, and you are... [dramatic evil voice] like baiting." 

rd shut up and pineapple but not banana is the best to pizzas :P

 

Strongly suggest that DW has a light amp vote for this type!

[Fonze]

I think it would be good for the relevant people to vote on this, but average, uninvolved idiots like me shouldn't be able to cast a vote.

[Grazza]

I'd just like to say that on reflection I am against this proposal. At first I read it as meaning that all incidental non-weapon damage is OK, but since it appears that the proposal is that all deliberate damage is OK too, this seems much too large a change from the original pacifist rules. (I'll also admit that I liked the way it didn't propose to disallow all telefrags, which would ruin the category entirely.) Basically it is Hypocritical Pacifist with the first word deleted.

 

I for one will not be using these new possibilities in Pacifist demos, even if they are adopted by DSDA. If that means someone can trivially beat a demo of mine by shooting a barrel and causing mass carnage to clear a route, so be it.

 

The traditional Pacifist rules really aren't that broken at all. It was only a few ill thought-out and contradictory rulings by AdamH in his later time in charge of Compet-N (quoted and ridiculed at the start of this thread) that might have made things look that way. Up until then it was all rather clear-cut. Adopting Xit's interpretation would basically solve all issues, retain pretty much all Pacifist records intact and avoid allowing new route possibilities that radically alter the category.

 

Since I am invoking Xit's words and proposing that they basically form a clarification of the traditional Pacifist category, I should probably quote them verbatim:

My opinion is that telefrags should be allowed under most circumstances. For example, if you are simply running the level as fast as possible you can get away with anything, even running into a teleport just after a monster. However, if you slow down to wait for a monster to reach a teleport spot (or for him to enter before you), then that would be not allowed. Also, for crushers, if you activate it by switch, then it should rarely be allowed, except for example rq08 where there is no other way to finish the map. I doubt that rq08 is possible anyways due to tons of blocking monsters, but this would be an example of what I'm talking about. If you activate a crusher by walking over a line and that line is on your route, then it's ok to kill monsters with them, as long as you don't slow down to lure monsters under them.

Note that this deals with the hp19 (avoidable crushing), p4m2s (guaranteed telefrag) and ep29 (telefrag that is avoidable with some pissing around) cases smoothly and clearly.

 

 

[GoneAway]

27 minutes ago, Grazza said:

If that means someone can trivially beat a demo of mine by shooting a barrel and causing mass carnage to clear a route, so be it.

The rules for barrels aren't affected by dew's proposal though. Incidentally, I'm sure some players would still avoid telefrags even if they're allowed. It's the same way some players would kill monsters out of bounds in max and others won't. I don't think that's a big problem.

 

"For example, if you are simply running the level as fast as possible you can get away with anything, even running into a teleport just after a monster. However, if you slow down to wait for a monster to reach a teleport spot (or for him to enter before you), then that would be not allowed."

 

This has even more problems than the existing rules as far as I can tell, because it somehow makes them even less objective. Basically if I see an important enemy go into a teleporter I should rush in to try to get the kill - I'm playing the level as fast as I can so it's allowed. If it saves time, I should retry the level until the timing is right without me needing to wait. Meanwhile, another player has some poor movement near a teleporter and accidentally telefrags something - or was it an accident? Did he move badly just to improve the timing of the teleport? Oops I ran into another wall...

 

"If you activate a crusher by walking over a line and that line is on your route, then it's ok to kill monsters with them, as long as you don't slow down to lure monsters under them"

 

So basically I can use a route with a crusher on it in order to make the run easier, even though the crusher was avoidable? That's more permissive than the current rules. Do we have to judge if a run uses a route that makes enough sense? And as above what does slowing down mean and how fast do I need to be?

 

It's a speedrun, so people would necessarily use these rules to their advantage, which I think would make things even more unclear.

[Looper]

I thought the barrels were quite rare/insignificant in the pacifist category, but guess not. So I've changed my view on intentionally destroying barrels near monsters.

 

Anyways, for me the most annoying part about the pacifist rules are the telefrags. It is impossible to tell which ones are intentional and which are not as you really want as many as possible of the unintentional telefrags. I don't care what the rule will be about the crushers, never saw them.

[Beginner]

I'd allow crushers 100% of the time, prohibit damaging enemies with barrels that player sets off with his weapons (using crushers, enemies and telefrags to do so is fine, however) and allow telefrags with a limit of one instance of frag per teleport/destination (this can be restricted to mandatory tp's only).

[GoneAway]

2 hours ago, Beginner said:

I'd allow crushers 100% of the time, prohibit damaging enemies with barrels that player sets off with his weapons (using crushers, enemies and telefrags to do so is fine, however) and allow telefrags with a limit of one instance of frag per teleport/destination (this can be restricted to mandatory tp's only).

This is definitely intriguing to me. It's certainly better than what we have right now, with respect to teleporters. There are some cases that come to mind still, like a map where you take a teleporter a variable number of times, and what "mandatory" really means.

 

Imagine a map where skipping a teleporter is possible but is basically TAS-only. Can you take the teleporter with a telefrag, in the spirit of the category? If you can, then how hard does avoiding a teleporter need to be in order to take it?

 

This would also mean that I can plan to get a telefrag with my teleport where it helps. For anyone bothered by that conceptual strategy, it is very much present here. The difference is just how many times I can exploit that strategy.

[j4rio]

3 hours ago, Beginner said:

I'd allow crushers 100% of the time, prohibit damaging enemies with barrels that player sets off with his weapons (using crushers, enemies and telefrags to do so is fine, however) and allow telefrags with a limit of one instance of frag per teleport/destination

 

I'd be willing to get behind that. Tele destination kills are definitely an easy parameter to track, it would solve the issue of accidental/mandatory frags and prevent tele abuse that some people are vocally against. As stated above, there might be issues with some maps where you teleport to the same spot from different sections of the same map, but those are rather negligible cases.

Edited September 29, 2020 by j4rio

[Beginner]

1 hour ago, kraflab said:

There are some cases that come to mind still, like a map where you take a teleporter a variable number of times, and what "mandatory" really means.

"Mandatory" means player has to take it to progress, e.g. backtrack teleporters in one-way trip areas. Like, if you drop off a platform with no way back besides a teleport and there's a need to visit said platform later then visiting that teleporter is mandatory. If teleporter is, in example, a shortcut and not necessary to visit to progress then it's not mandatory.

Quote

Imagine a map where skipping a teleporter is possible but is basically TAS-only. Can you take the teleporter with a telefrag, in the spirit of the category? If you can, then how hard does avoiding a teleporter need to be in order to take it?

Let TAS-only tricks be TAS-only tricks. If you need to perform tic perfect 360 noscope rj avj glide lineskip just to avoid otherwise mandatory or just potential telefrag then I personally don't care, frag away. I, honestly, have no idea what would be the measuring stick for how hard stuff needs to be, but, I guess at least line skips can buzz off.

2 hours ago, kraflab said:

This would also mean that I can plan to get a telefrag with my teleport where it helps. For anyone bothered by that conceptual strategy, it is very much present here. The difference is just how many times I can exploit that strategy.

Well, that's why there is a suggestion to ignore telefrags only in cases when taking teleport is unavoidable for purpose of progression. Anyway, it's lets idiotic than trying to find out player's intention of teleporting every single time telefrag happened in a demo.

[MathsDevil]

I don't often do anything Pacifist-style but I do agree that intent should not be part of the rules; it's unworkable that ignorance would be a defence in a run being allowed. I think for a new category - 'No Gun Running', you could simply have it that firing a weapon that directly harms a monster (or rocket's splash damage) is not allowed and everything else is fine - barrels, crushers, telefrags, the lot. Everyone would be able to understand this and have fun with it. 

[Andromeda]

I'd be in favor of the changes proposed by dew in the original post, as they would make the category more objective while still retaining its unique spirit.

[Xeriphas1994]

On 9/28/2020 at 12:15 PM, GrumpyCat said:

Again, old records will stay regardless of new rules, isn't it?

 

That's previously been true IIRC, but this change (a) could affect an unusually large number of existing recordings and (b) is, at least in some versions above, algorithmic. So if @kraflab or another developer thought it VERY important to flag everything, they could.

 

I agree it seems unfair to actually delete demos -- how was a player in 2002 expected to know about this thread and adjust routings?

 

On 9/28/2020 at 1:28 PM, j4rio said:

otherwise there will be a clash of old and new rulesets, which would just cause utter confusion

 

I want to agree, because I'm a pedantic nerd who pretends everyone loves fine print, but based on past changes this sounds overstated. Over time, people simply grow accustomed to occasional rejections based on a maintainer's judgement call. For example, DSDA3 banned runs  whose primary goal wasn't speed, which would have denied innumerable DSDA2 demopaks among other things, and how much backlash occurred? Unless it was all on discord.

 

Maybe too soon to ruminate on this before the final decision. I have that habit. :>

[GoneAway]

No rule change would result in demos being removed.

[RobReevy]

I've only just seen this thread, so apologies if this is too late to be useful.

 

I was one of the team that came up with the Pacifist level sets for the Doom Honorific Titles, way back in May-July 1997, so I'm happy to help with any historical info etc. if I can. The design decision essay for the DHT is still around (at https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/dht/design/pacifist/ ). Interestingly, on Steffen Udluft's Doom Pacifist Collection (last updated 21 Feb 1999) the rules of Pacifist haven't changed from the ones he suggested for the DHT title.

 

FWIW, I think allowing shooting barrels that harm monsters would deviate quite a bit from the original spirit of Pacifist play. I don't remember the issue of whether a telefrag is intentional or not coming up when we were designing the title, but I can see the benefit of either allowing them or not to remove ambiguity. While reading this thread I thought that differentiating between switch-activated and walkover-activated crushers would be unnecessarily complicated, so I was surprised to find that's exactly what the original rules did! As for some maps not being possible, I personally don't see a problem with this - it was something we anticipated when designing the DHT sets.

 

I'm not giving any definite opinions though. Back in 1997 we were looking only at Doom and Doom 2, so I can't really make suggestions about how the rules should work for Final Doom or for PWADs that are allowed for speedrunning (some of which I haven't played).

[dew]

On 10/6/2020 at 2:23 AM, RobReevy said:

I've only just seen this thread, so apologies if this is too late to be useful.

Oh my god, I haven't noticed your post before, but your input is delightful. A sprinkle of OG intents is very appreciated.

 

Anyway, I've intentionally let the debate run its course without pushing my own narrative too hard, but now it's died down and it's time to make a call. It seems like there cannot be a clear consensus that would make all parties happy, since there are diametrically opposing views held on a few issues. So, through some chat with kraflab (and please, kraf, correct me if I remember things wrong), we the most sensible and respectful way would be to follow the "obsoletion" of CN requirements for ports.

 

This would mean all current pacifist records remain pacifist, since the new standard only broadens what's allowed, but they also become "legacy pacifist" (labeling tbd, probably involving the word "glide"). Then, if it's pointed out that a new record beats the old one while using the expanded ruleset, the old record retains a marker of the legacy record. Also, hardcores can still simply record with the legacy ruleset in mind, and the archive would still reflect that with that marker. Just don't call it "true pacifist", that would not be true at all, heh.

 

As for the particulars, I believe the new expanded version would:

• Allow all crusher damage. Frankly, the intention clause is murky and distinction between switch and walkover activation is arbitrary. Yes, it means a pacifist could crush the map06 spider, but who said being pacifist equals being a good person?
• Allow all telefragging. Again, intentionality is the bane here. Does it allow hypocritical maxing? Perhaps. The amount of runs where telefragging a monster instead of not telefragging it results in a faster time, however, should be very limited. The fact that the engine traces telefrag damage amount to the player is a concept worth considering, but also a heavily asterisked case, since Doom mapping switched to relying on telefragging for various specific tasks, like resetting player arsenal between maps.
• Allow all infight provocation. Was already allowed in the old ruleset and it is one major argument against the capricious nature of "intent".
• Do not allow exploding barrel chains that hurt monsters, unless triggered by monster fire, crushing or telefragging. Shooting a barrel that hurts monsters is an extremely common mechanism of Doom gameplay and it'd utterly change the nature of the category. Since ridiculous corner case can make this bullet point surprisingly murky, the idea would be "innocent until proven guilty" and the runner can claim pacifist until someone Phoenix Wright's them.

I fully understand that there will be a segment of runners who will not agree with the changes - but I think we need a resolution even if it means bifurcating the category.

[MathsDevil]

Thanks, dew. I certainly concur that old records should not lose their status when the rules become more liberal, even if the times are 'beaten'. The biggest change I would like to see is the allowance of all crushing damage.

[j4rio]

Well, even if all pacifists remain pacifists this way, some runs labelled as uvspeeds may 'become' pacifists, so you would still need to do a careful combing through archives hunting for these cases.

[Keyboard_Doomer]

To my surprise the new proposal didn't get any reply so I guess it's time for me to join the discussion (with one huge post, of course). Up to this point I only discussed this in the speedrunning Discord and I kind of didn't see the point in joining the debate in what's an obviously polarizing proposal.

 

I don't think this idea of splitting the category and introducing a "legacy" label is in any way an improvement over the original proposal and in fact would create more of a mess.
The whole problem with the current situation is that there are only loosely defined rules that were also applied inconsistently in the past. So how do you want to decide which demos should get the "legacy" label? This proposal is in effect keeping the confusing status quo AND introducing a new ruleset that many people disagree with.

 

The overlap between the proposed new ruleset and the loosely defined status quo doesn't help either. Say demo B beats the current record (demo A) but also includes the same "accidental" telefrag as the old one. Then demo C appears and beats demo B but demo C is valid only in the new ruleset. Which one is the "legacy" record now? Is demo B a "legacy" record since it literally only has the same issue as demo A or is it a mere beaten run recorded according to the new ruleset since the whole point of the changes is to remove any judgment calls and have rules that can be consistently applied for all demos?
You aren't escaping the pitfalls of the status quo by slapping a "legacy" label on it and continuing to use it.

 

As j4rio pointed out allowing all telefrags and crusher damage also isn't in any way superior compared to disallowing them when it comes to not recategorizing old runs. It can be easily argued it's even worse because:
- if (some) telefrags and (some) crusher damage were newly disallowed you really only care about not doing that damage and if the old record does cause such damage then it's either obvious ("unavoidable") or kind of irrelevant for the time (in case of "accidental" damage)
- but if all telefrags and crusher damage were newly allowed that means for any Pacifist you want to record you need to make sure there isn't already a (faster) UV speed demo that's a valid Pacifist according to the new rules. Since it's difficult to automate any recategorizing this would stay an issue for years to come.

 

What I think should be done instead

 

It seems there are about as many different opinions as there are players as to what would be the "most preferable" ruleset. If we're to come closer to an agreement instead of The Great Pacifist Schism of 2020 the focus should be on what's the ruleset that would be the one that most people would agree on rather than everyone stating what's the ruleset they would find the most preferable. There's clearly no hope for a 100% agreement across the board whatever the new ruleset will be.

 

The talks about a vote never materialized for some reason so I suggest just that to see what the community actually thinks should be the rules instead of a yes/no to a single proposal with multiple changes inside it.

I propose the questions in the poll should be in this format (an example formulation for telefrags):

 

Quote

Do you think all telefrags should be allowed?
    - If yes would you also agree with a ruleset that would disallow telefrags (with limited exceptions, mainly or only Romero heads)?

 

Do you think telefrags should be disallowed (with limited exceptions, mainly or only Romero heads)?
    - If yes would you also agree with a ruleset that would allow all telefrags?

 

With the results in hand we would actually know where most people stand on the spectrum.
There's also the issue that the vote of people that never recorded a demo or record Pacifist once in a blue moon perhaps shouldn't have the same weight as the vote of Pacifist veterans. I have an idea how to present the results in multiple ways to address this as well and then we can interpret what the results actually mean and where to go from there.

 

What do you think?

[j4rio]

Okay, so let's summarize things a bit. Regarding telefrags, there are 3 types of them to consider, based on the baneful intent.

 

A. Predetermined by map geometry

This includes all cases with monsters occupying teleport destinations all the time. It's usually (but not exclusively) part neccessary for progression and the frag itself may be in many cases substitued for a crusher, therefore it can be considered enviromental damage.

 

B. Non-predetermined, "accidental"

The result of teleporting over a portion of a map with awake monsters and teleporting destination not barring movement of monsters.

 

C. Non-predetermined, "intentional"

The frag done after luring a freely wandering monster directly onto the teleporting destination with the intent of taking it out, potentially used repeatedly for bigger monster groups.

 

This is where philosophy and technicality behind rules clash. If you were to judge by intent, only type B can be acceptable. If you go ahead and bend the rules to include both A and B, then you are not judging by intent anymore and we are slowly getting into arbitrary territory. On top of all that, B and C can have very blurry boundaries with certain map geometries, so you'll be stuck in a philosophical limbo trying to differentiate between them for the purposes of accepting a demo for this category. On top of that, if you are willing to ban C, then you can't just look over allowing crusher damage, where I'm intentionally luring monsters straight to their deaths, possibly from different sections of a map, that's just hypocritical. This is the current status quo. If this sounds good, then I don't know what else to tell you.

 

So with intent out of the picture, we are stuck with just two options. Either ban or allow them. Complete ban is probably out of the question because of ever growing trend of weapon resetting by romero telefrags, but let's gloss over it for now, because that's not that complicated to accomodate to. Let's check pros/cons of each.

 

1. Ban

Pros : philosophically compelling

Cons : renders maps with predetermined telefrags impossible, randomly disqualifies attempts with actual accidental telefrags, makes recording maps with frequent but not guaranteed telefrags a chore to record, possibly requires linedef skips in case of skippable predetermined telefrags (rare, more common with crushers)

 

2. Allow

Pros : allows recording on more maps, doesn't disqualify attempts based on random movement of monsters, doesn't require any (rare) linedefs skips

Cons : not philosophically compelling

 

That's about all I can think of. Choose your destiny.

 

[GoneAway]

"I don't think this idea of splitting the category and introducing a "legacy" label is in any way an improvement over the original proposal and in fact would create more of a mess."

 

I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. The legacy note would be akin to marking a run as "intended route". If something is missing a label it's not a crisis - we can mark things gradually as people see things (and as discussed extensively, the number of runs affected by this is limited anyway). For new runs, if you specifically use a slower route then you mention it and we mark it. That's all. There's basically no work required for that - once again the affected amount of runs will be extremely small.

 

As far as finding runs that were pacifist except for telefrags / crushers that are marked as uv speed, that's certainly something that will need to be addressed, but this will be significantly fewer runs than those that would need to be recategorized if we banned things, and they can be fixed over time. It doesn't worry me much.

 

What would be a horrible mess for recategorization is introducing various possible options of partially allowing and changing things (something that will never be automatable).

 

Phrasing questions the way you suggested doesn't really solve the problem you lay out about deciding yes / no on a proposal. You can see in this thread a lot of ideas about pacifist and many have subtle differences. So either you limit the options anyway (the thing you say is bad) or you leave it open to every mutation (vote is meaningless).

[Keyboard_Doomer]

1 hour ago, kraflab said:

this will be significantly fewer runs than those that would need to be recategorized if we banned things

It's not necessarily true that there will be more runs to recategorize with an alternative proposal. Depending on what exactly would be agreed on I can easily see there would be significantly fewer runs to recategorize.

 

1 hour ago, kraflab said:

...(something that will never be automatable).

With objective and consistent criteria everything is automatable with a custom build of PrBoom+. Either way, I don't think the decision should hinge on what will be easier or harder to automate but on what the community is actually able to agree on.

 

1 hour ago, kraflab said:

Phrasing questions the way you suggested doesn't really solve the problem you lay out...

 

... either you limit the options anyway (the thing you say is bad)

The way you phrase this makes me think you might have misunderstood what my points are. I think the poll in the way I suggested it would address exactly what my issue with a single proposal with no alternatives is.

As it is, there's a single proposal which radically changes the definition of Pacifist and includes several changes at once. Your first option is to fully agree. Your only other option is to not agree fully or at all which leaves you in a bad position. There's no alternative proposal, no granularity, no option to vote for something different. All you're left with is making your own suggestion that barely anyone will fully agree with either because everyone has slightly different ideas about the elusive ideal ruleset. In the end the implication is if you're not voting for the proposal you prefer inaction over change which doesn't reflect the reality because virtually everyone agrees the status quo is terrible.

 

The purpose of the poll as I suggested it isn't to get a detailed answer what the new ruleset should be but to get a sense on which end of the spectrum most players in the community actually stand on and make decisions and new proposals based on that. As such, it wouldn't include any comprehensive proposal or every option imaginable to choose from.

 

If you don't agree with the poll as I formulated it, what formulation would you choose? Or do you suggest there should be no vote at all? Because it sure doesn't strike me this thread produced a widespread definitive agreement with the proposed changes.

[wrkq]

Full disclosure, I have zero stakes in this, I'm not a runner, but watching this discussion with a lot of curiosity.

This might be one of the rare cases where a style similar to the bullshit corporate surveys might actually help.

Consider something like this?

 

1. No, this is a show-stopper for me, I can't support a new ruleset with this in it.

2. I would prefer for this to not be included, but I will tolerate the rule if added.

3. No strong opinion about this one.

4. I would prefer for this to be included, but it's not a showstopper.

5. This rule absolutely must be included in the new ruleset, I can't support it otherwise.

 

• Telefrags section
  • All telefrags should be allowed, period: [answer 1-5]
  • "Mandatory" telefrags required for progress should be allowed: [answer 1-5]
    • ... but only if there's no way to skip the teleport completely: [answer 1-5]
  • "Accidental" telefrags should be allowed if the player can't know if a monster is currently at teledest or not: [answer 1-5]
    • ... but only if there's no way to skip the teleport completely: [answer 1-5]
  • Absolutely no telefrags should be allowed, even if it makes map unplayable in Pacifist: [answer 1-5]
• Crushers section
  • ...

Stick it up into excel or something, and you might be able to get an overview of which options are desired by the biggest group, and which are hated by the biggest group.

Sure, nothing stops someone to answer contradictorily, but as far as I can see, this is by the speedrunning community for the speedrunning community, so hopefully trolling would be rare, and should be easy-ish to see by the person compiling the results.

[GoneAway]

12 hours ago, Keyboard_Doomer said:

The purpose of the poll as I suggested it isn't to get a detailed answer what the new ruleset should be but to get a sense on which end of the spectrum most players in the community actually stand on and make decisions and new proposals based on that.

Aha, yes I did misunderstand then. That makes sense to me.

[JPL]

I do zero competitive stuff and thus don't have the same stake in this that others do, but I do think a lot about game pacifism, game tourism, and "nonviolent" mechanics so here's my take.

 

I think the word "pacifism" is too laden with non-Doom sociopolitical meaning to try to revise its definition in the context of Doom. I would rather just create a new category called something different, eg "No Direct Damage". Partly out of my designer instinct for simplicity, my notion of it would be that *everything*  except player-fired hitscan or projectile damage to living monsters is okay. To me that is the true shift in player headspace + tactics and it's not worth it to force players to think about game engine internals like which entity an exploding barrel considers to be its damage instigator. Just don't shoot monsters or hit them with splash. No Direct Damage. Let the current definition of Pacifism stand as it has for decades.

 

I definitely appreciate all the interesting discussion around this though!

[Looper]

On 10/12/2020 at 1:59 AM, dew said:

As for the particulars, I believe the new expanded version would:

• Allow all crusher damage. Frankly, the intention clause is murky and distinction between switch and walkover activation is arbitrary. Yes, it means a pacifist could crush the map06 spider, but who said being pacifist equals being a good person?
• Allow all telefragging. Again, intentionality is the bane here. Does it allow hypocritical maxing? Perhaps. The amount of runs where telefragging a monster instead of not telefragging it results in a faster time, however, should be very limited. The fact that the engine traces telefrag damage amount to the player is a concept worth considering, but also a heavily asterisked case, since Doom mapping switched to relying on telefragging for various specific tasks, like resetting player arsenal between maps.
• Allow all infight provocation. Was already allowed in the old ruleset and it is one major argument against the capricious nature of "intent".
• Do not allow exploding barrel chains that hurt monsters, unless triggered by monster fire, crushing or telefragging. Shooting a barrel that hurts monsters is an extremely common mechanism of Doom gameplay and it'd utterly change the nature of the category. Since ridiculous corner case can make this bullet point surprisingly murky, the idea would be "innocent until proven guilty" and the runner can claim pacifist until someone Phoenix Wright's them.

 

I approve this 🙂

[RobReevy]

On 10/11/2020 at 11:59 PM, dew said:

Oh my god, I haven't noticed your post before, but your input is delightful. A sprinkle of OG intents is very appreciated.

 

Thanks very much - it's great to be getting (vaguely) active in the Doom community again after so long :-)

 

I was thinking about how there are three types of telefrags - exactly as j4rio pointed out above :-) I don't want to complicate an already difficult issue, but in terms of the spirit of Pacifist, I think Type B (non-predetermined, 'accidental') should really be okay and Type C (non-predetermined, 'intentional') shouldn't. I'm more open-minded about Type A. These are 100% predictable, and maybe predictability is key. But originally Pacifist only covered Doom and Doom 2 (being a DHT title), and this situation doesn't come up much in either game.

 

I think the most important thing is to avoid ambiguity in the rules. For me the problem with the word 'intentional' is that, as only the player can truly know their own intentions, it's always going to be a judgment call. I don't know if 'predictable' works any better? I'd have guessed that it would be easy to tell if a player is luring a monster to a teleport destination, whereas teleporting into a room with awake monsters it would be difficult to predict whether a telefrag would occur or not. But I guess if it was that easy there would be no need to discuss the rules ;-) Also, the same argument (re the player luring monsters) would surely apply to crushers. Again, I'm probably thinking too much of just Doom and Doom 2.

 

Also, would having exceptions for, say, Romero heads or even for specific maps be a terrible idea? I ask because I recently saw a specific rule about having to kill the cyberdemon on MAP29 of Doom 2 (not sure where - can't find it now).

 

Anyway, just my $0.02 :-)

[Keyboard_Doomer]

@wrkq
My suggestion for the poll questions is basically the same, just more streamlined. I think 5 options per question is a bit excessive and it would make interpreting the results harder.

 

@JPL
Various similar proposals have been suggested over and over again. As much as it would be a "clean" solution, the "Pacifist" category is one of the most popular with 2 decades of history and with thousands of demos and several that could be called "historically significant". You're going to have a hard time convincing the community to just retire it.

 

Yet more debate broke out about the proposed "legacy" label on the speedrunning Discord server and I felt the need to post this here rather than in a channel that happens to be not even fully public:
If labels are to be a part of the solution I think a far better way is to label those runs that do use telefrags or crusher damage considered to be disagreeable by a part of the community. (However, I do think such a form of label should be considered only after all other options of a unified ruleset with no differentiation are exhausted.)

There are several advantages, among them:

 

- It's very clear that (certain) telefrags and (certain) crusher damage are the point of contention. So why not label that instead of introducing a new label that's undecipherable for anyone that isn't already intimately familiar with the whole debate?
- Such a label would be an objective statement of a fact. It wouldn't retain the problematic and subjective ruleset for the people that didn't even ask for it to be retained.
- It would label those runs that are actually in question instead of labeling runs that are considered perfectly Pacifist by everyone involved.
- The "legacy" label would effectively result in maintaining 2 different standards for a minuscule amount of edge cases. One of them very loosely defined.
 

[dew]

I said this in discord and I'll repeat here: the "legacy" label was an attempt to accomodate the hardcore playerbase that doesn't want to compromise on the all-telefrag rule. It should not be the sticking point in the wider debate over the new ruleset and the part about labeling is just a suggestion seeking further debate, I would certainly move it outside the rules/bullet points if I knew people would attack it so strongly.

 

In fact, I wouldn't really care if the labeling was flipped and all-telefrag/crusher runs get labeled as "new rules" or "with telefrags" or what-have-you. That is more of a question for the archive administrators and what they deem more workable.

 

As for why I have "tossed aside" the objections, I simply don't think this can be done piecemeal. We cannot reform crusher use and defer telefrags till 2030. We clean it up this time or we lose momentum and future generations point at this thread as empirical evidence change is not possible. With that in mind, I simply don't see how we can remove "intent" out of the equation while keeping the rules internally consistent. The advantage of my proposition is that as a whole, the rules are a slightly more lenient superset of the old rules, and therefore they allow extra runs and don't prohibit any legacy runs. This is far less intrusive than e.g. banning telefrags and having to filter out existing pacifist runs into uv-speed/other throughout the archive. However feel free to continue the debate.

 

I like the idea of a "corporate" poll that allows soft positions, but don't expect a classic yes/no thread poll - voting on the entire ruleset gives no space for nuance and voting on every bullet point separately misses the central issue: the reform should strive to be consistent between all issues. Furthermore, I should mention that it's been brought up with me that the simpler the rules are, the higher there's a chance "pacifist" could get supported by ports as a feature that automatically tracks your compliance. The less exceptions the engine needs to track for damage given by player, the easier such an implementation gets, and measuring "intention" kills it on the spot, heh.