Speedruns to Watch

I assume it includes all Shrines, but does it include all Korok seeds? Do you have to grind for all armor upgrades? Do you have to do every little quest for every person you meet? Cook every possible food? Buy the house and fill it with everything? Even with speedrun tricks and 20 hours, it still seems like too much to do.

All Shines, All Korok Seeds, All Armor that you can not sell fully Upgraded, No max cooking since the game does not keep track of that, also all map locations and side quests.

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Ah, so only things the game tracks. That includes things like the memory photos. But I guess they aren’t taking a photo of every single object and enemy for the item finder, even though the game does sort-of track that?

I guess this is without any DLC also.

You are correct, photos included and only things that the game can track. BLJs are the reason it makes it possible.

Not so much a speedrun itself, as a documentary about them, but…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtcJVCXT8P0

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A thought inspired by this:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_XkKufyIiAY

Golf speedrun IRL. Strokes doesn’t matter, just time.

Say you don’t get a caddy, and instead of stroke penalties you take 30/60 second delays.

Taking fewer shots is going to mean faster time, but your overall time is going to be dominated by how long it takes you to run that far. Take Augusta for example. The course is 7,475 yards, or 4 miles and change.

What clubs do you take? I’d say maybe a 5 wood and 9 iron? Drive and putt with the wood, get out of the rough or sand with your iron. Maybe you’re wearing like a bandolier of balls.

I would watch that sport once.

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Ok, so that’s actually very close to being a good sport. The thing is, you are incorrect about fewer shots being faster. You can just get a putter and push the ball in front of you as you run, almost like ice hockey skating with a puck. This way, you never stop running except when the ball goes in a hole and you take it out again. You also always take the shortest path to the hole. Only impassable water hazards will force the player to stop and take a stroke.

Even stopping for a few seconds to take a long drive doesn’t save any time. It loses the time it took to stand still. And worse, if the ball goes off course, you won’t be running the shortest path to the hole. But lining up a better shot to stay on course takes more concentration and more time.

What I would do to speed up golf is simply this. Keep all the normal rules of golf as they are. Just add one special bonus. Players who spend less time walking and less time lining up their shots in total will get bonus strokes removed. Alternatively, give penalty strokes to players who spent too much time. This will greatly encourage players to run to the ball and not spend too much time lining up their shot since even a few strokes bonus/penalty is a huge deal.

Normal golf has a 2 stroke penalty if you hit the ball again before it stops. So hockey stickhandling and running along would be a run killer.

This is already a thing! But never enforced. Rule 5.6:

https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/rules/rules-2019/players-edition/rule-5.html

In your version you said strokes didn’t matter.

Specifically so you have to golf still, instead of like carrying the ball and dunking it in the cup every hole.

That might work. You’ll still need a lot of calibration to get the timings right, and as you said, running speed will still dominate. Marathon runners will do better at this sport than pro golfers.

I’m still not sure it would be faster than just belting the ball, sprinting like a motherfucker to where it lands, belting it again. The extra attention you’d need to pay in keeping the ball at the end of your club would slow you down from a dead sprint, and I’m pretty sure even a middling strength shot has the ball moving faster than even the fastest marathon runner.

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You could, have, say, a max strokes/hole limit beyond which strokes cost a time penalty, say you get 10 free strokes for a certain hole. Do you want to use them all up with hockey-mode? Or do you beast that shit as close to the green as possible as fast as possible and then save 4-5 to mini-golf it?

Alternatively you have a cooldown except in the green and in hazards. Say you have 2 strokes/min before penalties in the fairway, 3 strokes/min in the rough. Go beyond that and you start getting penalties.

Honestly, this is starting to sound like it could be a pretty fun video game.

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I’d try a speedrun golf videogame for sure.

As a runner, you definitely could not run as fast keeping a ball on a putter as you could by driving and then running free.

For one, the ball will bounce off the putter and the terrain. Every bounce will slow you down and mistakes are likely. You won’t be able to go fast enough.

Much better in all cases to drive a moderate distance, sprint there, drive again, until you’re on the green. THEN play hockey with the putter.

Ever see those people who bounce a golf ball on the club without letting it touch the ground? Run while doing that all the way to the hole.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6oTMosZ76b8

You can’t sprint while doing that.

Sprinting is the best way to cover that ground.

I’m confident I could swing and then sprint faster than literally any human on Earth who was trying to bounce a golf ball along with them. Even if this person had unlimited time to practice and was a professional runner.

Have you never watched biathlon? The rules speedgolf needs are already there for us to see. In biathlon, for each missed shot, you ski an extra loop of 150m before leaving the shooting range area. This means it’s still all about whoever gets across the finish line first (in the shortest time), and nobody cares if how many targets you missed, as long as you missed fewer than the competition, or made up the extra loop distance faster than they did the 5km laps between the shooting.

So for speedgolf, we can treat each hole, or set of three holes, like a biathlon lap plus a shooting.

Each hole has a par. For each stroke above par, you have to run an extra loop of about 200m. These loops could be done between every third hole, and you run all the loops you must before moving on to the next hole. So between hole three and four there would be a 200m loop. If you complete hole one below par but hole two above par, and they equal out, you don’t have to do a penalty lap. This means below par shooting is still encouraged to “bank” some shots to use up later if needed.

In biathlon, you sometimes get a few extra bullets, so if you miss one of your shots, you can spend those bullets to reduce the time spent doing the penalty loops. It takes some time to reload the gun, but it’s less of time penalty than a 150m loop.

Speedgolf could have three “free shots” that you can take at some point around the course, which you could save in case of really wayward hits.

The length of the penalty loop could be adjusted, of course, to balance for golf skills vs running speed, but both would still be dependent on each other.

The issue with having to do a penalty loop after the 18th hole would be the that final moment would be running across a finish line. This wouldn’t do at all! The game must end with the ball going in the hole!

So I propose there being a loop at the end of the 17th hole, where you get all your previous penalties out the way. Then there would also be a penalty loop right at the 18th green! If you reach the green at one below par, you just go for the putt, or first do a penalty loop for how many shots above par minus one.

Then for each miss on the 18th green that puts you above par, you have to do a 200m penalty loop. This means that your clock stops the moment the ball goes in the 18th hole, and no matter what, you don’t have to do any running following that moment.

By the way, biathlon is super fun to watch. In Germany it’s way more popular as a spectator sport than golf, as far as I can tell. The balance of ski fucking hard mixed with can you get your body calm enough to do precise target shooting is a really cool concept.