Imperfect

casuals versus speedrunners

While you should play games how you see fit, I felt crazy seeing casual gameplay of a familiar game compared to my recent memory of a speedrunner's gameplay.

Exhibit A: the casual

The casual opted for the game's default difficulty with decent rewards and an objectively fair success rate.

In-game meta-progression remains steady, but can worsen if or when increasing the difficulty to try unlocking more stuff. While steady progression and high replayability sounds nice, fully completing this game takes a very long time.

Enemies at this difficulty have decent statistics and patterns. However, increasing the game difficulty makes the enemies harder, which might also make your training obsolete or less effective.

The casual largely shied away from mechanics with high damage and evasion when available. This further lengthened games out, encouraging chagrin toward their impeded meta-progression.

They rummaged for rewards to the point of close calls or outright defeat. Them having beaten enemies and levels slowly, if at all, they didn't receive the amount of rewards that they would have liked to.

Exhibit B: the speedrunner

The speedrunner opted for the game's hardest difficulty with immense rewards and an objectively minimal success rate, unless you learn how to overcome it.

In-game meta-progression tanks upfront, but accelerates over time once you start learning how to win against all odds. With how long this game can take to fully complete, that acceleration can feel very welcome.

Enemies here have maxed out statistics and optimized patterns. Instead of adapting to higher difficulties, you know what to expect. You can learn patterns applicable to any level without worrying about much future variance.

The speedrunner used mechanics with high damage and evasion when available at their earliest safe opportunity. This shortened games to quicken the meta-progression they were looking to advance.

They prioritized maximizing self-preservation through evasion and damage dealt. Them having beaten enemies and levels faster, this has the double win of massively increasing the amount of rewards they received.

Exhibit C: me

I played the game I wrote about a lot while growing up. After comparing both archetypes of play, my struggle with in-game meta-progression using the casual approach became visceral, particularly relative to others' more prospering approaches.

I sense this revelation also applies not only to my writing, which holds the most momentum for me right now, but to other subconsciously limited life aspects. As with my above juxtaposition, there are hidden win conditions to reveal and available methods to achieve them fast enough, but not so fast that I burn out trying.

Exhibit D: you

Have you had any experiences or areas of improvement that parallel any the above?

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