Good times in Pokemon speedrunning

There is no value in grinding a luck-based speedrun purely for achieving a good time. Pokemon speedruns have always been about discovering new things -- faster routes, safe strats to help risky routes finish runs, risky strats to help safe routes get better times, RNG manipulation, AI manipulation, menuing techniques, and more. Runs are fun because we get to try these discoveries for an audience. When the discoveries have been sufficiently explored, runs lose their value.

I've always said high RNG and high execution is a terrible combination for speedruns. This is somewhat counterintuitive, since a major appeal of speedrunning is the high skill ceiling that it creates for games we could easily beat as casual players. Wouldn't we want our RNG-heavy runs to reward skilled players rather than those who grind the hardest? My answer is no, because skill is valuable and shouldn't be wasted on RNG. It's like underemployment in the real world. Also, part of skill is effort, and the effort required to succeed at a luck-based task is directly related to the degree of luck. If your run has a 90% chance to fail to RNG, you should expect to spend 10 times as much effort as someone who runs a game without RNG.

This problem often manifests itself in a very frustrating way. You're on a good run, and then you kill it with a mistake. Then you do 10 more runs without making a run-killing mistake, and all of them die to RNG. Your success rate was greater than 90% -- extremely high for a speedrun -- but at the end of the day, that mistake will sit with you, because it happened on the run where RNG was kind.

I've noticed a trend when watching runners grind for luck, myself included. They'll start their session in a good mood, and that mood will deteriorate as their runs die. After a few hours, their patience seems to hit its limit, and stopping runs seems to be a good idea. But they continue, and they perform worse on their runs, making the difficult task of getting a lucky, well-executed run seem impossible. Why do runners do this? My guess is that there is no sense of accomplishment from unsuccessfully grinding for luck, and they want to accomplish something before ending their session. This is a vicious cycle.

Some runners seem to have little problem grinding for luck. Perhaps they see their runs as a glass that's half full of execution. Everyone is irrationally optimistic about something. Perhaps they're entertained by their own RNG, the same way a slots player at a casino enjoys playing a game they know isn't in their favor. Perhaps their runs still exist as a means of discovery, which makes the grind efficient because they can discover and PB at the same time. Perhaps a larger problem exists, where speedrunning audiences crave "WR attempts" and enjoy watching streamers get frustrated, and speedrunners feel pressured to cater to them for social or financial reasons. In any case, tolerating the grind is the key to getting good times. And in most Pokemon speedruns these days, you need a good time to compete with the top runners.

Being a Pokemon speedrunner is a lot like being a magical girl in Madoka Magica. Enticing at first, rewarding for a while, and then... well, I'll let you watch the anime to find out the rest.  :)