The 5 Second Rule RUINED our WORLD RECORD Co-Op Speedrun

Yeah, it did do it. >> Too bad it's uh it's invalid. >> It is invalid. >> Me and SPD Wolf just broke a huge minute barrier in the co-op speedrun. But why weren't we excited? Why did we say this run was invalid? Well, all this is centered around the most confusing rule in co-op speedrunning, the 5second rule. What is this rule? Why is this oddly specific rule in place? and [music] is it a good rule? First, to be able to answer these questions, we need to understand a bit about Cuphead co-op speedruns. It sounds overpowered having two characters instead of one. Right? Wrong. Or well, that's what I'd like to simplify it to, but it's actually a bit more complicated than that, as co-op gives some advantages and some disadvantages. For the purposes of this video though, I want to focus on the main disadvantage, which is the fact that when both players are alive, you each deal half damage. If, however, one player dies, the other returns to dealing full damage as a normal solo player would for as long as the other player remains dead. This doesn't naturally balance itself out as well as you might hope it to. Because if, for example, one player gets a parry, only that player gets an EX card from that parry. But if his partner is alive, that EX card is dealing half damage. So the value from this parable is half as effective as it would be in solo. What this means is that you could in theory just sacrifice one player and let the other play the boss fights out in the same way a solo player would, which doesn't really make for an interesting co-op speedrun. To illustrate what this could look like, imagine two teams. In team one, you take the gigachad, ultimate elite speedrunner, who has 20,000 hours in Cuphead, and then he co-ops with his nephew, little Timmy, [music] who only played Cuphead one time. The elite speedrunner just has little Timmy die as fast as possible. And the [music] elite speedrunner then goes on to crush the bosses like he would in any solo fight, getting really fast times. Now, let's talk about team two. In this team, you have both intermediate level speedrunners really trying to play the speedrun in full cooperation, coordinating with one another and trying to apply unique co-op only strategies. The second team does all that, but they end up in second place behind little Timmy. Good job, Timmy. So speedrunners rightfully decided this isn't really in the spirit of what we would like to imagine a co-op speedrun to be. And this is where our 5second rule comes in. No player can leave the screen for more than 5 seconds without being parried or revived. This rule makes it to where both players need to be alive for most of the fight or at the very least constantly working together and planning around bringing a player back if one player does die. Okay, that's great and all, at least unless you're little Timmy. Sorry, little Timmy. But this still leaves us with more questions. Why not just make it to where no one is allowed to die in a co-op run? And also, why is it 5 seconds exactly? For the former, there's actually a couple reasons why deaths are allowed at all. The first being accessibility. Cuphead is a hard game. >> Hello. What is this game? >> Now go. >> It is uh the hardest game in the history of games. as you can tell. >> And since there's no built-in online functionality, you either need to have a friend in real life to play co-op with or to deal with potentially heavy input lag using something like Parseek or Steam Remote Play. So, this is already a tall order just to play co-op to begin with. Bosses also feature more unpredictable targeting in co-op, which makes it that much harder for no one to take a death. So, someone dying but being revived still feels very much within the spirit of co-op and makes this already niche category a lot more accessible. The next reason is that allowing deaths creates some very interesting strategies and optimizations that are not available in solo play. For an example of one of these strategies, notice here that Cuphead has built up a lot of EX cards from the periable bricks. Then Mugman dies low on the screen. And as Mugman's ghost floats away, that gives Cuphead plenty of time to unload all of their EX cards at full damage. Then Mugman can steal HP to come back before the 5-second rule is ever invalidated. And in this specific scenario, as an additional bonus, when a dead player presses start and steals HP to come back, Mugman is warped to Cuphead's position and is still briefly considered a parryable ghost. So, if timed super well, Cuphead can parry Mugman a bunch before he materializes, farming [snorts] back up all those EX cards that were used before. There's also awesome tech like ghost lobbers where you shoot a lobber EX into the air and then die and then the lobber ex falls and explodes dealing full damage instead of the normal co-op half damage. Another really cool tech making use of this is the sticky ghost. If one player's ghost is starting to go offcreen and then they try to steal the surviving player's HP to return, but the surviving player only has one HP, which means they are unable to steal that HP. So then instead of being revived, the ghost just gets stuck. In this glitched state, the ghost can be parried infinitely for as many EX cards as you want. Since this ghost also remains on screen, this is also a bit of a silly workaround to the 5-second rule. However, outside of some exceptions, this is only really usable on plane levels. And because it requires one player to be dead and the other to be at one HP, it is a high-risk strategy. Um, okay. So, if players weren't allowed to die at all, it would remove any possibility of these unique and interesting co-op only mechanics, which do require coordination amongst the two players to fully optimize. All this leads us into the other question we had. Why 5 seconds exactly? Originally, this rule actually only allowed you to be dead and offcreen for 1 second. But for all the reasons mentioned above, many runners did come to the conclusion it was probably better for both accessibility and for allowing use of more interesting death abuse strategies in co-op to have a time limit that wasn't so strict, like 1 second. Some runners, too, were really excited by the unique co-op death abuse strategies, and upping it from 1 second to 5 seconds did open the possibility for more of these strategies. >> Crazy that this time is like not only possible, but like we've been quite a bit. >> Yeah. So, while 5 seconds is really a completely arbitrary number, it did feel by many to be the sweet spot where it did give this added accessibility and added co-op death strats, but still avoiding the run being a purely solo player speedrun. Now that we understand co-op better and the 5-second rule, let's go back, watch the Sally fight, and see what happened to invalidate what was the first and currently only 27minute co-op speedrun. Due to getting some rough lightning bolt RNG, it led to SPD Wolf dying earlier than expected. Rather than reviving Mugband, which would have lost a couple seconds of time, I opted as Cuphead to just try and kill Sally before the 5-second rule was breached. And this would have worked if it wasn't for the fact I missed this lava ex. Then between the umbrella, the leftover meteor and parisar from earlier that are still there due to killing Sally's phase three before the big wave attack and also an unfortunately positioned rose and miss slobers. It made Sally start to take way longer to kill. With some mild panic from the realization of the situation along with just the difficulty of all these added obstacles, I ended up missing more shots as well. SPD Wolf made a good call to try and steal HP and return to help me finish off the fight, but I got hit right before he stole HP, meaning he was not able to steal an HP to return. While I did finish off Sally, it was confirmed SPD Wolf was offscreen for 5.833 seconds. We continued the run and got the first and as of making this video only sub 28 minute co-op speedrun in this category. It was a bit of a tragedy because SPDWolf was visiting me in the United States all the way from Italy and so we had a limited time to do runs before he had to leave. So this was it. The only sub28 run we got while he was here ended up being just barely invalid due to this silly little rule. After all that though, it brings us back to answer one more question I asked earlier in the video. Is the 5-second rule a good rule? >> No. >> It sucks. I hate it. It ruined the best run ever. Oh my goodness. Why was it 5 seconds? Okay, now that I got that out of my system, let me give a real answer. I actually think the 5-second rule, while arbitrary and a bit confusing, really is a great rule to help solve a complicated problem. My personal favorite thing about co-op is all the stuff that makes it different from solo play. Playing as a team and managing our EX cards and HP in such a way as to maximize our damage. even trying to play around the co-op half damage mechanic by occasionally taking the risk of sacrificing a player temporarily or at the end of a fight to regain full damage creates for some really cool unique gameplay that I personally find really enjoyable. I mean just look at this Wernner Worman strategy. Bugman does a ghost slobber at the start of phase 2 to allow this EX to deal full damage. As he slowly floats off screen, I am able to unload a lot of damage. Then, as the final phase is about to start, Mugman steals one of my last HP to come back and I die right after because now Mugman, who saved up his EX cards, can now unload full damage EX cards. We then finish him off before the 5-second rule is ever a problem. I find this kind of thing so cool and me and SBD Wolf had an absolute blast coming up with some strategies like this. So, while it was super unfortunate, we barely lost such an epic run to barely invalidating this rule, I think overall it really helps co-op shine in its own unique way. At least that's how I feel about it. Let me know in the comments what you think of the rule. Co-op has this complex problem to solve with the rule. And I know this one in particular is a bit divisive amongst some players. And while I am not the one who makes these rules, I'd be interested to see how others feel about it. And that will do it for today's video. This was a different style of video for me, but I've been experimenting with different types of content recently. So, if you did enjoy the video and want to see more of things like this alongside potentially interesting speedrun and crazy mod action, consider liking and subscribing. And I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye. [sighs and panting] [gasps] >> [sighs]

Cuphead Co-Op's most controversial rule is a weird one, but what is it and why is it there? This vids my first time doing something scripted and more edited like this but I hope you all enjoy! If you want to see the sub 28 invalid run that this video references, I uploaded it unlisted here - https://youtu.be/Y4fMbF1jxqs If you want to see the actual official valid Co-Op record you can watch that here - https://youtu.be/K6qoDno-8oU I've got a Co-Op compilation type video that will be coming out in a week too, I'll put that link here once it's out - I have a second channel now where I will be uploading some of my other speedruns in the future and also some full VoD's of certain playthroughs - https://www.youtube.com/@ExtraGrond Watch me live at - https://www.twitch.tv/grondious Songs used in this video: The Dark Star by Hiroki Kikuta https://open.spotify.com/track/3jm6YcXId7N2EEktitoeWt Porkrind's Shop by Kristofer Maddigan https://open.spotify.com/track/5vUWXPgS8kCAOP4tZ0o6vI Bfg Division by Mick Gordon https://open.spotify.com/track/4COR2ZPEyUn0lsbAouRWxA Ballons in the Desert by Calum Bowen https://open.spotify.com/track/0ddQHAEWIJx8N6OpsxZmRO Tutorial by Kristofer Maddigan https://open.spotify.com/track/3b283GyxalGqsqCqLNw8xR Die House by Kristofer Maddigan https://open.spotify.com/track/3HpvQ7aZ5338LLRxPjUawN The Airship by Kristofer Maddigan https://open.spotify.com/track/3Mk62kPEDmcXpEvAM8ng72 Treetop Trouble by Kristofer Maddigan https://open.spotify.com/track/7D4cP3Hn1VepH9ZpcP0t8R For the Win by RandomBeats - Rifti Beats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asFzC9jQjvU 0:00 Intro 0:40 Disadvantages of Co-op 2:00 Example Skit 3:14 What is the 5 second rule? 3:57 Why you're allowed to die during runs? 5:06 Unique Co-op strategies 7:40 Why 5 seconds? 9:06 What ruined this run 11:11 Is it a good rule? 12:12 Werner Deepdive 13:24 Outro 13:49 Bonus Meme