Most, if not all, Tool assisted replays are done by people that have not a very high sense of roping. Meaning, they can't rope themselves at a high level. If someone that loves and embraces warming would have their tools it would look stunning because that individual knows what good looking roping looks like without making it feel totally artificial and robotic.
For me personally, it's the other way around. While I already had a solid base of roping skills when I started tool-assisting back in 2014, doing these runs has changed my style of everyday roping. In every game that involves rope, I now instinctively try to perform the most optimal tricks possible in a given situation. It has also augmented my sensing of the game's environment, I now take much more details into account whenever I press a button on the keyboard.
At the same time I disagree that a personal roping skill level would result in a better TA output. It is simply not possible to preserve speed while trying to adjust the style to be as close to human as possible (without getting at least a 20% decrease in the time result of the run). Remember, these are *speed* runs... With a primary goal to establish records and beat others' records. You would see what I mean if the TA build was public right now.
To keep both, specially crafted maps would be needed. Levels built specifically with TA in mind, where a combination of speed and style are achievable. That could require a lot of thinking and planning, to engineer the most suitable map. Battle Race? Piece of cake compared to this.
Tool assist is very interesting, to see the things possible, it's pretty geeky too, but it doesn't look nice at all...
Honestly, i've still yet to see a tool assisted replay that impresses me with stylish roping, with a smooth flow.
There are way too many stupid kicks/pumps/outlaws which just ruin it :/
Like I've already said above, this doesn't fall within the definition of "speed" runs. Doing this on regular small RR maps would provide little feedback.
However, some ideas can be used with Big RR-like maps, especially with unlocked or slightly unlocked speed limits (i.e. TestStuff). Back in 2014 I made a test run on a Big RR map that utilizes the indian rope feature. It is not focused on either style or speed, so is not very stylish, but should still catch your attention at some parts.
BTW, this isn't the first time that indian-rope is used with TA. Some people might remember Wyv's video from 9 years ago that utilized this. If you haven't already, you should check it out.
I didn't want to say much about it myself, because I didn't know the right words to say and it come off wrong.
But StepS puts it very nicely, I don't disregard stylish roping, heck when I began TASing stylish roping was my #1, and it totally worked (I think), but my stylish TASs were achieving (or not achieving) records, I eventually found a few ways around it while trying to be stylish while maintaining speed, and I beat few records of Deadcode's until he (re)beat them easily simply because speed was his #1 and stylish roping is hard to mix with speed roping, I soon had to change, and spent much time focusing and practicing speed, until this point.
Edit: After watching StepS' awesome TAS, I couldn't resist (8.82 sec finish, 18.20 sec back to start):4 more replay (videos) added! Sorry for the delay, TS runs take quite some dedicated time.
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