RTA vs IGT
6 years ago
United States

Anyone interested in timing these runs based off IGT instead of RTA? The PC version of this game is significantly slower at loading than the PS4 (even with a top notch PC with an SSD). I figured I'd ask since there isn't a large community running this game. All it would take is plugging the times at the end of each round into Live Split. The difference in loading times between PC / PS4 is significant and adds up to quite a lot of time after 57 stages.

Zaba likes this
United States

It would be pretty easy to re-time the submissions that are already on the board. I'll volunteer to do the legwork if that's the major obstacle. I think IGT makes way more sense.

United States

I'm also not sure where to report this, but the "New Game+ - Any% in 1h 41m 05s" by Spitfire is invalid. If the NG+ Any% involves beating all story missions, there was one skipped. I was timing the run for IGT to compare to my own runs and noticed that the mission "She Belongs To No One" was skipped and never made back up.

If you look at the video, the preceding mission "Haruka The Technician" is completed at 43:26 but the runner appeared to forget what mission he was on and went right to "When Hibari Gets Mad" at 43:42 in the video. You can see him pause for a second as he was thinking, so I don't think it was an intentional skip but it makes the run time invalid as the mission was never completed at another time during the video.

North Carolina, USA

There's a couple reasons we don't use IGT for Senran Kagura runs.

The first is that the IGT is unbelievably inaccurate. It's so inaccurate we're actually at a loss for what it even does. The best example is in my PB for Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson. I did an RTA run on New Game Normal, my RTA time being 2:13:49. What do you think the IGT would be? Probably a few minutes less right? Probably not counting load times or whatever. The IGT was 2:38:49-- 25 minutes more than my RTA. (you can see this for yourself in the video, I show it at the end)

Another reason we don't use it is that it wouldn't include menuing. I think it's dishonest to not include menuing, and in Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, they use IGT instead of RTA, so runs that are actually faster and done better, lose to worse runs because menu's aren't included in IGT (the time pauses in menus). This would make 100% runs in Shinovi Versus a nightmare imo to find a way to properly time, since it's all the different stories, and massive times for menuing, and has to watch the credits. I won't push this one since it's another version of your initial complaint for load times.

Last major one is that routes would change. In Senran Kagura 2 again, if we were to go with IGT instead of RTA, we would do things differently at the start. We lose time at the start to do side missions to get equips so that we save RTA later. If we were doing plug-in IGT levels, then we'd skip that and just yolo it.

I don't know what the other mods would think, but that's my reasoning for why RTA is prefered. I use the entire series as an example since I don't like the idea that only one title in the series does timing different than the rest, but again hat can be debated if people prefer.

I'll also take a look at that run you mentioned. We've rejected a few runs from doing that but they happened usually at the start or end.

But yeah, All of this is up for debate of course, but with how I see RTA is the most fair and consistent for the series.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Zaba likes this
United States

What run are you referring to about your IGT / RTA discrepancy? I don't see a run of yours on the leaderboard. Every run for this game I've reviewed has had pretty accurate IGT.

I think the menuing argument is pretty weak for this game. There are no close times on this leaderboard being determined by the speed of menuing.

As for routes, there are no huge skips in this game yet. Any% is basically "All Story Quests" until a major skip is discovered. You referenced Senran Kagura 2, but that's irrelevant for this discussion. This isn't about that game.

United States

Re-reading what I wrote, I'm not sure if the tone came off a bit too harsh. No disrespect intended.

I'm just concerned that with RTA times for this game, we're cutting out the other platforms from having competitive times because of theoretical concerns found in different games. I have an RTA that's nearly ten minutes worse and my menuing is far better in that run than the faster times I've seen on the leaderboard. I have an IGT that is several minutes faster than the fastest time here though.

California, USA

Honestly I don't think doing it by IGT would work out well since in every Senran Kagura game time keeps going even if you're not actively playing the game. For example you could be looking at the play time in the menu and time would still keep going. So really it'd actually be an inaccurate way to time runs.

United States

The IGT would be scored at the end of each round by the "time completed" metric. The timer resets each round. There's no issue with the timer continuing to run because the timer is only running in the round you're playing.

United States

This is what I'm referring to https://i.imgur.com/I7W5o2X.jpg

The game tracks how long each round took. All you have to do is add these up to get the IGT for any run in this game. It's not cumulative and every VOD I've checked has had accurate times for this game.

North Carolina, USA

So you're not asking for IGT runs, you're asking for IL times spliced together? We have an IL leaderboard if you'd prefer to run that in that case. Full games runs include the full game-- menus and all. If someone were to do a run then do something else, we'd want that counted in the final time. You might not like us showing you the history of this debate for other games in the series, but that's why we use RTA. We figured 3 games of was enough to show how IGT shouldn't be trusted.

The alternate route thing wasn't just for the literal example, it also means alternative strats in-stages. If we found out IGT is affected by animations or cut scenes, then fights would be changed accordingly. I can bring up other examples-- even in the Kagura series of this being the case, but you said you won't accept those... But I'll post them anyway haha.

In Senran Kagura 2 we never use Ninja Arts since it's slower RTA but faster IGT. In New Super Mario Bros there's routes that are faster IGT, but way slower RTA because IGT pauses for cut scenes.

You might think menuing is a weak point, but similar to that, load times have also not been a factor between runs (This debate happened for SSD vs. HDD PS4s). I'm simply stating it for the future-proofing of the rules. If someone is bad at menuing (which is a big deal in the other games; moreso than Estival, I concede-- but you also in your post showed a run being invalid BECAUSE of menuing) they should be penalized for it.

I'm having tests done for Full-Game runs in RTA vs. IGT for both PS4 and PC of Estival Versus so that our arguments won't be dismissed because it's not specifically Estival Versus. I'll post an update on how it turns out when it's done.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
United States

Terrific. I appreciate the feedback, everyone. I've stated my perspective, so I'll refrain from dragging this discussion out any more. Thanks for the speedy responses too.

North Carolina, USA

No, feel free to keep responding if something we said doesn't make sense. :O Like I said, we've only talked about RTA vs. IGT for the otehr games in the series, so I'm still going to test it for this one to see if it's inaccurate or not.

United States

The only other odd thing worth mentioning is that New Game+ Any% might need a different name. All Missions or Festival% or something might be a little more accurate. New Game+ Any% kind of implies that someone could just fire up the last level and complete it to get "any%" completion. It's the same route right now as the New Game Any%, so I see why it's named that way but it's something odd I noticed. When trying to complete all the missions, there's no real skip you can do as all the levels have to be completed. Maybe it's just a strange interpretation on my part though.

Zaba likes this
North Carolina, USA

I think that's a good idea, actually. NG+ All Missions seems much more clear and appropriate.

Zaba likes this
United States

Well, loading issues be damned, I still got WR tonight in NG+. I'll be submitting the run shortly.