Heya, I recently completed and submitted a few runs of each currently available category and thought I might share my thoughts on what I've learnt from doing them as well as make some suggestions about how the leaderboard could possibly be improved going forward. This may be kinnda long as I'd like to address everything in the one post so bare with me.
The only option the game allows you to change is the difficulty, it goes from 1-8 stars and there are 12 matches total with only the last two being the same every time; Sagat and Dictator.
It's probably obvious but I really feel like this category could do with more difficulty sub-options than just allowing anything where everyone would ofc choose difficulty 1 - the opponents essentially just walk into your attacks and sometimes don't even try to fight back so it becomes RNG at a certain point where if they block once you lose time because it's just that easy - I feel like keeping this as the only option would do more harm than good because of all this. After trying a bunch of difficult difficulties, I feel like sub-categories for 1, 4 and 8 would be the best fit.
Akuma is selectable with a code on the character select screen but doesn't feel as powerful as you'd expect, he doesn't even have a raging demon as far as I could tell, just a super fireball and his combo'ing felt pretty limited because of how janky this game's hitboxes are so he doesn't seem to be able to abuse all his aggression options as you're normally able to expect him do in typical SF games. We probably wouldn't need to restrict him to his own category unless we find something crazy so I think it should be stated that using him is allowed.
Speaking of Akuma, you trigger him as a replacement final boss opponent instead of Dictator by doing a 1CC on 8 Star difficulty only, the fight trigger doesn't seem to activate at all on lower difficulties.
I think time should end on the last hit just like Street Battle does, being forced to wait for "THE END" to show up felt annoying since the only thing you do after the last fight is wait through an unskippable cutscene.
Difficulty also appears to be locked to some kind of preset value no matter what you try to select in options before a run; I'd estimate it somewhere around 5/6/7 whereas only the first fight feels definitely like an 8 as that appears to be an extra hard fight that you're not supposed to win (Dictator's AI felt noticeably different to me compared with the actual final battle with the same character at the end) - it actually IS possible to beat them but when I managed to do so it doesn't even change the flow of the story or gameplay so yeah.
I would like to request that MisTer be added as a selectable platform and edited into my recent submissions.
Saturn has a very obvious advantage from faster load times so at some point we should have a category split but it ofc doesn't really matter until we actually have Saturn runners.
An Arcade version of the game does exist and should be added but I haven’t tested the gameplay yet myself. It should definitely be it's own category though as that version seems to have alot about it that makes it unique including exclusive characters.
I've completed a 4 star difficulty run of Street Battle to try and help facilitate the potential extra changes I mentioned earlier so if it gets added it's not just a dead category on arrival and should the other runners/mods agree I'd be excited to do some Difficulty 8 attempts too if that category gets made as well.
