Hello everyone, the Mania moderation team has decided to implement some well-warranted changes to the IL leaderboard side of the game (for the most part). These following three changes are:
Replays: The utility of this feature has never been mentioned before in the rules on SRC, but the consensus we have agreed to is that replays will now be only allowed to a certain placement on the IL leaderboard. They will be banned for the Top 5, however the runs which use the replay system that are currently in this placement will be grandfathered and remain on the leaderboard. This will be mentioned in the appropriate rules tab in the IL leaderboard under the phrasing: 'As of the current date, the replay system is banned for all runs that place in the top 5 as of the date May 14, 2024'. We will also require everyone to have the full results screen itself and the animation completely visible and shown at the end of their runs, so we have an easier time distinguishing a live run from a replay one.
Pausing: This has been debated among the mod team every now and then for a long time admittedly, however, we are now only allowing pausing to a certain extent. The sort of pausing that is now banned is the type where it is done egregiously. A few examples are: optimizing spindashes to a TAS-like level or any sort of pausing that appears to be unreasonable or excessive can lead to an IL submission that fits this description to lead to runs being rejected. This also includes input device switching, which is explained in the third change. ALL runs deemed to fit under this criteria will be rejected from the leaderboard.
Input device switching: This refers to switching from one input device to another (e.g. playing on a controller then changing it to a different input method such as a keyboard) at any point during a run. This will now be stated to be allowed for full game runs, since you will already lose some time from doing this each time in the run since Mania utilizes RTA, which has made it easy to come to a conclusion in this scope. For ILs however, this will not exactly be disallowed under a specific rule for input method switching but rather, this will be categorized under the 2nd change we are implementing: pausing.
Ultimately, we do want to encourage fun and competition and allow players to grind their way up the ranks that is reflective of their skill level. However, there has been some loose ends that have been worry points among us for a long time that have not been addressed, and we apologize to a major degree for not having done these actions implemented sooner. Thank you very much for reading and have a nice day.
