United KingdomAttendee, did not run or commentate.
Really enjoyed the event this year, leaps and bounds better than the previous year. More equipment, better facilities, more food options, really justified the increased price of attending. I spent a lot of time in Hall B, and there was plenty of equipment in that room to go round as well.
Arcades were fun, really happy to see Stream B back, kept a steady flow of viewers for many of the runs and was a nice alternative if Stream A wasn't for you.
The Final Fantasy runs were awesome, and no, there was never a time where there was two Final Fantasy's on at once. As a member of the FF community I have heard lots of positive feedback for all the FF runs showcased at ESA, so I do hope they continue showcasing them. If they want to save time so they can fit in more runs they should do less Ape Escape runs, that game is rubbish.
TL;DR -
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New column on PC leaderboards, 'Time Without Loads'. Requires you to implement the Load Remover component, details here - http://www.speedrun.com/ffx/guide/vnxps
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Leaderboard ranking will now be based on Time Without Loads, as the variation in loading times between runners appears to be massive. Please submit both times when submitting new runs, however if you choose not to use the load remover, please place the same time in both fields.
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PS2/PS3/PS4 Runners - Please only fill in the 'Time Without Loads' field when submitting runs, however we will check all submissions as always to ensure they are correct. Hopefully Speedrun.com will fix soon.
https://goo.gl/nFdPyN This is the new shortened link if you wish the bookmark it, hopefully it won't expire like the old one did! :)
Oh I should mention as well for the PS2/PS3/PS4 runners - adding this Time Without Loads column has had the unfortunate side effect of now showing both fields when you submit your run for these categories, when of course the load remover is not available for these console categories.
Unfortunately there is nothing I can do to prevent this, as the Speedrun website requires you to select the Time Without Loads on the game, not on the individual leaderboards. It also means the column 'Time Without Loads' also shows on these leaderboards, when in truth it is 'Time With Loads' or just 'Time'. I have submitted feedback to the site regarding this.
When submitting for the PS2/PS3/PS4 categories, please only fill in the 'Time Without Loads' column to appear on the leaderboards correctly, however, we will be checking the submissions for any errors as always so there is no need to worry if you have made a mistake.
Many thanks,
Flobberworm4
Hi guys,
As you may have already seen we have developed a autosplitter and load remover for the Final Fantasy X PC version, where the load remover in particular pauses the timer whenever the game is in a loading state.
We have now added an extra column to the PC leaderboards for this 'Time Without Loads' time, so when you are submitting a new time, you will be prompted to enter two times; one without loads and one with loads.
The leaderboard will now be ranked based on the 'Time Without Loads' time. Obviously this has the downside of dozens of times submitted in the last year have obviously not had their loading times removed from them.
However the major benefit is that it will give a much more level playing ground for all players regardless of your PC specifications and performance. From the few runs that have been submitted so far with the time without loads, the time difference has varied from 6-13 minutes! This was much bigger than I anticipated, and this was just from a few runners! I feel this huge variation justifies the use of a 'Time Without Loads' column greatly.
So all PC submissions will now require the times with and without loads. Please edit the layout of your splits such that both timers are visible when running the game, full details on how to implement this is available here - http://www.speedrun.com/ffx/guide/vnxps
If you do not use the load remover for your submission, then please fill in the 'Time Without Loads' and 'Time With Loads' fields with the same time.
Many thanks and of course if you any questions or need help with setting up your layout/setting up the autosplitter then please ask on here or on the Discord channel!
Flobberworm4
On the Final Fantasy X leaderboards we have recently created an autosplitter which also allows you to remove the loading times from the game. We have implemented the 'Time Without Loads' column to these PC leaderboards.
However it seems like you can only set the 'Time Without Loads' option on the game itself rather than the individual leaderboards, which means that for our PS2 and PS3/4 leaderboards, the run submission asks you for a time without loads, when of course this wouldn't be realistically possible to calculate for these versions. Also on the leaderboards for these, the time column is 'Time Without Loads' when really it should be Time With Loads, or just left as 'Time'.
Is it possible to have the option to set 'Time without Loads' on individual leaderboards, rather than the game? I'm not sure if anyone else has experienced this problem or if anyone has any solutions, but I'm sure it is getting more common now with more and more games becoming cross platform but require different leaderboards for the vast timing differences.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1r9ABt51Wcha3dNX0FVRTN3TWM/view Link to notes is broken at the moment, here is the long link
Minor updates to V2.2, added the location of FMV skips for PC HD Remaster runners, (denoted by the word 'Skip'). Re-added the key saying SD meant Skip Dialogue, etc, forgot to add it back in, also added a bit of legal stuff. No route changes!
Also should note, I think in terms of console it should be the same regardless? There's no loading screens, so it should be fair game whether you use a PS4/PS4 Pro/Xbox or Digital/Disc.
I suppose the leaderboards could have a column to indicate what you used just for information sake.
Hi guys,
Here's a fun new category that I'm hoping can be added to the leaderboards?
It's Pitioss%, so the timer starts when you hit the button activating the lift down the Pitioss Dungeon, and ends when you pick up the Black Hood.
Here's my VOD for it, lots of improvements to be made, although there definitely seems to be interest in it!
Finally got round to updating all the sphere grid images, newest version of the notes available (V2.1) in the above link!
Flobberworm4
Hi guys,
I have made an updated version of the FFX notes that you can find here - https://goo.gl/nFdPyN
The bulk of the route is pretty much the same with a few exceptions, this update has mostly been to freshen up the appearance of the notes, so I hope you enjoy them!
The changes to the route are fairly minor, just some small changes to the Sin Fin and Spherimorph fights, and Sphere Grid change on Old Road to give Wakka strength (page 11).
Also on page 11 is a couple of new images for the sphere grid, I lost the image I was using to make the pictures, so I will eventually replace all the sphere grid images with this new layout. Let me know what you think of them.
The URL to these notes will remain the same as I update them, so feel free to bookmark the page. I will keep the old Google docs notes up if you prefer them, although I will no longer be updating them.
Enjoy!
Flobberworm4
We've given the leaderboards a fresh overhaul to try organise each category better, all categories are subcategorised into either the PS2, PS3/4 or PC tabs, we hope you enjoy it. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
In addition, there's been a lot of discussion recently in the FF community in general about the general speedrun rules for each game, such as changing the JP timing method, which is from power on to 'The End' screen.
The general consensus from what I gathered so far for FFX is to keep the current rules and timings, however any and all feedback is welcome. You can reply here or in our Discord channel.
One minor change to the rules we've added is to better clarify when to split after defeating Yu Yevon as this caused some confusion. Basically when the camera angle changes and the cutscene of Yu Yevon's death begins is the moment to split.
Flobberworm4
For all discussions on Final Fantasy X speedruns and other games in the series, please feel free to join us in the Discord chat, link here - https://discord.gg/0tjIC3eQA7VFd6Qw
Just read your four part conclusion. If you felt I was disrespectful to your opinion then I honestly do apologise, I certainly had no intention in doing that. Like I said, I was throwing my opinion into the mix, if you felt my opinion contained fallacies then I don't know what to say about that, you wanted a discussion and I replied in what I was hoping to be a respectable manner and I said my bit.
For the record, I do think adding 30 mins to a 11 hour run (or any run) is a big deal, even a game that's not too difficult like FFX is still exhausting to do because of the longevity of it. Even for short games like FFX-2 which I sometimes like to do after work, adding 30 mins may suddenly mean I lose out on sleep or food.
Again, I apologise if you felt my comments were inappropriate, but other than a few unhelpful comments I felt the discussion was largely civilised, particularly on this thread rather than discord. So I think your reply just now in the form of images was not very helpful either and will likely only spark further annoyance/anger unnecessarily. I will no longer take part in this to avoid any further degradation of the debate.
Flobberworm4
In terms of the NA/Europe speedrunning community as a whole, what do you guys think it's more common, final split on final hit/input or on the The End screen? I've obviously only seen a fraction of all the games that have ever been ran, but I definitely feel the final input is a lot more frequent.
In that respect, I feel we should also adhere to that whenever we can unless there is a compelling reason not to. I'm pretty certain there's no RNG manipulation to be found in X/X-2/XII, so I don't feel there's any reason to start from new game and finish on The End for those games. If there's a good reason to change the timings for 7, then it should be done just for that game (don't know enough about 8/9 and whether they need the change too).
Finally, FF speedruns are notorious for being ridiculously long and a major barrier for people to speedrunning them (myself included), so I feel we should be trying to prevent them from being any longer than necessary, 20-30 mins of pure cutscenes/credits certainly doesn't help that! :-)
Okay, I'll go to bed! :-)
Just throwing my opinion into the mix, I don't agree with these standardising the timings across every game and platform to the JP method, whilst we share the same series, every Final Fantasy is pretty different and unique in its own way and as such I like our current method of expert runners in each game micromanaging their own rules and runs of their own games.
If the games were similar then yes I would agree (like the Harry Potter series on playstation), but there's no reason to have standardise the timing rules from FF1 NES and FF13 on PC, it makes no sense. From my own perspective of FFX, there's no value of adding JP timing to it, there's no (known) RNG manipulation so adding minutes to the run adds no value. If there is a need for a change on FF7, then the community of FF7 should decide accordingly whether to change the timing rules, rather than a blanket change across all games and categories. If RNG manipulation was eventually found in FFX, then timing rules could then be considered at that stage.
Of course we could have some rules specific to all games and platforms, we kind of unofficially do by not allowing any hardware manipulation in any run I'm aware of, and a okay quality VOD is pretty much expected as well, but the timing one in particular for me should be dealt with game by game. For such large series such as Final Fantasy or The Legend of Zelda, when people are interested in doing a run of a particular game, they first look at the rules of the particular game they are interested in, rather than look at the rules specific to the entire series.
