Apologies on the wait for getting this posted - I've had a draft of this saved for a while before a trip to my grandparents which was full of chores and other things and then other personal issues on Sunday before honestly just wanting to do something fun rather than deal with leaderboard stuff. Just figured this would be from a better headspace - this probably should have come sooner or left it to someone else but I figured it was probably better to come from me. Yeah just poor timing and dealing with other stuff at the moment and sorry for the delay.

So about a week ago, I got the rest of the mod team together to just have a chat on discussions for what to do with the leaderboard stuff, and working through stuff for better long term health of the game and board. Here's a brief writeup on the minutes, what we talked about and where we're at. I'd appreciate any and all responses.

As far as category name, Hard Great Seal was the most popular among the community and I think the reasoning eventually lined up - it defines it on what the run does rather than a restriction and also avoids spoilers if that's important for people looking at a leaderboard. The current leaderboard reflects what we think should both look good and work well - Leaderboard is divided into Journey and Answer and Great Seal vs True ending is a toggle for Journey specifically. If there's any comments on this from here, I think this should be something that's pretty much well agreed to here.

As far as the other things go, we did discuss most of the smaller details from the feedback forms and I'll address a lot of the bigger or more important ones there. Some people mentioned not really liking me gauging the "future proofing" question - just wanted to point out that wasn't necessarily my intent, more so just thinking about if there is a category split, what's the intended reason. Sounds like it mostly wasn't necessary but it was partly just a thought experiment and wasn't meant to be a very important question. Sorry if it seemed I was trying to think about hypotheticals that didn't exist. There was a decent amount of discussion on adding another mod that runs Journey specifically. While we all agreed it was something to look into, there just aren't a lot of runners, and even the runners for journey tended to run it extremely infrequently. As of right now, I think it's okay for now, assuming clearer communication between the mod team and the rest of the runners going forward.

As far as a turbo variable - this was a suggestion from the form - the difficulty there is that it's extremely difficult to tell. So while it's self reportable, it's a very hard thing to police on our end which makes it not a great choice for something on the leaderboard.

Breaks in longer runs was another point of discussion and honestly - there's a lot to talk about there. Currently, we follow normal RTA policies that runs are done in one sitting and not allowing a timer to be paused for any reason (the normal standard). While for some longer runs (journey definitely qualifies) this is probably less than ideal, especially for health stuff, it's probably something to discuss with the rest of the Persona and SMT community and even then, it leads to a lot of weirdness. Hypothetically, right now, say we said that if a run is over 8 hours, you can take a 5 minute break somewhere in the run. If a runner takes a 5 min break at the 4 hour mark and gets a 7:58... do they just sit for 2 minutes to avoid the 5 minute penalty? And there's definitely a skill to maintaining focus for a long period of time with some of the boss gauntlets that arguably would be diminished. It's something to discuss but as of right now, my suggestion is that if the length of a run is prohibitive for health reasons... taking even 20 minutes of breaks over the course of a 12 hour run is far from the end of the world and should still allow for both fun and competition.

So lastly, we talked a fair bit about communication and admittedly - at least from my perspective, there was kind of a breakdown on all sides here imo. Even this writeup was intended to go up a fair bit sooner than it is, but irl stuff happens on my end which should have been better mentioned. This type of stuff aside though, if there are questions or if there's something I said I'd do and haven't or forgot please feel free to just... ping me in discord if there's something that seems missing or just a question. Like I understand it's a pain or that you don't want to bother someone etc but personally, it doesn't really bother me. As far as the situation that led to the discussion as a whole, I think it kinda just boils down to similar issues that can be worked on in the future. I will say that if you have a dispute with a mod, feel free to ask another mod - I wasn't really aware there was a problem until things escalated quite a bit. Or if you have a problem with something I'm doing, ask another mod what their thoughts are if they're not actively participating. At the end of the day, we're all human and doing our best - we all need a little help sometimes.

Anyway, thanks again, and sorry for the delay. If there are any questions, feel free to drop them in the thread here or anything for me personally, my DMs on discord are always open.

If you want, I think the RPGLB run has both my and Ouro's mashing method. I just do right thumb on one button, left on the other and just kinda... vibrate so it alternates. It sucks, it will wear you out a bit, especially at the start of runs. Sorry. Dunno why the game has an amazing cutscene skip... in NG+ only.

Sorry apparently I didn't see the messages from earlier. And yeah, admittedly that's the problem with a game like this as a speedrun and kinda something I'd like to see solved before doing too much work on the leaderboard. While it's a good excuse to play through the songs again, as mentioned, I kinda need to understand what people are looking to get out of it so we can go from there in a healthy manner, which atm is basically going to hold the board in a freeze.

Hey all,

There was a lot of discussion on discord as to what the newly separated category should be named so I figured the best thing long term was to get things sorted out here so they can be referred to as things happen with the game in the future.

https://forms.gle/1CMQ7JMfALoGEZmF7 There's a poll here that I'd like to see filled out - I'll make answers public after a few days so the mods can meet and discuss them where we can have one last discussion and hopefully come to an agreement.

Mulsqi pointed out to me, that among other things, I did end up titling it as All Chapters NG+ which hasn't been what any runs have been. None of the runs done so far have included both Chapter 8 and Special.

So I guess we need to define what's actually being done - the problem with just calling it NG+ is that that's not strictly what's happening and having all chapters unlocked makes it not really work as a NG+.

The options if the goal is just to get to the credits are going to be to either force a NG save (can move old save to the cloud if you don't want to lose it) and start doing any% or we're going to have to define exactly which chapters are done, as well as what that means for timing.

Or you can just do all non-DLC songs back to back instead and not really bother with the story? I dunno, I'm not a runner but there's some issues that need to be resolved in the very near future.

YKW2 had a route made but the length just didn't make it something I was interested in, especially when it was less fun in a speedrun setting than the original in my and Osey's opinion. If you want to run it, feel free to. I haven't played YKW3 so I can't say much about it either way.

We had one that had almost no activity other than people looking for trades and such. We ended up deleting it after a few years since maintaining it wasn't worth the hassle for a game that hadn't seen activity in years.

My general policy on categories that aren't on boards - run them, show me a video or proof (probably need a lot more for an inferno run given I don't know how long it'd take...) and I'll add them to the board. Until then though, they tend to just clutter boards as empty leaderboards.

Turbo controllers aren't normally allowed by western speedrunning rules. I'm not sure the community has come to a consensus on them here either and to my knowledge, nobody that's run has used one? I could be wrong there; it's admittedly hard to tell. I don't think people would mind too much but if it's something you have the option of using, it's probably worth bringing up in the discord before you do a long run.

I'd imagine it's worth separating regardless due to different mechanics and lack of a touch screen. When someone does a run on the new release, I'll create the new category for it.

It's faster with 2 people, but the local only thing makes it less common. There is no way to differentiate 1p2c from 2p2c coop as it's a rule that is not possible to enforce.

Sorry, I've been away dealing with family matters and this seems mostly resolved so it might be better not said anyway, but I figured I'd clarify a few things...

Legrand approached me before doing anything on here, and my opinions stand the same as his; I don't believe Wii U emulation is accurate enough to compare across different computers running the emulator given that I don't believe any emulator past the SNES (or game boy color for handhelds) is accurate, and even SNES I know has issues with games that were heavy on internal chips added to the cartridge... which was a lot of SNES games). Heck, most modern games have issues with someone's console being faster or slower at random which is one of the unfortunate side effects of the modern era of speedrunning. I'd imagine a $5000 PC would blow a $1000 PC out of the water in emulating a Wii U game, for example

However, if the game release is official, I can walk to the store, buy a Wii U and the game, point a camera at the TV and play and the game is running as intended; unless the Wii U is hacked, there are no doubts that the game is running as it is intended. It is the default version of the game and should never be impermissible or suboptimal to run on, unless there is another version of the game with an official release. That's not the case with emulation; it's impossible to know that the RNG is running properly, or that the game is rendering things, not even mentioning load changes which obviously save tons of time. What's worse, this can vary from computer hardware to computer hardware and settings to settings, which gets even worse when you factor in an emulator in active development. Put shortly, it's a nightmare that would require the boards to, for fairness's sake, be either separated for each version of the emulator used or wiped with each new iteration of the emulator... which feels outright awful. If it's the former... what is the point? Who are you competing with that you need a leaderboard for? The leaderboard is literally your splits at that point if you're competing against a field of one. There are games that I think emulator specific leaderboards are okay, but even those are less moderated and problematic at times, on consoles much older than the Wii U.

All of that is to say that I echo LeGrand's sentiments on the leaderboard itself.

As for my comments, I'm sorry I wasn't more clear and that it caused confusion and probably a bit of heartache on your end, and I'll clarify a bit. The "AND the other runners" is the key phrase, not the "I need a full run before I do this". Since I haven't done much more than very early routing on the game, I don't want to overly dictate what can and cannot be on the boards; if the other runners of the game were all for "let's make emulator the default" (not what is intended here just going with the most extreme example first), I'd begrudgingly accept (until I got around to running the game myself... at which point I probably don't submit to the leaderboard at all to avoid drama or dealing with it). In this situation, legrand, who is a runner as well, has very valid reasons for why a emulator leaderboard is problematic, which I 100% agree with and would have said unprompted. In that situation, I'm going defer to my initial judgement. That said, I'm really really sorry that was interpreted as consent/approval - I'll be more careful with that in the future.

I'd also like to echo that again, there are lots of reasons to speedrun and my goal as a mod is never to block someone from running a game; I try to be very laissez faire there. I think that if emulator is the way you enjoy running a game or if it allows you to stream the game and you'd enjoy that, please by all means, do so. People ask for things like "IL categories" in Persona 5 to which I say the same response "It's impossible to moderate effectively or create a standardized ruleset so a leaderboard in the traditional sense is not a fit... but if that's what you'd enjoy most, please run it in that style to your hearts content".

I looked at it but at the same time... There are basically 5 fights on that day? And it gets replaced almost immediately. It's probably close.

I didn’t doubt it. I’m just running through and putting together my own version of the route. :)

Burst rounds work again... On 1 sensitivity. It feels awful for everything else but it's 100% optimal now... Ugh.

I don’t think changing the category name really matters that much; normal mostly means “not easy” in this situation. Regardless, I think changing Sexy + to be an explicit for easy is a good rule unless we want to allow optional fights on easy if the reason is a drop, which likely changes other parts of the route, since Gispy is right, the current wording leaves lots of potential loopholes and could cause issues of intent.

I’m also more in favor of not banning midnight reset because it’s currently not particularly impactful, and leaving it shelved until there’s clear time save potential from it at which point it probably should be reopened. Banning something before it’s used or tested is bad policy, especially if nobody uses it in any% currently. If there’s clearly demonstrated time save potential or a route discussed, we can reopen it.

I agree with some of the arguments for shutdown pp but it doesn’t cause an issue for the Switch version in particular so it doesn’t hold there. It is, however, a very deliberate action which makes it easily enforceable if it’s agreed that changing the switch time mid run is a negative (I’d generally agree that it is)

So Neku gets slightly better stats? That seems like a small trade instead of a difficult to enforce rule. Saying “oh, they can only do so much” is weird when by the games own rules, the player has done nothing to change that. Setting the switch clock to 11 pm before a run is annoying but not super difficult unless I’m mistaken.

You are right though; the rules probably should make the easy mode exception for Sexy + explicit unless the argument is made that any drop farming could be allowed on easy.

Midnight reset can be done accidentally, so while it’s annoying and I’d prefer it didn’t exist, banning it causes more issues than allowing it given how easily it can be done. Shutdown PP is more difficult, but unless it causes a negative effect on the run as a whole, I’d probably allow it too.

Also, again, 1p2c is not a sufficient differentiator. For better or worse, 1 person is not sufficiently different to coop to where they are different “categories”. It’s also not enforceable. Do they have to have a webcam showing it was only one person? A mic? If people want to do 1p2c (I do) it’s a really easy thing to keep track of but there is not a clean way to separate them so they should be on the same leaderboard.