Hi everyone,

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m noneleft. I’m currently the sole (active) moderator of Bloons TD6, having taken over earlier this month.
Since I’m going to be verifying all your runs, here’s a little bit about myself: I’m from the United States, I’ve been playing bloons since 2007/2008 (that’s 14 years ago!), and I love kpop which you can see by my livesplit timers in my runs (my favorite group is GFRIEND).
This thread is to give the community (whatever’s left of it) an update as to what the plans are moving forward to grow the BTD6 speedrunning scene.

NUMBER ONE: Quality of Life/Rules Updates
- The rules have been formatted and updated to be easier to read and clearer for new players. If you notice an error or have any questions regarding rules, feel free to ask in the speedrunning discord or on this forum post

- Timing for Impoppable and CHIMPS runs have been changed slightly. Sometimes the screen dims before the insta monkey appears, which is a time loss of 1-2 frames. Impoppable runs are not yet optimized to really care about these frames, but should we get to that point, we are now standardizing time stop to when the screen goes dark, NOT when the insta begins to appear

- All runs are now required to be Youtube videos only. Since I’m doing this on my own, I want to make this as easy as possible for both me and you, the speedrunners. Youtube allows for very easy frame counting in a few simple clicks. Using YouTube only means the time your run spends in verification decreasing, and your leaderboard time and placement are completely accurate. Please convert all videos or twitch streams to YouTube videos.

- All Times will no longer be rounded up should they end in 0.xx6 repeating (ex: A time of 4:41.966 will remain as such instead of showing 4:41.967) If your time is affected by this 1 ms change, please let me know.

NUMBER TWO: The Future - Guides and Fun Items
- Guides for speedrunning Bloons TD 6 are very limited. Over the next few months I hope to make a few guides – ranging from complete beginner tips to very advanced strategies. BTD6 players span a very wide age range, so we want the game to be accessible for all while ensuring that those who want to push the game to its limits can also do so. In other words: Low skill floor, high skill ceiling.

- For those who are interested in competing for leaderboard spots, I was thinking of setting up a separate leaderboard titled “Bloons TD6 Champion” (we can come up with a catchier name later) It basically totals your average leaderboard position and ranks you based on that. This could be fun, especially if the community ends up growing and we get more competitors.

- To hype up the scene a little, I was thinking about a world record/top times review. A video series where we look at some of the best times that players have set recently and break them down and praise them for being completely awesome (as all our runners are :D). If you’re interested in this and/or interested in helping, let me know.

NUMBER THREE: Questions for You all
1. The current Black Border% category states that times are to be calculated without time spent on the menu. I think we should actually include menu times as menuing effectively is a skill that can be learned. For example, being able to switch heroes quickly or being able to find the map in the map selector quickly as well. Would you guys be okay with this change? This would apply retroactively.

2. I swear I had more questions. Well, should they come up I’ll ask in a later post probably.

Anyway, that’s the plan for the future of Bloons TD6 speedrunning. Very lofty goals, but doable if there’s a community behind it. To get involved, please join our speedrunning discord here: https://discord.com/invite/VwrDMa7
Let me know what you think, and happy popping

i think menuing is cool for black border yea

I really love all of your ideas.
Adding menu time to bb% is a quite nice idea since its also a skill you need. It's also easier to time. Also you can't chill between the runs.

Menu time in black boarder% is a great idea in theory but it would give an advantage to people with better computers.

it would make maybe 2 seconds difference, if you're having trouble loading a map then there's something wrong with your computer just generally

Not everyone can afford a decent enough computer to save those 2 seconds and it would be better to have fair competition for everyone.