Just today, Revolucion found out that you can unlock 2A by beating 1B, the same goes for all other A-Sides. This means that you can beat the intuitive definition of "All Hearts", which is collect all 24 hearts in the game from a fresh file, without beating a single A-Side, but only collecting the tape and hearts of each A-Side. This would cut out over 10 minutes (to be more exact, I approximate around 15 minutes) of the current All Hearts run.

Now clearly, this goes against the way we currently have been running All Hearts, which is why I suggest to split the current All Hearts category into two categories, those being:

• All Levels, this will be the way we currently played All Hearts, beating all 24 levels
• All Hearts, this will be the category exploiting this, so you are not required to beat A-Sides here

I can see why people would dislike not finishing A-Sides, as it kind of feels fishy to not beat the levels, but thinking about it I personally came to the opinion that the new All Hearts would be a cooler category probably. People run All Hearts over other categories to play the B- and C-Sides, not to run the A-Sides for the 1000th time. So this would actually make for a more condensed category, cutting out a good chunk of the stuff that we have already seen so many times. This might increase activity in All Hearts too, because many people were probably scared away by the length of the category thus far.

I think there is further discussion to be had if we should have both categories on the main boards, and if not, then which of these should become the main one. However, I do think splitting the category into two is the best way to go, as both are completely valid, non-arbitrary and, frankly put, cool categories that should be represented on the leaderboards. Giving people the choice which on they would rather play is the best way forward in my opinion.

I brought it up to Noel, more importantly than anything, we need to make sure it stays in the game, it is an unintended route through the game that could lead to a messed up casual experience and they might want to remove it. Important to get their stance I think before we start arguing category stuff.

Just wanted to say I'm in favor of creating a new category for just All Hearts without having to complete every level, and I'm even in favor of it becoming the 'main' all hearts category, just because I think it differentiates all hearts from 100% in a pretty interesting way.

I agree with birdo

I would expect always people disagreeing with big changes like this to a category, that happens every time in every speedgame. Of course notifying devs about the issue because we 2018 and games are patched would be a first step just because no one wants to start doing runs with this system and they becoming obsolete because a new version makes impossible to speedrun like this, right?

Just saying, but I heard some stuff about a change like this being "arbitrary", speedrunning is arbitrary by definition, is a custom activity where you do what you want and no one stops you from getting fun the way you want with your game with the goal of going fast. From a purist speedrunner standpoint you should even be able to beat Any% using B-sides if you want and that should be allowed because a category in a game has 2 things, a goal and a way to reach the goal: Any% means "beat the game in ANY possible way".

This last clarification especially comes because the ruleset of Any% in speedrun.com says "beat all A-sides", not going against mods with this, I'm pretty much sure they didn't know that is actually possible reaching the goal of Any% beating B-sides in the middle. In any case, that would be the arbitrary thing for the boards, because if you can beat the game in the fastest possible way using a B-side instead of completing some A-side, why banning it?

Pointing this out because doing some maths, I think with a very high risk and little reward there is indeed a B-side route in Any% that would potentially save time, probably a thing no one would use but I don't think should be banned if someone comes with it, and is not an opinion or arbitrary proposal, I'm sticking 100% to what Any% means.

I don't think Any% has to be splitted, the only potential route that could be faster is Mirror Temple and the risk is huge for a very little reward.

City B is longer than City A, also the tape is late in the level. Old Site B about the same time but taking the tape would make that considerably slower. In Resort the tape is very late in the level. Ridge B is longer than Ridge A. Reflection B instead of Reflection A would be actually very similar but slower, also just if you are fast for taking the tape. Summit has the tape in 1500m so it would definitely be slower.

The only case that would be faster is Mirror Temple, if you use the key skip which is terryfing.

Any% is a category that has only one meaning, no need to split that. Comparing people going for a B-side route instead of the traditional way is completely fair, because all are having the same goal, there is no point on splitting a category because some people use different strategies.

This category talk might almost need a forum post of it's own, but it's slightly related so here are my 2 cents:

Firstly, to add onto what Revo said in terms of a faster Any% route and hopefully give context to TeDeMos' (and others) fear, the theorized route would include beating 5B instead of 5A, which would at best save 15s, probably less. And to even get that timesave, you'd have to play a perfect 5B, which is way harder than 5A with the required 5B keyless strat becoming the hardest trick in the Any% run. Nobody has finished a 5B run that even comes close to being fast enough to saving time in Any% so far. It would if anything be a high-risk, low-reward route for top players. All timesave is speculative until somebody gets a 5B run that is fast enough to save time (beating current IL WR by almost 40s).

Now even if it were to save more time, I don't think it warrants a category split like TeDeMos suggested, because a category should not reflect a route, but rather a set of objectives (with maybe certain restrictions). I think this is the underlying issue here, and from my understanding what Revo is addressing. All main categories except 100% right now have a ruleset that represent a route rather than the actual objective, or alternatively they describe the "wrong" objective, as in an objective that mismatches the implicit objective of the category name.

To give an example of what I mean, ARB currently says that you have to beat every A-Side, and collect 4 hearts, both of which are completely irrelevant to the actual objective. The definition should be "Beat Core A-Side with 175 Berries collected from a fresh file", plus the obvious restrictions of not using cheat or assist mode. As of right now, this happens to represent the fastest route anyway so it might not be seen as a problem, but this definition still rules out any potential alternative route, be it faster or slower, that would still intuitively qualify as an ARB run. To give a hypothetical example of why this definition is terrible, if we ever find a way to skip the heart-door in Core, there would be a run that collects all strawberries and beats Core, that would be minutes faster than the current ARB run, yet not qualify on the leaderboard because of sloppy rule definitions. Similarly, Any% should only be concerned with reaching the credits from a fresh file, opposing on how to actually do that, like Revo said.

To address what Jared said, this is where the current All Hearts definition is a mismatch from the name. The current All Hearts category should be called All Levels to properly reflect the objective stated in the rules. The definitions of Any% and ARB should be adjusted accordingly too, all 3 categories do not accurately represent the intuitive objective of their very name right now. So with the consensus being that current All Hearts is actually All Levels, the discussion should be if an actual All Hearts category should be added, presumably as a main category. Which, assuming the developers will indeed not patch the exploit, I still think is yes, for the reasons initially stated, plus what Birdo said: It would be a cool and unique category, separate and different from all the other ones.

Unlimiting All Hearts and Any% from finishing levels creates a whole new set of possibilities, even if just a few new routes are better (like going for 5B instead of finishing 5A), people will have more freedom while still doing the prerequisites for the category (Getting all 24 hearts, getting to the summit).

Completing all stages doesn't really make any sense when there's a category for that exact goal already

b side route is cool and good

Also, yes I basically agree with OddBod's take about the fact that a category should represent a goal, not a route. The specification that you have to complete all levels is weird when the actual objective is completing the game. Closing down options makes a game sterile.

for All Hearts I think it'd just make that category more fun by cutting much of the overlap between Any%. For Any%, if a B side route does turn out faster, then that's interesting because then you can actually have players doing totally different paths through the game depending on the size of their balls. It's good! I like that, it's an interesting thing for a game.

"depending on the size of their balls" love you Punchy lmfao

I agree, routing choices depending on skill level isn't a bad thing, it's quite the opposite. If we split Any%, we might as well make a separate category that bans hyperdashes, corner boosts and lake skip for all the players that don't like the risk-reward of those.

Also personally I'd like for both All Hearts and All Levels to be main categories by the way, although as long as both get added somewhere on the boards I'm fine with it. Both are pretty different from each other, and both are super different from the 3 other main categories. If one would be miscellaneous though, I'd vote for All Levels to be the secondary category.

One thing I forgot to touch on in the previous post is what Ben said, which is that I'd also like to get confirmation first that the developers will not fix this before we actually change the leaderboard. Although personally I do not see why this would get fixed, it took us 6 months to find in the first place so it's not likely to happen casually. And even if it were to happen in casual play, that person knows that they haven't finished the A-Side because they manually have to quit out, so it's their choice if they want to play that way or not.

I found some of those restrictions weird anyway, since routing changes all the time even in Any%.

Saying that you are not allowed to go through 5b instead of 5a is like saying you have to complete 7a with door skip for a valid run.

Regardless wether or not this 'b side progression bug' gets patched out, im all for rewording each category so it still maintains its intended purpose while allowing for more routing freedom.

Im also all for All Hearts just being 'collect all 24 hearts from a fresh file' (so skipping a bunch of A side stuff if it does not get patched) with All Levels being 'complete every level from a fresh file'.

It's staying.