Hey all,

The mods seem to not have thought that it would be important to notify non-discord members of the major leaderboard change that is currently about to be made regarding the "All Bananzas and Layers" category. Also, there will likely to be split with Restricted/Unrestricted in all categories soon.

If you are unaware, it was recently discovered that fighting Void at Junction will unlock the sinkholes in the layer you didn't enter. This skips some boss fights, and imo, is perfectly allowable and okay, at least under the current rules. However, those on Discord have essentially voted to completely remove this category and replace it with "All Bosses and Bananzas", which is, in my opinion, a completely different category altogether. No option for "No change" was given in the poll. And this seems to be set to be changed very soon, in an indeterminate amount of time (maybe tomorrow? I'm not sure).

If you didn't know, a tech that allows for infinitely chaining together aerial fast air turfsurfs was discovered and would result in a major change in all categories if allowed. So the mods posted a Google Form in the Discord but not on SRC. The Form is asking if you think a Restricted/Unrestricted split is needed, and if IFATs and Juice Boosting should not be allowed in the Restricted category. Here is the link to the form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kPY8lXrVJl3KrGvORy0CoqNH6mFDhrTht_D5QTATrQg/edit

My suggestion is for mods to make use of the SRC News posts to make announcements about major changes to MAIN LEADERBOARD CATEGORIES AND/OR RULES like this. Not everyone uses Discord, and Discord is soon to be ens**tified as they are likely going public soon, so I believe there could be a Discord exodus. Leaving a ton of information behind. If you make video guides as well on youtube, I suggest posting them in the "Guides" section as YT search is not as reliable as it once was, and there should be a place where we can easily find those guides. The "Discoveries" section in the Discord server is not easy to search through either, so please try to post things here if you can.

I bring this up for the sake of inclusivity. I was once an SRC Leaderboard "Super Mod" for BPM: Bullets Per Minute and I also modded for Yooka-Laylee in the past, so I know it's a lot of work, but this is what is best for the community in my opinion. Please let me know if I have any information that is incorrect.

just add more categories? really dont understand why people would restrict their options, more options is always good, + its not like this game has 300 categories....

Dropping my two cents as someone in the Discord who has been monitoring the discussion but stayed relatively quiet.

The problem with the current category (All Bananzas and Layers) is due to the discovery of Junction Skip (the fact that doing the Junction Jump will auto-complete the layer you skipped, including previously required bossfights and sinkholes), the current guidelines for a valid run became way too ambiguous. What constituted "completing" the layer? The definition suddenly started changing from layer to layer with this skip, which is a recipe for disaster. There was a suggestion of banning the jump/skip, but there was concern it would set a dangerous precedent for banning undesired but perfectly viable tech to maintain a rigid path. Kinda goes against the spirit of speedrunning IMHO.

So, I do think that a redefinition of the category is needed, and considering it is an official category on the main page, it is a little time-sensitive to prevent more runs being added and any debate on what gets grandfathered in. I agree it's very different from what it's currently defined as, but that's what happens when a new game gets this much attention and people discover new tech and exploits literally every day. Did we jump the gun here by adding it in the first place? Maybe, but mods can't be to blame here; we didn't expect a good number of these tricks to exist. I saw your suggestion to make All Bananzas and Layers a legacy category, which I think is a great idea to show some of the history of what we thought were good categories before skips jumbled things up :)

And I think it is valid to express concern that this wasn't discussed in the SRC forums, but from my experience speedrunning other games (namely Mario Party and Mario Wonder), a majority of the community is going to be in the Discord. And assuming people will defect when Discord goes public, I think it is a little unreasonable. I don't see many people interacting in these forums as much as in the Discord, which is the default for many discussions to take place.

No intention of invalidating your argument or being condescending or anything; just providing some counterarguments and reasoning for what's been happening. :)

ty for the feedback. will try to post big announcements on here as well as changes are made

Thank you for listening, I apologize if my post came off as rude, or angry. In hindsight, I should have used less inflammatory verbiage. I simply wish there to be open communication that doesn't lock away information behind discord.

Just to beat a dead horse a bit, News Posts are visible on the leaderboard page before runners submit. Having public posts outside of discord is still beneficial to those of us who do use discord as well. For instance, I am in dozens of servers and thus have disabled notifications in most cases. So I don't see everything unless I go into discord and look through, sometimes days of conversations. Having it here adds another place that's less dynamic and more permanent for information. Not just talking about leaderboard changes and polls, but any information. Of course in the relevant sections (Guides, Resources, News, Forums, etc.).

This is as much a post for the mods as it is the rest of the community, I know this won't get seen by many but some will read this.