Massachusetts, USASMB1 has been broken down more thoroughly than quite possibly any other game ever. It's been analyzed inside and out - it's not like there's really stuff that just "hasn't been thought of" at this point. Maybe, MAYBE, in a long, long, time we could find something in the L+R TAS to get 4:53. It's dubious, since it hasn't been improved in over a decade if I remember correctly. But technically I suppose you never have proof that you're at the limit. Even on the very unlikely chance that DOES happen, I don't see it ever happening RTA.
I'd say to LEARN the run, yes, practice the levels individually until you know all the movement, routing, etc. But at a beginner level you don't really need to practice unless you want to; you can usually get PBs by just playing full game runs.
My original estimate for 454 was ~2025. Given that the human SOB is now a 454, I'm gonna say 2022-2023. Not for a long time, but very possible.
Agreed. But even so, that's not a reason NOT to add verifiers. That's just a reason for why you should add new mods INSTEAD OF verifiers.
Just to hop in this thread real quick - I think we can all forget about the arguments about whether or not the mods are good because everything is either agreed upon or no headway is being made. I think it's clear that all Darpey wants at this point is a way for faster run verification, his method for which doesn't hurt anyone and doesn't seem to be controversial, and the rest of the arguments are useless at this point. To Darpey, I know it's frustrating, but I'd urge you not to reply to the arguments that you're being unfair to the mod team because it'll just keep going in circles. To any mods that have been a part of this thread, I can basically say the same - the best way to deal with the argument is just by addressing Darpey's main point. The one argument I don't get is the argument against Darpey's point - even if there is not a large chance that adding other mods strictly for verification will help, there is no harm, so isn't a little bit of help better than nothing?
Let's think, assume 100,000 attempts for 4:54. Let's assume that the average run lasts around 2.5 minutes (just because there's no clear way to tell what it might be and that's the halfway mark). That's 250,000 minutes of playtime, which is over 4,000 hours. $50 for 4,000 hours is 1.25 cents per hour. Yeaaaaaaah, not sure that's a good job opportunity.
Pipe jumps are probably one of the last strategies you should implement. They're very hard to do consistently, and save very little time.
Yeah, the safe strat only loses you about a second so there's no need to implement it early on. I'd recommend just working through the game with the larger timesaves first before you get to the less useful, harder stuff; best not to get overwhelmed with too many hard strategies early on.
For early runs: Do safest strats possible, don't even try to go fast. Grab powerups and don't worry about a deathless run. My first full run was12:34, you don't have to start strong.
Well, 8-1 fr has already been done by a few ppl using savestates, it's only a matter of time before people start getting consistent and I'd give it a year or 2 and by that point someone will probably have gotten wr using current strats+8-1 fr save. Faster 4-2 was also found to be humanly possible; after 8-1 fr, my guess is a few more years before there's a wr using that as well. After that (aside from some 8-4 frames) the only other tas fr is the 8-2 one, which currently doesn't seem humanly possible, but you never know; the same thing has happened with pretty much every humanly possible fr discovery in the past few years. Basically, the breakdown is this: current strats with amazing 8-4 = 4:55.6, with 8-1 4:55.3, and you could theoretically just barely get 4:54 with a godly 8-4, as well as new 8-1 and 4-2 frs with current strats, but i think it'll be many years before that happens (like, 2025 or something), if ever. Assuming 8-2 is never found to be humanly possible and no other frames are found in other levels, that's where the run will die. In summary, with an optimistic viewpoint, the category will most likely be dead by the time a human gets a 4:54.
