@zoton2, is the amount of grinding the only (or most) important parameter for a game to be selected? I figure that entertainment value and quality/popularity of the game should at least be equally as important. And since the run is so long, it will feel relatively ungrinded for a looooong time, despite throwing 1000s of hours at it. You may need 7 times as much grinding as for a typical 1h run. Does this mean that if you grind it 5 times as much (instead of 7x) that the game is less grinded than this typical 1h run? I really don't think so; contrarily it would simply mean 5 times as much effort has gone into the run already.

Though I respect and can understand the decision (that goes without saying), I do think it is a missed opportunity. One of the advantages of not having a completely maxed WR, is that this would be a good chance to beat the WR live on the marathon (=extra layer of hype, I remember Josh getting the GTA SA WR @ ESA 13 and the nr of viewers & hype that brought with it, despite the fact it was far from maxed). And I estimate the nr of gamers (not necessarily hardcore speedrunners) that have affinity with GTA V and would want to watch it at a marathon is up the ying yang.

The other thing that I feel is maybe not fully appreciated is that this would have been a co-op run, meaning each team member would only have to focus his training efforts on ~33% of the run. To demonstrate how much impact this can have for the total time, you only need to look at the PR's Meridian & me have. My PR is 7h49m and I have only really grinded Michael. Meridian's PR is 8h22 and he has only grinded Trevor. Our co-op PR is 7h33m (16 mins faster than my solo and almost an hour better than Meridian's). This is without a well trained Franklin and obviously we would only have gotten better with our characters. With Zoton's Franklin thrown in the mix we would probably be targetting sub 7h.

I realise that non of these comments will really matter, for the decision has been made, but I feel like I needed to get that off my chest anyway.

I will arrive at 29th. Keep that in mind for the schedule.

@flicky So everything you want is a better runner to be in? I don't know if I can surely understand that. "we don't think the ESA run would offer anything new" -> SM64 has been optimized a lot during the past year, mostly in "120 Star", ever since the last ESA marathon. It has been really crazy during the last year.

I'm happy that you explained the reason "It's time for SM64 to skip a marathon", because I couldn't understand it before.

If time is a big problem I am sure some people, including me, would agree to do "70 Star" or even "16 Star". The optimization was not as big as 120 in those categories during the last year, but there are still pretty nice strats to show. Maybe I should have submitted those categories in the beginning, but I am not sure if that would have made opinions of SM64 being in different.

I think you understood nothing at all. Seriously, is it that hard to understand? "it's time for it to skip a marathon" is a perfectly clear reason. Just watch SGDQ if you want your sm64.

Alright I understood, I will just watch SGDQ. Thank you 🙂

Great to see Isaac made it in 🙂 Can't wait to run the game at ESA ❤️ As for my estimate, a while ago I stated in the first cuts thread my estimate for 4 characters was 1:45. That pretty much includes everything going wrong that could possibly go wrong though, I'll probably be finished after 1:30. I just thought I'd mention it again.

I have a couple of question though because my schedule for the ESA weekend has changed a little.

I'm currently competing in an Isaac Rebirth tournament going on on twitch. Chances are the tournament will still be running in the week of ESA. Tournament days are Fridays and Saturdays, now I'm concerned about how good our internet connection at ESA will be to play my matches from there. I'm mainly asking because I'll need to know how long I'll be able to stay in Sweden as I'll have to schedule around both ESA and the tournament now. It was originally planned to run from mid-april towards the end of may, but everything has been delayed by a fair bit, so yeah..

I will also be arriving at ESA on the 29th of June as I've got a University day on the 28th that I really can't miss, sorry 🙁

also, I beat my PB for Sands of Time today by 14seconds - I'm really getting comfortable with the game again which is nice because I had a bit of an absence due to illness, really think people are gonna like the run if they've never seen it before/don't know what the main trick is like 😃

I plan on attending for the entire week of runs (28th till 5th), maybe I have to cut it short and arrive at July 1st or 2nd depending on how long I can take off work.

Ill be arriving the 26th and probably leaving the 5th around 2-3ish.
Will make the deposit this week.

Ya'll want an update on my game.
I've not had enough time to do as many runs of Ratchet 2 as I've wanted but I've done 2-3 runs a week since submissions to keep my game up. I did 5 runs in a row yesterday to get some kind of no reset average and they varied from about 37 to 42 minutes.
I'll be keeping up with the game at about the same pace for a couple of weeks but about 2 weeks before ESA I'll have time to practice more and will try to get every run below 40 minutes at least.

EDIT: Still can't record HD so I don't have video 🙁

I mentioned this in the first round of cuts topic, but might as well post it here as well to make sure. The Sonic Heroes estimate can be lowered to 1:15. Dustforce DX is fine where it's at.

I'll be arriving on the 28th itself, so if at all possible I'd like my runs on any day but the first. If not, I'll just have to deal with it >w<

I would like my games to be cut if you guys don't mind. I am still going to ESA but at this point im just not having fun running the games and practicing them so I do not really want to force myself to do so. Except for Swat 4 that is im still down for that since that is actually fun.

Oh look, after wanting my Grow Home estimate raised, what do I go and do? I go and PB by over 1 minute! So my PB is now 27:02. I would still like to keep the estimate raised though, because there's a couple of things I need to try and keep safe. For example, I did a run after this, and I thought I threw all my seeds down into the water, but one didn't appear, therefore meaning I couldn't finish the run (and I went looking for it for 5 minutes and found it nowhere). I did another run after that one and got a 28:xx run, so still not too bad.

Link: http://www.speedrun.com/run/60181

I guess I may aswell give some updates in how my runs are going, even though game is already in. Got a new PB for Chains of Olympus - 47:53. I got my SoB down to 46:34 so I guess sub 47 is happening soon. I'm gonna keep the 55min estimate in case something happens, but I can consistently sub 50, unless I fail a lot of stuff.

So once again, how good will our internet connection be over there? :3
Thanks for updating the estimate 🙂

Just letting you know I'll be arriving on the 28th and leaving on the 5th. I'm the same as Cyd, I would like my games not to be on the 28th if it's possible.

this happened. 18 second improvement over previous record.

estimate should probably stay the same though because 1 mistake can mean a minute (or multiple minutes) lost

Hello,
I'd like to have 1080 Snowboarding cut from the marathon if possible. While I would have liked to do the run, it doesn't look like I will have a lot of time for practice due to stuff going on at the moment. Considering this, I'd rather focus my effort on only one game in the time I'll have so that I can play to a good standard. Thanks for understanding.

The I wanna be the Boshy 100% estimate can be lowered to 1 hour.

I got a 1:07 on my first run since 2 months today, so I should very consistently get sub 1 hour once I start practicing a lot.

The estimate for Final Fantasy XIII can be lowered to 5:40. The run shouldn't go any longer than 5:30, but just in case really terrible marathon luck happens, I'd like to keep it there. It also allows for a couple of donation incentive ideas I have to be done both during and after the run. (On a side note, will there be a thread for that kind of thing going up at any point? Or should we contact you guys directly with those ideas?)

Ty the Tasmanian Tiger can stay at 2:40, similar kind of thing as FF13, Run shouldn't run over 2:30 but it still allows for an incentive, and also the tricks can have a chance to troll me pretty hard sometimes.