Oh c'mon not all speedrun or any speedrun must be 1 hour long y know that. Universe ending is ending like other endings yes there is no boss fight yes fast to beat but welp. You still have The End part you still have medal. And fix party mod exist. (=

You're absolutely right. Speedruns don't have to be long. In fact, I'd be the first to wager that shorter runs are often more fun than longer runs, if for no other reason than they're easier to optimize, and it doesn't matter as much if you drop the ball halfway through (Although, I am a sucker for 157%, I will admit. But that's a story for another day.).

However, that ISN'T the reason that we decided to ban Fixed Party from Universe Ending. It's not that it's incredibly short. We banned it because it's just... boring. If you use Fixed Party to get a Universe Ending speedrun, all of the things that make a short run fun suddenly don't apply here. FP Universe is, in essence, an autoscroller with 0 inputs from start to finish. There are no places to save time, because there isn't an action a runner can input that affects the run.

And I know that's a bit of an abrasive statement. I know that what's "fun" and what's not is completely subjective. I understand that. But we can't accommodate for EVERY single thing that EVERY single runner, now and later, would consider fun. That would oversaturate the leaderboards with countless categories with very few runs. It would make the leaderboards look bloated and disorganized. Therefore, we need to be reasonable when it comes to which categories we include on the boards, and which ones we don't.

FP Universe is analogous to "How fast can you watch a cutscene?". It's a predetermined amount of time, completely separate from any interaction from the runner. And that's just... not interesting. It's not interesting to run, it's not interesting to verify, and it's certainly not interesting to watch. I would rather that we gave the spotlight to the people who actually know the mechanics of the game, the people who are willing to put effort into getting an impressive time, instead of the people who know how to press the "record" button on OBS.

If you enjoy FP Universe, I would highly recommend Adventure Universe. It's probably the most fun character-grinding has ever been in this game.

I hope this answered your questions. Happy running!