Is there a particular reason as to why? For example, you think that it doesn't promote information properly or something similar. If it is just for aesthetics, I really would like to have all 3 MODs come to an agreement on the matter. Regardless, if it happens or not. Thank you for the feedback.

Hello, everyone. It’s me again with another post. If possible, I really would like to have the opinions of all the mods here (@Slevanas, @MSKain, and @Alexo).

The reason as to why I’m creating this post, which I wanted to write for a long time, is due to the fact that other versions get overshadowed due to the major split that we went through in the past. Not only that, the whole issue of separating things by guests characters, in my opinion, is pretty dumb and creates more separations that are not needed. I need to be honest and say that this might be tough for the moderators to fix/address these issues, but they have done a lot of major changes in the past. With that said, I believe they can create these changes if they agree with my opinion. This is our current leader board down below.

Main Leader board: Arcade | Extra Arcade | Time Attack | Extra TA | WM | Team Battle | Misc.

Arcade & Extra Arcade: OC | Link | Spawn | Heihachi

Time Attack & Extra TA: Standard | Alternative | Extreme

WM: NG | NG+ | NG +Alt

Team Battle: Standard | Extra

Misc: Survival | Arcade Extreme | Arcade Emulator | All characters | 14 Characters

I think that the current leaderboard tries to be close to the game menus and the separation of guest characters actually hurts the potential to organize everything better. This is what I propose, something that is similar but slightly different:

Main Leader Board: Arcade | Time Attack | Extra TA | WM | Team Battle | Misc

Arcade: Standard | Extra

Time Attack & Extra TA: Keep the same

WM: NG | NG+ | 100%

Team Battle: Keep the same

Misc: Survival | Arcade Extreme | All characters | 14 Characters

Now, I would like to propose that after the secondary layer we add a third one with these separations:

NTSC | JAP | PAL | HD | Emulation

If we add these options to the leaderboard, we will be able to track all times in just one website, which will be pretty cool and doesn’t exclude the other runners who played in other versions.

Now I would like to point out a quick issue with the JPAL leaderboard. You guys decided to have 2 completely different versions compete with each other, which goes against the point of “Balancing” the leader boards. Obviously you can create another website and separate JAP and PAL, but if you guys decide to go that route, then it will look pretty dumb and ultimately hurt the other runners with those versions.

There’s also a change in WM. I thought it would be better to take out NG+ Alt since it takes away from the original NG+ and I added 100%, which is actually 200% (I don’t agree with the name because we don’t go beyond a 100% in the run). Also, the reason I added 100% is because there are more runs in total throughout all versions than NG+ Alt.

Minor changes in MISC. Obviously I took out emulation and made it a different version so that it gives possible newer runners an incentive to run the game even if it is on emulation.

I hope you guys can consider my opinion in the matter and I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Thank you for reading this.

Misspelled names, sorry. @Ratchetfan321 @AaroNX @LilBabTodInf

I'm tagging everyone who has submitted a run in Soulcalibur II NTSC, JAP, and PAL since those are the versions that will be affected. Keep in mind that the HD Versions are not dealing with this because they have the same roster.

Affected Runners - People who have a run(s) with Guests characters.

@Baja @Slevanas @Stenaven @AbandonedProgram @MrGameAndWatchz @Ivanzypher @Ratchetfan231 @FourthHorn @Gameboy9917 @Fatal_King @Sosuk @Spenito @Thuli @orkybork @AaronNX @kai1215 @xShiko @EldoranV9 @Stac

Unaffected Runners

@Alexo @dahippness @GainingGround @Tigger77 @shinokat @illiop @WhiteGuy @rai606 @TheMidBoss @RunnerAF @Pixley2000 @LilBabTodlnf @Arngrim @Longtongue @Nate491 @DarkraiSR @bertin @ItsChazSpeedrunning @crazymoose3k @mitjitsu @Chronos @RickyBoy_EA96 @Maiguels @TripppAU @Astaroth @seasoner13_2

Note: If we ban the Guests characters, then the runs with Guests characters will be remove from the "Full-game Leaderboard." As of now, I can tell you that some of those runs will be kept in the "Level Leaderboard" section. Currently we are only tracking "Standard Arcade" and "Extra Arcade." I don't know if it is possible to add the Time Attack categories in this section because Time Attack has multiple categories, so please keep in mind that there's a possibility of dropping some Time Attack runs completely from all leaderboards.

I know that the website has gone thru a lot of changes, but most of these changes are meant to balanced out the competitive level of a very RNG heavy game. Some people know that I went against the "separating the NTSC, JAP, and PAL versions" stuff a couple of months ago and although I don't regret going against it, I can sincerely tell you that it was a good change since the main version (NTSC) has seen a little increase in new runners, which makes me happy for the community. Lastly, if we precede with the ban, I really hope that those runners that are being affected can submit another run and keep their legacy in the website. Thank you once again for taking your time in reading this. I'm just trying to inform everyone so that this does not come as a surprise later on.

The discord has created a new poll in which we are voting to determined whether or not we ban Guests characters. This is somewhat crucial since some runs might be taking down from the Leaderboard. The poll will end on August 12th, 2020.

https://www.strawpoll.me/20687523/r

Please, don't forget to vote and thank you for always supporting the scene.

I think "Weapon Master Early Inferno" is pretty good for the category name. Also, the name sounds pretty cool.

Yeah, if you can't deal with the AI, then just make another category for Weapon Master called "Chapter 7" or "First Inferno." However, this new category shouldn't be called "Any%" because you are not even beating the game, and it ends midway. This new category is similar to Wind Waker Runs for Master Sword only. You don't beat the game, but make it to the half-way point of the real category. I don't think that we should compromise the name of a category if it doesn't describe what it really is. Also, a point to note, NG for Weapon Master is literally Any% since we beat the game as fast as possible and make it to the credits.

I agree with @sesonmer13_2. There's no reason to change when Weapon Master ends since we all know that it ends after you beat the last inferno and the credits roll. If we change it, then I feel like we are being cheap about the conditions to beat the game. Also, just remove your memory card when doing NG and put your memory card back in when doing NG+. That should be able to help a little bit. Another good idea is to have like another category for Weapon Master but have called "Chapter 7 Inferno End." This new category could be a good idea in order to have more players try out Weapon Master Speedruns and eventually do full runs.

This is just my personal opinion, but I still think that the current leader-board should stay.

Let's talk about the first problem, HD vs SD. From what I can tell, the HD version is just a remastered version. Some people have mentioned that the HD version is based on the PAL SD version. The biggest actual difference is the loading times, which are only useful for Weapon Master. The current leader-board already addresses that by having Weapon Master SD and Weapon Master HD separated.

The Second problem is that of the AI difference between versions. As we already know, NTSC is the hardest one, then we have the PAL/HD versions with an easier AI than NTSC, and finally JAP version with the easiest AI. Now, the actual problem is not the difference between versions, but the accessibility of them. Let me tell you this, if you have a Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, or Xbox One, then you can have a good version to speedrun this game. Obviously, Xbox 360, PS3, and Xbox One have the HD version available, which costs $20. Now if you have a Wii, then you only need to MOD the Wii so that it can be Region Free. (There are a lot of tutorials for that on YouTube, so don't ask me how to do it) A thing to note for those who would say something along the lines of "Baja, you runs should not be counted because you are using a MODed Wii." All Wiis have all Versions available to them inside the console; however, Nintendo blocks each version depending on your region. For Example. American Wiis already have NTSC, PAL, and JAP coded in the console, but only NTSC is usable because the other two are blocked. Still there but blocked. Once you have a Region Free Wii, then you only need to buy a copy of SC II JAP (GCN), which you can get on ebay for around $20. (This price could be more or less)

Finally, the biggest issue that I see here is the so call "Honestly it seems like trying to lump everything together is creating more problems and an uneven playing field." (@GainingGround) I think the main problem lies on the "uneven playing field" stuff. This opinion is coming from watching other communities. Other communities make the best/fastest version the standard to compete. Of course not everyone has them, but they still speedrun in whatever version they have available. Those communities still update the leader-boards with all versions so that speedrunners can compare their time progress to that of other people. with that in mind, it is completely optional for a speedrunner to put the time and money in order to compete at the highest level. I also think that if you are using a bad version and you see yourself being held down by it, then it is your decision whether or not you move to the best version. So pretty much what I'm trying to say here is that the playing field is already even since the best versions are already at the top of the leader-boards and if you want to compete at that level then you have to move to the best version.

To conclude, I just want to give an example of the leader-board of two months ago for Arcade Mode. I was 3 on the leader-board with NTSC (GCN) time of 47s 560ms. RickyBoy_EA96 was first with JAP (GCN) time of 46s 950ms and Tigger77 was second with PAL (PS3) time of 47s 480ms. At that time I was competing against the highest level available with the worst version. The best versions for SC II only give you more consistency to get a good run; however, you still need to put the time to get the run that you want. There's still a possibility that a bad version can get WR on any category since I almost did at that time and other people did it before when the runs were getting more optimized a few years ago.

PS. Hope this makes sense because it took me way too long to write this and I'm pretty sure I was all over the place. Also, this is just my opinion, thanks.

Definitely like the current leader board, looks cleaner. Also, I agree with moving Extreme categories in the misc section because not a lot of people run those categories, and they also have the worst RNG, which makes them less consistent to run. Hopefully other people agree with this. Thanks to all the moderators in the SC II Speedrun page.

For those interested in more information about the Japanese (GCN) version of SC II, I can clarify the consistency and game difficulty as a speedrun. I can only compare GameCube versions since those are the only ones that'd used. By doing multiple runs of different categories, I can tell you this:

-Arcade *This version is slightly easier than the NTSC (GCN) version. *The consistency to get a good run (sub 1 min IMO) is pretty noticeable. *Getting a top run (sub 50 sec) is still somewhat difficult.

-Weapon Master *The Japanese version is faster due to Chapter 5 Stage 1 being playable with your Selected Character (in my case Voldo) and not starting with two other random characters as in the NTSC version. *When you finished a Chapter in the Japanese Version, you can transition to the next chapter faster on certain chapters (Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 6) *Just like in arcade mode, this is also slightly easier.

This are my experiences while doing runs: *It was a huge boost for my times when I transitioned to the Japanese version; however, I still had to grind good RNG so that I could get all those times. Even if it is easier, RNG is still RNG. *Also, I was getting good times before transitioning to the Japanese version, so my skills, planning, and execution where there already. *I had a harder time getting good runs going when doing runs that were not Arcade due to the fact that there is more RNG involved. This was very hard for me when I was doing Extra Arcade. *This might just be me, but I felt that when I had an amazing beginning of a run the difficulty increase a little bit later on. For example, the CPU gets more aggressive. *The rival battle and Inferno can still be extremely random fights even in Japanese due to bad RNG or as a said before the difficulty increasing. These two fights still kill runs consistently.

My personal Opinion in regards to separating categories: *If we are using RTA and there is advantage/disadvantage because of load times, then the version categories should be separated just so that people have a better time competing. *Since most other runs use IGT, then we can have the versions together. *In regards to making other categories separations. I think we should not do it. It creates more inconsistency on the leader boards if it gets change every now and then. Some runs make it and others don't. *This page has multiple options that allows us to have goals for runs. Like Slevanas stated above, There are Individual-level runs (Character Specific) and the leader boards also show the versions that we use (JAP, NTSC, PAL) and in case you don't have the version that gives you the best options, you can still try to get the best time for the version that you have.

If there are more questions regarding the Japanese (GCN) version just let me know, I might be able to answer them. Also, we still don't know how other versions can compare to the ones that we are using. For example, Japanese HD version.