Hi. Maybe this is a dumb question but while trying to play through this game on the hardest difficulty sometimes I would look in the gameplay options menu and see that it was mysteriously set to a lower difficulty.

Looking online it seems the game will auto lower the difficulty on death.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/220240/discussions/0/648816743083885300/

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632849-far-cry-3/64897100

But there are plenty of times I looked in the menu after a death and it was still on master, so it isn't consistent. It's mysterious to me how this works.

So my dumb question is, how do you know the game didn't do this on the current, or any future, master difficulty speedruns? Did y'all know about this and exactly how to avoid it triggering? Should master difficulty speedruns be forced to check the difficulty in the options menu after every death?

In my humble opinion it defeats the point of the category if the rules allow this to happen. Depending on how this thing works, the hypothetical optimal master difficulty run could become just figure out the fastest/earliest way to get the game to auto lower the difficulty and play the rest of the game on the easiest difficulty.

Thanks for another polite response. I knew my posts were unlikely to change anything but I wanted to give it a try anyways. I hope in the future other people can show enough interest to get cool/fun/impressive new categories.

I am happy there is an all bosses glitchless category now! But seeing that has made me think of another (hopefully not too annoying) suggestion. What if you used the 'news' feature to announce the new category? Then more people will know that it is there now.

I wasn't on the discord before. I looked today and I think I've found that recent conversation you mentioned. I don't really have much more to add to the discord conversation, but thanks for telling me about it.

I like what you said about finding a middle ground for this website.

I agree dark souls has a lot of potential categories. Some other games like Ocarina of time have a separate "category extension" page with long list of a lot of arbitrary or meme runs. I don't know if something like that would be fun/useful for the Dark Souls speedrunning community. But it might be a way to allow more categories while keeping the messiness away from the organized main page.

Thanks for the polite response.

I know this is a late reply, but I wanted to come back to this to write one more post arguing for my point of view, and then I'll stop bothering you. I hope that is OK.

I agree that it shouldn't be too easy to add a category. It would get too messy if one person asking for any random, arbitrary category could get it added. But I also think it is a shame if it is too hard to add a category, and ones that could be popular with a leaderboard don't get added because they need the popularity they can only get with a leaderboard in order to get a leaderboard.

My first post mentioned why it seems like SL1 glitchless and all bosses glitchless already have some interest. I think they both have a decent chance of getting more popular if they had a leaderboard, just like any% glitchless got more popular after it got a leaderboard. And I think these are logical categories to have, so they shouldn't be treated as if someone was asking for something as arbitrary as Praise-the-Sun% or Firebombs-Only%.

One could say these runs have some interest, but not enough interest, there needs to be more than 2 people asking for these leaderboards to add them. Maybe someone decided it needs at least 5 people asking. But I just don't think the bar for what counts as 'enough' interest before getting a leaderboard should be set that high. Why not set the bar at 2 people asking if it is a logical non-arbitrary category to have, like I would argue these glitchless categories are?

Another point is I think a leaderboard with few runners, but a lot of people interested in watching those runs, also has value being on a website. One of the dark souls all bosses glitchless speedruns on youtube has 31k views from a runner with only 312 youtube subscribers. It's the most popular video on that youtube channel, most of the other videos on that channel have sub-100 views, so I think that vid has 31k views because people are interested in the category, not because it is a popular youtuber. So I think these categories would likely also have a lot of interest from viewers, and that should count for something when deciding if they should get a leaderboard.

I don't expect all achievements glitchless to get a lot of runners, it might get 0 runs, but I asked for it anyways because I thought it would be better to ask for a consistent rule of just adding a glitchless subcategory to everything. But if that was the wrong move I concede that this has zero signs of interest and is much less deserving of a leaderboard than the other two I asked for, so I would understand not giving this a leaderboard. (Though if it did get a run I think it could be impressive.)

I'll conclude by summarizing my suggestion for what I think is a neat, logical, non-arbitrary way to organize the leader-boards, while adding what I think is reasonably likely to be decently popular categories that people will enjoy running/watching.

Suggestion:

5 Main Categories instead of the current 7: Any%, All Bosses, All Achievements, SL1, SL1 All Bosses.

Any% sub-categories would be: Any%, No Wrong Warp, Force Quit, Glitchless.

SL1 sub-categories would be: Any%, No Wrong Warp, Glitchless.

All Bosses, All Achievements, SL1 All Bosses sub-categories would be: Glitched, Glitchless

(After my last post I noticed there is also a SL1 all bosses subcategory. Maybe it is because there are only 2 runs, but I dislike how that's a subcategory of SL1 when the any% all bosses isn't a subcategory of any%. So I made SL1 all bosses a main category, and it also gets a glitchless subcategory, but if people want to keep it a subcategory of SL1 then that is fine. If so, then this way of organizing them would only have 4 main categories, wouldn't even need that "misc." button anymore.)

Except no wrong warp and force quit because those would be redundant with any% glitchless

I see there is a thread from a year ago debating on if it was worth adding the glitchless any%. But now it is a popular category with 48 runs. (Maybe it is too popular for the Misc. section now.)

And I see there are 2 other threads here asking for a SL1 glitchless category.

And I have found 2 glitchless all boss speedruns on youtube. So I'm sure some people would like a leaderboard for that also.

I suggest skipping all future debates on glitchless categories by just giving every category a glitchless subcategory now. So that would mean any%, all bosses, SL1, and all achievements would all have glitched and glitchless subcategories. Any future categories added would also get glitched and glitchless subcategories.

Applying the same glitchless ruleset to every category where it can be done, is consistent and not arbitrary. Maybe some will become more popular categories after they get a leaderboard like any% glitchless. And any gitchless subcategories that don't become popular won't be cluttering up the main category list, so it shouldn't hurt to have them there.