Yeah I agree, not all changes mimiz made are undoubtably improving the tracks. But most are either more nitro in a row (-> less frontruns) and adding bananas (-> more technical difficulty, e.g. Volcano Island is way too simple to drive, bananas certainly improve the situation imo + that leads to less frontruns as well).

I don't think we can say there is "large majority" of people approving these changes, simply not enough people who expressed a clear opinion to say that.

" the development should not be affected just because a change is super popular" ok??? Or, to put it differently, the community shouldn't have any influence in what happens to the game??? Never heard of the idea of putting Mod Circuit into the main game tbh lol

I hate the idea of 2.0 being "1.0 but a few different tracks and minor things" and I am sure many others would agree. It's simply stupid. That's not STK 2.0. With the current speed (or rather, lack of speed) of STK's development I doubt we will have any major updates (e.g. new story mode) in the next 5 years really. Possibly the idea of 1.x being compatible should even be re-thought.

"take the opportunity to make some more improvements" is easy to say, but not easy to do, with exactly 1 active developer. Would take a lot of time, and 1.4-rc1 is released already.

For online, item placement doesn't seem to make a big difference from what I've read. So it's just speedruns that would be affected ...

I agree that having small item changes for each version is stupid. That's why I suggested mimiz would update the item placements for all tracks and you have a new category for the rest of 1.x (hopefully!)

Reposting what I just said in IRC, discussion should probably move there completely

Haenschen: "One of my critiques is that these changes came out of nowhere. mimiz posted screenshots and blend files, kimden and FabianF agreed, and then Benau said okay unless Alayan opposes those changes. It all happened within one day and I don't think the new item placements have been thoroughly tested."

Can you stop spreading fake news, I never said I agreed The way you say it is your typical "gang coordinates their actions to convince everyone" conspiracy shit, and I am sure that is (a big part of) the reason why you are against these changes

I don't really care if the items are changed or not tbh, but the "speedruns will invalidate" argument is simply nonsense to me There are so few active speedrunners that I don't think they should have a big say in such a topic, on the other hand online players seem to favour it and they are the much bigger group Probably the best would even be to change all item positions for your speedrun, then one can make a new 1.4+ category and everyone is happy Honestly Fouks/other SRC mods, do you really want to wait 5+ more years for 2.0 and until then keep the 1.x category? I don't think that is how to attract new speedrunners either

Regarding whether these positions are an improvement, idk where the "it favours heavyweights even more" suddenly comes from, I never saw such a thing? Imo just from looking at it most improve the track and limit frontrunning (e.g. 3 nitros instead of 1 in a row). Maybe a good idea to test the tracks though? mimiz's argument was that his knowledge from creating addons is big enough and testing isn't needed but maybe it should be different for official tracks

Better wait then, I'll tell Typhon

Volcano Remake is a great new addon, also Mars Park has gone through some updates, might want to consider it again

Hey everyone, Finally we brought Soccer to speedrun.com! You can play a few particular fields against 7 AI as Individual Levels, and there are two "full game" runs, please read the rules for those to understand. This forum topic is for any general discussion, but you can also join our discord server to talk about speedruns. Looking forward to you submitting your runs, glhf mates

I know it's a remake of "Flat track"

I personally don't think this track is good enough to be included. It is a nice remake of the original track for sure and I don't think it's really possible to remake this track better; but in my opinion it's way too boring, too short and probably also not challenging enough.

Oh, and for Mod Circuit: It usually has no reverse unfortunately, are we allowed to change the track.xml file by ourselves and do reverse runs?

Sad, Mars Park was the only track I ever had fun speedrunning 😪 Well, "too little stuff in the background" - true, but there are other tracks like Paradise Peaks and beehive which have even less things there. And honestly I think Ravenbridge/Blackhill are very similar to each other, Zen Garden/Secret Garden even have the same minimap. Imo the gameplay should be different, and Mars Park/XR have very different gameplay.

Anyway, not my decision and I respect what you do and say. Thanks for your work!

Mars Park should definitely included, great new track by mimiz.