Ohio, USA“So then what would be the point of running the official version, now that it is slower and with smaller QoL? The only thing for it would be it's the official version, and that would make emu runs more attractive than console, whichis not the objective when it comes to having a time in a game.”
You say this but have also mentioned several times that “speedrunning isn't just about leaderboards.”
This is highly contradictory to me. If speedrunning isn’t just about leaderboards, then there would be no reason to care about a distinct separation/sub-category for emulator. You continue to play the game on original console in the main category and standard for the game because after all, the leaderboard isn’t everything, right? The reality is that making decisions to not allow people to submit only affects those people who want to play the game because of the leaderboard. People who run offline or don’t submit will continue to do so regardless of what you say or do to the leaderboard. Therefore it’s irrational to make changes that affect people who want to compare their times and try to tell them that they can just play the game, when that wasn’t their goal in the first place.
There doesn’t seem to me to be a reason to keep emulator runs entirely off the leaderboards. Just because it’s faster isn’t relevant in comparing to other emulator runs. Picking a standard version and settings for the emulator allows fine comparison for now, without waiting for some nebulous date in the future when the emulator becomes adequately accurate. Surely those who run on emu wouldn’t mind if their category becomes deprecated with a major emulator update as a compromise for running on it? The important thing is that they can play the game and compare fairly at the time. A default view with only console runs would show the relevant standard comparisons for the game, and people can look at emulator runs if they wanted as well. The same kind of thing happens with a different sub-category, where you have the default board with the console runs, and a separation for emulator.
I don’t see why you can’t just default emu runs to hidden. It’s obvious of course that Wii U emulation is far from perfect or accurate, which is problematic in comparison to runs on original console. But if you just leave the default comparison for the boards between console runs, and then people can look at the emu runs if they want as well, then the issue disappears altogether. Sure as improvements and changes to the emulators are made, these comparisons might not be truly accurate, but this can be standardized via emulator version as needed. When the game’s last accepted run was nearly 8 months ago, with 6 runs on the board total altogether, there’s hardly anything to compare to in the first place. One would think it would be more important to encourage accessibility in this case than it would be to enforce leaderboard integrity to the point of banning runs.
