I agree the most supported option is a flag, in that the most people on both sides have expressed a willingness to settle with that option, even amongst the most ardent supporters of both main positions. Thus, it is easily the best compromise available.

I would say we should call the flag "RNG manip" or "RNG manipulation". Adding the word "intentional" or some conjugation may sound like it's more precise, but really it doesn't help in any way and is just more verbose.

Edit: to clarify on the last bit, I cannot imagine a single situation where adding "intentional" helps anybody. Furthermore, it leaves open the obvious consideration of "unintentional RNG manip", which is just asking for more problems.

Exarion, if you're trying to rely on the fact that not much manip has been done yet to argue that we don't know much about the potential then you should be very cautious. Once you have a good enough idea of how this game's RNG works then it quickly becomes apparent what sort of strats are possible, given enough time to find out how to execute them.

This kind of scepticism came up not long ago, when Gcah asked in the Discord what the attitude would be towards a submitted run with RNG manip. People spent most of their time saying Gcah was full of shit unless he provided a video, even though he (and I, and a few others) knew enough to know it was very possible. We saw how wrong all of those people were, and quite frankly this situation isn't really that different.

Furthermore, it's hard to defend not making at the very least a preliminary decision. The decisions that are made (or not) affect what routes people spend time creating. I will also add that I am currently working on making it easier to find manips, hopefully to the point where people will be able to find their own manips. I have no intention of being the sole being able to find new strats; that would be incredibly damaging to the game and community.

Lastly, if your response is "I do not like to take other people's word on what is possible" then that is fine, but bear in mind that your lack of knowledge does not mean the community has a lack of knowledge.

If you think it's enough to dissuade Heishin 1 MBD then you're not appreciating the full potential of this. Resetting for an amazing starting deck on its own is helpful. Furthermore, Heishin 1 MBD is only hard and artificial because you have to S/A Pow Heishin 1 with what is basically a starter deck (an already very difficult task) and then on top of that get a 0.2% drop.

But why would we restrict ourselves to this? With the magic of things like draw prediction to locate the seed, we could invent strats in real time to get things like ... well, anything we'd get in a "normal" run. E.g., DT and WSR off Isis, maybe even Beast Fangs off Seto 1. Furthermore, we could campaign manip that last one without much difficulty.

Oh, and what if we can real time figure out final 7 manips? Given this game's tendency to have things appear in bands (at least that is the case with Heishin 1 easy modes, among other things), this is not remotely unrealistic.

Edit: oh, and to those who say draw prediction requires a program, no it doesn't. It makes it easier, but print out enough stuff and I'm sure a human could do the binary search themselves, if they so wanted.

Matt, you think Cyber's proposal is the most supported? I'm not convinced that's clearly the case, at all. Lots of people on both sides have moved towards a yes/no flag for the sake of compromise.

I don't see why Cyberdemon's proposal is such a great compromise (besides, when only people on one "side" are saying it's a great compromise ... maybe it isn't a great compromise). In fact, I claim it completely fails to address any of the fundamental concerns at play here and just has the veneer of a good compromise without any of the substance. As an aside, I feel it's worth making a post specifically about this because GFC has been promoting this view as a good one. That's why I'm not covering more here.

Let's first look at the people who want separate categories. This is not the side I'm on, so please tell me if I'm misrepresenting that position. So okay, they want separate leaderboards (I'm not going into whether it should be misc or not here). Why? Here's a common line of argument I've seen, perhaps put more coherently:

RNG manipulation fundamentally changes the way the game is played, turning FM from a combination of luck and improvisation into frame-based tricks. Furthermore, a lot of the community was built around a love for the former, and so without a clear separation we risk fracturing or killing the community. As a result, separating into distinct leaderboards is the most sensible option for saving the community and the game as we know it, even if ultimately the distinction between the categories must be at some level arbitrary.

With that said, let us now analyse how Cyberdemon's proposal fails to address this hypothetical person's concerns and desires. By unifying things into an any% category (and then split into subcategories from there), we are in effect treating all of these categories as equivalent. Now okay, treating manip and non-manip (however we define those, if at all) as equal may be a fair compromise. But do these people also want to treat CD/NoCD on the same footing? Do they really? I seriously doubt it. Surely at the very least a Yes/No option for manip, like Spectre suggested, would do everything this proposal does that these people like, and I claim it would also be better for those who don't want a separation of categories. The only things I see going for Cyberdemon's proposal, for such a person, are:

1. The appearance of a compromise.
2. Keeping the popular category as main in some capacity.
3. Keeping a distinction between manip and non-manip.

Again, a yes/no switch for manip on Any% NoCD does all of these things, and better.

With that said, now let's turn to the other side. Like before, here's a line of argument:

Speedgames need to evolve, and playing a game in "the wrong way" in order to beat it as fast as possible is part of this. Therefore arguments that the game has "changed" aren't very persuasive, and furthermore all we are doing is improving our luck. The reason separate categories aren't a good compromise is because it's just a poor attempt to hold back the evolution of this game. Furthermore, this is distinct from other separations because there's no objective way to define RNG manipulation. At best we could say ban resets mid-run, but even that can be worked around.

How does Cyberdemon's proposal even remotely satisfy this person? We still have an arbitrary distinction, we're still doing the separation, and on top of that we're lumping in things like CD which we can easily objectively define and separate. What does this proposal get right? Well ...

1. The appearance of a compromise.
2. It sort of keeps the two categories together, but not really?

And you still get all of this with a yes/no manip flag, and you don't start piling on stuff like CD. It's still not a satisfactory resolution, but anything Cyberdemon's proposal gets right, so does this, and it does it better.

In conclusion, anything good from Cyberdemon's proposal you also get from Spectre's proposal of a yes/no flag for RNG manip. It still has a lot of problems for everyone (and I still don't like it, and lots of people on both sides won't), but if you like Cyberdemon's proposal, why not like Spectre's more? Please tell me what Cyberdemon's idea does better.