How does everyone feel about the new category, or the fact that there are now 5 categories?

The amount of categories does not bother me, and I see the reason behind separating Any% into 2 distinct categories as a result of Dragon Gate Skip being found. Plenty of other games separate their Any% categories into different categories (like "glitchless," for instance, though there's an older thread about this regarding MediEvil, and I only bring this up as an example) for the sake of creating different possibilities for new runners. Obviously the game we run does not have a community the size of Ocarina of Time or Super Mario 64 or something like that, but in the event that we do get new runners (as we have this year) I think it's a good idea to have different categories for them.

For now, keeping Any%NMS and Any% as distinct categories allows those of us who still play without DGS to experience other levels while demonstrating our abilities with the tricks/glitches/etc. that we've spent a lot of time on. If we collapse the categories into one, we lose that space for ourselves and for future runners. I'd like to be able to experience the game in different styles and to maintain the ability to have my runs in those styles validated by the community, and at the moment that is possible.

I'm all for speedrunning being about the fastest way to get through a game, but when it comes to navigating how the community wants to run that game I think it's better to include rather than exclude, and keeping Any%NMS will do that. It should also be something we discuss.

These are some of my thoughts. Everyone else?

One argument is the name of course, but plain any% for non dragon gate skip runs makes no sense to me. Any% by definition is fastest completion of the game with no restrictions. On the other hand any% no major skips is very unclear with the name. What do we classify nms as anyway? We can't say no quest item skips because of the demon boss fight. We can't really say no level skips because of ant's cave. How do we even define what a major skip is in this game?

Good point/question. I guess it's a relative definition--prior to DGS I suppose not entering The Ant Caves or jumping through Asylum Grounds, or loops would be the most "major" tricks/skips, given the amount of content (entire levels or nearly entire levels) they skip. But now with Dragon Gate Skip, there are 6 (7 if you include The Ant Caves) levels we won't see, which in my mind makes it a more "major" skip than previous ones. At the moment it's the most major skip, but it's also in its own category, so to speak, since no other currently known skips skip as much content as this one does.

That being said, in terms of its implementation, it's still just clipping through something and then clipping through it again, which is not mechanically so different from anything else we already do. As Noob pointed out, perhaps if it becomes very inconsistent, we use that as a determining factor.

My interpretation of "major skip" is a loose definition, as are a lot of definitions with speedrunning. What's a glitch? So I think it's up to us to decide. If we keep but want to rename Any%NMS, I'd be fine with Any%No Dragon Gate Skip, in whatever abbreviated or non-abbreviated form sounds best.

I just agree with Jacobo on the need for a separation between the various Any% categories and can't wait to start getting some knockback dashes. As for the name of the category, Any% No DGS sounds nice and good to me, since major skips seems really too vague considering we already spend half of the game skipping stuff through various means and, as Jacobo pointed out, DGS is not mechanically unique.

I agree with the discussion here.

Instead of creating a new category, I am viewing it more as:

1. Move all old runs (before DGS was found) into Any% No DGS.
2. Any% stays as Any% as it has always been.
3. Any% is the default leaderboard that should show when you view the leaderboard.
4. The rules for "Any% No DGS" should say that the dragon gate skip is banned.

I think moving the old runs (instead of making a new Any%) is important to not damage the graphs that show how the WR has lowered over time.