Dear Admin,
Hereby a proposal for run category "Hard, True Ending (Segmented)":
Yaldabaoth needs to be beaten to obtain the true ending, on hard difficulty.
Timing starts when selecting New Game.
- Using a NG+ save file is not allowed.
- DLC is banned.
- Network functions are banned.
- A game save must be performed at each defined segment.
- Timer may only be paused after the game save has been completed (via system prompt).
- Timer may only be resumed immediately upon clicking the game to be loaded.
- A completed run will consist of all segments combined into a single video.
Segments are defined as follows:
- 04/11 - The Cell (1)
- 04/18 - 1st Mission Start (2)
- 05/02 - Kamoshida Deadline (4)
- 05/18 - 2nd Mission Start (2)
- 06/05 - Madarame Deadline (4)
- 06/21 - 3rd Mission Start (2)
- 07/09 - Kaneshiro Deadline (4)
- 07/31 - 4th Mission Start (2)
- 08/21 - Sakura Deadline (4)
- 09/12 - Post-Hawaii (4)
- 09/26 - 5th Mission Start (2)
- 10/11 - Okumura Deadline (4)
- 10/30 - 6th Mission Start (2)
- 11/19 - Interrogation Room (1)
- 11/25 - 7th Mission Start (2)
- 12/18 - Shido Deadline (4)
- 12/24 - Mementos Depths (3)
- 12/24 - Qliphoth World (3)
- 12/24 - Shibuya Post-Yaldabaoth (1)
- 03/20 - Complete (1)
(1) System-prompted save point (2) In classroom or attic, immediately after "Mission Start" logo is shown (3) Immediately upon entry to area (4) Attic, after going up the stairs
Defining segments where you could save would seem kind of silly, in my opinion. As the point of a segmented run is to utilize saves you think make sense/are necessary to get the most optimized run possible.
Also very likely a lot of people would just see it as "An RTA run with breaks".
...because it is a run with defined break points. Not everyone has the luxury of performing non-stop runs.
The save points allow governance on where a runner can catch a break.
Besides, a save-load cycle costs 13 seconds, more or less, on a HDD -- that's approximately +4m 20s for all points, making a non-stop run potentially faster.
You don't necessarily base speedrun categories around what some players aren't capable of doing, though.
Whilst true a perfect RTA run would be faster, Segmented gives you the advantage of not necessarily needing everything you would need in an RTA run, for example. A lot of the strategies used would likely be very unsafe, to the point where in an RTA run they aren't really viable due to the consistency of them. However, due to the nature of Segmented runs would become viable.
The problem with Segmented runs is that most players would simply see it as a category where they basically mimic the RTA Hard mode route with free breaks where they don't lose time when that's kind of missing the point of segmented. This is, for the most part, one contributing reason why segmented sorta stopped being tracked for a lot of RPGs a while ago.
No.
Liv pretty much already summed up most of the things I was gonna say.
In addition to that. Actual segmented runs don't care about real time at all. The point would be to beat the game with as low of an IGT as possible. Also, forcing you into specific segments is silly and has no place as a rule. The whole premise of a segmented run is for it to be a "poorly optimized TAS", given that you're limited to only reloading save files, as opposed to having all the tools a TAS has available.
Some strats would change drastically, too. But what you suggested really just sounds like an RTA run with breaks, in which case why should it even be added?
Edit: Same goes for the NG+ version of this thread.
