Rather than obsoleting most of the old runs by making them a misc category, we could have a variable for whether or not CN/Raiden are used or not. That way the runs that are optimized without Raiden are preserved without taking up too much space on the boards by extra categories. Seems like the best solution to me.

As for the patch split, I think it's best to have Current and Older Versions. I'm not sure when the Chopper Skip was fixed and it would be kinda arbitrary to just decide on a date to make the split. After that fix, I feel like the most recent version will generally be faster due to new items being added. Unless other things are also fixed, which I'm not sure about.

I'm glad you're willing to help improve the leaderboard. Kind of a shame it got off to kind of a bad start so now we're left with the mess.

The thing right now is that there's no consistency between what is the default timing method (from what Dekuking posted). If that's solved, then I'm fine with that.

However, this doesn't apply to the Cyborg Ninja/Raiden restriction (as per the other thread). Seems that everybody was on board with allowing them, so that needs to be changed in the rules and those seperate (empty) categories removed. Also we still haven't decided what to do about new/old versions in terms of the chopper skip being patched which is a massive deal for full-game.

I still believe more mods need to be added. But we need a super mod for that I think. The fact that it took a week from the creation of this thread to hear from a mod is a pretty bad sign despite the fact there's 5 mods. Or 2 weeks since the creation of the thread about chopper skip being fixed. 3 weeks since the Raiden/CN thread. You get the point.

I've contacted Theenglishman on Twitch to see if he can help us out there.

Mods, it's great and all that you're approving runs, but we REALLY need to hear from you so we can get stuff sorted

https://twitter.com/ShinenGames/status/690088061150085120 shows that they did finish the patch. But Nintendo are being slow? This is kinda ridiculous though

I've finished my 1st run of First Ending. Hoping to improve it soon but won't be able to play for a few days, so just gonna drop this here so people can use it as a reference

Could it be added to the leaderboards?

For new mods, I second Zefie and also suggest MiniOmegaKing. Personally I'd also want to be a mod but I'm relatively new in the MGS community so maybe not "trusted"

The tooltip doesn't say it restricts your rank. Maybe it did in the past, but it doesn't anymore.

Since they removed that text there's no need to worry it will suddenly start restricting in a future patch.

Guess we're all good to use it then

As much as I love using IGT, it's just too broken for this game. Using RTA is definetly the best option.

But yes we need mods for that. And all the current ones are dead. So we need to get new ones assigned. A super mod could assign new mods, but if those are inactive too we need to contact Pac probably

Barrier of entry literally does not matter. That's a given for NG+ runs. Peace Walker also requires Stealth Camo which is probably more work than unlocking Raiden here. Besides, I will supply an NG+ file when I finish it. Currently I don't have a lot of time, so it'll take a little while, but I will upload it here.

And yes Raiden does knock down guards by running into them. Might save a bit of time in a few ILs but it's pretty minor.

I will start speedrunning this game when I have more time. However I will be using Raiden regardless of what's decided here. If that would prevent me from submitting here, so be it, but I think it's a silly restriction.

Some of you might remember this video

Shows off an amazingly useful trick that skips landing with the chopper for a lot of missions. Saves a big amount of time over the course of the run and makes it a lot less tedious. However after trying it myself for a while, I can't get it. Might just be me being bad, so I asked someone else to attempt it. He couldn't get it either. So either we're both bad or it's patched.

Could other people please try it out aswell on the latest version? If others can't get it either we we should look into what to do with the leaderboards. As far as I'm aware there's no legal way to acquire an older version of the game, unless you play on console from disc but then you have longer loads aswell. I think the best option would be to seperate between newest version and older version runs in that case.

"It would take too long to unlock" is not a good reason to ban something in an NG+ category honestly. There's plenty of great weapons you are free to use that have crazy requirements.

If that is really the reason Raiden is banned I can provide a save file with it (and all other offline developments) unlocked. Actually I might start working on that regardless. My main file has all of that but I'd rather not hand that out freely.

Been thinking about learning to run this game considering the huge amount of time I've already put into it. But looking at the rules (mostly for IL boards since full-game misses alot of rules) I noticed that Cyborg Ninja/Raiden are restricted in the main categories. Even in IL "Any%" they're banned, and they have their own category (which nobody runs). Why is this? They don't restrict rank and it's not like it removes any challenge from the missions. It just speeds up the boring parts (running to the objective).

IL leaderboards can be found over at http://www.soniccenter.org/rankings/sonic_lost_world Though it doesn't include DLC stages since IIRC they don't have a time attack mode

For the 12 Hour Speedrun Challenge (http://pastebin.com/1Ew9Rc1d) I wanted to try running this game. NG+ didn't seem too fun to me so I went with NG knowing it would be a massive task, but doable. And getting the 1st ending is indeed very doable. Probably about 6 hours long, maybe less when optimized. But then, after barely managing to beat Peace Walker using up all my supply MKs, things slowed down. A LOT. The more I looked into the requirements for true ending, the less reasonable it got.

Initially I thought it'd be fine to just build ZEKE and find Zadornov 7 times. Then I read somewhere that you need to have your intel at about level 40. Alright, seems doable. When that didn't work, I found out that you need your Support platform to be rank 2... How does one do that? Well FIRST you need to get Command Center to rank 5. That requires you to develop a lot of shit. As you're doing this, Kaz calls you to say that we need more GMP to build the platforms. So off to recruit more Combat soldiers. And it just keeps going and going, the requirements are crazy if you're rushing through the game initially. Thankfully there's a place where you can get a lot of Intel staff and some R&D in Extra Op 17. But getting combat staff seemed pretty difficult, so you'd have to spend a lot of time grinding.

Basically my question is: how would you guys feel about a NG Any% First Ending run. I really doubt anyone would be crazy enough to do a True Ending run (though I would love to see one).

This isn't necessarily about the 12 hour challenge, just in general I think it would be fun to run this game with a natural progression rather than wrecking everything instantly. But chapter 5 alone will take forever and has a ton of randomness to it.

Good to have another opinion on the matter. So yeah it's unfortunate we won't be able to use challenge tasks, but you need to fulton a lot of soldiers anyway for a certificate IIRC. Just hope the end of the run isn't just waiting for timers (like building all MB platforms which I've read to be a requirement to unlock Mission 46)

Routing this will be interesting. Honestly the routing is probably more fun than doing the run so who knows if I'll ever get around to it haha

20 hours was my very rough estimate, which isn't too bad honestly.

You start with whatever you have in your online stache before you reset your save. Could be almost nothing, could be up to a million resources, 25 million GMP and all the best weapons you had developed (though not all major items are included, as stuff like Stealth Camouflage is an offline development) . As for the challenge tasks, if you've beaten them all it should be the same for everyone. However there aren't many people who have them all. On my main account I'm only missing 1 more for online dispatch missions after 460 hours of playing.

I don't think it affects the run THAT much, it's just being able to start developing platforms/important items right away rather than waiting for the right unit levels and resources, which would take a little while, but it's hard to say how much it saves in the end. I'm still in early stages of routing because it's so hard to find accurate/correct info on side ops specifically

Yes, I'm crazy enough to be routing this and maybe doing a run of it. However there's 1 thing I'm really unsure about... Online mode.

As far as I know, if you had any online resources from a previous save they'll be given back to you in your new save. So you could start the run with a million of every resource and 25m GMP, which in many ways defeats the purpose of getting 100% completion from scratch. So initially I thought about doing the run in offline mode. However this prevents you from using the Challenge Tasks, which would be a fair way to speed things up a lot since it gives you good staff for free.

What are your thoughts on the matter? If there's no good way to be online without regaining those resources, I think it would be best to stick with offline mode. But if any of you have a solution please let me know

EDIT: Actually I just remembered that the challenge task stats are tracked server side, so if you've completed them on a previous save they should still be completed. So at this point the question is, can they be redeemed again or not? If yes, I guess we should just bulk that into "online advantages" and my question is "Is online mode allowed yes/no?". Personally I'm still sticking with no.

EDIT2: https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3zl2zg/my_ps3_save_is_corrupt_what_do_i_do/cyncroi This comment has cleared things up a lot. You can redeem all challenge tasks again right off the bat, you keep online developed stuff and you keep online resources. You do not keep your FOB platforms and offline developed stuff. So yes you could start the run with 25m GMP, 1m of each resource and way overpowered gear. The challenge tasks allow you to immediately fill up your MB with great soldiers so you never have to worry about that either. In a way this would be a good thing, since you can develop stuff ASAP so you don't have to wait for timers as much, but at the same time it removes the base building part of the run. It would also classify the run as NG+ rather than NG, so I guess the distinction could be made there.

Neat, Kuru. I'd heard that was possible but whenever I tried I instantly exploded

I do dislike having a huge amount of categories, but it's also silly to void all old stats with a new update or to force everyone to play the old version which would also block online play. I feel adding a variable is the lesser of the evils

Having a version variable would be nice I think, especially if anyone could just delete update data. I've heard Wii U doesn't usually allow that, but I'm not sure how exactly it works