100% category rule changes - I need your opinions!
2 years ago
East Sussex, England

Hello!

Crazycider and other members of the chinese community have made suggestions to change some things about the current rules for 100% Ghosts and 100% Collection. I want to ask the rest of the community for their opinions and votes on what should happen. Or if you don't mind what happens, just saying you don't mind is also very helpful.

I will explain as best I can the situation, pros and cons, etc. so you can feel informed when giving your thoughts.

First issue - Fox ghost encounter:

Firstly, in case you don't know how the trigger for collecting the fox ghost works, the game needs her to attack for you to add the ghost to your collection. However, the chance for her to attack is 50%, and the encounter cannot be repeated for the purposes of a speedrun.

In the 100% Ghosts category, the current rule for the fox ghost encounter is that you must hear her song in full, but that it's okay if you get bad RNG in the end and she doesn't attack - you can just move on.

The reason this was decided is because adhering to the game's collection rules would essentially mean 50% of all runs would need to be reset over halfway through.

Now, the proposed change for the rule is to allow the player to run straight to the new building, instead of listening to her full song. You'd still need to trigger her encounter by looking at her claws, but no need to stand around for the full song.

Pros and cons:

In my opinion, the strongest argument in favour of this change is that the player will no longer have to arbitrarily decide when the song is over before moving on. The song's "ending" is subjective, and there's nothing indicating when it's over other than the player's judgement. With the current rules, things could get potentially very awkward to moderate. For example, if runners start looking for ways to save time during this encounter, the logical way to do it is to stretch the definition of "the end of the song" as much as possible.

Other potential arguments in favour of this change:

  • Being attacked by the fox ghost has big consequences for running the game on hell mode, which is necessary in the 100% Collection category. Your stamina is drained and you're at a significant disadvantage.
  • You no longer have to stand for 90 seconds doing nothing.
  • At this point, the 100% Ghosts category's rules are mostly whatever we deem to be an 'encounter', rather than what the game deems to be an 'encounter'. e.g. The head ghost is not required, and the mannequin encounter can be cut short.

Problems with this change:

  • The 100% Ghosts record will suddenly be up for grabs (kind of), due to the 60-90 seconds saved by leaving early.
  • The current rules do at least allow you to have a chance at collecting the fox ghost the way the game intends (even if you are let off for bad RNG).

Second issue - Allowing 1 death in 100% Collection:

For those who don't know, 100% Collection is a new category where you must collect all 20 ghosts (subject to exceptions), all 20 ghost stories and all 7 figurines. No deaths are allowed, and since you must collect the figurines, the game must be played on hell mode.

As a whole this is an extremely difficult category to even complete, let alone speedrun. However there are a couple of runs that have been performed by Chinese players, and curiously they both take advantage of a bug that requires you to die on purpose, but which makes the category much more manageable.

You see there's actually a bug in the New Building which gets rid of the janitor entirely. It involves dying right after the doppelganger boss fight by going to Eun-ah, and respawning there. Then he's gone.

Therefore the suggestion is that we allow 1 death to take advantage of that bug, which would make the category more accessible / enjoyable.

Pros & cons:

The glaring issue with this is with the way the in-game timer works. If you die, the in-game timer actually reverts back to the last checkpoint, meaning no time is lost if you die. That means you could technically die infinitely and lose no time according to the in-game timer.

Initially this would seem like a big problem for ever allowing deaths in any category at all, since some time is 'forgotten'.

However, if you watch how the bug works, it involves going to Eun-ah to die, and then simply respawning right back next to Eun-ah, where you just died. A checkpoint seems to be made for Eun-ah right before her encounter, or as a result of dying to her. So it seems like no meaningful time is forgotten when you perform this bug.

And so, in this one ocassion, it could be argued the IGT isn't an issue, and it's just up to us to decide whether the bug is allowed or not.

If you want to see the bug, player Tommy performed it in his 100% Collection run at 33:43 in this video: ""

So I know this is a long post, but I really appreciate anyone taking the time to read through it and telling me what they'd be happy with. You don't have to think about this as much as I have, or write about it as much as I have - I have chosen to do that of my own free will. 😅

That said these issues can get a bit complicated, and where possible, I want to answer for the Chinese community on behalf of our community, rather than on behalf of just myself.

Edited by the author 2 years ago
scallions and ShingledClown like this
Greater Manchester, England

Even though I probably won't do this run, I'll say that both changes would be really nice. Looking at the claws should be enough since you've "experienced" the ghost then imo. The Eun-ha part as well I honestly just assumed was used having never seen the run, I'd say just allow the one death there and get a brief respite from the janitor seems like a nice change.

Take these with a grain of salt though since I probably wont do all ghosts! Just seems like it'd be more accessible and fun if you didn't have to wait around.

scallions, emuyia, and crazycider like this
Texas, USA

Ok first off sorry I haven't been active as much lately, work has been very busy so I'm short on time these days! Anyway for the first issue I think just getting the song to start will be enough, standing for 90 sec doing nothing isn't fun and I think its fine to take it out. We can cut out the RNG of her attacking and make it a more consistent run.

For the second issue I think allowing 1 death is fine for this category specifically. You mentioned there was no meaningful time save from it and I agree. I would love for it to be more accessible so I think it would be good overall but we do have to monitor if any other glitches are brought up.

Thats my 2 sense I should be a little more active at the end of the month hopefully but hit me up here or on discord if you want to ask anything :)

scallions, emuyia and 2 others like this
China

Hello, friends. I'm crazycider. Because my English is not very good, I can only use machine translation to express my point of view. Maybe I can't completely understand what I said, but I will translate my point of view as much as possible. I'm really sorry!

In fact, I have always hoped to add an opinion that collects all the collections, including all the collections required by the game, that is, 20 ghosts, 20 ghost files and 7 personal model.

From 2018 to 2020, I have spent some time studying this opinion and thinking about how to make the most reasonable rules. Finally, I think the rules should be as follows:

  1. You only need to collect 18 ghosts (not just meet ghosts, but should be based on whether the ghost appears in the collection options after the game)

  2. You must collect 20 ghost files and 7 personal models.

3.Death is allowed, but only once in a specific place.

I think the above three items are the most important. If you have any comments, you can discuss them together.

There are video links to the two tips I mentioned above:

1.【get rid of the janitor entirely for speedrun【whiteday】-哔哩哔哩】 https://b23.tv/xIms3sV

2.【Don't use L-shaped iron through the swimming pool !-哔哩哔哩】 https://b23.tv/TcdzhOI

China

Hello! My English is not very good, but I think we can set this rule on the 100% collection!

ShingledClown and emuyia like this
East Sussex, England

Thanks so much for all replies. It seems like things are fairly unanimous.

I think then we should give it until the end of this week, and if there's still agreement I can go ahead and edit the rules.

And yeah if any other powerful glitches crop up like the janitor despawn (god willing), we can monitor if/how they affect categories and have another discussion about it if needed.

SHIMIAO and crazycider like this
East Sussex, England

I've updated the rules now.

Summary of changes:

  • You are now allowed to die once in 100% Collection in order to perform the janitor despawn glitch in the new building. No other deaths are permitted.
  • You are now allowed to move on from the fox spirit encounter after viewing her claw marks.

The current records in 100% Ghosts should be fine to remain, however all subsequent submissions must follow the new rules.

--

There's more though:

Crazycider has additionally suggested changing the mannequin encounter rule to disallow being hit by it to end it early. I'm inclined to agree as it's not hard to finish the encounter, and there is no RNG issue such as in the fox spirit encounter.

I wouldn't have agreed to this before, since changing the rule would have made beating the current records (which do end the encounter early), kind of unfair. However, with the fox spirit change giving us a big 60-90 second time save, that's not going to be an issue anymore.

I feel like since the mannequin encounter is no trouble, we may as well go by the game's requirements like we do for all the other ghosts.

Edited by the author 2 years ago
scallions likes this
East Sussex, England

Following from my previous post... I'm going to go ahead and change the rule for the mannequin encounter as well, since it's important that it's changed at the same time as the fox spirit. We don't want a run that ends both the mannequin and fox spirit encounters early, lest the mannequin rule change in the future and the run has to be rejected because it's no longer possible to beat it.

I hope that makes sense. We can still talk more about the mannequin encounter, as it's not a change that would make any new submissions invalid were the rule changed back. But if there's going to be that discussion, it shouldn't be allowed to be skipped in the meantime because any runs that skip both the fox spirit and mannequin will be unfair to try and beat in the future.

So, one more change:

  • The mannequin encounter must now be completed fully.
crazycider and Cloudmark like this