I promised myself as someone who has never done an actual KH run I would keep my comments only on twitter, but also as someone has done speedruns of other games in the past, and someone who has watched this community grow for a few years now, I'm gonna chime in anyway. I am 100% for video proof on all leaderboard runs (cept for 3DS). ¤Warning- there will be a lot of smash examples I use, gimme a break I've been in competitive smash for 8 years lol

I wanna start by saying my interest in speedrunning myself was basically revived recently as my interest in smash is fading. The very first point I'm going to say here is I'm not on board with with cut-off times. Just for the soul fact that I haven't ever done a run makes me feel not 100% a part of the community. Not that I don't feel accepted by all of you, I do even though I haven't contributed anything. However, not having my name listed on any game's leaderboard on here makes me feel that way. Now, if I did decide to run KH, I'd want my absolute very first run to be on the leaderboard. It could very well be that my first run's time isn't good enough to meet the cut-off. You'd think that shouldn't matter, but it does- and that it should motivate me to keep going for a better time until I do meet the cut-off, but it doesn't. I want my run to be enforced with the same exact rules as everyone else, and that not being the case makes me feel like my run is not legitimate and doesn't actually mean anything to the community. In smash, EVERY player's results and wins are looked at extremely closely when we make our monthly power rankings, even players who attended one tourney some have never heard of. The conclusion we come to is yeah, some players are better than others, and there's always a best player with the best results. But they're all treated equally. Results, wins, losses, seeds, everything is treated the same. There's no bias, so it's very easy to feel welcomed in that sort of community and see you're impacting it the second you enter a tourney even with like 5 people in it. Shouldn't all of the runners in this community deserve that same feeling of belonging? I can safely say I would be one of the discouraged ones if my time wasn't treated with the same rules as everyone else's just because it was slow. You know what happens to discouraged smashers? They quit. I bet it could be the same in speedrunning. So already you have me: one person who would not want to do runs of this game unless video-proof is required for everyone, AKA same rules for all.

BB made a good point earlier however saying that new players don't really know where to start, and it's not fair to force them into an overcomplicated scenario. I totally get that, but again, picking up a new hobby and joining a new community usually involves a sort of "wake-up call" moment. Again in smash, even if you're a new player, you have to know how the community's ruleset works. You have to know what stages are legal, that items are set to off, that stalling is banned, what the time limit is, what the mode is, and just a shitload of stuff that you have to know upon entering a tourney. Or if you don't you're told on the spot and are like "oh shit I didn't know what". Well, now you know for next time. New speedrunners of KH should be able to respect how your leaderboards are managed and they're taken seriously, like any other community. It shouldn't be a hassle to demand video-proof from new runners, or if they didn't know then hey, let them know for next time and why. And not only this, but newbies might not even know about leaderboards at first to begin with. I had no idea communities has leaderboards when I speedran pikmin the first time, and that smash had power rankings at my first tourney.

There are the other points I could touch on but they've all been nailed on the head by Hobz, Timmi, Spike etc. All hobbies require money, AGAIN in smash you have to pay venue fee for every tourney you go to, even if you're not entering which can range $5-15 for locals and up to $100 for nationals. Not to mention money for a controller, the game, the console, even the DLC stages/characters.

The very last thing I wanna mention is this. I keep seeing people say "well this community does it this way" as reasoning for how our leaderboard should do things. First of all different regions in smash use different rulesets all the time based on what the majority of THEIR players want. YOU decide how legitimate you want your leaderboards to be. Yes speedrunning is a hobby, but it brought us into a community. There needs to be some form of organization and consistency here and if we want to keep growing, which is why smash has to come to conclusions on rulesets too or else they'll never be taken seriously (like customs being legal in smash 4 oh god) and look how HUGE smash is now that they've become so professional. Just saying. Do YOU want your leaderboards to be serious? Because I feel they can only be serious if you take ALL the times on them seriously as well, not just WRs. So you decide just how important the runs are of new players with slower times. I firmly believe their times should be treated just as importantly as the others. I know my first shitty run would still mean a lot to me, but that won't be the case if it doesn't matter to the community I'd want to be a part of. Consistency is important too.

Anyway end rant. Thought I'd pitch in as someone who is MAYBEEEE considering running a KH game in the future. SORRY FOR SO MANY SMASH EXAMPLES FUCK

@bran While I get your edit was more aimed towards the console KH games I'm sure Saiyanz and other DS /CoM runners can agree with me when I say using a webcam for a handheld is really really painful / awkward to do. We've all done it because we wanted to show game play but dear god I never want to have to do it again and would just never post my times to the leaderboards if it came to having to go back to that scenario again and I know saiyanz is the same so I can't see any new person doing it when they're also struggling with the game as well.

That said I'm still okay requiring video proof for Days and Re:Coded given we have emus legal. Especially for Re:Coded since GOSU fucks with IGT / There isn't IGT for NG+ / We need to make sure glitches aren't used in No Major Glitches so its the only game where video proof kinda makes sense completely at all times.

I like the way some Kirby boards did it (I don't know if they still do).

There's two things that need video proof. Top 5, and anything under a certain time requires video proof. This way top times all have video proof, and if someone wants to take speedrunning beyond just a fun little hobby and into a serious competitive thing, then they have to invest. There's many KH runners who use webcam on their TV (I can think of 3 just off the top of my head) with competitive times in KH1.5, so that's a cheap option for that.

An example could be with 2.5 2FM Beginner any% that anything under 5:20 needs video proof. Though a few runs would be grandfathered in, I assume. As Bl00dy's 2nd place time doesn't have a video, though a lot of people could vouch for it as they were there for it.

That's also how Hyrule Warriors did it for a while. We require video for top 5 times, and for ILs a screenshot (because Wii U can post screenshots to Miiverse, and each stage has a victory screen with your time).

That way everyone wins. Some of the HW runners were located in Australia and had home issues. So they couldn't stream due to awful internet and lack of being able to use Wii U/Computer because it was a "family room".

But to counter my example, some communities are so against no video submissions that they'll flat out tell you to find a different hobby (I won't name examples to avoid any arguments). But their reasoning is hard to argue with outside of personal morality. Even if it's a handheld game.

So my vote would be for requiring videos only for hitting below a reasonably good time.

EDIT: I 100% agree with Drazark. The community I wouldn't name was for a handheld game. And I being 100% noob to emulators had to learn how to use them because they wouldn't accept any run without video. I've done handheld runs with webcam (My Senran Kagura 2) for two hours on my 3DS and god did it kill my wrists holding my 3DS up to be decent at best visability.

I've been on the fence about this argument just because both sides have decent arguments but I can now say I totally agree with requiring video proof for one reason and one reason only. We are finally on a leaderboard website. No longer a Google Doc with a bunch of names and numbers on it. If people want their times on here, they should totally need video proof. Before the switch to SRC you could just have a leaderboard mod just watch your stream and they would update your times without you even needing to highlight the run, so because of this, people never had highlights for their PBs just because they knew it was on the leaderboard (i'm guilty of this as my 3:00:48 1.5 time got updated on the LBs after i got it so i never bothered highlighting it so my SRC time lacks a video. Another example was BB's 2.5 English record, because it was already on the LBs he didn't feel the need to highlight it) . The whole cut off idea is quite nice for those "just starting out" people but a problem i see with it is that said people without the means to capture runs just yet, would feel pressured during their runs, they could be a few minutes off the cut off but might not want to do runs just because of the off chance they might hit the cut off and not be able to stay on the leaderboards, if they really want to get into it then they can just invest in a $5 capture device (I mean hell thats how Salad got by the last year and a bit. EZCaps get you places). Its not like they are needed for HD games either. People like Myself, BTrue and BB get by streaming HD games using SD Captures. Hell you don't even need capture cards. You could just point a camera at screen like MySora and hell a few of the guys in the Scooby community have decent times and they just point a camera at the screen. Its 2016, sure not everyone has godly internet and a professional setup. But if you watch twitch and want to get into speedrunning because of it then it must mean you have some kind of Phone or Computer or something else that can just capture a video of the run.

If its one thing about this is, there shouldn't be any pressure on this just because other communities have different rule sets about their games (PSX Final Doom used to have a rule where you couldn't use Twitch VoDs lmao). If Weed is Legal in one state, why should another state be pressured to legalize it in theirs too? Using examples of other community rule-sets helps for discussion but using it as a "they do it so why don't we" is a pretty dumb argument imo.

Take this as a grain of salt from someone who just got finished with some drama about a kid who claimed a dozen World Records without video's or videos just containing splits on his iPod, something people in this discussion are specially afraid of happening. We don't want that happening. People are smarter than that.

Hopefully this discussion reaches a nice mutual conclusion. Its interesting seeing everyone's viewpoints on different aspects of learning a game and leaderboard rulesets. Kiwi's comparisons to the Smash community were pretty neat. Show's you how much similarities there are between the two.

Anywho my vote is for 100% video proof. If the cut off thing does happen, I would just make sure its a system that works well for everyone.

Another thing to consider is if moderators will actually watch the video submissions. In that same community I mentioned that required videos for handhelds or you should just change hobbies, they didn't even have moderators checking the videos. So they had illegal runs on their boards as top times for months without anyone noticing.

So if we do require video for everything, will the moderators take the time to make sure runs are legitimate all the way through?

Real quick at the top of this post I wanted to thank Kiwi for chiming in. Hearing from prospective runners helps shed light on new angles we might not have properly considered and I know it's not always easy to comment when you think that your opinion will carry no weight with the audience (I've had a few viewers mention this to me before).

Additionally, I'd like to quickly note that for anyone who hasn't seen it, I made a guide a few days ago on "what you need to stream" from the bare bones to the higher end. It's linked on the "HOW TO GET YOUR RUNS SUBMITTED TO THE LEADERBOARDS" thread and will be in the OP on that thread as soon as I can get White to see it. Here it is again for convenience (I'm very open to suggestions for changes, especially by handheld runners): http://pastebin.com/mWHreqap

Now, onto the rest. I actually never would've drawn so many parallels between Smash and speedrunning, but it is a pretty decent analog. Smash started out as a tiny community of people playing a game they loved and now it's turned into a gigantic (probably multi-million dollar) industry. Competitive League of Legends, Starcraft, and Counter Strike have all done the same. Maybe not everybody feels the same way, but I would love to see speedrunning go in that direction! It's so much more amazing when you're passionate about something to see it be successful, especially in the eyes of "outsiders." I want the speedrunning (and KH) community to grow as large as possible and part of that is becoming more "professional."

For another example, I used to bowl on a club team back in college. When I started, I knew nothing about bowling besides the fact that I thought it was fun! My top time was like a 180 using house balls (the stock equipment at the alleys). But the more I got involved in the club, the more I enjoyed learning about it and how so many people took it seriously when the end goal was just to have fun! My first tournament I was practically shaking with excitement and a large part of that was from how "official" and "professional" everything felt. You had to wear the right uniform, shoes, not apply anything to the surface of your ball during a match, and follow the accepted etiquette. ALL of these things were part of what made it competitive. If my toe went over the line, it was a fault and the throw didn't count. The games that counted towards your official average were only those that could be verified at tourneys and the like. If I were back home playing with some friends just casually, we wouldn't care about ANY of that shit. But that's a completely different environment, and to this day I can't take the game seriously if I'm in that environment; instead I dick around with trick shots and whatnot. Which is fine! But it doesn't have that competitive feel that drives me to improve, and I wouldn't expect anyone to consider my "high score" to be "that one time I rolled a 280 with the bumpers up."

Competitive hobbies are riddled with rules and proof and rightfully should be.

Plus, getting into the habit of recording your runs is never a bad thing! You never know when you'll want to look back on that time in your speedrunning career and admire how much you've improved! One of my favorite streams of Biz's was when he restreamed his first 1.5 run after he got WR. It was so unbelievably awesome to see how he started out making a million mistakes jut like the rest of us and then worked his way to a WR.

I still just don't see how someone could get "too demoralized to do a first run" just because it'll take 30 extra minutes of setup time and $9 if they don't have a webcam to point at the screen. Additionally, I've started offering my assistance in setting up recording whenever I reject a run with no video. I just had my first person reach out today and he didn't make any complaint about it being unfair. That's obviously not to say that doesn't mean they may have thought that way, but instead of thinking we were just turning them away from the community, they instead decided to pursue setting things up the "right way."

Last note: I've said before that I also would be fine with DDD being the one exception to the rule until capture cards become less expensive, accurate emulators are made, and/or the community grows to a larger point. $300 is of course excessive.

@Drazerk No, You are 100% correct, im referring to console runners. I completely agree with you about video proof for handhelds being difficult. Getting a ds capture card or recording the ds screen with a cam is more difficult, especially when a ds capture card costs way more than a capture card off amazon, and recording with a webcam forces you to hold the console in a very awkward position. Im not very familiar with handheld runs, so my opinions will probably be very in accurate. I consider handhelds a very different case/argument/debate all together. :)

I'm super late to the party, but I might as well throw my 2 cents in. I did not read 90% of the thread, since I don't really have the time, but what I did skim through covered most of what I believe anyway.

Let me explain my background in this beforehand. I came into the KH speedrun community as a Brawl Tournament Organizer, where I would write my own rulesets for tourneys and strictly run by them. I feel that carries over into KH leaderboards easily, since that's what we try to do here, where we're trying to create organized leaderboards with strong integrity. I always believe leaderboard rules should be as objective as possible as long as it's not unreasonably hindering the KH speedrun community.

For example, we would not allow backwards compatible PS3's to have runs posted with regular PS2 runs, since it would cripple and kill PS2 KH runs due to the massive time difference. Backwards Compatible PS3's are not even remotely easily accessible, while PS2's still are pretty reasonable to get. In that situation, an arbitrary rule is used to help us from killing all PS2 competition. But in a situation of asking for video proof, that would not hinder most at all. Not to mention arbitrary rules are messy and incredibly questionable normally.

Quite frankly I completely do not see any real issue with forcing video proof for submitting runs. It really should have always been like this, but back on the Google Docs, it wasn't strictly a rule then (mostly probably because Toji did not expect the Leaderboards to grow the way they did), though we were slowly getting to that point before things moved here anyway. It is incredibly easy to record/stream/upload a run (even with garbage internet, you can get by these too), as has been stated many times in the thread from what I've seen. I only keep seeing counter-assumptions of "it MAY deter people" or "MAY make things more complex and stop them from running". That's all they are, unfortunately, is assumptions. No real data backing this up, while we still have new runners popping up all the time just fine with streams or videos.

Bottom line is that it is really not hard to have some form of video proof for a pb, this isn't really 8 years ago when recording/streaming was much harder to do. Jhobz decision isn't going to suddenly stop people from doing runs or competing on the Leaderboards. If a runner is willing to put the effort into running a multi-hour KH category for a leaderboard, they are probably not going to have an issue with putting a tiny bit of effort to show some sort of video proof.

As for DDD runs, it does indeed make sense to waive proof for those, since there is no easily accessible option to record those runs, because Nintendo is in the dark ages forever. Not sure on other DS KH runs, since I think emu runs were approved a bit too fast according to Vulajin (he claims emu is always faster than the handheld), but I didn't really offer any testing of my own, so I can't say much anyway, but would be interesting to bring up another time.

@Royalcyanidefuneral the link works, just remove the "."

There are a significant number of good points from all perspectives of this discussion; however, I personally think video proof should be required for leaderboard submission.

I do not believe that leaderboard submission is necessary to start out as a runner, or to participate in the community as a runner. You may discuss times, strats, PBs, etc., but with regards to a comparative list for competitive purposes, especially with a large/growing community, an objective requirement for submission to such a list should be a standard.

For an example, in the scientific community, new scientific theories require proof through testing, and often are subject to peer review. The testing of such hypotheses is done to account for all variables. As far as I know, video proof accounts for just about all variables in a speedrun. This being said, runs are very different from theories - after all, speedrunning is a competitive hobby, not a scientific study. On the other hand, competitive hobbies such as sports and the like are done IRL, while speedrunning is almost entirely offline. Could a run be accepted if a certain number of members of the community or mods watched and confirmed the run IRL? I believe so, yes (except in the case of WR, like BB said).

With regards to expense and effort for capture/upload, you can capture video on your phone camera, a cheap video camera, or a webcam and upload the raw footage to YouTube. If you have a smartphone with a camera this is even easier as you can upload directly from the YouTube app, and just about everyone has mentioned EZCap. Someone would have to retime it (ideally, the runner), but regardless, it is possible.

Any hobby requires some level of effort and expenditure. Over the course of the last year I've spent over $3k just on music equipment, most of it entry level. In addition, I've spent over 9 years practicing music and taking my time before putting anything out. To draw more comparison to potato cam, I could technically record music on cheaper equipment - and I have, though not for profit. On top of this, music equipment is far more expensive than video capture equipment. It is because of this that I believe that any hobby you feel worth investing in is one that requires more effort and expenditure than just getting into it to get involved and not compare.

Overall I agree with most of the opinions posted on both sides and they're all valid points, but I think the main issue comes to what people believe the leaderboards should be.

I do not believe all hobbies are inherently competitive, and the essence of speedrunning is simply beating the game (or category) as fast as possible. Most hobbies start off as just having fun and eventually you branch out to things like competing with other people. I think to this purpose leaderboards provide a place where people can compare and contrast their runs, and I think in anything competitive there needs to proof or verification that the runs are legitimate. Just because a time is above a "cut-off" point does not mean there isn't competition in that area. However, I do not believe leaderboards are necessary to be apart of a community and being a speedrunner, it is a tool that runners can refer to.

From reading all the posts it seems like people disagree on where to draw the line between just having fun with a hobby and actually competing. Even if people can't get recording equipment I think they should still be proud of their accomplishments. I think part of the issue is that people want to share their new PB times, and they should be able to, even if they can't record it. Unfortunately, currently the easiest way to do that, in a place where the community will look, is on the leaderboards. I can't confirm if there are actually any people that have this issue but I think it is a valid concern. Maybe there could be a forum where people can post unverified PBs?

If someone is unsure if they want to to commit to speedrunning then I would encourage them to give it a try and do a couple of runs. You don't need a leaderboard to tell you if you're having enough fun to want to continue the hobby, and like many people have said for a 2 hour+ hobby $9 is not that big of an investment assuming you already have the console and game.

From another perspective, as a new runner with a relatively slow time(probably above any reasonable cut-off point), if I get bopped by someone I personally would be interested in watching their run rather than just having a time inserted above mine.

With regards to the handhelds I don't have much of an opinion because I don't know much about them but from what I read there seem like legitimate reasons for why exceptions need to be made.

I believe leaderboards should be a place for competing against other people and not just a list of all runners and their PBs, and unfortunately to me that means runs need to be verified with video proof or some other reliable method, and should be applied uniformly.

I believe its important for times on the leader board to require video proof. One of the big reasons why is for the sake of legitimacy. Now I've only done one RTA run. A run I was really happy with but even several weeks since doing the run I am yet to submit. Now I streamed and recorded the run so submitting would be very easy for me. But the reason I haven't bothered is because comparing that time to other people near me on the leader board basically means nothing, at least to me personally. Since I don't really know any of the lower timed streamers or have any idea how much effort went into their run or even if its a legitimate time, I don't feel the need to compare it and thats not what a leader board should be like. A reason why a lot of people are against full video proof for lower times is the fact that some people just want a time on the leader board because it makes them feel good. But at that level the leader board is basically a joke and means nothing.

People are also raising the question. "well what if people feel discouraged by the fact that they didn't get their times on a leader board because they didn't have video proof?" Well for one I am yet to actually hear the opinion of this apparent Phantom runner that's been so discouraged they now plan to never even look at the game again. So until we get someone actively raising their hand and saying "hey I don't like the fact that my time wasn't accepted because I couldn't provide full proof." Then this whole thing is kind of a none issue and most of the peoples arguments against full video proof kind of go out the window. Besides most people already think you need to stream before you can even speedrun to begin with so I doubt many people would argue over this point to begin with.

Not to mention you don't need to be able to put your times on the leader board in order to test if they want to speedrun the game. If someone tries out a game and doesn't like it I doubt they would put in the time to submit a time they aren't happy with in a game they don't feel they are going to run. But if the person is so petty that all they want is their name on some arbitrary list then leave without actually adding anything to the community then they don't really deserve to be on the leader board. Like I said before if the leader board is just full of times from people who just did a single run, didn't care about the community and then just takes off then that takes away from he legitimacy and whole point of a leader board.

Apparently I hold the unpopular opinion among most of the community that video submissions shouldn't be required for good times in KH games. BB's idea on the top 10 runners or whatever getting together and voting on a suitable cut-off point seems like a very effective way to sort out this 'problem'. This was how things were back in the Google Docs: for KH2 it was roughly the 4:15 mark where proof was neccessary, and for 1.5 i'd say around 3:00-3:05. This was arbitrarily chosen by the top runners of the category or the leaderboards mods.

We're now using a more official and organised leaderboards than the google docs. A website shared with the vast majority of other communities. This means that random uncodified opinions on what the cut-off point should be is a bad idea, HOWEVER if it is decided on and written down on the individual pages for each KH game, I believe it's a more official way to do it.

The idea that a divide or cut-off point such as 4:15 for KH2 would create a point where runs become 'good', and would therefore deter people with lower times, is absurd in my opinion. 'Good' and 'bad' are somewhat objective terms. People can find some runs good when other people can call a run bad. We've had several arguments about this in the past, one of which directly involved me, where a runner who had World Record in a category called their run bad. The argument was that it was a cruel thing to say since it meant every other time in the leaderboards is bad.

If BB happened to call his 1.5 run bad out of rage one day because he hasn't been able to improve for a few months, would everyone suddenly put 2:45 as some arbitrary cut-off point where a run turns from good to bad? No. Besides, whether your run is good or not is somewhat self-explanatory... If one gets a time like a 3:20 in 1.5, 35 minutes off the current World Record, of COURSE it's a bad run. The runner will know that regardless of whether there's a cut-off point where runs require video proof or not. Speedrunning is a competitive hobby, no matter what anyone says. It's incredibly leaderboard driven, otherwise SR.com wouldn't be as popular as it is. As with any competitive sport/hobby, you will compare yourself with other players, teams etc. Therefore in comparison to other people, you know whether your time is good or bad.

Over half of my KH2 Any% PB (Was World Record for a month), was corrupted on twitch. As soon as I made that highlight, although I only came to realise it later, the 2nd half of my run couldn't be watched. If we add a strict rule that all runs require recordings, are we saying that any prior runs that don't have recordings are safe?? So if someone did a run without video proof a good few months ago and was accepted, it will stay, yet in future someone can submit a worse time and it won't be accepted? This doesn't seem right to me. If this rule is to be implemented, I don't think my KH2 PB should be able to be on the leaderboards, it should be removed. Along with BB's 2.5 time and many other times. Or are we saying that because I had a lot of viewers and people saw that I got my PB, it's fine? If we're implementing strict rules on recording, there shouldn't be any exceptions no matter what.

For my final point, i'd like to talk about my experience when I was first starting to run KH2. I ran the game for about a year before starting to record my runs. My first run that I submitted to the leaderboards was a 4:57. That was around 80th place or whatever, and although I was happy that I got the time that I did, the fact that my name was so low on that leaderboards inspired me to keep going. At this point, there was most certainly a arbitrary cut-off point over where runs would be allowed without proof or not, but this didn't deter me in the slightest. I saw that World Record was a 4:04 and how bad I was playing compared to it, so I knew my run wasn't good. I didn't need some silly little cut-off point to tell me that, and I wasn't going to be offended if anyone said my time was bad. I pushed harder and harder to improve my time, and I ended up gaining places on the leaderboards which added so much excitement to my speedrunning. I would tell my family and friends about how I was top 50 in the world or whatever, and be able to show them on official leaderboards and everything. Since I was on the PAL version, I would also remove ~11 minutes from my time to see what I was capable of and what place i'd be on the leaderboards if I had NTSC.

Eventually, I bought an NTSC PS2 and a capture card because I saw that I was roughly top 10 on the leaderboards if my PAL time of 4:24 was ran on NTSC with the faster loading times. The capture card wasn't too expensive, and I agree that recording runs isn't too difficult, but the fact that I'd seen myself climbing the ranks on the leaderboards for a whole year kept me going. It kept my interest for running the game high. Eventually I started streaming, loved it, and got WR etc etc etc.

I apologize for that being incredibly long-winded, but my point is that I honestly wouldn't have stuck with running KH2 or even speedrunning for such a long time if I hadn't seen my name going up on the leaderboards. I was just a guy who was just testing the waters with the whole speedrunning thing, but seeing my name put up with other great people that I knew about and watched was a blissful thing that kept me focused and willing to push myself and get a better time.

I wouldn't be here right now, nor would I have ever come close to WR in KH2 if my initial 4:57 required video proof. I would've felt incredibly disappointed, and since my time was no where near good enough yet, getting a capture card was the least thing on my mind since I didn't know how far I was going to go with running the game, or how low I could push my time.

tl;dr

• I'm for a cut-off point to be made and decided on by the top runners of individual games/categories.
• Having one's time show up on the leaderboards is an INCREDIBLY valid reason for people sticking around in speedrunning and improving their time.
• There are old runs such as my KH2 Any% PB that is 3rd Place on SR.com leaderboards without half of it's video. If these rules are implemented, surely runs like this would be removed too to maintain the strict rules.
• This will discourage new runners from picking up the game. It definitely would've discouraged me.

Thank you for reading my inssesent ramblings.

These days getting a capture card or some way to record is not difficult, to be honest it wasn't even 8 years ago.

I do think a run must be verified before adding the time to the leaderboard, otherwise anyone could say "hey I beat WR today".

Anyway, streaming on the other hand is not accessible to everyone due to slow internet speeds, so at least in another decade unless it's a top run it shouldn't be a requirement.

From my perspective, I would run only a game for fun and to keep the chat hyped so I would never do anything offstream, and most of the times I can't stream either. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQgBatAWUAAaDh7.png:large

@iiSalad I see your point about the leaderboards being motivating. But wouldn't it have been just as motivating to see how you compared regardless of whether or not you name was actually on the leaderboard? I mean you can still take your time and see where it slots in compared to others right? You were basically doing that anyway when you were taking 11 minutes off your time because of PAL.

Honestly I'm usually not the person who cares if other people think my run is bad or good as long as I think its good. But reading through the posts I've seen a few people talk kind of nonchalantly about what the cut off time would be and funnily enough all were faster then my time and the fact that it was done so nonchalantly is what makes it hurt. I think having a cut off time that hasn't had a whole lot of thought put into could be discouraging especially if people are struggling to make that time. Also with strats and runners constantly improving I think the cut off time will need to be changed more then people seem to think and thus the voters on the matter will start to put less thought into what the cut off time should be.

Also as for getting rid of older runs with no videos. I have a few reasons for both sides but basically I would say no for now at least. The main thing about getting new runners to submit times is that eventually, even if its over several years, there will be more runs that have videos of their PBS then runs without and I think that's important. Its especially important for new runners to learn what other people of their skill level are doing to say, beat a boss that has a particularly hard strat that they can't seem to pull of and thus are being discouraged from doing runs because all they have to learn from are the really good runners who do the hard starts.

Also I think its already been said that if people have a KH leaderboards Mod in their chat who watched the whole run then its fine if the recording fails or if you can't submit for whatever reason.

In regard to the whole shitty internet argument. I live in Australia which I would say probably has one of the worst average internet speeds in a first world country. I've since got actual decent internet but I use to have a 0.3 mega bit upload speed. Even with that garbage internet I still uploaded videos to YouTube. Some of these videos were even above an hour long but even so I did it and didn't really complain other then the occasional fist wag at what ever divine being happened to be watching me. Because here's the thing after living my entire life with shitty internet when someone told me I couldn't do this or that because of it I understood. Life's tough and unless these new runners have also just so happened to move into a house with massively worst internet compared to their old one they too are also use to shitty internet and what it means for them.

I don't really have much left to say at this point, most everyone seems to have taken their stance and it certainly weighs in favor of standardized video proof. I don't have that much of a problem with this, you guys have made good points for it and if we do standardize video proof then I think the leaderboards will be okay. I'll always believe that video proof isn't absolutely necessary and a cut off would benefit the most amount of people to draw in the most amount of people.

I still have a couple of points to mention. First of all, since the beginning of the google doc and even as we've transitioned to the leaderboards, we've always used this arbitrary cut-off line as our rule. I can specifically remember conversations where people actually mentioned times such as 4:30-4:20 in KH2 and 3:20-3:10 as times where people should start recording runs. Maybe it wasn't official or a conscious decision, but most people seemed to agree that having a video proof wasn't that big of a deal until you started getting better, at which point you should definitely start recording runs for validation reasons. I guess I'm asking what caused the change in thought. Maybe I've been out of the loop or I haven't been listening well enough to conversations as of late, but I'd like to know when the change of thought came about.

Salad also brought up a good point. Not everyone can afford to local record, I distinctly remember my shitty ass laptop from 2 years ago would overheat just from me using a webcam and could barely handle local recordings. Which means a lot of people are going to have to rely on Twitch recordings, which can cut out due to internet issues or corrupt like in Salad's situation. How strict are we going to be on these Twitch recordings? What if Twitch cut out a 30 minute chunk of a sub 4:10 KH2 run? I would assume that since we've been pretty chill about people pointing webcams and phones at their TV for video proof, Twitch recordings cutting out should hopefully be no big deal.

I asked what the big reason for being more official was and I guess the answer was just the community being more well respected for taking it's leaderboard seriously, and I can accept that answer. I still don't find being official for the sake of being official as a good reason, but if new runners aren't deterred and there aren't that many complaints, then I think this will work out okay.

Ander strikes again lmfao

Just to add to Salad's point I am pretty firm in the belief that as long as the run was verified at some point then it should stay on the leaderboards maybe adding a note as to why there isn't a video of it anymore (EG: Twitch is dumb or got high on KFC and accidentally deleted the VOD).

As for BB's points about parts missing from a VOD we've been pretty fine with it in the past so I don't see why that would change now. I know my Days J level 1 beginner any% WR is missing parts of the run because my internet going in and out but most leaderboard mods were okay with me adding it to the leaderboards despite this because I was streaming the entire thing (And the fact it has like 400+ deaths).

Lets take a poll so we can get a clear cut look on where it stands with everyone http://strawpoll.me/6891710