Too many categories?
5 years ago
jongyon7192p
He/Him, They/Them
5 years ago

I think we can cut down on a ton of this. Like, before I opened this page I was expecting only any% and 100%, where both allow cheats but you start from a fresh save file. I suppose nothing can be done about how there's a free and expansion version. Multiplayer... I dunno.

Sorry, it was a lot to go through. A lot of these categories, people don't run, so there must be some way we can prune these, right...?

Ohio, USA

can't change it without mod, who are all inactive, so maybe i'll request mod so i can change it myself

there's no need for over 50 categories when there's less than 10 runs lol. the rules are also very vague. this page could use some TLC

Edited by the author 5 years ago
United States

Here are my thoughts on the categories and why they are the way they are: Any% | Any% NG+ | 100% Base Game | Expansion These 2 groups pretty much need to be the main categories and subcategory- though Base and Expansion are comparable for the most part, 100% has some sizable differences and the lack of Dry NoLegs hurts NG+.

Unrestricted | Heavenly Difficulty has a large impact on the runs difficulty (duh). This matters more for ILs (where each difficulty is tracked separately- I think this is a good thing for ILs) though, so I wouldn't be opposed to removing this as a subcategory and placing the difficulty as part of the category itself- Any% and Any% Heavenly. Or perhaps just making it a filter instead, though that would put Heavenly runs at a large disadvantage relative to Normal, when directly compared.

No Cheats | Cheats | Invincibility This one seemed to matter quite a bit at the time, but now I'm less sure. See- at the time, Handicaps weren't known to actually make the run faster, so it seemed as though it was "base settings" | "any settings" | "seriously any settings" to accommodate a dodging run, a more resource management run with hoping for good powerup drops, and optimizing speedkills with invincibility. Now, it's a little different and I'm not sure what's best. My thought is that both base settings and cheat/handicap laden settings would be the way to go, but this would place the just handicapped runs (mostly in ILs) into a weird place of being suboptimal under the new paradigm. Maybe it could be adjusted to a filter instead of a subcategory?

Single Player | Multiplayer This is awkward to have placed, I will fully admit that. But as each side can't really be compared, either single player only or the way it currently is on this subcategory- and there have been multiplayer runs submitted.

Overall, categories for this game are a mess for 2 reasons: there are a lot of variables that can change the game, and the SRcom interface is poor for this sort of scenario.

Rules were vague because the site interface didn't actually let you place rules in by subcategory when I "fixed" the board a while back after being granted mod privileges. (Crow, TPB and grumpy are series mods, not sure on Dawgup, who had originally set up the boards with no rules, ILs as a filter so different levels were compared, and no 100% category because no one would do it) Now that it's been brought up, I've added additional clarifications and rules by subcategory.

Sorry for letting the runs sit for a week, by the way- I've been really busy the past couple weeks with IRL stuff, but most of it has settled down now.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Remix227 likes this
Ohio, USA

My goals for changing the leaderboard would be:

  1. Make it more obvious what the main categories for the game are
  2. Make it easier to find runs that actually exist

The I/L leaderboards are pretty much always going to be a mess in this, so I'd say just leave those how they are for now.

I'm going to suggest removing several things, and with all of them, keep in mind that if people express interest in running them, they could be brought back. They could also just be moved to the misc section if you think they still warrant being on the leaderboard.

Invincibility is easily the worst category, and it shows with no runs currently submitted. IMO it's just a worse version of cheats runs and NG+ runs. It doesn't really bring anything new and interesting to the table that those categories already do not. Removing this removes 12 categories from the leaderboard.

100% no heavenly requirements is a really weird category, but I guess it's not pointless as it's essentially the "hard" difficulty category for this game. Not sure if the title gets too long but maybe it could be changed to something like "100% hard (no heavenly medals)... Just something so that at a glance people recognize the purpose of the category is designed for hard difficulty.

I think the "unrestricted" and "heavenly" categories for both 100% and 100% no heavenly requirements should be removed. Both 100% and 100% no heavenly will have 95% of levels run on heavenly difficulty, or hard, respectively. The most significant distinction with these categories is the time trial levels, which can be replayed on hard if it is failed on heavenly, lowering the difficulty, but in my opinion, you're already losing time replaying the level on hard anyways, so I don't think there's a need for the distinction. A better run that features more difficult speedrun level completions will have a lower time anyways. It's the same thing for the "whatever" categories as well, it doesn't really change much, and what it does change, just loses time in almost all cases if you choose a lower difficulty. Plus, it's cool seeing the lower difficulties utilized at times to complete certain achievements to speed up the time. Removing these removes 4 categories from the leaderboard.

I'd also like to see the base game and expansion categories combined for any% and any% NG+. They could still be distinguished by the platform they're played on, Web/PC. If the only difference for those categories really is the available characters, it's probably worth combining them for any% and any% NG+. The expansion is the full version of the game and I don't see any reason to play the base game anymore now that the expansion exists, unless you don't yet own the expansion. Changing this would remove 8/12 categories from the leaderboard.

I'm not sure if it's possible, but it would also be nice if the heavenly runs could also show up in the unrestricted category.

I'd also like to see a few misc categories added. I'd like to see one for high scoring, such as an arbitrary goal of 150m total high score. I'd also like to see something that includes the bonus bosses, maybe an NG+ no invincibility boss rush going through all 19 bosses. I'd be interested in running those 2 categories.

As for changing "unrestricted" and "heavenly" classification, I think those are fine how they are, since you'd need 4 main categories for both any% and NG+ if they were added into the main category titles.

No cheats and cheats are both good runs I think, and keeping them how they are I think is fine.

Single/Multiplayer I think are fine how they are. They could be removed but I don't want people to think you need to play multiplayer to get a good time for the "main" category. Probably better to leave the Single/Multiplayer how it is.

For the rules, the updates look good. I think it should be clarified though that for any% and any% NG+, the bonus levels are not required. You could just add in a (not required) in the expansion explanation.

Outside of that stuff, can the theme on this page be changed at all? or maybe just slightly? This white text on nearly pure black background hurts my eyes. I think most games use a slightly gray background to make it not as bad.

Can a moderator make other people moderators? Or does it have to be a super mod? If it needs to be a super mod, there probably needs to be a new super mod here, the super mods are inactive and their contact info is out of date.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
United States

It has to be a supermod to add further mods- I have Dawgup on Steam, though, so I can potentially ping him to do something.

Invincibility: This is already a misc. subcategory. It's kind of moot for any% (can't afford it), so I'll probably adjust the subcategories so that it doesn't apply to any%. (edit: this is easier said than done, I'd actually need to quadruplicate the information and then set it as a filter for any% and a subcategory for the others)

100% no heavenly requirements wasn't added by me, but I cleaned it up significantly after it was added (listing the unobtainable medals, etc.). I can agree that for 100%, the difficulty modifier doesn't really matter and I think with how it's currently set up, setting it to filter is trivial.

Base game/expansion can't actually be distinguished by Web/PC, as the web version has the expansion if you pay on Kongregate. Dawgup (who didn't have the expansion at the time) was heavily against comparing across that barrier and I'm not the biggest fan that base game is disadvantaged there- moreso for NG+. Then again, other leaderboards have bigger differences compared directly. I'll need to think on this.

Heavenly runs can't be shown under unrestricted unless they're submitted under unrestricted as well, though this is something that can be done. Drawback of the site.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Ohio, USA

I have removed the "invincibility" and "100% no heavenly requirements" categories, since nobody cares enough to run it. In case someone gains interest in it later, I am showing the rules that had been defined for it below.

I have also removed the "No Cheats" variable from the NG+ category. The whole point of a NG+ is to play with all your options available from the get-go, and disallowing cheats seems contrary to that idea.

As for base game vs expansion, runs from those categories seem significantly different to me, so I'm inclined to leave that alone.

I also added a background image from a screenshot of the game. I'm not sure about this one; let me know if I should remove it.

From a new file, complete the game with all medals that do not require Heavenly difficulty. The full list of skipped medals is lower down in these rules. Due to the arbitrary nature of this category, 3 other grindy medals are also skipped. Timing starts on first interaction (slime kill or hitting Play) and ends on obtaining the final medal. For ease of verifying, please show the medals screen at the end of the run- you should have 55 for the Expansion, and 51 for the base game.

"No Cheats" is not an option for this category due to 1 medal requiring cheats. Many medals require no cheats to be on as well, so this implicitly is always a "Cheats" run.

List of skipped medals: Burst Eyeballs Heavenly Hero Heavenly Hero Deluxe (Exp.) "Perfect wave 13" per world Raining Coins Cheat Codes Hold the Fort (Exp.) Score Big (Exp.) 10M Points Ultra Star Ultra Star Deluxe (Exp.)

Ohio, USA

ok leaderboard looks much better now. i minorly adjusted the panel color to a slightly more gray color as well