Since there's no rules or anything currently set for any of the categories, I thought I'd just bring this up here. I know the Japanese leaderboards time from Power On to Final Save, but is there an official timing style to use for speedrun.com yet? And if not would anyone be open to discussing one for future use?
Just FYI, JP PS3 runs usually go from selecting the game off the XMB, not console power on, if they don't do New Game timing (subtle difference). That said, I don't think the western Tales community has a standard, especially for Graces...
Well that makes a little more sense, although I heard some just set it to auto-start disc so maybe that was a thing in the past, I dunno though I just don't understand the thought process behind doing either of those or anything like them, or maybe I'm just weird and it makes sense to normal people. Either way though I'm just hoping to maybe kickstart some talk about Graces in general so I thought it might be good to start here. I guess I could start with my own opinions on it if there's nothing official on it or anything.
So after going over the start and end points of all the runs currently on the Leaderboard, it seems both NG and NG+ favor starting time after confirming the options (which also honestly makes the most sense to me personally), while for the ones that don't end on Final Save after skipping through the credits go for either ending on the killing blow for Lambda Angelus or ending on the fade-out from the Lambda Angelus victory screen.
Generally, we don't use the JP timing method for our runs as most of us deem it unecessary. Usually we time from the selection of New Game to the defeat of the Final Boss. If you choose to use JP timing we will just convert it accordingly.
Alright, well that makes sense. I guess the main question then is which point is considered the 'finish point', although it's only a difference of a few seconds either way. personally I split on the fade out of the victory screen so I might go with that personally just to keep it uniform.
Whenever the Final Boss is defeated and when the screen fades to black/white is when I usually end the run as that is a good point to end it so you don't have to quickly put yourself in place to stop the timer.
Yeah, it basically goes Death Quote-Fade to White-Battle Victory Screen-Fade to Black, and victory screen is only a second or two to mash through so it's close enough that it probably doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things. Might be something to come back to and discuss in-depth if Graces ever picks up some popularity though hahaha.
