I am fully aware of the rule when submitting a new game that it must not be highscore based. However, what about highscore categories inside of games? I came across of such instance in https://www.speedrun.com/cgggd/full_game#Highscores
Well, in that case of cgggd, the whole game is still high-score based, not just the highscores category. A category of speedrunning a game to an arbitrary highscore count is still based on that highscore, IMO. (Maybe we can call it a middle ground between the two)
If a game fully complies with the game request rules, it can still be okay to add few categories that do not. I'm stating that based on the conversation about real life categories in this thread: https://www.speedrun.com/the_site/thread/pa4bi As long as there is an actual game, no one seems to care much about the leaderboard also having miscellaneous categories with non-game activity.
The site does not support high scores, and creating scoreboards in this way is generally frowned upon and strongly advised against. However, since there isn't a good alternative for score tracking in general (the more popular score tracking websites either don't have great reputations or have... other issues) existing high score categories like this are being left alone, at least for now.
@ShikenNuggets You said it yourself, there aren't any good alternatives for score tracking, so SRcom should implement this feature as quickly as possible. I can't imagine this being a very complex task.
@andypanther The site wasn't designed for highscores records, so "implementing this feature as quickly as possible" is not so easy as you imagine. You can read the discussion in this thread about highscores: https://www.speedrun.com/the_site/thread/1gbee . Most people DON'T really want sr.c to contain highscores, as their nature is inherently different from speedruns.
If you think this isn't a very complex task you've clearly never designed a website or built additional functionality into an existing one.
I'm not a web developer, that's true, if more experienced people say that adding score is harder than it seems, I can accept that.
But I can not accept the claim that "most people don't want SRcom to contain highscores" and therefore it shouldn't be implemented. First off, is this truly a majority? I'm not sure what you would get when doing a poll, especially if you ask the question in the right way ("Should communities be able to have highscore leaderboards?" instead of "Should SRcom support highscore tracking?"). This brings me to the second and most important point: Even if a majority does not want highscore leaderboards to be a thing on SRcom, insisting on not providing this option comes off as a very shitty attitude towards every community who does want it. The solution is simple: Don't like highscore leaderboards as a community? Don't have them! But don't try to take them from others.
@andypanther You should take a look at this relevant forum thread to understand why high scores were never added. In short, there's 12 pages over a year of discussion between the community which reached no conclusion, and the whole question has been put off to prioritize other tasks. I don't see that changing, especially since the site mods and devs always have their hands full.
[quote=andypanther]so SRcom should implement this feature as quickly as possible. I can't imagine this being a very complex task.[/quote]
I'm just gonna link a forum post I made a while ago that goes over a lot of this, but the short answer to this is:
- Properly supporting high scores is not nearly as simple as you think
- It's unclear whether the site should be supporting high scores in the first place (IMO, having their own site would be significantly better)
[quote=andypanther]insisting on not providing this option comes off as a very shitty attitude towards every community who does want it[/quote]
So, just so we're all clear, nobody has anything against the high score community and the desire to have high score leaderboards in general (well, maybe some people do, but who cares what they think). However, looking at the big picture there are a lot of legitimate concerns when it comes to having them here, and the result of that is that a lot of people think that it's best if we don't attempt this.
[quote]besides the commonality that people speedrunning and high scoring are typically good at said games, there really is nothing in common relating to the goals of both activities.[/quote]
I'd contest this. Sometimes games give bonus points for fast completion time, and getting the high score is similar to a 100% run. Other times the goal of a speedrun is to get a certain score, like in Pac-Man there's a category for perfect score.
You said they didn't really have anything in common, and I provided counter-examples. I'm not really interested in arguing what constitutes a "true" speedrun. My point is that for some games the high score gameplay has nothing to do with speedrunning, while for others there's some overlap. Whether we should track high scores on this website for certain games is a different question.
They aren't gonna put High Scores on here. They have a thread from like 2-3 years ago where they talked about the possibility of High Scores, as much as Id love to see it happen I dont think it will. People only wanna focus on their speedruns and dont wanna branch out to anything else. I'll just keep using other shittier websites to focus on my High Scores and my speedruns focus will be here.