Heyo. It's time to discuss rules for single character Odyssey runs. I will develop in this message my thoughts on the current ruleset, my pro and cons and we could potentially improve them.

The current ruleset is as follow:

• Time starts on "Yes" on the story

• Time end on Final Hit/Final Blow after the final battle

• Level and progress of the character at the start of the story is based off of a new game save

• You are not allowed to have any progress in one of the other storys (except prologue)

• Pre-customization is not allowed

• Buying addional calendar boosts is not allowed

• making use off the Bonus Day is allowed

So the tricky thing about the rules for Odysseys is that if you change one thing, pretty much everything needs to change. And that only is because in the current state of things, Introduction/Preprologue and the Prologue are not included in these runs. And if we change anything, this would void pretty much every single run in the LB. Anyways...

The 1st point I want to touch upon is the "Buying addional calendar boosts is not allowed/Making use off the Bonus Day is allowed". I think the rationale behind this was to have a "low EXP" category, for the Odysseys. But how relevant is that? If we want to speedrun as fast as possible, shouldn't we allow bonus day increases? We would go from a 1.1x to potentially 1.5x bonus, we would increase AP and Gils received from fights... And depending on the character, you might want AP bonus over EXP bonus, so it could be a routing element. However, not increasing the bonus allows everyone to start on a even playing field. So what's best for the category, allow for Bonus day increases or not? And allow bonus day at all? Does it need to change? I think the way it is at the moment is fine.

The second and big issue that needs to be discussed, is the starting point, and all the problems the starting point induces at the moment. "Time starts on "Yes" on the story", meaning that anything that happens in the prologue is fair game, and that can lead to severe abuse. The first thing is pretty straight forward. Since WoL is played in both the Prologue and his Odysseys, all the EXP you gain in the Prologue carries over to the run. Meaning that if you wished, you could easily farm exp in the Prologue by various methods I won't mention here, and you could potentialy start his Odyssey at level 10 for example if you had a dozen hours to waste. And you would still be in line with those 2 rules:

• Level and progress of the character at the start of the story is based off of a new game save
• You are not allowed to have any progress in one of the other storys (except prologue)

The other big issue that was fixed by a "gentleman" agreement in the previous community not to perform it. And it relies on the chocobo. Your chocobo walks along a path that is defined by your chocobo plan, and each time you engage in a fight and terminate it, either by winning, or escaping a fight (not restarting, completely running away from that fight), your chocobo will take a step on that chocobo plan. This will grant you fixed EXP bonuses that occur on specific steps depending on each chocobo plan, random EXP bonuses that occur on random steps, and accessories that you can equip to increase EXP gained after a set amount of steps. The exploit is that you can engage, and escape any battles in the Prologue to make your Chocobo take as many steps as you want, to stack up 99x accessories if you wish to, or to aline certain chocobo bonuses with important fights in any Odyssey run. Which could give you a shitload of EXP as compared to what you what you normally have, unlocking new abilities earlier, etc...

Final issue is that there is nothing in the ruleset that prevents you from doing custom fights with a random character to build gil and PP, and do your Odyssey run with another character, it still doesn't defy the ruleset. And if we allow to increase bonus day effect, doing custom fight could allow you to buy more increases for your bonus day.

How to fix WoL? Add a rule to force him to be level1 when starting? Still doesn't fix discrepancies, simply by doing an EX Burst on every fight of the Prologue, you'd be ahead in term of experience. But it would be a start.

How to fix Chocobo exploit? Force everyone to start with a chocobo chance level of 5%? You could still do the exploit, reset your chocobo plan, and step your chocobo in custom battles and start at 5% (you'd still have the accessories). Not really useful, cuz an advised Mods will see that you are equiping an accessory you're not supposed to.

So aside from adding rules, I am all ears about how to make a fair ruleset that noone can cheese through. The only "Hard Fix" that i have thought about pretty much since I joined the community is change the starting point, and doing so, invalidate all the runs present on the LB, which is not really nice, but it would definitely fix everything. By starting on new game, and therefore including Introduction and Preprologue, everything is included, and it would basically fix everything, chocobo exploit, WoL, custom fights, and even precustomization. But then again it would invalidate all the runs, and that is the only thing that I have some issues with. Mizzow mentionned that having to restart everytime is shity because of Battlegen RNG, and people would have to retry the intro and prologue if they don't get the right Battlegens. To me, that argument is pretty much inadmissible. RNG is an integral part of speedrunning, and this game in general. So that can't be the only argument against it. Anyways, even tho, it's not the best solution, it's the one I am more leaning towards, But I am aware of how shitty that rule would be. But then again, since we are starting anew with the community, if it has to happen, it's now.

Just a final word. The precustomization rule prevents you from accessing menu before your run, meaning you can't skip the tutorial prompts, can't change your button layout, your abilities, or equipment (which is nice in case you decided to perform some exploits mentionned above or not, the mods will be able to see what you equip). I still can't figure out what is best, menuing is definitely part this speedrun, but mashing through tutorial prompts hardly classifies as speedrunnable content...

So tl;dr:

• Bonus day for Odysseys -> keep it? Allow increase?
• WoL -> enforce a level 1 rule?
• Chcobo abuse -> 5% chance at the start of the run?
• Precustom -> Allow it?
• Start -> Start from new game or keep the rule as it is?

When everyone airs what they think about everything, we will take an educated decision to make the right choice between fun and fairness for the ruleset, in agreement with the majority.

Take care everyone, and as MASH said, stay sexy

If we were looking for an easy way to fix WOL alone, we could just adjust his category to "Prologue and Destiny Odyssey I" and have it start from START. It doesn't solve the other pre-run abuse problems but it is something. I am not a fair judge for invalidating runs because, frankly, my name isn't on this leaderboard yet, so I have nothing to lose.

• Bonus day for Odysseys -> keep it? Allow increase? → Sincerely, I don't see any harm in allowing that. I mean, it doesn't add any speed to the run, especially if we change the timing system for matching the Any% format, and being sure all the exploits can't have any effect during the runs. Actually, if it's not for Any% setup, bonuses don't really bring much to a solo character run. Might as well argue it's a bit slower on equivalent RNG through the stages up until Destiny Odyssey boss.

• WoL -> enforce a level 1 rule? → Yes. Yes. And yes, especially if the timing system for Odysseys isn't changed. One of the exploit that the former leaderboard representative actually ignored up until the very end of their service. Nothing prevents for busting some EX Bursts to be granted some extra HP and make WoL being higher than Level 1, thus, having a little extra bit of OPness if he were to be the one chosen for an Odyssey run. Omega said it, the exploit related to this is just ... absurd, and should be prevented. So yes, WoL Lv1 + answer to the question below. → Though, if the timing system were to change, then, not going by that rule wouldn't do any harm, as it would only slow the runner by trying to do the exploits or the workarounds, rather than just flying through the Prologue, to complete a WoL run, and get the fastest time of the two if such a race were to happen.

• Chocobo abuse -> 5% chance at the start of the run? → Yes. Yes. And yes. It matter soooo much, it's even surprising to ask about it, knowing the previous team came to know about it quiiiite late. Nothing prevents us to just forfeit any # of battle to align the very first x5 EXP Bonus onto the very first Chaos Piece or Strange Battlepiece (golden) and just wing all the xp you can, being OP right at the start, especially for solo Odysseys; there, it'd be deadly. So, yep, nope; 5% or bust.

• Precustom -> Allow it? → This one is kind of a mess I brought in the past, but for a good cause. Precustomizing any character prior to the run, especially after getting a battlegen in the Prologue which insta-unlocks the Shop (whereas you'd unlock it on 2nd Stage of any Odyssey or up until you get a battlegen via Quick Match), is a huge advantage for solo Odysseys. Getting rid of a whole menu session, and not having to do another one up until the last stage, or the second-to-last stage, is pretty huge. So, if we are to change the timing system, I'd say to allow it, as it won't have any matter; if the timing system doesn't change, then nope.

• Start -> Start from new game or keep the rule as it is? → This is one of the point I had mind for so long, but kept for me in case it created another huge ego mess on any place. The current timing system is good for Any%, after the savefile, completely fresh of the hoven, without any means to cheat it on before starting the actual run. → For Odysseys, specifically them, I'd also convert to the Any% timing system : since you can exploit things which could impact the whole run, and since you also need to make sure that everything prior to the run is transparent enough and "well-thought" on the runner's knowledge, converting back to Any% timing to make sure everything is going "naturally" without any "prior setup" - like the Garland battlegen that not everyone can get easily before each Odyssey runs, but plays a huge factor into it because stat boost - and thus, a better timing overview. Not only the quality of the RNG would play a factor, but the way the runner handles it would also come in the play, which would be a huge plus to this. → For Shade Impulses / Distant Glories / Inward Chaos, the current timing system is fine ... although one could argue that resetting ad vitam nauseam to get the right board skills like Jump + Maser Eye + Invisible, is kind of a way to differenciate two runners, but since everyone can reset to afford these, it's not really a timing method issue, more a commitment to get the perfect RNG setup with the perfect character made for going fast for example. → For any other categories : this will have to be judged in terms of what the run is based on, and how it progresses. if we need a basis of fairness and evenness, with no manipulation nor prior setups, then Any% timing would be prefered; otherwise, let it go under the SIs/DGs/IC system. Simple as that.

I honestly should have written this a while ago but oh well doing this now I guess. I completely agree that the current ruleset is a mess and needs tweaking. And I agree with every point Omega and Leo make. I am not really a DO runner because I enjoy full runs a lot more but regardless these are still as important as Any%. The only thing I wanna point out is to start as in Any% while it does remove any means that the save could have been setup very specifically to cheat in a way to save time during the run, the biggest downside of the idea is the intro itself, it doesn't hurt Any% too much, because it just makes sense to do the entire story and the run is long enough to compensate, but for the DO it basically makes it a 7:30 minute intro to even get an attempt started. In turn this can make runners just not run these because of how quickly and tedious this will get just to improve your time on any character DO. But still the fact that no cheating and no preliminary setup can be done is still a lot higher as a priority and all the other points Leo mentioned also add up to this, so I just say do it and let runners bear with that. SI/DG and IW timings should probably stay the same though, I mean they are in some way NG+ :^) Why I focused on the timing idea is because it basically solves all the problems that just come up when you allow to skip the Prologue.

Just a small note on Bonus Day increases, again if we make Any% timing rule it will be fine tbh. As Leo mentioned they might as well be slower, but you never know when a more optimized route comes up.

That's all from me folks. Have a good day :v)

Just to rebound on this very point Smartkin suggested, and in a very wise way: for DO, including Ante-Prologue & Prologue in the timing would be kind of a loooooong-shot; BUT, to make up for that, we could ask, in the ruleset, to add the Prologue+Ante-Prologue, with no timer, and start the timer when you confirm the DO. The catch would be to ensure the non-manipulated/non-cheated policy thanks to the VOD of any run starting with clear savefile + pre-run launch; AND, we could keep all kind of competitivity in any kind of categories which would need to include that (Prologue for example, or any DO).

Otherwise, my other points still stands \o

Hey team! Sorry for the late reply. I'll take the points from Omega's TLDR and work from there:

"Bonus day for Odysseys -> keep it? Allow increase?"

Something to consider, is that even if you specifically set your Bonus Day as a day that you currently aren't on, the game can still give you some form of bonus on that day. So are we going to start resetting runs over "oh no the GAME decided to give me extra Gil". I myself see the Bonus Day as a non issue purely based on this. It basically works as another form of RNG and in trying to keep everything as consistant as possible. We might as well let it stand as it is. I'll talk about the PP Catelog while I'm here. I feel that you start to cross the line of what should and should not be a "timed" menu. What I mean is unlike the calender bonuses (which we dont have full control over), we do have control over using the PP catelog. So we would need to talk about including it as a menu that would need to be included in the run. To which I would offer 2 options (when discussion the idea of letting it in):

1. It has to be included as a timed menu as part of the run
2. We agree some form of reasoning similar to the calender bonus that we just let it be a pre-run setup that does not need to be timed Now in some cases allowing PP Catelog additions can change up runs. Having more EXP might make it worthwhile to include a later menu for certain characters, which then might include routing trading out EXP for AP/Gil. Final opinion: I'm not completely sure if I do or don't like the idea of allowing the PP Catelog upgrades. Considering how short the runs are we might be letting an element through that begins to cause more issues than it is worth, especially for new runners who can use DO% as a starting point to get into running the game as a whole.

"WoL -> enforce a level 1 rule?"

This was actually a conversation that Omega and myself had a while ago and I believe we agreed that this is a positive and simple solution to this problem. While yes you could potentially route more EXP to be closer to level 2 while in the Prologue, in my opinion I say good on you for doing so. As long as you keep yourself at level 1 I feel that allowing runners to get creative with their save file preparation is welcome.

"Chcobo abuse -> 5% chance at the start of the run?"

Simple fix. Prologue sets you to 5%, which is an easy thing to check due to menuing at the start of runs being literally the fastest option for any character. Add in a rule section regarding the banning of "Chocobo Abuse" to clear things up and simple watch for any equipping of Chocobo Accessories during runs to prevent any form of cheating.

"Precustom -> Allow it?"

While I understand there was "drama" around this rule as a whole. Like I said in the discussion thread not too long ago, I feel that the rule as a whole is a positive change. I personally regard menuing as a key element of speedrunning and if you have ever seen my talk about FFIX, I see mashing ability as a skill and as such should not be eliminated from the run. We should also consider that allowing precustomisation would take away our ability to easily check runs for certain abusable factors i.e. Chocobo. As allowing precustomisation would mean not requiring an early menu within runs.

"Start -> Start from new game or keep the rule as it is?"

Now I'm going to speak as a runner who has basically the most experience in these categories. Like in a lot of other games, there are "sections" of a game that we like to speedrun on their own. DO% is DFF's version of that idea, and I genuinely think that adding the Prologue as a requirement could completely kill these categories. We should consider a couple of things. First of all that Prologue is a story of its own and as such actually has its own category. In regards to Battlegems, forcing a runner to sit through Prologue over and over due to an RNG element not allowing them access to the shop, which we should regard as a basic necessity for DO%'s would only serve to frustrate runners. Is it really fair for ANOTHER story section to effect each character's stories? With how limiting Prologue is in regards to what you can actually effect a DO run with, when we consider how easy it is to set up a save with each runner having an equal Prologue outcome, will it really have that much of an effect on the run that is positive.

I believe that the DO%'s are a great entry level run for Dissidia, which we should take advantage of and keep as simple as possible for not only newer runners, but potentially returning runners looking to kick off with something lighter. Don't get me wrong. With some of the points raised I have no issue going back and reclaiming my runs, especially with some of the options this discussion could provide. But again I believe that we should be keeping these smaller "bite sized" categories for DFF as simple as possible. Not everyone has previous experience with DFF, the last thing we want to do is turn people away from the game because we added in more frustrating elements.

I'll apologise for the garbage layout of my post. At the time of posting I'm struggling to get down exactly what I'm trying to say in my usual manner, brain is isnt in the right gear but I held off for long enough trying to get it kick started again.

Cheers team!

Sorry for the unacceptable delay... Anyways...

Concerning Leo's suggestion, that was also what I suggested to the former admins concerning the precustom rule. Including the prologue before the VoD seems like a good solution... When farming for the strength powder doesn't take 30 minutes, which it can sometimes ^^ To the point where if you start running late in the day, you'll skip your bonus day, which I've had happen once. But yeah, that would fix a lot of issues with pre-DO abuse.

I agree with a lot of Mizzow's points, mostly on the "fun" and "entry-level" side of DOs. However there are two points which I fundamentaly disagree with. The first one concerning WoL. I can't see how allowing people to start with different conditions, different amounts of experience for the exact same run is a good thing. You say that you'd encourage people that are creative with their savefile, but the chocobo abuse is exactly that, being creative with the game. When doing this, you're not glitching the game in any ways, but you could have a certain advantage. We have an expression in French, related to the actual difference that EXP gained makes, which is "de l'enculage de mouche". But the principle still stands to me, either we have a standardized run where everybody compete on an equal footing, or we don't have any at all...

The second point is concerning one argument against the starting point. Starting from new game is a hardfix on the problem of doing shady stuff before the run. I agree doing the prologue sucks, and I can admit it's the worst fix there is... Concerning the battlegens and how frustrating they are, though... Well that's RNG. It sucks, but that's RNG. People restart runs a billion times for the right RNG in a multitude of games, with beginnings that are much more boring than DFF, look at FF8, FF9, many Castlevania games, Halos, etc... Sure it sucks, but that's the way it is. You can purchase items soon enough in your run, so as a beginner, it doesn't make much of a difference anyways.

I mean, I don't know, I understand that wasting 7-8 minutes on everything before your DO sucks, but starting from start is an easy way to just make sure everyone starts on an equal footing, without making the category kind of a joke. It's up to what people want at this point, I am not against keeping things how we've got them, and I am not absolutely in favor of the new starting point. WoL's situation really ticks me off, and the new start fixes everything. Leo's suggestion is incompatible with your idea of a standardized save file we could share, but to be honest, that reaaaaly doesn't sound legit anyways... So i don't know.