No Early Blues Category?
8 years ago
Illinois, USA

Now that I got the fastest time without doing early blues in Pay Off Debt, would it be possible to put it as a separate category?

Or could we put Early Blues? as a yes or no.

The perfect time (No Early Blues) that I can think of would be 2:10 which is about 12-14 minutes difference compare to the Early Blues WR (HSS).

asheevee_ likes this
United States

I totally agree with this. I can do early blues, but I'm not consistent enough to do it in runs, and because of the huge time difference in every category, it should at least have its own variable (maybe subcategory)

New York, USA

Not that I have any say in this matter but I'll throw it out here anyway. Early blues really doesn't change the route to the point where I think it needs its own category. The only time it actually saves in an RTA would be the time of dissembling the electric gate the blues are held behind bc technically you could just do perplexing pool to get yellows, end the day and then go along with the route as if you had done the route with the early blues. Is there a certain aspect of the glitch I could maybe help you with?

chobo likes this
United States

No, you're missing the actual time save. I lets you do Perplexing Pool in one trip (even though it usually takes 2 days), and do Valley of Repose 3 early, which saves a fuck ton of time in Pay off Debt, like 12 minutes. You only take advantage of the Perplexing Pool in one trip in All Treasures, and even though it usually takes 2 days in RTA, the length of the second day is significantly shorter than the length of the second Perplexing Pool trip in No Early Blues. Most of this is from taking advantage of VoR3 early to get rush boots to make it a ton faster. That also lets you use rush boots for Awakening Wood 2 as well, even more time save right there. About the route you are proposing, it would be slower than the normal No Early Blues route. I'm not sure exactly how much time Early Blues saves in All Treasures, but I'm guessing about 15 minutes.

Ohio, USA

There's no reason to split a category (or add a variable) because a trick is hard and saves a lot of time. I'm strongly opposed to splitting categories (or adding variables) in almost any circumstance because you should do whatever is fastest, and if you don't want to, then you're not going to have a good time. Side note: If a community is heavily split (like SMG1 with 1P and 2P), they have a very large tendency to just disregard the fact that they're variables and treat them like categories anyway.

Disregarding opinions, let's look at what is changed in Pay off Debt:

Day 1, 2, HoB, WFG, Early Blues, SH, BK (end day), SCX, FC (end day), CoS, GK without Early Blues becomes Day 1, 2, HoB, WFG (end day), CoS, GK (end day), SH, BK (end day), SCX, FC

So, you end the day one more time (roughly one minute), grow some yellow Pikmin while you're in Perplexing Pool (it takes Ghostly one minute) and have to break down an electric gate (probably takes another minute to walk over there). Also, you're allowed to do other things while the gate is being broken down, like get the above ground treasures like you would after Snagret Hole in the Early Blues route. Also, Perplexing Pool in one day is utterly irrelevant in Pay off Debt since blue Pikmin are not needed (and in fact aren't even used in the world record).

It's a bit tricky to time how much Early Blues saves, but I can assure you the trick does not single-handedly save 12 minutes. You can't just subtract HSS's run from Ghostly's run, since the rest of the run is pretty much just getting good luck. It's especially a bad idea to do this, since Ghostly's run has a few issues that would be important to fix in a no Early Blues run:

  • He knocks down the poison wall guarding the yellow Pikmin instead of just doing this:
  • He stood around and watched the electric gate break instead of getting some of the above ground treasures

The only category that benefits the most from this skip (besides blue onion lol) is All Treasures, for which I can understand the desire, as Rush Boots and 1-day Perplexing Pool are very beneficial. But the category is mostly inactive and time variations in All Treasures are so extreme that it makes me a bit hesitant to even consider it, especially considering Ghostly has the record by 16 minutes. We don't have any legitimate evidence aside from speculation that Early Blues saves an extreme amount of time in this category anyway.

All things considered, it's ridiculous that the reason for this split is "it saves time and I can't do it". I'm not trying to undermine the difficulty of learning Early Blues (believe me, I've been there and it wasn't fun), but you're eventually going to learn Early Blues, right? I hope? It's not like the Pikmin 2 community is just bustling with runners. The usefulness of the category will eventually subside because you'll all be running with Early Blues at some point, I'd like to think. It just seems like promoting slowness when you could be spending the time practicing the trick. Hopefully you understand where I'm coming from.

Andrick11, Auphonium, and frogyfro like this