Game Segment leaderboards
5 years ago
Kent, England

On a lot of games I run it is increasingly common for there to be categories for groupings of IL's, most typically, a category for each 'World' or 'Stage' of the game. Indeed, Individual World categories are much more popular than full game in lots of games (e.g. https://www.speedrun.com/sdd ) because a 5-10 minute run is more accessible than a 30-60 minute run.

However, I don't think the leaderboards accommodate Segments (i.e. 'individual worlds' or 'stages' or 'acts') very cleanly as they either have to be put as a full game category (which technically they aren't), or as an IL (which technically they aren't) or as a Miscellaneous category (which isn't ideal especially if the IW's are more popular than full game).

It would be great to be able to add a third leaderboard type, i.e. Segment, in addition to Full Game / Individual Level, or find some other way to more neatly incorporate those categories into the game's page.

DracaarysTrophy, Bogdan_mk and 2 others like this
Barcelona, Catalonia

Totally agree with @drgrumble, I've seen the segmented runs been classified as full game runs, IL and misc, but I don't think they fit in any of those categories, so the creation of a specific leaderboard for worlds/acts would be a great idea

Switzerland

But is it really worth it? Id say a third type would be rather annoying since even ILs are often pretty much empty, some games even go as far and just don't add them because no one would run them (obviously still giving the option if runners show interest in it, which didn't happen yet). So id say either put it in ILs or as a Misc, misc would allow for putting the worlds as subcategories and include categories which real ILs shouldn't have (due to the lack of creating categories exclusive to a few ILs)

Antarctica

[quote]However, I don't think the leaderboards accommodate Segments (i.e. 'individual worlds' or 'stages' or 'acts') very cleanly as they either have to be put as a full game category (which technically they aren't), or as an IL (which technically they aren't)[/quote] An Individual World is the exact definition of an IL, not sure how you can say it technically isn’t. There really isn’t such a thing as an IW because IL doesn’t explicitly mean it has to be for a Level (like Level 1, 2, etc). This statement confuses me because maybe I’m not sure what you’re trying to consider an IL, but based on your use of “Individual World”, that should definitely be set up as an IL.

In Ocarina of Time, the ILs are the individual temples/dungeons. They aren’t ITs or IDs because that would be silly, they are exactly what an IL is for. If your game can be divided up into worlds or acts or something like that, the you already have the basis for ILs.

Segmented runs are based around save points and optimizing each section of the run before looking at a final, IGT of some kind. Segmented runs don’t really need their own LB setup since a segmented run is indeed a full game run, just with different rules. A category for this like FF9 did is the best way to go (even SDA used “categories” to split Segmented and RTA runs).

If you’re talking about an LB where people can post segment times, that’s kind of weird since segments are arbitrary and this would only work if you standardized segments of the game and people had to follow that explicitly. If that’s your goal, then I can kind of see how it would work as an LB, but it also seems like it would work in something like a Google Doc where people can share the best segments from their splits since that’s basically what you’re after.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Alayan, MASH and 2 others like this
Kent, England

Thanks for the comments.

Lots of games have, say, 30 levels, but 10 levels to each 'world' / 'act' / 'stage', e.g. https://www.speedrun.com/Sword_Of_Xolan . Each stage is a collection of levels so by definition is not an 'individual level'. Each 'world' / 'act' / 'stage' is not arbitrary, it is defined by the game.

'Segments' was perhaps the wrong word for me to have used as it has other connotations in speedrunning. I am not suggesting there should be a leaderboard for segmented runs.

I'm not suggesting this issue is an issue for all games and I agree it is meaningless for a game like OOT. It is just a little awkward I guess fitting a separate 'world' / 'act' / 'stage' category into the current LB dynamic for a lot of the games I run. It's not a huge issue, granted.

Timmiluvs likes this
Antarctica

I knew I probably didn’t understand what you were trying to turn into an “IL”. Now that you mentioned that each world has multiple levels I see where you’re coming from and how it wouldn’t fit in as a traditional IL.

In that case, one potential solution with the website in its current form would to still use the IL boards, but create subcategories. In other words, create ILs for the worlds/acts and then create subcategories for each level within the world, including 1 additional subcategory for all the levels.

The upside is that this will work fine, but the downside is that it can get cluttered very quickly when you have say 10 levels like you mentioned.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
drgrumble likes this
Kent, England

@Timmiluvs Thanks, that is certainly a potential solution. I also like the way NSMB DS has done it in the Misc category as linked by blueYOSHI although for games where 'World 1' is actually the most popular category, it could not be the shown by default LB for the game (I'm being pedantic now).

There are lots of current 'workarounds' which all work to a degree (a selection of different approaches): https://www.speedrun.com/cb https://www.speedrun.com/Speed_Run/full_game#World_1 https://www.speedrun.com/cblind/individual_levels

But if there was a way of fitting these categories into the site more naturally then that would be great. I agree it can get cluttered pretty easily.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
United States

I don't really see a problem with having a collection of levels that are a single world in a game remaining on the level leaderboards. The only distinction between the two is just that one is a collection of the other, but still not a full game run. The level leaderboards aren't necessarily set in stone as in it HAS to only contain single levels, I see it pretty much as a segmented category already, levels are segments of a game just like worlds are too.

Alayan and drgrumble like this
European Union

can I gain more people for additional (renamable) "boards"? "I can't seem to find a way to implement this proper" - Additional Board! "I want scores to be on the board" - Additional Board! "I have way too many ILs, can't I seperate them somehow?" - Additional Board(s)! "I want to make more categories without bloating the main categories" - Additional Board! "Meme Categories!" - Additional Board! "Multiplayer/Co-Op Categories" - Could fit on the regular board as subcategories or smth idk, but ADDITIONAL BOARDS! https://i.imgur.com/S0MN2uM.png

Edited by the author 5 years ago
6oliath, Alayan and 3 others like this
Kent, England

@Twan_Jones I agree with you I guess, that the level leaderboard is the correct place for world runs.

The only small problem is that levels within the level leaderboard are trivialised a bit by only showing the top time on the level leaderboard front page, so it's not very obvious where the main competition in the game is. If one particular world run is by far the most popular category for the game, there is no way of showing that category by default (that is why a lot of world runs are put in the full game board e.g. https://www.speedrun.com/sdd which is technically not correct). An option to make any category (not just the full game LB or the whole level LB) the default shown leaderboard would solve that.

Hands up, I'm probably just splitting hairs.