I’ve been discussing with the moderators of the main game I play the possibility of adding a low% category. They support this idea but have no clue how to implement it on the leaderboards. We want it so that least collectables has first place followed by best time. Thanks in advance.
You just answered your question, don't collect any collectibles. If you don't know how to implement a Low% why did you even ask?
That was rude. They're asking about setting up the leaderboard, not about the rules of the category. And as much as I'd like to I'm afraid I don't know either. You probably need a number variable for the collectible count sorted by ascending, then times sorted by ascending. Though I have to question if you know the minimum number of items and if that has any potential to change. If it's known and fairly fixed, I'd say just set the rules for that to be specifically how many you can collect. And if it changes, do a category split and obsolete the old count. That would probably be easier than adding the item count.
No, the problem is collecting some is unavoidable so we want to make a category that ranks people first by number of items collected which will vary greatly run to run and then by their time.
@Piggyking99 Unfortunately there is no good way to sort runs primarily by % completion and secondarily by time. The way this site has its boards set up is not conducive to how low% works. There are ways around it but it's messy and ugly. There might be a way with variables and filters, I'm not sure. Many of the boards that do include a low% category basically don't allow various % completions, and only accept the lowest number instead of sorting like they should.
@michaelatheswag I believe you might have misinterpreted what is being asked.
While it's not a good solution, I figured I'd mention it anyways, but for this case I've seen often people add a time penalty like 1 hour per extra item collected or something, especially in a game that is <30 minutes or something
Adding a time penalty relative to the number of unnecessary collectibles is the cleanest solution imo, but only really works for games under an hour. You could maybe just use a variable for completion and set the lowest completion as the default value so that higher completions won't be shown without filtering.
oh sorry for being rude, I misunderstood what you were asking
As long as you know the minimum amount of collectibles possible to finish, I don't see a reason for any workaround like that. Any run that collects additional stuff is clearly not qualified for low%. It would only get more complicated if after a while people figure out how to skip more collectibles resulting in a lower percentage of stuff. Low% is usually meant in a very strict way to really just collect the bare minimum and nothing else. Is there randomness to the collectibles? then low% would probably be a nightmare to run anyway lol
Personally i'd set it up using variables and filters. Add a collectibles variable and set the lowest known amount as the default, that way the leaderboard will be automatically filtered to only show the runs with that value. If someone wants to see the runs for other collected amounts or all runs, then they can select that from the filters. If a new lowest amount of collectibles is discovered, then set the default to that amount.
That's not how low% is supposed to work though. @Liv @Laxxus
Suppose you complete a game in 2 mins getting 10 collectibles and claim WR. Then someone comes and beats the game in 2 hours getting 9 items. They have the new WR. Your run doesn't become invalidated. It becomes 2nd place.
The site really doesn't have a built-in method for this two-pronged sorting method so I understand why some game boards may just invalidate or obsolete those runs. This limitation is probably what led to how you said low% works.
At least, that's my understanding.
If you can't figure out what to do, you could just make a spreadsheet for the leaderboard. That way, you can manually place runs where they belong. You could have a column for #items and time, and it would function like normal.
In sml2, there is a low% category. What they do i s they add a time penalty for collecting coins, and that way the lowest % completion takes priority, and then time.
I think my point stands, and I think you just repeated yours @Liv and we might just need to agree to disagree.
Nonetheless, there are two stated ways to rank low%.
One is to accept only the lowest theoretical percentage and invalidate all other runs. This is the method best supported by SRC. "Lowest%", if you will. Superlative ranking method.
The other is to just rank them first by lower completion, then second by time. This is clunky to do on SRC. "Lower%", if I may. Comparative ranking method.
It really doesn't matter in the end if we have different opinions in this topic on what the true ranking method for low% is. Different games can work better with one or the other. Obviously the OP is asking for the two-stage sorting method for their game, based on the variability of percent completion from run to run. Other games probably do just fine with having a lowest% completion number set in stone.
It's the whole reason different games have different rules, which is the strength of this site. Still, it's a shame that low% comparative is not supported by the site while low% superlative isn't ideal for some games. Resorting to artificial time "penalties" by adding units to the hour value so the runs sort properly is a sorry arrangement.
I explained my understanding of low%. "That's not how low% is supposed to work... At least, that's my understanding." You repeated your different understanding. I then expanded on our two different approaches in a more conciliatory way. "There are two stated ways to rank low%".
Don't be confused :)
[quote=6oliath]
Suppose you complete a game in 2 mins getting 10 collectibles and claim WR. Then someone comes and beats the game in 2 hours getting 9 items. They have the new WR. Your run doesn't become invalidated. It becomes 2nd place.[/quote]
Sure it does. Because your run isn't low% anymore. Maybe you could make a new category that doesn't include whatever skip enabled the 9-item run to happen, I've seen games do that.
I didn't mean to be condescending, I apologize. My "two stated ways" post was as mentioned an attempt at being more conciliatory, but for sure my tone might not have come across that way.
I really did mean that I think the pseudo-authority of this site's boards and the architecture of the leaderboard ordering system (that can only be ranked on time and nothing else) has had the effect of promoting the approach where all other runs are invalidated, and diminishing the approach where runs are sorted first by completion and second by time. That's a more general impression and I shouldn't have imputed it to Liv or Laxxus personally, clearly.
"Are there games already on here that run Low% under which lowest percentage / item attainment, etc isn't required, then?"
YES! Absolutely. Several were already mentioned in this topic. A lot of them, er, "appropriate" the time (hours) value to force the board to rank runs in two stages.
I'm not going to out games that use time this way, last thing I want is for some site mod to see the list and deem it an inappropriate use of the leaderboards, I don't think they would but I don't know the new admins very well. Nevertheless, I did already know of a few games, and I did find more just by searching, including some pretty big games with over nine hundred runners. Moreover, my search led me to a small handful of other forum threads like this one where low% is explained with the comparative completion definition I'm going by. Many of those threads concluded the same, that the site isn't set up for low% like that. So don't go thinking I'm some lone radical low% truther lol.
Anyway I liked Liv's idea of sending the list to the OP to actually help, so I went to DM them, found a user with a similar name and location, and the game they run already has this implemented. I'm not sure if it was added as a result of this topic, but I think so. Which would mean the OP got the info they needed.
By the way, for those who are still arguing that low% should invalidate all previous and future runs, I want to be clear that this is fine and normal when the game rules specify explicitly that their low% category is a restricted, specified list of items, and they have every right to exclude the runs that don't meet such specific criteria. Like for instance Super Metroid. Their low% categories seem to have galvanized into certain laid out routes to follow and which items to get. No one should submit a any% run to the low% board and try to claim last place there. That's just against what the community has agreed to compete on. I'm not so silly as to argue that and I hope you don't think that's my stance.
Game boards here have the advantage of defining what low% means for each game just like they do for any% and 100% and every other category. It remains, however, that low%'s has a two-stage ranking method is quite different from any% and 100% and it's still a shame the site isn't set up for that.
Again, just because the point of low% is minimum completion, by definition, that doesn't always automatically mean that any run that fails to reach the theoretical minimum is invalid. The point of an any% speedrun, for instance, is to complete the game as fast as possible, that doesn't mean you reject all the times that don't reach the theoretical fastest time!
For your reference, an infamous low% run is TP, where there's a glitch that lets you clip through things but that takes hours just to advance a few pixels. The first 3-4 minutes of this video (funny YouTube username, LowestPercent) explain the two-stage ranking for low%.
I don't really want to argue over semantics and definitions and I'm willing to accept that both approaches can work great. Please be open minded about the two-prong definition, it goes back years and works for lots of games, including some big ones, though I wish the site helped those categories display better.
tldr: sorry i sounded like a jerk, games setting their own clear category rules is a good thing of course, two-stage ranking of low% runs is still a correct definition even if it doesn't match yours, and it works for plenty of games. and op got what they needed.
[quote]Again, just because the point of low% is minimum completion, by definition, that doesn't always automatically mean that any run that fails to reach the theoretical minimum is invalid. The point of an any% speedrun, for instance, is to complete the game as fast as possible, that doesn't mean you reject all the times that don't reach the theoretical fastest time![/quote] Sorry but that is just a silly comparison that makes no sense. A better comparison would be a 100% category where you allow people with 99% on the boards and that just should not happen.
"100%" is a set number, not a mere objective, so I'm afraid your comparison is a bit silly too.
Submitting a 99% run to a 100% category is wrong. It would be like submitting a 1% run to a 0% category.
Low% works differently.
What you describe would probably be called max% or something similar, (maybe you can coin it high%), where runners try to get the most completion they can while trying to go fast, and with certain rng heavy games or games where there's an emphasis on the trade-off between speed and collectables, that could work great as a category.
How about the rest of the my post? I tried to be thorough :)
I believe that while some categories like any% and 100% are pretty common and there's a consensus on what they entail, other categories like Low% or the can of worms that is "Glitchless" aren't so black and white and thus can be more subjetive to certain boards, in which case I don't really see any harm in letting the community decide how they want to run it.
The point being made though is the fact that it's not possible to do sorts in the fashion the OP wants without doing some workaround, and that stands whether it is for Low% or for any other category that might require extra variables to take into account, so it'd be nice if the feature could be implemented in the future.