JP Easy mode
2 years ago
Pennsylvania, USA

As y'all probably know, the US version only has one difficulty setting, while JP has three. This hasn't really been an issue for the leaderboards since nearly everyone runs US. However, a JP Easy IL was just submitted for Max Lvl 5 and it's faster than the only other run which was on US.

When you look at the leaderboard for Max Lvl 5, all the info is there to show they were on different difficulties: https://www.speedrun.com/goof_troop/Level_5#Max

but if you look at the All Levels view for ILs, it only shows the fastest ones: https://www.speedrun.com/goof_troop/individual_levels

So, question is if y'all care about this. Seedy obviously didn't do anything wrong - it's a perfectly valid run and he can run whatever difficulty he wants - but if JP Easy and US runs are mixed together, it becomes necessary to run JP Easy to rank near the top. This will inevitably be the case for full game runs as well.

Brazil

This is being discussed in the game's Discord, but I'll post my suggestion here too:

  • make a new difficulty option: US (change all US PB runs to that difficulty)
  • make the difficulty variable a sub-category, with US being the default
scytodosis likes this
Pennsylvania, USA

I honestly don't know how sub-categories work, but that sounds like the right type of solution to me. Doesn't invalidate non-US runs, but promotes US as the standard. Glad to see Seedy's on board with it as well.

California, USA

I agree with making sub-categories, as it's already been shown that the US version is the most popular. As things are currently, I believe the JP version is just a free time save in many places, and despite that it's still not really being run. Definitely think it could be a cool sub-category if someone wanted to push it and see how much time they can save

Canada

As I said on the discord, I fully support a split of the difficulties because of the big differences in the puzzles. I will do a run of all japenese versions with both characters (6 new runs) if the category is split.

Here is a couple of example using subcategories: https://www.speedrun.com/mm#All_Dungeons (Pretty much all categories except one or two)

https://www.speedrun.com/drmariones#0-20

https://www.speedrun.com/oot (A couple of the categories)

Brazil

So far no one has opposed my suggestion, so I'll wait a day or two more and apply the change.

Brazil

The changes to the leaderboards have been applied! If you notice something weird please notify me.

Germany

back in the day: "Wow, we found out the other version is faster - cool, let's speedrun that version from now on"

today: "Let's make 3 new sub-categories, no, actually 9, because there are already 3 main-categories"

I'd understand the decision if it was a text-heavy RPG, but for this game? Kinda weird.

Edited by the author 2 years ago
Jumpyluff and Zekinoma like this
Pennsylvania, USA

This isn't a new discovery, my man. People "back in the day" were able to figure out the game was easier on Easy. It's fun to play the same version as everyone else for the sake of accessibility, competition, etc.

It's disingenuous to just say there's "9 categories." There's two single-player modes and a co-op mode. 90+% of the runs in each of those modes play the same difficulty.

Edited by the author 2 years ago
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