Hello everyone, first let me start with a huge thanks to all the mods, specially Slamon Buffalo for their hard work. I know that a lot has happened since the game was released and probably no one expected for this game to have this much controversy/possible categories in its first week.

With that being saidI think the Mega Poll is a great idea to try and consolidate everyones thoughts, however there is one think that I believe shouldn't happen, make the "non WSG" categories the "main categories".

At almost the very end of the poll it stands that if Non WSG becomes a think, those would be the main categories... I am not against Non WSG, but making those the main categories? Why and why I feelthat is the only decision that could be taken so arbitrarely?

Here is my reasoning as to why WSG should be allowed in the main categories:

1.- It is not even a glitch, it is mostly and exploit and it doesn't lead you to other glitches as stated in some sections (skipping boss phases is not a glitch, it just means that you did a lot of damage which can also be done with charge shot and supers)

2.- It does not cause Carpal Tunnel or any other health issues (Not sure how people doing this claim are trying to do it but mashing in an optimal way in an xbox 360 controller is definitely not hard neither causes any pain, I have the weapon swap button in RB or R1 and it is pretty simple to do a decent WSG)

3.- Non strat should be removed just to "make people more competitive". If we are under those standards we could very well do the main category to complete Isle 1 and thats it so that no one has to deal with harder bosses and therefore everyone could be competitive without grinding.

I believe this could be compared as to removing Whistle Sprint in Breath of the wild or even not hitting the angle buttons while running in super metroid because its "boring" or "tedious" (those 2 are mashing strats that would let you specifically go faster through the game, none of those are considered glitchess and both of those were definitely not intended by developers)

4.- Almost every single shooter involves a lot of mashing, seriously, it is good that we have autofire, but have you seen a Contra 1 optimal run? and Metal slug 3 optimal run? both of them include a lot of mashing, specially Contra 1, the base stages need you to do a rythm mashing and then keep that mashing for the rest of the lvl so you don't lose your rythm, that thing its crazy hard and I do believe that could cause some health issues on the long run... nothing compared to WSG seriously.

At the end of the day I will run whatever end up being the so called main categories and is No WSG ends up there due to community choice, then so be it, but please and I really mean it pleaaaaase don't end up banning WSG from the main categories for the reason "so people could be more competitive".

Thanks a lot everyone for reading, have a nice day! :)

I completely agree with you paisano, WSG is so much in the game and is not even a glitch as we call it, if people want to have non WSG categories that's ok (I kinda like the idea) but it shouldn't be more than a misc category.

Something I wanted to mention is, you could do something similar as Super Mario World 11 exit, they have 3 variables (Glitchless, Orb and Cloud) but they all compete with each other, but still a non WSG would not be valid if by accident you swap weapons while shooting, I think what is considered WSG is too ambiguos to determine if you actually did it or not.

Overall I think WSG is so much into the game that the only way to prevent doing it by accident is not changing weapons at all but that would be a different category.

I apologize for any confusion. By "Main Cateogry," I just meant anything that isn't Miscellaneous. I see no reason why WSG and non-WSG "main" categories couldn't co-exist, as long as they are separate.

I still disagree with that for a lot of reasons. Still, don't misunderstand me, I want a category where I can play without worrying about mashing a button 20 times per second as much as everyone else, I just don't think banning WSG is the right way to do it, here is a portion of what I wrote in the poll about this which sums up what I think about "No WSG" categories:

"What I'm trying to say is, if we want to come with categories where WSG is not a thing, we shouldn't ban it, instead we need to make rules that make WSG impossible, for example, low% wouldn't allow WSG because you'll never buy another weapon, "Single Weapon" would not allow WSG because you won't have another weapon to switch to, and this is to me the best approach for this and a category that would be fun to run and watch. By creating these kind of rules we keep the categories concise and not open to different interpretations."

The only problem I have with only doing categories that make it impossible to perform WSG is that I feel it takes away too much of the game

fireb0rn let me reply back to you:

First the reason for my post was already clarified by Buffalo, he didn't meant to replace the WSE categories with only non WSE as main, he merely meant to say that both types of categories could be so called main categories, therefore my whole thread might not even be valid anymore.

1.- Hilda wouldn't even be done in a run since you need to clear isle 1 in order to get the WSE while flying.

As for what happens to Beppi I believe you could enforce banning glitching a boss instead (since you can freeze Cagney Carnation without using WSG just by dashing into a middle accorn )

Where would you draw the line? glitching bosses by WSE its not fine but glitching them using other methods as a simple dash or scrolling the screen as with the plane fight in dice is ok?

2.- I still don't see that point being valid as non of those positions happen when you are using a control in the way cuphead is played. Now if you are using a keyboard or an unconfortable position like a claw then I believe it is up to you wether you want to take the risk or not (also this still hasn't been a valid point in so many different communitiesto ban optimization, not even only in speedrunning communities, take smash bros melee optimal movement as an example)

3&4 I never said there is no justification for a different category, please read through the whole point again which I believe you just skim through my post since I also never mentioned Contra 3, I said that "making game more competitive" should never be the reason to ban a way of optimization, and that is why I made the point that you could very well then just have runs that complete isle 1, that would definitely increase the competition since it is extremely easy to complete isle 1.

The reason why I mention other games that have been out there for so long is to take examples as to what has been decided in other communities with similar scenarios, still being fully aware that each community is different and there is no standards for this type of cases.

Also, I never said that Glitch will always be harder than NMG, but WSE is not even a glitch to begin with and what I said is that categories shouldn't be ban just because they are complicated (which in this case isn't even complicated).

How many frames/how much time differentiates changing weapons as a glitch from changing weapons just for the sake of itself?

We tried to stay away from using this kind of precise limit, as we believe people will be abusing it up to this limit (for example if we say there needs to be 2 seconds between each swap, people will probably swap every 2 seconds to maximise damage). That's why we decided to go with individual judgement, so a mod (and if there is uncertainty, most of the mods) will look at each swap and judge if it is just a regular swap or intended to abuse WSG. While we do realise that this can be subjective (in most cases it should be pretty obvious wether it's a casual swap or WSG), we still feel like this is the best way to handle it.

If you can't define a limit for how often you are allowed to swap weapons, then it should not be a separate category.

P.S. Contra III has this exact same mechanic and doesn't separate categories around it. The fact that this board bans this mechanic in many of its categories is preposterous.

The only categories this is banned in by definition are the Glitchless versions of (most) regular categories. These regular categories are however also on the boards with WSG/WSE allowed. A demand for a category without WSG/WSE was very high, and the poll resulted in establishing Glitchless. Not setting up the category because of not being able to find a limit also doesn't make a lot of sense in my opinion when dozens of people want a leaderboard for it.

Twin Galaxies has made many of these kind of tracks where they leave the validity of the run up to the subjectivity of a referee. It almost ¤always¤ led to fights and stupid threads about how another player must be stalling to score more points than another.

What this means in terms of what you have set up here is that you are absolutely going to start seeing debates on whether or not some runs are more "glitchless" than others once the category starts getting optimized. What happens when you get a run where someone never swaps more than once a second, but then you see another run that's faster and better in every way, but they swapped twice in one second once? Sure you could hand wave that instance, but what about if they did it twice, or 3 times? It will just keep going and going until you reach that point where it makes no sense anymore.

Plus, in essence the reduction of cooldown is not actually a glitch. It's been pretty widely known for that it's just a mechanic that Contra III runs utilize. That alone should make it not banned in glitchless categories, despite appeal to popularity.

I see your point, and we will definitely discuss this going further. We might have done things a little hastily (as things in this game are happening fairly quick) without thinking too much about the future. We probably need a bit of a rework of the boards anyways with the announced patch coming up (which was confirmed by the devs to fix WSG/WSE among other things), so that might already solve our problem of a no-WSG/WSE category.

On the issue of glitch definition: Calling fast weapon swapping a glitch is definitely debatable (and imo it also is just an exploit), but then again Glitchless rules are generally mostly arbitrary, trying to define a run that does not heavily break the game (which WSG/WSE definitely does, on top of being very uncomfortable for many people). Our goal with Glitchless was not to ban everything that is a glitch by strict definition, but mainly creating a no-WSG/WSE category (which the majority of people wanted to see incorporated in a category that also bans other broken things like Quickkills or Phase Freezes, hence Glitchless was created).

I'm obviously not a valued member of the community by any means, but I would like to note that this strategy causing Carpal Tunnel or anything of that sort is NOT valid argument AT ALL. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of speedgames that make you have to make more inputs even faster. Mashing causing carpal tunnel doesn't matter, as well as there are 0 tests or studies that directly connects the two.

On another note, these inconsistencies in the penalties are unreal. It's a ticking time bomb. The day someone gets penalized for WSG and another doesn't, it will not only make one person mad, but it will make the entire ruleset look like a joke. I understand you guys had to take control because it grew so fast, however this is just not the way to do it. Things need to be made official and consistent. That is speedrunning. Speedrunning is not "It isn't REALLY how I thought the game was supposed to be played". It's "this is the fastest way to beat the game under whatever category I am running". You want to run/have glitchless categories? That is fine. I support that 100%, but what I don't support is mistaking speed tech for glitches just because it's not "intended."

God bless

I agree with your first paragraph, second not so much.

Firstly, the rules are purposely made to be loosely connected. For example, lets plays vs speedruns. In a lets play you aren't going to see someone switch their gun back and forth rapidly, which is exactly what the rules for no wsg are supposed to entail. Secondly, you make your second point about speedrunning is 'this and not that' very hypocritical. You are correct that speedrunning is supposed to be beating the game as fast as possible under a certain category, but the "It isn't REALLY how I thought the game was supposed to be played" breaks that whole argument. This is exactly why we create categories, it is a different way to beat the game. Lastly, it is speed tech, but we don't mistake it for a glitch. Other moderators and I know that it is an abused mechanic, what produces its divergence is the outcome of WSG. There is over a 9 minute divide linking the All Bosses Normal and the All Bosses Normal Glitchless and stating that above 80 percent of that isn't caused by WSG would simply be false. WSG also causes phase skips and boss freezes.

I was not being hypocritical, It's based on context and where my opinions stand. You create rules per categories based on the parameters of the category, NOT what you didn't think should or shouldn't be allowed because you dislike it or whatever the reason may be. WGS is NOT a glitch, meaning if you want to ban it in glitchless, the category should be defined by WGS being banned rather than glitches being banned. It makes no sense it would be banned in glitchless and not any% because it's NOT a glitch. Phase Skipping is NOT a glitch. In Super Mario World you skip phase 2 of Bowsers final boss fight and its completely legal in glitchless categories. I understand not wanting to have WGS in a specific category however there should be a No WGS alternative to Glitchless & any% for the fact that WGS isn't a glitch because at the current moment glitchless is better off being renamed "no speed tech".

And thank you for agreeing with my first paragraph. I actually can't believe that guy thinks carpal tunnel is a valid argument for a speedrun trick being banned.

Or the more simple solution of getting over the fact that WGS is literally just fast and should be used because it's the fastest way to beat the game. I think it's dumb to make an entire new [miscellaneous] category based off banning 1 speed trick because... people dont like to do it or something? But if that seems like the best option for whatever reason I hope it's made clear that WGS is simply just fast speed tech and this game's community should be happy you have something like this. I have speedran games where we would kill for things like this.

We do acknowledge that WSG is not a glitch, and therefore Glitchless may not be as fitting of a name for the category. Glitchless rules are mostly defined pretty arbitrarily (see the famous Mirror's Edge Glitchless from last GDQ), so we went with the simple approach of just calling it Glitchless, rather than something like "Glitchless No WSG", as that would make the category name pretty long and possibly confusing to people that aren't that familiar with the game (since it'd be something like "All Bosses - Glitchless No WSG"). I don't think category names are that much of an issue, as anyone who wants to know what exactly the category is about can just read the rules. The name Glitchless is just supposed to give a general idea of the category, which it does well in my opinion.

"I think it's dumb to make an entire new [miscellaneous] category based off banning 1 speed trick because... people dont like to do it or something?" If this was the case, all there would be in speedrunning is Any% and 100%. Speedruns are supposed to be fun and impose a challenge, which is why other categories are created (No OoB, No WW... you know the deal). WSG quite heavily breaks the game (and is a little annoying to do), so it's only natural to have a category for this, especially when a lot of people want to run it. Also since only banning WSG would not be too different from normal runs, the community decided to pack it with Glitchless to get a run that "breaks the game" as little as possible.