Leaderboard ~DISCUSSION~
8 years ago

Hey, I just created the leaderboard and added the runs from the wikidot, the nico wiki and a couple which were missing. Feel free to submit your times here, and if you want your time removed from this leaderboard, just ask me (either in this thread, via Twitch PM (gaeldemarseille), or on SRL IRC (Gael) )

I've made category decisions that could be controversial like Any% Western vs Japanese ruleset or Any% no job glitch (w/ English translation patch) and Any% glitchless, no encounter skip as miscellaneous categories. I've also made up some rules, that may not be accurate for some categories. Nothing is set in stone and this is why I opened this thread, to get people opinion on the matter I also need a better name for the Encounter Manipulation variable because I don't really like the term "with prior manipulation"

I also didn't create categories for the remakes (DS, PSP, IOS, Android, Steam) because I never played those versions and can't moderate them. And personally I think it would be better to have them as another game on speedrun.com

PS: If you want mod just contact me.

Any% (Japanese ruleset) differs from (Western ruleset) because it can use pre-run encounter manipulation due to the timing method, it also uses a different credits warp setup that is longer than the one we use but allows to skip the cutscene before the credits trigger to get to The End sooner. (cheap's run has a faster Power ON to The End equivalent than Luzbelheim's run)

California, USA

For No Glitched Jobs: "English translation runs will be removed when someone complete a run on the japanese version, there is a misc. category for english patch"

Don't do this.

Create full fledged categories for both patch and non patch.

United States

Thoughts: This leaderboard is a mess. Some of it is my fault. Why is With/Without Prior Manipulation a variable? Who actually submitted a "No Credits Warp" run? Both my bad. :)

But I think some things need to change here. Here are my suggestions, let me know what you all think about them.

First of all: "With/Without Prior Manipulation". I think we should just remove the variable. Any% allows it so feel free to use it obviously, and if you don't use it, like me, that's cool. But I don't think we need to call it out if you do or don't. Imagine if there were Mega Man 2 leaderboards that let you call out every individual zip in Mega Man 2 as a variable. "Let's see, I did Heat Man's zip, but not Metal, Bubble, but not Wood", etc.... that would be silly. Similarly, do we need a variable for Turbo?

Secondly, I'm pretty sure some categories (I'm looking at the Glitchless ones) are just copy/pasted from Japanese leaderboards, are likely out of date, the runners probably don't even know about this site, and they'd not likely submit times here. Frankly, unless other people start running these categories with the intent to post times and improve them, I don't think they need to be here.

Thirdly, remove the category "Any% No Job Glitch w/Eng. Trans". Right now it's just a copy of the regular No Job Glitch anyway. There are no Japanese language runs in the category, so the duplication is pointless, and I think segregating them is unnecessary anyway. If at some point it were as popular as Any% and people were doing both versions, then we can reexamine it.

Fourth: Right now there are only two runs under "No Credits Warp". I would have honestly advocated for it's removal at one point, but then Nacho did a run. :p Maybe it's a good example of a "Misc" category. Honestly, FF3 has two well-known categories: Any%, and No Job Glitch.

Fifth: Any% rulesets. I really think having both rulesets is overkill. But at this point both are pretty well populated. What are everyone else's thoughts on this?

Sixth: "Remake Any%" can probably be simplified to DS Any%, until such time as someone posts speedruns from other versions. The only one I imagine is even likely at all is PC. And at that time we can add a PC Any%.

My Summary:

Remove the Turbo and Manipulation variables and reduce the categories to: Any% (Western Ruleset) Any% (Japanese Ruleset) Any% (No Job Glitch) Any% (DS)

So yeah, sorry for that wall of text, but in my opinion the leaderboard is in a pretty messy state, and it's been bothering me for quite a while. It needs quite a bit of trimming. Especially when you compare it with other Final Fantasy pages.

What are everyone's thoughts on all this?

Thank you for taking the time to read all this and for offering your opinions.

California, USA

My thoughts:

  1. With/without prior manipulation: I don't run any% so ignore this. But I personally don't agree with any sort of "prior manipulation" in any speedrun, and will never do it in runs myself. If it's a game where you time pressing the start button to begin on a certain seed (i.e. TMNT NES, FF4, etc.), then I don't mind as much. But racking up a bunch of steps, soft resetting the game, and then making a savestate is extremely dumb and gives emulator runs a massive advantage and isn't fun or interesting to me. But like I said, ignore this. Most people somehow actually seem to enjoy any% and do it this way.

  2. If you're going to copypaste Japanese categories, at least be thorough about it. Rename "any% Glitchless" to "any% glitchless with EC skip" like the Japanese do, and add the "any% glitchless no EC skip category". Or remove this entirely until somebody actually submits a run of it or a variant of the category here.

  3. "No Job Glitch". I prefer the category name to be "No Glitched Jobs", since people kept misunderstanding it to be a category where you used a glitch to obtain "no job". I actually started calling it "No Glitched Jobs" for my last few runs and before anyone else picked up the category, but I think the old name caught on instead because people saw the title of my GDQ bonus stream run. Just a minor gripe I have. Also, allow the translation patch in this category and don't segregate it.

  4. "No Credits Warp". I'm down for this being a Misc category, along with "No Glitched Jobs". I basically invented both of these categories because the TAS came out while I was in the middle of routing, and I didn't want to do some 7 minute cop out of a game that has a lot of good content elsewhere. I didn't think these would catch on with anybody. I don't mind if both of these cats are moved to a "misc" section, but I think they should both stay up in some form or another at the very least. I also might work on this again some day to find a setup that could be used on console.

  5. any% "rulesets": Again, I'm not even close to an authority on any%, but I do think it's silly to have a "Japanese ruleset" category without any Japanese runners on the board. Where did this thing even come from and why is it called Japanese? If the only difference is to use turbo, then just call it "any% with Turbo". If the other only difference is to stop the timer after the credits, then, well that's silly. Just convert the times so there can be a similar start/stop time across all categories. This one is a really strange addition to the leaderboard.

  6. I agree with simplifying the last category to "DS any%". Since there's a DS-exclusive strategy and the only times on the board are DS, it makes sense. If someone does a remotely serious run on a different platform, then a new category can be added at that point.

So there it is. Sorry for being controversial.

[big]IMO:[/big] It shouldn't be up to the leaderboard moderators to decide what runners should run. If people want to do runs with prior manip, that's their decision, not ours.

And as for miscellaneous or not, it comes down to whether or not we think that a category has received enough interest for it to be in the front. I'd be for moving any% J ruleset into misc. The only difference is in timing, which in turn makes you do a slightly slower credits warp to skip part of the credits. The other major difference would be turbo, but besides me, everyone was somewhat resolute to not use turbo. And as for NCW and NGJ, they're the categories into which the most work has been put, excluding any%. It'd be a shame to relegate these into a miscellaneous tier, whilst keeping times with no vods (glitchless, for most runs, and especially wr) in the front. For every single major category, turbo should be noted down, but shouldn't make a difference in category. The way turbo is used affects approaches to rng manipulation in dungeons, which is very important in any longer category. In fact, "glitchless, w. no es" actually doesn't permit rng manip on the nico boards, and I think we should go ahead and make that either an enforced rule for that category, or, preferably, a noted variable.

For the time being, DS any% is fine until someone actually does a glitchless run on another platform, and then, psp and pc would need to be separated, since psp has auto battle to speed up fights, whilst pc, to my knowledge, doesn't.

And as for patch mergers: I'm fine with this. Japanese text is somewhat faster, but it would also involve a reroute of every single rng manip, since the lookup table is different between the 2 versions. This is a better way of handling the situation then having patch be miscellaneous until a J run comes along.

As for names, Any%; Any% No Credits Warp; Any% No Glitched Jobs; Any% Glitchless; Any% Glitchless No EC skips, (no rng manipulation) misc: Any% Japanese Rules

Binarynova:

  1. agreed, we could remove the "prior manipulation" variable but i think it should stay for turbo

  2. glitchless runs on the leaderboard are copy/paste from niconico leaderboard with a few other times i found and probably out of date since i haven't looked in months. While all the current times are japanese and they won't ever look at this site, we should get the category since NachoYacopu is routing/learning it We could get rid of Glitchless No ES or make it a variable for glitchless

  3. Agreed, when i first made the leaderboard, i put the translated runs in the misc category and none in the Japanese one, then people submitted their runs in the main one creating duplicates. I think we should keep differencing the JPN runs from the translated one by giving the JPN region varialbe to japanese run only.

  4. I don't think No credits warp should be removed nor misced. people don't run it because the RNG for the drop is retarted (even though there's a setup nowadays but i'm bad at button smashing :( )

  5. regarding the remakes i never played them and didn't add them to this leaderboard at first. then someone asked me to add them. Personally i think the remakes should be their own game on sr.com but others FF games didn't do that with their remakes, so i had them under remake since adding every platforms would be even messier

duckfist:

  1. i tried to fight people using savestates and they wouldn't listen so i gave up i don't use savestates for my runs and people really shouldn't

  2. i just realised no job glitch could be misinterpreted, i just copied the name from the wikidot leaderboard at the time. Should be changed

  3. regarding the rulesets, the first person to ever do credits warp run is cheap, a japanese runner and founder of this credits warp setup, and he most likely used turbo during his run so it couldn't be added to the board as people agreed that turbo shouldn't be used. Also comparing his time with ours wouldn't be fair as japanese rulesets uses a slower credits warp setup (a few seconds) but you skip a cutscene before the credits start to make it like 1minute faster for to THE END timing, it also prevent seed manipulation by starting from a clean power ON I've decided those 3 differences on a 7 minutes run were enough to make a second category as i felt like cheap deserved his time to be here for a long time his run was the only one on that ruleset until recently when some people grinded it

United States

Just popping in here real quick to say I think there's a consensus regarding the naming of "No Glitched Jobs" so I'm going to go ahead and change that. I also removed the variable for "Encounter Manipulation".

California, USA

Gaël: I wasn't familiar with that regarding any% J. I agree to keep it a separate category.

Also, I've thought about something with respect to turbo, but I'm not sure if anyone has tried it. If you could assign turbo to a d-pad direction, you should be able to reliably buffer through a text box immediately into movement as early as possible, or maybe up to a 1-frame variability. You could, for example, reliably manipulate an Eyedrop from skeletons in the Mythril Mine this way, or drops from enemies in other non-World Map areas. Any thoughts about this?

United States

Gael:

  1. I changed the Glitchless category names as per Duckfist's suggestion to match the names used by the Japanese community. Personally I'm against adding yet another variable to differentiate in this case two very different runs. If we want to keep both types of glitchless run, I think we should keep them separated.

  2. When you say Japanese region variable, are you referring to Speedrun.com's built in region setting? So say, use US for translated runs, and Japan for non-translated and keeping them all in one category? That sounds perfect to me! As long as we're not adding a secondary Translated/Not-Translated variable or maintaining two separate categories. Is it okay to go ahead and remove the translation specific category?

  3. Regarding the running of the 3D remakes, DS is very different from all the rest because it's the only one with a item duplication glitch. That's why I say it's probably unlikely to be run on other platforms. The Steam version is probably the next most popular and might be run, but without any time saving glitches I doubt it. The PSP version probably loses any chance due to its horrendous load times.

As for turbo directions: yeah, that's exactly how I do it, and honestly, this is something I'm still conflicted about. On one hand, this has pushed, and can push ff3 to a much higher level of optimization, on the other, this sort of makes it impossible to run without turbo. One thing to know about assigning turbo to directions, is that because of how lag and turbo works, you'll always hit the first frame entering an area for the box, but then your movement afterwards is delayed by one frame every tile if you hold the turbo direction.

IDK how you guys feel about this, but this is what can make FF3 runs more optimized, especially in glitchless, for grinds, drops etc. In theory, turbo could be used to make glitchless no ec skip 100% manipulated, which would be amazing to see in practice.

The way Nacho manipulates stuff, is by trying to hit a small frame window (iirc 4-8) in which he's routed out the possibilities for all rngs in the window. Adding turbo would allow you to make this manip faster and more consistent, thus helping the run to be more optimized. The principle behind manipping rng in the first place stays the same, but the method used allows rng manip to be more useful throughout the run in other categories.

Notably, in the glitchless route currently in the works, there are concrete plans to integrate these type of manips, be it executed through a window, or through turbo directions.

This does however make turbo an obligation for every category where this would be useful. At this point, we may need to reevaluate how we separate categories based on turbo, and maybe even do a hard separation.

California, USA

Well, I'm personally against turbo in all speedruns as I consider it tool assistance. Also, this manner of turbo is pretty much exclusive to emulators - Not only is it hard to find decent controllers with 30Hz turbo, but I've never heard of a turbo controller that assigns to d-pad directions. Along with all of the ridiculous advantages people get from playing on an emulator, it's pretty disheartening to me and separates my point of view even more. Playing the game in this manner, along with the use of savestates for pre-run manipulation, the potential to cheat undetected, and glitching the game into oblivion, the gameplay experience for the runner doesn't even remotely represent sitting down to play FF3 on a Famicom.

All that said, the conclusion is, as usual: If people want to do it, then go for it. Turbo and emulators are already used, so there's no stopping this, really.

United States

I don't have much more to add other than that I agree with Duckfist with regards to turbo and EC manipulation.

I've removed the "No Glitched Jobs w/ English Trans" category and added that when you submit a No Glitched Jobs run you should use the game's region to differentiate between original and fan translated. With that I think the leaderboard is in a better state than it was in a few days ago.