Im sending this message because I think there is too much categories in the leaderboard. 21 characters * 6 difficulties * 13 (full + 12 IL) +21 (boss rush) +5 survival + 14 (2players) = 1678 categories WOW! Why ? Because there is still a lot of "empty" times and because even if Sor4 is popular we are not enough speedrunners to fill all. I noticed one thing. The normal, hard, hardest and Mania difficulties are the ones with few times and sometimes the "world record" on them is longer than mania + for arcade full games because there is no "try hard" on this category. And IL times are empty. That's why Im thinking if reducing the number of categories will bring more competition and then an overall better quality of runs, because the more you are the more you need to improve to get the world record or a good place in the leaderboard. So only keeping Easy and Mania + available can be okay ?
Removing mania would straight up be disrespectful to the last year of speedruns. This patch is hella stale, and yes, while some categories are very empty, the same could be said for characters, maybe we should remove zan altogether from the boards, or the sor1 characters. Boards are fine as it is, better to have more room for people to submit their times than to randomly choose what goes or stays
@oDSFM Indeed you can think to do only a Sor1, sor2 and sor3 mixed characters board. I was speaking for V07 of course. Don't erase pre-dlc records. lol I understand why you want to keep all. But today I can do a 2hours run on a random level in a random non-used difficulty and have a WR.... which is kinda sad.... Or even have 50 meaningless WR if I snipe them, and comparing to a really contested WR with a good runs I can't have or I should work to have it, I prefer to be 5th or more to that kind of time. ( Im even lazy to snipe) It's ok you are the mods. Im just pointing that fact. I didn't expect you to change them. Im nobody. I don't know if I explained well my feeling but for that game I love so much I feel this leaderboard can be better.
I suspect the way the SRC backend works will lead to all the old v4/v5 records being deleted if we delete the categories.
As for there being a lot of dead categories, this is true, but if anything I think it draws some new people in - maybe they're only in it for the low effort WR, but if even some of those stay that can only be good :)
Those low effort WRs also encourage others to pop up and beat those times, etc. Stylistically/organisation wise I agree - too many categories. However, it's not like anyones winning any prizes for this, the more in the community the better, and if peeps wanna join the community by taking some random obscure char/category combo then good luck to 'em :)
I used to think we should have only Easy / Hard / Mania back in the day
But we made a decision to keep all difficulties. If you ask me today, despite disagreeing last year, I think it was the right decision in retrospect.
Don't disrespect yourself by saying you are nobody. Your opinion is as valuable as any of the rest of ours. My opinion is, the boards are absolutely fine as they are. But it is fun to discuss these things.
'That's why Im thinking if reducing the number of categories will bring more competition and then an overall better quality of runs'
The only reason I've done a run on Cherry Easy/Hard difficulty this patch is because the streamers who run the character haven't bothered yet.
I'd expect to see less competition, not more, if you removed categories, and all that people had to run were against the top tier streamers runs who have invested thousands of hours into the game. I'm not going to bother trying to compete against streamers because the time commitment makes zero sense for me as a non-streamer. The time investment would be detrimental to my own career/desire to play more than just a single game.
What you would really need to advocate for is Jordi (the developers) to include time attack mode/leaderboards and a time attack timer on screen, officially in game like they do with score. The mentality of most players is to go for score because that's what is hyped in-game through the leaderboards (non-PC) and the in-game combo counter and those juicy rank S giving you that sweet dopamine hit seeing the big numbers. At least this makes sense to me why there are far more score runners/interest in score, as dull as it is, than speedruns.
I'd wager it never occurred to many people to speedrun this game because the combo counter/end of stage rank number/leaderboards/presentation are all about score.
All great points but I actually think there should be a full combo or perfect no hit category added. Would be fun to see runners combine speed and perfect score. Mainly for Individual levels... arcade prob should be deathless. Either way, it would be interesting to see runs at that level and maybe encourage all the score attackers to speedrun.
@jpr1est Yes you can't compete with players that spend 1000+ hours in this game but you just want to be 1st or don't do it ? If you think like that you will never do anything in you life. In the moment I speak I played only 160hours so I know I don't have the level to compete against top tier player, but speedrunning is also about playing against yourself to be better. And having people that have better times can also encourage you to give more. For exemple I runned DuckTales on NES I am 130th/295 and Im happy about my time because It's only 35sec from WR, it's clean and I didn't spend years to improve this time ( only 1 week maybe). And I runned Kenseiden on SMS and got the world record on AllBosses category with 10:58. But the time I have now in only thanks to the guy that did 11:11 because before it was 12:11 and I would have stopped my grinding only around 12minutes if there was not that 11:11 time. I know I am a competitor because I play tornament and competitive games a lot so maybe that's why I think like that. Having opponents is not a problem but a strengh for a solo game speedrun.
@GAM3ENDERZ Score attack and speedrun is totally different. Games that have score attack have a leaderboard on their own and not in speedrun.com. Because to go fast you need to sacrifice your combo or skip bonuses. It's anti synergic. Deathless runs can be fun in high levels of difficulties to be honest.
And yes ! Having a time attack mode inside the game and not only a Rank S can encourage people to speedrun :)
I wouldn't make assumptions about whether people will do anything with their lives or not based on videogames discussions.
None of my runs are in empty categories so I'm not sure which point it is you're trying to make that is relevant to the topic of: 'are there too many categories?'
"Only" 35 seconds behind WR in a game that takes just 7 minutes to complete is like being several minutes behind a 45 minute SoR4 arcade run tho ;D
If your desire is that more people speedrun the game then you're still left with having to do the work of trying to get more people interested in SoR4 speedruns in the first place. And in an organic manner, not an artificial one.
Promote speedrun streamers; get friends interested; get other communities interested; contact Summoning Salt and whomever else and ask them to make videos about the SoR4 speedrunning community; make videos yourself and get the word out; petition Jordi to add time attack to the game, etc.
Another reason it's empty is because most of the best runners in this game are playing against the other best runners, investing many hours into one category that wont be left until one backs off :D. I may take you up on that challenge though, I'll start filling the board next week. Also saying there's too many categories when you've done 3 runs in 5 months is kinda lul
If you start thinking about speedrunning Sor4, I think it's just confusing to have so much criteria that's why I started this thread and also to "focus" people into some categories so there is more times and competition.
And yes I do content on my small you tube channel about Sor4, I was the one that commented the run of themightybill for SGDQ2021 (french restream). I also proposed and did a run in Interglitch, a french charity marathon of speedrun. But I didn't want to say this one because Im not here to promote that because it's not appropriate
I just wanted to propose something to think about because Im also new in Sor4 speedrunning even Im a huge fan of Sor (all) I only tried to speedrun it (maybe them one day) now.
And one last thing about my "only 35sec" : shiva mania+ arcade Wr is 40mins. Try to do 45mins first and you will see that it's not easy at all to do it. :)
@themightybill Im not a big runner of this game. I play a lot of different games so my time on this game is limited. And also a lot of categories seem not interesting. And it's what I said : the best runners are focused to only a few runs. Ok Have fun to fill the board ! :) And there will be one more run tomorrow ! hahaha
