More Categories
5 years ago
Virginia, USA

Every one of this games main categories completes the game under a given stipulation. Any%, Glitchless, and 100%. While I'm not going to get into my personal feelings here, all of these categories make sense for basically any game with exploits, and/or things not required for game completion. The two miscellaneous categories of this game both show off a unique exploit of the game. ESW has it's namesake, Event Storage Warp. Spellstone 1 reveals DIME(Dark Ice Mines Early) which isn't possible in any category that requires Krazoa Spirit 4.

Spellstone 2 would just be a harder version of Spellstone 1, and would include CCE,(Cape Claw Early) BCRS,(Baby CloudRunner Skip) and Iceless Cape Claw. While I would like to see a Spellstone 2 category, I also can see that DIME, CCE, and BCRS wouldn't be unique to the category. Iceless Cape Claw may be difficult and require a decent amount of skill, but it doesn't warrant it's own category. As you move up from what could be done, nothing in particular would be unique, and miscellaneous categories never have restrictions. Spellstones 3 or 4 would require ESW or RESW respectively to have any merit, and even then I don't feel they would be good categories.

I also think it's worth mentioning that shorter categories don't seem to do the trick in this game. ESW is less than 40 minutes, and has premade save file for the category, but there are only 8 times on the leaderboard. Spellstone 1 is commonly obtained in less than an hour and a half, but has few runs, and only 2 of them do the trick that makes the category unique.

I would like to see more variety on the leaderboard as well, but I just don't see it happening. Maybe a Spellstone 2 category, but I don't want to be too hopeful either. That decision is up to the community as a whole.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
josejavier1158 likes this
North Carolina, USA

Celestial so the only reason you're leaving out other categories is because there's no tricks, skips or glitches for them. that's stupid. Take a look at other games on this site that don't have glitches or skips and still speedran and get more categories. you don't make sense at all

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Växjö, Sweden

Thing is, in general we do not want to have several categories without real purpose on the leaderboads. And that is the case for pretty much every serious community out there. If you watch the SM64 leaderboard for example, you don't have boards for 31 star, 45 star or 50 star, even though those are three categories more than a few people run.

You could see categories as having a few rules where at least one should be met for it to be considered having a leaderboard spot (and this is not guaranteed to apply for all games, but most).

  1. Is it an arbitrary category (read: Any%, 100%, low%, glitchless)? If no ->
  2. Is there a huge runner base for this category? If no ->
  3. Does the category show parts of the game that you wouldn't see in any other category? If no, it probably won't fit.

This is not something that is written in stone, I just made up the list on the spot, but imo it basically shows the thought progress of including new categories. Noteworthy though is that even if a category has tons of runner, but is really silly, it doesn't necessarily have to get a spot on the leaderboard. There are also other factors that are often considered, for example if the category uses cheats, hacks or any kind of pre-moderation of the game file. This is the reason why Skyward Sword Any% isn't 8 minutes, and why ESW is a misc in this game.

Most communities and runners (including myself) also really dislikes having speedrunning categories that doesn't actually complete the game, since it just creates a made up goal. In some communities (including this one) it is solved by putting it as misc, in some others they just don't get any sort of leaderboard representation. But even if they are, on occasion, accepted as miscs, we still don't want to fill the misc with categories that doesn't really fill the criteria.

With this being said, the best thing one can do if he or she wants to run a category that isn't represented on the board is just to run whatever they see fit. Speedrunning is made for fun and improving on yourself and competing with others, not keeping track of runs on official leaderboards. Some people just create google doc. files as an "extended leaderboard". If the category turns out to be very competitive in a later state, we might consider publish it officially on this leaderboard, as we did with Blue Line in Star Fox 64.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Mexico

2nd & 3rd Spellstone!!!

Norway

People. Aren't. Gonna. Do. Runs. of. Meme. Categories. More. Than. Once.

Venezuela

Wrong, Celestial. Spellstone 3 would need both ESW AND RESW to work and be valid, which is why I say it could be brought up, but I personally won't discuss it, because we would have to also discuss the global restriction of RESW.

Also, there was another thread for categories discussion, why is this one a thing, again?

Växjö, Sweden

True, Narbe, I will lock this thread. All further discussions should take place in the already existing category thread: https://www.speedrun.com/sfa/thread/wsy7r

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Latest news
UPDATE: Rules and Category Changes [01/23/24]

As of today, new categories and rules have been added to the leaderboard. The following has changed.

Here are the following new categories and changes added to the leaderboard:

  • Spellstone 2
  • Spellstone 1 will now be a sub-category under the new category "Spellstones" along with S
2 months ago
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