Category: No Story Segments or Initial Spirit Cores

Category: No Story Segments

Also, "Initial Spirit Cores" might should just be called "Any %" since it's the least restrictive category, and the other that exists right now might should be called "No Initial Spirit Cores", again following the idea that the names just tell what's restricted.

Reason for having no story segment categories is to allow players to compete without having to save scum their choice of runner, praying for story segments. It's technically possible to get all 4 story segments in a single run. That happened to me with Hat Kid on my initial natural playthrough. Right now I've been keeping the 3rd and 4th story segments open as getting 1 or 2 isn't too unlikely, but it's not gonna be very fun when there are no categories that do not rely on this heavy of an RNG while forcing the player to maintain a save just for that run type.

If these categories get made, I think that "No Story Segements + No Story" would be the most "natural" category to run for people, probably the most fun.

Honestly I would just add a rule to ban story segments from runs. It's an extra and completely unnecessary RNG element which, to make matters worse, requires a lot of setup, as you have to max out the characters' upgrades without ever watching any story segment, and then make your run from that save. Nope.

Why not just have extra categories? The ones that people like the most are the ones that will get ran the most.

Because running that category would have to be interesting in itself. I honestly can't see the point in running that. But maybe that's just me...

I think it's interesting for the folks that want to do it. It's the same kind of argument that people have for glitch vs no glitch. You don't ban the glitch. You just make a separate category for glitch vs no glitch and whichever people enjoy more they run more.

I'm with Radish on this one. It would be better to be as unrestrictive as possible unless there's a preclusionary reason to add restrictions, such as glitches that are so centralizing that they have to done for a run to be viable. Extra categories would be fine, though.

That said, another advantage to having no story segment runs as well is that they give another way for people who keep a completed run as their cloud save to still have a viable speedrun category.