I think RNG manip and no RNG manip should be separate categories (or subcategories). I like Aerius' suggestion best.

Might it be faster to perform the manipped route without resetting? You could go for clusters to aid consistency, or just rely heavily on draw prediction. Winning 3 MBDs wouldn't be necessary in those cases.

It sounds like we need more time to figure out the potential of the manipulations. Rushing to a decision, especially when so few manipped runs have been attempted/submitted, doesn't make sense.

Arbitrary categories are a part of speedrunning. They're not as bad as this thread is making them sound.

Having said that, we have no working definition for "no RNG manip," and we'll need one if separation is going to happen. Would it be effective to ban resets, and simply discourage other forms of manip? Obviously, someone could get an unbeatable WR by manipping the starting deck and hitting a frame-perfect input on campaign Heishin 1 for MBD, but would people do that if the entire community was against it? No one would realistlcally A-POW Heishin 1 in a "normal" manip-less run, so you couldn't disguise it. Maybe this would lead to allowing only starting deck manip (which could be cool, since it would allow us to play the game more). At this point, I think we have more questions than answers. It wouldn't hurt to try something like this, then abandon it if people abused it or it wasn't as fun as we imagined.

Discouraging a play style rather than banning it might seem silly, but it's not unheard of. For example, in Gen 1 Pokemon runs, the conventional method of resetting is to press A+B+Start+Select. This is normally the same as pressing Ctrl+R on emulator. However, on certain screens, the game won't execute the A+B+Start+Select input. It will still execute Ctrl+R. So if you're on emulator, resetting using Ctrl+R is discouraged because it's faster, but the mods won't reject a run that does it at the start (to speed up resets, not the run).

(Note: The above example might be a bad one because certain consoles can reset using other methods, but the idea is clear.)

I don't feel like I can have a sensible discussion at this point. If you don't understand the huge difference between running with manipulation and running without, I don't know what to tell you. If you don't understand that people who like the manipless route simply want a space to play competitively, I don't know what to tell you. If you don't understand that categories are created based on community interest, not semantics, I don't know what to tell you.

What I can say is that your tone comes across as trying to exclude people from enjoying speedrunning. You enter this thread as a non-runner and make incorrect assumptions about the community (we care about more than our times, and we don't just farm to make the Final 6 "smooth" in races). You ridicule current runners who make valid points that don't align with your own. You claim that a 2-hour run is essentially the same as a 7-hour run. You use semantics as a fallback argument (a deck with 3 MBDs is the same as a deck with none, I guess). Can you see how these arguments might deter a new runner from entering the community?

To be clear, I don't have a good suggestion for how to handle the leaderboards. If we can find a reasonable way to define RNG manipulation, albeit not entirely objective, I think a board should be created for runs that don't use manip. If not, the Yes/No option seems solid.

"Does the extra farming promote fundamentally different gameplay? What gameplay is worth preserving in a separate category? I'm grasping at straws trying to find quality answers to these questions."

Yes, it does. You need to make choices about which duelists to farm. You need to create, practice and refine strategies for beating these duelists quickly. You need to decide which ranks are best to aim for. You need to decide how to edit your deck throughout the farm as you get better cards. You need to decide how long to farm in order to meet your goal (WR, PB, fastest average completion, etc.). You need to decide which cards to buy with the star chips you earn from farming.

Then, in campaign, you need to choose which dueling strategies fit your deck best. For example, if your deck has a lot of dragons and thunders, you might toss them on the harder duels to give yourself a better chance of drawing an equip/Raigeki. If not, you might keep one.

The RNG manip route involves tossing cards on the hard duels until you draw MBD. If you draw it, you almost certainly win. If not, you almost certainly lose. There is some strategy, but not nearly as much as manip-less.

I don't think anyone wants to give equal weight to manip-less. Any% will allow RNG manip and be the main category. Any% (no RNG manip) is being considered as a side category, possibly filed as miscellaneous.

This attitude of "speedrunning is about going fast, manip is faster than no manip, therefore manip-less shouldn't be taken seriously" is incredibly short-sighted and could end up damaging the community. By this logic, if we found a glitch that warped to credits in the first 5 minutes and skipped every duel, we should all run that to preserve the integrity of our speedgame. Categories exist to preserve the fun, challenging ways of speedrunning. Manip-less FM has an extremely high skill cap and offers many routing possibilities. Many people enjoy that in spite of the often brutal RNG. If you don't enjoy it, no one is taking you less seriously for running the game with manip.

Think about the reasons categories exist in the first place. It's not because the game provides them for us (except some games that have modes such as "Easy" and "Hard"); it's because people enjoy certain styles of play more than others. Defining glitches, manipulations and the like is often arbitrary, but that hasn't stopped other communities from successfully doing so. If more people want to run this game with manipulation than without, there should be a place for them to do so. Also, there is no point in having runs with an average completion time of 2-3 hours on the same leaderboard as runs that beat the game in 6-8 hours. These things are just common sense.

I don't care whether the non-manip category is made miscellaneous, but I like Cyberdemon's idea.