Don't get me wrong, skipping entire islands by bugging into the boss arena is cool, but I think what we all wanna see in speedruns of this game is movement tech and how it's applied to get form A to B as fast as possible across the open zone.

I'll give my final thoughts on the manner (this time without focusing on shutting down Greycatmon).

ahem

I agree with the rulesets Smash made in his recent post. No Ultra and Pauseless seem like the best way to go, so long as there's a "free" category that permits the use of all skips without limitation as well. This means that there's 3 categories for 3 different types of runners. Pauseless for people that want to play the game beginning to end without abusing the game too hard, No Ultra for people that want to have a relatively normal run of the game, and No Limits for people that want to push the game to its limits. In the end Speedrunning has always been about the latter, and the more options for running the game, the better, imo.

@Greycatmon "I should clarify about TE is that the changes to the boards, especially ring boards, angered me so much that I flat out removed it from my computer and cut off all communication to the discord server, save for sm4sh. If I wanted to play casual, I'll play the frickin Hang-On bike. Have you not noticed yet that I can be extremely competitive?"

Can I have some reasoning behind that? I would hardly call the changes that have been made "casual". It added much needed variety to the game as opposed to what was originally "every gear is copy paste default with a few gimmicks here and there and slightly different stats". There is also, of course, changes to extremely polarizing gears such as the High Booster, nerfing it to a level that it isn't objectively broken, and even then it's still a top tier gear. I don't understand how these changes could anger you so much that you dropped it immediately when it did nothing but make what is, objectively, improvements to the gear selection through variety. TE is, to date, the most competitive scene for Sonic Riders, with tournaments being held weekly and majors being held every few months, with more players in one tournament than there are runners on this board. Your complaint against it being casual hardly holds water when TE was created to make the game more competitive, and give it more variety.

You saying your reference to "I outright refuse anything from TE into the original game, even if it can be replicated in the original." was in reference to the gears also makes little sense when the post was in reference to skips, which is solidified by the "replicated in the original" part. I see no reason for that quote to be about gears if that's the truth, but if that is the case, that means it has nothing to do with the skips and those are perfectly fine. But that isn't the case because that's contradicted by your original post of banning everything found in TE in relation to skips. I understand it may have been made in times of stress where emotions were high, but it's hard for me to take things concretely when you're contradicting yourself between two messages. I'm a logical person, I accept logical responses, but if those responses or statements contradict themselves, I'll ask more questions. I would like answers, if you're willing to give them.

Though, honestly, having gone back and re-read the options, they're both bad. There shouldn't be any limitations on skips period if they're doable in Vanilla. Again, false skill ceiling.

Well, sorry to say, but you're gonna have a lot less players running and updating their runs if you ban skips simply because they weren't discovered before an irrelevant date in time. The origin of a skip is irrelevant if it can be accomplished on an unmodified copy of the game.

Never have I seen a speedrun board do anything like this. I can understand banning game breaking bugs and the like, because those risk damaging the game irreparably. But banning a skip just because it was discovered prior to an irrelevant time in relation to the original game is not how speedrunning works. The point of speedrunning is running a game or stage beginning to end as fast as possible, regardless of the original intent of the developers. If that requires abusing level design, glitches, and any other array of techniques, it's all fair game. The skips discovered thanks to the spike in popularity that TE brought are the exact same as the skips found before TE was made relevant. They are abuses of level design with the intention of completing the game faster, no more, no less.

By actively banning skips discovered in Tournament Edition, you are harming the development of runs, and actively hindering the improvement of your runners. If option 1 to ban ALL skips from 2017 onward is decided upon, that ALSO means that if any of YOU discover a new skip, it is also banned. If any new discoveries are made by any of YOU while improving your runs, that run is disqualified. This will result in a solid ceiling with no room for improvement. If option 2 is selected, it will remove the skill ceiling that option 1's artificial limitation creates.

Make your choice, but know that option 1 will actively harm this game. Limiting people by forcing them to use outdated skips, or ignore new, better routing due to the skip involved being banned will not help the game in the slightest. It will only harm the people that want to get into speedrunning.