I'm a competitive Tetris Attack player that hasn't had any association with the community until the past week. I've lurked around multiple speed running communities for awhile, but this is the first game where I've gotten into this sort of discussion about runs. There's so much information here, and a lot of opinions are already laid out on the table, so I'll just address them as I scroll past them.

First off, the argument that the time should be either 50k or 999k because that's the credit screen/max score. 100k is not an arbitrary score. It's the max score in Tetris Attack, so as a predecessor to Pokemon Puzzle League, it's not illogical to carry that score across games. The Tetris Attack credit score is 10k, and that would be a god awful sub 30 second run. I wouldn't say it's too far fetched to create your own value when none of the existing ones are entertaining. Also, if you're saying it depends on credits or max score, Tetris Attack's 100k is the max score, and is also in the miscellaneous section. So...

• What's the difference between making it misc and not misc?

You guys don't have much to lose from making it a competitive category. In fact, displaying this run which you all say is 'wowing' at speed run events would be more likely than not to attract interest in the community.

In regards to popularity, it's debatable that there's no community for it. You'll notice that there's nothing on Twitch for point based Pokemon Puzzle League runs, so you come to the conclusion - there's no interest in this type of run in the community. However, if you go on Twitch and look up Tetris Attack, you'll see dozens of people with personal bests listed on the site. It kinda makes sense that there's no community around a run that's not listed as important to the people who play the game. So we're in a bit of a paradoxical situation if you think that we can't establish this category without a following, and if we also can't get a following without this category.

But in the chance that there actually is nobody interested in the game aside from those who already play it, it's still not the strongest argument. In terms of consistent runners, there's me, vZakat, and Blinzer. Several speed run games that push games to their limits, that are constantly being innovated, are competitively run by a small amount people. Diablo 2 is ran by Slimoteq, MrLlama, Teo, Yag, and Ryu. The rules of The Last Of Us glitchess runs are decided by a discussion of 4 or 5 people. All of this brings me to the question.

• What does a community vote entail?

The most competitive speed run games' rules are decided usually by the best players, or the people who have pioneered the game in the past. I do think that players who are committed to the game and understand it more should have a heavier weighted opinion than somebody who's extremely low in the rankings. Not to completely brush off the lesser skilled players, but in a competitive environment, I think it makes more sense to give the majority of the dialogue to people who intend to compete.

I agree with Blinzer on many points, especially on the fact that it seems pretty backwards that the most skill based run in the game is listed under miscellaneous. However, I disagree with him on the stance that "Hard is the only true demonstration of a player's ability to consistently plan and execute chains". That's something I believe will push newcomers away from the community. Hard mode is extremely technically demanding, and if something of this sort is to be implemented, I'd like to see Easy, Normal, and Hard. In addition, I don't agree with the mindset that "I am better than you, therefore my opinion is right". I stand by what I said before that due to his skill his statements demand a certain amount of weight, which it's clear that they are given that weight, but I don't believe that skill can leveraged to more than that.