We now have an English version of the Lite% Mod thanks to Thomas_89 in addition to the French version by Seifer! We have added a category called Any% Cutscene remover to have a more intuitive name for the category and to be in line with FFX and their version of the same thing. As the name suggests, it removes most of the FMVs and dialogue heavy sections and cuts down the length of the run to about 4 hours. You can find both the English and the French versions on the Resources section.

Here's the survey: https://forms.gle/5kcybUmT5AQYRiwz6 All of the necessary information should be there. We will keep the survey open for 1 week, closing it next Sunday (20th) night.

I have created a 100% category for the PC as we now are starting to have a bit more interest in it and had our 2nd completed run. I'm expecting at least 2 or 3 more people to pick it up in the near future.

I have also removed the rule about having to point out the timestamp of a reset in case you reset your game at any point in the run. The rule was decided on a spur of the moment as a side thing in one of the rule discussion streams we had with Ahramanyu and primarily it was made to make the moderators' job easier, but in practice I have noticed it's making it harder and giving mods more work if anything. You can still continue to point out the time stamps in your comments of course, but no one is required to do so anymore.

We have no separated the Windows 7 and non-Windows 7 PC categories from each other and instead crated new tabs for PC and PC (Windows 7).

This allows us to create new categories, such as Booster% and 100% for non-Windows 7 runs without cluttering the PC tab with duplicate categories (one for Windows 7 and one for Non-Windows 7). You will surely see those categories made in the future as people start running them, now that there is space for them. Creation of these categories will still require interest in them and are not going to be created automatically, so go out and run them if you want to see them created!

The naming has also changed. We used to have PC Any% (No Windows 7), which was the odd one out banning Windows 7. As that category is (and likely will be) much more active than the Windows 7 ones, we have decided to name the non-Windows 7 category as PC and the categories which have been done using Windows 7 are now PC (Windows 7). We feel like this is best going forward as we expect the Windows 7 runs to be very few and far between in the future and thus leaving the awkward naming convention behind.

We have had a little bit of interest shown in a Dollet Escape category for HD Console version and before creating a category that ends up dead after a week, we have decided to make this thread where people interested in that category can submit their VODs. If there is enough interest shown here we will be making the category as normal. You can put all the required information (Time, Platform, Language) in this thread already so once the category is created, these runs are easily added to it by the moderators.

We have added a new category for the Dollet Escape where Windows 7 is banned. The rules are the same as the PC Any% (No Windows 7), so it requires you to have an FPS meter on screen (Steam or better) and Windows 7 is banned. There are no language restrictions. Note that this category only accepts runs from the 2013 version and not from the HD Remaster as the remaster has the option to select Japanese language which also skips all the tutorials and thus is quite different.

We have also changed the "Cards" selection to be "Route" and have added the option to select "ECM" as an option. ECM stands for Early Card Mod, which is starting to take off as a route. The route still uses Q+Z cards, but refines them earlier to get the powerful items from these cards earlier. The "Cards" option has always been a quick and easy way to see which route the run was done with (Q only or Q+Z), but since now ECM is another route that uses the same cards but is significantly different, this change was done to easily differentiate between these runs.

I would also like to thank everyone who has ran the Any% (No Windows 7) category and also congratulate everyone on their new PBs. The creation of the category has been a major success and in these few short months has already seen 15 people submitting runs and many more starting to learn the game. With this in mind, we might be creating a separate tab for non-Windows 7 runs in the near future so the categories aren't forever staying mixed together and unnecessarily jumble up the PC section.

Here's the information and the vote. Voting will be up for about 2 weeks. https://forms.gle/MgrSn6HZcQ6xmU997

So my goal here is to try and gather opinions about the removal of co-op categories from pretty much anyone. If you have an argument for or against the removal, feel free to express it. I have talked and have asked @kaivel to talk to the runners of the categories about how they feel about the removal and half of them care and half of them don't really mind. It seems like barring any developments these two categories will be removed.

The reason I feel like these categories don't belong in the leaderboards is that the co-op runs are mostly just for fun and not for competition, something you can do with your friend for fun but you aren't going to take too seriously. They don't bring anything interesting to the run, it's just the same any% except done with two/three people.

As it stands right now, there is a rule which allows Pre New Game manipulation. This means that before you start the timer, you are allowed to manipulate the RNG of the game and then start a run. What this means right now is that you could manipulate your danger value and step ID to start at a different spot than normal, thus leading to fewer encounters overall throughout the run.

As it stands right now, there has been no runs that have used this, but recently Luzbelheim has brought this rule to question, as he has worked on a new stepcount with this manipulation which would remove a couple encounters from the run, thus saving a meaningful (for WR) amount of time.

What this means in practice is that before you hit New Game, you would load a save file at some specific point, do your manipulation (walking/running around to get correct step ID / Danger value), then do a soft reset (Ctrl+R on PC) and then start the timer and the run as normal.

This kind of manipulation is not allowed for FF7 mostly because it also removes an important glitch from being acceptable, but is allowed for example in FF4 and FF6 for the same usage, a different step count.

Do you think this should be allowed or not? Please give a clear "Yes, allow it" or "No, don't allow it". Any reasonings for your answers are appreciated.

So I was watching Luzbelheims FF9 run and people got into a discussion about turbo runs. This is what Luzbelheim did: Any% run like normal but at the end when there was no chance of WR, he switched to a turbo controller to be able to get a time into the turbo category. Some people considered this to be a "dick move" yet not prohibited by rules. This made people discuss the turbo category and many said the category "doesn't matter", and I agree; in the current state of turbo category, it doesn't make sense, as Luzbelheims actions have shown. My first thought was that if it is allowed to switch (any) controllers during a run, then Luzbelheims actions were fair play. That made me think maybe switching controllers should not be allowed, thus having turbo runs be intended as such from the very beginning. This implementation of a rule to "validate" the turbo category doesn't seem like a good way to do it though.

This brings me to the point of the thread:

People were throwing out ideas about merging the two leaderboards and having an option of "Turbo: Yes/No" and I think this would be a decent option. There would be a way to filter out turbo runs to see only the non turbo runs and turbo runs would be shown together with the other runs as default.

Some food for thought for discussion:

The non turbo WR is, at the moment, faster than turbo WR and AFAIK people don't consider turbo to be a huge time save (2-3 minutes?).

The top 4 times for turbo are quite competitive times compared to Top10 of non turbo, even if you apply the couple minute penalty for using turbo.

Turbo provides a lot more for a run than just a couple minute time save: comfort. For FF9 where text boxes don't have scrolling text like older FFs, the mashing can be intensive and over the 9 hour run can be exhausting.

Combining the two points above: Some people probably would never have done FF9 runs if turbo wasn't a thing. Some might think "good, who cares if some pleb wants an easier run" but as said above, the turbo runners are good at the game, too. Having a category, a possibility, to use turbo can increase the number of willing participants and I can only think that's a positive thing.

Alright, this thread ended up being some random rambling during my last day of holiday vacation. I will be back at home tomorrow more involved in the community again (read as: posting dank memes on twitch chat). I hope everyone has had a nice holiday and a good start to the New Year :)

W1ndows