The current criteria the leaderboards use is based on popularity. The 5 categories we have are by far the most popular. Yes, 16 star is extremely arbitrary, but (again) it is one of the most popular speedruns of ¤any¤ game.

1 star is even sillier than 16, and I was in favor of removing or making it misc. until I saw that it's also very popular. There are 81 1 star runs on N64.

I don't see any reason to make either of these categories misc. What benefit does it add to our leaderboards? I can't think of a single positive in making that change. Even though both are silly, they are also competitive and popular categories.

But it's not fine for the mods to decide that they'd rather not bother with having unpopular, inactive leaderboards and just doing away with misc. altogether....

"I'm just saying most speedgames have misc categories and they have found ways to not add every meme category there is"

Well, I hope you and others are beginning to understand why expecting every speedgame to abide by the same rules/traditions is impractical. It's because not every speedgame is the same. If other games can get away with adding misc. categories and not having 1000 stupid additions, then that's great for them, but unfortunately SM64 is not in that position. Many, many dumb categories have been ran over the years.

If popularity is not the criteria we should use to determine which categories are run, then both of us seem to be at a loss as to what criteria should be used. If popularity is the criteria we use, then I don't believe that 45/31 etc would make the cut.

I don't know how else to ask this question, so I'm just going to repeat it until you answer it.

Many people have done runs of meme categories such as 100 Unique Lives, MST, BST, 22 star, etc. Are you okay with these runs being on the leaderboard or not?

No one has run All Signs to my knowledge, though many ILs have been done. Many people have run 100 Unique Lives, BST, MST, 22 star, etc. Are you okay with those categories or not?

"We know that 31 star and 45 star are the most popular misc categories, "

You just said the popularity shouldn't be a factor in what categories we allow on the leaderboard. Now it is?

Why is 45 star a more legitimate category than any of the other categories I've listed? Why is it more deserving than All Signs or 100 Unique Lives?

So, if it's irrelevant how many players runs a category for it to be on the leaderboard, what's the cut off for what categories are allowed? All Coins okay? 100 Unique Lives? All Signs? How about BST? 22 star?

Do you think we should make room for categories that very, very few people run? Not just a small amount of runs, but a small amount of updated runs? I don't find removing sections of the leaderboard that no one bothers to use elitist at all.

I agree that 16 star makes no sense, but it's one of the most popular speedruns of ¤any¤ game. That's why it deserves a spot on the current leaderboard, even though we don't have misc.

You can run whatever you want dude. The fact that there's no leaderboard shouldn't stop you lol. I run All Coins fairly frequently and there's never been a leaderboard for it.

Good idea Artism :)

I strongly support the idea of making a separate game for all of the junk categories.

A few people have suggested giving some misc. categories (45 and 31 star mainly, but possibly others) another chance on the leaderboards. They were previously on the leaderboards but removed because of inactivity.

I personally think there's very little reason for having categories on the leaderboards (even under misc.) if the leaderboards aren't being used. 45 and 31 star are both unpopular and illegitimate, pointless categories. However, I also think that a category absolutely deserves a spot if runners will make the leaderboard active, regardless of whether it's a joke category or not, and I see no reason to not at least give these categories a trial period.

The biggest downside to doing this is that it potentially opens the door for other shit categories. Like, I do All Coins, and I see no valid reason why 45 star is a more legitimate category than All Coins. If 45 star is on the leaderboards, then I absolutely want All Coins to get a chance as well.

So, where does it stop? If a category only needs to be popular and semi-legitimate in order to justify a spot on the leaderboards, then are we going to have to add shit like BST and other awful categories in order to remain consistent?

Thoughts?

edit: oh there was also some discussion about moving 1 star, maybe 16 star to misc. if we did add misc. categories

I don't really understand why you would be less likely to join a community after seeing us engage in a constructive, civil discussion on trying to make our community better, but thanks for your input.

Would you be less likely to start running/more likely to stop running if you weren't able to submit a time to the leaderboards @xzRockin?

"The people who play on N64 are not effected at all, while the people who don't play on N64 will be strongly negative about the change."

A very good point.

Also appreciate Pac giving us permission to against what his personal opinions are. Means a lot.

"Seems like a lot of the Pros are overstated. I don't see how removing categories that nobody is running competitively will increase competition."

I think the point then becomes, if no one is running these versions competitively, then why do we have them at all? We don't have a 30 star leaderboard because no one runs it competitively.

I also think you're greatly underestimating how confusing our leaderboard system is to a lot of outsiders. When Paper Mario community were arguing over whether to separate their leaderboards, many of those guys were convinced that emu and VC were banned, and even after the way we do things was explained to them, some of them didn't seem to quite understand it, or they thought that emu/VC was banned in practice.

Definitely could argue that what other communities think is irrelevant though.

Overall, at this moment, I agree with your assessment that the cons outweigh the pros, even if I disagree with some of your minor points. If you look at it as risk v reward, there doesn't seem to be that much reward, but a ton of risk.

I don't like capping the time. If we have a leaderboard, it should be treated as being just as legitimate as the N64 leaderboard.

The problem with "giving them a choice" is that it inherently makes the competition weaker by dividing it. Now some players are just never going to switch to N64 no matter what, but many players claimed this back when we first separated the leaderboards, and N64 jumped from being the least popular version to by far the most popular. I feel as if we go the distance and finally just get rid of the other versions, we might see another jump, and that's only good for the competitive state of the game.

As Sicko pointed out in the discord, there's a cognitive dissonance in the way a lot of people who have stuck with emu and VC operate. They claim they only care about their own times, yet often they're frustrated that VC and emu are separated. If you only care about your own times, and comparing to other people makes no difference, then how we handle our leaderboards is irrelevant.

And if you do care about your competing with other runners, then there doesn't seem to be any reason to not just switch to N64 other than a monetary reason.

I'm also not convinced that we'd lose a lot of runners if we banned it. If players want to try out the game to see if they want to speedrun it, a change in the way we handle our leaderboards doesn't seem to make a difference. I can understand the argument for sure, but I'm not convinced that it's 100% accurate.

There's been some discussion in the discord regarding adding/removing other platforms to the SM64 leaderboards. I'm curious to see what everyone's thoughts are on this.

A few things that seem obvious:

PROS:

-Encourages competition. Version differences are a really unfortunate part of speedrunning in regards to competition. Competition has always been a huge, important part of SM64 speedrunning. Officially encouraging everyone to play on the same version will make the game more competitive and hopefully make players want to work harder to get better.

-Removes ambiguity. Lots of runners, especially from other communities, already see emulator and VC as being less legitimate than N64, and this would make that official. No more long explanations explaining how our leaderboards work.

-Removes clutter. The VC and EMU leaderboards simply do not have the same number of active runners that the N64 leaderboard does, and given past precedent of removing categories and denying iQue a place on the leaderboard based on lack of activity, it seems to follow that VC and EMU should also be removed. This will make the leaderboards much more streamlined and easier to understand for the casual speedrun fan.

CONS:

-Exclusionary. There's no doubt that many, many people get into speedrunning SM64 because of the availability of emulator, and without a leaderboard for that version this would possibly discourage new runners from picking up the game.

-Unfair to current runners. The status quo for the past several years has been that N64, VC, and emulator are all technically equal but separate versions, and that it is up to the individual player to decide which version they would prefer to play on. Many have decided to stick with emulator or VC. Removing the leaderboard that they have chosen to compete on (even if that competition isn't as tough as N64) doesn't seem to be fair to those players, who are every much a part of the community as the N64 players.

All opinions are welcomed and encouraged, but please be respectful.