i wish my community still argued over stuff

super jealous right now

setup music was excellent, fit the background really nicely and gave the stream character and a more professional tone. stream worked great, tech crew was excellent and were on point in keeping the event clean

was not a fan of the actual space we had this year(except the outside lobby space we had, that was rad). no windows made rooms get ridiculously hot/smelly and a lack of oxygen, especially during hyped runs or mafia/wolf sessions. agree with headcrab that there needed to be some sort of projector where everyone's heads were irrelevant, sometimes it was hard to watch runs.

food was close so that was good, honestly there's not much to complain about

next year we definitely need more space though, there were too many people for the space we had

i see. even so, i'd still try to negotiate with them for a better deal since they are inhibiting our freedom to show the content we produce wherever we want.

in my eyes, they need to at the very least pay for all equipment, venue, and hotel costs of the runners. and it shouldn't bind us to them in any way outside of whatever content is produced as a consequence of this NASA. if everything goes smoothly and it proves to be beneficial for reasons that aren't purely economical, then we can discuss a more long term relationship.

signing contracts is an extremely dangerous game, and most business people seek to exploit smaller things so they can reap the fruits of when they become bigger. that is not going to happen while i'm around.

no, the money and freedom to do what we want would be paying for everyone's flights, hotel and the venue. your original post was not clear about whether they cover hotel costs as well, but that is still a minor cost. 50-125 out of a 650 dollar expense makes very little difference in the overall scheme of things for each individual member. even if they were willing to hand over 10,000 dollars for a venue, we can't even put that venue to use because we don't have that many people to entertain.

i'll try to weigh the goods and the bads as best i can

on one side having the event paid for is pretty good lets us redirect that money onto much better things like streaming gear. on the other realistically their investment is only a couple of thousand dollars and it's going to bind us to their site. i'd also rather pay 50 bucks to attend than go around promoting the event all day long like a paper boy

i do think that cfb represents the majority of runners coming, and that they are coming for the gathering and all of the fun that comes with it. i share the view that this event is not really a matter of trying to get popular. last time was dope and i'm 100% sure we can make it way better this time around

i was a big advocate for trying to get the runners not have to pay for the event earlier on the year because i think them flying themselves out, paying hotel etc. is enough of an expense, but 50 bucks more on top of that is nothing. maybe if they were flying everybody out it would be a different story, because then they would be carrying the weight of the event and open doors for us to bring in new people; but this is a very small fraction of the overall costs of the community, and certainly not enough benefits to be going through all that additional effort.

unlike the sellout gdq we were never really in it for the money to begin with, and i think that we should continue to not let money compel us to make decisions. since that is the only thing that stream.me is going to offer us, i think for now our best option is to continue on our own path but still leave the doors open for the future.

I think Forky did a good and fair analysis of the situation. The only thing I would like to mention is that I don't think Easy/Medium/Hard should be bunched up as the same categories, but should each have their own categories. Enter mathematical explanation.

While I do agree that in the sub 2:30 times Easy must step up to double breaking(by double breaking, I mean you are chaining in two parts of your field at once) in order to compete with Hard, for Medium that is not the case and Medium can easily reach times as low as 2:20 by single breaking, something you can only beat on Hard if you play perfectly in single breaking. Perfectly. While you can argue that you are perfectly single breaking in each mode, you have to keep in mind that Hard is 33% faster than Medium, which is 33% faster than Easy. Just to get the same time on Hard as you would on Easy, you have to play at double the speed(and more because the dark blue makes it even more technically and mentally demanding). What it means to play perfect in these runs are completely different levels of execution, so they shouldn't be compared.

End of mathematical explanation.

The point of why I play Hard mode is to display the pinnacle of speed, execution and quick thinking. It's not the time itself, but what it takes to get there. If I wanted a free sub 2:30 time, I would play on Medium because getting a sub 2:30 on that mode is piss easy for anyone who has a < 5 minute run on Hard; it's literally just doing the same thing in slo-mo. What makes a run important is not the time, and I think it's obvious to everyone that the meaning of having X time on Medium is much, MUCH different than having X time on Hard. You would be hard pressed to find a single person who would disagree. Since everyone acknowledges this even if they don't directly say it, these runs need to be separated. It's as simple as that.

This has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, but I still thought I'd throw this knowledge out there.

I would like to correct you on a single thing NaN, and that is your comments about what you can and can't have control of in a run. Marathon/Time Zone mode have 0 luck to it. Two main reasons go into this, and I will say them in the order I discovered them:

A. Any full screen combination of panels can be converted into optimal amount of points with at LEAST 1 route available(EXTREMELY rare case for there to only be one route). B. The panels the game will give you as you raise the stack are NOT random, and can be recited infinitely after pushing up only a single line.

Because of B there is 0 luck involved other than the initial screen you see. Because of A, the initial screen can be converted into an optimal amount of points every time, which means no luck other than a couple of extra moves you would have to do(< 10 moves) which would have a minimal effective influence on your time since the moves must be made within the time frame of the chain(you can be obligated to move faster or lose frames by sliding blocks in or doing tricks). Since the "luck" variance itself can only be < 1 second because of this, it is low enough for me to declare that the run has no luck.

An even later reply, but I think we're lucky enough to have a community which doesn't lie about these kinds of things. I think for the sake of general site rules there should be at least some sort of proof to post a time onto this site, but that doesn't mean that a faster time can't be acknowledged as the official world record. I would have no reason to doubt anyone's word here if they said they got a certain time in something. It's such a pointless lie to make, and I think everyone understands that.

Just to clarify, I do agree that only having Hard would discourage new players from joining, and would like to see Easy Normal and Hard all implemented for the purpose of bringing in new people. In fact, I think playing on King Kai gravity(10x, aka level 10) is a terrible idea(and will stagnate your improvement) until you have a really good mastery of chaining past 13 on level 1. I said that solely to make it clear that I think the ultimate goal for a person who wants to prove their technical and mental skill should be Hard mode, even if you don't start off on it. That also doesn't mean I am de-valuing the different skillset it takes to double break on easy if you want to get times lower than 2:30, a time which can be broken by only single breaking on Hard. It doesn't mean I am de-valuing the timing for tricks on the different difficulties either. I am simply saying that everything you can do in Easy can be done in Hard at a much faster pace if you are fast and good enough, so it's a more demanding run.

I don't think I'm right because I'm good, and I despise that kind of mentality. It should be clear that a person who believes that would never make a long post explaining into detail their reasoning. It was never my intention to turn it into that kind of air, so I think it serves as a clear indicator of my frustration and conviction.

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm perfectly fine with 50k or 999k being the official categories in marathon, as long as they are treated with the same respect as Super Hard or Spa Service as main categories. My issue is not with the score, since what I value about this run is the mental and technical skill which is required to consistently plan and create the maximum chains repeatedly. 50k is what I would consider the more "lucky" category of the two, since you only need to get lucky with the panel combinations one time to get a good score, so if I were forced to only choose one of the two, 999k would be my choice.

The reason I have played up to 100k up until now is because it seemed like a score which fit properly within a time margin which made for a reasonable speedrun to perform for other people at marathons, with the initial idea of it being performed between 5 and 10 minutes. My idea went rewarded when it got into NASA for not being too long or too short, and was very well received by the speedrunners at NASA. Some of them watched me do runs of it for over 4-5 hours in a row. I am now going to explain some math about why 100k is the sweet spot(for my current skill level) in terms of performing at marathons and promoting competition.

The higher the points go, the more the run would clearly differentiate consistency in making large chains over getting a lucky run. I chose one that would respect the skill of players who dedicated themselves to this category enough to create a clear difference in the times of a person who can make 1 large chain a minute on a good day and one who can make 2 large chains a minute on a good day(large chains are what I consider 20k point chains). The difference between these two players in time is 3 minutes, which is extremely large in a category where the record is currently 3:14 and can potentially be 2 minutes or less. To compare, a 50k run would only show this discrepancy with a time difference of 1 minute. A 999k run would create the insane differential of ~25 minutes between the two players. 100k was a fair middle ground to allow players who were newer to the category to not feel completely discouraged or crushed by the difficulty of the run, which I believe is important in the growth of our community(a lot more than semantics are).

As far as the time itself goes, all puzzle games by definition are doing the same thing over and over again. You need a time for a run which is long enough to allow players to understand and begin to appreciate what they are seeing, but not long enough for it to start becoming repetitive for the viewers. Marathon and Time Attack are difficult to follow for your average viewer, so the display leaves them in awe for a while while they see a cursor move ridiculously fast while they see the numbers on the screen grow and the colours explode like a slot machine. Really big chains generate hype, and I'd say your average viewer begins to understand what's going on after 3 or 4 minutes. From that point on, you need to have already reached a point in the run which keeps them interested. The flashiness of the run would probably keep people interested for as long as 10 minutes; however, if the run were to last 5 minutes, being that close to the end would keep people interested and on their toes to see the grand finale. My NASA time was 5:19 in the 100k.

Why is this all important? In order to grow the community you need to attract players by making them see something in this game that interests them. Being displayed in a speedrun marathon is the perfect way to give exposure to the game, so that is my first priority. The exposure so far through Story Mode and Spa Service is alright, but generally speaking has not attracted new players to our game, only older ones. I am convinced that the craziness of the Marathon run, if performed at a certain level, will bring new players to our game.

End of mathematical explanation.

What I am not ok with is Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Super Hard all being main categories, and Spa Service, Marathon and Time Attack taking a back door to them. This is for multiple reasons, such as how 5 story mode categories and 0 point based ones(...), but the main one being that Spa Service, Marathon and Time Attack are a greater display of technical and pre-planning skill than story mode is. If a game is supposed to be competitive, it can only be competitive because being better at the game reaps greater rewards. There is no better translation of this concept in the game than Marathon or Time Attack. S Hard Story mode is actually the one which translates this concept the worst due to the low technical speed cap and the amount of luck there is in it. There is AI manipulation involved, which is what makes it a unique run compared to the rest.

Needless to say, it follows that I believe Marathon and Time Attack should be run on the Hard difficulty, since the other ones require much less skill to make the same points on. I wouldn't mind if Easy Normal and Hard were all categories, but if a choice between the 3 needs to be made, I think Hard is the only true demonstration of a player's ability to consistently plan and execute chains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedrun

Speedruns by definition are a competition to see who can complete an objective the fastest. Getting 50k, 100k, completing Spa Service or anything else are all objectives which can be raced and competed for. I play this game solely to compete in the most difficult task to do, and if other people don't want to do that I am perfectly fine with that. What I can't accept is "popularity" of something overriding the proper respect it should be given. There is simply no such thing, and I can and will prove it with more than just talk if necessary.