Massachusetts, USAIndividual cups have no reason to be considered main categories, given that they're not even full-game runs. The extra click to display misc categories is far from a major inconvenience, and reflects the status of these runs relative to All-Cup Tour.
Even as misc categories, they're still "legitimized" by their presence on the leaderboard. The current implementation of misc categories is insufficient to properly be able to incorporate these alternative speedruns (be it Extra or 50cc no-R). If anything, MK64's misc categories should be individual 150cc cups, just like the other games in the series.
I don't think it's a good idea to add Extra Mode categories to the leaderboard for similar reasons I outlined in the MKDD section about Mirror Mode.
Not only is Extra not significantly different from regular GP, it's also much slower since it's 100cc. I think the MK64 competition is already partitioned enough as is with Skips/No Skips and N64/VC/emulator.
While Extra speedruns can certainly be a fun alternative to the usual, I don't think they have their place as recognized "legitimate" categories on the leaderboard.
While allowing for more play styles is definitely something to encourage in general, the distinction between said play styles should be justified. Whereas many other games have significantly distinct play styles, such as the classic Any% vs. 100%, or, more concretely, No Skips vs. Skips in MK64 or MKW, MKDD only has one overarching play style (for speedrunning). Within a given play style, it's important to establish rules for competition to function properly, and in this case they're given by RTA, 60Hz, 150cc restrictions.
As an aside on leaderboard moderation, I think it's preferable to keep RTA values with no decimals. With the inherent level of inaccuracy of self-timed runs and the lack of re-timing being done for MKDD, it doesn't seem worthwhile to keep track of decimals. (It also makes the leaderboard look neater.)
[quote=Skull64]Mirror Mode: […][/quote] While having Mirror as a run variable “doesn’t do any harm”, I don’t think it contributes anything to the leaderboard. If anything, as I’ve mentioned several times now, it detracts from the competitive value of the main 150cc category, and legitimizes a type of run that has no reason to be.
[quote=Skull64]50Hz vs. 60Hz: […][/quote] For Time Trials, each Combined WR set in 60Hz is considered a feat, because it is generally accepted that although 50Hz is not intrinsically faster (by IGT), it is easier (because you’re essentially playing the game at 5/6 of “normal” speed). For speedruns, where the objective is to go as fast as possible rather than optimize a value stored by the game, it seems counter-intuitive to allow 50Hz, because it is visibly slower. For example, using Kouider’s run that you mentioned, although his IGT is a bit more than 30 seconds faster than Andreas’ time listed here, his RTA is over 41 minutes, or almost 7 minutes slower than Andreas’. I don’t think it’s reasonable to credit Kouider’s run as the fastest speedrun of MKDD under these circumstances. As an added “bonus”, restricting all runs to 60Hz means that everyone can compete on a level playing field, since all regions have access to 60Hz, whereas only PAL can play in 50Hz.
[quote=kirkq]Moderation: […][/quote] The “and series moderators” seems like a reasonable addition for users to be able to more readily identify which specific moderators are familiar with a given game in the series.
[quote=kirkq] Thought: […][/quote] While this is certainly a possibility, I would only be comfortable with it if there were a clear separation between what is “tracked” and what is “featured” (where “featured” is what I consider the role of a leaderboard to be, as per my last post). I’m not sure how speedrun.com would accomplish this (I don’t think that the current “misc categories” is sufficient).
First of all, I appreciate the time you're taking to rectify this situation. Thank you as well for the clarifications relative to your thought process in making Skull64 a MKDD moderator.
[quote=kirkq] I am either unaware of or do not recall the first time this happened.[/quote] If you would like me to expand on this, I can. For now I’ll concentrate on the current situation.
To address the points in your third post:
IGT vs RTA: My understanding of this topic is that if IGT is chosen, RTA would not be tracked at all. From your points, it seems like you think that both times would be displayed regardless. I think the choice of which is default is actually relevant, because it implicitly promotes that timer as the one to be considered foremost.
IGT (breaks): While breaks for optimizing IGT will always be an issue, if RTA is made default, any time with breaks will be penalized by default. As I mentioned in the previous thread, making a rule relative to breaks dives into subjective territory that I would rather avoid, especially when promoting RTA is an efficient solution. (You can’t restart a track during a GP in MKDD.)
50Hz vs 60Hz: As you say, your hypothetical user’s reasonable IGT will be displayed “when the user sorts by IGT”. I think the distinction here is relevant, because the requirement of user action to view this reasonable IGT makes it appear less important. I think that discouraging 50Hz is something that should be done (be it implicitly or explicitly), because historically there has always been a (Time Trials-centric) debate on the legitimacy of 50Hz, and this can be avoided completely in a reasonable manner here.
Based on the rest of your post, it seems that we have different perceptions of what the purpose of this leaderboard is (or should be). For example, based on how you formulate “Is the goal of this board to force a narrow competition spectrum, or to track the reasonable ways people may want to play this game?”, it would appear that you think the second option is preferable, which in this case would mean adding all the variables you mentioned. However, my personal opinion is that the first option is preferable based on how you present them. I specify “based on how you present them”, because I think that the “narrow competition spectrum” that you mention encompasses the “reasonable ways people may want to [speedrun] this game”. I believe that one of the roles of a speedrun leaderboard (be it on this site or elsewhere) is to provide information on which categories are considered “legitimate” by the community. While each individual is free to speedrun however they want, I think it’s important for a leaderboard to establish what is worthy of recognition. In this particular case, I don’t think that the MKDD leaderboard (or any of the Mario Kart leaderboards for that matter) should legitimize runs done in 50cc, 100cc, or even Mirror, because they either fulfill the same objective with the same conditions as 150cc but slower, or they are only distinguished from 150cc through a superficial modification of the game’s mechanics.
As for your last post, if your only issue with the series moderators is that none of us have runs on the MKDD leaderboard, I can amend that. I think that the series moderators have been handling all games rather well for the past few months, and I believe that each game in the series has a moderator who is reasonably well-acquainted with it and its community.
I noticed recently that Skull64 has been made a moderator for MKDD and that the Mario Kart series moderators no longer have access to MKDD. With no indication of what had happened, despite having been in an active conversation with Skull64 (http://www.speedrun.com/mkdd/thread/bgq8u), I was puzzled and looked for some form of explanation, which led me to this thread.
Based on what I’ve read here, I have to question the appropriateness of how this matter was handled. For one, I find it rather underhanded on Skull64’s part that he would petition for an admin to grant him the ability to overrule the then-current state of the leaderboards while we were in the midst of a civil debate. Furthermore, once these powers were granted, one of Skull64’s first actions was to remove series moderators’ access to MKDD, and he refrained from making any mention of this turn of events on the game’s forum, which in my eyes is essentially a forcible termination of the ongoing discussion through power seizure and abuse. I am also concerned, although to a lesser degree, by how kirkq handled this request. From the information available to me in this thread, it doesn’t seem that kirkq was aware of the thread in the MKDD forum, and, as far as I can tell, made no attempt at finding any information about this situation other than what was provided by Skull64’s posts. Please correct me if I am mistaken. I think it’s necessary for me to bring this up here, because this is the second time that an admin grants MKDD moderator status with seemingly minimal thought to someone whose immediate response is to rescind series moderators’ access to MKDD in order to impose their vision of an improved leaderboard (said vision was different in the first case).
While I have no qualms with continuing the debate about how the MKDD leaderboards should be presented, I would appreciate it if the state of MKDD moderation was returned to what it was a few days ago. I believe that although I am certainly not perfect, the change brought forth by Skull64’s request is both unnecessary and unwarranted.
While it would be possible to add a rule enforcing 60Hz, many people don't read the rules. Using RTA implicitly handles these cases without any unnecessary misunderstandings. As for timer precision, there haven't been any significant problems with second-wise precision so far, and IGT can be used as a tie-breaker if needed.
In a (single-segment) speedrun, where the objective is to complete the game as quickly as possible, it seems unreasonable to allow the player to take breaks without any negative impact on his/her measured performance.
Again, Mirror Mode isn't substantially different from 150cc: it's a "gimmick", as Goomba puts it. Creating a separate category for Mirror Mode (or even making it a run variable) would detract from 150cc competition and separate runs into two categories which are essentially the same.
I did not decide this on my own. Before these leaderboards were made, a few top MKDD players did All-Cup Tour runs, notably Andreas Rudmarker (Druvan7) and Richard Karlsson (LyftarN). Even though they are mainly Time Trialers, where 50Hz is used, their All-Cup Tour runs have always been in 60Hz. Adopting RTA on the leaderboards ensures that everyone does runs in 60Hz.
That being said, you could argue stopping people from using 50Hz isn't a good enough reason to ditch IGT. However, even aside from 60/50Hz issues, IGT has its problems. For example, what's to stop someone from taking a breather between tracks? If track transitions don't factor into your time, then it doesn't matter how long you take to move on to the next one. You could attempt to restrict this by imposing some kind of time limit to track transitions, but then you enter the realm of subjective criteria, when the issue is avoided entirely through RTA.
Just because more categories can be added doesn't mean they should. The current system allows for all players to directly compare their times without unnecessarily fragmenting competition into categories with no substantial differences between them.
There's no reason to do a speedrun in 50Hz, unless you're going for IGT (which ties in with the leaderboard using RTA).
As for your second post, menuing is part of the speedrun. It's also not very complicated to mash a button for a few seconds every couple minutes.
I don't think the question is "What's the downside to having it?", but rather "What's the point in having it?", as mentioned in the two posts above yours.
The default sort is RTA because if it were IGT 50Hz would be faster.
As with Mirror Mode, I don't really see the point of having a separate category for such a small change as that.
I don't think it's worth having an extra category for this, considering there isn't really any substantial difference between the two categories. I don't consider the mirroring of the tracks to be much of a difference within the context of a speedrun.
MKSC has 5 Extra cups that contain all the SMK tracks. They have the same names as the regular cups but with "Extra" added in front.
I was wondering why some games (namely, MKSC and MKDS) only have single cup categories, but no all cup ones. Also, if you want to have single cup categories, why not have them for all games in the series? MKSC is also missing all the Extra cups, by the way.
