As there have been a couple of category suggestions as well as others outside of this forum, I want to give a small statement about the current suggestions already made in this forum and present the new ones here, too.
We are still quite unsure which categories to add but we do think there should be some more than only the current 3 categories. Discussing the categories ideas is welcome!
Any% NSB: NSB stands for "No Sequence Breaks". The idea would be to do an Any% run but without clipping through walls/objects and without doing death warps etc. Smaller glitches would be allowed as long as you would not go somewhere you are not supposed to be (for instance the quick kill glitch for king bob-omb could be allowed ()). The problem would be to define what a sequence break would really be, for example a simple shortcut which can be the fast route to be bomb defuser powerup or the double lavabounce up to it, it's not a glitch but an unintended shortcut.
All Temple Powerups: In this category you would get all powerups which are not depending on the star count, those would be vc, bomb defuser, super gp, hat throw, fire suit, mc, hover boots, anti-gravity boots, freezeflame, and spin gloves, life trade and lens of truth. The problem would be to conclude if only powerups would be included or also items like the cannon license or the peach letter. Furthermore, it would also need to be clarified if the category would end on collecting the last item, beating the first bowser or beating the second bowser.
171 Stars from finished save file: This category would be quite arbitary but likely still funny. You would start on a safefile that has all powerups unlocked and collect all 171 stars from there again. It would be very hard to define rules and verify these runs though, however it's probably worth to consider this idea.
Low%: This category would basically be Any% except you collect as few stars and powerups as actually required. For this it wouldn't be easy to define rules and it would be needed to clarify if sequence breaks would be allowed or not. If not however, there needs to be an option for what to do when it is figured out how to leave out specific stars/powerups that were required before. You probably only need 10 stars and the bomb defuser or 15 stars and no powerups for low% with sequence breaks though (I'm not quite sure).
30/31 Star: It was requested to have a category which is "escape% but you have to starslide onto the thing, and not the regular escape% route". This requires to at least have 30 stars after all. Personally, this category seems very arbitrary to me, even if it might be fun it is a bit questionable to have a category be focussed on one specfic powerup without deeper reason.
Present Run: This category was requested, it's actually consisting of 2 different categories. One category would get as many stars as possible before going through the Temple of Time into the future, the other category "where you beat all the dungeons and temples you can in the present". Personally, I can see why this category would exist but again I can't really tell if it was a good category (categories) to have.but as I said, it's hard for me to evaluate.
Now that I have presented all current category ideas, I can personally say that I would include Any% NSB and All Temple Powerups but rather not any other category for now.
However, I would be glad to know your opinions before we add any new categories. We will probably not add any new category before tomorrow. Your opinons could make the whole process be fairly easier for us generally.
What about All Dungeon Stars, where you'd have to get all the stars of each dungeon (including bowser's castle), would show off a lot more of the dungeons and would make for interesting routing
for NSB, a sequence break could just include clipping into unintended places, such as a bomb clip into an area early, or other methods such as going over the whomp to gerudo desert
I could probably make a save file with all powerups and only the stars required to spawn the bridge to ganon's castle, however the magic meter would be small so that might not be a great idea
For the 171 stars from finished save file idea, you could use star display to remove all the stars you collected once you have all the powerups, and then have a 0 star file with all powerups and start it from there. Then you won't have the problem of it being hard to verify. I guess it might also be nice to start with 2000 coins in that case to cut down on coin farming. Once you have the file, you can just copy it every time you want to do a new run, so this process only has to be done once. Then we could just call the category "100% new game plus".
Ellaboration on 30/31 star: I meant that the category would be the same as escape% but the current method of sliding down and wallkicking is banned.
NSB and ATP I agree with, but I also like the 171 ng+ type category you mentioned
Super late to the party, but maybe Dungeon RTAs for IL's? You'd have to make a rule about how to deal with items/moves, and itd be a pain in the arse preparing a bunch of save files that have done everything but one dungeon, but I guess you could skip collecting items and just get the stars on a 100% savefile.
Low%
I think the easiest way to do it is to have sequence breaks and no sequence breaks versions of the category. Sequence breaks doesn't have much that needs to be done, the only real problem with no sequence breaks is if sequence breaks in dungeons are allowed or not, because I that would drastically increase the item requirements (e.g. lens of truth required for shadow temple, metal required for water temple), and that would be the real challenge for rule making.
For sequence breaks allowed: I submitted a low% run to the any% no rha category since there is no leaderboard for it yet. The rules shouldn't be TOO hard to define based on what this run does.
You need the vanish cap for final bowser (even tas uses it, it's just hard to see) ((MAYBE it's possible to use bombs to hit the shell back but it would not be rta viable in the slightest)) and obviously we need bomb defuser. My run does not use any of the fountains because I think they are what give you extra stars, and I would consider them collectables, none of them are necessary so ye none used.
Unless some crazy tech is discovered to not need vanish cap, I think this is the lowest it's gonna go. So 10 shines, 2 items-> bowser for sequence breaks allowed.
low% should be added according to sapling's proposal now that they have submitted a run
as for low% no sequence breaks I'm not sure how much it would deviate from the normal progression especially if they're not allowed in dungeons, hard to say really if that'd be any different from an any% no sequence break run
