With the newest patch drop I realise how really important it is for this leaderboards categories to be set in stone as early as possible. And since it has been here for quite some time I have a number of thoughts that I would really ask all of you to consider and share your own to help shape the look of the board for the final time.

First things first: the expansion pack. I never would've expected for there to be such small interest in the expansion pack categories. Looking at the amazing competition that standard pack has gotten it really does suprise me that nearly noone is interested in the, basically, free real estate that is the expansion pack category. Now it's not going to be deleted or altered obviously, it's just as valid as standard pack, but it does feed into my next point regarding...

Double Arena Win category, and multi-win categories in general. The main issue with SAP speedrunning is obviously the RNG nature of the game and the necessity of hard grinding, which is unideal. One clear way to ammend that is to have a category that reward consistent play and being able to bring 10 wins on command. Now the current Double Arena Win category was ment to be that, but it was a poor attempt as I explained, the expansion pack is not very popular.

But the thing is, that I don't think it's even too bad of an idea. Besides Double Arena Win being a multi-run category it also rewards expertise in both of the animal pack, which I think is really cool.

But besides that, if we were to implement a proper multi-win category with the standard/expansion dichotomy, what should it be? Just X runs in a row? What number? It should be high enough for the category to trulry reward ability to win on command. (and make note how that will only count for runs 2 and onwards cause the first one can still be grinded). But also it should be low enough to be feasible to do. Would 3 be too hard, would 2 be too low? (just 1 on-demand arena win)

I saw someone do a run of getting X amount of points, which would make the run possible to do for everyone while still rewarding consistently getting high wins. But it would be a nuisance to have to keep track of the points. Or would it? We could make it so you have to show the count before and after the run to verify, though it would still be a nuisance for the runner during the run to keep track of how many they need to complete the run. Also, what should be the amount?

Are there other goals that aren't too arbitrary that would aid in rewarding consistency in a run?

What should happen to the Double Arena Win category, is it ok to leave as is?

All of these questions need to be considered if we are to decide how to move forward with this leaderboard. I know this is a lot, but I hope I wasn't too rambly and was able to express my concerns and thoughts on this matter. I hugely, hugely encourage you all to share your thoughts on these topics. They will be the things that will decide what ends up happening.

As I see people really do not care much about this, which is really diheartening because I do not want to be the final arbiter of what the board is. The way that players will interact with the leaderboard should be decided by the players. But since nobody wants to get involved the only way to go is for me to make all the decisions. imo that's very much the unideal situation, but if that's what need to be done then that's what'll happen.

I'll give this thread 1 more week and if by the end I don't see any objections or discussion I'll implement the changes. Deleting the Double Arena Win category and implementing a new one in it's place of Non-Abandon Triple Arena Win with Standard and Expansion variants.

Hey terter, I just found this community and website. I think if some interesting categories are made, people will flock to it.

I was wondering about a couple ideas. I'm completely new to speedrun.com and was wondering what is and isn't allowed. Do things have to be purely time based or can alternative measures of skill be used?

I have two categories I have been personally tracking and am curious about any other people who are doing the same:

1. Most 10-win arena wins in a row
2. Fastest to collect all ribbons (except for the sloth ribbon)

For (1), this would not be timed but would have to be streamed to confirm For (2), having someone to confirm a multi-day event may be extremely tedious. I would propose that this be based off of total run count rather than time. I've personally forgotten to start and stop the timer as appropriate and so only have an approximate time estimate.

Regarding the 3-wins-in-a-row speedrun, I doubt it will be popular. A good player, when playing slowly, would range from 50%-85% 10-win rate. A speed-runner generally fails 100x times before getting in a run under, say, 4-minutes. Doing this challenge as a mix of speed-run and skill would be frustrating to the slower players and also speed-runners who enjoy the (somewhat) mindless grind as they don't need to know more advance strategy but are rerolling for the high-rolls.

I think the untimed, 10-win arena wins in a row could be popular if the right people know about it, speed-runners may not even attempt it because their actual slowplay 10-win-rate% may be quite a bit lower to even chain 3 or 4 wins together.

My suggestion for a full ribbon collection speed run would definitely be very unpopular for people to attempt, but it would draw a lot of attention. Only a very small proportion of SAP have been able to complete the full ribbon collection, speed running it has not even crossed their mind. But it would be a statement to the community that this is possible and if you can ever try to beat it, go for it. I don't know if this website would be the best place to log this attempt, but I'm uncertain where else I can discuss this.

Thanks for responding cleanup! To answer your question: the site rules prohibit hosting categories not tied to speedrunning. But in practice it is feasible to just make one anyway and hope it flies under the radar for a long enough time to gain sufficiently many runs. At which point it would make site staff apprehensive about removing the runs from the site, in spite of them being of a prohibited nature. Whether it is worth it to walk such a tightrope? I'd lean on no, but if you trulry believe for that to be the way to go then it can be discussed.

If we were to go through with such a thing, your first suggestion would be the thing to try. The second one not necesarilly so much since there would be no great way of verifying the completion of the challenge in any other way than doing it all in one sitting, which I do not believe is feasible.

Lastly, your comment on the 3 in a row category is apt. The original concept was to reward consistent play rather than grinding, but setting it up the way I described would mix the two, and it's not the best of both worlds like I thought, rather the worst. I still think a multi-win category of some sort should be in place in some way, but I do agree that the starting point would need to be determined in a different way.

I wouldn't want you to feel like you're breaking the rules. Now I'm thinking about it, I don't see categories for "how many times can you beat super mario 64 in a row". Or "how many games of League of legends matches vs ai bots can you win in a row". This is makes sense as many good players could beat it an indefinite consecutive number of times.

The nature of SAP is very different from these static game setups. An unfortunate consequence of the underlying randomness results in requiring 'the perfect run' of RNG rather than 'the perfect run' of fine motor precision. Additionally, I've watched some SAP speedrunners who face varying amounts of server response times between rerolls and a match starting. Once iOS is released, we may not see any records being broken until the server becomes more responsive. Server response times add another layer of uncontrollable increase in time. I personally believe non-time based runs would be the best fit for SAP but recognize this might not be the best community/forum for record-keeping.

I agree w/ your sentiment that these mix of skill/speed challenges brings out the worst in each world. The separate but equally hardcore communites of speed-running vs slow-running SAP (actually there are no slow-running communites that I'm aware of which is how I ended up here haha) has different ideals of how they want to approach a challenge. Unless we are able to find and bring in additional attention from the SAP community, I doubt any skill-based speed-run challenges would garner much attempts at all.

I think that we should promote speed runs for more obscure skill based runs like achievements or ones that involves challenges like 3 pets only or under tier 3s only

I also think that it's necessary to try to let people who don't grind abandon hats lobbies have a chance by making a more casual speed run

Idk if achievement hunting is obscure. Lots of people like to get achievements, its just not something speed runners do due to the loooong nature of the ordeal.

With time I majorly warmed up to the idea of a non-abandon hat categories to at least try to nab at the everpresent RNG of the runs.

Additionally I would like to add that I don't believe challenge runs of any kind actually require skill any more so than the current standard form of running. Even with only being able to use 3 pets you'll still restart at every opportunity until you get what you need to complete the challenge quickly.

I am really unsure of how would we go about making a trulry skill-based category. Maybe it is impossible, this is SAP after all.

I definitely think that both are about the same in skill level but doing the non-abandon hat lobbies just make it take a few hours longer. They both take skill in knowing what works at different points of the game, but at the end of the day either way it is RNG. So I beleieve both are basically the same thing but one is more time consuming. I think multiple wins in general should be up there and that it should be up to 3 wins. So like one double win with standard or expansion and one triple win with standard or expansion. Also a side note from me: where did the double arena win go? Just bought the expansion pack to try it yesterday and it was gone when I woke up haha.

Huh, I didn't consider this perspective up until now. I guess it still is mostly up in the air if the abandon/not experiences are sufficiently different. Maybe I was a bit too naive thinking that disallowing abandoning runs would lead people to play with more consideration, rather than switching to a more tedious form of grinding.

I do agree on the multiple wins but I do think that the rules should be made in such a way that all 3 of the runs are done to maximize the chances of winning, without the option to grind the first win. And so far I haven't came up with an idea on how to do that. One idea I had is to make it 4 wins except the first win isn't timed. The problem with that is that it majorly increases the difficulty of an already very difficult run.

The Double Arena Win category has been recently removed off the boards as I have come to terms with it being an impulse add and not an actualy good category. Flawed in concept and not sufficiently non-trivial. I'm sorry for this unfortunate timing for you, you can still run the single win cat if that's any remedy.

I believe It is fine to have a multiple win with the grinding. It is really hard to get three wins in the first place haha. I dont think I’ve ever done it even with grinding the first one. It is definitely easier but you could just do 4 then make it so the whole thing is times. I believe It is a bit weird to have no timer for any of the matches. 4 wins to me seems like it’d be very difficult, but maybe it’s have to be tested more. I could try for a bit and get back with ya to see if I could even do it with grinding the first win. Also yeah it’s is fine that the double is gone. As long as we can get another cool category! Why don’t you make it so that non-abandon hat is just a sub category on the regular ones as well and test that to see if there is change? Not sure how easy it is to throw something up to test it for a week, but I beleieve both multiple win/no abandon hat just need a trial run!

Happy to see more people coming around to the non-abandon hat category more! I'm still very much in favor of it since the Feedback thread comments I had posted.

I do believ it should be it's own proper category not just a sub-category. And can then also have people that watch/learn from these runs also get a good idea of potentially different ideas/solutions for a multi win run!

4 wins in a row does seem a bit too much, I'd say 3 wins with all of them timed properly. Maybe I misunderstood some comments earlier but there was something along the lines of the 1st win not really being timed? Which would definately seem weird in a speedrun. If I misunderstood then I apologise and hope to see more runners and fun categories added in!

Haven't been watching this board in awhile cause I was taking a break from running but my current thoughts:

Main thing about expansion pack that makes it not popular is that it is incredibly hard to speedrun relative to standard pack. Standard pack has lot of animals that reward tempo play and make it relatively easy to shoot for 10 straight wins in 10 turns. Expansion pack #1 is mainly about long term scaling which is explicitly detrimental to speedrunning. However I still enjoy it because you get to play with a very different group of ideas.

Unfortunately no one but me even attempted multiple pack speedruns so I can't blame Terter for removing the category, but I would like to see some type of run that rewards being able to play for consistent winrate. I admit though that it is a daunting task for an average runner.

I would be interested in a 3-win challenge. I personally wouldn't be going for a fast 1st win via abandon strat, but I can see that some people may do so anyway. I really think this category may draw out a different type of speed runner (as long as they know about it)

A 3 Arena Wins category has been made. For now it is just a test as there is a whole board restructuring that would be made if it ended up being a success. But since idk if that will happen I'm putting it off until later.