I've been thinking about this for a long while now, but have only just gotten annoyed enough to post it now because of the new "25%" category.
In most cases, a category of a game exists to show off some sort of "completion" or "unlock" state, or because of a special glitch that completely changes a run (such as MIPS and SBLJ in sm64). However, I feel like that with the Bejeweled games we are paying no consideration to that.
Not that I am against any category that does not have an explicit completion state. That would eliminate bejeweled 1 entirely, and cut down the Bejeweled 2, twist, and 3 leaderboards too much, and that does not seem fair.... especially since that would mean game modes that have their own unique playstyles would never be represented...
If someone not in the community were to ask "Why does 25% exist?", what would the answer be? From the outside, these categories look completely arbitrary and have absolutely no reason to exist. Even I, someone who follows bejeweled speedrunning, don't know the answer. This would not be an issue normally, and more respected speedgames have arbitrary categories (20 and 10 shines in SMS for an example.).
But what irks me specifically about 25% is that it seems like the most arbitrary of arbitrary categories. All this category is is an all puzzles run cut off after the fourth puzzle world. There is no "unlock" like in action 8 levels or some sort of glitched state like in the hyper mode max score run. There is also no difference in play between those two runs and THIS is what annoys me. The SMS 20 and 10 shines runs, even though it is a similar case to these categories, at least have some differences in regards to routing, and a runner may try more risky strats in a 10 shines run because of the shorter category. But none of that exists here. This also applies to the sub-boards of other bejeweled games, ESPECIALLY bejeweled deluxe time trial. The fact that there can be 4 different leaderboards in a category with no differences other than "it's longer" drives me insane.
But don't listen to me. I am not running the games anymore. You guys have fun with your new categories :D
i completely agree with this. that's why i try to emphasize stuff like all quests for bejeweled 3 and any new category i add will always be quantifiable and with good reason. im not sure why bejeweled 2 even has a category extension, it feels to me like they're trying to come up with categories for the sake of just adding categories without considering if they would actually make sense
I invented 25% because I didn't want to have to run all the puzzles because the last few worlds have tedious puzzles that require a lot of memorization to perform the fastest solutions, but I still at least wanted to run the easiest puzzles because I think it would be fun to try and optimize them. I also thought about making a category that goes up to the eighth world but only requires you to open all of the previous worlds up for that exact same reason, but seeing as this category resulted in such negative reception, I'm glad I forgot about uploading the video I made to propose the idea.
@courtemanche437 that's what the ILs are for tho
