I was wondering if Speed Golf runs can be made into level leaderboards, which interests me because I cannot figure out how to set up a timer on my mac at the moment and the in-game timer would remove this issue.
Since Neil/Ella can be raised to Lv99, maybe it could be a rule that they cannot be used. Or maybe they can be used and there can be sub-categories for each Speed Golf level leaderboard for each character (since there aren't many characters anyway).
How would I submit a speed golf run? I'll gladly be the first to post some.
Thanks for adding speed golf categories, but I think there's a problem with them - each of the five tabs in the Level Leaderboard section all have their own five tabs for each course, making 25 total instead of 5.
Also, it'd be nice if there was a way to separate/mark the speed golf runs by character (something like how MGSV has a denotation for which character you're using), since not doing so would discourage playing as Yoshi as opposed to a higher-leveled Neil/Ella, or something like Joe instead of Kid as another example. If the characters were given their own significance, there'd be more reason to run the game more often and in different ways.
I know I'm complaining about a category without any current runs, but I'm only mentioning it because I think I finally should have time to run this game this coming summer.
Something that also needs to be discussed is Star Course Speed Golf. In MGAT's Story Mode, you can only unlock all of the odd-numbered star holes (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17) for the star courses (those being Marion, Palms, Dunes, and Links; there is no Star Mushroom despite the fact that you can play Star Mushroom Singles Tourney and Star Mushroom Doubles Cup). The even-numbered holes are unlocked by first linking an Advance Tour save file to a Toadstool Tour save file, completing certain objectives in Toadstool Tour, then linking back to Advance Tour. It should be a requirement that all Star Course Speed Golf runs have all of the star holes unlocked, as otherwise you would only be able to play half of a Star Course at best (which defeats the purpose of even doing a Star Course Speed Golf run if only 50% of the course one plays isn't a Star Course). Because of this, Wii U VC should not be allowed for Star Course IL's, as it is impossible to obtain the other half of the star holes since it can't connect to Toadstool Tour (Wii U VC would be allowed for Normal Course IL's).
As IronInfidel47 pointed out, the IL leaderboards are messed up. If a mod can change the main tabs for Marion, Palms, Dunes, and Links to "[Course Name] Course Speed Golf" and "Star [Course Name] Speed Golf" that would be great. Also, subtabs should be placed under each course type (Non-Star & Star) called "Front Tees" and "Back Tees".
For example: When you click on "Level Leaderboard" and click a course (in this case, Marion), it will bring you to the leaderboards for that course, divided into the main tabs (in this case, Marion Course Speed Golf and Star Marion Course Speed Golf), with Front Tees and Back Tees as subtabs under each main tab. This would be done for Palms, Dunes, and Links as well. Mushroom, on the other hand, would only have one main tab simply called Mushroom Course Speed Golf and two subtabs called Front Tees and Back Tees.
If a moderator can apply these changes and consider the rules for Star Course Speed Golf IL's, that would be great.
I didn't even consider front and back tees; having those in there is a good idea. I also thought that since each course (level) currently only holds Speed Golf, maybe we could push for Custom Clubs and the Go-Go Gates (all the GGG holes at once) too if the moderators felt like adding even more meat to the IL categories.
I agree with the Star Course runs, but I myself cannot access the even holes. If there's some kind of code (or a save at the worst) that can be entered for emulators that would unlock these courses and the extra four characters, I would love to see it. I haven't been able to find anything like that and I'm not sure how those kinds of codes are created.
EDIT: I thought the use of different characters were going to be one of those distinction things on a run, like how there's a distinction for what platform people are using. Doing that would promote at least to a degree some reasoning to run with more characters instead of just the objective best in the game. This would pose the question of how fast each character can do something instead of just how fast a runner can use the best character to do it.
Custom clubs and their legality is something that also should be discussed. With access to clubs like POW, Super POW, and Risky, I feel that most Speed Golf runs would just result in driving the green on most holes in one, then one-putting, resulting in a run that is somewhat un-entertaining, as you won't see a lot of really creative strategies to play each hole as fast as possible. Yes, a CC Speed Golf IL would be much faster than a non-CC Speed Golf IL, as you would ideally save multiple strokes and thus save more time, but it wouldn't be as interesting to watch, in my opinion. If custom clubs are allowed, then they should be in a separate category from non-CC runs.
For Go-Go Gates runs, I think it should be a full game category (one that completes all of the holes in Quick Game, rather than just the ones for a specific course), similar to how Toadstool Tour has Ring Attack speedruns, but my opinion on that really only comes from watching Ring Attack runs and how fast and optimized they are, so it isn't the most well-founded opinion. The thought of Go-Go Gates as IL's based on the course is quite interesting though if it is easily differentiated from Speed Golf (navigating the speedrun.com page into the Level Leaderboard to find both Speed Golf and Go-Go Gates shouldn't be so complicated if this ends up being another IL category, and all Go-Go Gates runs would have to use an RTA timing program like Livesplit to time the run, as the in-game timer is exclusive to Speed Golf).
Oh whoops, by custom clubs I meant the Slot Clubs thing (it's been a while since I've played the game). Even then I'm not sure if I would run Slot Clubs too much myself since it'd be really random, but that might be a plus for some people, so I'm not gonna vote no against it if there's a chance people would like it.
But yeah, custom clubs probably should just not be in these kinds of runs for the sake of keeping things the same across the board, at least in my opinion. As for Go-Go Gates, I was thinking it'd be IL. GGG isn't really a long thing like playing the entire game is, and each course (except the Mushroom one and Elf's Short Course) has its own seven-ish holes that can easily be played in less than 10-20 minutes. If these and possibly Slot Clubs were pushed into IL, then that'd keep the quick game modes in the same place. Separating them from the story mode kinds of things makes more sense to me.
Effective yesterday, the community has decided to allow Story Mode Singles speedruns to be able to start from either specified SRAM files or an emulator save state / Wii U Restore Point at a specific point in order to skip the intro sequence. Please see the category's rules for the conditions on whi