Hi Guys,

Noticed there's been a big change to the categories, not sure if it's still in progress or done. I only play the N64 categories so am coming at from that perspective. "Popular" is relative here since this game isn't played by loads of people at the moment but it seems like popular categories that are most run and competed with back and forth lead changes and increased run quality have been removed entirely or relegated to Misc, where as categories that have 0 submissions or 1 have been moved to the front page. If some needed to be cut (Not sure why this would be the case) I'd have had to let go the categories that weren't played and if some categories had the opportunity to become front page I'd have upgraded the categories that were played. Even stranger it seems like things had been as they were for years and just at the point when certain categories were really picking up they have been removed or relegated to Misc. TheAndySocialNetwork was streaming any% ps1/N64 wr attempts on wednesday for lets just say at least 20 times the views I usually get (he doesn't like to know the exact number of viewers! - also check him out on twitch - great stream very entertaining) giving the game great exposure and those categories are now downgraded, and are less likely to be played by top streamers who aren't MK specialists. I think these categories serve as a great way to encourage people to get started with MK4 speedrunning too, since completion is easy and you can gradually work on improving the speed. Cards on the table about 10 of my wr/2nd place times have just been relegated / removed entirely so I certainly have a stake in those, but trying to look objectively the a lot of the categories that are now top tier just seem weird to me when compared to the dropped categories.

Anyway just my 2 cents, no salt just a bit disappointing.

Peace

Yeah, we're done making changes. Glad you chimed in because I saw you were firing off a lot of runs before the change. The only leaderboards that we really wacked were the levels. The rest were just moved around and organized.

I mean, I suppose we can bring those back, if the interest is there. Running those was a lot of work though, and more mods would be nice if we go that route. I did move the Arcade version of the game to the third tab though, because you're right. It's not as popular, and it probably won't become popular because it doesn't emulate properly.

Thanks for the info KombatKing, It seems what I was saying may have got lost with it being too long a post though. So just to redo it in bullet point form to clarify, not with expectation, but just to make sure my opinion was clear:

1. I think categories that survive should be driven by how active the MK4 speedrun community is. With that in mind if there were too many categories I'd have got rid of PC, arcade and GB purely because there are only 2 runs total for all those formats. (again I wouldn't call for getting rid of anything but if some had to go)
2. I think any% should sit within the main console tab. For me it is the most natural (and popular) category. Speedrunning typically has any% and 100% categories for most games, there isn't a natural 100% for mk4 but there is an any%. Misc should be for categories / formats that are obscure or not played (i.e. 0 or 1 runner only if at least 2 submissions are made then they could be on front page) .
3. I think speedruns of each towers in standard difficulty should also sit within the main console tabs for all consoles, I don't see why they are any more a "level" than the other categories. To me these fit "speedrunning" much better as the challenge is how fast can it be done, rather than can it be done at all. (Again if there must be a limit on categories I would choose these first)
4. Out of what used to be in the "level" section some categories disappeared and some were moved to the main table. I'm interested in what the motivation was for choosing to upgrading arcade and pc to main table at all was when there was no indication in terms of runs submitted that interest was there, whereas it seems (from runs submitted) that there was clear increasing interest in the normal difficulty towers. These tower runs would not be empty (certainly for N64) and would actually have some increasingly optimized runs, so I think would give a better impression to new players than a load of empty categories (or non competed single submission categories)
5. RE: Needing more mods: - Removing categories that are creating work with many run submissions while leaving empty categories doesn't seem a great way to deal with increasing popularity! Reach out for some mods! While there is a mod shortage ask people who are submitting a few runs to help out. With some guidance on community agreed ways (/tools) of measuring the run lengths I'd be happy to Mod other runners N64 runs, though for other formats I might struggle to be able to detect what console the PS versions were running on or how to tell that that a genuine arcade machine is being used, or any other hardware tricks that may exist on PC or GB. (The vast majority of runs seem to be N64 anyway as there seems to have been less than half a dozen non-N64 runs over the last year so that shouldn't be a problem)

Anyway, I'm just a new community member, I don't claim to know how things work around here, just saying it as I see it - pretty much if categories are used I'd keep/ upgrade them - I'd promote categories that will encourage participation. Don't mean to criticize, just seemed like my first post may have been misinterpreted a little so wanted to try again!