[quote]Sure this is less of an issue for the console games but for the DS games I'd rather not deter more runners from already dead games. [/quote]
The DS games are kind of a different ballgame because DS recording is a pain in the balls, but that kinda goes around to the point I had earlier about desiring some kind of game-specific rules/mods to decide this type of thing. Days has those unique rules, because DS capture is a weird special case.
Local recording/streaming a 10 hour run and being harsh on no skipping is obviously totally unreasonable (even though I think some of the final fantasy games still pull this off but eh idfk?), hence timer rule.
But having a bunch of skipping or missing minutes in runs that are about an hour or two long in BBS is kind of wildly inappropriate, It's not asking a whole lot for an hour of unbroken footage, I don't think.
[quote]Before I make any sort of decision within this community I always ask "Will this get more people interested in the community and running the games".[/quote]
If you wanted to get more people to run the games regardless of their technology standards, you'd just disable verification entirely. So clearly, some changes are motivated by desire for tangible proof. I don't really feel like my argument about how computers and internet connections historically just get better was really refuted (an argument about a roommate buying a tablet computer is possibly the most asinine attempt at a counter-argument I've ever seen in my life), so KH having such a low standard globally across all its games feels like reverse future-proofing, it's going to get less of a problem over time, not more. Some people will be inconvenienced at initial implementation, but they will figure it out.
Historically. if you make the standards, people will generally find a way to adhere to them. They'll record locally, they'll get their capture cards working and eventually the end result will be much cleaner boards and much better reference videos unlike the two BBS runs I've posted where there are outrageously large chunks missing.
I'm not surprised that this would be initially a difficult to justify change, since yes, it asks more of both mods and runners alike.
[quote]considering how different the kh series is and the fact that the communities you compare ours to, dont have categories on the ps4 in the first place.Which ps4 streaming is how this entire thing started in the first place.[/quote]
I brought up Resident Evil 7. A PS4 Game. RebelDragon brought up Ratchet and Clank, a PS4 game. Nah.
[quote]Then bring up some possible desired changes.[/quote]
Sure.
Change #1: Runs under about an hour and a half shouldn't be allowed to have minutes missing
You can hash out how long is too long later, but the point is more that it's abject madness that runs as short as BBS's are allowed to have multiple minutes missing off their runtime and still get verified just because the person put a timer on the VOD. That's a significant chunk of video game going missing there which besides being horrible to compare against or use as reference material, it opens the door for cheating.
Actually, not even necessarily cheating, just mistakes. Runners do daft shit like pause their timers all the time by accident, if someone happens to accidentally pause the timer for even a brief amount during one of these missing segments, you would never have any way to know and that run would be forever inaccurate.
I mainly state this for the sake of BBS various Any%'s, but a rule like that would also apply to 0.2 and some of the shorter handheld games.
Change #2: If a person's video is in one piece and doesn't skip around there is no real reason to force them to put a timer on it
Timing off the vod isn't as difficult or time-consuming as I feel its being made out to be here considering I do it all the time and there are numerous communities working with much more granular units of time than KH (SMB1, Zeldo) that ignore the on-screen timer entirely and retime your runs anyway because people make countless mistakes with their timers.
Hell, if you want to be super lazy about it, you can just go with RebelDragon95's suggestion about requiring proof of splits via screenshot or splits.io to verify timing for a run that has no onscreen timer. That would be an additional moderator convenience though, and apparently that's never considered when making changes.
Change #3: Game-specific mods
Part of the argument in favour of timer rule was that it exists, at least partially, for moderator convenience. Drazerk even said that outright, which amusingly contradicts JHobz but I appreciate the honesty.
So, this implies that you guys have a lot on your plate, right? I can understand that for sure, having 22 game pages of varied video games solely handled by the one group of moderators is quite a lot.
As it is right now, no one single mod runs every single one of the games they moderate. That's not an attack or an insult or anything, just of course you don't, there are so many fuckin games and no human being should be expected to run all of those games. Thus, you need some game specific moderators to handle that workload and discuss changes on a per-game level for games they are personally invested in and understand.
No other large series on the entire website organises itself in a way where there's just global moderators for the entire series and nothing else and for very good reason, it's kind of a bad idea. Zelda and Resident Evil have no global moderators, Final Fantasy only has two. Generally, that's about all you need if you have game-specific mods allocated appropriately. Speedrun.com itself made changes to where global mods do not inherit moderator of every game in its series automatically precisely to try and prevent this type of scenario from occurring. Even the site itself is engineered against the set up currently present and if that's not a cue to stop doing it, I don't know what is.
You have several people in this thread alone who've stated now and previously in the past, their open willingness to shoulder some of that burden by moderating individual games. If making some of the above changes you think would be too much work, then consider accepting some more help and delegating it to individual games. You won't be displeased with the results, it's historically worked out very well for the series I moderate for! Less individual burden, games get verified faster, the moderation is more decentralized so you end up with less of this goofy "Us Vs Them" horseshit I've seen from this community. I literally can't think of a downside to doing this, if any of these get done, choose this one. It's a win for literally everyone involved.
Now, about most game series only having one or two global mods...
Change #3.5 REMIX: You honestly need to drop most of your global mods
Most, not all. Some of them would also probably be fine as mods of some individual games. But over the whole series, some of them just don't really do a whole lot? This is where I get to be incredibly mean and make enemies by doing specific callouts, so here we go!
From ROMMaster2's Site Moderation Statistics updated last on the 1st of March 2017:
Most KH moderators only moderate KH. So the data is pretty pure in regards to how much this actually applies to KH.
Does Actually Quite A Lot: Sonic: 628 runs JHobz: 429 runs
Kinda In The Middle-Ish: FayeLilac: 159 runs KHFan169: 76 runs
ehhhhhhhhh: Tojimaru: 33 runs Drazerk: 29 runs (modding Days though would probably be a good idea!)
Does Literally Nothing: Bizkit047: 1. And it was self-verified. Drop.
Ninten, Dax and BB have been excluded because they're new. The data isn't there yet. Saiyanz has also been excluded because he moderates a ton of other crap so the data is impure and hard to read. He's probably about in the middle.
With this data publicly viewable and all, I suspect part of the reason rules for "moderator convenience" even exist is the just the fact that two of you are shouldering about 90% of the entire workload. That's not OK at all, no wonder you seem to struggle. I'd be pissed if that was me. Drop some global mods, add some game-mods, split that workload, baddabing, baddaboom. Efficiency.
Those are just off the top of my head, couple of them are structural changes to the leaderboard moderation, some of them are game rule changes. Maybe I should start a new thread with that stuff as the OP rather than it being buried 4 pages deep in this thread....
The mods do more than verify runs. I myself have had a large role in updating the boards themselves for new releases, as well as fixing vod links links all over the various boards. Just because we can't quite compare to those who consistently have an open srcom tab doesn't mean we're any more or less deserving of the position.
[quote] The DS games are kind of a different ballgame because DS recording is a pain in the balls, but that kinda goes around to the point I had earlier about desiring some kind of game-specific rules/mods to decide this type of thing. Days has those unique rules, because DS capture is a weird special case.
Local recording/streaming a 10 hour run and being harsh on no skipping is obviously totally unreasonable (even though I think some of the final fantasy games still pull this off but eh idfk?), hence timer rule. [/quote]
In which case it is best we discuss this on a game by game and category by category as based on your first suggestion I think this really only applying to BBS, 0.2 and ILs right now.
[quote] Part of the argument in favour of timer rule was that it exists, at least partially, for moderator convenience. Drazerk even said that outright, which amusingly contradicts JHobz but I appreciate the honesty. [/quote]
Do remember that the mods aren't one single entity that all know what one another is doing (Nor do we always agree with one another), there is a similar rule to the timer rule in the DS games where you must show the emulator's fps and full screen at all times during a run for obvious reasons I hope you understand so I don't have to explain them here. I believe this timer rule mainly came about due to the PS4 games which sadly came after I had surgery and have been in hospital for basically the majority of this year so I'm not completely in the loop, personally I see the timer as an added benefit to the mods which helps speed up the verification process thus aid both the runners and the mods by removing workload on both sides (Which the timer actually does).
[quote] Change #3.5 REMIX: You honestly need to drop most of your global mods [/quote]
I'm sorry but there is nowhere near enough people who have ran the handheld games let alone run them actively (Yes yes I know I slack) to really make more moderators for them. At best you have me and Saiyanz and we are already mods, hence having global mods means they are able to cover these games when I am sick and unable to do anything in the community. You could make the argument that the games are dead anyway but we do occasionally get people running them from time to time and me and Saiyanz are not always there and I'd rather not have new runners wait multiple days for us to realize we need to verify a run.
Also I would like to add that we do do more stuff than verify, by being a global mod I am able to edit the rules of say KH2 or add a new category that another mod may not be able to do at that time and so on and so forth.
I can say that we are discussing the option of bringing in more mods. However I will say that asking for mod just like in a twitch channel probably isn't the best method to become one.
"Change #1...." I would be ok with this if it is only for short runs, like all bbs runs, excluding all stories or 100%, like you stated. The one problem is about ps4 streaming. I find it unfair to them that this rule makes it so you can not stream directly from ps4 because of how often the ps4 skips. Though, having people retime their run while watching their past broadcast shouldnt be the solution because of the skips. It is something, at least when I was a mod, we were unaware of. The only thing we were aware of was that the elapsed timer was not equal to any other timer.
"Change #2...." I agree with that, a run shouldn't be rejected because it doesn't have a timer. We would have to decide at what point is too many skips though. If the video skips just once for 5 seconds, is that too much? I wouldn't think so. If you go by length of the run, then what would be too much for each run. 10 seconds for every hour? 5 seconds for every hour? If this does become a thing, how often will people complain about mods not doing their work because there was a BBS run that was 1 hour long that had 11 seconds of skips in it, but it was at a part that a mod didnt look at? There obviously will be mistakes. Just like there always have been. Yet, people still want to blame the mods for every single little mistake that goes on.
"Change #3..." I was in favor of game mods at one point, but game mods wont help the situation at all. The vast majority of runs are submitted under KH1 or KH2 runs while the rest of the games get very few runs submitted, on average, every day. BBS gets a little bit, but it is less than you would think, even with it being a short category. So I dont really see the point in having game specific mods. Plus, it doesnt take alot to verify a run. All you need to know is when the run starts, when the run ends, and check for skips.
"Change #3.5...." I agree that some mods need to be taken off because of inactivity. At this point, most were kept because of legacy. Toji was the one who created the spreadsheet back in the day that we used as LBs before srcom was a thing. Everybody who gets added or removed as a mod goes through him. It's just the way it has always been. Plus, most of the mods do other things that help tremendously other than just verifying runs. I wont go into detail what each one offers as I have already done that in the past. This doesn't mean that they shouldn't be taken off as a mod on the website, but also doesn't mean that they should, imo.
Considering how many runs have been verified, including mine when I was a mod which was well over 400, this hasnt caused a problem. Almost every run that I rejected was because it didnt have a timer on it, and the runner just went back, added a timer, then resubmitted it. I think, if it aint broke, dont fix it. What we have going on now works perfectly fine. It inconveniences a few people, but so does local recording or streaming runs. We arent just going to stop requiring video proof. In the end, it doesn't really matter to me which way we go because I will still either stream or local runs, with a timer. Which is the way almost all people will think.
The things you suggested are pretty much fine. I just don't see them benefiting anybody other than people who don't want to take the time to put a timer on the screen. It doesnt help ps4 runners because they wont be able to submit runs anyway with what you are offering because of the skips in ps4 recordings. If this is about trying to make it easier or benefit the runners more, then the things you brought up will only make it more difficult for more runners.
I know I didnt really offer any help with what you offered, and that is simply because I don't know of any. Though I can say that I don't think what you offered should be the end all be all rule. It's a start, possibly, but not the final solution, in my opinion.
[quote]Just because we can't quite compare to those who consistently have an open srcom tab doesn't mean we're any more or less deserving of the position.[/quote]
Not necessarily, but it does mean that like, at best, it's kind of unnecessary to have that many. Having 11 mods when 2 of them are doing most of the actual workload is...questionable.
There is more to it than just run verification, but run verification is like, most of it. Having nothing/very little verified is not an amazing statement on one's commitment to the position.
[quote]In which case it is best we discuss this on a game by game and category by category as based on your first suggestion I think this really only applying to BBS, 0.2 and ILs right now. [/quote]
Pretty much. Loops back around to that thing about timer rule only making much sense for the really long categories.
[quote]there is a similar rule to the timer rule in the DS games where you must show the emulator's fps and full screen at all times during a run for obvious reasons I hope you understand so I don't have to explain them here.[/quote]
Makes sense to me. I'm all for the more game-specific rules like this. Games are varied and nuanced and a broad policy isn't effective over the sheer number of games KH has.
[quote]I'm sorry but there is nowhere near enough people who have ran the handheld games let alone run them actively (Yes yes I know I slack) to really make more moderators for them.[/quote]
Of course, there are a couple of fairly inactive games in KH. That's why I suggest dropping most of the global mods, not literally all of them. Having nothing but global mods is a bad idea and most larger game series worked this out a while ago.
[quote]Also I would like to add that we do do more stuff than verify, by being a global mod I am able to edit the rules of say KH2 or add a new category that another mod may not be able to do at that time and so on and so forth. [/quote]
True, but I'm unconvinced you need 11 global mods for this, or that game-specific mods wouldn't be a more efficient solution for this.
[quote]However I will say that asking for mod just like in a twitch channel probably isn't the best method to become one.[/quote]
I'm not asking, so I assume you mean everyone else. But really, how else are they supposed to show support for the concept of game-mods without simultaneously demonstrating willingness to take on that responsibility? It shows proactiveness.
It's possibly a bit gauche, but really what other method are they meant to do? Is there a formal application process? Are they supposed to hope they just get picked out of the blue based on the whims of the existing mods?
[quote]I can say that we are discussing the option of bringing in more mods.[/quote]
I also submit that this discussion happening in private is kind of
odd
this is again something i do not really see from other game series, I feel like this is the sort of thing you'd want to conduct openly?
Edit: I missed this because I'm bad
[quote]I find it unfair to them that this rule makes it so you can not stream directly from ps4 because of how often the ps4 skips.[/quote]
You can local record in chunks up to an hour on PS4. You can fit an entire BBS run into that timeframe and it's actually more reliable than ps4 streaming so that might be a good baseline to work off since everyone who owns a PS4 can pull that off.
You know, I said I was done but I juss wanted to leave this here https://discord.gg/eauh8jf a link to the community discord LB channel.
Why not use that text channel so we can have a more active conversation rather than waiting hours for someone to check the forums? That way when the dust settles there. A new thread can be made with the official end of this debate.
Just saying that discord is way more efficient than forum posting and we could get a lot more done with instant messaging
Thats fine for people who can do that, but what about people who cant finish a run of BBS in under an hour? Will they not be allowed to submit to the LBs because they arent good enough to have a time under an hour? Good luck with winning that argument over with people.
"You can local record in chunks up to an hour on PS4. You can fit an entire BBS run into that timeframe and it's actually more reliable than ps4 streaming so that might be a good baseline to work off since everyone who owns a PS4 can pull that off."
Only good speedrunners would be able to submit to the leaderboards :Thinkiing:
To note to what Ninten and I said, only around half the runs for BBS would be allowed if all of them were recorded with the PS4's recording.
So I think I might be missing something. But people keep bringing up ps4 streaming and why thats a reason for allowing runs without timers, but the ps4 streaming has a built in timer with the elapsed timer that you can have displayed in the top right of the screen when streaming through ps4, so I don't see the issue there. The timer doesn't have to start from zero since its just a point of comparison right?
That timer is inaccurate, there is a thread on here that talked about it and we initially thought it would be fine, but after reviewing data when we had more PS4 runs, we realized there were inaccuracies with it.
Im sure someone can provide specifics if you so desire it.
FurryWulfz just hit me with some solid shit:
Wulfz - Today at 4:48 AM here http://www.speedrun.com/run/jy9q4ovz he starts LS timer at 9 sec timestamp skip ahead to last 1/8 9 sec at start 23 sec difference near end so desync by 14 sec
Edit: According to FurryWulfz this desync is actually by about 39-40 seconds. I'm mixing post logs up a bit here, sorry.
Wulfz - Today at 4:54 AM http://www.speedrun.com/run/8yvrdl6z he starts LS timer at 28 seconds approx if you skip right near end, like... 11:54:28 his LS timer is then 34 seconds approx behind time stamp time so his time should be 11:54:00 at 11:54:28 on time stamps when its actually 11:53:54 if that makes any sense
Wulfz - Today at 4:56 AM in these cases LS is absolutely retarded because the timer itself is saving you time
Wulfz - Today at 4:45 AM short bursts though or if you have a monster CPU it won't happen if your CPU spikes enough LS will actually freeze too like not even desync just totally freeze and not count anymore unless you restart
Wulfz - Today at 4:47 AM i only know that cause i intentionally bottlenecked my CPU to test that
Having worse hardware actually results in time saved off LiveSplit desyncs, and it's a phenomenon more likely to effect longer runs than shorter ones.
新しいＷａｓｔｅｄのシットポスト - Today at 5:03 AM here's something i've been wondering now, how long does the game have to be until the difference is actually noticeable? Wulfz - Today at 5:04 AM no idea it depends on what goes on with your PC i think
Better PCs are less likely to be hit with this problem, which means verifying solely off the timer is actually more likely to cause people with worse hardware to gain "fake time".
Thanks to FurryWulfz for telling me all of this, because this is waaaaaaaay more interesting of a point than anything I've raised so far.
Edit 2: Drakodan has now also pointed out to me that even on good computers, over exceptionally long periods of time it's just prone to drifting off slightly based on nothing in particular. But it's magnified based on one's CPU problems.
Any on-screen timer is going to do this because of how they work. There are probably tons of runs on the KH leaderboards that aren't timed correctly, in light of this new information.
I mean, I've known about that for a while, but it's nice to see it brought up. LiveSplit does have accuracy issues when used for many hours on end.
So, with that in mind, let's review:
1.) Runs that are in multiple chunks literally cannot be verified for accurate timing, on-screen timer or no since LiveSplit has been proven to desync gradually over the course of runs. Even short ones, according to what a Starfox 64 mod LylatR has been telling me.
2.) Even the longer runs that are in one-piece likely have huge inaccuracies in their timing because of this reliance on LiveSplit and other on-screen timers that gradually have desync issues based on the whims of your CPU.
3.) Bad hardware is actually more likely to suffer timer desyncs. Which means verifying solely off the timer means you might gain fake time because your hardware isn't good. It's not exclusive to bad hardware, it just magnifies the effect.
4.) It's impossible to measure the exact magnitude of the desync because of how closely related to one's CPU it is and also might be effected by other arcane nonsense.
In light of this new information, I see no reason timer rule should continue to be a thing.
I think the timer rule is a bit silly especially if someone has a video of them doing a run in one sitting. I'm not sure that I've seen a rule like that anywhere else. I'd say it should be recommended but not required and if it's wr it should still be retimed anyway and required to have the full vod.
Just want to toss in here that this discussion continued in the Discord and we reached a proposal that satisfied the initial concerns about this rule and is under review by the leaderboard mods.
We have reached the decision that for runs around 90 minutes or less, a timer will not be required if you have a full, good looking video. This will help ease the submission process especially for those who use the PS4's built in streaming/recording features.
For any runs longer than that or for runs that are missing some time (like a minute or so at most), a timer will be required same as before. The mods will also be a bit more strict on chopped up video so that runs with 5 minutes missing don't end up verified on the LBs. This won't impact any current runs on the LBs, so nothing will be removed.
All of the people who initially posted their concerns here agreed to this proposal and are satisfied with the result and we hope that this help encourage more people to submit runs since they won't have to go through the time consuming task of re-streaming a short run just to have a timer. I'm sure the mods will make an official statement on the rules once they iron them out more, but this post was just to show any late comers to this thread that a proposal has (mostly) been reached and just needs a final decision from the mods.
If I left out anything, an LB mod will probably comment below this with whatever I left out.
I'm not a KH speedrunner, but I'd just like to throw in my 2 cents.
Any runner who can't have a timer on screen to record (or if without a timer, he can re-stream by using a Media player such as VLC and then put in LiveSplit on OBS) is most likely just lazy to re-stream or does not even care about the KH community or his run. That is all.
I would also like to throw in my opinion here and that is to say I have not once experienced de-sync with my timer (I even went back and checked my time comparisons on twitch) and I think a timer or re stream for a timer is not a lot to ask of a runner. In all honesty if you have gone to the effort and monetary expense of getting a capture device to do a run that is significantly more than what it takes to either put a timer up or re stream with a timer.
Now that the discussion on this has died down, we've done some final talks on this and come to a decision:
Timers are no longer required for runs of BBS. However, if you submit a run without a timer, it will be required to be in one continuous video and immediately skip to/show the battle report at the end. Runs with timers will not need to show the battle report if they want to let the final cutscenes play out.
