At the moment on the leaderboard all runs are listed in the same leaderboard, despite them using different difficulty levels. I am not sure if a practice run should really be on the same ranking list as a normal run.
Other similar games that have multiple difficulty levels, use one of two approaches for this: a.) Category-Tabs (see the Aladdin Gameboy port: https://www.speedrun.com/aladdingb) for each difficulty level, also naming the categories then "any% practice" b.) Sub-Tabs (see Harvest Moon: https://www.speedrun.com/hmfomt#Marriage) for each level
I think both options would be more easy to understand compared to the current "table attribut" version.
What do you guys think? Or is the difficulty maybe so irrelevant, that it is not worth making it so prominent?
The differences are so minor that it makes no sense in separating them at the moment. Just play on your preferred difficulty. I personally always like to play games on the default difficulty ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Easy is a bit easier casually (duh) mostly because of some platforms in Inside the Lamp not disappearing and because of hearts restoring more of your health, but if you play well enough on any difficulty, that actually won't slow you down (much). Normal and Difficult are almost identical. I might do easy mode runs at some later point because of the Lamp stage.
We might reconsider separating them if there were a dozen top times that are almost tied ;)
I wanted to quickly chime in because I looked at differences between the 3 difficulties when making my Aladdin guide. Please find the differences below:
Practice Start with 5 lives Start with 15 apples Heart heals 3
Enemies Palace Guard (Scimitar) and Palace Guard (Pole) take 1 scimitar hit
Cave of Wonders No fish No boss skip
Inside the Lamp Genie hands always platform
Sultan's Palace No fish
Normal Start with 3 lives Start with 10 apples Heart heals 2
Enemies Palace Guard (Scimitar) and Palace Guard (Pole) take 2 scimitar hits
Cave of Wonders Fish enemies present No boss skip
Inside the Lamp Genie hands alternate sizes
Sultan's Palace Fish enemies present
Difficult Start with 2 lives Start with 5 apples Heart heals 1
Enemies Palace Guard (Scimitar) and Palace Guard (Pole) take 2 scimitar hits
Cave of Wonders Fish enemies present Boss skip present
Inside the Lamp Genie hands alternate sizes
Sultan's Palace Fish enemies present
Commenter Notes The difference in enemy HP between Practice and Normal/Difficult is significant given the prevalence of Palace Guard (Scimitar) and Palace Guard (Pole) throughout game. Both appear in 6/10 stages. The Fish in the Cave of Wonders is insignificant to increased challenge or time The Shiva Monkey boss skip is a large time save for those on Difficult setting The Genie hand in Inside the Lamp impacts 5 jumps and the cumulative time difference is significant on Practice vs Normal/Difficult The Fish can deal additional damage and kill momentum in Sultan's Palace in Normal/Difficult Additional run categories are a potential sign of a healthy, growing community
After switching from Normal to Practice recently, without learning new tech, I did shave off close to 40 seconds but there are also many factors there so I wouldn't reconsider my case beyond a single anecdote. Personally, I'm fine with whatever decision and I'll continue running this game until I reach my time goal.
I separated the difficulties, even though I personally think that most categories feel more like a "slower Any%" than truly different categories.
While I respectfully abide by tako's decision to separate the categories; I honestly don't see the point right now in doing so with minor differences between difficulties (I run this game I know). Also, not many people run this game. My opinion is I feel it's too early to separate categories by difficulty.
I'm personally OK with either choice really, though I agree that separating the difficulties makes it seem like the game has less runners than it actually has and I don't see much point in doing it.
Setting that aside, if we're going to stick with this decision, I'd suggest we make Practice the default sub-category instead of Difficult, given that it's the sub-category with the most runs submitted and better represents the game's community.
Not separating the difficulties seems to get more votes. It also makes the leaderboard look much better at the moment.
Difficult is currently theoretically the fastest sub-category but no one runs it yet.
Also, the current WR was done on Normal so that's what people should see when they visit the leaderboard :P
YES! We need it! I'm Training on The Difficult at this moment. Please, return this separation, I'm inviting now more people in this game for speedrunning. It's obviously needed because of difference in additional skip on Difficult. It also make sense to run this game in all available difficulties.
That's how Mafia works :P
As I mentioned earlier, I'm OK with either decision, and taking into account the WR being done in Normal it makes perfect sense to make that sub-category the default. Normal's pretty active on it's own as well, so no objections here!
