Over the course of the last month, the Spyro series leaderboard mod team have discussed rule changes and rule additions to the currently posted rule sets within the forums. The purpose of this forum post is for the community to review all of the proposed changes and additions and give criticism and feedback so we can implement a rule set that all or most will agree upon.

Here are the current rule sets on the forums here, if you wish to compare: 1st: https://www.speedrun.com/spyro/thread/j13wg 2nd: https://www.speedrun.com/spyro1/thread/k1g0f

And here’s the new leaderboard rules Doc: https://goo.gl/5vNBBi

Now I’ll do my best to cover everything new and explain why it’s being proposed.

In section “I.” “Visual” evidence has been changed to “Splits” evidence because of the somewhat new splits.io embed feature. It has been acceptable to submit that as sole evidence (if the run doesn’t require video evidence) for a while but the rules didn’t reflect that, so that change has been made in the entirely of section “I.”

“I.B.” previously included that we would accept screenshots of the player’s in-game timer in individual level runs, but for a long time now we haven’t accepted that as evidence because of a manipulation that cuts your time down when the game is paused. Now all individual levels require complete video evidence as suggested in “II. E.”

In “I. C.” it might have seemed like commonsense: if a player uses splits.io embeds/screenshot that in order to be verified, a moderator would have to be able to recognize what the splits correspond to. So if a player submitted Spyro 2 Any%, for example, they’d need more than just one split titled “Ripto”. Instead that player would need “Summer Forest, Autumn Plains, Winter Tundra” or more commonly “Crush, Gulp, Ripto”. If the moderator can tell it’s a homeworld split, it’ll fly. This rule isn’t to say that in longer length runs, that the player ¤must¤ use homeworld splits, just that it serves as a minimum when there’s a low split count and that’s all the evidence that’s being provided.

The biggest change is “II. B.” which proposes an entirely new system for video evidence when submitting to the main categories of the boards. An example: everyone would be suspicious if a new player came out with sub 1:30:00 splits for Spyro 120% without video evidence, but following the current rule set, the moderators would have to verify it. Most moderators feel like they wouldn’t want to verify it without more evidence, so it makes sense to set these times for main categories. Any category ¤not¤ listed in “II. B.” would follow the guidelines in “II. A.” The mod team set low ball times for each category so in the future if the category times improve drastically, the time could be shortened and no grandfathering would have to occur.

Nothing new till “IV.” which has been modified to make sense of the fact that Spyro ETD any% uses milliseconds in a main category. Also that any run that is as short as ETD any% could become as contested, so using milliseconds for runs shorter than 5 minutes (notably Spyro 2 bone dance) would be worthwhile to prevent multiple place/rank ties. In “VII”, pause allowances were comically misunderstood, so the rule has been changed to make sense of what it actually means to have a pause allowance, and now includes that allowance for all runs regardless of length. Never have we ever had a section explaining what grandfathering means, so here it is folks, section “VIII.” Enjoy. :)

Very recently, section “IX.” became pretty mandatory to have, as the mod team encountered it and took action as described in “IX. B.” So might as well make it clear to everyone what a cheated run is and what the consequence will be if it’s submitted.

That’s it! Let us know below what you think and any changes you think should be made.