Hey all,

There was a lot of discussion on discord as to what the newly separated category should be named so I figured the best thing long term was to get things sorted out here so they can be referred to as things happen with the game in the future.

https://forms.gle/1CMQ7JMfALoGEZmF7 There's a poll here that I'd like to see filled out - I'll make answers public after a few days so the mods can meet and discuss them where we can have one last discussion and hopefully come to an agreement.

Mulsqi pointed out to me, that among other things, I did end up titling it as All Chapters NG+ which hasn't been what any runs have been. None of the runs done so far have included both Chapter 8 and Special.

So I guess we need to define what's actually being done - the problem with just calling it NG+ is that that's not strictly what's happening and having all chapters unlocked makes it not really work as a NG+.

The options if the goal is just to get to the credits are going to be to either force a NG save (can move old save to the cloud if you don't want to lose it) and start doing any% or we're going to have to define exactly which chapters are done, as well as what that means for timing.

Or you can just do all non-DLC songs back to back instead and not really bother with the story? I dunno, I'm not a runner but there's some issues that need to be resolved in the very near future.

With the new run and category, I've taken the liberty of switching the order to say "Difficulty, New Game (+)" to match how it's done in Persona and other SMT games. If there's a strong reason to dissent, let me know; it's open for discussion.

Since the game does have issues with loading and running for an extended period of time and Babel has a constantly displayed IGT, I'd like to propose switching it to solely IGT. I'll likely go through the leaderboards and fix it but given that the IGT never disappears and is easily the better way to actually time the run, I'd like it to be the main source shown.

Note that due to SRCom restrictions, I don't think it's possible to display it as IGT instead of Real Time without adding an empty IGT slot to the story mode runs, but I'll put a note in the rules and times won't go there without verification.

Does anyone vehemently disagree with the concept?

Is there any way we can use IGT instead of real time? As far as I know, the IGT that's displayed after each stage is accurate and, importantly, takes into account all deaths. Since I'm going to be running on PS4, this removes all hardware differences from the equation, loads etc. Thanks!

Looking at the first thread for this, it might be a bit clear or get muddled, so I wanted to make these clearer, as well as allow a point of discussion in case people disagree. I'll leave the first post clear of my thoughts so this can be edited as need be.

1. Box art should be the first NA release box art unless it never had US release.

2 ) No background images or changes to the general look of speedrun.com.

3. Categories should be complete. Any% is usually not a category for SMT - ending and difficulty should be preferred over vague terms.

4. Any category without a run should be marked as misc if not outright deleted.

5. Games should not be created until there is a completed run. (Older boards may have been created before this rule was in place)

It had zero runs, didn't follow the guidelines I set up at all, and had no runs. If you want it, I'll recreate it properly but please don't do that without asking and especially without having a reason to make the board. And if you do create the board, please look at the series guidelines for box art, no backgrounds, and not having extra categories without runs.

Thank you, Ghoul02

I sent you a PM on Twitch, but as a series mod, do you mind if I change the box art to match the US release, like the other games in the series? Everything else here is great, just a small change I want to make for consistency.

Thanks, Ghoul02

I sent this in a PM to tetsuya, but I wanted to get this all in the open. I want to keep the leaderboards looking more consistent. There are more details below, but here is the TLDR on how I think the leaderboards can look a lot better.

Box art should be the first NA release box art unless it never came out here. This is just to keep a consistent look.

No background images or changes to the general look of speedrun.com. These are usually ugly and take forever to load. Black is fine, we like a dark series.

Categories should be complete. Any% is usually not a category for SMT - ending and difficulty should be preferred over vague terms.

Any category without a run should be marked as misc if not outright deleted. This is to direct attention to the runs that actually exist, rather than having an empty leaderboard.

If there are any people that have opinions that are different than these, let me know. Here's the full text:

Shin Megami Tensei - Change the Box art to the SNES JP original (http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/megamitensei/images/0/05/Smt1snescover.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140426025439 …). It's the version used for the only run on the leaderboards. Make "theoretical categories" (Neutral ending, Law Ending) as misc categories until a run is submitted.

Nocturne's box art is fine. Change the category to be correct. Romscouts run is True Demon Ending iirc. The version is the Maniax Chronicle Edition, which should be noted on the page somewhere.

DDS is fine for the most part, although I'm not crazy about using the European box art. Usually it's either the original japanese or the first western release (http://s.emuparadise.org/fup/up/150802-Shin_Megami_Tensei_-_Digital_Devil_Saga_(USA)-1.jpg …) - DDS was released in Europe by Ghostlight so it was probably a fair bit later than the US release. I'd prefer to see it standardized across all (First US release art, JP art if no US release happened), but message Jay if he's okay with it first.

Remove the background from P3FES. That page is a cluster¤¤¤¤ since we don't have any runs to fill at all, but any% isn't even enough information for what we're supposed to have. I'd rather delete the whole page and wait for a run to actually happen and recreate it. I guess tack on either a hard or normal difficulty to The Journey or something so that it's an actually existing category. Remove the two mods for the game, since they don't run it anyway and are basically squatting on something they don't need access to.

Change Persona 4's picture to the NA Box art here … I'm not as opposed to the background here because it's at least clean, but I'd still prefer it removed to keep the series looking consistent across everything. I'd drop the coloring for the top bar at least. Remove Any% since it's not a category without a difficulty. If somebody wants to run it, they can submit it when they finish. True Ending should be changed to True Ending, Hard Mode. Championbeef did NG+ Normal True End runs as seen here: twitch.tv/championbeef … Should be the second category on the leaderboards and it should default to Hard Mode True Ending.

Persona 4 Arena is okay I guess. I wish I kept the IGT's of the other runs but I dropped it when I beat them. Token's run wasn't done on Arcade, so that should be changed to PS3 iirc.

SMT4's box art is kinda in a crappy place. First US release was the version with the book, so the box art is huge. Probably cleaner to just use the JP release here. If you can find a good version of the US art, that'd be much better. … Make ALL of the categories without runs misc or delete them. Delete All Endings from Misc categories or at the very least, remove xdxd from it.

Persona Q is like FES. It shouldn't have been made. However, in the meantime, change the box art to match the US release art. https://gbatemp.net/attachments/pq_cover-jpg.8326/ … Also, might as well change the categories to add a difficulty and split into P3 side and P4 side.

Lastly, we should add P3P. Only category with a run right now is Mulsqi's 10:02 here: … which is True Ending Normal. Note as another field that it was done on a Vita TV, and that it uses the male route. Box art should be something like …

I've probably missed more than a few games with valuable runs, but this'll keep the section looking more consistent and a lot better. I'm going to mirror this to the forums on SR dot Com in case somebody wants to chime in on anything I've said.