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.

Apologies on the wait for getting this posted - I've had a draft of this saved for a while before a trip to my grandparents which was full of chores and other things and then other personal issues on Sunday before honestly just wanting to do something fun rather than deal with leaderboard stuff. Just figured this would be from a better headspace - this probably should have come sooner or left it to someone else but I figured it was probably better to come from me. Yeah just poor timing and dealing with other stuff at the moment and sorry for the delay.

So about a week ago, I got the rest of the mod team together to just have a chat on discussions for what to do with the leaderboard stuff, and working through stuff for better long term health of the game and board. Here's a brief writeup on the minutes, what we talked about and where we're at. I'd appreciate any and all responses.

As far as category name, Hard Great Seal was the most popular among the community and I think the reasoning eventually lined up - it defines it on what the run does rather than a restriction and also avoids spoilers if that's important for people looking at a leaderboard. The current leaderboard reflects what we think should both look good and work well - Leaderboard is divided into Journey and Answer and Great Seal vs True ending is a toggle for Journey specifically. If there's any comments on this from here, I think this should be something that's pretty much well agreed to here.

As far as the other things go, we did discuss most of the smaller details from the feedback forms and I'll address a lot of the bigger or more important ones there. Some people mentioned not really liking me gauging the "future proofing" question - just wanted to point out that wasn't necessarily my intent, more so just thinking about if there is a category split, what's the intended reason. Sounds like it mostly wasn't necessary but it was partly just a thought experiment and wasn't meant to be a very important question. Sorry if it seemed I was trying to think about hypotheticals that didn't exist. There was a decent amount of discussion on adding another mod that runs Journey specifically. While we all agreed it was something to look into, there just aren't a lot of runners, and even the runners for journey tended to run it extremely infrequently. As of right now, I think it's okay for now, assuming clearer communication between the mod team and the rest of the runners going forward.

As far as a turbo variable - this was a suggestion from the form - the difficulty there is that it's extremely difficult to tell. So while it's self reportable, it's a very hard thing to police on our end which makes it not a great choice for something on the leaderboard.

Breaks in longer runs was another point of discussion and honestly - there's a lot to talk about there. Currently, we follow normal RTA policies that runs are done in one sitting and not allowing a timer to be paused for any reason (the normal standard). While for some longer runs (journey definitely qualifies) this is probably less than ideal, especially for health stuff, it's probably something to discuss with the rest of the Persona and SMT community and even then, it leads to a lot of weirdness. Hypothetically, right now, say we said that if a run is over 8 hours, you can take a 5 minute break somewhere in the run. If a runner takes a 5 min break at the 4 hour mark and gets a 7:58... do they just sit for 2 minutes to avoid the 5 minute penalty? And there's definitely a skill to maintaining focus for a long period of time with some of the boss gauntlets that arguably would be diminished. It's something to discuss but as of right now, my suggestion is that if the length of a run is prohibitive for health reasons... taking even 20 minutes of breaks over the course of a 12 hour run is far from the end of the world and should still allow for both fun and competition.

So lastly, we talked a fair bit about communication and admittedly - at least from my perspective, there was kind of a breakdown on all sides here imo. Even this writeup was intended to go up a fair bit sooner than it is, but irl stuff happens on my end which should have been better mentioned. This type of stuff aside though, if there are questions or if there's something I said I'd do and haven't or forgot please feel free to just... ping me in discord if there's something that seems missing or just a question. Like I understand it's a pain or that you don't want to bother someone etc but personally, it doesn't really bother me. As far as the situation that led to the discussion as a whole, I think it kinda just boils down to similar issues that can be worked on in the future. I will say that if you have a dispute with a mod, feel free to ask another mod - I wasn't really aware there was a problem until things escalated quite a bit. Or if you have a problem with something I'm doing, ask another mod what their thoughts are if they're not actively participating. At the end of the day, we're all human and doing our best - we all need a little help sometimes.

Anyway, thanks again, and sorry for the delay. If there are any questions, feel free to drop them in the thread here or anything for me personally, my DMs on discord are always open.