At the moment, the way that the rules are set up for the All Challenges categories, the Challenge "Have the game powered on for a total of 20 hours." can be completed before the timer starts as seen here:
This can be done by starting the game, and waiting on the main menu for 20 hours (time spent clearing DLC or reading announcements don't count for some reason). You can then close the game and backup the save to the cloud so that you may use it at any point in time.
I haven't applied this in any run that I have submitted to the leaderboard, as I don't think that this is a healthy thing to allow in runs.
On the one hand: We do currently allow the limited time DLC packs to complete 2 challenges immediately as well as majorly impact AC: Spirit Board and WoL categories. This 20 hour trick isn't as impactful as those. We allow regular DLC to clear another 5 challenges before the timer starts The rules state that the timer starts after clearing the DLC and has nothing to say about how long the player stays on the main menu before clearing DLC and announcements.
On the other hand: It really bends the rules of what counts as a fresh save file. Having a pre-beaten challenge is big for certain All Challenges runs where the hammer routing is really tight, especially noticeable in the example linked above. Keeping a cloud save with usable gift spirits from the limited time DLC is allowed as verified runs have shown, however I think that's a healthy thing as it allows runners to actually get runs going instead of constantly resetting for good spirits over and over.
To summarize: There's a way to have yet another challenge beaten as soon as you start the game by leaving your switch powered on for a really long time. I don't think that it should be allowed, however I don't think the limited time DLC should be allowed to influence runs either. Limited time DLC is allowed by precedent.
I am not the only runner of these categories so I would like to know what the other runners think.
The challenges that are usually cleared are from a direct result of purchased DLC. If you have bought the DLC packs for the DLC characters (At least fighter pass 1 / Terry), you automatically have enough music to clear that challenge for example. Same with the Mii costumes, as long as you've bought enough you can easily get the 10 headgears you need for example. These challenges are always accessible to everyone (It's always an option to purchase if not done so by this point) so its fair game for these to be included within the challenges cleared before the timer starts as its directly tied into the DLC that anyone can get to implement into their runs.
It's a slightly different story with the limited edition DLC packs, since not everyone can get to these anymore so those who missed out on some may not end up getting all the challenges automatically cleared that those with all the free DLC packs can get (for example, I missed out on the Snack Pack 1 DLC at the very beginning, it wasn't till the final limited DLC happened that I could finally reach the "Obtain 7777 SP" Challenge as a result (was always 6K, now I get 9K) so they are in a grey area to work on. The issue is as long as you have it on 1 account all other switch accounts also have it, meaning at this stage those who missed out don't have a way to claim them and those who do have them do not have a means of preventing them from counting so It's really hard to try and prevent these from being included (without literally buying another copy of the game as a separate user and archiving the original game) as there's no internal counter for amount of gold and SP obtained so the only way to not include those is to "prove" a method of obtaining an additional amount equal to the base goal of the challenge, but there is no visible internal counter that checks these values other than your total Gold or SP at that specific time of checking, the game just counts it at its own accord and gives you the challenge once you exceed the value.
Considering both of these points, The ability to wait 20 Hours on the title screen is always accessible as an option for anyone at anytime (granted this probably would be best done on a Friday night / Saturday morning for ACNO runs as those kinda rely on the day being Sunday for the shopping sale challenge) so in theory its more viable to include than the DLCs as a whole, as all it requires is just leaving the console on charge and not having it auto turn off on the title screen for 20hrs, but with cloud data save also being an option you literally only have to wait once to do it and that's it, so sure its out of the way to prep in a sense but it only needs to happen once. I feel as though it could be included, because effectively the time save is what 2-3 seconds at most, which yeah is a lot for All Challenges Other, but is much more insignificant for the All challenges (With or without online) categories, and regardless of category its not exactly a difficult thing to so since you do not need to input for any of the time at all, you just leave it.
Long story short: I see no harm in it being included but I wouldn't object to either it being allowed or not for runs, as the method of the challenge itself is more accessible to every runner as opposed to DLC's and especially the Limited DLCs that are already included for the runs before the timer as well. I don't necessarily expect it to be a thing most runners would do if it was allowed though unless specifically for All Challenges: Other runs though.
Personally I think the rules for what is and isn't allowed on a cloud save should be made on a case by case basis. That being said I don't really feel right with allowing it, it just feels kind of dirty in general to do. Something that feels akin to someone submitting an 5 hour RTA run to a Classic Sonic game but with a super low In-Game Timer because they decided to take a nap halfway through the run.
That being said though I don't necessarily think just saying "it doesn't feel right" without any basis towards them is a super solid reasoning, and I can also imagine this being a nightmare situation for mods to regulate. I can imagine a situation where someone could sneak in a AC:NO submission that had a premade save with 11-13 powered on hours clocked in, just enough time where it wouldn't go off until after World of Light was finished but would go off before the run is over, just so it wouldn't be something mods would easily notice unless mods combed over every second of the run. I know that category isn't exactly the most popular category to run so it's not like submissions come flying in every week but it still feels like an obnoxious burden to expect mods to bear.
So I guess I'm unsure how to feel about it but also lean more towards don't allow it if that makes sense.
You can have control over the DLC you have downloaded to the console without having to buy a new copy of the game. If you are on a downloaded copy you can redownload the game without any DLC and then redownload specific DLC. Runs can very easily be done without the limited time DLC, however precedent has always allowed them.
I understand that it's easy enough to equate the cloud save and regular DLC as they're both available to everyone, however the DLC is a one time purchase and accessible across all accounts on the Switch. The cloud save feature is a subscription that is tied to a single user. So in the case where there are runners that don't want to lose their current save file, they have to pay for an online subscription for a different account. Either that or they have to queue up several accounts with 20 hours on the loading screen in order to be competitive in some categories.
