Hi! I've just started to run this game like a few days ago, but im not sure what the EB & CB stuff actually means. Could anyone help me out on this one? Sorry if this has been already answered somewhere else.
Hey man. First of all, if you want to, I highly recommend that you join the community discord server. People will be able to help you much easier than in this subforum. The "route" column in the leaderboards simply stands for which routing approach you have chosen to do. In case you are mostly going for elevation boosts (short EB, stands for the trick which lets you preserve your speed whenever you go down in elevation), choose EB. If you are going mostly for a crouch boosting approach (short CB, stands for the trick which lets you preserve speed by crouching and jumping out of it), choose CB. If you are not sure because my explanations werent sufficient, or you simply dont care and just want to play the game, feel free to leave it blank and let mods categorize it. If you arent happy with the decision the mods took (e.g. because you used a bunch of cboosts but you still feel like youre playing EB) then let the mods know so they can change it. Be aware that which route is displayed on the leaderboards is totally and 100% up to the runner and nobody else!
Here comes the more detailed explanation: Just like spin glitch (SG), crouch boosting (cboosting, CB) is a way to preserve your momentum between jumps without the necessity to jump from something that is higher onto something that is lower. As such, it drastically alters the approach you go for when you try to play the game as fast as possible. That is why in the case of SG, we have created a new category (any% no SG) in which SG is not allowed, in order to maintain the routing of approach people love about this game so much.. which is going down hill all the time. Additionally, SG is obviously an ultimately faster way of playing the game because you can theoretically maintain your speed EVERYWHERE. Thats why it simply does not make sense to compare runs which dont use SG to ones which do. In the case of SG, this was a rather easy decision because it is very clear to define what a SG is and thus figuring out which run uses SG and which one doesnt is also easy. Now comes the problem with cboosting. THEORETICALLY, it can do the exact same thing as SG, which is preserve your momentum on every single jump. Think of it like this: a TAS would be able to play the game equally fast with cboosting as with SG. A normal human will not. But the problem is one is not able to define what a cboost even is - where it starts and what defines it, so to say - because in the end it is simply jumping directly after you crouch! You could argue cboosting was done by runners all the time even in very old runs, while the drastic effect on the game wasnt known and people didnt realize what they were doing. Hence, it is impossible to separate runs with and without CB other than by what intention the actual runner who completed the run had when he did it. So the "route" column is a compromise: runners will still be able to play the game the way they want to and the leaderboards will somehow reflect the decision they took and how it affects the game. If done well, cboosting will save minutes over just eboosting and we felt like this should be reflected also in the leaderboards. It also allows runners to submit times in both EB and CB routes (even though vryndar is currently the only one who has done that), in case you want to compare the two. Basically, EB and CB are both categories within a category. The way speedrun.com is currently set up, this is certainly not the optimal solution but thats what it is and what we have to deal with for now. I hope that helped! :)
saji
