As the next patch is coming up at some point, I believe it is a good idea to start a topic here so the community and mods can discuss what and how the categories will be changed when the patch hits. There has been a lot of issues with communications about this, so I'm creating this topic so we can lay down at least some preliminary thoughts on what changes there should be.

Note: This topic is only about any changes to the categories and rules of the runs themselves, there are other topics to discuss other matters, so please discuss those there.

Since we don't know everything about the new patch, a lot of what might be discussed here will be prone to changes, so consider this more of a thought-exercise than laying down the law. That being said, my thoughts:

1. The current "No Major Glitches" and "Any%" should be kept as is, as changing them drastically may invalidate runs.
2. Adding "No Major Glitches CP" and "Any% CP" -categories after tha patch hits would allow us to differentiate between older runs and new runs. (CP = Current Patch)
3. Any major rules changes would then be on these CP -categories, which could accomodate changes coming in any follow-up patch as well.
4. A new category for the new difficulty setting will have to be added, with the same consideration as for normal/easy/maso in regarding to rules etc.

Current Patch -category is a pretty common way to differentiate down-patched versions of games etc. in speedrunning, so that is what I think might be good here.

What do you guys think? These are pretty general thoughts, because we are still unsure when the next patch will come, and there are people here more qualified than I am to consider any future categories. Any and all discussion on the future categories/rules welcome, as those are what we'll be using as a base.

We are a pretty small community, so a lot of changes will likely not be needed (if at all), but this is mostly for transparency and thought-exchange rather than anything.

Approved incoming changes to categories

• CP: For Ending B (Maso/Normal/Easy), fighting and beating Rher is mandatory, not optional.
• ALL: In-game music is mandatory, not optional. NOTE: This is necessary for all runs, CurrentPatch or otherwise, as in-game music is an important tool to avoid splicing of footage.

Sounds good to me. Also I think we can add separate difficulty subcategory (like on devil may cry leaderboard).

A suggestion from Hugo:

"For example, the Rher requirement for Ending B helps make the run more unique. But that also can cause conflicts with invalidating some previous submissions/old times."

Having a "Beat Rher" -requirement would make that category more interesting, as it can otherwise be pretty similar to C, and the Rher -fight is very cool, so not having that in any of the categories might be a bit of a bore.

Because of the problem with invalidating previous submissions/times (something we don't want to happen), this would be added to the Current Patch -general category. I think that would work best.

Yeah I think that rule update for b is a necessary evil. Or else it will literally just be end c with a different dialogue choice at perkele. Also I would like to request a change to make all the audio mandatory instead of some optional. Having music optional is just asking to have someone splice a run and make it hard to catch

On the difficulty -subcategories, g0dh34d mentioned Devil May Cry -leaderboard as an example, which I think would be a good change:

Yeah that's a great way to sort the runs. Also I would like to ask if the runs are going to be archived or be place into a different tab? I saw we will have categories like "any% cp" but I guess I just want clarity if we will be accepting runs for old patches?

Sorry if my question doesn't make sense I just don't know how to word it

No that is a good question. A lot of games do runs with old patches due to the use of glitches/older game mechanics.

Currently, as far as I have thought of it, we won't be doing changes (except the music-one, which is a verification-requirement) to the non-CurrentPatch categories. We should likely change the name of the "oldpatch" category to use the current patch's number "Version 1.9.1" or "OldPatch". But that in itself has an issue: Many submissions don't show the version number anywhere in general, so that verification is difficult.. I'm pretty sure none of the runs we have verified are older than 1.9.1, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't technically be possible.

The easiest way to deal with this is to stop accepting non-current patch runs completely. I think it's the simplest way to avoid issues with older versions without invalidating old submissions.

Okay thank you and also one last concern i had was about how we will have proactive changes. The game is almost certainly going to have bug fix patches after the big update drops meaning the leader boards would be "scrubbed" with each new update. I think to combat this we should use an optimal patch instead of "current patch" so long as no new content is added. For example in the legend of zelda ocarina of time all runners use a specific version of the game (1.0.2 i believe) because it is faster. The newer versions of the game dont add content but fix/add bugs but ultimately runners use the most efficient version. I feel like going in this direction is better however theres two issues: making downpatching easier and finding which patch is the fastest. I think when the update drops we can just accept runs from any patch (for example i could have a 2.0.1 patch compete with a run from patch 2.0.4 ) as long as it doesnt have any extra content (like new enemies/areas) but im not entirely sure how to solve the first issue of downpatching

We'll definitely need to play the new updates to see if it's the better option. That'll be inevitable, but I think it'll take longer given the new locations and enemies, QOL fixes, balance changes to attacks and items, everything.

There might be a possible way to still incorporate older version runs through the Steam version of the game. It isn't a guaranteed solution as this would require testing, but it's important to consider.

I want to avoid (publicly) distributing various full builds of the game, as that's piracy. Random users go to our resources page to download the entire game without paying a penny. But this seems to be the only legal method of accessing previous builds.

https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-downgrade-steam-games/ (This is the original source with written instructions. The video description provides links to all the necessary downloads for downgrading Steam games.)

And given the ability to easily make back-ups and to decrypt RPG Maker MV games through multiple methods (https://petschko.org/tools/mv_decrypter/), we could independently create executables for v.1.9.1, v.2.0.0, v2.0.1, etc. and keep old runs active while also still allowing those to be active categories.