Hi there, long time lurker for this game, I've always been interested in speedruns of this game, and I am really happy stuff is being found for it now. Much cooler to watch now than it was a few years ago back when the only recent runs were the 15 minute Any% Cheats run and the 1:22 All Missions PC run.
I think with the new influx of players and new stuff being found which will drive even more people to run/be interested in this game, the state of the leaderboards should probably change to reflect that. First off, I wanna talk about how the Any% category is laid out, more specifically the cheats subcategory. Is it really necessary to lay them underneath Any%? I can sort of get why it's like that, since this is a 2 hour long speedrun, and Any% with cheats is a really short category, anybody can get into it, but the issue is; it's just not Any%. The standard definition of Any% is just beating the game as fast as possible without cheats. This is not Any%, this is just Cheat%. (Also, quick question, what is the deal with it also being allowed in All Missions? That doesn't even have a subcategory, it's just at the very end of the rules.)
I don't know how many times discussion was brought up over this, but I feel like now something should probably be done about it. It's not really the best outlook for the game to outside viewers either, hell, people on the forums weren't even too sure what it was to begin with and had to get explained to them more than once that yes, this isn't a glitch, this is a cheat. This isn't 3 years ago when most people were busy doing ILs, this is the current day where people are actually giving a shit about full game runs. It should be reflected properly now that people care.
I kinda don't really have much else to say, the cheats thing is kinda the biggest thing here. I don't know what to think about the PC version on these boards either. Unlike the Billy Hatcher community, you guys actually acknowledge that you have a PC port and have it on the leaderboards, but since it's so different compared to console, it's just shoehorned into All Missions. I don't think it warrents another board, especially since all you can do with it is All Missions and ILs, but I also don't think just outright banning and denying it's existence would be a good idea either, especially since it's a more available version of the game and much easier to play. It's just there.
I've rambled for a bit too long so I'll stop there. I just needed a place to write down my thoughts. I wanna hear what everyone else thinks of course which is why I'm posting this. Hopefully something will happen. Thank you for reading.
I agree that it would make more sense for Any% (does not use cheats) to simply be called Any%, and for Any% (uses cheats) to be called Cheat%, removing the need for the Any% subcategory.
As for cheats being allowed in All Missions, we use the pile increase cheat so we can complete all of the missions as fast as possible without worrying about picking up XS items. In normal Any% you need to route how many XS items you collect in each level, in order to have enough to unlock each subsequent level and eventually reach the final level. The main idea of All Missions is to do all the skips and timesaves you can do, complete each level as fast as possible regardless of how many XS items are skipped in the process, and then use the pile increase cheat to compensate for the missing items to unlock the next level. It's like doing Any% for every IL in one run. But I wouldn't mind a variant of All Missions without cheats being added if people wanted it.
Hi aims, thanks for replying.
I can understand the stuff for All Missions on console, but to me it kind of just sounds like Extended Cheat%. I can obviously get the appeal, but the title is a bit misleading, especially since the cheats rule is just tacked onto the end of it like I already said before. I assume Any% does not do all of the missions (even though there was a previous wr for both any% and all missions), I haven't had time to watch a full run yet, but from what I can gather it's just routing and not skip heavy like All Missions (both console and pc). I never really thought of what to do with All Missions in my original post since I never understood the true purpose until now. Like I said, the description I've been given makes me think it's just an extended Cheat% category for console.
I think it would be neat if there was a seperate category for All Missions with the pile cheat (name it whatever the fuck you guys want i think extended cheat% would be the way to go), and then have the original category get rid of the Very Obviously Tacked On Rule for the cheat. Would also make it consistent with PC since it has no cheats.
Sorry if my reply was shit, didn't truly expect people to respond and it's currently almost 6:30 AM for me so I'm dying inside, had to improvise.