The new leaderboard category All Journal Entries for this game has the following line in the category rules:

The journal entries "Mystical Treasure" and "Go to tram station" are not required.

Considering the purpose of the category is to complete all the in-game achievements / journal entries, it's not immediately obvious why it would exclude these journal entries. The purpose of this forum post is to provide a comprehensive explanation for why the category is setup this way.

Short Answer: The journal entries "Mystical Treasure" and "Go to tram station" are affected by game bugs that would make their inclusion in the category problematic.

To explain the issues with these journal entries, I need to break down each entry separately.

~ Go to tram station ~

This is the comparatively easier journal entry to explain. When the trigger for this journal entry works, it's triggered by walking in front of the tram in Coastal Plain (around where Miss Tricket is). The problem is that this entry doesn't always trigger when it is supposed to. Specifically, whether the trigger for this journal entry works depends on which option is selected on the main menu. If the player selects "Start Journey" to start a new game, the trigger for the journal entry won't work, but if the player selects "Continue" to load a save, then the trigger will work. This means that completing this journal entry requires quitting the game and relaunching it at some point in the run.

This all means that the journal entry is technically completable if the runner quits the game and restarts it at some point during the run, but it was still decided not to require it. An important factor in this decision was considering how exactly the run would change if it was required. Notably, the journal entry "Take the tram" effectively assumes the completion of "Go to tram station", as the former requires talking to Miss Tricket inside the trigger for the latter. With that in mind, the only change that requiring "Go to tram station" would make to the route is to require the runner to relaunch the game. In the interest of making the category simpler to run, it was decided not to require the journal entry.

~ Mystical Treasure ~

This journal entry is more complicated to explain because its behavior changed with a game update on November 17, 2022. In the current game patch, this journal entry is simply incompletable. There are multiple threads (in both english and chinese) on the game's Steam discussion board asking about the bug, so it's seems to be a common problem with the game. Prior to that update, the journal entry was actually completable. There is a trigger area inside the vault (not present in the latest patch) that causes the backpack to say "Nyan! It's a battery!" and triggers the completion of the journal entry. This dialog trigger spans the space between the 9-balloon and 12-balloon door, so approaching either battery in the vault is sufficient to trigger the journal entry in these game versions.

Originally, the options being considered were to either create a (sub)category split depending on the game version (requiring the journal entry for game versions where it's collectable) or define the category to require opening the 9-balloon door to create a degree of requirement parity between game versions. However, it was discovered that, for the game versions where the journal entry is completable, it's possible to get the entry by simply standing in front of the 12-balloon door without having to open it (YouTube video). With this in mind, it became clear that the only difference between a run requiring the journal entry (in game versions where it's completable) and not requiring it is a small diversion taking just few second, which isn't worth creating a (sub)category split over. Similarly, the removal of the dialog trigger in the latest patch means there's no similar event to check for on the latest patch, preventing a simple category rule to create run parity that way. As such, it was decided to simply ignore this journal entry entirely, as excluding it doesn't significantly impact the category.

cont.

I was in a discussion today with the leaderboard moderator for Melatonin today, and ended up left with an interesting question. There are two categories for that game that are relevant here: All Levels and All Stars and Rings. The first category is just Any% with the requirement to also complete all the levels, and the second category is like All Levels, but also requires completing the "hard mode" variants of each level (in addition to the normal mode), and get the highest (non-perfect) score in all of them.

The discussion was about what would be between them. You could make a category that needs all stars, which excludes the hard modes, or make a category to also do all the hard modes, but not necessarily get the highest score in them. Right now, there's nobody pining to run those categories, but the discussion was over how to handle it if they do get run. The moderator was saying to just make them additional categories (most likely misc. categories), but I had another thought.

In my view, separating categories by the scores you get doesn't make much sense as, assuming perfect skill at the game, it doesn't take longer to get a better score. An all stars run could trivially obsolete a normal all levels run. My idea, then, was to use a variable to indicate the score the run got, and let users filter by that. The problem I see is handling run obsolescence. An all stars run could obsolete an all levels run, but an all levels run that doesn't get all the stars can't obsolete an all stars run. From what I can tell, variables can only be set such that all values obsolete each other or none do, so they can't be used for this ordered relationship.

Is there a way to do this with variables? If not, is there a better way to handle this kind of relationship between runs? Would adding this functionality to variables as a feature to the site be helpful for other games' leaderboards? Additionally, for filtering by these "ordered" variables, it would be nice to have an easy way to say "filter by this value or better" instead of having to select all the values individually to get that.

To get ahead of the debate, I'm making this thread here to discuss the game-wide rule that all runs must be made in the "Offline" mode. My rationale for this rule was that the instability of adding an internet connection could influence the results of the game. However, I can understand this being a contentious rule, as most people will play online the majority of the time (especially if they're playing it casually).

Put your thoughts and opinions on this rule in this thread. I'll look over the arguments and try to make a decision that will make most of the community happy.

I've also created a strawpoll over the options as I see it. If you have an opinion on this, please respond to the poll (in addition to any comments you make here), so I can see what the general opinion is. https://www.strawpoll.me/20687530

I think I already know the answer, but I figure it's doesn't hurt to ask and see if there is any sort of protocol in place.

I am the moderator on the leaderboard for Empathy: Path of Whispers. The game's name is very often shortened to Empathy, to the point where that's what it's still referred to on Twitch. (That comes in large part due to the subtitle being added very close to launch, and the GiantBomb database not being updated until I asked them to myself.) I would want to use speedrun.com/Empathy for the game, but that is currently taken by a user by that name. The account appears, to me at least, to be inactive/abandoned. The info page says they were last online 3 years ago (close to the age of the account) with 0 posts or runs.

I know that currently, with my game having no runners other than me, there's not going to be any sort of special case for me, so I'm wondering if there is a protocol for this kind of thing. Is there an "abandoned account" system? This isn't a huge issue for me, as I did recently change the permalink to one I am relatively happy with (as apposed to the old one, which was the game's full name), and if it were, I could always message the user on their linked accounts to see if they'd willingly change their permalink. I'm just curious if there's rules or systems already in place about this.

I have a game request currently pending for a game I want to get a speedrunning community started for. In the section for "Additional notes by the user", I made a speculation/observation about part of the game. Today, the developer made a comment that very much confirmed my speculation. I was wondering if I could (or should) update my request to include this specific quote to better clarify the submission.