Recently, I got appointed as a mod of this board, so I want to ensure the decisions that I will make will be the best for this community without any conflicts.

As a result, this post is a data collection on community's and outsiders opinion on revamping DMC4: Special Edition board. Additionally, I'd like to hear your opinions based on the gripes of running this or the barrier of running this game. (Is it due to lack of resource ? Unforgiving ? More help needed ?..etc.)

I started this discussion with mekarazium on discord to come up an idea of further enhancement for this board.

The issues so far A ) Too much difficulties. Hell and Hell in particular should not ever exists in any DMC game. B ) Lack of exposure and community engagement in general.

Here are some of the consideration that I came up with:

Consolidating New Game + Itemless category. Along with the removal of super costume vs no super costume and unnecessary difficulties Tis without doubt the change the board need to consider. While, it's understandable to split catas, so the main ones would be at the top and arbitrary ones at misc, aka different NG+ itemless cata. It doesn't change the fact that outsiders/newcomers will get confused.

Therefore, I believe merging them together with the following adjustment might going to eliminate this issue:

1 ) Deleting Hell and Hell, Son of Sparda. Merging Legendary Dark Knight and Human together in one sub category known as misc (see DMC3:SE board)

The reason for HaH and SoS is plain simple. "Arbitrary". When it comes to going fast and there is literally no reason to run a difficulty that has very minor difference. There is also no need to challenge yourself with no damage run that has literally same scaling as SoS.

2 ) Eliminating Super costume vs No Super costume

We could add filter stating whether its a super costume or not on Nero/Dante/Vergil. Considering Lady and Trish has none. Whole different run like vergil for example yes, but I honestly think that it shouldn't be split apart with this size of players at the moment. It's also the fact that, you have unlimited DT making same cycles. The main difference is that you have unlimited extra tool access and things like auto full exceed, unlimited concentration meter and distortion.

Putting Nero/Dante. Vergil. Lady/Trish under one category called New game Looking at this structure. I believe this would make much more sense. Because the rest of categories has characters as a sub to switch around. This way we would only end up having only three tabs that are New Game, New Game+ Itemless and Misc.

I hope we can come together to resolve this and make the changes these boards need to look less overwhelming to newcomers.

Main category: New Game Sub-categories: Nero/Dante, Vergil, Lady/Trish Difficulty sub categories: Human, Devil Hunter, LDK

Reasoning: this looks cleaner and this is the part of the board that matters the most, since this is how majority of long-term runners will/have engaged with the game.

Main category: NG+ No Items Sub-categories: Nero/Dante, Vergil, Lady/Trish Difficulty sub-categories: Human, Devil Hunter, DMD, LDK, HoH (Human and DMD as misc)

Reasoning: HaH has 2 runs and SoS has zero. I'd even advocate for DMD being removed and moving them to a google doc or something until more interest grows but idk how people feel about that. Also saying "Itemless" is awkward as opposed to "No Items."

Misc category: NG+ No Items w/ Super Costume Sub-categories: Nero/Dante, Vergil Difficulty sub-categories: Human, Devil Hunter, DMD, LDK, HoH (Human and DMD as misc)

Reasoning: Very few people play the game this way so it's not indicative of the community. Hence, misc category. This also makes it so there's no category where Lady/Trish are mistakenly listed as having a super costume.

Move Boss Rush to ILs, as you are not playing through the full game during a boss rush. This makes for less categories on the main board and gives us a new IL board, which is easier to find since it will be right below BP. More players may see the category if it is there and it could get run more.

Just to establish where my POV is coming from. As someone that hasn't really put much time into DMC until last year with DMC4SE which was my first ever speedrun game. My feedback will be bias.

1 ) HaH and SoS seem completely redundant at this point. I don't have any particular interest in it unless it's proven to have some interesting memes that aren't just "more of a chore"-version of the Demon Hunter run. Sure there might be a niche demographic for it but as of now the community is so small that the main categories barely are being run anymore which is what should be pushed IMO and if people do the HaH or SoS run and find it cool it'll be brought up eventually. So I think you should be safe to remove it as of now.

2 ) I'm not familiar with Super Costume runs, hell I'm not even familiar with the Vergil route even. So take whatever I say with a bucket of salt. That said. The issue would mainly be that people who run without Super Costume would feel like they're running with a handicap which would be straight up unfair. HOWEVER. I'm okay with that change. NG is there to preform with limitations imposed on you. NG+ being a "do whatever" mode with freedom to choose your gameplay with unlimited resources or not at this pool of people should be completely fine as of now. Worst case scenario is someone gets upset their free WR is bopped which I can count there would be 3 of? 1 in the Nero/Dante HoH section and 2 in the Vergil DH and DMD section. Which at the end of the day is pretty much dead categories anyway so any attachments to rekkys there shouldn't be expected. You'll have a more streamlined intended competetive scene which I think is a fair trade. At this size. If it grew and you got like 15 Super Costume runs taking up the top board there should probably be a change but we're not at that point. However could you submit the NG+ category with and without Super Costume and take up 2 spaces? Or would submitting one take out the other?

"Putting Nero/Dante. Vergil. Lady/Trish under one category called New game" This should be fine. From a "Presentation POV" You'll still have Nero/Dante as the "Main Category" when you open the leaderboard and Vergil or Lady/Trish isn't literally pushed to the side like "oh and there's these memes too if you wanna give them a go and would be more integrated in the "Main Category". Doing NG and NG+ vs Nero/Dante, Vergil and Lady/Trish would also be more compact. However leaving them separated as categories really emphasises that they are different runs. So it's a matter of whether you want the presentation of the board to leave the impression that Vergil and Lady/Trish is synonymous with Nero/Dante as a main category or have it emphasize that "These runs are very different but available if you wanna run". To me who regularly comes by it's not that big of a deal but I'm considering the POV of someone dropping by to consider running. Like I can see someone looking at the integrated NG and NG+ versions thinking it's taking away the spotlight from them being separate tabs but I can also see someone looking at the NG and NG+ categories being like "Ah yes Vergil is in the first category tab, that means it's also important".

Now to the " I'd like to hear your opinions based on the gripes of running this or the barrier of running this game. (Is it due to lack of resource ? Unforgiving ? More help needed ?..etc.)"

As I started taking this game seriously around last year I'll tell my experience learning the run.

Resources? Meka has done an AMAZING job pooling the information together in terms of learning the run. I pretty much learned it without interacting with any of the community. Mainly through his pastebin, youtube tutorial and ESA run I watched a couple of times as a reference cause I'm very much a visual learner. Though once I submitted my run and got more engaged with the community I got even more help which I'm very grateful for.

Unforgiving? Yes. Very. There are so many places that have a "You can fail here" moment and I'm not just counting the skips. The battles themselves in terms of playing optimally for maximum damage and speed stack up into a massive time junkyard filling up the run. Being consistent with attacks that require timing inputs takes so much practice. I'm kind of exception where I actually very much enjoy punishing learning curves so I'm not sure how someone who isn't would experience learning the run and what they would like or if this run is even for them, which is fine.

More help needed? I'm familiar enough with the NG Nero/Dante that I'm not even sure what I would've wanted more help with when learning this run.

I think alot of people (including me at some point) only looked at DMC4 as like "Ah yes the unfinished game with good combat that I will never be good at" and that perception still lingers with people so if they would run any of the DMC games then 4 is probably the least likely unless they have some sort of appreciation for its combat. The majority people didn't even exceed with Nero when playing through this game and would actively complain that he was a boring/not-fun character. So I think the game kind of from the Get-Go is considered kinda "it was cool but kinda meh" with the majority? I'm talking about your Average Joe that played through this game casually. Which is fine to do. Now the meme is how do we appeal to them to grow the community? Just the idea of Speedrunning turn alot of people off so it's a very hard market to appeal to. While we like to meme this game is cursed and terrible between ourselves I think I should probably not do so with people on the outside unless they're aware of how much I actually like the game to encourage newcomers. It may still be terrible in some aspect or cursed but rhetorically it's not very healthy of me to market the run like a terrible curse. So that's one change I'll make for myself at least in hope of encouraging others.

Not that I think that this runs community should be like other communities. But that is one appeal some runs have to people. Just being a cool community. Which I think you guys have done a good job at, despite being so small. Initially I worried that the speedrun community would be similar to the general DMC community. The tryhard elitists that would at every possible moment downplay anyone else's achievements and always jerk off themselves that they're always better than you. I'm cool with a healthy amount toxicity. The one that encourages others to do better. But I acknowledge that even that is a turnoff to the majority of people that aren't competitive so I never really enter that mode unless I'm aware the other party is cool with that. So any newcomer should probably be warmly welcomed to optimally foster a community which probably goes without saying but I just wanted to acknowledge there's that appeal and how to make use of it. And of course, I appreciate you all for being helpful so far and encouraging me to do better.

Now I spent a little more time than I wanted into writing this but I figure I should take part and try to give as much feedback as I can, even if some of it is redundant. Just that I'm here and taking part is for the better of the community vs just lurking like I usually do. As I said at the start, new runner. I got my biases. I might wanna change something I wrote or add something. But these are just my general thoughts surrounding this.

Speaking as the only person with a Hell and Hell run up on the boards, please get rid of that category. There's no reason for it to exist, and that run is terrible. It will not be missed.

Otherwise, yeah I second what Cosmic said.