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[2339] SNES Chrono Trigger "completionist" by Saturn in 5:44:58.18
This issue keeps bothering me without sympathy. It somehow ended up having the least appropriate branch name of all available. How inappropriate it was was was described by Saturn here. But I don't want to talk about it, it is not as bad a thing.
What is more interesting is, what to replace it with? I had a long talk to Saturn some months ago, he insisted on "100%" the hardest. My personal suggestion at the time was "Max%". Some guidelines propose more options.
Let's look at the options then.
"100%" is technically pointless for Chrono Trigger, since it does not count percentage. Moreover, there is no single convention about what to consider "100%" here. SDA defines it like that:
Now, Saturn's definition does not match!
Some people elsewhere can as well appear to have their own definition, and nothing would prevent them, because there is NO way to track completion percentage present in the game. Anything goes! Which actually does not work here, where we aim for clearness.
My old suggestion, "Max%", does not make much more sense either, because percentage is still never counted in the game.
Technically, the only really sensible branch would be namely "Max completion". Because it is really a run aiming for max completion for teh win.
But Saturn strongly dislikes both Max options, because he feels the most convenient with his (fairly) arbitrary "100%" branch. I would like to rely completely on the author's choice here, but I still can not. Because "100%" has just nothing to do with CT gameplay (which I never played honestly). And it is inaccurate judging by our standards here.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
My vote would be for "completionist" here. It's somewhat vague about what exactly "completion" is, but I think it captures the obsessive "must have 1 of everything" attitude that you normally see in people who label themselves completionists.
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It really shouldn't bother you. Don't start believing in Saturn now.
I agree with Derakon on "Completionist", since I think it is a short, descriptive and accurate label, moreso than the current one. And yes, Saturn has a point with the Secret of Evermore TAS (it should have the same branch). But just because someone blindly insists on "100%" does not mean that his opinion needs to be respected.
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I don't know what believing in Saturn has to do here. I see an untrue branch, I suggest improving it. I criticized Saturn's opinion on it. And asked for opinions.
FractalFusion wrote:
It really shouldn't bother you.
Why it shouldn't, and what should?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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For what it's worth, I agree with Derakon's suggestion. I also feel that subsequent runs should be able to bend to new standards for the purpose of obsoletion. If a new run decides to fight pink nu, and it adds 3 hours to the run, it should obsolete the old run, as long as every other comparable part is of equal or better quality.
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It then becomes some kind of Longplay. The longer it is, if it is still fast and optimized, the better it is considered :)
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I don't know what believing in Saturn has to do here. I see an untrue branch, I suggest improving it. I criticized Saturn's opinion on it. And asked for opinions.
FractalFusion wrote:
It really shouldn't bother you.
Why it shouldn't, and what should?
Sorry if I mistake your true intentions. It's a bit difficult to tell from the first post.
I responded this way because:
- The first post sounds like you are giving more credit to Saturn's opinion than is warranted. The publication was already judged not to have "100%" as a branch name, and a number of people already disagree with Saturn's opinion.
- "This issue keeps bothering me without sympathy." sounds like it is a personal problem. If not, then it is not necessary to write like that. Because it is just an ordinary problem, not a personal one.
I'll throw in another vote for "completionist".
If things like this start happening a lot, we might consider a branch title (or even publication tier?) specifically for "vanity" runs - runs that impress everyone and are technically impressive in completing the goals they set for themselves, but which for whatever reason can't be usefully compared to other runs of the same game, or which we don't want to accept as precedent for category definitions.
The fundamental tension here is that this run exists, and is amazing, and TASvideos seems like the only logical home for it, but it just doesn't fit into the framework we've established. TASvideos has a long and illustrious history of exceptions to the rules, and there's nothing particularly wrong with that - we've more or less "solved" the problem here by just giving it a random branch title and publishing it anyway. But if we do start to see a lot more submissions like this, things could get messy, and it might be worth formalizing what we want to do with them.
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feos wrote:
Technically, the only really sensible branch would be namely "Max completion". Because it is really a run aiming for max completion for teh win.
Something along these lines is probably the least arbitrary we're going to get it.
We add a comment in the movie description that it's not actually maximum possible completion, just maximum currently submitted to TASVideos. We obsolete the moment someone submits a decent run with higher completion.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Technically, the only really sensible branch would be namely "Max completion". Because it is really a run aiming for max completion for teh win.
Something along these lines is probably the least arbitrary we're going to get it.
We add a comment in the movie description that it's not actually maximum possible completion, just maximum currently submitted to TASVideos. We obsolete the moment someone submits a decent run with higher completion.
Would a run with less completion but also less arbitrary (and less boring) also obsolete this TAS?
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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That might be an option too.
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I think we should only use "maximum X" when it's actually as much as you can get given the restrictions imposed externally. I'll need to reread the submission thread.
If it's not a result of restrictions, just an arbitrary pile of things one felt like achieving, and that pile is reasonably huge, I suggest enforcing "high X" for such cases. Or some better wording.
Then a run that obtains more, but is equally entertaining, would obsolete it. As well as a run that gets less, but is more entertaining. Because the current movie has quite bad rating.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
"Completionist", which can then get obsoleted directly by faster completion of same goals, more goals, or cross-obsoleted by an actual 100% run (as defined by the community, since a definition is not clear from the game itself).
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After reading the submission thread I can say that this is the original goal:
Complete as much as possible, as long as it's entertaining.
It's clearly not vaultable, hence it's clearly not full completion, nor 100% by any objective definition. I see how misleading the "100%" branch label is now.
So, is it "max%", "high%", "maximum completion", or "high completion"?
"high completion" sounds strange, as it's not used for any branches so far, and I'm not even sure it's real English. But it doesn't really tell anything either.
- High? Okay. How high though?
- Nobody knows. Somewhat high.
- Why is it considered Hight enough then?
- Nobody knows.
"maximum completion" is informative, now we know that the goal is maximizing completion. So we just need to mention in the description that the run only aims to complete things that are entertaining to watch. Clear and accurate.
"max%" doesn't work, because there's no percentage in this game in any form.
"high%" doesn't work for the same reason, and also because it's not descriptive.
Memory wrote:
Nach wrote:
feos wrote:
Technically, the only really sensible branch would be namely "Max completion". Because it is really a run aiming for max completion for teh win.
Something along these lines is probably the least arbitrary we're going to get it.
We add a comment in the movie description that it's not actually maximum possible completion, just maximum currently submitted to TASVideos. We obsolete the moment someone submits a decent run with higher completion.
Would a run with less completion but also less arbitrary (and less boring) also obsolete this TAS?
If we get a run that completes a comparable amount of things while being more entertaining, it can obsolete it. Doesn't have to complete the same amount, nor more, nor less. Just comparable. And it must be more entertaining, since it's our end goal here. See how low the rating of that run is now.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
After reading the submission thread I can say that this is the original goal:
Complete as much as possible, as long as it's entertaining.
I'm not sure that's correct either. Some stuff could have been left out and provided more entertainment. It's really arbitrary.
Here's the author's criteria along with my notes:
getting at least 1 of every Item/Weapon/Armor/Helmet/Accessory (186 unique items) - It did this.
collecting all Power/Magic/Speed Tabs (except of LV99 Pink Nu reward) - Its own definition claims it didn't do "all". Some people also pointed out in the thread that there's more Power Tabs aside Pink Nu in the game than were collected.
opening all the Sealed Chests (Black Boxes) / Sealed Doors in every time period - IIRC someone mentioned it skipped sealed chest variations if the item was already acquired elsewhere.
finishing all sidequests - It didn't do this, instead it only did side quests mentioned by one of the characters, and even that is somewhat debatable as some of the sidequests have more than one part, and they were skipped.
defeating every boss - Didn't do this either. It only did bosses that have special boss music. (The game uses special music for the dramatic fights, which are typically bosses, but as an example Spekkio doesn't have special music because the fights with him in the story are not dramatic. Some of the bosses also have way more dramatic music than others because as part of the story, some of the fights are way more significant than others.)
defeating every form of Spekkio (except LV99 Pink Nu - separate demonstration of that form available here) - Its own definition claims it didn't do "all".
learning all Single/Double/Triple Techs for each character - It did this.
Aside from this, other things people mentioned in the thread that weren't done:
Open all chests.
Speak to all characters.
Visit all endings.
Collect various non-usable items such as cats and kittens.
Everyone can have their own criteria on what full or high means, but the only things we can say about the current one that is unanimously agreed to is that it got one of every piece of equipment, it learned all techniques, and it did a lot of other stuff, but by no means all. This is why I suggested originally we name it something like "all equipment and techniques" because that's the only things that we can honestly and objectively agree to.
feos wrote:
It's clearly not vaultable, hence it's clearly not full completion, nor 100% by any objective definition. I see how misleading the "100%" branch label is now.
There were at least a dozen people explaining why it's not 100%. My summary of points they raised is above. Saturn for some reason writes in his "rebuttal" that there's only one person who disagreed with his "100%" label. I don't know how anyone can read the thread and honestly say that.
feos wrote:
"maximum completion" is informative, now we know that the goal is maximizing completion. So we just need to mention in the description that the run only aims to complete things that are entertaining to watch. Clear and accurate.
Well, I would say something along the lines of maximum completion, with some notes describing what it did. I wouldn't necessarily say entertaining to watch is the best criteria either, it's really arbitrary.
feos wrote:
If we get a run that completes a comparable amount of things while being more entertaining, it can obsolete it. Doesn't have to complete the same amount, nor more, nor less. Just comparable. And it must be more entertaining, since it's our end goal here. See how low the rating of that run is now.
Agreed.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
[*]finishing all sidequests - It didn't do this, instead it only did side quests mentioned by one of the characters, and even that is somewhat debatable as some of the sidequests have more than one part, and they were skipped.
Whether Gaspar stops mentioning a certain sidequest is probably the best way to tell whether a quest is completed. This is also the current RTA definition of 100%. arandomgameTASer said he was planning to make a run following RTA rules a few weeks ago, but he has been inactive for a while.
Nach wrote:
[*]defeating every boss - Didn't do this either. It only did bosses that have special boss music. (The game uses special music for the dramatic fights, which are typically bosses, but as an example Spekkio doesn't have special music because the fights with him in the story are not dramatic. Some of the bosses also have way more dramatic music than others because as part of the story, some of the fights are way more significant than others.)
AFAIK, all enemies considered bosses in the Bestiary of PSX and DS versions are beaten in his run. Spekkio is not considered a boss in both PSX and DS versions.
Nach wrote:
[*]Visit all endings.
Given the fact that the game doesn't save after the each ending and that you can't get back to the game without resetting, it's probably not a good idea to do this category on the SNES version.
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Fortranm wrote:
Nach wrote:
[*]finishing all sidequests - It didn't do this, instead it only did side quests mentioned by one of the characters, and even that is somewhat debatable as some of the sidequests have more than one part, and they were skipped.
Whether Gaspar stops mentioning a certain sidequest is probably the best way to tell whether a quest is completed. This is also the current RTA definition of 100%. arandomgameTASer said he was planning to make a run following RTA rules a few weeks ago, but he has been inactive for a while.
Your logic still assumes a side quest is only if Gaspar mentions it.
We don't care what other communities do. We care about what our users as a whole want and what makes sense. We have an entire thread of our users saying this is not 100%, it never will be.
Fortranm wrote:
Nach wrote:
[*]defeating every boss - Didn't do this either. It only did bosses that have special boss music. (The game uses special music for the dramatic fights, which are typically bosses, but as an example Spekkio doesn't have special music because the fights with him in the story are not dramatic. Some of the bosses also have way more dramatic music than others because as part of the story, some of the fights are way more significant than others.)
AFAIK, all enemies considered bosses in the Bestiary of PSX and DS versions are beaten in his run. Spekkio is not considered a boss in both PSX and DS versions.
People in the thread pointed out what they considered bosses were not beaten. IIRC some of them are mentioned in other versions as being bosses.
Fortranm wrote:
Nach wrote:
[*]Visit all endings.
Given the fact that the game doesn't save after the each ending and that you can't get back to the game without resetting, it's probably not a good idea to do this category on the SNES version.
It's a terrific idea to do this because it's something the game offers to do and people mentioned they want it. The lsnes emulator is perfectly capable of recording resets. As far as I'm concerned, completing the game every single way it can be completed is the single most significant thing you can possibly do. Anything less is only partial completion.
Everything I mentioned is a summary of what people mentioned. As long as someone mentions something to do in a game which doesn't have its own completion counter, you cannot claim 100% without doing it (this is within reason of course).
As I mentioned previously, my personal criteria for 100% would require all side quests, all chests, and all endings. None of which was achieved by this run. But in any case, what I want is hardly the issue, lots of people listed lots of criteria, and most of them are within reason, yet not accomplished.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
After reading the submission thread I can say that this is the original goal:
Complete as much as possible, as long as it's entertaining.
It sounds to me like the exact definition for this branch, ie. its list of requirements, is pretty arbitrary.
That in itself isn't what bothers me. After all, lists of arbitrary (but arguably logical) requirements are a staple in speedrunning of many games (my all-time favorite example of Ocarina of Time being once again the posterboy for this.)
What does bother me is that I get the feeling that the list of requirements is not fixed, set in stone, but up to the author. "As long as it's entertaining."
"Up to the author" in this case meaning that if other runners wanted to obsolete this one, they could decide on a different list of requirements, at their own will, and they might actually have a shot at getting their runs accepted, obsoleting the existing one, in the same branch. Because the list of requirement is not agreed and fixed, but can be pretty much freely decided by each individual runner.
It's that kind of arbitrariness that bothers me slightly. It kind of makes the branch a bit meaningless.
(If I'm incorrect that this kind of run, with a slightly modified list of requirements, would be accepted as obsoleting this, please correct me.)
"max%" doesn't work, because there's no percentage in this game in any form.
"high%" doesn't work for the same reason, and also because it's not descriptive.
I don't think it's necessary for the game itself to show percentages for a "%" category to be completely logical and legit. As long as we can establish exactly what constitutes 100%, we can calculate the actual completion % ourselves, even if the game itself doesn't. (If an exact 100% definition cannot be made, then you may have a point.)
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Nach wrote:
feos wrote:
After reading the submission thread I can say that this is the original goal:
Complete as much as possible, as long as it's entertaining.
I'm not sure that's correct either. Some stuff could have been left out and provided more entertainment. It's really arbitrary.
Well, we know that it was the original goal, and it means it was judged by Saturn whether something he does is going to be entertaining to him or not. It doesn't mean that it was all similarly entertaining to others. People just happened to like a lot of the run's content.
Nach wrote:
Everyone can have their own criteria on what full or high means, but the only things we can say about the current one that is unanimously agreed to is that it got one of every piece of equipment, it learned all techniques, and it did a lot of other stuff, but by no means all. This is why I suggested originally we name it something like "all equipment and techniques" because that's the only things that we can honestly and objectively agree to.
"it did a lot of other stuff, but by no means all" - this part was lacking from the originally accepted label. And I don't see any sensible way to add that: it'd be the 3rd part of the label, and it can't even be accurately formulated as a label.
feos wrote:
"maximum completion" is informative, now we know that the goal is maximizing completion. So we just need to mention in the description that the run only aims to complete things that are entertaining to watch. Clear and accurate.
Well, I would say something along the lines of maximum completion, with some notes describing what it did. I wouldn't necessarily say entertaining to watch is the best criteria either, it's really arbitrary.[/quote]
I didn't mean that we need to write down the goal literally as "Complete as much as possible, as long as it's entertaining" in the movie description. Everything that might be useful to know is already written there, I don't see anything confusing.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Warp wrote:
What does bother me is that I get the feeling that the list of requirements is not fixed, set in stone, but up to the author. "As long as it's entertaining."
"Up to the author" in this case meaning that if other runners wanted to obsolete this one, they could decide on a different list of requirements, at their own will, and they might actually have a shot at getting their runs accepted, obsoleting the existing one, in the same branch. Because the list of requirement is not agreed and fixed, but can be pretty much freely decided by each individual runner.
It's that kind of arbitrariness that bothers me slightly. It kind of makes the branch a bit meaningless.
(If I'm incorrect that this kind of run, with a slightly modified list of requirements, would be accepted as obsoleting this, please correct me.)
You are correct, the goal is super arbitrary. But it's a Moons era, and Moons were allowed to have esoteric branches from day 1, as long as they are entertaining. Of course some judgment needs to be made on whether the goal is too arbitrary to be accepted. For that run the decision was that it's not arbitrary enough to be rejected.
Warp wrote:
I don't think it's necessary for the game itself to show percentages for a "%" category to be completely logical and legit. As long as we can establish exactly what constitutes 100%, we can calculate the actual completion % ourselves, even if the game itself doesn't. (If an exact 100% definition cannot be made, then you may have a point.)
It's exactly what I mean:
"max%" doesn't work, because there's no percentage in this game in any form
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
Nach wrote:
Everyone can have their own criteria on what full or high means, but the only things we can say about the current one that is unanimously agreed to is that it got one of every piece of equipment, it learned all techniques, and it did a lot of other stuff, but by no means all. This is why I suggested originally we name it something like "all equipment and techniques" because that's the only things that we can honestly and objectively agree to.
"it did a lot of other stuff, but by no means all" - this part was lacking from the originally accepted label. And I don't see any sensible way to add that: it'd be the 3rd part of the label, and it can't even be accurately formulated as a label.
Well, we don't accept movies for only doing part of something. I accepted it because it got all the equipment and techniques. All the other qualifications were not met. If someone were to submit a run which is shorter, more entertaining, and does those two things, I'd have it obsolete this. This is precisely because "it did a lot of other stuff, but by no means all" is arbitrary and cannot be described in any meaningful way.
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So what version of the label do you personally prefer?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
So what version of the label do you personally prefer?
My original suggestion was something along the lines of "all equipment and techniques", although I'm not set on the exact wording. Any variation of that is fine with me.
I'd be fine with other wording which describes it's trying to be completionist or towards maximum completion with descriptive text.
I'm definitely not fine with 100% which is completely absurd for anyone who isn't married to some other gaming community and has thus turned their critical thinking skills off.
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I already elaborated why "100%" is absurd here (and why other "%" options don't make sense either).
Mentioning in the label what it gets will be either inaccurate (omitting some of the goals or presenting them in a strange way) or overloaded (simply telling too much, more than the viewer wants to know).
"Completionist" doesn't actually sound as bad. It doesn't define the entire goal, but the goal isn't strictly defined either! And quite a few people liked it.
"Maximum completion" feels the most accurate, because there's no way to define "full completion" objectively, and it's a Moons-only branch, so we expect that it defines it based on entertainment instead.
My 2 favorite ones are "completionist" and "maximum completion".
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.