Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
We've been bandying about an idea to recode the site from the ground up, and after some of the more recent conversations about improving the site I think it's high time we make this idea a little more public.
Currently this is purely an idea: We don't have the coding manpower/spare time to actually pull this off at the moment, let alone do so in a reasonable amount of time, but for now we can definitely start accepting and discussing ideas (and perhaps this thread could help us bring on a dedicated, trustworthy team of site coders to make this a reality).
Anything goes in terms of site improvement ideas, from huge things such as tier restructuring to minor things such as wording and phrasing across the site. The sky's the limit, we could theoretically do anything if it makes sense and benefits the audience.
I suppose I'll start with some of my personal ideas:
1. More emphasis on publication ratings, for sure. Make it easier to rate movies, give people more of an incentive to rate, perhaps change what gets rated if we can find some things that work better than Entertainment/Tech Quality.
2. A more streamlined system for co-authorship and movie credit in general. Perhaps a system that allows users to be rewarded with player points for being involved in a movie, without having to be made co-authors? Examples: Someone who provides a helpful Lua script, or someone who helped route the game but didn't provide any actual input in the TAS.
3. Submission voting changes. An idea I came up with very recently involves changing the question back to "Should this be published?" and giving a Yes/No answer, but upon selecting Yes or No you get different sub-options that provide a reason for your vote, something like a dropdown menu. This seems like a more efficient way of gathering better feedback on movies without requiring everyone to post their thoughts in the thread... But it's still probably a terrible idea in some way.
4. I suppose it's high time we really discuss what we want to do with the tiering system. Do we really want to keep tiers in a literal sense, where Vault is under Moons and Moons is under Stars, or should we discard that in favor of a more categorized system, such as Speed and Entertainment? Should we loosen the rules on what goes into Vault, allowing more diversity in there, or should we loosen the rules on what we can and can't accept as new branches in Moons? There's a lot to discuss here, though I would personally like to move away from Vault and "tiers" in some way, shape or form.
If anyone else has any ideas of their own, feel free to post them. Or you can just call my ideas terrible or something, that's probably far more likely to happen. If you have any knowledge about proper site coding and a lot of spare time, definitely post here as well and we can talk with you about adding you to a Nice Site Team or something. There was some talk about building the new site in C#, perhaps we will still go with that.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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.
3 and 4:
i think these new categories are way more clear than moons and vault and creating a separate answer in the voting system for vault and entertaining runs is definitely a good idea.
Should this run be published/is it technically sound?
Is it entertaining?
or simply answers that reflect that in the voting process.
this is technically good but i didn't enjoy watching it
this was very entertaining and technically good
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto.
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
First of all, mind, without actual coding manpower, or even ideas for coding infrastructure that people could potentially do work on, many of these ideas are going to be wishful thinking and not much is going to come from this topic. If we really want to get large changes enacted to the site, that is what we really should be considering or discussing. EDIT: Topic for that here.
That said, I'll give my take on a few things here.
1. More emphasis on publication ratings, for sure. Make it easier to rate movies, give people more of an incentive to rate, perhaps change what gets rated if we can find some things that work better than Entertainment/Tech Quality.
I would scrap Tech ratings. They are basically useless. Nobody has a clear idea on how to define it, everybody has a different definition or idea for it, and less experienced members have no good idea at all what to do with it.
Instead, replace it with just a single rating number where people can define how much they liked the run on their own terms.
It should be made much easier to rate. A single-click system à la IMDB would be ideal. Also possibly consider guest ratings, although that may lead to too much useless noise in the ratings.
There should also be some other incentives of rating. There's a top 50 table of raters, but it's out of the way and not really that visible. Maybe a better way of integrating rate counts into user profiles?
2. A more streamlined system for co-authorship and movie credit in general. Perhaps a system that allows users to be rewarded with player points for being involved in a movie, without having to be made co-authors? Examples: Someone who provides a helpful Lua script, or someone who helped route the game but didn't provide any actual input in the TAS.
I think this devalues the idea of "player points". If you did not actually participate in TASing a game, you should not be receiving player points.
Speaking of player points, while I like how they currently accumulate over a history of work (assuming it doesn't all get obsoleted), it may be more interesting to "rank" TASers based on active or present work, giving an added incentive for TASers to stay active in their TASing efforts. I have attempted to make such a ranking based only on publications from the past two years, but it might be worth to look more into this.
3. Submission voting changes. An idea I came up with very recently involves changing the question back to "Should this be published?" and giving a Yes/No answer, but upon selecting Yes or No you get different sub-options that provide a reason for your vote, something like a dropdown menu. This seems like a more efficient way of gathering better feedback on movies without requiring everyone to post their thoughts in the thread... But it's still probably a terrible idea in some way.
I think this needlessly complicates the vote system. I think it could be done better than it is now, but complicating the vote options beyond "yes/no/meh" may dissuade voters.
4. I suppose it's high time we really discuss what we want to do with the tiering system. Do we really want to keep tiers in a literal sense, where Vault is under Moons and Moons is under Stars, or should we discard that in favor of a more categorized system, such as Speed and Entertainment? Should we loosen the rules on what goes into Vault, allowing more diversity in there, or should we loosen the rules on what we can and can't accept as new branches in Moons? There's a lot to discuss here, though I would personally like to move away from Vault and "tiers" in some way, shape or form.
I am against any idea that splits the site into speed and entertainment regions. It ruins the original concept of the tier system, which was devised to let outstanding runs get more exposure, and only means you get two 'halves' of the site that would be more or less equal in the hierarchy, which means there is no point to splitting them in the first place.
On that note - tiers are, by definition, hierarchical structures, where tiers are above or below other tiers, not side-by-side. Any "tier" suggestion that breaks the hierarchy or tries to put them side by side is not a tier structure at all, and should not be referred to as such.
We can fill whole topics on alternative ideas than our current tier system, but I won't go too deep into this yet.
Now, for some other ideas:
I think that a big change for a new site structure should be a much greater emphasis on individual games. We do have individual game pages, but they're hard to find, are very beta, and don't really fit into our current site structure. A more per-game site structure with greater focus on franchises and such would make it easier for people to find games/movies they like. I don't think the site is ready to go full speedrun.com yet, but we can take a step in that direction.
Make game resources and other such wiki pages easier to edit. Right now you need to either ask a site admin for editor rights, or submit a movie and get it published (by which point one is often already past being interested in writing up a game resources page). Making game resources free for everyone like a conventional wiki (or at least for registered users) would make it much easier for many people to get involved with writing game resources and such for the site.
In general, it should be made easier or better incentivized for new members or guests to get involved with site content and contribution, no matter how minor. Every vote, every rating, and every piece of game information (save abuse) helps the site.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Mothrayas wrote:
I think this devalues the idea of "player points". If you did not actually participate in TASing a game, you should not be receiving player points.
That might sound solid, but there are cases when a researcher helped to move the TAS to an entirely new level of optimization. We want to encourage researchers, because research is mandatory for a really good run, but very few people have the skill to dive into game internals and develop scripts based on that.
Mothrayas wrote:
I am against any idea that splits the site into speed and entertainment regions. It ruins the original concept of the tier system, which was devised to let outstanding runs get more exposure, and only means you get two 'halves' of the site that would be more or less equal in the hierarchy, which means there is no point to splitting them in the first place.
Just to address, Stars were supposed to remain, as were all the flags, one of which is newcomer rec. There can also be a list of best rated movies. So you still get 3 ways to promote good runs. Right now all of these can be used, but the rest of the system doesn't promote Moons any better than they were or could be promoted, instead it just unpromotes vault.
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 think the searching functionality of the site would benefit greatly from improvement. Results should somehow be sorted by how much it matches the search terms and relevance.
For example, if I search for "super mario bros", I would expect runs of the first NES SMB to pop up at the beginning of the results, but instead the first hit is in position 6, the first one being "FDS Super Mario Bros. 2" and the second "Super Mario All-Stars: Super Mario Bros. 2" for no apparent reason.
If I search for "mario land", the first hit is "GB Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3". And if I search for "super mario world", the first hit is "GBA Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World". And if I search for "mega man", the first result is "Wii Mega Man 10". And so on and so forth.
I don't know how the search could be improved, but it would be nice if it were.
Mothrayas wrote:
I would scrap Tech ratings.
I think it would be a shame to throw away thousands of ratings.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
feos wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
I think this devalues the idea of "player points". If you did not actually participate in TASing a game, you should not be receiving player points.
That might sound solid, but there are cases when a researcher helped to move the TAS to an entirely new level of optimization. We want to encourage researchers, because research is mandatory for a really good run, but very few people have the skill to dive into game internals and develop scripts based on that.
This is what I was getting at. Contributions that were integral to the primary TASer's work, not just "Hey here's a strat that saves 5 frames". Under this system I'd probably list someone like Omnigamer as a contributor on Run Saber and the upcoming Majyuuou TASes just because of the insanely helpful hitbox viewer/memory watch Lua scripts, in terms of helping my efficiency with TASing those games and my overall level of optimization being far greater than it would've been without them.
The problem I have with the term "devaluing" player points is that they inherently don't have value in the first place. They're not an accurate measure of a TASer's skill or anything. The way they're distributed is enough proof of that. Points are divided evenly among teams, so if you do a lot of team work then you're going to need twice as many runs to rack up the same number of player points as someone who's doing things alone. Since player points are distributed on ratings, you can easily inflate your score by TASing entertaining games that people love, which will bring more ratings to the publication, which brings you more player points in turn. You could make 20 amazing, heavily optimized TASes and only get a few hundred points if no one's watching them.
By player points alone, I'm about 60 points below feos, with 4 more active runs than he has. I would not put myself on his level. On the higher end of the spectrum, people like Alyosha and MESHUGGAH, who have pumped out 30+ high quality runs each, are just barely at the Expert Player level, which some other people have hit with only 10-15 runs. If we really want to worry about devaluing player points, we need to remake the system in a way that actually gives them value. As it is right now, it's just a number that gives you a little title every now and then. Cute, but ultimately ignored in the grand scheme of things.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
feos wrote:
That might sound solid, but there are cases when a researcher helped to move the TAS to an entirely new level of optimization. We want to encourage researchers, because research is mandatory for a really good run, but very few people have the skill to dive into game internals and develop scripts based on that.
Maybe quantify their productivity in some other way. For example, it may be possible to keep track of statistics for game resource/article edit counts, uploads of scripts or other relevant files, etc. But I think player points should be for the actual TASers only. Otherwise the term gets diluted too much.
feos wrote:
Just to address, Stars were supposed to remain, as were all the flags, one of which is newcomer rec. There can also be a list of best rated movies. So you still get 3 ways to promote good runs. Right now all of these can be used, but the rest of the system doesn't promote Moons any better than they were or could be promoted, instead it just unpromotes vault.
These are all other ideas than a speed-entertainment split. What is the speed-entertainment split for, then?
And by "unpromoting" Vault runs, that does promote Moon runs relatively compared to Vault movies, which is precisely the point. There's no difference between promoting one or unpromoting the other, as there is no absolute rate of "promotion".
Warp wrote:
I think the searching functionality of the site would benefit greatly from improvement. Results should somehow be sorted by how much it matches the search terms and relevance.
For example, if I search for "super mario bros", I would expect runs of the first NES SMB to pop up at the beginning of the results, but instead the first hit is in position 6, the first one being "FDS Super Mario Bros. 2" and the second "Super Mario All-Stars: Super Mario Bros. 2" for no apparent reason.
If I search for "mario land", the first hit is "GB Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3". And if I search for "super mario world", the first hit is "GBA Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World". And if I search for "mega man", the first result is "Wii Mega Man 10". And so on and so forth.
I don't know how the search could be improved, but it would be nice if it were.
Below the site search results are Google-based search results, which generally are better about this. We may want to highlight the Google results more, as the site-based search results are, while reasonably robust, often just not as good for direct matches, as you noted.
Warp wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
I would scrap Tech ratings.
I think it would be a shame to throw away thousands of ratings.
I don't. As I said, I think Tech ratings are useless.
Maybe they can be merged with Entertainment rating (with significant bias towards Entertainment, the much more important rating stat imo), but on their own, I don't think they need to exist. The current ratings as a whole won't go away, of course.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Hurray plan for the future! :)
For me the single biggest improvement to the site would be to arrange it in terms of games, not in terms of tiers. Each game page can have the runs associated with it, the game info page (which right now is unmaintained and hardly used as far as I can tell), and other helpful stuff like forum links, a general description of the game, etc. Scrapping vault/moons distinction will clean up and simplify a LOT of the muddle that I think bogs things down.
I also like the simplified rating system ideas, simple is almost always better.
Basically, a simpler and cleaner overall site structure is what I envision.
I also like the idea of broadening the contributors to TASes. Especially now when TASing is approaching more complex systems, the research work and even involvement of RTA community increasing significantly, things are just plain harder to do.
I never liked player points personally. I think the player profile page can serve the purpose of player points better, it gives more details then just a number.
We should really replace the rating system with a like/dislike bar.
Jokes aside, I agree with Warp that the search box needs a big revamp. As of right now, it feels clunky and doesn't often seem to return what you want. It would be better if results were served up immediately, rather than in a separate page.
If we are to categorize movies by games in the future, the search box should be also reworked to be game-centric. On speedrun.com, there is auto completion for partial game names. It seems like a small thing, but it's a godsend for lazy people like me.
Being able to filter by platform, date, author and so on would be nice too.
Hi. I think that the front page should look something like this:
For smartphones and tablets, maybe?
Or maybe it is how the site looked like back in 2003.
Not at all.
(okay, this is from 2004, but this is among the oldest working Wayback Machine captures. In fact, the Wayback Machine doesn't have any captures from 2003.)
Hi. I think that the front page should look something like this:
For smartphones and tablets, maybe?
Or maybe it is how the site looked like back in 2003.
Not at all.
(okay, this is from 2004, but this is among the oldest working Wayback Machine captures. In fact, the Wayback Machine doesn't have any captures from 2003.)
The front page needs to use its space optimally to encourage the viewer to interact with the site in some way (search, click links, vote, etc). The current front page is as poorly optimized as a TAS from 2004, because:
-There's a tiny search bar hidden in the corner.
-The tabs are excessive and labyrinthine.
-No social media.
-The top third is a complete waste of space. Who isn't scrolling past a random movie made years ago? Who is concerned about month-old news about tiny changes to emulators?
-There are no thumbnails for videos, except the poorly positioned one way off to the right for the latest movie. Show what the games look like. People haven't even heard of a lot of them.
-The right side is wasted empty space—in contrast to the endless column on the right side of a site like Daily Mail. Remove the random 'featured movie' and put all the starred, popular movies over there.
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Mothrayas wrote:
Maybe quantify their productivity in some other way. For example, it may be possible to keep track of statistics for game resource/article edit counts, uploads of scripts or other relevant files, etc. But I think player points should be for the actual TASers only. Otherwise the term gets diluted too much.
I think being a part of the run with your research is a good thing, having some separate currency that would be additional to player points is also interesting, but I'd just replace it with a single rank (Researcher) without assigning researcher points, because such points would 1) compete with player points in prestige, lose that battle and end up being meaningless (you can't evaluate quality of help by mere quantity), 2) be faceless, due to not being tied to games that bring those points, unlike if researcher is added to a team.
I'm not sure what Samsara means though, being a part of the team or just getting those points by site database juggling?
Mothrayas wrote:
These are all other ideas than a speed-entertainment split. What is the speed-entertainment split for, then?
Right, you've never read my response to you. Here it is: Post #421751. All the problems that post lists are resolved if we move from tiers to metacategories.
Mothrayas wrote:
And by "unpromoting" Vault runs, that does promote Moon runs relatively compared to Vault movies, which is precisely the point. There's no difference between promoting one or unpromoting the other, as there is no absolute rate of "promotion".
And I said unpromotion, because we don't showcase Moons any batter than before the tier system, we simply hide Vault. It sounds like it makes sense, but the problems it causes are heavier than the benefits it brings.
I remind, that speed-entertainment split is not ambiguous or arbitrary: all "fastest possible" and "full completion" runs go to Coins, if their submissions are optimal, all the rest branches go to Moons, and published if they are optimal and entertaining. Stars are cherry-picked from both.
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.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
feos wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
These are all other ideas than a speed-entertainment split. What is the speed-entertainment split for, then?
Right, you've never read my response to you. Here it is: Post #421751. All the problems that post lists are resolved if we move from tiers to metacategories.
I see in that post plenty of criticism about the current Vault-Moon system, but I'm missing an answer to my question. What is the purpose of a speed-entertainment split?
feos wrote:
And I said unpromotion, because we don't showcase Moons any batter than before the tier system, we simply hide Vault.
It sounds like it makes sense, but the problems it causes are heavier than the benefits it brings.
Which, on a relative scale, promotes Moons. Once again, there is no absolute scale of promotion to compare with, so "unpromote Vault" and "promote Moons(/Stars)" are the exact same thing.
feos wrote:
I remind, that speed-entertainment split is not ambiguous or arbitrary: all "fastest possible" and "full completion" runs go to Coins, if their submissions are optimal, all the rest branches go to Moons, and published if they are optimal and entertaining. Stars are cherry-picked from both.
Even if splitting speed and entertainment runs is non-ambiguous or non-arbitrary, what is the purpose of splitting them? What benefit is there to putting, say, Super Metroid 100% on the other side of the site as Super Metroid RBO? Why does there need to be a split of this nature?
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 4/17/2010
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Mothrayas wrote:
feos wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
What is the speed-entertainment split for, then?
All the problems that post lists are resolved if we move from tiers to metacategories.
What is the purpose of a speed-entertainment split?
Ummm, are you in a loop? The point is (and has been from the start of the "Vault Tier Discussion" thread) fixing all those problems.
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.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
feos wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
feos wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
What is the speed-entertainment split for, then?
All the problems that post lists are resolved if we move from tiers to metacategories.
What is the purpose of a speed-entertainment split?
Ummm, are you in a loop? The point is (and has been from the start of the "Vault Tier Discussion" thread) fixing all those problems.
Are these problems fixed by removing the Vault and Moon tiers/distinctions, or are they fixed by introducing a split between speed runs and entertainment runs?
I understand there are several criticisms with the Vault and Moon tiers. Fine, let's say we merge the lot and erase the concept of tiers. Then what is the purpose of introducing a split to speed runs and entertainment runs? What does that achieve?
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Even if splitting speed and entertainment runs is non-ambiguous or non-arbitrary, what is the purpose of splitting them? What benefit is there to putting, say, Super Metroid 100% on the other side of the site as Super Metroid RBO? Why does there need to be a split of this nature?
What is the current world-record tool-assisted speedrun of Super Metroid? Suppose I'm writing an article about speedruns for an online publication, and would like to mention that fact.
With so many Super Metroid runs, it can be a bit hard to find a definitive answer. Some clarity on this could be beneficial.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
Even if splitting speed and entertainment runs is non-ambiguous or non-arbitrary, what is the purpose of splitting them? What benefit is there to putting, say, Super Metroid 100% on the other side of the site as Super Metroid RBO? Why does there need to be a split of this nature?
What is the current world-record tool-assisted speedrun of Super Metroid? Suppose I'm writing an article about speedruns for an online publication, and would like to mention that fact.
With so many Super Metroid runs, it can be a bit hard to find a definitive answer. Some clarity on this could be beneficial.
Given the concept of category names, it seems to me like this would not be hard to figure out. I doubt anyone is going to think the "world record" is going to be the longer time with an "RBO" label behind it, or something similar.
And it doesn't seem like something worth splitting the entire movie base over.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
The split reflects the rules used for each metacategory:
Additional branches have to be entertaining and can obsolete each other based on that, in addition to speed (which isn't the main factor)
Any%/100% should just be optimal and only obsolete based on that (probably difficulty settings and similar things can affect things too)
The split represents records with due highlighting. Right now, we only highlight what is cool to watch, and discard what is not, so speed optimality (tech level of the run) gets lower promotion compared to entertainment. But for a run in current Moons or Stars, speed optimality (being a record) is just as important (if not more so).
The split serves as an additional indicator of "legit any%" for games with a branch faster than any% due to things like newgame+, unlockable modes, and stuff like that.
Mothrayas wrote:
Even if splitting speed and entertainment runs is non-ambiguous or non-arbitrary, what is the purpose of splitting them? What benefit is there to putting, say, Super Metroid 100% on the other side of the site as Super Metroid RBO? Why does there need to be a split of this nature?
It won't be the other side of the site, if we go game-based. Just like right now, if you observe a publication for a given game, the tree below the pub module lists all branches for that game (and their history), showing both tiers, regardless of how they are split in the Movies page links (which will become obsolete probably).
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.
