Spikestuff
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feos wrote:
Which part of my explanations fails to work in fighting games and why, exactly?
._. feos I'm literally pointing out the issue to your proposal with "They can't be separate branches". What are you on about? There's more bits to what I wrote than even the ones I even cherry-picked cause I just didn't want to quote myself going "feos, you're misinterpreting the side that's concerned about this sort of deal" and that'll be showcased directly below.
As for the other bit where you refer to this post I just have to refer to this:
Spikestuff wrote:
I can refer to Guilty Gear X: Advance Edition where Ky is obsoleted by Zato as they're both characters available form the start for an instance of a character that wasn't unlocked.
This is a partial agreement to what you say here:
feos wrote:
Interestingly, suboptimal chars make labeling kinda tricky. Not necessarily harder to do, but it may look inconsistent across all movies on the site.
But also is heavily argued to my point of:
Spikestuff wrote:
In my opinion the character should obsolete the other regardless if they're an unlocked character or not and if they're an unlock then they should have the tag of well in this case `Second quest/Post game-completion`. We have tags, we should make the tags work at the very least, we still make new ones to this day. This allows it to be simplified, and any other run from an unlocked roster or a standard one can instead go to Playground whilst the actual fastest can obsolete one another. This also allows another type of branch for fighting games, where you have the fastest character, a playaround and then "all endings", at least for the fighting games that show off different endings. SRAM should obsolete, but only for Fighting Games, and the information has to be very clear about it in the Publication. It will also cause the least amount of headaches.

But apparently we just love causing headaches on this.
Spikestuff at the start of this post wrote:
._.
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Counting public opinions... Savegame based unlockable character should always obsolete clear save character in fighting games (and possibly racing) if it's faster. 2/16 (12.5%)
Spikestuff wrote:
SRAM should obsolete, but only for Fighting Games, and the information has to be very clear about it in the Publication. It will also cause the least amount of headaches.
KusogeMan wrote:
I just fully agree and wish there were special rules for some genres
On the fence but a compromise of some kind looks acceptable. 4/16 (25%)
Samsara wrote:
I'm really on the fence about this. The easiest way to handle this would be through superseding, i.e we accept the first one we get and obsolete with the other, but we still have to figure out what option we prefer. SRAM better fulfills the goal of being as fast as possible, though it introduces conflicts of "legitimacy", for lack of a better word, in that a run that starts purely from power-on can be instantly verified as legitimate while SRAM needs further investigation to prove that nothing unfair is being carried over.
slamo wrote:
I think obviously we accept it as-is right now, but I think I might prefer the SRAM one, because it's faster and doesn't detract anything from the normal run? I can see why others might feel differently though, from a legitimacy standpoint. I also thought we were going in the direction of not superseding Standard branches even if content overlapped, so maybe both would be ok.
Fortranm wrote:
What if we limit the "SRAM-anchored movies would never compete against 'clean' movies under Standard" clause to the Fastest Completion types of categories only, or at least do not apply them to the Full Completion categories? While they are all categories under Standard, full completion is ultimately not exactly about "beating the game as fast as possible" in the most literal sense and is arguably less "sensitive" to certain differences that would have caused relatively bigger impacts to fastest completion runs in many cases. Maybe that doesn't sound like a good justification for this specific proposal, but the general idea is that it's probably reasonable to allow obsoletions between save-anchored and "clean" movies for non-fastest completion categories based on how different they actually are instead of having a blanket "ban" on all obsoletions between movies with different save-anchor statuses under all of Standard.
Jos (on Discord) wrote:
Having two branches for fighting games for starter characters and unlockable characters isn't the end of the world IMO, but it is kind of a strange split The cause of this argument right now is, as I see it, because TASVideos wants to draft one rule to apply to all games. And if that's something you want to do, I think the fact that fighting games get this branch split that isn't aligned with how the fighting game community acts is an acceptable compromise
The best solution is allowing them to co-exist as separate branches. 10/16 (62.5%)
feos wrote:
I don't want save-anchored movies to compete with power-on ones in Standard, because the former kinda give themselves a handicap which would somehow not count as a part of its completion time. I feel it's fair to instead have more branches. But in Moons, I think we can obsolete goals with and without save-anchor if they are too similar, and if there's consensus. I'd argue save-anchored would generally be more entertaining.
DrD2k9 wrote:
I don’t like any save-anchored run obsoleting a run based on a clean start.
DigitalDuck wrote:
This seems like the most reasonable way of handling things to me, if the unlockable characters aren't significantly different gameplay-wise to the base characters. I see more reason in not allowing unlockable characters to standard than I do in having them obsolete base characters. In any case, it's effectively just NG vs. NG+, and it seems wrong to me that a NG+ run would obsolete a NG run.
Tompa wrote:
I think the most clear and logical ruleset you can have for any game is to have the run from a fresh unaltered save file, regardless if this is the fastest category or not. It should never be completely obsolete by a run which take advantage from having a save file.
Chanoyu wrote:
Personally I don't like watching these fighting games, but I do think it's an interesting principle to see how fast one can beat a game out of the box from power on. https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Posts/528739 I really don't quite get what's so bad about having seperate publications for fresh starts and save starts in fighting games (and racing games, and other games where the game is still played from a 'new game' state - but in an unlocked (hard) mode).
OceanBagel wrote:
If a game has people working on SRAM-cleared TASes then they should be able to get those TASes published as such. Allowing both SRAM-cleared and SRAM-anchored movies as opposed to only one or the other gives TASers the freedom to work on what they actually want to work on without having to worry about their movie being disallowed on the site before they even make their first input. And I'm very much in favor of staying on that path of acceptance, rather than reverting back to more restrictive policies.
CoolHandMike wrote:
This sounds reasonable to me.
moozooh (on Discord) wrote:
i'm proposing there be two branches: one that starts with the roster available from power-on, and one that uses whatever the best character is after everything is unlocked (presumably what the fighting community, which you're an ambassador for, wants)
InputEvelution (Evelyn) (on Discord) wrote:
I don't play fighting games much, but I watch TASes of them. I personally am very interested in seeing what can be done just with characters who are unlocked from the start
dwangoAC (on Discord) wrote:
I, for one, am almost always in favor of being an inclusionist and don't see more branches as a problem unless they're way overboard; I'd want to see the reasoning for the branch explained well and any gotchas as it were but I'm in favor of accepting the nuances of other speedrunning communities and noting where things deviate from TASVideos norms (while also having a concession that they may not be considered standard runs on the site) TASVideos doesn't work like a traditional leaderboard, you're arguing that a "slower" run shouldn't exist but that "slower" run still has value to some viewers
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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Spikestuff wrote:
I can refer to Guilty Gear X: Advance Edition where Ky is obsoleted by Zato as they're both characters available form the start for an instance of a character that wasn't unlocked.
Since they are available from the start, a Standard movie starting from the game start requires the most optimal char to be used. Originally one char was considered the best, then later it was found that another char is better, so a movie with one obsoletes a movie with the other. Since SaveRAM is not involved, movies of that game will be unaffected by the (year-old) changes in SaveRAM rules. The slower char will remain obsoleted, unless people take a second look and feel that it's entertaining and different enough to co-exist in Alternative, with the "uses suboptimal char" tag. If that happens, particular char available from the start would be the only difference, so we would put char name into branch label to distinguish the 2 existing branches. It won't imply any policy regarding other games and their branches. Branch labels are only used to indicate what makes branches different for a particular given game. If we try to add other meanings to branch labels, it quickly becomes impossible to reliably handle. Now, you also asked "Let's pretend that Zato's the "savegame" character for this, which is why I'm saying for the sake of argument" in a non-public chat. If Zato was a savegame char, the whole point of this thread's existence is splitting savegame-anchored movies into their own goal sets and obsoletion chains, therefore it would be published as a separate Standard branch called "savegame", and the Ky branch would remain without a label. Because there would not be several branches coming just from char choice. Savegame would be the key difference, therefore it goes into branch label for all savegame goals. Finally, if we imagine an unlikely scenario that after that distinction someone makes entertaining movies for suboptimal chars, labeling becomes more complicated, tho it doesn't mean we won't be able to solve it. Most likely for Alternative, we would not care if it's a savegame char or not, so yes, in Alt a better savegame char can obsolete a base roster char. However it doesn't mean it'd be faster. It could be slower and more entertaining, and still obsolete, because in Alt we aim for entertainment. Now I said above that if a suboptimal char exists in Alt, both char branches would be labeled, because it's what we do according to branch label policies. But it really looks like "princess only" is a better example here, where an Alternative branch aims for a specific char, while other branches aim just for the most optimal char combo whatever it is.
  • For that reason, chars that are used for Standard goals (and can be changed in newer runs if they are quicker) should not go to branch labels, unless char choice results in what we consider a separate game mode altogether.
  • Chars that are used for entertainment in Alternative goals will go to branch labels if showcasing them was the sole goal.
  • If the Alt goal is different, and any char could be used within that goal, then that goal goes to the label but not the char.
  • Finally if different chars co-exist in Alt within the same goal, they go to branch labels to distinguish which is which.
This is all just branch labeling policy, obsoletion policies are unrelated and don't need to care how we label things. It's the other way around: we agree on obsoletion (or split) policies, and then adjust the labels to work with it. Making movie rules depend on labels would be a very bad practice that makes things worse.
Spikestuff wrote:
I can also refer to Digimon Rumble Arena where an unlocked character wasn't allowed, and instead a character that's available from the start would have been preferred instead.
That submission would be accepted under the current SaveRAM rules as a separate "savegame" branch.
Spikestuff wrote:
But we're in the new site era now where we have a new submission that's using an unlocked character in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance which should outright obsolete the Kenshi run and be the preferred run. But isn't for some reason.
[5818] GC Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance "Arcade Mode" by SJ in 11:01.87 would stay and keep its label, and #8879: KusogeMan's GC Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance "Arcade Mode, savegame" in 08:26.20 would be published separately as "savegame, Arcade mode".
Spikestuff wrote:
A character name as a branch implies we would accept and publish every character. Which isn't good on the site side, as Judges and Publishers will have to deal with a "mess" of fighting game TASes. But I already experimented with that idea with 5 separate characters in Tekken 3 and they're ineligible to be accepted due to Yoshimitsu (and that puddle can get muddier, but let's avoid that puddle) and of course Guilty Gear X as I referred to earlier.
If individual char branches are not good enough to go to Alternative, they just go to Playground. There, they will have char labels, because showcasing those chars was their sole goal. As I explained above, we need to update labeling policies to account for the new class system.
Spikestuff wrote:
In my opinion the character should obsolete the other regardless if they're an unlocked character or not and if they're an unlock then they should have the tag of well in this case `Second quest/Post game-completion`. We have tags, we should make the tags work at the very least, we still make new ones to this day.
Tags are fine, we use Starts from a saved state or SRAM and Uses a suboptimal character where applicable.
Spikestuff wrote:
This allows it to be simplified, and any other run from an unlocked roster or a standard one can instead go to Playground whilst the actual fastest can obsolete one another.
Adding extra clauses to movie rules is the opposite of simplification. Especially when those clauses go against the already existing agreement (always split SaveRAM in Standard unless all unlocked content fails to make the movie quicker). And especially against the current site direction of letting everyone have their favorite goal published (as long as we can afford it). If our wording of the current policies needs to be clearer, we can and should improve it.
Spikestuff wrote:
This also allows another type of branch for fighting games, where you have the fastest character, a playaround and then "all endings", at least for the fighting games that show off different endings.
A fighting game movie that goes through all chars doesn't sound like a very popular goal among players or viewers, so I think it would be incredibly rare. If replaying the game with all chars is the only form of full completion for a particular game, maybe it's fine for Standard. But that's a discussion we haven't had yet, and adding it to this one seems to only make it even more complex. Like look at all the posts I already made in this thread, and tell me how many people have read them all and understood them.
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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I did a little searching into the profiles and I noticed something very clear from the start. The only who are being affected by this rule in this voting were the specific people that voted against the ruling that was passed. Only me and Spike, i looked over all your TASing movies and got this result: Me and Spike are the only fighting games TASers for speed. The only people that voted against. Feos, Samsara, Coolhandmike do not TAS fighting games, but TASed beat'em'ups. Slamo, Fortran, DrD2k9, DigitalDuck, Tompa, Chanoyu, oceanbagel don't TAS any of these, they also do not TAS racing games either. Nobody in this voting TASes racing games, Mario Kart Double Dash and Wii fans, and the FZero X and GX fans would be affected as well. Of course nobody here TASes either games as well. So basically this is the equivalent of inviting 12 politically not interested people and 2 politically interested people to vote for laws that only affect those 2 interested people. I could give a more specific example with politically charged issues but I don't want to derail this. I just wanted to vent out how bad i feel about being a major contributor, along Spike obviously, and having my vote crushed by the uninterested party. player TAS fighter? TAS beatemup? vote kusoge yes yes obsolete spike yes yes obsolete samsara no yes no slamo no no no fortran no no no feos no yes no DrD2k9 no no no DigitalDuck no no Tompa no no no Chanoyu hasnt published anything oceanbagel no no no coolhandmike no yes no
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.
Spikestuff
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A conversation after this post went for 7 hours. After a sleep and everything to evaluate that convo, my position is still "No". I still dislike the separation for a "clean save" and an "unlock character" as much as I would still prefer obsoletion (at worst, branch by character, at better "all characters"). And I still dislike the current name given to that branch being "savegame" however, it is a stark improvement over "newgame+". In saying that. The site does need to move forward one way or another, so even though I will stay in the No camp, I will say "you can probably reach a decision one way and it may lead down another in the end". One last thing.
feos wrote:
That submission would be accepted under the current SaveRAM rules as a separate "savegame" branch.
Since the start of this entire discussion in Staff, I said one consistent thing about that submission. "It should be redone. I will hit cancel on it if I see it back on the bench".
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DrD2k9
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KusogeMan wrote:
I did a little searching into the profiles and I noticed something very clear from the start. The only who are being affected by this rule in this voting were the specific people that voted against the ruling that was passed. Only me and Spike, i looked over all your TASing movies and got this result: Me and Spike are the only fighting games TASers for speed. The only people that voted against. Feos, Samsara, Coolhandmike do not TAS fighting games, but TASed beat'em'ups. Slamo, Fortran, DrD2k9, DigitalDuck, Tompa, Chanoyu, oceanbagel don't TAS any of these, they also do not TAS racing games either. Nobody in this voting TASes racing games, Mario Kart Double Dash and Wii fans, and the FZero X and GX fans would be affected as well. Of course nobody here TASes either games as well. So basically this is the equivalent of inviting 12 politically not interested people and 2 politically interested people to vote for laws that only affect those 2 interested people. I could give a more specific example with politically charged issues but I don't want to derail this. I just wanted to vent out how bad i feel about being a major contributor, along Spike obviously, and having my vote crushed by the uninterested party. player TAS fighter? TAS beatemup? vote kusoge yes yes obsolete spike yes yes obsolete samsara no yes no slamo no no no fortran no no no feos no yes no DrD2k9 no no no DigitalDuck no no Tompa no no no Chanoyu hasnt published anything oceanbagel no no no coolhandmike no yes no
Just because you are the only two in this list of players to have published fighting game runs does not automatically mean that none of the other players will ever be interested in making one themselves in the future. Nor does it mean they are an “uninterested party.” The simple fact that they took time to respond to this thread shows, at least, a degree of concern for the issue and how it could potentially impact themselves or other TASers (besides you and Spike) in the future. Further, your list of players is either accidentally or intentionally deceiving. It appears you only considered publications for whether or not a player has interest in fighting/beatemup games. You have myself listed as a no on TASing beatemup games, but i have before. I have TASed and submitted a run of Double Dragon, but it was not published. You cannot know what other people may be interested in TASing in the future solely by looking at what they’ve had published already. As far as your vote “getting crushed”: when things are put up for a vote, there’s always the possibility that someone who is very passionate about their position/vote will not get their way due to the votes of others. The whole point of basing things on a vote, though, is to consider the views of all respondents not just those who are the most vocal/passionate about the subject being voted on. While you may currently feel that this vote has impacted you differently than others, that’s not true. The vote impacts the whole community (present and future) equally, as the decisions made based on the vote will determine site policies going forward. Even if a particular individual never chooses to TAS a fighting game, they are still subject to the policies and are thus equally impacted.
Spikestuff
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KusogeMan wrote:
I did a little searching into the profiles and I noticed something very clear from the start.
That's nice. I did some basic understanding and warned you ahead of time in DMs after shortly blocking you on Discord for a whole lot of shit besides you calling Staff illiterate and that you were making threats (which you still continue to do so). Let me repeat one thing I wrote to you on Discord. "Respect others or leave". You still haven't put in a lick of respect, and have always came in as extremely aggressive. "Your issue is that you're going hot headed so you're missing points people are making that are for or against yours." I don't believe that you have the best intentions for the Site, and I can refer to your apology you sent to me in private to show for it if you'd like.
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CoolHandMike
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Spikestuff wrote:
KusogeMan wrote:
I did a little searching into the profiles and I noticed something very clear from the start.
That's nice. I did some basic understanding and warned you ahead of time in DMs after shortly blocking you on Discord for a whole lot of shit besides you calling Staff illiterate and that you were making threats (which you still continue to do so). Let me repeat one thing I wrote to you on Discord. "Respect others or leave". You still haven't put in a lick of respect, and have always came in as extremely aggressive. "Your issue is that you're going hot headed so you're missing points people are making that are for or against yours." I don't believe that you have the best intentions for the Site, and I can refer to your apology you sent to me in private to show for it if you'd like.
He has some frustration and expressed a concern. Just address it calmly.
discord: CoolHandMike#0352
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I'm not being agressive about anything, I just expressed a feeling, I'm not writing any curse word, i'm not saying the people who do this or think that are evil, it's not an insult to believe someone is not interested or dislike opinions. I understand you don't want to discuss this anymore because you already voted. I also apologized twice to spike, which obviously she is not obliged to accept, but that has nothing to do with the subject so carry on (or not) if you guys think there anything else to contribute (or not). Honestly, I don't feel comfortable commenting anything nowadays on the site.
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.
Samsara
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KusogeMan wrote:
Samsara, Coolhandmike do not TAS fighting games
#5027: Samsara's N64 Fighters Destiny in 01:44.43 #8426: CoolHandMike's Arcade Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters "Rescue Roll!, 2 players" in 03:09.36 #8848: CoolHandMike's Arcade Metamoqester "2 players" in 03:31.54 ...That being said, I don't even understand why this is an argument in the first place. I could be wrong, but I feel like it's meant to be an accusation of the community having a bias against fighting games because most people don't TAS them, but I think it's actually proving the opposite, in that the outliers are pushing for something that only benefits fighting games despite the fact that the majority of the community doesn't TAS them. TASVideos is a general purpose site, and we're running it that way because for our purposes it's the neatest, most efficient, and easiest way to do it for the most people involved. It's easier for staff to manage, it's easier for the current community to support, and it's easier for brand new members to understand and learn how to contribute to. As far as I'm concerned, the less opportunities there are for people to misinterpret our current general purpose ruleset, the better, and allowing some sort of special clause for a certain genre only is going to be one of those things that gets misinterpreted as one of the general purpose rules we've been promoting for years now. We've already had misinterpretations of the rules lead to massive public incidents before, and I can easily see it happening again here. I've more or less been in charge of the rules for a few years now. When I rewrote them, my philosophy at the time was to remove as much extraneous information as possible. The old rules prior to the rewrite had subcategories and examples for all of these weird little edge cases that may or may not have actually existed on the site, and most of them were just unnecessary, confusing, and ultimately served to do nothing more than restrict content in advance. That's what the "SRAM obsoletion for fighting games only" proposal feels like to me. It feels unnecessary, in that I can't see any particular benefit to us implementing it. It feels confusing, in that I feel it will only lead to people assuming we'd allow it for all genres and not just fighting games. Lastly, it ultimately serves to do nothing more than restrict content in advance, because that's quite literally what the proposal is: It's telling people that they're not allowed to TAS fighting games in a certain way. If there's a super overpowered unlockable character that can end rounds seconds faster than any other, that has to be the character you use, no questions asked, deal with it. Let me put that a different way. This would literally be restricting the only thing we have universally allowed since the site's inception: Clean save file speedruns from power-on. At best, I think that wildly goes against the current principles of the site and the direction we're taking it in, both as staff and as a community. At worst, it sets a precedent so dangerous that the entire site could fall into disrepair if we fail to implement it properly, and even if we do implement it properly, there's a good chance that people will miss it or misinterpret it anyway. Even if everyone gets it and understands it and accepts it, who's to say that another discussion like this won't happen again in the future with a different genre of game? What if the RPG TASing community wants their baseline runs to all be New Game+? All they'd have to do is point to fighting games and we wouldn't have an argument against it, because we've already allowed it in that one case so it wouldn't be reasonable to tell anyone else who wants it for their communities to hit the road. After years of me refusing to let the rules get more complicated and opening up so many discussion threads for us to be able to allow more on the site, I can't in good conscience sign off on a rule like this that actively goes against everything I've fought for. It's a rules complication and a special case, like the myriad flaws I found in the old rules. It's content restriction, like what I've fought against through threads like the one we're posting in right now. It doesn't match the wishes of the majority of the community, and I promised TASVideos that no major changes would go through without community support. At the end of the day, the way TASVideos is right now just can't support this. There's always a possibility that we shift to a different system down the line where genre-specific rules or even game-specific rules make more sense for us, but I don't see that happening any time soon just from pure logistics. It'd be nice, I'd even support that kind of shift in the future, but we'd need a lot more support and direct help for it to be feasible.
I guess one last quick point: I haven't really been active in this thread due to some major personal issues taking the majority of my day-to-day energy, but I want to stress something important for me. The reason I said I was on the fence is because I think both sides are valid, here. Both sides make sense to me from their individual perspectives and both sides have their pros and cons. Unfortunately, that means no matter what we do, it can't be done perfectly clean, and I'll be the first to admit that and to say I'm not exactly thrilled about it. I don't want anything I've said here to come across as "No, your point sucks and it's wrong and I hate it and it's dumb", because that's not what it is at all. It's simply "I absolutely see your point and even think it's valid in a lot of ways, but you need to see it from the site's perspective and understand why it's not feasible for us right now". I completely respect the disagreements, both what they are and having the courage to step forward and address them in the first place. Keeping a balance between what the overall community wants to see and what the TASers want to make is difficult, because there are always going to be cases like this where those things may not align or might even be in direct opposition of each other. I talked about how not wanting to restrict content meant that I disagreed with the proposal further since it inherently restricts content, but if us disagreeing with the proposal causes the TASers to leave the site, causing their runs to not be submitted in the first place, doesn't that mean we're still technically restricting content? Given how often we've cut out entire communities based on decisions we've made or standards we follow (Super Mario 64 and Celeste come to mind immediately), the last thing I want is for that to happen again, so I guess the best question I can ask right now is this: Is there a breaking point? Is there something we are doing or have talked about doing that actually goes too far? Are we going to actively lose TASers and/or runs by sticking to separation? I can absolutely understand and accept disappointment and disagreement, but I refuse to cause explicit divides anymore.
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KusogeMan wrote:
Slamo, Fortran, DrD2k9, DigitalDuck, Tompa, Chanoyu, oceanbagel don't TAS any of these, they also do not TAS racing games either. Nobody in this voting TASes racing games,
Yet. It's worth noting that while I haven't submitted a TAS for a racing game, I have a couple that I haven't submitted because I'm not happy about how optimal they are. I've definitely speedran some, in fact I'm into double digits. So I don't think it's out of the question that I might want to TAS one or more of these in the future. It's not really relevant though, because my argument isn't "I don't like fighting games or racing games so we shouldn't allow runs of them", it's "I don't see why fighting games or racing games need special rules, we should allow the same set of runs we allow for all games". There's a difference between starting from zero, and starting from a saved game. TASVideos tends to prioritise the former. If the latter allows the game to be played faster, then that's great - we should accept it. But it shouldn't obsolete the run starting from scratch. I don't think DS Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia "Albus mode" by mtbRc in 18:03.21 should obsolete DS Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia by mtbRc in 34:38.32, even though the former completes the game much faster than the latter, because the former requires having played a significant portion of the game first in order to achieve. I don't think Linux Undertale "Neutral ending, newgame+" by LukeSaward in 36:04.20 should obsolete Linux Undertale "Neutral ending" by OceanBagel in 48:51.95, even though the former completes the game much faster than the latter, because the former requires having played a significant portion of the game first in order to achieve. As such, I don't think Wii Mortal Kombat: Armageddon "Arcade, Kreate-a-Fighter" by KusogeMan in 06:38.42 should be considered as already obsoleting Submission #9025: KusogeMan's Wii Mortal Kombat: Armageddon "Arcade" in 07:01.67, even though the former completes the game much faster than the latter, because the former requires having played a significant portion of the game first in order to achieve. The latter would be a separate branch, just like the two previous examples.
Edit by feos: URLs without https:// get parsed as relative links, fixed.
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KusogeMan wrote:
I did a little searching into the profiles and I noticed something very clear from the start. The only who are being affected by this rule in this voting were the specific people that voted against the ruling that was passed. [...] So basically this is the equivalent of inviting 12 politically not interested people and 2 politically interested people to vote for laws that only affect those 2 interested people.
It's called the community. There's no sane way to look at an open question for everyone and conclude that it "invites" specific types of people in prejudiced quantities. We invited the entire community. We invited everyone, to share their thoughts and feelings, to give us ideas and suggestions. Comparing people who were firmly against obsoleting the most legit category ever (starting from power-on) to "politically not interested" is invalid. It's the most legit category ever because it requires zero technical verification, and has zero room for speculation about optimality of unlockables and their legitimacy. With movies that start from a savegame or a savestate, you need to technically verify that they are reproducible, and then also verify that they unlock and use the most optimal things. And those things may also raise questions about whether they should be allowed, like what if you could unlock noclip in a platformer or an FPS? What if you could unlock a mode that removes all enemies? Would those things count as the most optimal route ever? There's no such concerns for power-on startup. And it's always been accepted for the entire history of the site. People supporting it are absolutely "politically interested".
KusogeMan wrote:
I could give a more specific example with politically charged issues but I don't want to derail this. I just wanted to vent out how bad i feel about being a major contributor, along Spike obviously, and having my vote crushed by the uninterested party.
Do you want your feelings to matter more than the rest of the community? We can not provide that. Best we can do is counting everyone's feelings equally. And in cases when feelings of some people contradict feelings of other people, what do you think the best solution is? My personal solution is reflected in my forum signature, and it's what I've been doing since 2018 when I became a senior judge. Or maybe even since 2014. For conflicting opinions, the best thing to do is figuring out reasons and priorities behind everyone's point of view, and accounting those priorities as best as we can, instead of sticking to hyper-focused extreme visions that miss the forest behind the trees. We, site staff, can not afford missing the forest behind the trees. We need to see the bigger picture at all times. Not only in space (various people posting in a certain thread during a year), but also in time (what should we expect to happen as a result of our decisions, in the next several years?) Now you may know that the universe operates by the laws of logic. People may not know exactly what's happening in nature through facts, but facts we can observe can only compose a theory that is able to reliably predict things if it's build using logic. Your smartphone keeps working because processes inside it rely on laws of physics and their logic. Similarly, we won't be able to build a reliable system for people to operate in unless we rely on facts (opinions/feelings/experiences) and logic. Logic guarantees it will keep working given the same reality, and if reality changes we should be ready to adjust the rules. And those adjustments still have to be logical, because only then people will be able to understand them, and to predict results of their actions. This is what makes a policy legitimate - when people who want to challenge the policy conclude in the end that it makes sense. We do this among staff all the time, and we invite the community to chime in all the time.
KusogeMan wrote:
I understand you don't want to discuss this anymore because you already voted. Honestly, I don't feel comfortable commenting anything nowadays on the site.
I presented a ton of logical arguments in this thread in all my previous posts. If you're interested in helping the community move forward, discuss them using logic and facts, and be open to other people's logic and facts. If you don't use logic and objective verifiable facts, yet you still want your feelings to matter more than feelings of others, you're being disruptive.
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.
Memory
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Hi I've tased a racing game. To be honest I'd love to see us be able to include slower characters or cars/ships in some fashion at some point if we can figure out a good design for it (and had like a million more judges). I know the F-Zero GX speedrunners for example have a spreadsheet of all the fastest times for each noncustom machines with the goal of beating the staff ghosts on as many tracks with them as possible. So honestly, I don't see the point in restricting something I'd ideally broaden to begin with. If nobody takes from power on seriously, nobody is likely to TAS it in the first place. Therefore, the only scenario where it'd come up is if an sram character was discovered to be faster after the fact.
[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
Samsara
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Posts: 2822
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We're going to be moving forward with the separation policy that the majority of the community voted for, but to everyone who voted against it or might still be on the fence, I'd just like to pose these questions again before we do so:
Samsara wrote:
Is there a breaking point? Is there something we are doing or have talked about doing that actually goes too far? Are we going to actively lose TASers and/or runs by sticking to separation?
I'll give it a few days before we go ahead and make it official, assuming nothing drastic comes up during that time.
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 Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Spikestuff
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Samsara wrote:
Given how often we've cut out entire communities based on decisions we've made or standards we follow (Super Mario 64 and Celeste come to mind immediately), the last thing I want is for that to happen again, so I guess the best question I can ask right now is this: Is there a breaking point? Is there something we are doing or have talked about doing that actually goes too far? Are we going to actively lose TASers and/or runs by sticking to separation? I can absolutely understand and accept disappointment and disagreement, but I refuse to cause explicit divides anymore.
I'm using the full quote because you explicitly mention two communities as a worry to contrast to for fighting games. The biggest detractor doesn't really matter that much when you consider the fact that if someone wants to showcase characters they would make a playaround of the title and do whatever they can to screw about. In a single character showcase. You either go for the fastest, or you showcase an "all characters" exhibition with each individuals speed and have that as an Alternative,,. or we lead into a discussion about a puddle relatively soon. In the way of the site's proposal, you showcase the fastest available unlock, and the fastest character after a game completion as long as their faster than the available. In the backhalf to your question I believe it falls back to what I said in my closing comments (I say expanding my other point which was originally in brackets):
Spikestuff wrote:
I will say "you can probably reach a decision one way and it may lead down another in the end".
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
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Samsara wrote:
We're going to be moving forward with the separation policy that the majority of the community voted for, but to everyone who voted against it or might still be on the fence, I'd just like to pose these questions again before we do so:
Samsara wrote:
Is there a breaking point? Is there something we are doing or have talked about doing that actually goes too far? Are we going to actively lose TASers and/or runs by sticking to separation?
I'll give it a few days before we go ahead and make it official, assuming nothing drastic comes up during that time.
My concern is labeling what is not the fastest version of a run as the fastest version of a run, so i'll only comment the specific case if I see something that is confusing in the labeling. Besides that, I tried all i could and let's move on with this change as you guys wish. I wish you all a great week and let's keep TASing all over the place.
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.
Samsara
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KusogeMan wrote:
My concern is labeling what is not the fastest version of a run as the fastest version of a run, so i'll only comment the specific case if I see something that is confusing in the labeling.
We went ahead and just cleared the Fastest Completion flag from every movie because of this comment - With everything we've been doing to increase the scope of what's accepted, it was getting harder and harder to apply the flag consistently and accurately, especially in cases like these where we can have two entirely separate and equally valid fastest completion runs. Apart from that, if there's any confusion going forward, let us know and we'll fix it. It's been more than a few days without anything drastic happening, so I'm going to go ahead and push the separation policy through. To recap: All fighting game runs that begin from SRAM to use unlockable characters are to be published separately from fresh file runs that use only base characters. This is to ensure consistency with our universal policy of never having SRAM-anchored movies compete with fresh file movies. If a fresh file character is fastest completion, there will not be a separate published branch for a slower unlockable character. In the future, once we have more resources and willing volunteers, we may move to allowing any character to have a published run, but for now we can't afford the potential onslaught of allowing dozens of publications for a single game.
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 Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.