The State of UYA NG+

Hello friends, it's me, your dear pal Xem. Today, I want to discuss the recent file corruption development for NG+, and why I believe it has no place taking the name of NG+ over vanilla NG+ as it stands now.

Before I go into details, let me clarify that I *agree* that this category has potential on the main leaderboard. As of this exact moment, I think it could be moved to a bonafide category, but I'm also of the opinion it could have a place on the misc section of the main leaderboard as well, which would still be a slight step up from being relegated to CatExt. That being said, onto the meat of the matter. This is why the current iteration of NG+ file corruption does not deserve to become the standard for NG+:

1. First and foremost, corruption IS NOT the same as glitches or manipulation. Glitches and manipulation are abusing in-game mechanics and holes in the game design to do what we want to do. HOWEVER, corruption is completely changing the way the game functions through rewriting the code of the game itself. The argument that this category is "just like IMG and EGS" is completely invalid purely by definition. We have absolutely no precedent in this community for dealing with corruption on the main leaderboard, and therefore we can't just point to the other Ratchet games and say "well, this worked for this situation, so clearly it works for this, too." This is a brand new situation for us, and it will absolutely, 100% have consequences for all instances of corruption henceforth. This may seem like a slippery slope fallacy, but there has already been a rac2 corruption found that makes xp values completely broken. It's not far-fetched to say that every PS3 Ratchet game could theoretically have a form of corruption found in the next few years should people look hard enough. While there is no examples in the Ratchet community for corruption, there is precedence of corruption in other communities, so I will draw some information from them for future points.

2. Believe it or not, my issue with Early Vid Comic 5 has nothing to do with the actual bolt manipulation strategy itself. Rather, my issue is that it's really horrible for new players to understand and access, since things don't behave the way they do in other categories. Let me expound a bit. In Ratchet 1, we have Drek skip, or deplanetizer glitch, whatever you want to call it. It's a very strange manipulation, but the way it works is consistent with gameplay across all areas. It works in any% under the same exact circumstances, which is why it's also banned in any%. You can't manipulate files beforehand in any% within this community. Qwarp has been proven to work in any% as well given consistent circumstances: you need to die entering the Veldin drop ship, and you need to skip to the end of Veldin without triggering the checkpoint of the gate lowering. Isaki proved this using debug codes, I believe. However, EVC5 does not contain consistent circumstantial gameplay. You cannot do the things you do in EVC5 in any other category because it breaks all bounds of how the game is meant to be played. Skipping items and sequence breaking is consistent, and so is mapping items to bolt counters, in theory. However, corrupting the game to the point that weapons EXCLUSIVE TO RATCHET 2 are now available in UYA is not something achievable in the bounds of any other category, and therefore does not provide consistent circumstances. Being able to buy 20 Tesla barriers to manipulate buying the magnet boots from a vendor on Command Center, while cool as shit, does not provide consistent circumstances. They are consistent in a vacuum, and that’s it. Furthermore, The game is now much less approachable from a new person's view. If they look up NG+ now they're gonna find see WAY less cool movement and a gutted run with 6 mins of it being Marcadia, as opposed to the run now where Marcadia is still a dull section to watch, but at least it's not *almost half the entire gameplay in the category.*

2a. I also want to expand on the Drek skip any% ban a bit. We don't have to allow something just because it's there, which is why we banned a trick that requires manipulation from another file. The argument that "it should be allowed because it's beat the game ng+" doesn't necessarily mean anything.We allow setups and manipulation from different files in NG+. However, we have, once again, never had to deal with corruption in these games before. We don't *have* to do anything just because we handled something loosely related to it a certain way. While the argument that fast > fun is valid, this decision isn't just about the fun of this category, but all future categories that involve corruption.

3. People inherently shy away from categories with weird circumstances in favor of more substantial, intuitive categories. Example - Super Mario World 11 Exit: https://www.speedrun.com/smw#11_Exit vs Super Mario World 0 Exit (Arbitrary Code Execution): https://www.speedrun.com/smw#0_Exit . There are barely any runners of 0 Exit in comparison to 11 Exit, and it’s because arbitrary code execution removes much of what makes the category substantial. Granted, EVC5 is significantly less difficult to pull off than SMW ACE, but the point still stands that, despite the game being much faster, people would rather have a more complete category be representative of THE main game category. Another famous example of corruption in a popular game is Pokemon Red/Blue, which can be completed in ~0:00 game time. They renamed this corrupted category to "any%", and hilariously, it's not even featured on the Red/Blue leaderboard on srcom (source: https://www.speedrun.com/pkmnredblue/). I dug a bit deeper and found it on the category extensions leaderboard. There are a grand total of 5 runners for red/blue, and 2 for yellow. This category is given little to no credence in the Pokemon community (source: https://www.speedrun.com/pkmnrbyext). Again, this is not as extreme as ACE, I understand that. However, this is in the exact same vein as ACE. We are rewriting the code of the game using in-game mechanics, which is exactly what ACE does. It would make more sense to follow the examples of previous communities by categorizing this appropriately as an ACE-esque category.

And to counter the obvious “well, look at rac2 ng+” argument, I have a couple talking points. For one, Deadlockedj NG+ and no EGS provides a huge disparity of interest (8 runners vs 24 runners). Furthermore, rac2  ng+ is capable of being played within roughly a couple of minutes of world record on each console, and actually utilizes version differences in creative ways. Once again, EVC5 is only possible on PS3.

4. Making EVC5 into NG+ inherently goes against everything we set out to accomplish in the vote to separate the BCPS3 leaderboard from the main leaderboard. We wanted to give PS3 and PS2 runners semi-equal footing in NG+, and taking the name NG+ away from vanilla NG+ and giving it to a PS3 exclusive category is hypocritical to say the least. People have said we have done this in the past with no IMG and no EGS, but precedence within UYA (the bcps3 vote) should always take priority of precedence elsewhere. If we make EVC5 the new NG+, we have completely invalidated every single thing we set out to accomplish by splitting BCPS3 from the rest of the other systems. PS3 is now the only system NG+ can be run on, which is a gigantic middle finger to legislation we already made last year to give validity to runners on PS2. It's not just about going fast; inclusivity in a community really does matter.

5. In all instances of new skips creating a new definition of ng+ (rac2 and deadlocked), there is a very simple element of “you can do this, too!” IMG literally takes 8 inputs to accomplish on ntsc ps2 as long as you have the shortcut unlocked. EGS is simple to recreate on any PS3, as well. However, corruption is not as simple to recreate. There are more steps, more stipulations, and more things that can go wrong, especially because this category is still relatively unexplored. The counterpoint is “well, just re-sign a ps3 file from resources”, but I believe a large draw in main categories should be user agency and accessibility. Whether or not it makes sense to us, some runners like having the ability to be in complete control over their file making process. Right now, it’s not *extremely* complicated to make a file EVC5 file. However, as the category becomes more and more discovered, what happens when it’s optimal to have a file on challenge mode 140, for example? It removes all sense of agency, as those who stubbornly want to make their own files would immediately be dissuaded by having to beat the game over and over and over for a 15 minute reward. Again, this is fine for an off-shoot category, but should not be representative of *the most widely established UYA category*. Furthermore, it’s already hard enough to get people to run these games. Even nowadays, with file re-signing being as simple as it is, people need less reasons to be hesitant of a category, not more. Giving them a main category that says “oh by the way, here’s all these things you have to do to be able to do this run in the first place, and also avoid all this or else you’ll crash the game” is not going to convince them further.

I get it. People love memeing about me obsessing over this category, and have poked fun at me for over 4 years for whatever ng+ related thing they could. People may even make fun of me in DMs for writing this pastebin at all. I don’t know, I don’t care. I’m not writing this because I want to protect some world record streak, or because I don’t want the game to change. My legacy with vanilla ng+ is still in tact, and it's not a stretch to say that I could probably get WR in this category right now if I wanted to. Furthermore, I really do love that people took the time to find this, and I eventually want to run it myself. So, please understand that this has very little to do with my own personal attachment to this game. My biggest issue with EVC5 is that I believe it carries many negative consequences to the community that people are not choosing to consider. Primarily, I want to look out for all future runners of Ratchet games by keeping the games about the gameplay, and not overcentralizing main leaderboard categories around how efficiently you can rewrite code.

At the absolute bare minimum, there needs to be a referendum about this. I cannot repeat this enough: corruption is NOT manipulation. We have precedence of manipulation creating new categories, but this is the FIRST instance of corruption. This decision bears more weight than many people realize. There is a real possibility that corruption will be found in most or every single Ratchet game, and we may very well see ng+ become a corruption-based category in the majority of leaderboards should we vote to allow it in this game. Once again, I believe that corruption categories can have a place on the leaderboard, but the integrity of ng+ should be maintained for the sake of gameplay, and not thrown away in favor of code execution.

Thank you for your time.

-Xem