Stance on Argick's request

For starters playing as Trip in Main Story is inherently NG+ because of the nature of unlocking her, we don't have NG+ put on the category names for her subcategories because it feels redundant to do so. Everyone else has NG+ added onto the name of their respective All [Character] Acts categories because they need that distinction. I don't know where this assumption that NG+ is by default short for "NG+ Any%/Beat the Game" comes from, because I've never heard anyone make that assumption until we had a huge discussion about it a month or so ago, and I've been in the speedrunning community for over a decade. We don't have a NG+ option to select in game of course but regardless of that when I see a "New Game +" option on a board I don't assume the game requires them to go in the order the game requires you to. Hell, for the rules I was never planning on even requiring people to go in world order (even though it's almost definitely faster to do so.)

Honestly something I want to know is if multiple characters NG+ BTG would actually have you only play as multiple characters aside from in the Amy Act. Like if there were even a few stages where it'd be faster to switch in glitchless at least I'd be a lot more open to that specific idea if someone could prove that to me. I do not like the idea of having both NG+ options up for single character runs because everything except 1 level would be exactly the same, one of the runs is going to be replaced and overtaken anyways and they both will look weirdly similar to each other.

Especially if assuming for this Multiple Characters NG+ BTG (I'm shortening this to MC NG+ BTG from now on sorry) category ends up being another category where only one character ends up being faster, you'll now have 2 boards that have exactly the same runs. We already have a situation where that's happening right now. Tails is almost definitely the fastest in every stage in BTG, so right now both the MC NG BTG category and Tails NG BTG categories are exactly the same. Sukimos time is the fastest new game run on the boards currently just shy of sub 40 and it isn't even submitted under the multiple characters category, it's under Tails BTG, but it's also the fastest run in MC NG BTG. If we apply this logic to any new game plus category, let's say for example Amy somehow ends up being the fastest in every stage glitchless, glitched, whatever. Not only would the MC NG+ BTG category be the same as an Amy NG+ BTG category, it would be the exact same as an Amy All Character Acts BTG run too, so that would be 3 categories on the board that are exactly the same.

We honestly were just talking about whether we should even keep the multiple characters category or just axe it altogether because of how similar categories seem to look to one another, but there's barely enough activity to justify making any hard decisions at present. 2 months in and 12 fullgame runs have been submitted and accepted from only 6-7 people, and that's not counting the 2 runs we had to reject bc of some underaged dude proclaiming they were 11 years old at the start of one of their submission. That also doesn't count a small handful of runs from you, me, and 2-3 others that haven't submitted their runs for one reason or another, but even so that feels startlingly low compared to how much activity a lot of other new sonic games have gotten, and also compared to most new games of the same level of popularity.

For reference I used the start and end date filters on some boards to see how many different runners I could find that did runs 2 months after each respective game came out. Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog already had 26 players by the end of June, Sonic Frontiers Any% had 47 runners listed, and Sonic Mania had 19 people listed on the boards for Sonic & Tails Bad Ending category alone. Sonic Forces, a game that Superstars seems to be on pace on outselling and got a lot more negative attention then Superstars ever did, had 27 runners listed under the Any% No Rental category. Even Sonic Dream Team seems to be on pace to beating or at least matching Superstar's 2 month runner count at 4 fullgame runners 2 weeks in, and that game is on a pretty inaccessible platform for a lot of people. That's one of the biggest reasons I've been hesitant to add/remove/change any more categories, and have been avoiding discussing this at all honestly. I understand you want to have the option on the leaderboard for all mandatory acts for NG+ but my concern right now with even adding it as a courtesy is that there's a good change it'll be removed a few months from now, and we'll just end back up at square one having the sameish circular argument.

And I've made my stance clear on the matter multiple times but to reiterate in case: I genuinely think in the long run single character ng+ runs where the Lagoon City Amy Act is required where it doesn't belong would make the run look and feel more arbitrary for no other reason than to keep it in line with other categories. NG+ shouldn't be forced to adhere to a btg ruleset just for the sake of keeping categories unified, in line, or consistent with one another. However you want to word it. You're excluding individual character levels that give the character the chance to shine, but even regardless of that my intention with ATT and NG+ All [x character] Acts in the first place was to actually make sure characters were all separated as best as possible, because everyone I saw thought it was really weird or annoying that the game arbitrarily required this one Amy Act especially since none of the others are required. This way at least we could have some of the categories a lot simpler and clearly divided like every other classic sonic to date.

Do people propose that All Time Trials (ATT) should do the Amy Act in every character's ATT run too? I don't see anyone making that argument. I understand that the reason why people aren't making that demand is in ATT you're just going down a list without having to unlock anything, but in NG+ categories you aren't forced to go in a certain order because of programmed game restrictions either. Just like in ATT you're more or less selecting games from a list that you can scroll left and right on, only difference is you have the option to immediately move to the next stage/act without exiting to the menu in most cases if you so choose.

To me trying to force Amy Act into every character's NG+ category feels like an incredibly shortsighted decisions that will cause problems in the long run. If not in this game it will cause issues in future games if SEGA pulls something like this ever again. I can already see the idea of forcing Amy Act into every NG+ category here be used as a justification to force an even less logical act or stage into a category for a future game under the logic of “Well they did it in Sonic Superstars why not do it here?” And I say that as some who has seen past shortsighted decisions be used for new game rulesets, regardless of how illogical it is. There have been at least 2 communities I've been in that have tried to use Super Mario 64's various leaderboard decisions as the reason a new game should adopt a similar standard, even though a large chunk of people who were around back then agree that the decisions were very short sighted, were not applied the same way by most other games that were ran around when the boards were established, and would not go the same way if they were established today.


tldr: submit the run under Main Story All Trip Acts and accept the timeloss from doing the Amy Act if or when anyone else comes down later down the line, we feel there's barely enough activity in full game runs as it is to make any hard decisions of what to add/remove right now