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Mario Kart >> Mario Kart Wii >> Is it finally time for new standards?
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Message started by LHB on 01/17/21 at 08:23:57

Title: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by LHB on 01/17/21 at 08:23:57

With the RR glitch finally being pulled off I'd like to once again bring up the possibility of redoing the standards, not only to accommodate all of the new SC categories that have been added, but to take into consideration the new strats that have been found that make almost every current God far easier than they should be.

There are 17 courses currently where the 3lap WR is more than two seconds lower than the combined God time: MG TF MC CM DKS MT GV DDR RR rPB rGV2 rSL rWS rDH rDKJP rDKM and rBC. More than half the courses in the game have been blown wide open by either new SCs (MC, CM, MT, ect.), or by new strats that save massive amounts of time (MG, DKS, GV).

Almost all of the Gods in fact have been made easier by the discovery of new strats since they were created, with some only requiring a top 25, or even top 50 level time to attain. Now, the strength of how strong a God time should be has been something up for debate over the years, but my opinion is that they should be about as close to perfection as you can get, even on courses with insanely difficult strats at the top level (which for MKW is a lot of courses). I can remember reading a post by an old member here explaining the God standards were originally created for people like Justin: site champions who had nothing else to accomplish in the game after climbing the AF ladder. Or in a game like this, with so many track specialists, that it should be essentially what the most insanely good run they could possibly hope to be on their respective track is. The God run, essentially.

Since the creation of the standards, advances in emulation and TAS have been a goldmine for discovering new strats, as well as expanding our knowledge of the game in general. We can much more accurately predict now what a perfect or near perfect run could be on each course for a human, taking into consideration all of the strats currently known/used, as well as strats found in TASes that could potentially be used in future RTA runs.

Note that I am NOT suggesting that the standards be redone every time a new SC or strat is found on a single course, which I'm sure would eventually happen. That would defeat the purpose of standards entirely. However I think the opposite is true as well: the more courses that get their standards obsoleted, the more the standards lose relevancy overall (and let's be honest, they haven't been relevant for a while now). The 10+(?) years the current standards have existed has been plenty of time to allow the game to develop to the point where an update is needed.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by Arvo57 on 01/17/21 at 08:58:17

I think the old standards should be kept integrated with the PP for history, but it would be awesome to see a new, modern standard sheet decided by the community

I think the best way to do it would be to get the top players on every track together to try to decide what the standards for that track should be.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by hahaae on 01/17/21 at 09:51:40

Ye, but within reason, imo. Mind you, this game is near what, 13 years old at this point, so realistically all of the gods should pretty much have been hit by now. Some are within reason as they are (not many), for example setting the LC god time to something like 1:08.800 would kinda defeat the purpose of standards. Ideally, all god times are essentially equally-difficult to attain, setting, as the name implies, a "standard" of play that need be realized to achieve them. As long as that's kept the priority, and not just upping god times to whatever our wildest fancies are, then yes, they are long overdue for a revamp.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by LHB on 01/17/21 at 10:58:31

6E7D79603A380F0 wrote:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding here, but I don't see why we should keep the old standards on the PP if the community goes through the trouble of creating new ones tbh. The PP already feels like an ancient relic to a lot of players in the community, and having a modern set of standards while the current ones on the PP stay the same will only do even more to obsolete the site. I'd be fine with archiving the current standards maybe on a spreadsheet or something, but the PP should stay updated imo.

7E7E7E160 wrote:

Good point on making the standards all equally difficult to attain roughly. I think it's better we have Gods that are TOO hard than too easy though, imo. If I had to choose, I'd use Cole's LC and Luke's rMC3 as references for what a "God" standard would be; two of the strongest WRs in the game and essentially the human limits for those tracks with current strats. Now I'm NOT saying that a track like DKS or rDKM should require as much pixel perfect optimization throughout the entire track as rMC3 or LC. Setting the DKS God to 1:44.000/.100 would be a mistake, even though the best splits give it, since it requires as good of a run as Cole's LC/Luke's rMC3 over a track that's way more difficult and inconsistent than those two tracks.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by Jack Gluesing on 01/17/21 at 11:37:25

The standards definitely need to be updated. Some of the god times are just so far off from what they should be. Like, a 23.8 on MMM flap is the same standard as a 1:22.45 on rSGB????? In my opinion this is one of the biggest differences in skill level between God times. I agree that standards should be the same difficulty across all categories. Also of course I think we gotta set actual standards for glitch tracks (like CM, MC, MT to name a few). But I'm not sure how I feel about standards for tracks with absolutely crazy strats/glitches. The glitches on the tracks I named earlier are some of the easiest in the game. Setting accurate standards for those tracks wouldnt be too challenging. But what about for example RR glitch? I think it'd be weird to have standards on that category that require you to do the glitch to get even a legend time while the glitch is so incredibly difficult. Idk I'd like to hear other people's thoughts about this.

Edit: maybe rr glitch isn't the best example of what I was trying to say. But after thinking about it more I feel like it would be best to set the standards so that only the very top standards (like God and myth) require you to do a glitch like this because of just how difficult it is. Same thing for rBC and rWS. Anyways, a better example would be rSGB tas glitch. This strat sets Justin and i so far ahead of the competition, so would it be good to set standards with the tas strat in mind? If you set standards while accounting for hard strategies that only a handful of people have accomplished, then only those few people will have good standards. I don't know if that's okay. Im having a hard time expressing my thoughts in words, but I hope you understand.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by Vincent Nguyen on 01/17/21 at 12:54:08

Aren’t there going to be new standards on MKRecords? If so, I see no harm in keeping the standards as is on the PP and making new standards on the new site, despite the horrendous inconsistencies in the standards here on the PP.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by Bub on 01/17/21 at 13:32:27

No because I want GOD times

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by PaulM78 on 01/17/21 at 17:28:30

I am personally happy to see discussion about newer standards. Some of the standards on tracks are definitely way too strong/weak for modern day racing.

While I am for making the god standard difficult to achieve, I believe that with how developed this game is through very intense competition especially over the last couple years, I think most standards should have been achieved by multiple players at least, or have the potential to. I understand that player skill is only going to improve over time, but I think making the god standard a time that only 1 player has achieved in 13 years of development and grinding is just too strong. To compare with tracks that have been discussed, I think that a 1:09.000 LC and a 1:18.000 rMC3 would be pretty reasonable god times. They are still very difficult to achieve even for some of the best players this game currently has to offer, but within the realm of reason for most to get after a pretty considerable grind.

With many players (including Luke and Cole) grinding for weeks, even months just to shave every last bit of time from records, I think setting a god standard at current world record times is just way too strong. I would not be surprised if by nearly 2030 there is not 1 player that beats every current no glitch record, let alone multiple. Even for some of the best this game has to offer, achieving a 1:17.999 rMC3 is no pushover task, and would take most weeks to achieve even from a good base. To get an overall rank of god, this grind would have to be repeated 31 more times (not even including flaps) and in my opinion that is more than justified to get the status of a god player.

I may be in the minority in this, having discussions about this topic several times over the past couple years has shown me that many people think a god time should be a seriously significant achievement to get (near or at current world record level), but I could be wrong.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by LHB on 01/17/21 at 19:12:10

7964484A414845481E11290 wrote:

The thing to remember is that we're designing standards not for today, but for 5, 10, even 20 years down the road, and one thing I've learned is to NEVER underestimate the ability of human improvement. A lot of people thought MJ's times in MK64 were unbeatable. I myself thought Fox's reign would last forever back when I understood less about improvement in general. While most of the current WRs are getting relatively close to their max now, you'll start seeing more and more times approaching the current WR as current players improve and new players take up the game. And yeah, a God overall SHOULD be hard to achieve. There are currently ZERO God overalls for PAL SMK and approximately ONE for NTSC, a game that's been out for nearly 30 years. Don't see why it couldn't be acceptable here, and unlike SMK I don't think you even need 0.000 ARR to be considered God overall.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by Kjeld on 01/18/21 at 07:25:24

Perhaps we could follow in MKDDs footsteps and add God+ categories. After things like a-tech and r-tech were implemented and perfected, God times became pretty easy to obtain. This way people can strive further while not changing the standards from back in the day.

Glitch times should definitely be updated though. Making a glitch should not result in an automatic god time. I myself have 8 god times, while deserving none. As someone who loves glitches, I'd love there to be a standard for them to be created at least.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by hahaae on 01/18/21 at 09:29:43

^lol, God+ is one of the most hideous messes among the standards, though. There's nothing wrong with revamping them (something that MKSC has done, and SMK is in the works of doing). However, you have to keep in mind that standards are meant to motivate people of all levels of play. Therein lies the problem with setting the standards to the level of play as, say, LC WR or MC3 WR. Ideally, God standards should be attainable (albeit not necessarily easily) for anyone within a certain skill level of play, say, roughly top10-20. At this point in the game's life span, basically every god should be hit, barring maybe something that's underplayed, such as MMM flap (even then, this god time is substantially harder than most of the others; you have to remember that when these were made, these times were complete shots in the dark, as opposed to all of the knowledge that we have readily available regarding the skill level of times today), or perhaps some of the newer SC's. If you set God times to impossibly hard levels, it defeats the entire purpose of standards (motivation).

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by LHB on 01/18/21 at 12:28:58

God+ is definitely a no from me. Makes no sense why we'd do that and not just revamp the standards entirely.

And honestly? It may not have come off from my previous posts, but I definitely understand the argument for not having God standards as hard as I had previously described. Ultimately how difficult each standard should be is subjective. All that matters to me is that the difficulty is roughly consistent throughout each category.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by Kjeld on 01/18/21 at 14:54:55

Yeah I'd honestly like to revamp everything too to make it more accurate with current knowledge. I meant it more in the sense that it's a possibility if the community decided that it doesn't want to alter the standards.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by blahpy on 01/21/21 at 17:50:27

2536322B7173440 wrote:

The CTR site has both "old standards" and "new standards" implemented so as not to throw away people's past accomplishments / history. I think this would work really well for the players' page too :)

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by James on 01/22/21 at 10:12:32

If new standards were implemented I think the God standards should be around the current top 3-5 for a track on no shortcut. For example either a 1:08.9 or 1:09.0 for LC, 1:15.6 or .7 for MMM, 1:40.9 for MG, 1:49.3 or .4 for TF, 1:17.9 or 1:18.0 for rMC3, 52.8 for rGV2.

I’m pretty neutral on whether new standards should be implemented here tho.

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by Silver on 01/24/21 at 23:53:26

yeah

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by Bub on 02/01/21 at 15:24:40

Idea: God times change based off pf the top 10 on each track on the PP. Keep the rest of the standards the same but make god times harder and harder to get

Title: Re: Is it finally time for new standards?
Post by ArthurOww on 04/28/21 at 02:20:54

I'm very late to this, but here's my opinion:

The game has evolved since the last standards were created. It would not be fair for older times to be ranked with newer standards based on newer strategies that weren't known back then. So I completely agree with Arvo there, we have to keep, in some sort or another, the old standards. But, we still have to create new ones as most of them are not accurate to the modern state of the competition (I have a King D standard on both rSGB and rMR but I'm 252th and 363rd respectively, what). I don't think there's a perfect way to work around that, and everything we'll try will have its flaws: a separation of the standards would mean no competition with older players, making them isolated from the rest of the PP, a mix between the 2 sets of standards would be counter-intuitive as they'll reflect neither of the old and modern times trying to reflect both, and the idea that first came to my mind, that is to have standards based on the strategies used in a run regardless of the era it was driven in, would be both very hard to do (requiering a view of each run, yeah impossible unless 20 people came to work on the PP today) and a little unfair as we still have knowledge that older players did not have at the time. So regardless of what we choose to do, there will always be something wrong. Our work at designing how standards should be handeled nowadays will then be to limit thoses flaws as much as possible, for them to be fewer than those in our current set of standards. Working with 2 eras of the game is very difficult, but it has to be done.

In my opinion, newer times should not be classed based on older standards. They are not older times, and as such that gives them an unfair advantage over those. The same goes for older times with newer standards. The only way I see then is to entierely re-create a set of standards, based on what we know and what we've done. We will replace the old standards with them. But the harder part is, how are we gonna make them relevant for older times.

A solution to that would, eventually, be to boost times from like 2008 to 2013 (these are arbitrary dates, I really don't know when we got all the knowledge we have today) by a said amount of standards (for example, let's say the new Myth D standard for rSGB is a 1:22.55x, a 1:22.540 driven in 2010 that would technically be in Myth D, would be in Myth C). Therefore, the older time is still recognized for its strength, but with the newer standards, making it viable to compete against them. As good as this sounds, there's still some problems, such as the simple fact that our modern knowledge does not give us the same advantage on all tracks, and some older times would be considered stronger than others, although in the same standard and roughly the same period (a 2:05.5xx (Myth D) on rDS with older strategies is, in my opinion, less strong than a 1:43.7xx (also Myth D) on MH using Spear auto). It's a pretty complex question that should not be answered in 5 minutes, we must take the time to analyse all possibilities and take the best one. And no, keeping the standards is not an option. They are 8 years old (go to the standards page, at the bottom right it says "file modified 2013 03 22 by Alex Penev"). We've had them for almost ²/₃ of the game's life, it's time to change.

On how should we build the new set of standards, I believe, as others said, that at this point every God standard should've been reached, by several people, likely the top 5 to 10 on a track. For instance, DDR God (1:49.3xx) has been achieved by 60 people here, so if I had to redesign the standards myself I would put God at either 1:48.4xx (18th), 1:48.1xx (10th), or 1:47 (6th). Then we go along, for example if I chose a 1:48.1xx as God here I'd go with a 1:48.8xx as Myth A (33rd), 1:49.5xx as Myth B (64th) and so on. These choices would be directed by the player's experiences, and for instance if many think that a 1:48.8xx is still doable but a 1:48.7xx is much harder, we'll go with that last one as a Myth A standard. And this for all 64 categories, + the No-Glitch/No-Shortcut ones.

As an add-on edit, I see some people here talking about how the god standard was made for people who "had nothing else to accomplish in the game after climbing the AF ladder", a sort of perfect run, that only track specialists such as Cole on LC, Demon on MT or Blake on DKS should be able to get, being miles away from anyone in the world on their specific track. I see that and I understand that. Although the God standard has changed meaning and no longer represents that idea, I think we could (eventually) add this to the newer standards, as the ultimate goal for the "chosen ones" on a said track. I don't talk about crazy expectations like "that track will get blown up by a strat nobody saw coming" or "we'll discover a new technique that saves 3 seconds on each course", I'm talking about what we know, what is technically possible to do and what will be achieved in the coming years. Something above God standard, that's so difficult it'll only be made for the best of the best and only one could ever achieve it. No, I'm not talking about these awful God+ they added in Double Dash, but rather a much more... Special standard. There, you read it. Special. Something that we know is possible but is the closest to perfection anyone has ever been on a track. If you reach this standard, your time will be very Special, that's the word. An exemple of Special time would be, even though it's already been achieved, Guy's 3/3 King Alex MC run (1:20.357). That's Special. The God standard is at 1:21.5, the Special would be something crazy like this, a sub 1:20.4. Representing something that even the best in the world would grind for months, something that we know is possible but extremely hard, something that's the closest to perfection someone can go. That would be the Special standard (-1.000 for the ARR calculations).

Here's my point of view on the topic. Take it, leave it, criticize it, we're here to discuss so any comments will be appreciated. Thanks for reading, imma head out [smiley=flush.gif]