All,

Just some thoughts and brainstorming ideas after a discussion with Alicia briefly. As you know the Standards on the site are very outdated on nearly all of the tracks, moreso with the introduction of the new strats on CI1, MC3, MC4 etc. It is worth noting that the same issue has happened on the other Mario Kart games as players have managed to push through barriers and reach higher and higher levels, sometimes with new strats, sometimes by doing beyond what was expected.

Now several years ago we did change the standards to what they are today, with the aim to hopefully not have to change them again. However we have gone well beyond in some cases so I just wanted to get some thoughts from everyone what to do. It is really just between keeping things as they are despite the age of the standards, or revising them based on the achevements made in the recent years and setting top standards beyond that. Last time we chose some different names from the old standards which were named like the MK64 ones, so the players wouldn't feel they 'lost' their achieved standards the first time (e.g Myth + instead of God).

My take would be to not change anything further (like MK64), as the main ranking is not based on the Standards, they are a side statistic for players to use to aim for particular targets as they climb (if they want to). I don't personally keep a track of where I have certain standard times or not, but many do and enjoy that.

This is not an official 'lets do a change' poll. Just a discussion for now as we haven't gone over this for a while. So what do you think? Please share your thoughts and if anyone plays on the other Mario Karts (Christian Wild, Stacy Needham etc) your feedback would be appreciated.

Or does anyone have any fresh ideas for something new?

I'm extremely surprised to realize the big IJ on VL2 PAL has never had an impact on standards. So yeah, it definitely needs a change. Not everywhere, but some tracks need that.

On a more serious note, yeah, some need some revision. But let's not go overboard, they need to remain more doable (or as doable) as RR 5-lap PAL.  
For instance now 12"02 has been done on MC2 flap PAL, but setting it on 11"99 might be going a bit overboard. A new standard doesn't necessarily need to be faster than the current WR (imo), it just needs to reflect a really, really good time with a 'new' strat.

KVD wrote on 07/25/17 at 09:34:29:


As long as we won't have more players to test new possibilities with MC2 flap, it'll be hard to set a correct Myth+ time. I guess LB can allow bigger gaps than tight trajectories, so set Myth+ to 12"49 doesn't surprised me for the moment, as long as more players won't try seriously.

Another example, VL2 flap PAL is a combination of very hard strats, so I should say 8"99 is already a great time for the Myth+. But as already 5 players did under 8"79, maybe they can assert a Myth+ at 8"79.

KVD wrote on 07/25/17 at 09:33:42:

Of course I will not stupidly threaten Sami or anyone on this but if standards are modified I might consider asking for removal depending on which the changes are. I don't have time to answer in detail right now but be sure I'll give my opinion on which standards should deserve a change if we have to do it, but also why I don't think that's a good idea – even if I already know why Sami opens the Pandora box there, this having nothing to do with pissing me off of course, no worries.

lol I didn't feel offended at all, don't worry about this. I've been completely immunized to sarcasm as years went by… the only thing that disturbs me is the lack of respect and you never showed something like this towards me.

Of course in an ideal world all of our players would test every strat to the best of their ability and all would then weigh in equally, that is, if we're even going to suggest new standards for some places at all...but pragmatically speaking the best course of action would be (at least for the moment) to let ScouB have the biggest say in those standards. At least that's in my learned opinion.  
No one else has even tried his method of executing the LBs yet, or when they did, at least they didn't score new PRs with it yet eventhough it's potentially a lot faster. Of course I absolutely share the thought that more top players ought to try, but it's intimidating business for sure.


@Mario, of course I have huge respect for you. I thought that would go without saying really. Some of the SMK performances you have done, both in terms of WRs and CDM performances, have been truly iconic. That CI1 lap, all your very tough Myth+ times on tracks like GV2, BC2, GV1 platform in bronze medal play-off, sub 1'28 on RR, Match Race final, TT 1-try gold medal, the list goes on. On occasion I can be a sarcastic smartass, but I hope that never overshadows the fact that I think you're a really cool dude and an absolute beast of an SMK player.

Eventhough I see your point, the times ScouB have set seem so extreme from the onset that most players are too intimidated to even try and to be honest putting the top standard faster than ScouB's shocking flap WR would just be silly. I'm saying that because ScouB played the track for weeks (months?) and this lap was over two tenths (!!) better than all the other laps he has done there. Considering the fact he actually achieved a time better than the time that we should mark as the top standard, extra exploration from other players would unlikely lead to another outcome. That'd be my educated guess, but I'm happy to let ScouB speak up himself, MC2 is his track now after all.  

By the way I'm not saying that his 12"02 will never be beaten, but I guess I am saying that whoever manages to go faster would certainly deserve the top standard in any case.

Nice post Chris, definitely food for thought.  

As first I'm completely okay to bring back the GOD name to the best standard since there's no real reason to keep on calling them "Myth+" which doesn't really make any sense actually. I never asked for it before because I don't really care, but especially because I don't see where there would be a religion-related issue since the GOD standard was already used before (and had been used for years, and is still used on other MK charts. I'm not a fan of GOD-xx rankings though, maybe just because the ASR rankings would evolve and I know I would be GOD-1 or even better on many tracks, which is something I really don't like – it's a matter of personal taste there, I see Myth+/GOD as the ultimate standard that just can't be improved/overtaken/whatever.

About changing the standards and after having reading the whole topic (BTW, I'd say Chris's post is very interesting and is a great discussion point, just like Alicia's suggestions, even if I don't accept them for obvious reasons), there are two ways to analyse the situation. Here they come:

1) A very selfish opinion would be "fuck no" because I would not accept to see "super-goals" like standards becoming completely irrelevant after I fought for hundreds (I guess) hours for. Of course my performances have been appreciated by the community and my rivals, and of course I did it for the beauty of the game, but also for myself. This is not about being fucking pretentious there, I really hope not to read the same crap as some (jealous?) French players have been able to write about this, eh? Just saying, there are something like 7-8 of my WRs I had already secured but wanted to push further just because I wanted to reach the ultimate (and unofficial) standards Sami had set almost ten years before. When you own 34 of them, on a total of 40, after a long WR harvest that earned you a World Champion title, you just can't stop there, there's something way too cool to do that nobody achieved before: hitting all of them. Before everyone. For the history, for pride. Of course it's been already two years and nine months since I've hit my 79^th and final one, and I could have ended the job on RR since then. But now that this discussion is open I feel some kind of obligation to do it very quickly when I'm not into the game at all because if I don't, I will have done all this shit for nothing. Which of course doesn't please me at all.

Based on this logic, do not change any of those standards in any way please! Just because:

• turning some of them into easier ones will make my 2013/2014 efforts ridiculous and pointless because I could have avoided wasting hours for a standards I might have already hit before (hey GV2/BC2) ;
• making some others harder to reach will also destroy all those efforts and make the 80/80 dream impossible (at least for me) because I will NOT play the tracks in question again (especially MC3/MC4 with pipe/wall boost strats).

2) A more realistic and objective vision doesn't even make me see this potential change differently, because many other players also improved a specific time just to hit a M+ standard, of course they didn't do that as often as I did, but still. And I'm having a look at how the ASR charts would look, too. If we change SOME of them, there will obviously be tracks where only one or two players (Karel and Scoub, again?) will hit the only (close-to) GOD/M+ standards while everyone is now far away. I'm not saying high level competition is dead on the SMK TT scene, but we can be pretty sure there will be only two players fighting for WRs on 3 specific tracks on the "upper charts scene", assuming there will be no Sami, Kartie, Neo or me playing again. So we might have two players having six M+ times that their legendary rivals will probably never have… whereas they did own them before the change. And considering how important the change could be, would we (previous M+ holders) fall down to Myth E/F or maybe Titan A? LOL, seriously, please don't destroy another part of our profiles history.

Anyway, I also think there is absolutely no need to change the MC3/MC4 standards since the MC2 flap ones were NEVER changed in SIX YEARS of allowed IB, creating a ridiculous amount of M+ times (more than 40 on PAL before it went banned!!), so why would we do it now for a smaller strat change? The wall/pipe hits and boosts don't create a huge difference from the previous WRs, at least not as much as IB did… if I'm correct, the single lap differerence between IB and LB was close to one second and a half back in 2006, it's not even the case for the full race when it comes to MC3 or MC4 (and around a quartersecond for the single laps). New standards would not even make reaching M+ times easier since both are tracks where at least 5 people have already hit it in 8 possible situations (there is only one exception, MC3 PAL 5-lap, where only Sami and I achieved it). The only standards that could be discussed in my opinions are the CI1 ones, maybe because some of us already had "SC" PRs and experimented the strat before? But I don't think I'm objective there as I've played it (especially on the NTSC side) and like the strat. Ah, and I'm not even OK with the idea of making the RR M+ too easy to reach, I've always found it fascinating to make such a legendary full race the one with the hardest of all the highest standards of the game.

Oh, on a final note: even if I regard him as a friend and maybe the best rival I've ever had and enjoyed to face in the whole game, I don't really see the point of Karel praising my performances this way, because it will absolutely not change my mind about a potential removal demand. As long as I'm losing even only one of my 79 M+ I will think about asking for it, even if Neo suddenly says he sincerely respects me and apologizes for making a fool of my person for a decade. I hope it shows how determined I am to ragequit the whole scene if I feel that all that I've done on the game is suddenly destroyed after having slightly destroyed the charts with the recent decisions. If my attitude is regarded as childish, well you will not have to keep somebody's whose spirit doesn't suit you on the charts, so everything will be okay for everyone, eh?

This might have been one of my worse English posts, sorry for that, I didn't have much time to write it and this discussion is really pissing me off so I may not be very nice to read. Hope you've enjoyed the fact I spent more time explaining my "general" point of view than the "selfish", by the way. I don't think I have to "convince" too much of you there on this, though.

Thanks for reading and sorry for the huge rant.

Well I think you overreact even more than me, I said I would give a personal and probably selfish opinion. This is the obvious reaction to a discussion brought by a situation I didn't vote for (allowing new strats for no good reason in my opinion). I have the right to think the charts I paid so much attention to in the past are now fucked up and will be for good. Plus, I don't understand why you accuse me to agree with allowing the new strats: just because I stay on the site doesn't mean I approve this change. I'm still completely against it (the decision to allow them suddenly in 2017; not the strats, I have nothing against them) but I decided to stay on the site because this is not something stupid and inappropriate enough in my mind to say goodbye to such an important part of my life. Changing standards in addition to this would make two important changes I don't accept (and find ridiculous), which would be too much for me.

I'm free to think, and even to say,  that if I don't like something, I stay away from it. Unfortunately too few people have the courage and honesty to act this way in the world and especially on the internet, I guess this is why it shocks people. When I say I'm leaving something I don't approve, I do it and I'm not the kind of person who keeps on knocking on the window hoping for attention. I might have been this kind of person when I was younger and less happy in my life but I've grown up much more than many people among this community have ever seen and could think.

On another note, please don't be Neo-ish, for fuck's sake. I don't even see where I'm claiming this is "my" site, even when I was an undisputed double #1 this would have been a complete lack of respect to think this way. I just express my single right to have an opinion and to speak sincerely about it, which I know doesn't suit everyone. This is not forbidden as long as you show respect to your opponents, which is something I think I've always done – which is definitely not the case of everyone within this community. I know where I come from, i.e nowhere, and I'm perfectly ready to come back to it. SMK has no importance anymore in my current life for a lot of reasons you do know, and you have already asked for removals of different kinds in the past so you should understand me more than the majority there.

To be honest, I find kinda funny to receive this kind of criticism from someone with a more extreme point of view about retiring when things are changed. With all my respect, you're definitely not the right person to attack me on this.

I've thought about one thing then told Karel privately I would not ask for any removal as long as I own WRs, because I would destroy some credibility there myself too. If standards are changed AND modify my ASR I will just announce a definitive retirement from the Players Site but will not ask to be removed. So there is no threat or anything related from me to consider when discussing about those changes, it's much nicer for the debate atmosphere to everyone when there's nothing regardable as a threat involved in the process.

Without trying to stir flames or pick sides here, I think Guillaume was actually against CI1 walljump this time around, precisely because it was banned multiple times before. But correct me if I'm wrong.

In general, basing decisions on historical consistency considerations is rarely a good idea, as you would be doomed to make the same mistake over and over. I think the community very clearly sided with pipeboosts, so let's not even mention that again. The CI1 walljump thing has always been a can of worms, it might have been better if it remained forbidden, but here we are
I changed my mind in comparison with previous polls and voted to allow, purely because the technical reasons to keep it banned didn't convince me enough anymore. And maybe a little bit that the majority have been wanting it to be allowed for years, so hopefully we would finally hear the end of that discussion. Personally, I would have preferred to keep it banned, but out of egoistic reasons. I don't enjoy the strat and had some very strong WRs without it. Plus you do skip a wall.