Still conflicted about how much to respond to any mob, there's always a number of people just looking to take a punch vs those who seriously care. Seems the majority in here are more in the latter camp, so from what I read there were 5 points people asked questions about
1) The 212 streak - this was mostly done offline as it was a preliminary research into "accidental" manip. Not to say this was accidental, but how vague the lines would be if I (or anyone) were not obviously doing manip, but just playing in a regular way without avoiding doing manip.
Basically, for a lot of the sets (but not all, I got bored occasionally), I was playing from the start of the game, mashing fast, and then going on the first 'easy' audio cue in the music. Turns out doing this gets you Starmie 3 a lot. And turns out with Starmie 3 you win a lot, especially with the IV advantage.
As I got more into the manip procedures and just how concrete you could make the wins, I debated about whether to turn that streak into what eventually became my singles manip "record" video, where I go super hard on the manip to show how ridiculous the end point is, or continue playing as I was, or getting bored and playing with none of it. I did a mix and it ended up dying on stream.
My motivation for doing this was sparked from doing manipless runs where I would often see a draft I had seen before, and therefore knew what my Pokemon in the draft were and more importantly exactly what the team is for the first fight. This was never intentional, but would often bring into question the run - is it actually manipless at that point? I'm not trying, but I can't delete knowledge.
In this case it was "identified" rather than "manipped". Is that the same thing? And how far would it go. If I didn't take steps to 'avoid' it, how often would the same, or close draft, appear. With that line of thinking I did that streak off stream for research and well, it turns out, it's a lot.
In speedruns, this would mostly happen on the very first draft - and this is far more noticeable as you reset for a good first draft, a lot, especially in L50, where I'd be resetting for especially Charmeleon/Delibird. And it's faster to reset then see it's a bad draft, still select Pokemon, and then quit out. After a certain amount of time, this meant any draft with Charmeleon/Delibird would be 'identifiable', rather than 'manipped'. And it was such a low amount of options, I'd eventually run out of ones I can't 'identify' really quickly.
The more I saw the same drafts and first trainers that I recognised, even sometimes ones that weren't the first draft (See: stream-speedrunning), the more I become convinced it's basically impossible to always avoid 'identifying', and so my main thought process became around "how do I make the speedruns feel legit".
I altered between just moving around and wasting time on the first draft, towards not allowing myself to reset at all and playing through the draft and quitting out (even though it's slower, just to maintain a level of integrity). It's kinda all you can do, and ultimately I came to the conclusion that the more and more you played Emerald Factory, the more and more you'd recognise more drafts. It's a vaguery that sucks, but there's not much else I can do for speedruns. But at least in speedruns, because you're going as fast as possible, you aren't able to take the time to 'process' identifications, that would eventually turn it into nonsense.
I do similar practices in other manipless runs - for example in my current hg/ss manipless grind, i deliberately take different paths wherever possible to avoid 'identifying' the seed I might have hit. While this is enough in hg/ss, In emerald factory you really can't avoid it completely.
Anyway so back to the 212 streak - I've been very consistent in saying "there is no record, I'm just trying to beat my streak" for any of the streaks because I believe the rules are impossible. I find following from a program a bore and ultimately ends up in a place where the program can be fully optimised to the point where the amount of decisions you actually make is so few to bordering 0, and I don't respect that. It's not the first and won't be the last time I think rules are like this, happens all the time in speedrunning.
It's nearly impossible to argue with people in established rulesets in different communities over 'vagueries' or 'slippery slopes', because the position almost always is "where we are now is completely fine, but any step past this, now that would be bad!".
i.e. in this context, all the information given from the programs now is fine, but if it started supplying the next step (what to do), terrible! Seeing calcs of damage is a-ok, but seeing calcs of decision outcomes (this is best choice), terrible! But then if that program exists that do the next step, that is fine, as long as you input the criteria yourself, and don't have the program scraping the game feed itself. But then if that exists, that's fine as long as it doesn't actually press the buttons for you. etc etc
And over the years the two most effective methods I've found when confronted with this is the following. Bring it up, so it at least stops the line in the sand there before it gets any worse, because now a position has been made.
And to just walk away and play by my own rules that actually feel good.
Even on the vaguery of established practices, to me, having a program say "this is the information of every set of pokemon" and "this is the information of every draft, and every trainer you fight" is no different. It's just a set of information not telling you anything else. The later, is "rng identification" that I referred to before, that is at some level, unavoidable. And arguably the same the rng manipulation, depending on where you stand.
If I'm being honest though, I never had, or have, any intention of competing with the the rules of the high streak stuff. I just get worked up about rules that I don't like all the time, including in games I don't run. Just can't help it.
For me personally, it was just something I did for fun after speedruns. Clearly I touched a few nerves by dismissing people who do those high streak runs and take it really seriously. I honestly felt more aggressive on that topic after one person doing so started publicly attacking me outta nowhere, and had a small mob brigading my spaces as well, and often felt compelled to put forward my point after however many messages about it showing up. Can't say I have any respect for that either. (To be clear, this was not the person who made the recent video). Similarly, I have no intention of making any sort of video myself, because it always ends up in some mob of people just going at others. Never helpful.
Anyway tl;dr, if you wanted to say the 212 streak was RNG manipped, you can. I was never claiming it played by any community ruleset, I don't even know where they draw the lines.
2) The "IGT discrepancies", I think it mostly covered by the above - playing with good consistent Pokemon, and without animations, and without explaining to people my line of thinking, is a lot faster
3) The Yellow run being private: The truth around this is probably different to what I thought at the time. The reasoning I told myself at the time when I came back to it is that "it's an old pb on an inaccurate emulator, I shouldn't have people looking at this". The vague logic might be there, but the decision was probably far more emotional: rewatching the video triggered me. That run was done when I was with people who I ended up falling out with many years later in a way that hurt me a lot, and I just wanted to erase that from my mind.
I honestly had no idea anyone had an issue with this until Dact told me in person late last year and I was like, wow what. It was private and not deleted, if you wanted to see it you coulda just asked. Seems like people in here have the video anyway, so no skin off my back.
I can go to the effort of dragging up logs of the fall out and flights showing where I was at the time, but honestly I don't really want to put my private emotional baggage in a public forum. If for some reason that needs to be verified, it'd have to be via DM with relevant party (i.e. like I did when the lilly stuff happened)
4) Deleting the vod: I straight up do not recall doing this, so I can't tell you my reasoning on this. I don't really know what else to say about this, as I'm not sure how much relevance this has
5) The Stadium 2 held item transfer thing: Honestly might be a silver lining in all this, if it causes more people to investigate what was going on with the held items. I was as shocked as anyone, it made no damn sense to me at all. I tried to put forward a few theories, but none of them seemed solid enough to lock in. So if this causes more people to look at it and figure it out, would be great. Maybe there's more other useful held items that could be gotten for other transfer runs, idk.
Other conclusion: Regarding cheating in speedrunning, my ultimate conclusion is we have long needed something that's actually in person that's considered a pinnacle of competition too. I have thought this very frequently, and talked about it often.
It's so easy to trust people, and just as easy to jump at shadows the moment anyone casts doubt on anyone as it stands. Because it's impossible to prove a negative in this case, as ultimately anyone can cheat. You can play TAS's back on console let alone emu, or run input scripts on PC, or play videos on stream, or any number of modifications to the game or the run, that you just can't know for absolute sure. And it extends to everyone. There's several people that I think, or have thought, have cheated at runs. Some I have called out them directly, some I notified to moderators, and some I've kept to myself. I definitely haven't made any videos about it (I won't, it isn't overall helpful and doesn't bring out the best in anyone), which might give the illusion that I don't think it. But I do, a lot, and it sucks, cause once you have a bit of doubt, it's so easy to just turn away without a definitive "here it is" that can never exist. It's part of why I really love gen 4 runs, because it's so verifiable.
Its also why I'd love an in person thing that's definitive, but as it stands, an in person competition might just be a fantasy of mine and never come about. I hope it does, and I'd love to compete in person with people more and know everyone I'm competing with is legit and on the same field as me.
But outside of that, the thing I always think when it comes to thinking about others is about what you can't cheat, and respecting that. It's why I often gravitate towards respecting those that route themselves, and find new discoveries, than those who just copy a route and grind for a time.
All of this is neither here nor there, but felt like as good a time as any to put into words how I feel about the topic broadly
Anyway, I might take a couple days off before getting back to streaming. Between the ff stuff, the lilly stuff, and the chugga stuff, I've had a few times of dealing with people coming at me over nonsense and let me tell ya - it ain't fun despite the fact you know it's nonsense! I'll take the time to focus on the routing stuff a bit more (finally got some motivation for Platinum Baton Pass rerouting, so trying to see the silver lining there too)
