Here's the thing - Almighty Dread, nobody is (or should be) saying that you're a bad player, clearly you do know your stuff when it comes to Elevator Action. But you're not some deity who should be worshipped by everyone for finding an efficient way to leech in the game. If you really want to have a civilized discussion about this issue, you need to drop the condescending attitude. This is what's turning people off from attempting to discuss this with you, leading you to further call people things like "children" and "ignorant".
But hey, I'll address some of the things you brought up.
Almighty Dread wrote:Your pathetically uninformed opinion doesn't concern me in the slightest. When you tell the Ms Pac Man players that they can't go around the maze dozens of times to ensure that they get the highest possible score because it isn't entertaining enough, you won't be a hypocrite for singling out my gameplay, but you'll still sound like the Jon Snow of gaming. When someone starts telling me what I can and can't do, that's when problems start. So, I've come up with a little principle, which I call 'the principle of non interference'. This principle states that no one should be told how to play a game, unless there is a compelling reason.
I'm not a fan of Ms. Pacman either, and I don't enjoy watching grouping in that game either. HOWEVER, I wouldn't equate Ms. Pacman grouping with Elevator Action leeching at all. For one thing, you're not continually building points running around the maze when you're not eating dots in Ms. Pacman. The game has an end (kill screen), so it's about squeezing out as many points as possible in the boards you're given, which often consists of grouping them all together to get a quadruple eat, or in the later boards, grouping to make survival possible. No I don't enjoy watching it either, but it's become accepted by the players, and is not an exploit that leads to potentially infinite (or maxed out) scores.
Compelling reasons include:-
1. Gameplay includes a point accumulation method which any muppet could execute.
2. Gameplay produces high score, but does not demonstrate high level expertise.
3. Gameplay exploits major bugs in the game's programming.
Compelling reasons do not include:-
1. Some mendicant's saying he didn't like the gameplay.
2. Demonstrably incompetent gameplay assessment.
3. Inappropriate application of gaming regulations.
Even with a compelling reason, telling people how they should play games should be a last resort measure. Persons who call for a ban on a gaming method without first having thoroughly examined said method are control freaks, and ought not to have any say in matters of intervention.
I am the inventor (and, possibly, sole practitioner) of the floor 7 point accumulation method. If you wish to learn a few facts about it, you will listen to what I have to say, and ignore the uninformed and simplistic opinions of those who have merely observed my method in action.
Firstly, defending a floor 7 position is not easy. Perhaps it looks easy when I do it, but anyone with a brain knows that something which seems simple in the hands of a master may actually be very complex. On floor 7, it's all about tracking your opponents, maintaining your shot accuracy, and not getting lulled into a false sense of security. Playing floor 7 is just like playing the rest of the game: most of the time, your opponents blunder into your bullets, and their shots are easy to avoid; but, every so often, there comes a critical moment, when one decision will see you survive, and another will see you dead. Anyone who can learn my method with little time and effort is entitled to dismiss it as “point leeching”. As of now, I have seen no evidence that anyone has earned said entitlement.
Since I've demonstrated a high level of expertise at the game, and have not exploited any bugs in order to attain my score, I see no compelling reason for anyone to interfere with the way I choose to play it. I did not play the game in this way to entertain anyone, I did it to make a score higher than anyone else's.
Your argument seems to be that you think nobody else is on your level and can show the extreme mastery of staying on one floor where enemies don't spawn and have no choice but to take elevators to reach you. Perhaps you're right in people don't fully understand how to set up the leeching so let me explain that I have since tried this and I *DO* fully understand how this works.
The most important part of this trick is that it requires a stage in which there's a red door on floor 6. Enemies can not spawn out of red doors. Because there's only two doors on floor 6, one on each side, this limits the possible number of directions in which enemies can approach you. If you were to try this trick on a stage that does not have a red door on floor 6, eventually there's going to come a point where two guys are riding the elevators up to reach you at the same time from each side, and these guys are the most dangerous because you have less time and space in which to react.
This is why in your recording you don't do the trick until stage 3 - it was the first stage in that run to have a red door on floor 6. Perhaps not everyone understood that just from watching, but they will now.
Almighty Dread wrote:Any position taken up on floor 7 is frequently attacked from multiple directions, so the risk factor is both constant and high. I have never accumulated points on floor 7 without finishing the level on which it was done.
I fully acknowledge that there is risk involved in doing this. HOWEVER, one can argue that there is much less risk in doing this trick than there is by playing the game normally and reaching the later stages. During the trick you're in a controlled environment where you're making no effort to advance gameplay, and you're performing the same actions over and over. In regular gameplay there's a lot more risk involved with everything, since as you move through the level you get put into different situations that you have to be ready for. In the later stages the enemies are even more dangerous, with less delay on their shots and "reload" times, the ability to lay flat on the ground under your crouch shots, they come out of doors faster, etc.
So if this trick was allowed, what's to keep someone like you from NOT making progress after that initial ~70 minute leeching is up, and just doing it again? As I just established, this trick is only possible on stages that have the red door on stage 6, and you don't know if the next stage will have a red door there. You could do it again on the same stage to build up even more points a second time and then play through to the end of the stage afterwards if you feel like it, just so you can say "But I was making progress!". It opens up a can of worms. So no, the best way to treat the timer is that when the hurry-up music starts, you need to make an effort to clear the stage. If you get stuck in an area where you can't control the elevators to reach the bottom, then who's fault is that?
So... yes, I tried this trick out, yes, I got it to work just fine and didn't die in the time frame in which I was doing the leech (which was around 20 minutes). I wasn't recording since it was my first time trying the trick, but... even if I did post an inp, I'm sure you'll say that I didn't do it long enough and demonstrated no mastery of anything, am I right?