Marble Blast Gold 2024 Rating Race

What is up folks! It has been a good few years since our last Marble Blast Gold rating race, and so it's time for the next one! I will be hosting a 12 hour Marble Blast Gold rating race sometime next month, and I want to gather some input from you all.

In December 2023, Jean hosted a rating race for the MBU levels and I helped by creating a website which can automatically determine each player's rating within the timespan of the event, so no new accounts are needed. I plan to use this same tool again.

The last MBG rating race in 2019 allowed players to choose their start and end time as long as they didn't play more than 12 hours. My website doesn't do this though, it has a fixed start time and end time shared by everybody. For this reason, I am currently planning on fixing the time of day from UTC 12:00 to 23:59. Please let me know if this will be an issue for you. 12 hours is a lot of time, so hopefully there will be some time during that timeframe that works for you. If you can't make the entire thing, that is ok! Since writing, I have added support for adding in per-player exceptions!

Ok, but what is the date? You guys voted, and the date is Saturday, October 12th, 2024! Get hyped!

RESULT OF POLL: strawpoll.com/05ZdzDP9mn6

Rules:

• You have 12 hours to get the most rating possible in the 100 levels of Marble Blast Gold. Only runs done in the 12 hours on the agreed upon date will count towards the rating for this rating race. No new account is needed! Simply login to PlatinumQuest online during the allotted time and play.
• All runs must be performed in PlatinumQuest online. While this is the MBG rating race, runs done in vanilla MBG cannot be verified to be within the 12 hours and cannot be counted. As of a few PQ updates ago, MBG levels have been restored to match the vanilla MBG levels and so this shouldn't be a big issue.
• The scoreboard will be kept track of on thearst3rd.com/mb-rating-race/ , which will live-update with the latest scores. It will automatically determine who is in the lead so keep an eye on it!

Time slot:

For most players, the starting time will be 12:00 UTC on October 12th, and the ending time will be 00:00 UTC on October 13th. If you cannot make it at all during that time, please let me know! I can grant an exception for a player to play on a different date if that Saturday doesn't work for you.

Here are the currently granted exceptions (please let me know if you want to be added!): thearst3rd.com/mb-rating-race/exceptions/

• berserk - Starting 9 AM PDT October 11th, Ending 9 PM PDT October 11th
• HappyTreeX1 - Starting 2 PM EDT October 11th, Ending 2 AM EDT October 12th

The event is coming up really soon, so GET PUMPED!! See you all there!

This is so exciting! I remember the 2019 race, and my hand hurt for days afterward. Such fond memories... I don't think I'll be able to do as well this time as last time, since I haven't touched MBG much since 2020, but I'll gladly still participate. This isn't capped at a certain number of people, right? And as for the date, I assume it makes no difference whether I vote for every date on the poll or no dates at all, right? The only thing I can think of is that if we get into November, DST will end in the US, so the time frame will start earlier for us than it otherwise would. I guess that's a reason to want to keep the race in October, unless people's sleep schedules are unaffected by the switch to standard time. But really I think I'd just vote for every date, so should I do that, or should I not bother?

There is no cap on the amount of people! If all of the proposed dates work for you, then I suppose it doesn't matter if you vote or not. You could vote just to show interest

The poll has ended (a few days ago ), and the date of the event will be Saturday, October 12, 2024! Thanks to everyone who voted, and see you all then!!

The rating race is starting really soon so everyone get hyped!!! I updated the main post with more details:

I've added some clarifications on the rules, mostly that you do NOT need to create a new account, you do NOT need to register or anything, just log in with your current account and play MBG during the allotted time.

The scoreboard will live update at thearst3rd.com/mb-rating-race/ , so keep your eyes peeled on that!

Some players couldn't make it during the timespan we decided, and to accommodate them I added an exception so they have a different 12 hours. Currently, this list is berserk and HappyTreeX1 - please let me know if you want an exception as well.

See you all this weekend!!!

Aaaand that's a wrap! Thank you so much to everyone who participated!! The turnout was great, and it was a lot of fun! There were plenty of shenanigans and goofy moments, but the competition was fierce throughout. A huge congratulations to Xelna for taking the top spot, once again demonstrating his dominance over the game.

Here are the final standings:

🥇 Xelna - 13,216,775
🥈 HappyTreeX1 - 13,084,888
🥉 berserk - 12,609,782
4. NF - 11,915,991
5. Voltage - 11,738,666
6. Kalle29 - 11,442,338
7. Connie - 10,768,711
8. thearst3rd - 10,677,559
9. Charlix - 10,476,232
10. Jaxx - 10,022,257
11. bobirika12 - 9,540,318
12. serjG - 9,531,351
13. Eurobeater - 9,358,402
14. Robert - 9,340,800
15. m2k - 9,267,105
16. ShadowVisions - 8,762,942
17. StewMan46 - 8,426,730
18. Rabul - 7,279,232
19. Jean - 6,985,502
20. eNetro - 6,355,064
21. linguini15 - 5,796,437
22. Gravey - 1,665,465
23. supermarble94 - 1,114,069
24. August - 37,738
25. Sylvani - 22,391
26. Nockess - 16,289
27. Powerjohn25 - 11,865
28. Yoshicraft224 - 1 (actually crazy)

See a full breakdown: thearst3rd.com/mb-rating-race/

Once again thanks to everyone for showing up and making this a successful event, and I can't wait until the next one!

I'm reading through the list of everyone who participated again, and I just want to say how proud I am of everyone here. 12 hours is a LONG time, and whether you stayed for all of it or just a little bit, I really can't believe so many people showed up, and I'm so happy to see how much engagement this got! A huge congratulations to the top three—I was shocked to see HappyTreeX1 get 13 million yesterday, and so impressed when Xelna got over 13.2 million. berserk also performed extremely well, which was a lovely thing to see. And it was great to see both old people, like Kalle29 and Robert, and new people, like Jaxx and m2k, participating and having fun. And a special shoutout to Yoshicraft224 for getting exactly 1 rating. Easily the funniest thing I saw all day.

Since I wasn't in voice chat or watching anyone's streams, I didn't really know what was going on, except for when I would sometimes check the in-game chat. So I'd love to know how people thought about this whole event! Here are some of my feelings.

The last time I did this was for MBG in 2019. I was in college then, using a 2017 MacBook Pro with a butterfly keyboard, so the key travel was extremely low. For that race, I played for 11h 15m, and I had to stop because the hand pain got so bad that I physically could not play anymore. My hand took nearly a week to recover from that. Also, during that last time, it was right in the middle of a year of heavy MBG grinding for me, so I was very familiar with all the levels and what I had to do on them. But I still came out of that race feeling like I hadn't done my best—Airwalk in particular tripped me up.

This time, I was going into the race after not having played most of MBG seriously since 2020. And also not getting enough sleep the night before (I have nobody to blame). I also used a mechanical keyboard on my 2014 Mac mini rather than the laptop keyboard, and my hand doesn't hurt nearly as much as last time. Oh, and PQ didn't crash once! It got laggy about nine hours in, but that was just because Night Shift came on.

I just wanted to start with Tightrope and Pathways, the levels that give the most rating, and then just have fun with the rest. I set myself a goal of 12M rating, which I thought was attainable. And I was right, it was attainable, I just didn't attain it. If I had been slightly luckier and more resourceful, I may have done so. But I am shocked at how much muscle memory I have from these 100 levels, and how much of the race was "let's open this level and see what path my muscle memory wants to take." And I'm very proud of myself for doing just about as well as I could, and proud of everyone else who did as well as they could too!

Some highlights from my portion:

I started the race at 12:30 UTC, or 08:30 my time. Usually, I would have slept in until about 09:30, but I was so excited to race that I woke up early naturally. The first hour and a half was all Tightrope. I was trying to do the double edge hit for ages, but as the two-hour mark of the time window approached, I figured I should just get a run in (24s) and move on. After that, I did a quick WRR2 Pathways run, and then just went in order from the beginning.

Most impressive runs:
Skyscraper 29.263: I did the double traplaunch! This was soooo close to actually being a PB (20.xxx), but I missed one gem on one of the tiny platforms on the way down from the second launch. So I had to super jump back up to get it, and then ride an elevator to the finish.
Monster Speedway Qualifying 14.371: This is such a fun level, and so satisfying to get a low time like this. I originally got a high 15, but I'm really glad I played it for a few more minutes, even though it's just an intermediate level and doesn't give much rating.
Money Tree 35.059: I know Xelna did better, but I'm just glad I was able to hit a great run on one of my favorite levels.

Luckiest runs:
Under Construction 2.463: Literally second attempt, near the end of the race, and I almost fell off. I even did a weird edge hit and went backwards onto more construction, and somehow finished with only 0.3s of time travel left.
Dive! 13.839: Only took a few minutes, and this was the very last level I completed, with less than 10 minutes of the race remaining. Much better than 27 or whatever I had before, and I had barely ever finished this way too—I did a loop exit and then landed right in the gap where you normally go to finish. So glad I didn't miss the finish pad.
Survival of the Fittest 9.367: I mean... yeah, this was pretty lucky. I almost got an even better launch before this—had just enough height to jump on top of one of the blue pillars, but hit the yellow pillar because I didn't know how to successfully go through all those pillars at that height.

Most shameful runs:
Great Divide Revisited 31.142: I don't know why the edge hit at the start wasn't working for me at all in PQ, no matter which FPS I used. So I just went with the regular traplaunch, but even then it wasn't a very good launch and just sent me straight up, and I just completed the level normally. I didn't have time to go back to it at the end. Definitely not proud of this.
Ramps Reloaded 18.430: I was trying to do the WRR 5 path, but I kept moving the camera way too far and not aiming the super speed correctly at the end, and I moved on pretty quickly because I wanted to get the Tower Maze traplaunch.
Battlements 20.885: No launch, which was a shame.
Tango 10.785: I tried the WR path for a bit just in case I got lucky, but in the end I had to do the full path because I didn't know of a faster way to do it. I should have just seen what Xelna does for full MBG runs and done that, because at this point I was very pressed for time, and it probably would have been faster.
Also Whirl 8.805: For some reason, I can't get up to the time travels in PQ like I can in MBG. So I had to settle for this time.

This took way too long:
Tightrope 24.864: Approximately 90m, this was at the very start and I spent a long time trying to get that double edge hit without success
Marble Playground 36.995: 34m 28s on an easy path
Spork in the Road 13.590: 20m 26s for not a very good finish. I felt like my muscle memory was betraying me on this one, because I kept missing the super jump and not knowing how to get the time travels the right way.

[hr]

Overall, this was just a really great experience, and I got pretty lucky near the end. I would like to suggest that in the future this could be separated into two six-hour time slots, because 12 hours is a really long time to have to stay focused and staring at the game. I could feel myself starting to lose steam when there were still over three hours remaining. And a huge thank you to you, thearst3rd, for organizing this and providing your website so that we don't all have to make separate accounts! I think that made this event much more accessible than the previous MBG race.

First time participating in a Rating Race and I have to say it was really fun! I am glad that I was able to finish all 100 levels during the time period but sadly didn't manage to hit 10 million. It's pretty wild seeing the leaders with 12-13 mil.

Hopefully we'll have one for MBP soon.

I had fun doing what I did during the rating race, but I also had a lot of fun being able to hang out with a bunch of MB folks in voice chat. That's been happening a lot more recently, even just out of the blue, and I'm very happy to see that.

Now I'm just wondering: When is the first PQ rating race going to be?

This was incredibly fun and I hope we have more events like these in the future. I'm also glad I didn't end up 2nd to last like in the MBU Rating Race lmao, although I'm a bit disappointed I dropped from 4th to 7th in the Final Standings.

It is great to hear your thoughts on the event NF

NF wrote:

Most impressive runs:
Skyscraper 29.263: I did the double traplaunch!

Holy balls that is impressive!!

NF wrote:

Overall, this was just a really great experience, and I got pretty lucky near the end. I would like to suggest that in the future this could be separated into two six-hour time slots, because 12 hours is a really long time to have to stay focused and staring at the game. I could feel myself starting to lose steam when there were still over three hours remaining. And a huge thank you to you, thearst3rd, for organizing this and providing your website so that we don't all have to make separate accounts! I think that made this event much more accessible than the previous MBG race.

I do like the idea of splitting it up into separate blocks, especially if it can be done in two days on a weekend. I will look into implementing this, especially for the MBP race since that game is just so much bigger than MBG and it might be nice to have more time (two 8-hour blocks maybe?). And a huge thank you to you NF for participating

serjG wrote:

First time participating in a Rating Race and I have to say it was really fun! I am glad that I was able to finish all 100 levels during the time period but sadly didn't manage to hit 10 million. It's pretty wild seeing the leaders with 12-13 mil.

Hopefully we'll have one for MBP soon.

Thanks for joining! As for MBP, that one will be next Planned for early 2025

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

Now I'm just wondering: When is the first PQ rating race going to be?

That will some months after the MBP one, early-mid 2025

Connie wrote:

This was incredibly fun and I hope we have more events like these in the future. I'm also glad I didn't end up 2nd to last like in the MBU Rating Race lmao, although I'm a bit disappointed I dropped from 4th to 7th in the Final Standings.

There will indeed be more in the neat future!! I was hoping you would drop to 8th in the final standings If survival of the fittest gave me a single TL then I might've knocked you down another spot, but oh well. GGs on that

ALSO: I edited my recorded session into a compilation video including all of my best times on each level, and some funny highlights in voice chat. Enjoy!

And if you want to watch the full unedited 9 hours and 52 minutes of footage, that can be viewed here:

A great event which motivated me to reach 10m+ general rating and achieve top 80 in all games! I hope there will be as many people as threre were as the next rating races. The timeframe could be altered in order to give players from other parts of the world a little bit more time to leave their mark, but 9/12h is enough to make a good show on the lbs!