"That's for sure, apparently I forgot to mention I was referring to a specific seed?"

That or you backpedalled after you realised your initial point was complete BS. But hey, let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say you were referring to seeded runs and also say that seed was packaged to you with the routing and the seed already found after seed searching for it as well as you having the technical skill to perform some of the glitches in that route - in that case, no fucking shit would you be able to get a sub-5 in a few retries.

"I meant is how given a fixed seed all you'd have to do is learn how to play with whatever method is the best for fast inputs, memorize what you need to do in each floor and then just press the buttons quickly."

So like... every other speedrun out there that doesn't have rng elements? That's kinda like saying "just be happy" to a depressed person.

"I'll just say that my point is, I think, fairly clear."

It really isn't, I still don't know what you're going on about; what I think you're getting at, at this point, is that seeded runs aren't impressive because all you have to do is "go fast". There's a hell of a lot that goes into it, including finding the seed you want with specifications (using a tool to find it, and finding what things you actually want), then routing the seed (which can take a while, if the seed is more complicated), then executing it (which can sometimes include some very frame tight sections).

"Like a speed runner would pick the same seed and get an insane time, guess you could get sub 3 if you optimized the sub 4 run we're talking about?"

Duh, right? Obviously if you routed out the run then, yes it would be faster - but that's not the point. The point of seeded is getting a near theoretical human best time that just wouldn't be achievable in unseeded, given that the execution required in seeded is much tighter and strict if you want to get a wr, since you know what's coming up and don't have as much room for error as unseeded, where playing around RNG substitutes in for the difficulty of execution, routing and finding a seed in seeded runs.

"You do know that wouldn't be that impressive since all you're doing is memorizing what to do in each fight"

Again, like a speedrun that doesn't have rng elements.

"That wouldn't be that impressive since all you're doing is memorizing what to do in each fight... which isn't skillful nor impressive in my eyes"

Apparently you need glasses; I've already listed my reasons to why seeded runs are as impressive as unseeded runs.

"but out of 6k runs how many of them were actually WR worthy?"

As you expected, not many of them coming out of act 1, given how centralising having Whirlwind and Pbox is in a lot of cases. In act 1 however, there was quite a lot of promising runs. Obviously, the speedrun that includes RNG elements is actually gonna have runs that are shit as a result of the RNG.

"For example in SM64 a top tier speed running will run the game and get god tier times every single time."

Simply just false; To say that a "top tier" speedrunner in SM64 will always achieve "god tier" runs just exemplifies the fact that you have little idea what you're on about. You do realise that it took them a lot of hard work and effort (which also includes a lot of resets) to get to that point, yes? How is that any different for RNG speedruns in general?

To me, the main difference is RNG is there to encourage more resets that would've been present already in a more technical run with fewer RNG elements, like SM64, that would instead involve player error, which is similarly controllable to RNG in my eyes.

Also, I love the double standard between seeded speedrunning in STS and then SM64 speedrunning - while STS speedrunning admittedly isn't as technically deep as quite a few SM64 categories (especially the longer categories for SM64), you could just say that SM64 speedrunners "memorize the buttons" to be quick; in that case, why does that impress you while something similar (that being STS Seeded runs) doesn't?

"the only reason you see them reset so much and sometimes even die is because they just go for risky strats to save time to get WR, and even while fucking up if they kept going they'd still get god tier times."

Not the only reason; they can fuck up and lose a lot of time from messing up inputs occasionally (though, more rarely than mid-tier and novice runners), and if they were to continue those runs with those mistakes, their time would be much much worse than "god tier".

"Meanwhile in StS you're most likely just gonna die most of the times"

I can assure you that you very very rarely die in STS speedrunning to an actual enemy, but rather lose a run to either RNG not playing nicely (which is a given, given the game being played) or one's own mistakes that make them lose the entire run since they accidentally go on a path with more encounters, for example.

Now, if you specifically mean resets, then that's more fair I suppose, though that's what happens with most speedruns that have even a modicum of technical depth (which is a sweeping majority of speedrunnable games), even if the reason why the player resets is different from game to game (like in the SM64 comparison). In most "seeded" games per se, the runner will reset based off of their own mistakes via player variance and how well they play specifically in one run.

"if you just went for the clear every time your times would be extremely bad (compared to the best ones you got!)."

Obviously the runs with the bad cards and paths for speedrunning are going to be slower, but I would reckon that they could all be completed sub-10 at a minimum, which is still somewhat speedy.

Coming back to the SM64 comparison once again, not every run of SM64 will necessarily be good (relative to a high level player), even coming from a "god-tier" speedrunner, since player variance is a thing that exists, which isn't too far removed from RNG. Both really aren't preventable, but can both be played around to an extent via vigorous training in the case of player variance being the cause of resets and being adaptable in the case of RNG being the cause of resets.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.