List Official Featured Ghosts

Depending on the track, copying just the first 2 seconds could give as big of an advantage as copying 90% on another track. A lot of short feats are like that. Being able to skip the first couple of seconds could be the difference in it being the hardest or the easiest featured ghost to do.

I mean this doesn't worry me any more than any other type of cheating. If people really want to cheat, they can. And there are a ton of a lot less laborious ways to do it. Our last resolve will always be asking for a keyboard cam if someone appears too suspicious.

Well, it's cheating if we decide that it's cheating. At least in the context of the featured ghosts list.

For example, spacebarring could easily be disallowed, if people truly wanted for it to be. Spacebarring undermines the game's integrity and is a dishonest way to play and those are great arguments for why it shouldn't be allowed. But as far as I'm aware, when it was initially discussed people didn't really understand spacebarring and people who had used it were already hooked on it. And as time has went on, the core ghosting community has been built around it. Attempts at making non-spacebarring competitive have not really worked out, or at least it hasn't pulled the core ghosting community towards it that much. Disallowing spacebarring would most likely kill the ghosting community, which is why it's not really considered. People find spacebarring a fun way to compete and make cool ghosts, and non-spacebarring not as much it seems. Otherwise I would be completely fine with disallowing it. Which is why I'm fine with discussing whether things like copying inputs should be allowed on the featured ghosts list or not.

 

There have been a couple of attempts to make a featured non-spacebar ghost list, one actually started but eventually died down, the other didn't get any traction. The main factor for the first thread being closed was evidence that someone did not spacebar in a ghost. Considering ghosting is arguably at its most dormant, if spacebaring were disallowed in the game's current state, it would have a minimal effect; however, in almost any other year, it would be widely challenged with considerable backlash.

No nsb player has reached 5 featured ghosts, and I believe no nsb player has reclaimed a featured ghost on a single track more than 3 times, as the spacebarer just defeats the competition. However, I do believe 3-4 nsb players (myself included) earned a featured ghost in the last 3 or so years, which is more than any other time period. There is a big asterisk, though; those ghosts were achieved through either a long vehicle ghost (heli), using a vehicle time glitch and having a suggested featured ghost be featured (in my case), not stealing regular fast ghosts. It has been mentioned in the last 2 years that the featured ghost list is so optimised now that it's so hard to steal ghosts, let alone an nsb player stealing a ghost.

Not to draw attention to myself, but I could count on one hand the number of times I beat an old featured ghost or had a featured ghost stolen from me at the hands of spacebarers like Xenom and Cerasium. If they didn't exist, I would have reached 5 featured ghosts. If certain other spacebarers also didnt exist, then people like Dblu would have reached 5 too, much earlier than I. After getting to 5, good luck getting to 10 unless you suggest heaps of really good ghosts, but updates in the thread a few and far between nowadays. I've gone through the list, and I can safely say I stand almost no chance of stealing any of the current featured ghosts except Escape, the only track where I had a featured ghost, and I plan to beat Cerasium back. To steal another ghost, you would have to put hours on end on easier tracks to get remotely close to the spacebarer. I also think no one has produced a really good nsb trickghost (as not a single one is featured), which might be another easy way to feature, and if the standard remains unchanged, that ghost can last forever and never be stolen.

To summarise, spacebaring is the definitive way to ghost; most people will recognise ghosting excellence for who are the best spacebarers and have supreme skills in the game. A select few people either highlight the skills of real-time ghosters or believe spacebaring is cheating/not that impressive compared to non-spacebaring, which is fine. But as a nsb player myself, I don't have an issue with spacebaring (except the few times a featured ghost slipped away from me). I mean, we can always try and revive the non-spacebar featured ghost list idea, but we would need new mods for that thread, a definitive lower standard. It would be extremely challenging to start a new list from scratch for nsb players in 2025/26 and encourage inclusivity while maintaining a high standard to make the list. But the same problem arises again, how do we know who spacebars or not? Ghosting inputs can give a narrative, but it isn't always accurate. I would like further consensus on this.

 

Ghosting is at its most dormant but it’s still dominated by spacebarrers. It would kill what’s left of it.

I was following along when the original nsb feat thread was active. It never reached the level on enthusiasm as this one from more than maybe 4 people. The problem of verification was on the side of the moderators. People participating in the thread were fine with it and the thread ran for a good while. The moderators wrongfully suspected wano of cheating when he spammed the thread with amazing ghosts, which is when the moderators realized verification will be a huge hassle and abandoned it. The thread was great insight on how many people actually want to compete without spacebarring.

I don’t care if you’re a nonspacebar player who is fine with spacebarrers, all I care about is that ”would the ghosting community be in a better place if spacebarring wasn’t allowed”. And by better I mean that would the most active part of the community be larger, would they be more enthusiastic to compete, would they be overall more pleased with how things are, etc. I underdtand that there are exceptions like yourself who don’t mind spacebarring, but there’s no denying that allowing spacebarring always means that there will be less nonspacebar competition. Or I guess in a perfect world there would be a very active nsb thread and a very active spacebar thread and both would attract new ghosters to each other, but practically that will never be the case in this community.

 

This dude is so tuff

 

Removing the pause button for a month would be funny