Talk:Sequence break

Scope

This article was created to be a better place to document the exploits that allow parts of the Pikmin games to be skipped. The out of bounds article wasn't the best place because it has more of a focus on locations and methods of going out of bounds, and the main glitch articles weren't the best place either since often there were no glitches past the initial out of bounds movement. So now we have this article. But what exactly should this article have? What should it cover in each game?

Here are my thoughts. The only tricks that should count as sequence breaks are those that break the sequence of major events in the story, such as unlocking a Pikmin type. Thus skipping a wall to access a cave faster wouldn't count, even though it's a faster way to get to the cave, unless it also allowed you to get to the cave before unlocking a Pikmin type intended to be used to get there. This definition has different effects for different games. For Pikmin, it leaves very little counted as a sequence break because of how few major events it has. Getting a few ship parts without Blue Pikmin is basically all that can be counted. For Pikmin 2, it leaves a bit more considering how more major sequence breaks exist and are used in the 5 day run, but there still aren't many, considering it excludes most of the napsack tricks that are already documented on the path oversights article. For Pikmin 3, it's much more broad considering the linear story, and there is the potential to document loads of tricks to get fruits before the intended type. For this reason, I don't think fruits (or treasures in Pikmin 2) should be discussed in this article, only ship parts. This definition isn't perfect, as it's hard to define exactly what a sequence break is. But for the purposes of this article, is it good enough for now? — Soprano_(talk) 17:43, August 24, 2021 (EDT)

When designing the game, the lead game designers had a certain sequence in mind, like what order stages should be visited in, what order Pikmin types should be unlocked in, etc. With that established, they hand it off to other designers to create content with these aspects in mind, like the area designers. That said, the area designers themselves also have an intended sequence of events within the area, at least for some parts of it. Like "before getting to this item, the player must first push this box and then open this gate", or "before accessing this boss, the player has to have a certain Pikmin type to complete a puzzle", etc. Both these "macro" and "micro" sequences count as designed sequences by the designers, in my book. So any exploit that allows skipping any sequence should be documented.

As for sequence breaks that do skip content, but don't allow the player to get back onto the main sequence, i.e. exploits that leave the game unwinnable or let it crash, I don't think those would count. However, for the sake of completion, I reckon there could be a section just for these scenarios. — {Espyo^T} 13:41, August 26, 2021 (EDT)

I’m a little late, but here’s my perspective on the matter. While, yes, skipping a wall may not be as grandiose as something like Pikmin 2’s early Blues, it still is breaking the sequence intended by the developers, and is therefore a sequence break. And while it may seem like not including them may make sense at first, we still should document them somewhere, and they don’t really warrant their own article for the sake of their similarity to the content of this one. Therefore, they should be included here. On the other hand, grouping Early Tremendous Sniffer with Early Pink Pikmin still feels off, so perhaps for each game we could make two sections: Major and minor. Major should handle things like early Pikmin types or more complicated cave earlys like Shower Room Early, while minor could have simple yet still important tricks like Tremendous Sniffer early or Glutton’s Kitchen early.

Also, why should we skip over the Napsack tricks? The Path Mistake article only says where the tricks are and gives a vague idea of their benefits at most. This article could go into further detail on what the exploit allows, while the Path Mistake article can go into some practically useless but still notable exploits, giving each article its own purpose.

This is a message from Lord Breadbug, “I await you on the Bread Isle,” 21:41, August 30, 2021 (EDT)