Just stopping in to say, thanks Mods for doing what you are doing. Folks that have never been a moderator of a game with a super high volume of submissions in such a short time will never really comprehend what it is that you have going on. First come fist serve always sounds great, but it doesn't work with the way this website is designed. There are so many flaws with the verification queue. To name a few, you can't sort the queue, there is no easy way to see or know if another moderator is working on a specific run, if any runner makes ANY edits to an existing run (like changing the description for the run and nothing else) it pops back into the queue and looks like a new run, and it's easy for runs that were submitted first to get pushed behind runs that were submitted later even to the point of being unseeable if enough come through because these mods can only see 50 runs total at any given time.

Everyone needs to submit their runs, pretend that they've completely forgotten they do so and then get excited when they eventually get the notification cause these moderators are doing the best they can with the tools they are given. This game has plenty of mods who are doing fine work, the vocal few of you having issues with how things are going just need be patient.

@LeonShredfield When it became apparent that IGT was a mess with this game and the question about whether or not to do IGT or RTA started to come up originally I started looking closely at the IGT, loading, and other potential issues that could affect timing. I started testing things out on as many of the consoles as I had available to me, a Day One edition Xbox One, a One X, a Series X, a PS4 Pro, and a PS5. After diving deep into all of this, I went back and forth with my own feelings about which timing method would be better and eventually, after a ton of testing and talking with other console runners, I started to lean towards IGT. What made me start to lean that way was taking a look at the problems that both RTA and IGT presented.

The biggest issue with RTA is that there is no way to create parity in the timing, even if you break it down to each individual version of the consoles. It’s easiest to explain with looking at one console as an example. If you have an Xbox One S, the stock internal storage is a 5400rpm HDD that is connected through SATA II which limits the transfer bandwidth of the HDD. If you have an external HDD, one that is for all intents and purposes an identical HDD to the stock internal one, and you connect it though the USB3.0 ports on the One S, USB3.0 has a higher transfer bandwidth and will give you better load times. Connecting an external SSD would give you better load times than that. The changes in load times can be a couple of seconds for some loads, 10-20 seconds for others, and there’s potential for it to go higher for other ones. So, even separating down to the individual console level wouldn’t solve the load time variance unless you’re breaking it down to every possible storage combination.

The reason this isn’t as much of an issue for PC folks and their “RTA” is that they are not actually using RTA. The load removal tool can be looked at more like a new IGT than an actual RTA. It stops on loads, it stops on cutscenes, and it stops on pausing. PC runners utilize the same pause buffering as consoles can because the elevator load times have that much of an affect on the potential outcomes. With consoles, we’d have a true RTA because we don’t have a load removal tool, so every second from starting condition to ending condition counts against you.

With IGT, the biggest issues are that the timer is stopping for inventories being open, the map being open, pausing the game, and time spent in the dukes shop and also that the timer resets when you continue through death or restart. The load times are not much of an issue for IGT because you can use pause buffering on the loading areas that exist during gameplay, like the specific elevators and doors, and the IGT stops during all of the actual loading screens.

The RTA issues for consoles, IMO, carry more weight than the IGT issues because there’s nothing that can be done to make different load times better since they are going to vary from runner to runner, but with IGT you can simply write some rules that get rid of abusing the IGT. Not being able to die in a run absolutely sucks, and it makes the baby skip terrifying, but it’s a compromise that is made to allow for a more fair timing method.

Just, sharing this info since you were asking to get a better understanding.

I mean, the mods been saying for weeks that their plans were to not include a Standard category, hence why in the discord there have been channels for routing Casual, Hardcore, and VOS but none for Standard since the day the discord went live. It’s been publicly available information since a couple days after the game came out. With any new speed game a lot of folks might start running before rules and categories are known and they risk their runs not being valid for the leaderboard. I was doing retry strats in my runs with the assumption it wouldn’t be allowed for console before they gave us the rules, fortunately they allow it but it was the risk I was taking assuming my runs would be invalid for this leaderboard because it’s how I wanted to run the game. Even if it would’ve been invalid, doesn’t really make my effort any less or my achievements any less, I would’ve obviously just needed to make adjustments to be allowed to submit though.

As for choosing casual, I’m sure like with most games that have different difficulties it comes down to it being the fastest, if even by just a handful of seconds.

@GenoaLow Weird post. This game came out this month not at launch of the last generation of consoles. A PS4 or Xbox One costs less right now than a Series X or PS5, and most cost less than the Series S as well. Additionally, if you pay extra for better storage on those old consoles, you get better load times, which equals better RTA times, hence the mod that posted that’s comments about it being pay to win.

I just wanted to post this here, it’s a copy/paste of the recent announcement about console time that was made in the Discord:

[quote=TheDementedSalad] Hello runners! Quick update from us regarding console's timing method (These are simply basic rules and will be fully expanded on before the board release)

• Console runs of this game use In Game Time (IGT)
• Tactical resets and pauses may be used to teleport Ethan, despawn/move enemies or load things quicker
  • Tactical resets must be done within a couple seconds of hitting the checkpoint
  • Any non tactical resets will result in a rejection - non tactical resets being deaths or messing up
• Dying during a run will invalidate it

After much consideration, we decided IGT would be the lesser of two evils. This game was fucked either way between IGT and RTA, and RTA for this game is very P2W even with consoles of the same gen. [/quote]

@deserteagle417 Yes. All of the consoles I used were with stock storage devices.

There are a few threads on here already talking about loading issues with console but they’re more talking about dealing with those issues. So, I wanted to centralize the conversation about RTA vs IGT on console since it is something that is in consideration and bring some data/known info to one single thread to talk about it.

A recap of what we already know: Pausing the game, having your inventory open, having your map open, having the key items or treasures inventory open, time spent in the Dukes shop, and some very specific cutscenes stop IGT from progressing while all the other cutscenes keep the IGT moving and would need to be skipped quick no matter the timing method. Additionally, there are hidden loading gates in specific doors and elevators that keep players with slower hardware back while the next area loads. There is also a loading issue when pressing pause to skip cutscenes or opening any of the inventory menus mentioned above, where on less powerful hardware you can be forced to wait before being able to do anything in these menus.

Let’s take a closer look at the elevators. The elevators before the Beneviento Doll house, in the Windmill on the way to Moreau’s reservoir, and the one that you place the Giant Chalice in on the way to Heisenberg all hide the game loading the next area. I spent quite a but of time over the last couple of days recording footage of these elevators to see what the differences are depending on hardware. I have a PS5, PS4 Pro, Xbox Series X, Xbox One X, and a Xbox One Base Console that I tested, additionally I tested the PS4 version of the game on the PS5 because it is not the same as the PS5 version on PS5. For each console I took footage 15 times on each elevator, except for looking at the Moreau elevator on the Xbox One Base Console which needed additional testing so I got 25 testing attempts on that one. I summed up the results of these tests in the following video, you can pause it in the first 5 seconds to see all the data laid out or continue watching to see one capture of each platform running next to one another: Look strictly at the elevators, we are looking at a 13 second difference on current gen consoles (Series X and PS5) and at best a 1 minute and 16 second difference, at worst a 2 minute and 1 second difference, between best and worst last gen consoles. Additionally, there are doors that seem to have this same behaviour where they will open at different speeds to cover for the next area loading. Another loading related issue that has been commented on in the discord and on these forums is that some people are experiencing black loading screens in various areas of the game. And as I mentioned at the start, there’s also a loading delay that can occur when opening menus or pausing to skip a cutscene, you can see an example of this here: There’s a 1.333 second delay once the pause screen is brought up before any player input can be done in that specific example. The length of this loading can be affected by what’s going on in the scene before you pause to skip or open any of your inventory menus and you can have different lengths of time in the same areas. Some are as low as half a second, some are 2 full seconds. When you take into account the number of times you have to open your inventory to use a key item or pause to skip a cutscene throughout the run, these short .5-2 second delays can add up quickly.

Then there are the loading screens that pop up after skipping certain cutscenes or using a restart. On current gen, these don’t exist on PS5 but they do on Series X. On previous gen consoles, it occurs on every console but the length of the loading time is different depending on the console. I made a video that was posted in the original RTA vs IGT post, the one that was primarily meant for discussing PC, but I’ll post it again here for anyone that did not see that one. It shows the loading time differences due to skipping cutscenes at the very start of the game, but this same kind of difference can be seen in the loading times throughout the run: It’s quite obvious that these issues, the loading time issues, are going to be a major deciding factor for RTA vs IGT and how either can be implemented.

Looking at RTA as an option: This is console, RTA is not going to come with load removal which would fix all of this. Lol. So we are looking at real RTA where you start the timer when the run starts and end the timer when the run ends and every second between is captured. Even if the categories are split by console generation, we run into the issue that parity in loading still doesn’t exist between consoles of the same generation. So how do we make RTA work with this. Splitting each console into its own set of categories is one way but it creates a mess on the leaderboards and would leave a lot of empty or way under-run categories. Grouping by console generation brings more parity but doesn’t get rid of the differences within the generations. This would lead to one platform being OP for running the game on each generation. This is actually fairly normal in speedrunning, where one specific platform or version is king over the others for a game. What RTA does well is get rid of the potential “squatting” in inventory menu or with the Duke, or people taking time to skip the cutscene after they press pause since the timer is still running. It would also allow for using some of the Restarts that teleport ethan forward during the run, but only on certain platforms where loading times are less than the time saved from the teleport.

Looking at IGT as an option: IGT has a couple of issues. The first being the potential for people taking time in the menus/with the duke/skipping cutscenes while paused to skip. The next being that IGT runs during the hidden loading elevators and doors and potentially during the black loading screens. The first issue I mentioned is easily fixed with a rule for consoles that states that all menuing, pauses to skip cutscenes, and merchant visits must be done hastily and tactfully or it could result in rejection. This leaves the loading issues to be dealt with because a 68 second elevator ride RTA is still a 68 second elevator ride IGT. In RE7 we used pause buffering to get rid of the exact same issue that existed in that game, and from the comments I’ve seen in other threads and on the discord it seems like you can achieve parity in these loads by allowing pause buffering in RE8. This would require that pausing be allowed to use these buffers so that consoles of the same generation could have parity in IGT. This type of pause buffering would need to be allowed for areas that are known to create those black loading screens as well. IGT would get rid of the loading issue when pausing to skip or opening an inventory menu that forces you to wait because IGT stops at the time the game is paused and the loading and delay occur during the paused IGT. It is still early in the life of this game so we do not know if IGT has other strange behaviours. Something else that IGT would require is that no one could use the pause option to restart at any point because it reverts IGT to whatever it was at the time of your last autosave. This also happens when you die in the game, continuing on resets your IGT to the time it was at the autosave, so dying in the run would likely have to kill the run as then it becomes more like a segmented run.

Anyhow, I just wanted to have a more focused spot for discussing this since it seems to be spread between multiple other threads and discord discussions. Please, everyone weigh in on this with your thoughts. RTA and IGT both come with some serious issues because of the nature of the game, before the boards go live it comes down to figuring out which is the “least bad” option. Lol. Thank you all for reading this novel.

I’m against splitting a leaderboard in these opening months for an unnecessary few minutes cut off of an otherwise identical run. You want the downside, it unnecessarily increases the submission load for the moderators making verifications, which will likely be insane without it existing, take even longer to get through and all for something that doesn’t need to exist. It also adds even more work to the moderators workload which at this particular time is literally the most stretched it will be until 3-6 months after release. They would need to verify that whatever gets decided on doesn’t mess up later parts of the game, RE Engine isn’t the most stable thing in the world, just having high frame rates can soft lock you in some RE Engine titles. Messing with saves causes other issues in the game and is often difficult for most users to do. Having a trainer hooked to RE Engine with absolutely no cheats actually being activated is enough to make AI act differently. Anyone on the mod team would need a lot of time to look over this stuff. This game has enough challenges it has provided these mods with already without adding the load of potentially creating tools to create a save to make a few people happy or having to verify that the special saves are exactly the correct one that is valid for submitting.

I was one of the people that was working to get NGH to work for RE7 by working close with Toast to make it happen, because we had a 20 minute intro with most of it being unskippable cutscenes. I was even the one that came up with and pushed for the idea of expanding it, making life harder for myself and other mods, to make it able to be run by more people. I’m not against the idea of something being cut ever becoming a category if it ever feels necessary for RE8, but this doesn’t because it’s all playable content and it’s literally a few minutes long. And if you try to add the stay alive portion, then you are getting rid of Lei farming and ammo/material gathering on top of getting rid of the “just hold w” section as y’all are putting it.

I’m done commenting here, cause you seem to have yourself set in your want for this and I’ve listed anything I’d have to say already, but it’s a bad idea for this game, especially at this point in the life of the game.

Literally yesterday you made a post about what constitutes a good speedrun, and the whole "significantly different categories" part of your post seems lost on you today when you are advocating for an identical category minus an intro because of... laziness? Idk. It's a few minutes of actually playing a game, not a bunch of unskippable cutscenes, not a bunch of game breaking glitches or something that we shouldn't have to deal with, but actually playing the game for a few minutes. There is no reason to do no intro over that.

Edit cause I don't think this needs another post: First, I run on PC too, it's on my profile here on sr.c, I prefer console because it usually has more parity so you don't have as much pay to win, but that seems to be gone with this game so ???

Additionally, it does make things worse on mods, every category increases the submission load on them and having been a moderator at launch for the last 2 RE releases, I know they're going to have enough on their plates without needless extra categories that DO NOTHING besides appease some instant gratification you need by not having the intro.

I'm a father of 2. Work full time. I am homeschooling my kids during a pandemic. I moderate a leaderboard with 100+ submissions a month and we keep queue under 10 days most of the time. I spend time with family and friends. I also speedrun. I understand people have lives.

We're talking about a few minutes of actual gameplay that you want to skip for no real reason, just that you don't like it. That "reasoning" literally could be translated to I don't want this part of the game for reason X so a whole new category needs to be created on the leaderboards because of this for anything that anyone wants. If this was because of some serious issue with the game or some other legitimate reason besides "I don't like it" then I'd be all for it. But instead, you want to split the leaderboard and have the same exact run twice because you don't like that there's a section of the game a few minutes long that you have to walk through.

No Intro is a bad idea for this game. All it does is make a split leaderboard because of a few people’s desire to not have a few extra minutes on the run.

The real issue I have is that this would split the leaderboard for no good reason. There’s nothing that will change about the entirety of the run from any decided save point forward, so there’s no reason to make a whole set of other categories that will be doing the exact same run with a few minutes of the start missing. Having double the categories that add nothing new to the run, because it is literally the exact same run, is a terrible idea when it’s just because “I don’t like the opening/movement section that lasts for a few minutes.” If there were real reasons to do it then it becomes something to look at but, legit this is just a few minutes of playing the game. If we’re going to make more categories for the exact same run for absolutely no good reason, then people need to not get mad if console runners want a certain type of platform category split with legit categories (not a filter) because of actual differences from the variations in how the game works on the different consoles.

This game already got rid of cutscenes for us, so we’re now talking about getting rid of gameplay sections. If that section is something that is so egregious that it needs to be removed then are there other areas that should be taken out as well just because? Should we remove the Heisenberg fight as well because of the major scripting portion where you actually don’t have any gameplay but are forced to watch? Should we remove the Lady D fight because in many of what I assume will be categories you’re standing and waiting for her to get around the tower with little to do after a few shots? Should we remove the House of Beneviento because it is effectively just holding W with a few things to do throughout most of it? Should we remove all of Luiza’s house because it is almost completely holding W the whole time while waiting for skip cutscene prompts? This whole notion of deleting part of the game from the run because of a few minutes of movement is no less ridiculous than contemplating any of these other scenarios.

Before RE3R and RE7 get brought up as reasons to support doing this, I’ll say my bit on those because I know they’ve already been mentioned in other places. RE7 has a No Guest House run because the intro is over 20 minutes long and you have control of Ethan for half of that time, tbh probably less than half, with the rest of it being unskippable cutscenes. You don’t even get control of Ethan until 2 minutes and 42 seconds IGT. We had this idea for a community meme category where we got to skip all of that. It’s a meme because we are just deleting the first 1/3 of the game making it the least legit speedrun of RE7 with an official time (hence it being a category extension). We had a lot of support for creating it though because it sounds great, but then no one ran it. We made it much easier and more accessible to run, opened the ability to run it to console players as well, and saw a just a few new runners go to it, but it’s still barely run (in a time when we are having 100+ submissions per month for RE7 mind you). RE3R, I remember the debates about why it should be removed at launch. It ranged literally from “you don’t even play the game during this section” to “you have to do so much that it hurts my hands” and every type of reason in between. RE3R put out this mode and had 67 yes votes out of 73 votes total and less than 1/3 of that number of yes votes actually run it and a third of those categories are empty with 2/3 of the categories having 2 people or less. Granted, it has only been around for 2 months, but you always end up with a lot of people saying they’ll run the game if it only had this cut out, then they don’t. This will be especially true for a game like Village where there is no real reason to do this.

Tldr; It’s ridiculous to split the leaderboards for absolutely nothing being different except removing a few minutes of actual gameplay when there isn’t a reason besides that some people don’t like it. If we do make a no-intro, then where do we draw the line in what is acceptable to remove because you could make the same arguments for other parts of the game. In other games within this series, when this type of category has been made, it is not run by many people despite how many people say they would run it.

@Kaori_3 There are similar situations to this in RE7 and RE3R. We found a fairly simple solution that I would hope the mods would allow for this game, so long as console ends up being IGT. Basically, you allow the runners to pause to let the game catch up with you. In RE7 and RE3R, some sections of the game would just stop you and bring up a loading screen until the game caught up. Both of those games also had certain doors and elevators that you had to wait at so that the next area could load before you could open them. RE3R has sections where the game “gets behind” and doesn’t load the upcoming area but still allows you to go into it before it finally pops in after you’ve entered. RE3R also had trouble keeping up and would make runners pause after the “horde mode” so that they could skip the cutscene faster. All of this stuff was solved for those games by allowing console runners to perform a premeditated short pause before these known bad loading areas and give the game a buffer to load correctly. If this game is not timed IGT for consoles, then this wouldn’t be a viable solution here but, while cumbersome, it would be viable for IGT.

Aside from that, another thing I’ve noticed that would be an issue only for RTA on consoles is that on last gen consoles there is often a slight forced load when opening the pause screen, inventory, maps... basically any menu you have to open can have this slight load occur and you have to wait for it to end before being able to do anything. Since IGT stops when these menus are opened, it wouldn’t affect IGT timed runs, but it would create more disparity between consoles with RTA since the length of that forced load time seems to be varying in lengths in each of the last gen platforms. I haven’t noticed it at all in Series X runs/playthroughs I’ve watched and it doesn’t happen at all on PS5.

I’m starting to get the impression that consoles should go IGT even if there are some less than ideal but easily fixable issues with the timer stopping for various things. All it takes to get rid of people spending extra time without IGT moving is making a console specific rule, for PC as well if it doesn’t go RTA, that says all menuing or merchant visits must be done hastily and tactfully or it could result in rejection. People are going to be buying the same shop items and upgrades and doing the same menuing a lot, this is a speedrun after all, so the expectation that they generally know ahead of time what they need and can be swift at doing these things is not unreasonable. Moderating this game, no matter what decisions are made regarding timing or any of this tbh, is going to be some real work. GL to whoever the group of folks are this time around.

"zgl is typing..." - some of you are going to get that, most probably not. Lol.

I was about to make a separate thread about this but I realized that it’s just another point to consider in the argument of choosing RTA or IGT.

In RE7 we have a number of Retries that we use to manipulate different aspects of the game. Some alter Ethan’s running speed, some “teleport” Ethan forward saving a couple seconds, and some help avoid enemy pop-in and iFrames. I bring it up because I was testing this out in Village and there are some teleport “Restarts” that exist, (example: ) but they may not be able to be used and that will depend on the timing method for runs.

IGT reverts when you use a retry. This includes at death. So, if you die and continue, any IGT progression that occurred from the time of your auto-save to the time of death is wiped away. If you hit restart at any point, all your accrued IGT since your last auto-save is wiped away. See example VOD here: This puts us at a loss of two things if IGT is used, the ability to die and continue a run afterwards and the ability to hit restart for any strategic purpose.

I saw some comments about RTA with Load Removal being messy, it really isn't when referring to the auto-splitter. The wonderful Mr. @CursedToast has been designing these auto-splitters for a while and is more than capable of delivering a more consistent and accurate LiveSplit time using the auto-splitter than the dev's have given us with IGT. We use his auto-splitter with load removal as the official time on PC for 2 different runs in RE7, the No Guest House categories, which are a community creation, and the End of Zoe categories, which do not have an IGT displayed at the end of game stats screen. On console, NGH uses a very awkward IGT subtraction method for official timing and EOZ uses RTA with some messy manual "load removal" for PS users. The way CursedToast designed the auto-splitter for RE7 actually removes some of the "pay to win" aspects of the run on PC because of how it handles starting and stopping the timer compared to how IGT does it. IMO PC speedruns would be in the best position if it's using RTA with a auto-splitter that does load removal.

That is not so cut and dry for consoles. RTA doesn't have a simple load removal option on console; therefor, everything from the decided starting point to the decided ending point is included. I saw a comment mentioning grouping consoles by like storage devices, consoles with SSD's in a group and consoles with HDD's in another, but this doesn't really work if you are using RTA because these consoles have such disparity between the individual consoles. Hell, even the PS5 has disparity with itself. I made a video showing the PS5 playing two different versions of the game, one version being the PS5 version and the other being the PS4 version, to show how the hardware doesn't really dictate parity:

The results of this video are that the sections that are load related and have absolutely no Human Element to cause disparity between them give a 17.733 second difference in the first ~90 seconds of a run that would begin at the point of clicking the difficulty, and this is running on the exact same PS5. The Series X has faster loads than the PS4 version shown in that VOD, but it doesn't have the instant loads for this game like the PS5 does. When we tested load time related things on RE7, we found that a base Xbox One was slower than a Xbox One S which was slower than a Xbox One X, and if someone uses an external HDD or SSD it completely changes the loading times yet again for each version of those consoles, not enough to take advantage of most of RE7's retries but for the sake of looking at RTA it would've been significant as up to 25 seconds difference on one single load between a base Xbox One and a Xbox One X with the stock internal HDD's. I don't have RE Village on Xbox yet, probably won't have the funds for another copy for a while so I can't break down the differences as in depth (I have a Series X, One X, and base One I could test with), but watching some streams you can see the load time difference between the PS5, PS4, Series X, One X, and One S. I haven't seen any streams on Xbox One base console or Series S. Ultimately, what I'm getting at is if console goes RTA, the times from each individual version of each console means PS5 is free WR's over everything else, Series X is likely the next block, with Xbox One X, PS4 and PS4 Pro, Xbox One S, and Xbox One base console following if all skill related things were equal and likely in exactly that order.

With all of this being said, it's entirely possible that the loading differences can have an affect on IGT as well. I'm working through the PS4 version of the game now so I can get the IGT timer on my pause screens since PS5 save data doesn't share with PS4 (/sigh), and hopefully I can get access to a Xbox copy. I'll try to get some data on how loads affect IGT from every version I do end up with though. I think even if IGT does get affected by loading times, it won't be nearly as significant as the time differences we will see between the consoles in RTA and because of that I think if the decision is made for console to go RTA then the only fair option would be to split each console off individually, unless someone comes up with a quick and easy way to get load removal on console as well. If the decision is to stick with IGT for consoles, then I think "Restarts" should be banned from use on console as well as continuing from death since whatever IGT progression you have is erased.

tldr: In this individual's opinion, PC should use the auto-splitter and be RTA with Load Removal. Console RTA is pretty grim looking, but IGT seriously needs to be tested to see how borked it is between different hardware. Console has no good choices on the table, again IMO, in terms of official timing. Nothing in this post even touches on the other flaws of IGT or RTA that have been listed already in this thread.

.#blamezgl

Apologies on the delay, but the new No Guest House leaderboards have been created and all of the old runs have migrated to the new boards already! You can find them on the new Category Extensions Leaderboards here: https://www.speedrun.com/re7ce

You can also find the PSVR Leaderboards on the new Category Extensions Leaderboards! With VR now having it's own leaderboards we will no longer be accepting runs for the main leaderboards that are done in VR. Any VR run that was submitted to the main leaderboards prior to March 18th 2021 will remain on the main leaderboards.

The Beginning Hour categories have not yet been added to the new Category Extensions boards. They are coming soon but we are finishing up the specifics of each of the categories! Once we add the Beginning Hour categories I'll make one last post/reply here saying that they're done!

The PSVR Leaderboards are live! At this time the PSVR Leaderboards only show the Easy difficulty. This is simply because we have never received any PSVR runs submitted to the Madhouse leaderboards in the main game (that we are aware of) and we've never had any requests for Madhouse PSVR. If you have a Madhouse PSVR run and want to submit it, please reply on this post with a link to a video of your Madhouse PSVR run and we'll add Madhouse to the PSVR page for you to submit to.

This issue has already been through discussion and was decided on within this community years ago that all versions are kept on the same leaderboard. Cero D is available in all regions on every platform so anyone that wants to run competitively at the top of the leaderboards have access to that version of the game.

On PS4/5 you have the option to import a physical copy of the game, you can get the Cero D version of the Not a Hero DLC by creating a Japanese PSN account and downloading it after getting the Cero D version of the main game. On Xbox One and on Xbox Series S|X you can either import a physical copy or change the region of your device to Japan before downloading the game or DLC to get the Cero D version. On PC you have to purchase the game through the Microsoft Store, not Steam, and change the region to Japan before downloading the game. On Xbox and the Microsoft Store for PC the game is often on sale for under $10USD. Check out this video for that shows how to get the game on Xbox and PC:

Having a specific version of the game that is faster is a common thing in speedrunning. In some cases there are specific versions of the game and specific versions of the consoles they are run on. This community ultimately decided to keep all of the versions on the same leaderboards, as many other communities do in this same situation. It ultimately comes to the individual runners choice on if they want to invest in that version or not.

I just wanted to go on and update everyone on this since we've given some time for everyone to look and comment. Between the comments here and on the discord there was not one person that came out as being opposed, which never happens when you're making changes to something in the world of speedrunning, so we are going to get to work on making these changes.

Please wait before submitting any more runs for No Guest House until after the new leaderboards are created and ALL of the existing runs have been transferred. This will make sure we don't end up with double submissions and it will allow us, the mod team, to make this transition go as smoothly as we can possibly make it.

One major thing has changed since we did a similar move of all of the DLC from the old leaderboards to the new sub-games, and that thing is that Speedrun.com has removed the ability for moderators and super moderators to create their own sub-games. Because of this we will be working with the new Speedrun.com site moderators to get this going, which means this new Category Extensions leaderboard is not going to happen at the snap of our fingers like how we handled the DLC leaderboards. I will be contacting the site moderators shortly to get this process rolling, and hopefully it won't take very long before we get the new leaderboards setup.

We appreciate all the feedback that we received, both on these forums and on the community discord, and look forward to getting things moving! As soon as I know when the new boards can be created I'll comment either here or on the discord, and once everything is ready for submissions I will make one last update on this post before locking it.

Hey everyone! I have a bit of a proposition for everyone to take a look at and see what your thoughts are. Over the last 4 years there have been requests, directly and indirectly, about various categories. One of those recommendations of course, was our community meme, the No Guest House. No Guest House has been a pain in the ass to everyone since it was introduced almost 3 years ago. It is difficult for us moderators in verifying because of the specificity of the save file and it is even more of a pain in the ass for anyone that wants to run it because of the hoops that you are forced to jump through just to get that save to work and additionally because of the forced exclusivity that it creates.

So this proposition is that we create a Category Extensions leaderboard as a sub-game, similar to how we have the DLC as sub-games. Once these boards are created, we would move the NGH to the Category Extensions leaderboards and with this move we would also make NGH less restrictive. What is being suggested is that we would remove the mandate for using the pre-made NGH zero’d save and allow everyone to create their own saves while using the same timing methods that are already in place for both PC and Console. This would open the category up for runners on PC using the Steam version, PS4 and PS5 runners, and it would make the run more accessible for Xbox and Microsoft Store version runners by getting rid of the difficult “installation” process. There would be certain requirements for saves being created by the runners to match the current NGH save for any runner created save to be valid:

•The runner created save MUST be created directly after receiving the knife from the Deputy. Making any progress beyond receiving the knife prior to making the save will automatically result in rejection. •The runner created save MUST have the inventory empty with exception that it must only have the knife. Any other items in your inventory prior to making the save will automatically result in a rejection. •The runner created save MUST not have the wall skip implemented at the time of the save. If the wall has been destroyed prior to creating the save, then it will automatically result in a rejection. •The runner created save MUST be created in as close to the same position in the laundry room to the original NGH save as possible with Ethan facing as close to the same place as possible. If the moderators deem the positioning too significantly different from the original NGH save, then the runner will have to accept the rejection and make a new save adjusting their position to the correct area.

This obviously will not protect against the potential for DA manipulation prior to creating the save. While this is not initially something that can be viewed as a positive, if we simply allow the DA manipulation and everyone can create their own save then anyone can attempt to manipulate the DA as part of their strategy. Having NGH as a Category Extension gives more freedom to the category than it should have as even a miscellaneous category on the main leaderboards. If we leave the NGH on the main leaderboards/decide not to create a Category Extensions board, then the current rules and accessibility will likely stay the same.

In addition to moving NGH to these Category Extensions, there are some new categories that we have had requests for in the past that would fit well specifically as Category Extensions. The most commonly asked for categories over the last 4 years are for a PSVR category and for the Beginning Hour Demo to have a category and we are planning to include these when the Category Extensions boards would be made. Besides being the most requested, they also work well as speedruns. The Beginning Hour demo has different endings, which allows for different categories for this run. PSVR would be any% only and include all the any% categories that you would see for the main game.

We are looking for your feedback on all of this as these are the ideas that we have and are not yet decided on. What are your thoughts on opening the NGH category from using the single pre-made save to runner created saves?

After a few days of testing, this is what I've found:

At this time no next-gen updates/patches have been applied to RE7. Since there have been no patches, the frame rate still is capped at 60fps meaning that advantages that exist from having a higher framerate on PC do not exist on the Series X or PS5. The controllers do feel better on both PS5 and Series X whether you are using a next-gen controller or using a previous gen controller. The responsiveness feels slightly better on PS5 than it did on PS4, and much better on the Series X than it did on Xbox One. This is fairly subjective, but I've always felt that the analogue stick dead zones on Xbox One were larger making more subtle movement more difficult and this has been reduced drastically compared to even using the same controller on the Series X. Overall, the controllers on Series X and PS5 feel incredibly similar while running.

Unfortunately, there is a difference in performance between the two consoles that does affect IGT. After testing the loading abilities of both next-gen machines as well as the previous gen machines I've found that while both the PS5 and Series X overall run the game better and seemingly at a steady 60fps, the Series X does perform better overall. Loading a save takes the Series X 8-11 seconds whereas the PS5 takes 40-43 seconds. Both instances are faster than their last gen counterparts, which could take over a minute to load in a save file, but that difference in the systems being able to load leads to advantages on the Xbox Series X that the PlayStation 5 does not have. All of the PC retries are useable on the Xbox Series X, though two of them seem as though they may only provide at most a handful of milliseconds time saved but they certainly do not lose any time if used. On the PS5, two of the PC retries return results that are equal to not using the retries and the other two lose about a half of a second if used. Below is a chart detailing all 7 retries used on PC and the amount of IGT that is lost during the load before IGT can be checked again on console. On the far right side of the chart you can see how long the same actions take without using a retry. Also included in that chart are the load times for the long load on the Ship. After a lot of testing there has been shown to be no IGT advantage to any console because of the faster load speeds on the long ship load, the load from the ship tape, the loads from the tape at the start of 100% runs, or from other areas where the game loads naturally/without a retry being involved.

Roughly, the Xbox Series X has about a 7 second advantage over all of the other consoles at this time and the PS5 provides faster load times but does not have any IGT advantages over previous gen consoles at this time. Some things to keep in mind, it is possible as Sony has firmware updates that the PS4 emulation on PS5 could be affected or the developers could utilize the PS5's Game Boost feature at a later date for RE7, but at this moment neither have made any comments regarding this being planned.

Some additional performance related notes. I have never had a black loading screen occur on the PS5 in all of my testing so far, but oddly I did have the one that occurs in old house on PS4 begin to occur but quickly stop one time while testing Xbox Series X. Additionally, texture popping does still occur on PS5 but it is reduced to only a handful of areas and for significantly shorter periods before the pop in happens, I never experienced any texture popping on Series X. Both consoles still have LOD popping from objects at a distance, that would need to be changed in a patch by increasing the LOD distance which I doubt they would do as it could negatively affect performance or cause unexpected issues with game triggers.

I have not yet looked at any DLC yet, though NAH and EOZ should be the only DLC that will likely see any improvements considering they are the only DLC that have loading related issues on previous gen consoles. I can update here when I get a moment to look at those DLC's. If you have any questions or can think of any specific performance related testing that you'd like me to check out let me know. If you have any comments on this in regards to the leaderboards, leave your thoughts below.

Edit: As a side note, the base PS4 and PS4 Slim have the exact same retry IGT times as the PS4 Pro. The base Xbox One and Xbox One S hold similar retry IGT times as the Xbox One X, except that the loads for PC retries are slightly longer on those consoles. I did not include any of this in the chart above because the useable retries on previous gen all have the same times as the PS4 Pro and One X and the not-useable retries don't really matter since we already knew they couldn't be used on those platforms.

With the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 coming out next week I wanted to make a post to discuss what the plans are regarding these consoles and RE7 speedruns.

The first thing I think is relevant to mention is that we will NOT be accepting runs done on next gen consoles right away. At this time we do not know how the game will run on next gen hardware and for this reason we will be waiting until we have enough information to better decide how to handle runs/leaderboards with the new hardware. What we do know about the Series X|S and PS5 is that they certainly reduce loading times, even on backwards compatible games, but how much exactly we don’t know. If the load reduction is significant enough, running on these consoles could provide the ability to use previously PC only retries. We also know that some games on the next gen consoles are getting patches as backwards compatible titles or as complete overhauls and being re-released as next gen titles and in either case the games can see significant changes in performance, but we have no idea if RE7 specifically will benefit from any next gen specific treatments.

After we, the mods and the RE7 community as a whole, get our hands on the PS5 and Series X|S to test things out and we find out how things are working we will be able to make better decisions on how to handle next gen. Other RE games have handled new console generations in just about every way you can: keeping all generations of consoles in a single console category, grouping each console generation to their own generation of categories, and separating each console into their own individual category. You can see the reasoning behind the decisions that were made for most of these games, and with RE7 we will consider the specific conditions that are seen on the new consoles. Depending on what exactly the differences are, we most likely will see either all console generations in the existing Console category or they will be separated into generations with the current Console categories housing current gen and a new console group for next gen. For absolute clarity, there have been no decisions made or set in stone yet for how next gen will be incorporated into the leaderboards, we really are waiting to see what is actually necessary before any decisions regarding next gen are made. We likely will NOT have this all figured out in the first week, so please be patient during this period while we figure it all out.

We will definitely be looking to the community for help in testing things as at this time only one of the mods will have access to the Series X and PS5 on day one. If you notice something working differently please upload video of it to YouTube/clip it on Twitch and respond to this post with the link. Once we have a better understanding of how next gen consoles should be incorporated into the leaderboards we’ll make a post here and link to it on the discord.