Is there a reason the default sort is by RTA instead of IGT? I was always under the impression that this community went by IGT. Is it a 50Hz vs. 60Hz thing?

I ask mainly because I have the 2nd best IGT but I don't even know my RTA.

The default sort is RTA because if it were IGT 50Hz would be faster.

...why not have a separate category for 50Hz and 60Hz?

Another reason is that I don't think we should be penalized for not menuing as fast as possible.

There's no reason to do a speedrun in 50Hz, unless you're going for IGT (which ties in with the leaderboard using RTA).

As for your second post, menuing is part of the speedrun. It's also not very complicated to mash a button for a few seconds every couple minutes.

I intend no offense by this post. I'm just very frustrated by the situation.

Why do you get to decide these things? You don't even have a time on the leaderboards. (I've seen your time trials from your Twitch profile.) MKDD has a 12-year history of going by in-game time, and when the in-game timer is as accurate as it is in this game (thousandths of a second), I don't really see any need for real time.

I'm not just some hack. I'm a supermod for the Metroid series and I single-handedly maintain the leaderboards for all three Metroid Prime games. But I let the community make the decisions about what the rules and categories should be. For the other Metroid games; the ones I know less about? I defer to people who actually run the games. Why can't you do the same thing?

In my perfect world, there would be 10 categories: one for each tour, 150cc and mirror mode, and they'd all be IGT with 50Hz and 60Hz on the same leaderboards, existing as toggle-able variables. I can't think of any possible reasons why the current system would be better than this.

I did not decide this on my own. Before these leaderboards were made, a few top MKDD players did All-Cup Tour runs, notably Andreas Rudmarker (Druvan7) and Richard Karlsson (LyftarN). Even though they are mainly Time Trialers, where 50Hz is used, their All-Cup Tour runs have always been in 60Hz. Adopting RTA on the leaderboards ensures that everyone does runs in 60Hz.

That being said, you could argue stopping people from using 50Hz isn't a good enough reason to ditch IGT. However, even aside from 60/50Hz issues, IGT has its problems. For example, what's to stop someone from taking a breather between tracks? If track transitions don't factor into your time, then it doesn't matter how long you take to move on to the next one. You could attempt to restrict this by imposing some kind of time limit to track transitions, but then you enter the realm of subjective criteria, when the issue is avoided entirely through RTA.

Just because more categories can be added doesn't mean they should. The current system allows for all players to directly compare their times without unnecessarily fragmenting competition into categories with no substantial differences between them.

Another way to make sure everyone does runs in 60 Hz would be to make a rule saying that all runs must be done in 60 Hz. I think this would be preferable to requiring people to submit a less precise time with three fewer decimal points of accuracy.

I'm aware of the problem with IGT allowing people to waste time between tracks. This is an issue with most games that use IGT, although there are plenty of communities whose members really don't care if you pause a lot during your run (i.e. most every Metroid game except Super, which I believe only uses RTA because the IGT doesn't show seconds.) I guess I don't really care that much if people want to waste time between tracks.

For the mirror mode discussion, would you at least be willing to add it as a separate game variable? That way they would all still show on the same page and each person would still only have one time visible by default.

What's the point of mirror mode, though? It's an unnecessary gimmick that doesn't really differ from 150cc.

For one, you can't practice it in time trials so I'd say it's automatically slightly more difficult than 150cc for that reason alone. The muscle memory isn't automatically there just by knowing how to play 150cc. (If you don't believe me, then try it.)

I feel pretty confident that I'm about 99% as good at Mirror Mode as I am at 150cc, and I just hope that all of you see why I find it frustrating that no one arguing against including Mirror Mode on the leaderboards is actually any good at Mirror Mode. My PB is ~30:46 IGT and I'd be more likely to improve it if I could get it accepted as a legitimate category.

While it would be possible to add a rule enforcing 60Hz, many people don't read the rules. Using RTA implicitly handles these cases without any unnecessary misunderstandings. As for timer precision, there haven't been any significant problems with second-wise precision so far, and IGT can be used as a tie-breaker if needed.

In a (single-segment) speedrun, where the objective is to complete the game as quickly as possible, it seems unreasonable to allow the player to take breaks without any negative impact on his/her measured performance.

Again, Mirror Mode isn't substantially different from 150cc: it's a "gimmick", as Goomba puts it. Creating a separate category for Mirror Mode (or even making it a run variable) would detract from 150cc competition and separate runs into two categories which are essentially the same.

"and I just hope that all of you see why I find it frustrating that no one arguing against including Mirror Mode on the leaderboards is actually any good at Mirror Mode."

How would you know that everyone on the leaderboards is shit in mirror mode? That doesn't make any sense.

Not saying that everyone on the leaderboards is shit at mirror mode... just that I assume that most people aren't anywhere near as good at it as they are at 150cc. I could be wrong.