i didnt know about those regional differences, but for timing i think we could do it on the "ready..." that happens before the "fight!" that way it skips the loading and cutscene but also you can start the timer and still get into a good position. its also kinda technically when you first gain control of your character since the pre round movement is involved

yeah i def wanna start doing individual levels now so we dont have to deal with a good run dying to a brutal ai vanishing gut punch into cutscene super

I also think saga leaderboards is a cool idea, but I really do want individual level rankings as well. I dunno if it gets messy with too many things cluttering the actual website or stuff like that, but if it makes things bad that's totally fair. I know of a few cool tricks and skips that aren't super viable in runs since they tend to waste a lot of time if it doesn't go well. With individual levels you could go for the high risk stuff without tossing a good pace, plus it could give us crazy fast theoretical best times adding together the IL records and accounting for menuing.