I am not a runner, past or present, just someone who is learning the game currently and hopes to become a runner. I am not voting. You're welcome to skip over this if you aren't interested in my opinion, however what I'd like to offer is the opinion that only someone brand new looking into the game and the community might offer, and I hope that's of some value you to some of you.

1. I've read through all 7-odd pages of this. It's insanely toxic. I've read many other forum posts and guides and have sat in most of your chats, so I know that that doesn't completely pervade the community, but it's very discouraging nonetheless. This kind of contentious topic requires getting down and dirty, per se, but there has to be a civilized way to do it, or you will scare away new people such as myself.

2. As someone learning the game, tools such as SRT which show me my health and ammo are useful until I get off my feet and memorize damage values and whathaveyou. A tool which would allow me to choose GL or Magnum for long practice sessions of one of the two independent routes would also be useful until mastery of both routes is achieved.

3. Any% is the core of all speedrunning games. But if the GL route is currently the faster of the two, there's little to incentivize current runners to run the magnum route or new runners to learn the magnum route. This is different from Arrange or Nemesis%, which have their own value and enjoyment factor, in part because they are simply completely different. Magnum% as a category doesn't currently enjoy that same luxury. As it stands now, the magnum route (or Magnum%) is viewed as a throwaway by most people I'm reading and most people I've seen run. Keep in mind, even on your own leaderboards it is not placed front and center as one of the two main categories of an any% run, which is indicative of the general opinion about it. If you really see value in it and wish to maintain the sanctity of the game, than an important issue of this speedrunning community needs to be addressing ways to incentivzing the magnum route/magnum%, even though it is currently an inferior speed category. The SM64 speedrun community has 16 and 70 star categories which, at their core, are merely antiquated any% categories, and thus also inferior speed categories. Obviously there's a huge difference in that an SM64 run doesn't force you into a certain category with RNG the way RE3 does, but the more important point is that the speedrunning community has brought enough interest and further development into those categories so that they are not eclipsed by faster ones. Something of a similar nature would be very useful for RE3 and would help mitigate contentious discussions such as this one.

That's it, that's all I feel comfortable saying. I'm going back to learning this great game. Thanks for those of you that read.

Users interested in speedrunning the game may join our discord channel for strats, files, and general discussion.

https://discord.gg/7hd59z2