Wanted to bring this to your attention: there is a poll currently out on merging all non-Dread difficulties for Any%, 100%, All Bosses, and Legacy (NOT 0%, Minimum Items). The poll will be open until Wednesday at 12PM Eastern Time.

https://forms.gle/h6pzTBniBz5NDhVW6

NOTE: For questions, go to the Metroid Dread Speedrunning Discord, link https://discord.gg/BdmYr5TRGT. I don't manage the form and am not involved in administering the vote, I can't answer your questions.

From the poll contents itself:

[quote]The purpose of this poll is to gauge community opinion on the potential merger of the rookie and hard modes into the normal mode leaderboard. Also the team would like to note that the Boss Rush mode will be added to Metroid Dread page on speedrun.com when these changes are implemented as well.

Please note that the Min Items and 0% categories will be unaffected by this change. The categories which WILL be affected are Any%, 100% and All Bosses and Legacy alongside their respective subcategories. Also Dread mode WILL remain its own respective subcategory for all difficulties.

You can find the discussion about the topic in the Metroid Dread Discord Server under #Discussion -> #combining difficulties on leaderboard (sub category). In addition there was a post in #announcements which details the points made as well.

Below is a summary of the points as well for your reference:

Reasons FOR the board merger

-Insignificant differences between runs of different difficulties. -Reduce verification load, allowing for quicker turn-around times on run submissions. -Reduce the number of boards, particularly sparsely run boards. -Increased engagement with community for runners who prefer different difficulties -Alignment with other communities where rookie/easy is a standard for fastest times. -Difficulty filter option available to compare like runners still -New runners won’t have to feel alienated if they prefer the easier difficulty. -Rookie differences minimal outside of Corpius and Kraid. (RNG heavy fights)

Reasons AGAINST the board merger

-Different difficulties have different skill caps. -Reduce number of boards one can compete on. -Runners forced to “compete” against different difficulties. -Visibility of similar difficulty runs reduced to filter option. -New runners may not explore other difficulties -Potentially makes Corpius/Kraid easier. (“Potentially” as avoiding phase 3 with the extra missiles could negate the positive effect of having more missiles.) -Rookie not “intended” difficulty. Advantaged with 30 missiles start.[/quote]

https://forms.gle/h6pzTBniBz5NDhVW6

A merger of the Rookie, Normal, and Hard difficulties will occur for the Any%, 100%, All Bosses, and Legacy boards. A poll of verified Dread speedrunners with at least one run on the board broke out as follows:

Full text:

[quote]After reviewing the results of the poll and much discussion on the data provided; the staff has agreed that a merger of the rookie, normal, and hard difficulties will occur. (Boards affected include: Any%, 100%, All Bosses, and Legacy boards.) As noted in the results, a majority favored the merger of hard, and the vote for the rookie merger was split evenly. We felt this decision should be made by those who will be most affected. As such, the final decision was based on the results of the poll with those who have verified runs on Metroid Dread’s SRC leaderboards. You can see the statistics below.

There were many reasons for the decision as outlined in the previous announcement. The thread outlining the discussion is also available for review. Ultimately, there was no right answer. The decision was made based on the weight of the pros and cons of each outcome alongside the polling results and arguments brought forth.

The staff determined that; with the availability of filters, the lack of diversity in runs of differing difficulty, and the small number of submissions of non-normal runs, there was sufficient reason to believe the pros of the merger outweighed the cons.

The board updates will be coming following this announcement.[/quote]