I've read through all of the old forums posts and I wanted to give my opinion as I plan on playing this game soon and I think the current leaders are somewhat restrictive and limiting. Note: This is just my opinion and I know this game is old, but since it was recently free on Xbox and Aragami 2 comes out next year, this game has a chance to gain some popularity and new submissions and I'm curious to see what people some up with.
I think the main issue is with v1.03b and the current categories. First, I think it's fair to say that the current pc version and all console players can't compete with the old and unpatched Aragami runs. This creates a big problem as new potential runners (such as myself) don't want to be forced to play on old patches (which btw is impossible for console players), just to have a decent time on the leaderboards.
No New Game categories? I'm curious why 🤔.
How do you time the runs for console? I've never used a plug-in or autosplitter in my lifesplit so I don't know if that's a PC only thing. I also don't see it in the resources tab, so I'm not sure where to get it from.
My suggestion would be to have 4 main categories at the top: Any%, Any% NG+, Any% Co-op, Any% NG+ Co-op. Create subcategories for Current patch and v1.03b.
If there would be a sudden rush with new runners using consoles, one way to solve this is to split PC and console-players, having their own tabs for said systems. Having both basis covered under one tab now is much easier to handle, since playerbase is very low.
As with every game, categories are made when the run for said category has been made, dunno why New Game isn't here, maybe it is too dull to play rather than blasting through with all the powerups?
Can't remember if there is some kind of in-game timer, but if played on console (at least for first) I would assume timing would be the same when starting and finishing the game. The only problem is with loading screens, but maybe they would need to be done after the run with re-timing.
Sorry for the late reply, been busy over the holidays and simply forgot.
Tohelot is pretty much on point with everything. We are always open to adding more categories if there is an interest, reason to why there's only two categories at the moment is that these are the only ones that has been ever ran. There have been people before that said they might run the game on current patch but never ended up doing it and we don't want to add a bunch of categories just to have them end up being empty. I have even routed and found quite a few skips for current patch to help any potential runner for it.
The reason why we don't have any New Game runs at the moment is because it really doesn't make much of a difference in the end since you can do pretty much everything without powerups, just slower. While I haven't routed it out you might end up picking up a few scrolls that are close to the NG+ route and grab one upgrade. So basically it's just a slightly worse NG+ run and so far no one has had an interest in it, hence no category for it.
The load remover/autosplitter is unfortunately only available for PC runs so timing for console runs would have to be done manually. As there hasn't been any console runner yet, the question whether or not to split up the LB hasn't been brought up.
I hope this answers some of your questions and if you or anyone else who wishes to discuss things regarding the game, feel free to contact me through discord as it is the fastest way to get in contact with me.
Regards.
