In follow up to my previous thread, here are some suggestions I would like to make in regards to parameters that I feel would improve both ease of engagement and fairness across the various platforms available:

• Time With no internal game time, times of course have to be calculated externally. Due to load screen times varying significantly across the available platforms, I would make the suggestion of pausing the run time when they in play. All load screens in game, besides the first initial new game load screen, follow immediately after skipping a cutscene, knowingly activated through the action of holding a 2-3 second input. I feel this window gives great if but enough opportunity to allow for manual split interactions. Having then paused the time, the timer is reactivated after the load screens final frame or more comfortably the frame after skipping the cutscene that follows when the load screen completes, as is present with every load screen in game. In similar fashion, the start timer is activated after the first initial new game load screen, or again after skipping the cutscene that follows. Final run time is then attained as the in game credits activate.

• Categories In similar fashion to the any% category format, I would love to suggest expanding secret ending to mirror its sub categories (e.g Kensei Secret Ending) and possibly even adding 100% categories in the same manner, which would give a total of 10 runs, offering a lot of versatility for runners.

Thanks a lot, take care.

We were recently discussing in the discord that certain categories like difficulty etc wouldn't be added until more people were a part of the community and showed interest in doing those particular runs. So that's just going to potentially show up as time goes on.

As for timing, I believe someone is working on an automatic splitter, but to ask that we start and stop the timer during each cutscene or load screen is pretty taxing having to do it manually, and even more so for anyone who is validating the runs. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like it would even save that much time.

Great thread @UkzMadman here is my view on things regarding the following

"Due to load screen times varying significantly across the available platforms, I would make the suggestion of pausing the run time when they in play. "

While I wouldn't mind this, it will led to inconsistent timings as people might unpause 1-2 secs later or start pausing 1-2 secs late (plus under added pressure during the run as well), at that stage you might as well just let the moderators manually time out the loads for all runs, which I wouldn't mind doing or having another pair of hands to help but it would require doing a lot of work.

in my opinion there is another few ways around this, either first making another sub-cat that has the boards divided between SSDs users and HDDs users similar to the PC / Console split seen on other boards but since PC doesn't have an advantage in this game to other consoles that use SSD it would be named as such instead. Got to be honest I never liked seeing the PC/Console or SSD/HDD sub-cats myself as no one cares about the slower sub-cat other than the runners.

the third way I see it is adding another filter with just SSD/HDD (similar to the Difficulty filter) and taking a rough/fixed amount off HDD's players time due to loads to try and line up with SSD players this would be a lot less work as currently there doesn't seem to be many players using a HDD. Let me know what you guys think or if you have any other ideas that might involve the issue with HDD users?

"• Categories In similar fashion to the any% category format, I would love to suggest expanding secret ending to mirror its sub categories (e.g Kensei Secret Ending) and possibly even adding 100% categories in the same manner, which would give a total of 10 runs, offering a lot of versatility for runners."

Right so if you wish to run any other categories such as secret ending kensei just submit a run and it will be added as a sub-cat the reason it isn't currently on there is because no one has a run yet, same applies to 100% or all collectibles these aren't on there because it would just be empty space on the boards similar to ronin where it would show empty (hopefully will manage a run of ronin myself to fix that) if you submit a kensei secret ending run or ronin secret ending run the sub-cat will be added same with 100%. But for the less common categories I would recommend asking beforehand and seeing if it will change the gameplay dynamic much if you consider the existing categories e.g stuff like Low% ronin would be a big change compared to anything else on the boards.