Karik, don't worry about scaring people off, even with current RTA that doesn't have any penalties doesn't attract many people. Racing speedruns are a niche category anyway – most people associate speedrunning with a red Italian screaming "HOOO" and "WOHOOOO" every two seconds for 90 minutes straight. I mean, even if it's just us both racing for the 1st place in each category, that's still fine. ;)

Pretty much what Ananas said. Based off other Rally/Dirt boards there really isn't much of a community for each game, so this category fixup is really just for you guys. Given my time in the Dirt 3 leaderboards (which is arguably much more casual and much more open to newer runners), I'd predict that at most there will only be maybe 1-3 runners apart from yourselves who will submit at least one run in the next 2 years. Really only myself and Bunny have ever been actually active runners for that game.

The whole point of changing this is just to make it easier to compare times/skill due to the variable loading issues, so really any changes should be focused on solving that while trying to preserve as much of the board as we currently have.

I think I've come up with a decent compromise. You're allowed to restart, however any IGT you had accumulated up to that point gets added into the total time at the end. That way everything is still technically timed with the in-game timer but it prevents people from abusing it in any way.

This is similar to the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 rules, which state "Any deaths also count towards your in-game time. Add the amount of time lost (time at death minus time when when you reappear)."

^What about jumpstart? Will restart after that cause some kind of time add to your IGT? I'm not sure if accumulated time is big enough as 10s penalty for a jump start which u normally get added to stage time.

In the game timer start to run at GO after 5s countdown. If u jumpstart the timer starts to run immediately. Le'ts say u jump start when countdown is at 1 and then u take restart. After that there's video of car closing to the start line again and after u hold handbrake the countdown starts from 5. How much that will add to IGT, will it be less than 10s?

If accumulated time isn't big enough(not sure how it works it that situation) a jump start+restart after that should give 10s added to IGT so it won't even worth to do a restart. If u set On-Screen-Messages ON in the game settings it will also show jumpstart message on the screen.

Well penalty times would be included in the IGT, thus when you restart you'd still have to add the extra 10 seconds. Going through the cutscenes again wouldn't really matter because going through them was never going to increase IGT anyway, only RTA, which can still be used for tiebreaking.

So just to confirm with changes I'll be making to the rules-

1. Timing starts once you select your car (from within the car selection screen) - This isn't really a change, just trying to be more explicit to avoid confusion.
2. Runs will be ranked via IGT but RTA will be used to break ties.
3. Any IGT time accumulated up to any kind of restart must also be included within IGT. This includes any penalty time gained prior to the restart.

All good?

yep, all fine by me

Yes, that's good

Thank you very much for the changes! The Loading Times where a Big Issue when going for competitive Times.