Thank you for the clarification

or should we have the default be the easy mode to minimize RNG?

I think the runs should count for the normal difficulty and for the run to be legit the video has to show the difficulty selected the beginning before the run starts

Otherwise, there has to be separate leaderboards for easy/normal since the presence encounters are greatly reduce in the easy mode

Are we going to be allowed to pause the timer during loads? They can be ridiculous. I'm noticing 10 second difference against other runners even though I have an SSD...