They really don't have to be, and tbh if we did go that way we have a massive community, it wouldn't be that bad.
Alright, as for what this post is going to be about, I'll be discussing how we should moderate this game on Speedrun.com.
A little bit of background for me in Speedrunning as well, I've been running for 5 years. I've had interest in multiple series, where I've submitted ILs and full game speedruns before, such as in Ratchet & Clank (Multiple Categories from the Original Trilogy and PS4) and in Sonic the Hedgehog (1, 3K, SA1, Heroes, Lost World) - Meaning I haven't exactly been around for the longest amount of time when compared to a lot of the users on this site, but I've had my fair share of experience with Speedrunning, and have had a consistent interest in multiple games ever since I started.
Thus, based on my experience, I've come to the conclusion that Sonic Mania shouldn't be handled the way it's being planned to, and that's mostly down to a couple of things.
For one, the current Moderators of this board seem unwilling to allow users to submit full runs at this moment in time (despite the overwhelming competition hot off the game's release) and to me and many others that could end up being rather detrimental to the game's short-term viability as a speedgame. If people are unable to submit runs at this point, it's very possible that interest will soon be lost and we could lose potential runners for this game, because it would turn people off from the get-go. Not saying this is assured, but it's a distinct possibility if we can't keep the ball rolling.
You're probably wondering why we can't yet submit runs, and the reason I've been given was to wait for the PC Version. I understand maybe for an IL Leaderboard (which I'll get onto later) but for full game runs this makes ZERO sense. I presume the reason behind this is for a possible (likely inevitable) patch that fixes a lot of the known bugs, but shouldn't be an issue at all, since said patch will surely come hand in hand on consoles as well? Even then as a community, we can decide whether we want to choose between 1.0 and later versions of the game, which makes this wait for the PC version all the more arbitrary.
Another thing is IL (individual level) leaderboards. The past games haven't had them, and I've seen people contest us on this out of tradition - But considering the fact that Time Attack IL Times aren't synced across multiple platforms, why not have a Leaderboard here on Speedrun.com like some other games do? Freedom Planet is a perfect example of how it should be handled
On a final note, other things we should consider are categories, and whilst not set in stone, I don't think we should just copy Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 & Knuckles for the sake of tradition. For example, in Mania, you can independently control Tails using a single controller, allowing Sonic/Tails to be a main category due to plenty of new routes opening up with a combination of Sonic's Elemental Shields and Tails' Flight. We also should re-consider the viability of "All Emeralds" for each category as well, even though they were kinda treated as a meme run for the Genesis Trilogy.
[if any of the mods want to discuss this - i'd love to by the way - contact me on discord or twitter]
