I think we should, as a group, revisit the idea of merging all the platform categories. Almost all runners only have the game on one platform, and it would look really nice if the list was longer and we were all competing against each other. The load times are not outrageously different.
I think we should vote twice to establish what the community here wants as a whole. First vote; Do we leave the categories exactly how they are, or merge them? And the next vote; if we merge them, Should we either, Cut out load times, just leave the load times in and if you play on an inferior system that's just the penalty you have, or the third option of adding or removing specific amounts of time depending on what system you are running.
I would really like to hear peoples thoughts on this, I've been thinking about this and wanting to merge the categories for years, this would also bring in more runners, and I know that everyone who ran this game loved it. It's a hidden treasure and I want as many people to discover it as possible.
I don't like the idea of merging. I have Unfinished Swan on my Vita and I'm sure if I ever decided to run that version, it would be impossible to compete with that one. Removing loads seems like more of a pain than just leaving it the way it is. It's like the Silent Hill 2 board - PC is the only one that's competitive. You can't compete if you play on PS2 or Xbox. So no one runs those other versions. It basically just forces everyone onto the platforms with better loadtimes (or in the case of Silent Hill 2 - glitches that save you time that can't be performed on the other platforms) and anyone who can't use those platforms, decides not to run it because their version is inferior and they'll never be able to compete.
The argument could be made that this will actuallly cause LESS people to run the game than more. That's my opinion. I want more people to play the game too but having someone on Vita/PS TV competing with PC is just going to be super unfair to the Vita player. They're never going to be able to compete on that board, even if you take out loads. The game is just going to run smoother on better platforms, period. So that's my say for whatever it's worth. I own the game all over the place so it's not a huge deal to me but not everyone is so lucky.
I'm pretty much in the same camp as Droogie. I'd be down for merging everything if we wanted to take load times into account to make comparing runs "apples to apples" across all platforms (assuming there are no other differences besides loading times. How much are load time differences, btw?).
Otherwise, it seems a fair option to leave things as is. That being said, if someone runs on PS4 HDD and someone else on SSD, that can of worms could potentially be opened within the same platform category (seen this conundrum in quite a few games. Some take load times into account while others leave as is with hardware advantages unfortunately being part of the leaderboard).
My vote is for whatever keeps things the most fair so that hardware accessibility or limitations don't deter new runners and don't put current runners at a disadvantage. I understand some solutions (like load time removing as an example) are sometimes easier said than done and don't always work for every game. That being said, I only ran/run this game somewhat casually so take my opinions with a grain of salt.
I'm ok with merging. The load differences seem pretty small between ps4 and pc, the two most popular platforms. Unfortunately there isn't really a perfect solution to this problem without manually retiming runs to remove loads since a load remover on console is basically impossible.
I’m fine with either keeping them split or using an auto-splitter. There are autosplit tools that work with video input rather than gameplay now so that might be a reasonable solution.
Yeah, I think a visual autosplitter would be pretty simple to put together, especially for this game how it shows 'loading' every time.
Going back and manually adding up the 'loading' screens afterward would also be pretty quick and easy to do, albeit a small bit less accurate depending on the timer situation in VODs and VOD quality.
Then before we merge since that seems to be where this is headed, someone needs to make the autosplitter. Preferably one that works with video input rather than gameplay as Glitch Me suggested.
That would be really cool for someone to make that, I don't have the know how unfortunately. Everyone seems against hardware advantage except for me so I guess that things will remain how they are until someone makes one. :(
Another thing I thought of is just cutting down the platforms. like.. Vita and ps3 in 1 category and then the rest in their own category. Obviously vita and ps3 have much slower load times, but the other 2 are identical from what I can tell. And there isn't even a version for ps5 or mobile. Merging ps4 and pc seem reasonable since they have the same load times, this is because there is a minimum load time for the game, so having better hardware has diminishing results. Maybe saving like 1 second if you have a beefed up pc.
