Hey everyone the game has been out for a few days now so we have some things we would like to discuss with you and hear your opinions on.

1. What should be the official timing method?

The starting point seems fairly standard but where timing ends is in the air with people wanting to stop time before the heartbeat portion. Right now we are proposing timing ends when the beam hits Xehanort.

2. Level 1 for beginner and standard?

For those who have played around with level 1 beginner it plays a lot like proud in the early game and then transitions into its own personal hell. Meanwhile level 1 proud looks massively unfun and not entertaining at all. I propose adding beginner and standard as their own categories rather than just having proud level 1.

3. DLC Keyblades?

I think we can all agree that the Xbox keyblade is a significant power increase in the early worlds just due to how useful early thunder is while the PS4 keyblade gives you some nice movement options. We're mostly in agreement that we should split the game into any% and any% no DLC but if people want to argue the opposite please say so.

4. All worlds?

Right now the only optional world is 100 acres which is composed entirely of minigames and is fairly short compared to the other worlds. Do you think this is worth making a category for given there's no real skipable worlds?

5. Harddrives?

I've not done enough testing on loading times but I would like someone to figure out what the battle report actually times since its not RTA accurate. If it removes loads / cutscenes it may be worth switching to using that for fairness. We also need to do a lot of testing in regards to how big of a difference to loads the ps4 pro etc have.

Again this thread is mainly to gather feedback from the community, there's no obvious answer one way or the other to these topics and I'm sure there are far more questions we could ask that we haven't thought of yet.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this and with your help with organising the leaderboards

• Drazerk

All Worlds should be in, since you can skip 100 acre woods. Removing loads would be pointless wasn't that a thing with BBSFMHD and then no one cared?

Lol the game isn’t even out in the states yet.

Seriously, most of the people who might have opinions on this haven’t even played the game yet. Making this thread now is jumping the gun immensely. It seems so silly to go with the two week embargo and then start talking about this kinda stuff before a giant chunk of the community plays the game.

Just to point it out we arent rushing to decisions or anything this thread simply exists to get feedback from people who have played the game fully and will take views as we get them.

Final decisions will all be made when the embargo ends but getting the thread up and rolling seems like a smart move.

1. timing should stop at the final beam hits Xehanort just because is easier to split.

2. both lv1 categories should be separated

3. I think only separate Xbox and Ps4 is fine. DLC keyblades shouldn't have their own category IMO

4. All worlds category does not have to be in the LB. Maybe have just HAW as its own category?

5. does the battle report time include deaths/retries? If so, make it at least included in the submission. I still think having a separate timer should be needed still with a run. So maybe submit both times in if possible

Having tested it we can now confirm that the battle report does not include load times (or deaths).

1. Timing should stop when the beam hits xehanort and you hear the swoosh because that's the end of the fight~

2. Level 1 should have it's own little tab thing, since it can produce enough categories on it's own (beginner any, standard, proud, jj stuff etc.)

3. XBOX and PS4 should be separated maybe? I dunno how it'll run on xbox so can't really say just yet how I feel on it, but DLC keyblades just make the it DLC Any% etc. and No DLC because there are bound to be people who want to use them though I personally won't be so it makes sense that way, and if there's more dlc later on it'll incorporate that like an FM dlc or something you'd be allowed DLC keyblades cause DLC, it could potentially evolve into it's own entirely different category based on what Square does.

4. All Worlds shouldn't be a category, it's arbitrary at best, so it'd be a waste of space imo. if someone wants to do 100 acre wood in their run let them but I think we shouldn't make an all worlds cat just for one world of minigames, it has to be a substantial amount of extra worlds.

5. we could maybe make an all Battle Portals Category for Miscellanous? that might be something people wanna do later and even maybe make them ILs too?

Can Confirm the IGT/Battle report does not include loads or deaths, Tested it myself.

Also I tested Movement stuff around endgame, dodge roll is slower than air slides by like a second same as gliding. I think dodge rolls were like 5.89? while airslides were like 4.89? something like that, glide was about the same as those. either way we should really be using dodge rolls for movement in endgame areas, and mayyyyybe before that? also to note when going up a slope it's most definitely faster to be using airslides for what I can gather just playing the game, you land pretty much instantly and can do another right away and it gives you farther distance up the slope.

Lastly these are all justy my opinions, and other stuff based on what I've played around with and tested so everyone's free to do their own tests obvs, hopefully we'll get this game down.

Side note there's a strength ring with 10 AP that's really quick to grab in OC right before the rock titan area andit's worth getting for the world, I believe the extra strength can def help speed things up and it should only take like 5-10 secs to grab.

i have no idea how accurate this is but if you have a pro and force the resolution to 1080p the game runs better since it doesnt have to render a higher resoluton then whatever the ps4 pro normally does it at. As an extention to this idea i would assume the Xbox one X would have no trouble at all running 60 fps all the time but untill a test is out in the wild who knows

I cant say anything on timing as im waiting for eng to actually do the final world

Unless theres interest I don't see a point in adding lvl 1 to all the difficulties as categories.

I don't mind a DLC category but I personally don't see myself ever doing it since theres a menu you can do right before the oc forced fight to take off the dlc keyblade.

All worlds sounds pointless to me if its just a mini game world thats optional

I know some people hate too many tabs and what not but at this point its the only way to keep comparisons fair I think, theres so many different versions of consoles and then you have SSD and HDD and its shit but its what we have to deal with because they cant just make the next damn gen of consoles.

As someone how had been playing on HDD PS4 original and switched to SSD PS4 original my IGT was about 45 minutes below my RTA and now about 20 minutes below my RTA (some other factors such as what IGT takes out in terms of deaths and menus would contribute)

Timing I feel should end when the beam hits Xehanort. It gives the usual end-of-fight slow-down and flash, and, if I'm not mistaken, the heartbeat segment progresses with controller inputs.

Difficulty separation for Level 1 should come if enough interest is garnered in the other difficulties. Until then, just having Level 1 stand on it's own should be fine.

I'm personally more in favor of simply banning the DLC Keyblades altogether, but ultimately a DLC category is harmless and is good for people who really prefer to run with them, so I'm cool with it if the majority of the community wants it.

All Worlds seems really pointless as all it would add would be talking to Merlin and doing the minigames in 100AW. I could maybe see it if there were torn pages that needed gathering like in previous games, but as it stands it seems superfluous unless we get DLC worlds in the future. Unlikely, but not impossible.

If a significant difference is found, I'm personally in favor of, bare minimum, splitting XBox and PS4. Maybe a separate filter for Pro/X, and then do what 0.2 does for HDD/SSD, but I'm only partial to that. If people are really opposed to the extra tabs, then we can just handle Pro/X and HDD/SSD the same way we did for 0.2.

personally i believe if we do any filter it should be with HDD and SSD seeing the difference between systems (PS4 vs PS4, i can't say for Xbox one but i would assume the same) is pretty mininimal compared to how much of a difference hard drives make. Just seeing from other games current gen console games the difference is pretty significant. Ranging from being about 20 mins of a difference to up to almost 40 or 50 mins of a difference where as consoles tend to only make about a 2 to 4 min difference due to being on a higher framerate or just processing better.

As for everything else i'm pretty much in agreement with everyone, beam on xehanort, level 1 idk really care myself because i'm not gonna be running it so people who are should talk it out, DLC should either be separated or banned. Should not be on the same board, All worlds, since there's only one optional world then i don't see a point

depending how IGT is calculated (if it includes menu time or not, as was hinted at), that could be used. Else, could make mandatory to use a load time equalizing splitter. Feels weird to separate into different tabs for console and HDD/SSD. They can be used just for info, but not for comparing times.

Can we please add a level 1 sub category for all difficulties, currently routing out level 1 beginner and its actually somewhat enjoyable unlike the reports ive heard about level 1 proud, Currently routed the first 2 worlds and will report back sunday once i hopefully do the rest of the routing (work then family engagements friday and saturday)

Also on kHfreaks point about all worlds, Nomura had explicitly stated there would NOT be new worlds any content updates will be additional content in existing worlds or additional post game content.

Also im going to make the same argument i made in 02, start time should be on hitting continue on the first load completing NOT on settings. Its not as important here but its kind of annoying you need to start the game let it load then soft reset and load the game again to actually start a run.

That can be considered Xelnas, should we have it as its own Category Tab or filter in with Any% and other categories but maybe make Standard and Proud Misc so they don't show unless you 'Show All'

Would it be possible to post a current ruleset to the leaderboard? I'd like to start practicing/streaming runs, but I need to know what exactly I'm looking for. I'm assuming for now that time starts upon confirming difficulty options, and ends upon beam strike on Xehanort (Loss of control), and that I need to use Wsplit or similar for time, rather than using the battle report?

id say it depends on where we land with DLC if its outright banned(since like that gets weird cross console)

Also could we have the leaderboards have igt and rta submission making IGT option if we stick with RTA due to tradition?

@Sly1020 just letting you know Digital Foundry did a video on all versions.

The TL;DR on framerates is: Force 1080p on a PS4Pro to have 60fps experience and it's able to hold it for the most part. Don't use supersampling option. (Max is 1296p) XboneX uses supersampling regardless of resolution and doesn't have an option to disable it, it's unable to reach have a steady 60fps. (Default 1440p) The PS4 base, is 900p and doesn't hold a steady 60fps. (Don't know about forcing that to 720p) Xbone is 720p and is able to hold it's weight but also unable to have a consistent framerate.

So, I noticed there were no rules, and I thought I'd pitch some out there... Maybe they are decent enough... Timer starts the second you hit start, and the game begins to load the first cutscene.

Timer ends once the "trinity" command is activated (since the final boss ends with that command..)

DLC Keyblades (Phantom Green, Midnight Blue, Dawn Till Dusk, Starlight) are allowed.

I believe these are a good starting point for rules...

Most of us have a bad time with the loading when the gameplay starts so can we recommend having a with and without loading time on the run?