Having been a moderator for about a year now, I have put together a list of changes I would want to see to the setup of Categories and Variables on Gunman Clive. This is not an absolute definitive proposal, just a list of my issues with the categories as they are right now and how I think they should be changed.

First, let's go over some issues I see with the category system as it exists right now:

Double Platform Dipping: As the Categories exist now, every run submits its platform twice, for the category and for the speedrun.com built-in platform function. Having the Categories set as the platforms has rendered the platform feature nearly useless. Unpreparedness for new versions: Building off the last issue, speedrun.com is built to make adding new versions of a game fast and simple using the platform feature, just add a version in the settings. As the Categories exist right now, every time a new version is added (Such as the PS4 Version Recently), the number of Subcategories grows exponentially. We now have 25 Subcategories in a game with 4 Active Runners. Negligible Version Differences: Between the Major Full Game Releases of Gunman Clive, on current game understanding, with the exception of between HD Collection and Non-HD Collection Versions Gameplay differences are negligible between PC and 3DS, and non-existent between the different HD Edition Versions. Unused Variable: 97% (63/65) of full Game runs on the leaderboard use “Easy” and with good reason, in terms of gameplay and strategic differences, the only difference between Easy, Normal and Hard is the Level that RNG can Randomly end your run, there is no gameplay or frankly skill differences.

Now, let's go over my proposal for Leaderboard Reform.

Individual Levels

• Remove difficulty entirely
• Split by Category into “Classic” and “HD Collection”
• “Classic” would Include PC, 3DS and New3DS runs
• “HD Collection” would Include Switch, WIIU and PS4 runs

This will Reduce the Number of IL Categories from 12 to 8, while more fairly splitting where gameplay differences actually exist, versus by difficulty where they do not.

Full Game Runs

• Remove difficulty entirely
• Make the Characters + 2 Special Runs the Categories, that would make the categories as follows.
• Clive
• Duck Mode
• Ms. Johnson
• Chieftain Bob
• All Characters
• ANY% WW
• Each category should have the Subcategories of “Classic” and “HD Collection”
• “Classic” would Include PC, 3DS and New3DS runs
• “HD Collection” would Include Switch, WIIU and PS4 runs
• “Platforms obsolete each other” should remain off, allowing for a player's best run on each platform to appear on the leaderboard together.

Other

• This Proposal does not recommend Changing The “GBA” and “SNES” Categories

They essentially function as their own unique entities on the leaderboard, without much connection to the rest of the leaderboard

Here is a chart of what the New Category list would be, (Down from 25 Subcategories to 13) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X9bl1OHta3aRKIYOPVGc2RStFeNK3bTiFVAvePTFzHI/edit?usp=sharing

What Would this Accomplish.

To start, a few Statistics. On the Leaderboard right now, 84% of Subcategories have less than 5 Players having submitted runs, 64% have 2 or fewer. And 20% have 0 Runs Submitted. This Subcategory bloat is massive for a small game.

My Proposal would change those numbers respectively to 62% of Subcategories having less than 5 Players having submitted runs, 38% have 2 or less. And only 1 having 0 runs submitted (ANY% WW - HD Collection)

Merging Leaderboards would serve to make HD Collection Runs more Competitive, with them currently being thinly scattered across multiple categories. It would serve to actually bring many more subcategories to having competitive leaderboards. And would overall massively reduce bloat on the leaderboard, while future-proofing the leaderboard for potential future HD Collection Version Releases.

Thank you for reading through this.

That would defeat the purpose of me buying the Games across 4 Platforms lol But serious: there are differences between 3DS and PC for example. On PC, you can stretch the Window to whatever you want, making stage 16 a second faster to complete. Also, the Enemy Spawns are different (affected by Window size), and so are the Controls. I have already made myself clear that i dislike the Keyboard, because you just can not compare a 3DS Button layout with a Keyboard. PC seems to load levels a bit faster as well.

This is more personal, maybe just my lazyness, but i personally do not want to mess around with the Settings here. If we switch things around and merge stuff together, i dont know what can happen. Of course you could save all Video links and make Screenshots of each and every Run and its details in the Submission, but managing all that will je something...

I would like to hear from the other members of this community what they think about this. We should not decide on our own what to do, but listen to feedback. Thats my two cents about this.

As I said, not hard on these suggestions I would be fine just shoving the HD Collection stuff together and leaving 3ds/pc separate, for the issues of switching, in total we have about 200 Runs total, that's probably just an afternoon to recategorize everything tbh.

On Differences between PC and 3ds, I never said there weren't, "differences are negligible between PC and 3DS", the time difference in terms of runs between the PC and 3ds version is the kind of size that in most other multiplatform game does not justify separate categories.

Yes, there are nitpicks that there are differences, my argument is the difference isn't big enough to justify separate categories in a game with 4 active runners.

I only started playing into the Full Game category recently, but the suggestions sound very reasonable.

If the differences between platforms are negligible, it would lead to a much more simplified and cleaned up leaderboard. Also the difficulty variable doesn't seem to add much to the leaderboards so I think it's best to remove it.

I only have two remarks:

• To have the "Platforms obsolete each other" toggle on Off doesn't really make much sense with the new system. If the whole point is that runs in the new categories share a leaderboard and thus compete against each other, it doesn't make sense to track older, slower runs. I only think this should be considered because it might smoothen the transition so that players don't "lose" visible runs.
• I'd suggest to switch the sorting of the boards to IGT. This might reduce differences caused by loading time. IGT is the most accurate way to track time and it's a gift if the game provides it, so in my opinion it should be used.

I agree, there are too many subcategories and it needs to be simplified. And Wanuke’s proposals seem about as good as any. So I’m on board.

One thought, platform does seem to matter when we’re talking about ILs. Stage 2 has a platform-manipulating trick that can be done on 3DS, but not on PC (if I’m not mistaken). I don’t know if that justifies trying to do separate platform categories for ILs, but just something to consider.