Hi mods!

I would like to propose a loadless PC leaderboard for Birth by Sleep HD, Dream Drop Distance, as well as Re Chain of Memories. I have been in talks with various members of the KH speedrunning community, and we've all agreed that splitting PC and console and implementing a load remover on PC for each of these games would be great for the health of the speedrun and encourage more activity and competition. Fellow community member deathofall84 has been hard at work creating and testing new load removers for all three games ahead of the Steam release, and I would like to push for this change to happen and provide some reasoning to back this.

1. With Kingdom Hearts releasing on Steam very soon, now is the best time to make these changes since there is bound to be more interest in the speedruns from people who haven't tried them yet. Those who are used to running or watching PC speedruns will expect a loadless leaderboard, which has been the norm for most PC games for a while. Having a loadless board for each of these games can be more inviting to newcomers and lead to more growth and new discoveries from people we don't know yet.

2. Currently, the leaderboards for BBS/DDD/ReCoM HD have a combined console and PC leaderboard. This is currently a very big disadvantage for anyone without a PlayStation 4/5, as the load times for these consoles are drastically faster than PC. For example, we know that Birth by Sleep All Stories is at least 15 minutes slower on PC compared to PS5, so you could imagine DDD and ReCoM are similar in this regard. This is very unfair to those who can only speedrun on PC and disincentivizes people from running the game. Adding a loadless leaderboard will not only solve this problem, but will create a perfectly even playing field and lead to more fun competition, as seen with the KH1FM and KH2FM leaderboards.

3. A separate leaderboard for PC can also open up the possibility for Quality of Life and cosmetic mods, which have been very well received in the KH1 and KH2 PC community. I am proposing for at least a soft reset mod to be allowed, as well as basic cosmetic mods that don't affect the run (basic color pallet swaps or music mods). I understand the current stance on not allowing these mods since PC is currently combined with console, which is more reason to have a split in my opinion. If you have any doubts, I'm proposing a community vote on whether or not to allow these mods.

If you are a fellow KH runner, don't hesitate to add to the discussion. Thank you for reading and have a nice day :)

Nothing really to add here myself other than a seconding to the ideas and points brought up here. As one of the primary people contributing to the tooling around the PC ports I am also happy to put in extra work if validations or other things are needed before a green light on anything around them could be made.

I've always said when there are more runners the leaderboard would be split down, pretty much despite the games being on PC we got maybe like 2-3 runners (across the whole time BBS has been on the Epic Game Store) that did more than say 1 run if that. There wasn't even interest in making anything like an auto splitter or a loadless timer until recently. If the steam version brings more interested at the release then we a split will occur but only if we get enough runners/runs for it. We have always been open with this and I have said it multiple times in the BBS discord text chat whenever it is asked.

And to note here we have had 0 PC runners for DDD since Epic Game Store release which is why it was never done there so again my stance is the same there show some more interest then we will amend the leaderboard. I cannot speak for RE:CoM since I am not a Mod for that game.

Is there also proof of the 15 minute difference you mentioned? No one has ever brought this to our attention so it's a little weird to me, I know some hardware for BBS does load slower but it has never been stated to be as much as you are claiming. BBS has always had weird loading issues between even the same hardware on console so am interested where the number came from and would like to make my own comparisons. From what I recall we have had 0 all stories runs done on PC so have nothing to compare to, we currently have none submitted either.

At this time the standpoint will remain the same on modifications, the reason isn't due to it being combined with console the stance is the same regardless. We can't 100% tell how they effect the game even it's just cosmetics. This game as lot of differing bits of RNG all over the place and not knowing what modifications effect is an issue from the verification side. These runs rely on things like enemy drops etc so if they effect even slightly how that works it could give an advantage to whoever is using said more even if it's just a colour mod to make floods green as an example.

I appreciate the work deathofall84 is doing to try and get all games in line with each other but at this time I am pretty firm in my stance. I am not convinced a leaderboard split would bring in more people, a lot of people show passing interest but ultimately don't start running the game. The only real time we had a surge of runners was when Aqua Level 1 was first done on PS3 which gave us a ton of runners. As a final note the top level runners in this game all currently play on console and have never considered switching to PC for the game which has fed into how the leaderboard has been run.

I would like to see hard numbers/video evidence of the alleged loading differences in All Stories. This is the first I'm hearing of a 15-minute time difference and there's no PC runs of that category on the board against which to verify that claim.

For the record, I have no issue with an "empty-looking" leaderboard and I've always found that to be a silly complaint (reflecting the reality of the game and ensuring the most level possible playing field is more important than having pretty leaderboards), but unless the time difference between versions is actually substantial (and I've seen no evidence it is for the PC version) I think it's pretty pointless to split.

I also think video evidence of that big loading difference should be provided. The leaderboard shouldn't be split based on that claim alone, which is very hard to believe, if I'm gonna be honest. If you were talking about PS3, I could believe it, but PC really needs some demonstration of that claim.

Also, I think every game has its own peculiarities, and if a runner doesn't have some some experience running the game, he may not understand that just because a lb split worked for KH1FM and 2FM, it doesn't mean the same would work here. I wouldn't go to the Re CoM lb, for example, claiming that we could allow mods that change color palletes and other stuff without understanding the impact that can make for the runs.

About the loadless remover, as it has been stated above, the game always had loading disparities even on the same console, so I don't know if that would be ok.

I'm not sure where the 15 minute time difference is coming from for BBS and would love to see evidence of that number. 15 seconds for one any% run is the most repeated number I've heard. As Rebel said, if the steam release brings more interest in BBS runs we'll happily split and talk about changes to the rules needed from there. As it stands I agree with Rebel and I'm happy to reassess this again in the future if interest in the category spikes.

I'm also of the mindset that there is no real need to split the leaderboards at this time since there aren't many runs of the PC version. Sure, BBS might be slower on PC but it's not significant enough to warrant a split. If you were to split it right now, it would look empty, especially considering how many different categories BBS has. As others have said, if interest spikes with the release of the steam version, then we can return to this in the future.

As for mods, I agree that we need to look into seeing whether or not they can effect the RNG of the game in anyway as RNG plays a significant part in the run, no matter the category. If mods don't effect the RNG, then I would be okay with a soft reset mod & that is all. Allowing cosmetic mods to me feels like a slippery slope that could be hard/tiring to regulate.

So to clarify the 15 minute number is not taken from an all stories run but from the load removed versus RTA best segments from my time working on each story and is done as an estimation based on the fact that PS5 still has loads but they are MUCH faster. There is a plan to break down the side by side but even from just a bridge comparison of PS5 timing on loads vs my PC (I have a high spec machine to be honest) several of my loads on BBS specifically are multiple times longer. Each story has a minimum of 5 minutes of loads with terra having over 8 going against a sub 1 hour run for each. You can check my submitted runs for as each has the timer with both RTA and LRT in the mean time for more exact numbers.

Another thing worth calling out here as all stories has come up, the fact that no mods are allowed on PC means all stories is not viable as you can not reset to menu the same way console does which is why there aren’t runs of it.

My revised opinion:

Game mods:

• I think I would be okay with a community-vetted soft reset mod to help bring PC in line with other categories. I don't run any% but lack of soft reset does affect a category I do run (Mirage Arena RTA). The concern I have about this is proof standards, because a sufficiently technical person could alter the mod or create a similar one that also altered some element of game code that affected, say, RNG. Then again, it would be pretty hard to tell if someone were running a modded game on PC anyway, if the changes were small enough and RNG-related so that seems like a thin justification.
• As much as I might like to have cosmetic mods I'm largely against them because every allowed mod is that much more verification work and if I wouldn't want to deal with that in the games I mod either.
• BBS doesn't have anything egregiously time-wasting to quite the same degree as, for example, gummi ship missions in KH2 which you can't speed up at all, so, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here, there wouldn't be justification for any other run-altering mod to begin with. I know some communities (FF13-2/Lightning Returns for example) have instituted separate categories for mods that remove drop RNG for run-killers, I'm not necessarily advocating that, just mentioning that it exists.

Timing/Load removal:

• My general thought on a split/load removal for basically every video game is 5%, if it's a more than 5% difference it probably warrants split + loadless regardless of other factors. Seems like I might get outvoted on that but eh I don't run any% so whatever.

All that said, a split or lack thereof doesn't affect me all that much.

Thank you for all of the responses!

I understand the main concern of there not being enough PC runners to warrant a split from console. I actually have something in the works to address that and potentially bring in some more interest. My main point is that I'm not really a fan with PC being compared to console runs because of how much load times can vary based on someone's own hardware, when we have the perfect opportunity to completely level the playing field by using LRT for PC runs. There's already plenty of evidence of most KH games loading faster on PS5 than any other platform (excluding 0.2 and KH3 because of UE4 optimizations for Xbox/PC); the 15 minutes that I brought up was information passed down to me from deathofall84, who worked on the BBS load remover. It would be a lot of work to put a load comparison together for concrete evidence, but I'm willing to put in the work if necessary. However, I think I'll be shifting my focus to getting more PC runners to warrant an LRT split in the first place, since that seems to be the main concern.

As for mods, I completely understand the concern for RNG aspects of the run being altered, so I'm willing to concede there. I honestly don't think cosmetic mods are such a big deal, but I still think stuff like basic color swaps and music swaps wouldn't hurt the run and would provide some harmless fun customization. Verification hasn't been a problem with the KH1 and KH2 leaderboards to my knowledge so I don't believe it would be an issue for the rest of the games to allow the same level of cosmetic mods. Of course I'm not talking about model swaps, more so stuff like changing an enemy from blue to red. It's not a big deal, but I would like to see an official community poll on this topic after we can get an LRT leaderboard.

So I just finished taking the loads out of the first world in 4 different runs. I took the loads out of my pc run, Flounder's pc run, Pessilist's ps4 run, and Marvin's ps5 run.

Marvin's run was the fastest

Pessilist's run was 3 seconds slower, so not that big of a deal

My run was 3rd which was 6 seconds slower than Pessilist and 9 seconds slower than Marvin's

Flounder's run was the slowest which was 15 seconds slower than my run, 21 seconds slower than Pessilist's run, and 24 seconds slower than Marvin's run

My opinion on the matter is that they boards should be split simply because pc has a load remover. Normally, if the difference was just loads like this case, I would have the opinion to keep the boards together. But since there will be some people running on pc that just wont be able to realistically compare to another person's run, it would be nice to have a way to even the playing field. In a perfect world, we would have a load remover for everything, but we simply don't. However, I believe that we should utilize the tools we have to make runs be as consistent as possible.

As far as using mods in a run, I don't really have much of an opinion on that. I think it would be nice to allow cosmetic mods that don't physically change a model since we wouldn't know if that changes hitboxes or something. The biggest issue would be unintentionally causing changes. Personally, I can take cosmetic mods or leave it. Doesn't really matter to me too much. I think in most cases, it would probably be fine, but if you want to err of the side of caution, then that is understandable. However, I do believe that pc runners should be allowed to use the soft reset mod. It is just way too convenient to not use. Nobody wants to have to wait until they get to a save or world map to reset a run.

As far as the lack of pc runs, I think you can attribute that a bit to the fact that we already knew console was faster than pc. With that in mind, people are almost always going to just run on the fastest version they own. If pc was faster, then I believe the boards would be mostly pc runs. So I would be curious to see if pc would have more, or the most runs, if pc was faster or had its own board.

In the end, it is obviously the decision of the mods, and I will stand by that. If more information is needed, I can continue taking loads out of everyone's pb, but to be honest, I definitely do not want to do that unless it is needed.

I haven't chimed in on this just due to life. I ran this game for a brief period of time when the xbox ports came out. When I was looking at it, I was noticing my xbox one load times were slower than the PS4 times by a significant amount. I did not do a lot of research but I did notice that it was enough to make it VERY difficult to rise up the boards. Because of this I stepped away from the game. Then the PC ports came out and I thought if there was a loadless timer I would return and run on PC then without it I had no desire since I knew I could not keep up with PS5 load times. With a PC leaderboard I am much more open to returning to this speedrun and trying to get better since I knew I would have a much better time with more fair loading times and not a scuffed fruitball