The TRA leaderboards have been pretty disorganized for quite some time now, dating back to the IBJ discovery. To grant competition for people not able to perform it and because of the potentially big impact of IBJ, the no BJ categories were added. Since nobody submitted a run with IBJ ever since, the Any%/100% leaderboards have been empty the whole time. With the current state and direction of speedrunning, segmented runs seem to be far less important than some years ago. Segmented runs take a long time to complete and optimize and thus aren't really submitted or meant to be on a leaderboard. There has also been an increasing interest in extending the categories offered on the leaderboards, most notably regarding glitchless speedruns.

To adress the empty Any% category, I've moved Any% no BJ to the top of the categories list to make it the default category. This is only a temporal solution. What I'd like to do here is discuss what everyone wants the leaderboards to look like, to make them and running this game more appealing.

Some suggestions to start the discussion: ¤ Remove Any% no BJ and 100% no BJ as categories, instead add BJ as a variable to the leaderboards. ¤ Remove Segmented categories from the leaderboards, instead collect them in a (sticky) forums thread. ¤ Remove Glitched as a variable from the leaderboards, instead add Glitchless category/categories or subcategory/subcategories (and discuss its/their ruleset). ¤ Add new categories according to suggestions/discussion (e.g. All Levels/Segment End Screens, No OOB)

Thanks for participating!

My suggestions:

1. Any% category with 2 subcategories - BJ and no BJ. Since the BJ trick has such a huge impact on the total time, it shouldn't be a variable. Variable should be something you can choose/change before or during the game, like framerate, aiming mode, car (in a racing game), difficulty etc. (yes, I know that glitches/no glitches doesn't fit that description, but there was no other way to separate both types of runs without having too many categories. Now we have subcategories.)

2. Disagree about removing the segmented runs. They should be on the leaderboards. Many people don't read forums here. Respect the "elders" and their old runs ;)

3. Yes, remove glitched as a variable. We did that with classic Tomb Raiders and made it subcategories. Much better solution imho. As for glitchless category, I guess it would be a good idea if people wanna make such runs.

4. Not sure what's "All Levels/Segment End Screens". As for "No OoB", if you can find people who would run that category, then why not, otherwise it's a pointless category. I don't really understand why would anyone want to do a glitched run without using OoB. Might as well do glitchless run already :) Just my 2 cents.

The Problem with having two subcategories for Any% is that we end up in the same place as we are now - one category will be empty, and it is the "default" category (as Any% No BJ is a restriction). I don't mind either way, and I'm actually a big fan of the subcategory thing, I just want to avoid keeping the empty category thing alive.

I would still take the segmented runs out of the leaderboards, as these are more like entire projects and less runs, but if need be, we can still keep them as another subcategory.

All Levels/Segment End Screens (not a definitive name, just a description) is getting all the level summaries (e.g. reaching Vilcabamba, and you get the Mountain Caves summary with time, kills, etc.). It's basically 100% without getting all relics and artifacts, and is something we came up with during one of Moonfane's recent streams. No OoB would be a pretty different run from both glitchless and normal Any%, it's just a restriction that could make for an interesting run, I haven't tested it or anything, I just tried to come up with something on the spot to give some examples of what people might find interesting. ;)

I would recommend not to create any new categories unless there is someone really interested in doing such run, otherwise you'll end up with exactly what you don't want - empty categories. I've heard several times that someone wants to do a run in non-standard category and most of them never even started. Specifically glitchless runs require a lot of routing on contrary to glitched, where you usually just copy the WR strats and add some new ones.

All Levels/Segment End Screens and OoB - sounds like misc categories to me.

Don't worry, I'm not trying to litter the leaderboards or force new categories, the primary goal is to make them more appealing, easier to understand and actually less convoluted. It just seems like a good opportunity to address potential wishes for new/different categories. I'd obviously do some test runs/routes so we could see and judge accordingly if the respective proposal warrants a separate/new category. :)

The leaderboards have changed a bit now, but unfortunately most of the Any% runs were lost. I tried to find as many as possible on my own, but I know there are still some missing, so if you don't find your run on the leaderboards now, please resubmit it.

Segmented is a pretty stupid category tbh. I've never seen any other game with a segmented category on Speedrun.com. Seems kind of pointless.

99% of all past speedruns were done as segmented and there are still people doing them (eg. Half-Life). Just because people started speedrunning RTA category couple years ago doesn't make the segmented runs stupid. Segmented runs shows the best possible strats in a game, which often can't be used in RTA run, unfortunately 95% of all segmented runs are obsolete due to new glitches and shortcuts.

What happened to the glitched/glitchless distinction? It doesn't even seem to be a variable now.

Eh... good point. Cadarev?

It's still a variable for ILs. It's not a variable for full runs because we don't have a ruleset for Glitchless as of now, and there have not been any submissions/suggestions regarding glitchless runs. There was a Glitches variable before, but it said "yes" for all runs anyway because nobody ever submitted a glitchless run. I'll add it as a subcategory (as mentioned above) for full runs once there's a ruleset and/or interest in such a category. As I said, I actually want to have a discussion about the rules of that category.

This is my suggestion of ruleset for the "glitchless" category, also the one that I am using on my Secrets Segmented project:

Do NOT make use of:

. Infinite jumps bug (IJB - f.k.a. UBJ); . Airwalk; . Back handspring or left roff to reach "unreachable" high areas; . FPS dependant tricks that look like glitches (e.g. using irregular slopes to make Lara float); . Delayed Swandive; . Any trick which involves making Lara step on something that's obviously not a solid surface (e.g. using the fence shortcut in Croft Manor's maze);

Of course, this is merely a suggestion. Changes may be made if needed. I have created this list myself because there didn't seem to be a community consensus regarding rules of this category when I started the run. When I get back to it, I'll be following this ruleset since it's the one I've been using so far and it would not be very pleasant to restart the run after all the effort I put in it. :/ Also, I don't think that a glitchless category for full runs is needed right now, since I have no idea when my run will be finished, and as you guys said, there doesn't seem to be interest in these types of runs.

I posted your list in a different thread before, and I think it does need some additions/clarifications, but it's a good starting point. Your segmented run will obviously not be touched because it's your private project, and even if you want to submit to the leaderboards, it should still be fine, because I assume that we we would rather allow some tricks that you didn't use rather than ban things you did use, because your rules seem to be somewhat conservative.

Maybe the glitchless ruleset should be discussed in its own thread?

The glitcless rule set we discussed extensively on Tomb Runner and my only disagreement was delayed swandive and the "stepping on nonsolid surfaces", which, to me, seems too vague. But if you want to do a more conservative glitchless run, I don't think anybody would have a problem.

Ewil, I didn't say Segmented runs were stupid, I said it was stupid to have it on Speedrun.com The site is obviously set up for single segment runs. Again, I don't know of any other game on this site that lists segmented runs. Even games which still have segmented runs done fairly frequently like the Half-Life doesn't bother listing them on here.

No, you actually said this: "Segmented is a pretty stupid category tbh."

It's a speedrun and this site is called speedrun.com, so why shouldn't it be here? Why do you think it's stupid to have them listed here, at least just for information? I completely understand that having a leaderboards for segmented runs is weird, but not listing them here is like burning historical books since we can have them in pdf.

Yes, but when I said "Segmented is a pretty stupid category tbh." I was obviously talking about it in reference to speedrun.com That what this whole thread is about, cleaning up the speedrun.com boards. I shouldn't have to reiterate that I'm talking about speedrun.com on every occasion because that's what the conversation is already about. It just wastes time. If you agree that it's weird having segmented runs on the leaderboards is weird, why not put them in a thread like Cadarev suggested?

Hmm ...okay. I guess I took your comment as a general statement. I apologize.

Yeah it's weird to have segmented runs on the leaderboards, but there really isn't any other solution to have them listed here other than forums, which as I said before - not everyone reads. There's unfortunately no way to make a separate leaderboards like full-game or level leaderboards.

How about misc category? That way it will not show up as a main category, but it will still be listed.

I'll throw my 2 cents in for this.

1. I think we definitively need a distinction between BJ and no BJ, BJ drastically speeds up the run and in some places out-right kills it, so as a Variable I don't think it portrays just how much it changes the run.

2. I think Glitched/Glitchless should also be different categories. and that Glitchless needs to be properly defined, Since you've proposed to speak about it in a different thread I won't state what I think here but I do think it needs splitting.

3. Other categories would be nice to spice things up, just need to decide what's a neat idea for a run.

4. I haven't seen another game out-side the tomb raider series that has Segmented as a category, even Valve games like Portal (which their segmented runs are insane) aren't on the leaderboards anywhere. Moving them to a thread seems like a good idea.

I actually hadn't noticed the part about BJ/No BJ being a variable until Deadscale mentioned it. I don't think that'd be a good idea for the reasons he gave. I also realized however that if we keep Segmented on the leaderboards, we'd also need to make more categories to distinguish between a segmented run using Bug Jump or one not using one.

Can we just kill Niepanh and Taeruhs to remove all traces of Bug Jump from the internet and forget it ever happened?