Hey all,

So that was a bit of doozy of a title. Essentially, we are going to be reshuffling/organizing the leaderboards slightly. This will not, in effect, change anything with the Pts categories. There will still be separate class-based leaderboards within each Run Length (A1/A3/A6) for Pts runs. However, by changing the category from A1 Pts/A3 Pts/A5 Pts to simply run length (ie A1/A3/A6) this will allow us to add Any % as a subcategory and Geared Pts Runs as a subcategory. Both the Any % and Geared Pts runs will not be class based leaderboards meaning all classes will be competing against each other rather on a single leaderboard than having a discrete leaderboard for each class. If that was not clear, here is an image of essentially what we are going to be doing:

Without going too deep into the weeds nor being exhaustive about all considerations involved in making this change, essentially the purpose of Pts runs and Any % runs are a bit different. Typically, interest/participation in PoE speedrunning is usually greatest for the categories which mimic a fast league start style scenario (in PoE1 Pts+Labs runs) with players being less interested in the pure fastest thing possible, but the fastest things for particular classes in the context of what someone would do at league start. Any % runs have had there place in PoE1, but more so usually as a race style category rather than something many people explicitly have interest in speed running. In other words, participation in any % runs corresponds to upcoming any % race events usually. Outside of any % races, any % participation had dropped pretty severely. Nonetheless, any % runs capture an animating spirit of speed running the goal of getting the game done as fast as possible. Because the primary goal of any % runs is just getting it done as fast possible rather than trying to find out the fastest class build to get through campaign in service of a league start of that class, the case for having separate class based leaderboards for an any % is not as compelling.

There is also the consideration of not having too many leaderboards. Once the other 6 classes are added, each run length category will have 12 class-based Pts runs, 1 class-indepedent any % run category, and 1 geared run for 14 total (Unofficial category will be phased out to being archived as EA issues are resolved such as migrate all being functional). Across three run lengths, this gives us a total of 42 leaderboards for each major patch. Having separate class-based leader boards for any % would result in this number increasing to 75 or so leaderboards per major patch. This number would get even higher if we had separate class-based geared runs.

On the topic of geared runs, there has been some interest in past in geared style runs. It has been a bit of mixed bag between people doing any % or doing pts style runs in PoE1 (ie leveling second char as fast as possible). To that end, we'll be experimenting with trying a geared run category for those interested in such runs. The leaderboards will be class-independent for the geared runs and the geared runs will use the Pts standard rather than any % as it more closely adheres to why people would be doing a geared run in first place. Pts being the run type for geared is not necessarily set in stone as we will be experimenting with it.

A ruleset will need to be developed for the any % and geared pts run subcategories and I would not expect the subcategories to be added prior to 1/6/25. Likewise, the reframing of the categories/subcategories will not take place before then as well. But to reiterate, the reframing does not, in substance, effect any change on the current Pts run categories, so players are free to continue running those under current rules and submit runs for approval