I'm interested in doing some fun-runs via time attack mode for this game, and it's been a blast! However, in the full-game leaderboards, it seems like we go by real time when it seems to make more sense to go by in-game time by summing up the times. Is there any reason we don't use in-game time, and instead go by real-time?

To me, unless there's a timing exploit or inaccuracy, there isn't any reason to use real-time over summing up in-game times because it eliminates variance from potentially random loads. In particular, livesplit has the function to sum up in-game times for you.

(There also aren't any rules at all for the Time Attack full-game leaderboard... can a moderator fill this out?)

Thanks!

I guess it could make sense for Championship and Time Attack modes, since it actually shows your final time for each cup/track. But you don't get a perfectly accurate display of your final time for each race in Hero Mode, so real time seems to be the only option there.

I actually haven't tried Hero Mode before so I'll take your word for that. But personally I would strongly advocate for IGT for the other two modes. Shouldn't be a particularly difficult transition either given the lack of runs on this leaderboards.

(I know I posted kinda outta nowhere since I never ran this game, but I do want to do some for-fun speedruns for this game since I've been having a blast with it, so I'm interested in hopping on)

-Fixed the missing rules on Time Attack for some reason the Time Attack rules had moved themselves onto the Hero Mode rules, resulting in the Time Attack rules being empty.

I could add IGT as an additional timing method, but personally, I think you want to time the whole thing, not just the time you were in the levels themselves. Summing up the Track-IGT would discard the time inbetween, i.e. choosing the track/cup & vehicle, which are obviously part of the fullgame runs, you can always just run ILs if you want to time by pure IGT. Previous iterations of the series also use this timing method and I don't see anything wrong with it.

Additionally: unless you install the game to SD, there shouldn't be any loading inconsistencies.

but that's just my take on it. ~HDK

Thanks for updating the Time Attack rules!

I would strongly argue against prioritizing RTA over IGT for these reasons, the main idea being to future-proof leaderboards whenever possible.

-If this game were released in future consoles with faster loads (i.e. if nintendo released a "new nintendo switch", which is very possible given their past history with black wii's and new 3ds), IGT would eliminate the discrepancies of that. This has happened for many, many games, both old and new, so it isn't out of the question at all.

-You can save several seconds of real time using the touch screen for several menus to select cups / tracks / cars. Obviously you can't use the touch screen if the switch is docked, so this brings the question of would this even be allowed? If a undocked switch capture was developed, it would be faster to record using this method too. Sticking to RTA would encourage a potential pay-to-win mentality that we want to avoid whenever possible; IGT would remove this discrepancy (again, future-proofing leaderboards).

-In stage-based games like this, I personally dislike having to add menus when the goal is to clear every stage/track as quickly as possible. IGT tracks just that, nothing else. This is a personal preference of mine though and isn't a strict objective argument.

-However, related to above, counting menuing means it's a factor in vehicle selection now. This isn't particularly realistic but theoretically if there were cases where just mashing A through the car selection is worth it over picking an actually faster vehicle for a track, I wouldn't be a fan of that (again admittedly personal preference). One example is Sonic Advance 3 All Stages, which is a category that does every stage in time attack mode, and timed by adding in-game time for every stage - the reasoning is the same, to ensure that menuing will not be a factor in team selection for each stage.

I would actually argue that the entire series should've done IGT in the first place. However, this isn't really the place for that; this thread is about this game only, but I don't think using the "previous games have done RTA" is a valid argument if all of the above could've potentially applied to those games too.

I can see why you would want to count the "entire game" with RTA; however, if it's something that isn't part of the core gameplay yet comes at the cost of potentially inconsistent loads/versions in the future that I've listed above, I personally don't think it's worth prioritizing RTA.

If you still aren't convinced, then I'm fine with sticking to real time since this isn't a game I have much say in and I won't bring it up anymore. However, given my past experiences with other game leaderboards that did NOT properly future-proof them, I would strongly recommend swapping to IGT now as opposed to when it becomes more of a real problem. This game has a working in-game time (at least as far as I know). I think it makes most sense to track both RTA and IGT, but prioritize IGT.

I did my first run (~hour RTA, 50 minutes IGT) and realized another annoying thing about RTA for time attack mode.

You save about a second every time you finish a stage in time attack that is a new record in that file, since the game skips straight to stage select instead of bringing up the "retry/change vehicle/quit" menu. Meaning, with RTA, we would save ~30 seconds by making a new file with no records and have to keep copying that file for every reset. IMO this is a really dumb thing to require for a good time, whereas prioritizing IGT would completely ignore this.

I see the points here and agree that we should think about adding IGT to the Leaderboards.

The reason to why we are using RTA in FRN was simply because you are able to quit an IL straight after finishing it (crossing the finish) to skip the cutscene. But by doing so, you also skip the time you got (on the screen) which would make a huge effort to get the IGTs of them in the first place.