Hello, im here today to push forward an idea that would probably be great to maintain a register of what the best times are in this game. Much is said about how and why glitches and skips work, but the top-level execution itself has been attatched to observing PBs/WRs that may or may not display the perfect time for said skips, glitches and strats, capping the community to self-learning and depending on lengthy discussions/questioning on discord or any other message app for that manner for them to conceive what the execution is like at top speed.

Self-learning, lengthy discussions and/or questioning about general concepts or execution of skips, glitches and strats are not the issue here, and shouldn't be discouraged, but certantly don't need to be the only way of learning the game. The matter of fact is that there are also tutorials teaching these stuff and giving tips, but, the intention is not to show actual top speed execution as much as it is to teach things in a more slow-paced manner for better understanding of the public.

I can say for myself, that seeing specific segments of Traj's runs, even while being mid-run myself, inspires me to do a good execution, as an example, many times i have had trouble with sacrifice skip, and seeing him doing it inspired me to get the right setup and execution for it. Im sure a place full of those first try, top speed, top level strategies all put in one place would be very helpful to keep track of gold times and inspire and teach people to about those strats, and encourage them to use it on their runs.

There are examples like those of Jolielegal who has his gold times on his GoW3 VH Glitchless runs all packed into a non-listed playlist, but an Individual-Level section for this game would greatly improve on that concept as it would all be here, a place organized specifically for speedruns and it would all be on a plattform of easy access for all speedrunners and speedrunning spectators, not requiring any more than a couple of clicks to access those top speed times (It would be one more part of the leaderboards, such as Full Game Leaderboards and Category Extensions, that are all accessible with 2 clicks for that manner).

Enough reasoning for why it would be a great idea to implement a Individual Level leaderboard here, here's how it would work:

Just like any category, it has a beggining and an end, defined by a criteria. On GoW:GOS for example, the timer starts not when you press new game and chose the difficulty, but rather when you skip the first cutscene. Here on GoW1 its when you chose the Kratos skin or choose the difficulty for people who didn't complete Challenge of the Gods, and, for all Full Game categories, ends when you sit on the throne on Olympus.

However, certain categories such as Cronos% has a bit of an arbitrarity in its end segment. It is not when you finish the game but rather when you blow the horn after killing the sirens, and much to the likes of the concept of Individual-Levels, it serves to keep track of how fast people get to the Cronos cutscene in different categories, such as Easy and Very Hard Glitchless. It is important, though, that even if there is a bit of a arbitarity on the end time, it still is consistently finished at a time Kratos is not moving, to keep reliability and consistensy on split timings.

That is exactly what the Individual-Levels leaderboard would exploit, a controlled arbitrarity on the start and finish of the runs in it contained, always starting at a consistent time of Kratos not moving, starting or finishing a cutscene, interacting with an object, seeing a panorama, etc.

I can see where this could maybe become troublesome for PS3Emulator or such that could skip cutscenes, but it is easily ruled out by Frame Advancing.

I can also see other issues, for example, having many sub splits inside a split that are not used in a category but used in another. For example, if you were to speedrun Any% NG+, you would'nt see the cutscene after getting the skull at CoA because of the backwards CoA route, meaning anyone that does Glitchless categories would not be able to consider CoA done at the start of the cutscene, but rather at where you crank the skull on the door. That is a minor issue for the example i picked, as both has the skull crank as a common point, but there are many other examples like this.

For instance, Cliffs of Madness, where you basically skip all the way to the llever that puts you upward to the 3rd skull section on Any% NG+, skip all necklaces, meaning any Individual-Level containing the necklace pick as its end or starting point would have to exclude Any% and only contain Glitchless Categories.

Theres also a problem where we wouldn't want Individual-Levels to be all flooded with, well, individual-levels, only keeping those ones that are relevant to keep track of gold times, just like how there exists a category for Cronos% but not one for Medusa% or Ares%, because its all irrelevant. It could be hard to sort out what is useful and what is not, considering too that there is other issues to deal with.

The last issue i could identify is people doing slower strats at the Full Game category but faster at a specific individual-level just to grind said level, subverting the propourse of that leaderboard, which is to keep track of gold times and fast strats that can be applied to learning the game and used in actual runs, not to grind for WRs.

An example of this would be to skip rotating pandora's rings to get a faster time on the segment, but a slower one when looking at the Full Game perspective. That could maybe force to either write on the rules and force out a route, or create a value for "rotating the crank" or "not rotating the crank". Not doing anything about this would have it's own set of complications, for example, people not rotating to get faster times on Individual-Levels would lose time on Full Game and be discouraged to do so mid-run, but people on Full Game would feel discouraged to be posting their times to Individual-Level, as they would always be behind 20-30 seconds to people that grind those individual-levels.

Same could be said for upgrade routes, for example, skipping sex minigame at certain categories to save time on the Individual-Level and lose on Full-Game.

Look, this whole idea sounds very handy and useful to me, but i can fully understand that it is hard to sort out, as there would still be a lot of individual levels and start/finish criteria to sort out. I also moderate a game here on this website, so i know how some stuff can be a bit tricky. I am making myself available for any help or question about this whole stuff.

It's interesting to note that if this GoW here can implement that, all other ones can too, and we would be the pioneers of this type of leaderboard. Thanks for the read!