We've been using the time without loads for a while, and it has a lot of problems- namely it being really confusing/annoying, and intimidating for new runners.

I think there's a better way to do it. There would be a second column called "DS timing" / "adjusted timing" / "adjusted loads" or something. VC would have 45 seconds added to the new column, emu would have 38 seconds added to the new column, and DS would be the same in both columns. The extra time is added because VC and emu loads are about 45 and 38 seconds faster than DS loads, respectively.

Pros:

• The main one: SO much easier and quicker than taking out load times
• I think the way we have it now is also kind of intimidating to people wanting to run this game, so it would be better for them, too
• Don't need to go back and count how many/which load zones you went through, which is annoying to do, and a problem for runs that don't have a recording
• Harder to mess up: since the way we have now is so complicated, I'm sure there have been/could be mistakes when calculating the load times. Adding a fixed amount of time is much less prone to error, and much easier for a mod to verify
• A simple solution is usually better than a really complicated one

Cons:

• Slight Inaccuracy. The difference between load times is 45 or 38 seconds if the runs go through the same exact load zones. As the number of load zones increases, the difference in load time increases too. HOWEVER: the change would only become significant in runs that go through a lot more load zones (a lot more load zones = have a lot of deaths = time doesn't need to be as accurate anyway)
• Somewhat arbitrary / not the usual way of dealing with load differences
• May look weird to have 2 columns with the same time in them for DS runs, then adjusted for vc and emu (we could change the formatting or something though)

It wouldn't have to be exactly as I said here; please make suggestions for improvement, tell me if/why you don't think we should change, etc.

I've suggested in other forums that we just revert to the old system we had and just distinguish which system it's been run on, as we do in literally other game.

It gives it a simple system and the records are still distinguished by system itself.

Yeah that could work also

I'm going to be honest, the whole timing thing was discouraging for me. But it's up to you guys to determine what's best. I'm going through that with Battle for Bikini Bottom as I play on gamecube and they just tell me those who want record play on xbox. I think that approach is a bit harsh but honestly I think in the end we shouldn't care about loading times. We should just play to get good times and have fun while doing it. As speedrunners we shouldn't have to debate over the games we love. I'm fine with any changes you guys decide to make. I don't care about WR, I just love seeing games optimized and if someone asks me who has WR I'm going to say it's you walrus because you have a much more clean run than me.

We should probably just make separate leaderboards

I don't think seperate leaderboards will work

Well, it makes it difficult for people to compete with each other seriously, and I know that speedrunning is supposed to be more about improvement than competition with other people, but competition is a big part of speedrunning.

That's definitely a problem with splitting the leaderboards and why I thought there should be only one, but I think a solution would be having a note on the top of the VC and emu boards saying about how much faster they are, if people want to compare times.

So should we have a vote or something on separating the leaderboards?

I think a vote would be a splendid idea. I made a strawpoll: http://www.strawpoll.me/11569543

banning VC/emu would be a mistake.

I agree

(I just put it there for memes tbh :P)