Some changes have already been implemented and others have been in talks these past few days.

• Firstly, ILs are officially RIP. A game's IL community needs to be active enough to warrant its existence on any leaderboard and currently I do not feel it is so it has been removed until a time comes when this game's activity picks up again.

• Both Bad Ending and Boss Rush are relegated to the "Misc." tab. Bad Ending will remain as a category as we feel that not allowing the category to exist is gatekeeping potential new runners (due to the requirement for getting the Good Ending not being lenient) but we did need to clean up the leaderboard quite a bit so we've put it in the Misc. tab

• "Hard" is set the as default difficulty on this leaderboard, just like it was in Genesis version of the game.

• The "PC" categories are in a good spot with only 2 variables but the "Console" categories were a mess with 4 variables, making it a chore to find runs and imo at least two of them are not necessary. 1 of them has been removed already.

Those are the current changes. Gilman and I have also been talking about changing where time ends in the Good Ending run to the results screen signaling the end of "The HQ" stage. This is because the player still has control past the point where the current end time happens and the stage doesn't end until you perform one last roll into Dr. Herzog so we both feel the results screen is a better spot to end the timer at.

We also both agree that "Retro" and "Modern" are fundamentally different versions of XenoCrisis and must remain intact in some way as separate of each other. Currently I am of the belief that all categories with "(PC)" in it should be changed to "(Modern)" as the PC Steam version resembles the "Modern" version of XenoCrisis already and all categories with "(Console)" in it should be changed to "(Retro)" and must resemble that of the original version (Sega Genesis) of the game. This will remove the other unnecessary (imo) variable that is stuck in the console category.

Yes, I will have to make a new thread discussing the differences so everyone knows which version of the game they ran on when submitting a run but the differences are very noticeable with just a little bit of watching both of them in action.

The final thing we discussed was the addition of a "Random Seed" category. Part of the draw of XenoCrisis is it's 60K+ seeds which carry many differences in map and room layouts as well enemy waves to help keep each new playthrough fresh. This of course is one we don't intend to rush into changing so for now, we will stay put on this idea but we definitely have been in talks about it.

Having looked at all versions of gameplay I can already tell that Switch, PS4 and XboxOne resemble the Steam version (Modern) of the game, whilst the AES and Dreamcast versions resemble that of the Sega Genesis version (Retro) so we can put that in the rules description should we follow through on all of that.

I was going to say that the modern consoles are exactly the same as the PC version and it always confused me why the consoles were treated separate from the PC version. The category for PC should be PC+Modern console and the console used can just be a marker that is not a separate sub category.

The console category should be changed to Genesis/Mega Drive and Modern/Retro shouldnt' even be a thing.

These are all good changes and I'm happy with them. I was going to bring some of these weird categories (or over-categorization) up with bling once I get the good ending on the Switch version (haven't quite done it yet).

and I'll have to see what you did in Easy (I know you died to get more grenades) and see if I want to improve my pb.

As a side note, I think if Xeno Crisis gets in main schedule GDQ I will not do the death abuse because I would rather have a deathless run.

P.S. Would random seed runs be a thing, or is seed 1 just too good? It's the only seed I know you can get full gun power up for stage 2.

My only concern about renaming the console category to Genesis/MegaDrive is that anyone that may run this game on the Dreamcast or AES might get confused where their runs will fall into but I think as I mentioned before we can clarify on that further with a separate thread on where each console's version (and the rules too) falls into.

Another option is we can rename the console category to "Original" as it is my understanding that this game was originally made for the Sega Genesis and then was modernized/updated for the releases of the game on more recent platforms and Steam. But yeah, just figuring out a proper name for the categories is all we have to decide on at this point. We're pretty much in agreeance that the Retro/Modern variable shouldn't be a thing so I think it's safe for me to remove that now so I'm gonna go do that shortly here.

Also the death abuse isn't just to regain the grenades, it is also serves to tack on more damage on respawn if the final boss's weak point is still open when you die and you're close enough. I'm not gonna lie though another thing that's been on the back of my mind was banning the death abuse strat I use too. There is a right and wrong time and place to do that strat but I dunno...it feels kind of cheesy to just up and die to regain all my grenades and save time because the final boss has too much downtime before he's vulnerable again in both phases.

As for the random seed stuff, I think the number of rooms you need to travel through (before the boss encounter) don't change with a different seed so time saves I don't think sway as much in favor of one seed over another there but some room layouts play more favorably to the player than others when it comes to keeping up with the enemy wave.

Don't think banning a strategy the game allows is a good idea. It is not like the entire game is death abuse or something unentertaining.

This is true. It only really applies to the final boss because of the requirement to get good ending. Even in Bad Ending though, I can only really see the use of death abuse happening for Cthulu and the lab boss (Myriax I think is its name?) as the other fights end too fast to make death abuse worth it at all.