OK, I think I sent this to GS a couple of weeks ago, but he hasn't responded, so I'm not sure. I thought I would put this in public then as an idea. It concerns version differences; the same game (or very similar) on different consoles. I.E., MS or GG, or SA/SADX, or SA2/SA2B. NOT PAL or NTSC; while it may be arguably slightly easier to play, you won't see a difference between the top ranks. It works like this:
Find the stats where the current record can not be performed on every system. Big example: Final Egg from SA. I doubt this one needs explaining.
Send a notification to every player in the chart by PM. I have a feeling that this could be automated pretty simply, though I could be wrong. Let them know all of the following information, and advise them to save their stat somewhere else.
About a week later, purge the chart. Hopefully, everyone who really wants to keep their stat can, because they paid attention to the PM and wrote their stat down. Reopen the chart to submissions.
When a competitor submits a new stat to the chart, include a checkbox on the submissions page for which system the competitor used. They check the appropriate box and submit.
Now the stats can be simply sorted by which system/version used.
Rank the systems separately; when a user brings up the chart, show it all on one screen but separated as to which system.
Here's the important part: calculating points.
The player's point count is determined by ONLY the other submissions for that system. If a player has submitted for both systems, the best of the two works.
Example: Say five people submit to the new Final Egg charts in the first day: mike89, SM, RPG, Thorn, and DsS. Their times are as follows:
mike89 got 9 seconds on the DC version
SM got 2 minutes on the GC version
RPG got 2 minutes 10 seconds on the GC version
Thorn got 8 seconds on the DC version
DsS got 7 seconds on the DC version AND 2 minutes 5 seconds on the GC version
And all of these times were submitted.
The points are distributed as if:
DsS and SM are tied for 1st
Thorn is 3nd
mike89 and RPG are tied for 4th
Explanation: DsS and SM hold the records for their respective systems, so they each get 1st. Second place for each system is Thorn and DsS, but DsS is already first for the DC version, and is already in 1st; Thorn is thus alone at 3rd. mike89 and RPG hold third for each of their systems, and there are a grand total of three people ahead of them, so they are tied for 4th.
Why this is good: I think it would help competition and not give an unfair advantage to someone with a particular console. I know I personally am that less likely to compete actively in Final Egg, because I only own the PC SADX version and therefore have no chance of coming close to the seven-something-second record for the original Dreamcast version. I also know that there is a 99.9% chance that I will never own a Dreamcast, and that most people won't own the same game on multiple systems unless they were (no offense) clueless enough to buy SADX when they already own SA. I feel that this could greatly help competition in a few areas; it might be a tad difficult to implement but I don't think it would be all that bad once people understand it. As far as I am aware, this would help for the following:
Sonic 1 Game Gear/Master System (Bridge 2 rings comes immediately to mind; I think there are a couple other GG/MS titles that also have differences)
Sonic 3/Sonic & Knuckles/S3K (someone owning S3 but not SnK has a severe disadvantage on Launch Base 2 times)
SA/SADX (the large majority of the time-saving wall glitches only work in SA for Dreamcast; IIRC SM has a guide to such differences)
SA2/SA2B (the differences are pretty well spread for this; each system has its own advantages, though the big one is the extra ring in every SA2B stage)
SH (I vaguely recall something about boss times being slightly smaller in the PS2 version but I'm probably wrong)
I know, this is a lot, but any suggestions would be welcome too. Thanks!
