So I'm just starting to get into speedrunning, with Splinter Cell being one of the first games of choice. While a lot of categories for a game can make for multiple empty leaderboards, a "no QS/QL" category is a popular category, splinter cell or otherwise. As of this post, the no QS/QL category for Chaos Theory is more than the normal any% category. Maybe it wasn't always the case but still, it shows that runners are willing to try out that kind of category.

And of course the stipulation of not being able to quicksave/load may lead to a more "safe" speedrun, but, this is a matter of adding a category rather than replacing it. It's like the hardcore version of speedrunning, which is not for everyone, especially the casual speedrunners. I'd be lying if i said that i don't get annoyed when I see speedrunners of any game having high dependability on quicksaving/loading for certain shortcut strategies, since the repeated re-loading of a save is less about skill and more about trial and error, as all that's happening are slight incremental changes to a player's speedrunning movements/animations/actions/timing/etc. (example that comes to mind is the 2nd level of Splinter Cell 1 in the burning building where you carefully line up your jump wit ur pistol to wall jump over the fire to the person, gurgenidze, that's trapped by debris)

But again, as mentioned in prior post(s), a clutter of categories, whether they are ridiculous, common, very specific or otherwise, can be harmful to a game's leaderboard since most categories might only have 0, 1, maybe 2, submitted runs. Hence, my solution would be to wait for AT LEAST 1 person to submit a run for a category that is yet to exist BEFORE actually making it official; maybe even wait for at least 2 people to submit a run for an unofficial category before actually creating it and making it official.

For me, I just recently became the first person (on this website at least) to complete an Xbox console run (Xbox one specifically) for the first Splinter Cell game. However, it wasn't just a normal run; I went for a No-Alarm + No-Saving/No-Loading unofficial category run. Since version 1 has only been speedrun'd on PC, I imagine that's why the non-main categories (like No-Alarm and No-Damage) don't have their own console/xbox filter. That being said, I think it would be valid in making the type of speedrun I did into an official category for the game, as new categories that pop up with at least 1 person on the leaderboard could garner attention and interest, since the traditional and long-time categories probably contain times by runners who have already studied and practiced the speedrun strat metas which leads to leaderboards with players with all very close times. New categories might be ripe for new strategies/approaches for runs, maybe even new discoveries that could be used for other categories.

So yeah, not trying to re-ignite/continue the arguing within the community or anything, I'm just giving my 2 cents of perspective on speedrunning :)