Hello Splinter Cell speed friends!
There has been some demand for Any% No QS/QL as a category for this game for a while. I apologize for the big delay in reaction, but I am here to announce that this wish has been addressed!
We decided to add an Any% Single Segment category, which has the same ruleset as Any% but with the exception that any loading/reverting to a previous save is prohibited. This is technically not the same as Any% No QS/QL but I can explain our thought process. The split was generally asked for by Xbox runners who thought that PC had an unfair advantage over Xbox with all the dialogue skips. However, Any% v1 is already split between Console and PC nowadays. Since consoles don't have quicksaves or quickloads in this game, a console submission is already a de facto No QS/QL run.
For PC runners, we decided to add this new Single Segment category as a challenge run. A lot of people don't like the ability to QS/QL, especially because the dialogue skips on Training can be quite annoying to execute correctly. Other people just don't like the idea of saving or loading making parts of the run easier or manipulating AI behavior. We believe to cater to more people by not just restricting QS/QL for PC runners in this new category but by completely restricting reverts of any kind. From the information we gathered, mostly console runners are actively interested in a No QS/QL category while PC runners are more interested in the challenge run. That being said, console runners can of course submit for the new Single Segment category as well as long as all criteria are met!
That would be all! Thank you very much for being part of this amazing community and happy speedrunning!