No-Hit ruleset contains these three statements:

1. Complete the game as fast as possible while not getting hit by a single enemy.
2. You may restart a level if you take damage.
3. Just make sure that you get a No Hit star after the level.

These rules contradict each other in some ways and raise more questions than answers. You can read problems with each of these statements below.

1. Player can be hit by some enemies but receive no damage at all and still get star after the level. You do not even need to restore health for that (otherwise it would be All-Stars category definetly). Could it be considered as no-hit run or not?
2. Player can take damage or lose health not just from being hit. There are some perks that reduce your health instantly and some other perks provide you with abilites to do damage to yourself without any help from your enemies. So, you can finish level without getting hit by a single enemy but with lot of damage taken. You may or may not get a star after the level depending on your ability to restore full health before level ends.
3. The last statement is the most confusing one since there is no such thing as "No Hit star" in the game. You get star if you complete the level with full health at the end of that level. You can take bunch of hits and tons of damage then apply one simple bandage and get desired star. Though it doesn't indicate whether you've taken damage or not, nor taken any hits or not.

In order to understand listed problems we need to understand game mechanics first.

From what I've learned about this game I can say that every melee attack consists of three steps:

1. Monster attacks Monster performs melee attack whenever trooper gets into its melee attack range. The game informs you about monster attack with sound of that monster type.

2. Trooper gets hit or evades Trooper can dodge monster attack (Dodger and Ninja perks) or block it (shield powerup). Succesful monster attack results in trooper being hit - indicated by "argh!" human sound.

3. Trooper gets damage or ignores it Succesful hit doesn't result in trooper losing health every time. Trooper can ignore some portion of damage with perks Living Fortress and Thick Skinned. Trooper can ignore incoming damage completely with perks Highlander and Tough Reloader. Non-ignored part of incoming damage reduces trooper's health.

The same attack-hit-damage pattern applies to ranged attacks as well with two exceptions:

• enemies make ranged attack regularly which produce flying projectile
• hit from ranged attack may (or may not) occure when projectile moves directly into the troopers' hitbox.

With everything being said we come to the main question. What exactly should be considered as "No-Hit run"?

Is it run where you take no damage from monsters or no damage at all? In first case you can get real headache using perks Ammunition Within and Jinxed. Both perks will reduce your health from time to time. Furthermore, Ammunition Within do it and looks the same way as hit from monster: trooper screams, spills blood and gets disoriented for a small amount of time. Combine these perks together with bad luck and welcome to hell of a guessing what is the cause of every lost hit point. Did I hurt myself or bumped into a monster? And there is no ingame statistic that can help you with that. In second case Ammunition Within and Jinxed becomes useless perks and should be avoided or even be banned. And there is another question. Should we forget about perks Infernal Contract and Thick Skinned in second case as well? I think most people watch for health bar being full all the time to determine if there was no hit taken from monsters. Any health draining perk turns health bar to unreliable source of information that way.

Or is it run where you get no hit for real? In that case Highlander becomes useless perk and actually should be avoided or banned since no more hits would have impact on player's health making it very difficult to see them.

The rules are the way they are because -games tracks ending a level with full health on it's own -manually tracking that makes the moderation workload far greater -due to some perks defining an arbitrary 'no-hit" beyond what the game define as no hit is a lot of work in itself -The more complex those arbitrary rules become the worse the workload will be -anything beyond the current definition is just a very frustrating run that almost no one is gonna touch, having an empty category is pointless

I understand the moderation overload problems with manually tracking health, perks and complex rules. I've described reasons for that in my first message already. But I don't see anything in the rules that forbids me from using perks that would complicate moderation that way. So I wonder myself how is it could even be possible to moderate well with such ruleset?

Ruleset contains only one actual definition rule: Complete the game as fast as possible while not getting hit by a single enemy.

Followed by one addition: You may restart a level if you take damage.

These statements don't forbid me to take damage. They forbid me to take damage from enemies only.

Ammunition within is very good perk for speedrun purposes.

Let's consider this scenario:

1. Get perk Ammunition Within
2. Shoot during reload time, receive damage from perk
3. Receive no damage from monsters
4. Use bandage and finish the level with a star

It is eligible run according to current ruleset. But it makes hard to moderate such run. Moreover it is hard for player to keep an eye on that during entire run. And it could be very frustrating to record 2-3hr full game run only to discover you've missed some monster hit while being with Ammunition Within or Jinxed and you haven't noticed.

So it is already frustrating in the current definition without anything beyond.

What I'm trying to say there should be direct restriction on taking any damage at all in the ruleset not just from enemies if you want the moderation process to stay clear and simple.

Also it would be great to see some terms regarding Infernal Contract perk. Technically you do not take damage when use this perk but it is going to complicate moderation process as well.

I think I see the problem, the rules should probably clarify that you have to show you getting the "no hit" star on every level, which ideally should be done after the run (since some runs start with a fresh save or are single levels that's very easy to use as a guideline) The main issues I'm seeing right now -NG+ full game category lacks a clause to make verification simple / prevent cheating without having the runner manually show the star every level Ideally you'd start from a custom provided save that's NG+without any star and have the runner show it's like that every reset, more burden on the runner sure but still a lesser problem than any alternative. -Same rules apply to classic which doesn't feature anything like the star and as such would have to be very arbitrary However that might just be a byproduct of the leaderboard editing system having stupid limitations (if you make a variable it either applies to all or only one, so if you need the same variable in some categories it's a pain in the ass).

As for anything involving subtleties I'm fairly sure keeping it to what the game considers "no hit" (finishing the level with a full health bar regardless of anything that happened) is gonna be the preferred solution.

Yeah, if the rules require each stage to be manually checked for any hits in a full-game run that's just impossible to moderate. As long as the no-hit star is achieved, which would be a no-hit stage completion per the game's own definition, then it should be allowed on the no-hit leaderboard.

Oh yeah, I totally forgot we made an "All Stars" category because this issue was brought before. No Hit category would require manual review of every stage because as per the rules, you must complete each level without being hit once. I don't think that needs to include perk damage or damaging yourself, personally.

Although I'm not sure if we should even keep the "No-hit" category as it is, to be honest. If the game says ending the level with full health is enough to get the no-hit star, then that, in theory should be a full no-hit run.

I'd support making All Stars the default and merging no hit into it, effectively deleting No Hit as a separate thing, if others agreed it's just not worth it keeping them separate, especially if moderating a true no hit is problematic. After all, the game has a Star mechanic, but no sudden death mechanic. Also, there's some strategy in risking for an early Infernal Pact perk while hoping to recover full health mid-level, while Highlander is just pure luck and not really a great loss if we do remove No Hit as a separate thing.

Should the proposal be a separate thread? This seems like a good enough place to discuss that.