I was thinking of a doing a speedrun of new game on hard or manic. But if what I am hearing is true that it is faster to switch difficulties then having different categories for difficulty setting like they use to do for Last of Us.
I'll add a category for it when there's a run of it. And as somebody that's got about half the game routed on Hard difficulty, in theory, a true any% NG run would switch difficulties.
Nope you can change the difficulties at any time. And well I'll get a run of it once I finish the game.
Difficulty is only locked if you choose Lunatic, which is only available after beating the game once over. Any other difficulties you can switch between on the fly from the settings menu.
In that case i would impose a rule banning difficulty change. If people want to cheese the game they can do NG+ like i did. or just run on easy from beginning, or friendly difficulty. Anyway that's just my stupid opinion on the mater.
If people want to run it with difficulty switching, why not? There would actually be some cool stuff in it that running on only hard or easy wouldn't have.
If you want to run on only a specific difficulty, do that too and as a separate category. Speedrunning rulesets are flexible for a reason.