I personally think that Glitchless/No Major skip should be a category for the RE4 speed running community.

There would have to be an interest in the category first, and I'm not sure what other runners think of this.

There is no such thing as a "glitchless WR" for this game as it's not a category and there has never been intent to make it one. Glitchless categories usually exist in games that are broken to the point where there is no semblance of the actual game anymore (see Ocarina of Time or Luigi's Mansion.) RE4 already has a ton of categories so glitchless would feel redundant imo, especially when the No Merchant category is nearly glitchless, as the only useful glitch that is even possible in this category is the bolder skip.

With that said there is no reason you shouldn't run glitchless if you want to, just because you can't upload a time to a leaderboard doesn't mean you shouldn't play the game in the way you enjoy playing it!

"Glitchless" categories usually exist when there's a significant enough change to the games route. If there's no significant difference then all a "glitchless" category does is serve as a diversion in the run, nothing more. Going back to the OoT example, look at Any% vs "Glitchless". That's a pretty damn large routing difference.

Though sometimes "Glitchless" categories also exist to keep the games lifespan alive. Look at OoT, yet again, as a good example here. Any% is a non-stop array of (almost, if not in most cases) frame-perfect glitches, with one mistake essentially killing runs in most cases. In these cases, separation is to protect the longevity of the game itself. Whilst RE4 has a number of glitches, they aren't collectively on the same level as a game such as OoT in terms of difficulty to pull off in succession.

Separating categories also leads games into stagnation. People jump from one category to another, and focus dwindles. This is why a lot of games, besides the obvious like Mario and Zelda, simply die off or activity drops a ton when separation like that happens unless there's a meaningful reason to do so.

I guess the questions to ask are:

Would Glitchless be too similar to Any% in RE4? Would a Glitchless category merely be established as a low-entry barrier for those who cannot do the Glitches if the above is true?

Glitchless would essentially just be no ditman, which would barely take away/add anything to the run

Glitchless/no major skips would merely be "hey check it out! I got a sub 2 in RE4 by optimizing my lines and routes with out using ditman or any of the skips that could save a nice chunk of time."

also there are runners who like to run games not utilizing any glitches or skips and just seeing how well they can do with the mechanics the way the developer actually intended.

I'm currently sitting at just above 2 hours for what I call a glitchless/no major skip run so I could potentially get on the board above some runners who have used the skips. I just think a "traditional" or whatever you want to call it category would be neat and I'm not expecting for it to happen nor does it end my love for this game or the game's speed running community.

Also I'm typing this on my phone so.. grammar and stuff .

Edit: Also while we are talking glitches and skips would you guys consider a rocket to the door to activate the light on the other side in the cage a skip?

i see where everyone is coming from and its like we already have a large amount of different categories so whats one more but that being said it should be there if people intend to compete against times which i know chalk_head is trying hard to get his time optimized. overall i dont see the hurt of putting it on there if people run it and have fun doing it and want to see there name on the board. just my opinion on the matter :D if you guys dont want to add it im sure they can just upload the times to its respective category i just wanna see everyone happy and having fun running the game.

Maybe you've seen it already Chalk but be actually just did a commentary on what we believe to be the first recorded NG+ run which at that time the run was glitchless.

You asked about shooting that light from the other side in 5-3 and that is actually done in this run. I guess it should be considered a skip but I wouldn't really say it's a glitch so much as an abuse of mechanics

Why would someone NOT ditman through the game? That sounds no fun.

I feel speedruns have to evolve in some form, or they get boring.

Glitchless is pretty much that, a vanilla experience of a speedrun of a particular game. It's the game without all the stuff players find to speed up the run. At some point it gets ridiculous, such as OoT, where you skip like 90% of the entire game and skip immediately to the final boss pretty much, but for RE4 it is far from being at that point, yet.