Get notified of new topics, but not posts

Can this new notification level not be exclusive of Tracking?

If I am understanding this correctly, if I choose to follow a category, I’ll get a notification (and thus an email) for every new topic, but will not receive further emails, nor will I see unread counts on the topic. I would very much like to receive an email for the first post only, while still seeing an unread count when I visit the site, without needing to track each topic after I get the first email.