Baldur’s Gate 3’s huge launch has reignited the age-old debate about save scumming.
There’s no debate. Mind your own business.
Still my favorite American motto before “E pluribus unum”.
But then how will I get a quick and easy sense of superiority?
Is only game. Why you heff to be mad?
Play video games the way YOU want to and stop worrying about how other people play. This is a major problem in MMOs/Multiplayer games, I don’t know why we should open the door for people to be upset about someone else’s Singleplayer experience.
In a game that takes dozens of hours to get through? Of course I’m save scumming to get the result I want. If I don’t care about some consequence maybe I’ll let a failure slide but for the big stuff, I’m not starting again and doubling my playtime, I’m usually burnt out on the title by the end of the first run.
This is definitely it for me too. On games like this I’ll happily savescum because I want to see the ending I desire. If I love the game enough I may replay it, and in that case I’ll just roll with whatever happens as I explore new paths.
IMHO, no harm in a single/cooperative multiplayer game. If the player wants to go through the hassle of saving and loading repeatedly, that’s their decision. No harm to the community at large.
Exactly. If i do it or not is literally something you couldn’t possibly find out about me unless I said it, how could this be igniting anything?
Because this is the internet, and we have to argue about something.
That is so not true fuck you! /s
yeah we never argued before
Are you… arguing right now?
I’m sorry, this is abuse. Argument is next door.
Terribly sorry to intrude. Carry on.
Hi abuse, I’m dad
Are you trying to infer that I meant arguing was invented on the internet? Because that’s not even close to what I said.
I have planted a plasma grenade in the ass of a friend too many times
I choose to believe this is a fallout…2? reference.
Could be Halo
Yes
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Same. Why the hell do people care about how other people play?
Bigger question is who gives a crap?
It’s a single-player game, let people enjoy things the way they want to. I personally don’t save-scum the skill and ability checks, but I will save-scum on a tough fight if I’m in a losing position - and I ain’t gonna knock on people who do and don’t do that in a single-player game.
For multi-player, I would discourage it since dealing with your friend’s fuckups is like, half the fun of a tabletop session.
Presumably IGN have not been able to generate sufficient clicks by saying ‘this game is really good and not very controversial’ so they’re turning to shit like this now.
Yeah, I have to agree. When it’s a single player non competitive environment, who gives a fuck? Even if it ruins the game for the person doing it, that’s all their are hurting, their own experience.
How is it ruining the experience for them if they shape the experience they want?
They’re not saying that it does ruin the experience, they’re just saying that if the argument is that the experience is ruined, it’s only the player’s experience that is ruined.
Aah okay.
I think reloading a difficult fight you’re losing isn’t necessarily savescumming. What’s the alternative, letting it play out until you get a TPK and then starting over with a new level 1 character because “that’s what would have happened in pen-and-paper”?
I think this is the challenge for some who don’t want to reload a save. But random dice --with 1 always failing and 20 always hitting are just that random. No play skill involved.
I agree. But hey, people do permadeath no-reload challenges of XCOM, too. Some folks are crazy.
I just don’t think reloading a save after losing a fight counts as savescumming. That functionality is such a core part of games that we had to invent an entire genre to design around not doing that (Roguelikes).
Yeah, and that’s an extreme take I’ve seen some people take on games in the past - basically treating every game as if they had an Ironman mode.
I personally don’t even see reloading the game after losing as “save-scumming”, but there are the rare individuals who would consider it as such.
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Al Lowe
Oh man, my childhood. I learned the art of saving from a brutal master.
I’m so glad difficulty can be changed whenever.
In Resident Evil Village I set it to hard. I was having trouble (partly because of a glitch of the game being stuck in black and white that I didn’t realize was a glitch at the time) and it suggests I lower it to easy. So I did. Then once I understood the game I was ready to increase it. Fuck you, you can’t do that. You can only lower it to easy if you die a lot. Can’t ever change it again. So stupid.
I do it but I feel kinda dirty about it, ngl. With inspirations there is little need to reload unless you get a TPK, but I save them in case I ever need it, but never use em anyway.
I only wish they had an option for time based auto saves. Realized too late that it’s based on milestones and had to relevel every character after a tpk.
There is a mod on Nexus, the Life Saver Mod, which is supposed to auto save whenever you enter combat. But it hasn’t been updated since 2020 and doesn’t work on the release version. Hopefully the author comes back to it, or someone releases something similar.
I bought a super fast NVME drive just for this game as I acknowledge that I am a save scummer and hit F5 before and after anything important happens. It’s muscle memory by now. Someone looks at me sideways, they get an F8 to the face.
On top of that I do periodic named saves because I left number of autosaves and quicksaves set at default 25.
I realize I haven’t Got Gud at the game as quickly as a result, and do respect those that only reload after a TPK.
When watching streams, I start to stress when the player hasn’t saved in the last 5 minutes. It’s the price I pay.
Yea this would be nice
I remember when Pathfinder Kingmaker released there was a very vocal group that said the game was too difficult and they were forced to save scum. Now everything in that game basically had a slider and you could completely customize difficulty, but that meant you were changing it to the forbidden option labeled “Easy”. The pride these people had, they just couldn’t do it.
The funniest part of it is that Owlcat did fix it. That group’s attitude was very much “finally, it’s playable. About time”. However, all that Owlcat did was move those sliders for them and renamed it normal mode.
Having received Kingmaker for free and tried it on a supposedly “normal” difficulty, I totally understand why people save scummed and did it myself, because the game balance is so poor in the early sections that if you don’t save scum, progressing was often literally impossible.
And then later on, if you got some really bad rolls, particularly when travelling or making camp, even if you could progress, you’d have used so many resources that it wasn’t worth it. The worst part was that certain class combos were overpowered and others were really horrible too. That game was just all over the place, and I eventually stopped playing it not because I couldn’t handle the difficulty, but because it was a chore to play and unfun.
Very clunky all around, and it got repetitive too and had many work-like elements. I hear the sequel is much better, so I may try that instead later, or the upcoming 40k RPG from Owlcat.
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I don’t see a problem unless there’s a competitive league with specific criteria excluding it.
Hell, now that arthritis has fucked my hands like a two dollar whore, if I was playing anything, that’s what I’d be doing.
They didn’t put quick save and quick load on single-keys in easy reach because they expect you to live with the consequences of what happened. Anyone who doesn’t recognize that save-scumming is part of the design intent is lying to themselves.
Though the load time should count as somewhat of a punishment.
Save summing is enjoyable. If I wanted to live with my horrible decisions I’d turn the game off and engage with reality. Anyone debating how someone else enjoys something they paid for is a muppet.
Well said.
Question: how many people are this “debate”? Judging by this thread, there’s not many, and it’s a slow news day at IGN.
Yea, I’m scum. And I don’t think I’m the only one. I’ve been doing it since there were D&D games. I remember doing it in Pool of Radiance.
Yeah, I have to win. So I just put it on hardest difficulty to compensate then save scum away. Have to use every tool to your advantage, right? Plus it always eats at me to know I failed a check and whatever that content was is just gone forever now unless I do a new 150+ hour campaign.
