Save scumming

[TrashMan]

There seems to be some reading comprehension issues.

 

I'm not advocating removal of options or saves from PE. I'm merely stating the very real problems with a system in regards to the atmopshere/immersion and general experience.

And stating my personal opinion. That is how the game SHOULD be palyed FOR THE BEST EXPERIENCE. You don't have to do that tough, nor am I forcing you to.

 

And yes Jarmo, I do believe my opinon is "right" - shocking, isn't it? Also, since I never argued with Argumentum Ad Populum, I never argued against Iron Man mode. Being in majority/minority has no correlation to being right or wrong.

 

 

 

The only game that truly meets your standards is the one that, once you die, deletes your serial key from existence, scratches its own disc all to hell, and wipes your entire hard drive, then brands your forehead with some symbol, so that stores will never, ever sell you another copy of the game ever again.

 

And what would you know about my standards? You are assuming very much there.

Iron Man has a problem with corrupted saves, hence why I would personally use a single auto-save + checkpoints. So if your save gets corrupted, you don't have to start over from scratch, but for hte begign of chapter 3 or something.

[JFSOCC]

The only game that truly meets your standards is the one that, once you die, deletes your serial key from existence, scratches its own disc all to hell, and wipes your entire hard drive, then brands your forehead with some symbol, so that stores will never, ever sell you another copy of the game ever again.

Wasn't that what steel battalion did?

 

Edit: I for one, will be happy that I can take risks and see where they lead without having to worry about having to start from scratch. That doesn't mean I'm going to recklessly chaerg! into everything, because reloading isn't fun.

Edited November 22, 2013 by JFSOCC

[teknoman2]

The one thing I wonder in this thread is still the BG1 example.

 

First time it took 20 tries. These days people do it in 1.

And... they still say it's up to luck? Wait? What?

 

How can you contradict yourself in the exact same post? Still think it's luck-based if obviously you now found a winning STRATEGY? Or do did you defile luck in those years inbetween?

well if i know that up ahead i will find basilisks, i use a protection from petrification and all's well. if i know ahead i have 3 fighters, i send forth my AC-over 9000 figher that can be hit by a roll of 20 only and lo and behold: all 3 roll several 20s in a row and kill him, then it's pretty much pure luck... or in reverse, if my character cant miss unless he rolls a 1, and for some reason that's what he always rolls, i dont think my "tactics" are lacking

[Lephys]

There seems to be some reading comprehension issues.

 

I'm not advocating removal of options or saves from PE. I'm merely stating the very real problems with a system in regards to the atmopshere/immersion and general experience.

And stating my personal opinion. That is how the game SHOULD be palyed FOR THE BEST EXPERIENCE. You don't have to do that tough, nor am I forcing you to.

My bad. In response to Cubiq's (paraphrased) "If that's your opinion of how the game should be played, then simply play the game that way," you asked (also paraphrased) "Why tempt the player?". Which I took to mean "why should the game even tempt the player with the allowance to play NOT the way they think is best, which, in this case, is by seeing the effects of a choice, then reloading a state before that choice, and doing it over in a different way?"

 

If I've misunderstood, I apologize. Could you please explain what you actually did mean there, so I can compile that knowledge into my code so as to better avoid misunderstandings in the future?

[Cubiq]

He was jokingly bragging that, that is the right way to play it. And that everyone else who doesn't do it is a pleb. (i added the last bit )

 

But i got the feeling he was starting being serious, after he said that if we don't like it we should have to rely on mods.

Which is a strange statement to say for a joke....

[teknoman2]

as i said before, if you reload because you want to pull through a tough battle with all your characters alive, is fine. if you reload because you see the result of a choice you made and do not like it, then you are bad at roleplaying.

an easy way to prevent the later, is to have delayed consequences, like the witcher had. at the start of act 1 you made a choice and did not know it's effects until well into act 2... to change it you had to actually replay the whole game

[Lephys]

an easy way to prevent the later, is to have delayed consequences, like the witcher had. at the start of act 1 you made a choice and did not know it's effects until well into act 2... to change it you had to actually replay the whole game

 

Except that the delayed consequences can just be looked up on the internet. And the person who's reloading is reloading why? Because getting the results they want via the choices presented to them is the most important thing to them. So, again, they can just look it up if they're that worried about it, because you can't prevent people from communicating things 4 hours after the game releases.

 

In which case, again, why work to prevent someone from diluting their own game experience? If someone wants to buy the game on disc, then use the disc to make a shiny mobile for their baby's crib, they can do that. Just like if someone wants to buy a specific book online, then just burn it for fire fuel, they can do that. If they want to argue that they're using the book the way it was meant to be used, then I'll tell them "no you aren't," all day long. But, who am I to attempt to prevent them from doing that?

 

That's the thing about save scumming, and this whole "There's no wrong way to play a game!" argument that some people love to toss out there. You're correct. You can do whatever you want with that game, and it's not really "wrong." It just isn't "right." In other words, there IS a way in which that game is intended to be used. Why? Because it was designed. It's not just some random object. A tree doesn't have a specific way to be used, because it's just a raw object. But a game? It's designed by people, for people. So, yes, the designers DO get to say how it's "supposed" to be used, and if you want to use it a different way, then congratulations. If you want to buy something that utilizes chance and unknowns, specifically to circumvent all the chances and unknowns and just make exactly what you want happen, then by all means, do it. But why act like rolling with what chance dealt you, and dealing with the consequences of unknowns (like what's ultimately going to happen in a given situation, despite your best efforts and intentions, as based on your choices) is somehow not the intention of the system?

 

The fact is, saving your game wasn't put there so you could go "No, wait, I didn't want them to NOT-give me that magic sword, *reload*". And the only reason that you can save anywhere is for your own convenience. So that you never get 15 minutes through a forest, then have a real-life emergency, and have to lose that progress simply because you couldn't save it at that moment in time. So, if people want to use it for whatever, then cool beans. All they're doing is missing out on the intended use of the game (even if they don't care about it), and using a product inefficiently (like buying a garden hose to use as rope, instead of just using rope).

[Silent Winter]

On-topic: I agree with what Lephys said and I apologise for the following OT sidenote:

 

an easy way to prevent the later, is to have delayed consequences, like the witcher had. at the start of act 1 you made a choice and did not know it's effects until well into act 2... to change it you had to actually replay the whole game

Except that the delayed consequences can just be looked up on the internet. And the person who's reloading is reloading why? Because getting the results they want via the choices presented to them is the most important thing to them. So, again, they can just look it up if they're that worried about it, because you can't prevent people from communicating things 4 hours after the game releases.

Yes, but delayed consequences are also good, just not for the reason of preventing save-scumming.

Like (in BG1) helping or killing that merchant guy in cloakwood forest and then either getting the merchant league quest or fighting his brother later.

I like that your actions/choices have farther reaching consequences.

/OT

[Lephys]

Oh, I fully think we should have delayed consequences. We just shouldn't have them to prevent save scumming, is all.

 

I mean, I guess technically, it does "prevent" (extremely heavily deter) the act of save scumming, itself. So, that's not false. But, it doesn't do anything for the reason anyone wants to prevent save scumming, which is finding out mystery stuff, then re-doing something accordingly. Which, with long-term stuff, and looking it up, simply bypasses the save-scumming process entirely.

Edited November 26, 2013 by Lephys

[teknoman2]

in the end it all depends on how you want to play. in RPGs i put myself in the shoes of the character, and make the choices i would make if i was really in that situation... and of course i accept the consequenses and move on. there are people however who prefer to know what will happen if they make a choice and are choosing based on the desired result. no matter how many restrictions i could put on the game to ensure everyone plays it my way, they will find a way to circumvent them and play it how they want. so why bother?

[Hassat Hunter]

Oh, I fully think we should have delayed consequences. We just shouldn't have them to prevent save scumming, is all.

It's like the argument that they added item degredation JUST for a money sink.

Now I am not fan of degredation, but I can understand if there are several underlying reasons for it. Simply one however, not a good idea.

 

Same here... if the suggested 'fix' is simply only suggested for one reason, you have to put question marks at it for use in your game. If you can honestly think no other reasons, you simply should not use it, it's a bad solution!

[Lephys]

Well, at the cost of sounding overly technical, teknoman described long-term (as opposed to short-term) consequences as "an easy way to avoid the latter" (save scumming). So, while it is true that a beneficial result of long-term effects of choices would be that it's all but impossible to save-scum 3 hours of gameplay to redo a choice, I wouldn't really call it a "way to avoid" save scumming, since you're not really ever implementing a long-term choice specifically for that reason. You're never just going to take a quest you've already designed, that had short-term consequences, and override the other reasons for its design by giving it long-term consequences instead, as a method of preventing save scumming.

 

So, yeah, even though it's a beneficial side effect, it's not really a good reason, as it is nullified by pretty much any other reason for quest-consequence design.

 

I realize teknoman may not have intended that meaning, specifically, but when I'm uncertain, I just-in-case clarify.

[Nanakamado]

I think  I agree with most of pro save scumming arguments (Well I didn't read few pages from this thread)

Well... I'm playing cRPG's for it's story... A bit like some interactive book. Save/buckup points are good for action games.

I'm interested in story, so I will reload x times to look how will NPC answer my questions, I'm not play this game 1000 times to check all the endings...

 

When I want to play RPG with consequences etc. I'm calling my friends and we play some pen & paper RPG.

[JFSOCC]

 

Oh, I fully think we should have delayed consequences. We just shouldn't have them to prevent save scumming, is all.

It's like the argument that they added item degredation JUST for a money sink.

Now I am not fan of degredation, but I can understand if there are several underlying reasons for it. Simply one however, not a good idea.

 

Same here... if the suggested 'fix' is simply only suggested for one reason, you have to put question marks at it for use in your game. If you can honestly think no other reasons, you simply should not use it, it's a bad solution!

 

agreed, but I think there's several reasons why delayed consequences can be a good idea. besides discouraging, if not preventing, save scumming, it would give the player an increased sense of reactivity and their involvement in the narrative. I also think it's just narratively stronger not to have everythign neatly and quickly tied up right away. that's easy street. Bad guy dealt with, the end. Boring and not very involving.

 

Finding out later that something you did, or a decision you made caused content to happen, reminds you of what you did earlier (rather than fire and forget quests) and provides the player something to do which feels has sprung naturally from the narrative.

 

Otherwise you get that checkpoint feel of, step 1, step 2, step 3, end.

[Hassat Hunter]

Oh, I definitely agree with that, it can add some nice C&C.

 

@ Lephys; I know. But reading these forums, I do know there will actually be people who wouldn't mind rewriting quests, huge sections of story and pretty much do ANYTHING to stop the abhorrable crime that is called loading a savegame (also known as deplorable 'save scumming'!)...

[teknoman2]

Well, at the cost of sounding overly technical, teknoman described long-term (as opposed to short-term) consequences as "an easy way to avoid the latter" (save scumming). So, while it is true that a beneficial result of long-term effects of choices would be that it's all but impossible to save-scum 3 hours of gameplay to redo a choice, I wouldn't really call it a "way to avoid" save scumming, since you're not really ever implementing a long-term choice specifically for that reason. You're never just going to take a quest you've already designed, that had short-term consequences, and override the other reasons for its design by giving it long-term consequences instead, as a method of preventing save scumming.

 

So, yeah, even though it's a beneficial side effect, it's not really a good reason, as it is nullified by pretty much any other reason for quest-consequence design.

 

I realize teknoman may not have intended that meaning, specifically, but when I'm uncertain, I just-in-case clarify.

to give an example of what i mean

in the witcher, in act 1 you are asked to protect a shipment from drowners. when you are done, some elves come and say that the shipment is theirs and you should hand it over.

at that point you can say yes or no

the imediate consequence of yes, is that the quest giver will be angry at you. the long term, is that in act 2, several hours later, the person you wanted to meet, is killed with the weapons from the shipment. as an added bonus the non human traders are favorable to you

if you say no, the quest giver is happy, the person in act 2 is alive, but another important character is now in jail and the non humans will not trade with you

you can reload to get the favorable responce from the quest giver, but that changes things down the line, and if the result is not to your liking you have to repeat several hours to change it

the reason this system is implemented in the witcher, is to add depth to the quests and story, but as a bonus, it also serves as a deterent for scumming

i do not say to rewrite the quests just to prevent save scumming, but if the quests are made with far reaching consequences, then it reduces the chance of someone replaying a large part of the game just to change a choice

[Lephys]

@JFSOCC:

 

I think my words overshot their meaning, according to your "but...", because I fully agree with there being many a reason to have prolonged quest effects/consequences. I was only calling out "to prevent save scumming" as not really being one of them, all things considered.

 

@Hassat:

 

Exactly my sentiments. I feel really silly when I even think of clarifying/explaining such things, thinking "Surely no one would suggest we should just arbitrarily change short-term quests into long-term ones JUST to deter save scumming," but then I realize that I can't really assume that. So, yeah, again, there are more people reading this stuff than just those of us immediately posting in a given thread, so it's more of a "just-in-case" elaboration on our given topic of discussion.

 

@teknoman2:

 

I understood what you meant, and didn't mean to imply confusion on my part. Like I said, it pleases me that not-seeing significant effects of your decisions until hours later all but prevents people from reloading to pick the choice that gets them the results they want, and I realize that you probably didn't mean it that way (and by your further comments, you clearly didn't mean it that way). But, I just wouldn't call it a reason to prolong quest/choice effects/consequences, as I can't think of any time I'd do that without one or more other reasons to do so. Like you said, when it IS done (for reasons other than just to prevent save scumming), save scumming is pretty much prevented, as a beneficial side effect.

[teknoman2]

how far reaching consequences a quest will have, is actually determined by who makes it and how much freedom to play with it he has.

even a simple fetch quest can turn into something that will follow you through the entire game if the writer is allowed and willing to go with it.

well to get back on the topic, even if the game is made with trial of iron mode only and a save made on a server and not on your pc, people would still find a way to scum. so it is useless (from a practical point of view) to even bother try to come up with a way

[Jobby]

I don't know what your definition of save scumming is but if anyone here played through the original IE games without trial and error re-loading they were either looking at a guide or playing on easy, I hated DA:O for the health regen out of combat it was illogical and removed any sort of challenge from the game.

 

I really hope the game will be difficult enough to justify re-loading because 4 out of 6 people died and they aint gonna miraculously jump to their feet at the end of combat, in fact as far as i am concerned meaningful states of death and permadeath are exactly the type of old school mechanics this game should have.

 

But yeah, the point is, If stopping other players from unnessecary "save scumming" means dumbing the game down to the point where there is no death / permadeath and no actual consequences to your actions then your ruining the game for no good reason.

I'm all for delayed consequences if it fits from a story point of view, I'm just really really sick of the pissy simplified combat mechanics we seem to be getting these days.

[Alchymist]

I save scum. I'm not proud of it, but in some games (usually permadeath games like roguelikes and Project Zomboid) if that's what I have to do to enjoy the game then I will. It doesn't affect the games or enjoyment of the games of others, so they shouldn't have a problem with it. If you know what you are doing, then you can save scum in many instances. As long as the save file is saved locally and you have access to it then you can save scum to your heart's content. Simply copy the save file, place it somewhere safe, play the game and if something you don't want to accept happens, simply place the backup save in the save folder and overwrite the one the game made when you played last. The only way to prevent save scumming is to force the players to play online and have save data stored on a server that they can only get at to load their game when they log on to play and auto-save the game every few minutes and when they log off.

Not always quite so simple.  I think that the roguelike called Valhalla (or Ragnarok) had some additional checksum calculation so it could identify copied and restored games.  In the limit, locally saved games could be as difficult to modify as viruses if they really wanted to go that far.

[JFSOCC]

I because 4 out of 6 people died and they aint gonna miraculously jump to their feet at the end of combat, in fact as far as i am concerned meaningful states of death and permadeath are exactly the type of old school mechanics this game should have.

I get where you're coming from, but I believe what you describe is exactly what is going to happen. (when stamina is depleted a character falls unconscious, gets up at end of combat. Death, which is a different HP pool does cause permadeath) Edited November 29, 2013 by JFSOCC

[Jobby]

 

I because 4 out of 6 people died and they aint gonna miraculously jump to their feet at the end of combat, in fact as far as i am concerned meaningful states of death and permadeath are exactly the type of old school mechanics this game should have.

I get where you're coming from, but I believe what you describe is exactly what is going to happen. (when stamina is depleted a character falls unconscious, gets up at end of combat. Death, which is a different HP pool does cause permadeath)

 

 

Yeah ended up getting directed back to update 24 and re-reading the mechanics, I'm happy enough with that system though, at least death is a possiblity from combat on expert mode.

 

Still need to hear more about this "maimed" mechanic out of expert mode though, does anyone know if it will simply be a case of them running back to the nearest campfire for you to collect them miraculously "un-maimed" or will there be lasting consequences or even injuries that require professional help?

 

The updates reference to medicine suggests the latter most likely won't be included.

[Gfted1]

I believe the only way to get un-maimed, or even replenish your Health pool, is to nap it off in the dedicated rest spots.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

You know what, **** realism. If someone wants to save every five minutes and reload every time they miss a minute bit of xp, they should be able to.

[danjal]

Well, to be fair, a save anywhere system is similar to free chocolate. For most it's great, but it's not unreasonable for those of us who know we'll abuse it to hope for mechanics that makes it harder/pointless.

Isn't that kind of your own 'problem'?

Its like the people complaining on youtube that the video is too loud/not loud enough and expect the creator to adjust for their issues.

 

The way I see it, if you have a free saving system, you can restrict yourself to only saving in towns or at "checkpoints" if you so desire. Or you could just 'abuse' the system if you feel that this makes your experience more enjoyable. I for one utterly dislike having to re-do a certain piece of a game once or multiple times because the last save option was way back. I'd rather 'diminish' my game experience with a well-placed save, than die and re-run a piece of game multiple times. Especially since I know that this has gotten be to stop playing certain games in their entirety. (A game should be fun and challenging - but not tedious.)