Baldur’s Gate 3’s huge launch has reignited the age-old debate about save scumming.
What debate? I will save scum and there’s nothing anyone can do about it lol.
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.
I mean, it’s your gameplay, do whatever you want.
There’s no debate. Mind your own business.
Still my favorite American motto before “E pluribus unum”.
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.
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.
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”?
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.
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, 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.
First of all, I don’t think there is any right or wrong and everyone should just play the way they enjoy most, whether that is rolling with their failures or ensuring they get the outcome they desired (because they might perhaps not have time to do a second playthrough of a 150 hour game).
Secondly, I think the desire to savescum usually materializes because of inherent game design issues. Failures are often less interesting and satisfying than successes, regularly closing the door on additional content which leads to the player feeling like they’re missing out. In pen-and-paper, improvisation between both players and the DM usually means there are other ways to access that same thing if the first option fails, but this is much harder to implement in a CRPG and so many checks end up being “succeed or miss out”.
The only game I’m aware of that really tried hard to design around these types of problems is Disco Elysium (though even that game had several instances of fascinating content possibly missed because of a dice roll). Still, I really wish more RPG developers would study this example and adopt a similar “fail-forward” design principle.
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.
I love that not a single one of us has a controversial take on this matter. Sounds like it’s not really a debate and just a trash editorial from a trash media outlet.
Disco elysium did failing checks right. Even if I failed a check I never wanted to scum (except for kim) because the different outcomes were so interesting. I feel like in baldurs gate I fail a check and just fight. There is very rarely a different outcome. Maybe I’m just unlucky tho
I’ve passed two skill checks only to find out it perma-kills someone in my group. Or at least the first time was permanent, idk if the second one was because I only just retrieved Withers today, I’m always flat broke, and I didn’t want to deal with it when I could definitely bring them back to life for the low cost of waiting out the loading screen. Either course of action would undo the same mistake.
Most of my save scumming is because I’ve almost never had a game present me with multiple great options that I mentally can’t pick between, though you’re right that a lot of times failure just results in arguing and murder attempts. Really look forward to playing Disco Elysium after this from everything I’ve ever heard about it
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.
I try to play games on their intended difficulty. Difficulty level wise this usually means “normal”, unless “normal” = “a chore in early game without any items or skills, then at the exact moment your arsenal becomes viable you obtain the pointy acid sword and the ‘double all acid damage’ skill, which trivializes the rest of the game”. In that case I pick “hard”.
Why is this relevant? Because the industry has developed a standard protocol to prevent save scumming, such that when a game starts I instantly know where the devs stand. You know the drill: ‘this game features an auto-save system; when you see the spinning circle, first don’t turn off your system, and second take note that your fuck-up right now has been recorded for posterity and cannot be undone’.
As far as I’m concerned, nowadays if the game lets you save scum, then this is an intended part of the experience. The most blatant example of this is immersive sims (Deus Ex, Cyberpunk 2077, Dishonored) that hand you a bazillion save slots with manual saves, auto-saves and quick saves, all but outright telling you “go ahead, ‘Life is Strange’ your way through this shit”. Conversely, we have games that don’t let you save scum and this is also a part of the experience – Soulslikes, Choose-Your-Own-QTEs (Until Dawn, Detroit: Become Human, etc), roguelikes, and a great many other genres where save scumming abolitionists can celebrate their successful conquest. The devs pick carefully, and I believe they usually know best.
It’s reached the point where when I see an overpowered save system in a game, I don’t only feel zero guilt about taking advantage of it, I actually interpret it as a necessary concession from the devs – an essential feature to be ignored at my own peril (think of Al Lowe, designer of ye olde sadistic point and click quests, who said the quiet part out loud: “Save Early and Save Often!”). If the devs chose to allow save scumming, this must be because they knew a lot of game scenarios are frustrating, counter-intuitive and capricious when encountered the first time, to a degree that can make the game not fun. I’m just not up for that.
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 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.
Christ, that game. Coming into it I’d just played Dragon Age: Inquisition and took one big lesson from that previous experience – no more filler quests. Is the quest part of the main plot? No? Do I actually predict a good payoff, and not just imagine it could maybe be there? Also no? Then skip the quest. That approach would have saved me like a 100 hours on DA:I that were entertaining but ultimately, in retrospect, wasted. I thought it would serve me well coming into this new game.
Imagine my surprise discovering that after the first act Pathfinder: Kingmaker becomes “wander and stumble upon side quests to pass the time, the game”, crossed with some kind of painfully elaborate toy version of Crusader Kings that I found I had zero enthusiasm to play. Once the main quest became officially gated by in-game time I was tempted to quit right then. In spite of myself I said “fine let’s explore” and tried going to four different places, only to get rekt each time due to ‘not supposed to be here yet’ underleveling. That’s when I shook my head sadly and threw in the towel. I suddenly gained an unexpected appreciation for DA:I, which at least did entertain me for those 100 wasted hours.
I don’t think there’s ever been a save scum debate. Most people just do it, especially the game is unreasonable or has easily missable / permanently locked content that you lose out on forever after dozen or hundreds of hours of playtime unless you save scum.
It’s more like most people do it without shame because they have lives, jobs, families, and limited time and energy to play, and a vocal minority of tryhards and internet trolls (who also save scum but lie about it) who try to force their twisted values on the majority for no other reason than to try to control everyone because of some personal dysfunction.
The gripes I see about save-scumming usually come from those who would prefer not to but don’t have impulse control, so they’d prefer developers to take away from players who don’t care, and have valid reasons for doing so like you listed.
The debate often pops up in rogue like games when you say there should be a save and quit option.
Save scumming is the only way I can tolerate games like this. For as awesome as the game is (very awesome) sometimes consequences fall within the range of acceptability and sometimes they don’t. When they don’t, save scumming is what keeps me from putting the game down for good.
I try to think of it in terms of how it would go at a D&D session.
For example, if i roll perception well, seeing a tile is trapped, and tell the DM i avoid it, he’s not going to have some NPC trigger it because i forgot to tell them to stop following me, so i feel justified in reloading a save in that case.
I’m the first area with Withers I didn’t fully understand traps. I saw one and we avoided it then I turned off turn based mode. What I didn’t notice was the fireball traps on the walls. It was extremely confusing but hilarious watching it unfold. It wasn’t too big of a deal but I totally get what you mean. Even apart from that it’s annoying how they don’t just avoid ones other people saw.
Lmao I often forget to unlock my party when dealing with traps only to have Shadowheart haphazardly wander right into the painfully obvious tripwire as the trap dice check is loading
Yeah, absolutely reloading after I click on a barrel to search but it’s not that kind of barrel so my character smashes it and explodes us all.
