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Incline On the topic of Consequence Persistence & save systems

What type of save system do you prefer?

  • Save and exit only, exit save deletes upon continuing

  • Save and exit(with delete) + limited saving(resting, special items, etc.,)

  • i like to savescum and therefore prefer quicksaves


Results are only viewable after voting.

lukaszek

the determinator
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deterministic system > RNG
 
Last edited:

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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I demand the developers enable the cheat mode for everyone, not doing so limits my fun.
I believe it's called 'Journalist Mode' these days.

Cranky old men trying to keep new people out of gaming by making them fail sometimes, so unreasonable. Obviously if you like to fail you should just choose to fail on your own and the default should be automatic winning.
 

Bah

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My take is that nothing stops an individual from self-imposing their own difficulty standards on a game (i.e. no save-scumming). But their own lack of will prevents them from not "cheating" as they see it, so they demand that the rules be forced on them to make up for their own (perceived) lack of character.
 

Saduj

Arcane
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Aug 26, 2012
Messages
2,547
There’s a difference between failing and failing with “lolol now go play teh last two hours over!”. Replaying content because the game lacks basic quality of life features isn’t hardcore or cool. It just sucks.

I even reject the assumption that having to start over when your character dies makes a game more difficult. It is time consuming but that’s not the same thing as difficult. You’re restarting with a bunch of meta knowledge and can avoid sub optimal choices you made the first time. How is that more difficult than reloading and trying to beat the game with the same flawed character that just got wrecked?
 

Harthwain

Magister
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Dec 13, 2019
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Playing from the scratch doesn't have to be doing same things over again. Your progress can depend on what items you find, what enemies you encounter, how exactly the encounter itself goes, what your chosen build is, etc. Dungeon of the Endless did this in an interesting way, because tech you were able to get was random, as well as heroes, and room placement per each floor, etc. This, combined, really made things interesting.
 

HansDampf

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2015
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1,471
My take is that nothing stops an individual from self-imposing their own difficulty standards on a game (i.e. no save-scumming). But their own lack of will prevents them from not "cheating" as they see it, so they demand that the rules be forced on them to make up for their own (perceived) lack of character.
If an obese person is trying to lose weight and therefore gets rid of all the junk food and sweets in his house, is that a lack of character?
 

V_K

Arcane
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at a Nowhere near you
If an obese person is trying to lose weight and therefore gets rid of all the junk food and sweets in his house, is that a lack of character?

Removing the junk food from your own house is not the same as removing the junk food from your neighbors house.
I'd say it's even closer to demanding that the local stores don't sell any junk food.
 

Bah

Arcane
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The bottom line is that if you don't think games should be played with save-scumming, then simply do not save-scum. If it turns out you do save-scumm when playing, then perhaps that's actually how you really want to play the game to begin with. Be honest with yourself :M
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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If you don't think games should ever make you upset, then simply cheat your ass off. Be honest with yourself.

I even reject the assumption that having to start over when your character dies makes a game more difficult. It is time consuming but that’s not the same thing as difficult. You’re restarting with a bunch of meta knowledge and can avoid sub optimal choices you made the first time. How is that more difficult than reloading and trying to beat the game with the same flawed character that just got wrecked?

Starting over from scratch and making a wide series of different decisions is far more interesting and requires more foresight than reloading to 5 seconds ago and changing one decision to the clearly optimal one. You don't need to be starting from scratch of course, but the more progress lost, the more chances you have to do things differently and the harder it is to predict the long term consequences. If you're restarting from 2 hours ago to do everything exactly the same except the last 5 seconds before you died, either the game is shit or you're a fucking moron.
 

Saduj

Arcane
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Messages
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Asking others to be honest right after posting a straw argument isn’t exactly logically consistent.

Nobody is saying a game should never present a challenge. That’s a false position that nobody has taken.

The gripe is with having one’s time wasted pointlessly. The reason why nobody is addressing that gripe is because wasting the player’s time can’t logically be defended.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Asking others to be honest right after posting a straw argument isn’t exactly logically consistent.

Nobody is saying a game should never present a challenge. That’s a false position that nobody has taken.

The gripe is with having one’s time wasted pointlessly. The reason why nobody is addressing that gripe is because wasting the player’s time can’t logically be defended.
Arguing that losing progress is nothing but a waste of time is what can't be logically defended. Are all competitive games wasting your time because the other team can score points as well? If you think Starcraft is better if you save and reload whenever you make a shit decision, why not apply that to multiplayer too? Why not just make all your shit invincible so you never have to 'waste time' by not winning your first and last attempt?

There's nothing challenging about drinking poison, reloading 2 seconds earlier and not drinking poison. The challenge is in noticing the clues that let you avoid ever drinking the poison to begin with. The option to savescum changes that challenge from something meaningful to a hollow, arbitrary achievement, just like winning with invincible units would be.
 

V_K

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There's nothing challenging about drinking poison, reloading 2 seconds earlier and not drinking poison. The challenge is in noticing the clues that let you avoid ever drinking the poison to begin with. The option to savescum changes that challenge from something meaningful to a hollow, arbitrary achievement, just like winning with invincible units would be.
You're confusing "challenging" and "punishing".
Also, if you're basing your sense of self-worth on winning single-player games, maybe you should reassess your life priorities.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Ok, explain to me in what way hitting F6 and clicking dialogue option 2 instead of 1 is a challenge? Because I'm not fucking seeing it.
 

V_K

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Clicking dialog options isn't challenge irrespective of the save system.
I've already posted above about Monkey Island games - you can't die and lose progress, but it still takes effort to progress further. So you have challenge but no punishment. Or, say, Blackguards, where you can replay fights until you get it right - same principle.
A punishing but not challenging game would be something like Cat Mario - where you die randomly in numerous ways, but once you know where traps are, there's nothing challenging about avoiding them.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Clicking dialog options isn't challenge irrespective of the save system.
Are you retarded? I suppose scoring a perfect score on an exam isn't challenging either?

I haven't played monkey island but if you can't lose progress then the only effort involved would be trying one random option after another without any need to think about it. That's not challenging.

What's the difference between having to replay a fight and having to replay multiple fights? Why isn't replaying one fight a waste of time, so the game should let you reload in between every missed attack roll? Or just never let you fail to begin with and waste time by reloading even once? That's also the same principle, and it's a shit one. Again, my example of Starcraft applies here too. Is it wasting your time when you lose a fight during a game? When your place on the ladder drops?

You're just trying to soothe your ego by claiming your failures weren't legitimate and merely 'wastes of time' you couldn't have avoided. That you have to reach for some obscure shitty romhack nobody has ever heard of to use as an example is telling.
 

V_K

Arcane
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at a Nowhere near you
I suppose scoring a perfect score on an exam isn't challenging either?
It's an offtopic, but yes actually. Multiple-choice quizzes can be punishing, but not challenging. I happen to work in academia, and I never use them - they don't test jack shit other than mechanical memory and they're not that hard to game.

I haven't played monkey island but if you can't lose progress then the only effort involved would be trying one random option after another without any need to think about it.
I would like to see you solve a sudoku that way. Let's see how many years it will take you.

What's the difference between having to replay a fight and having to replay multiple fights?
Because then you're trying to succeed where you failed, not repeating stuff you already succeeded in.

Why isn't replaying one fight a waste of time, so the game should let you reload in between every missed attack roll?
Because challenge - in that particular case - is in winning fights, not succeeding individual attack rolls. You can succeed on every attack and still lose the fight. You may even have a deterministic system where every attack automatically connects, still doesn't mean you win every battle.
And then there's the whole blobber genre, where challenge isn't even winning individual fights but managing attrition, so you can win every combat in a dungeon level but still screw up because you used up your resources.

You're just trying to soothe your ego by claiming your failures weren't legitimate and merely 'wastes of time' you couldn't have avoided. That you have to reach for some obscure shitty romhack nobody has ever heard of to use as an example is telling.
Cat Mario is very far from obscure. And my ego is fine, thank you - I have a life.
 

CryptRat

Arcane
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If a game is just about successive hard handcrafted encounters like Knights Of The Chalice or Dungeon Rats then I don't mind saving after each encounter. A lot of things happen during one encounter in these games, there's a lot of room to consume your resource and taking or not taking risk during one encounter instead of just reloading when one thing goes wrong, so they're fun to play. Roguelikes are also fine as they are by the way.

However when we're talking about party-based games resorting to a lot of non-combat skill checks then I prefer limited saves, these do not really work for games with quicksaves, the proof is that people will go as far as advocating for deterministic checks in such games which is a shame, rolling to check stats is much more fun (risk/reward, worth trying or not, critical failure, ...), and one check alone can't make for a fun challenge but a sequence of checks can. Besides having to beat a full, tight, dungeon (you can't exit the dungeon before reaching the end) without reloading (only save & exit) is cool. You'll adapt to random encounters as they come, consume your resource and sometimes play safe not to lose progress, and choosing between taking some risks or not is actually cool unlike when you can just reload just 10 seconds before. You'll go on a full unique expedition with some failures and some successes. In Unlimited Saga you often won't get every single treasure out of a map because due to critical failures some chests will have exploded at your face, also maybe you were greedy and tried to get a better reward off a random chest via divination and failed. Note that the game also have some time limit for each dungeon that just like a food system (IMHO an overall time limit is different) works better with limited saves and enhances the game (having to decide when to rest or if it's worth persisting in trying to open a chest or pass a check through a shortcut even when the consequences of a critical failure are not terrible).
 

HansDampf

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2015
Messages
1,471
If an obese person is trying to lose weight and therefore gets rid of all the junk food and sweets in his house, is that a lack of character?

Removing the junk food from your own house is not the same as removing the junk food from your neighbors house.
I'd say it's even closer to demanding that the local stores don't sell any junk food.
Nobody is demanding this, though. It's usually people - mostly game journalists - demanding easy modes in otherwise challenging games (i.e. putting junk food into my fridge).
 

barghwata

Savant
Joined
Sep 13, 2019
Messages
504
If an obese person is trying to lose weight and therefore gets rid of all the junk food and sweets in his house, is that a lack of character?

Removing the junk food from your own house is not the same as removing the junk food from your neighbors house.
I'd say it's even closer to demanding that the local stores don't sell any junk food.
Nobody is demanding this, though. It's usually people - mostly game journalists - demanding easy modes in otherwise challenging games (i.e. putting junk food into my fridge).

I don't get it, if you value challenge in videogames so much and find it to be more rewarding and entertaining, why would you be tempted to play on an easy mode in the first place? why would you be tempted to play the game in an easier difficulty setting that you yourself claim is "objectivley" less rewarding and fun?

Imagine if some game journalist would flip this point around and say some stupid shit like "I am always tempted to play on harder difficulties but when i try to do so it's not fun, therefore ALL games shouldn't have harder difficulty settings", this isn't really any different from the point you're trying to make here...... if you don't want to play on easy mode then just DON'T.
 

Saduj

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2012
Messages
2,547
Arguing that losing progress is nothing but a waste of time is what can't be logically defended. Are all competitive games wasting your time because the other team can score points as well? If you think Starcraft is better if you save and reload whenever you make a shit decision, why not apply that to multiplayer too? Why not just make all your shit invincible so you never have to 'waste time' by not winning your first and last attempt?

Huh? If there is sensible save system and I want to replay content, I will load an old save. Another thing that makes save anywhere the best system. If I have to replay a portion of a game over when I don't want to then of course my time is being wasted. This is entertainment.

The rest of your post is just more assigned motives. The main reason I like save anywhere is that I like to be able to save and fuck off at any time. The other reason I named for reloading is dying as in game over screen. I don't know what competitive multiplayer has to do with any of this. And I'm not a min-maxer looking for optimal builds. I just want my entertainment to be entertaining and convenient rather than repetitive and inconsiderately wasteful of my time.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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The main reason I like save anywhere is that I like to be able to save and fuck off at any time.
That isn't a fucking reason you moron. You can save and fuck off at any time without having multiple save slots to reload. The only reason to need save anywhere + multiple slots is so that you can save before every irrelevant decision and rewind your mistakes.


The problem is that when you design a game around the assumption that everyone will savescum and only masochists won't, you get retarded shit like the consequences for failing a lockpicking or pickpocket check being an entire town fighting you to the death. Because hey, you can just reload! Hey, lets put in a dialogue where the player has no hints and has a 50/50 chance to just die, you can just reload!

There are no examples of a game which is shitty and repetitive normally but fun with extra savescumming. If it's a drag to do something more than once, it wasn't worth doing in the first place. Stop demanding that actual games be reduced to fucking hiking simulators where any mistake you make is completely meaningless.
 

Saduj

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2012
Messages
2,547
That isn't a fucking reason you moron. You can save and fuck off at any time without having multiple save slots to reload. The only reason to need save anywhere + multiple slots is so that you can save before every irrelevant decision and rewind your mistakes.

Not in a checkpoint system. Or system that penalizes saves in some way. And even in a save anywhere system there are other reasons to use multiple slots. Saves can be corrupted. Or maybe you want to go back and replay a specific fight. In Dungeon Rats, I saved before every fight and after I beat the game a couple of times once in a while I would go back and try certain battles over. The game I want to spend 40+ hours on more than once is pretty rare too so sometimes, if I'm curious, I'll go back and reload an old save just to see what happens if I made another choice. I always stick with the original choice though. Usually it hardly fucking matters anyway.

The problem is that when you design a game around the assumption that everyone will savescum and only masochists won't, you get retarded shit like the consequences for failing a lockpicking or pickpocket check being an entire town fighting you to the death. Because hey, you can just reload! Hey, lets put in a dialogue where the player has no hints and has a 50/50 chance to just die, you can just reload!

I don't agree that games are designed around save anywhere.

There are no examples of a game which is shitty and repetitive normally but fun with extra savescumming. If it's a drag to do something more than once, it wasn't worth doing in the first place. Stop demanding that actual games be reduced to fucking hiking simulators where any mistake you make is completely meaningless.

Stop making stupid shit up and pretending I said it, you fucking imbecile. I've called it out twice before, you think you're going to sneak it by me now? It ain't gonna work. Learn for fuck's sake. Nobody said they want to reload after every mistake. In fact, in my last post I mentioned that I'm not looking to optimize.
 

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