Going cold turkey on savescumming

[Shaki]

No savescumming makes sense only in games that were created with that playstyle in mind. Which doesn't apply to 99% of modern RPGs. Otherwise it only makes the gameplay tedious, instead of more challenging and exciting. To make failure a valuable part of the experience, has to be a conscious design choice.

Modern RPGs are made purely for savescumming crowd, so it's not wonder they play like shit when you don't savescum. Remember Josh Sawyer saying how he doesn't like spells like disintegrate in oldschool games, because players just reload the game 100x untill the target fails the save and they instawin a bossfight? So instead of letting players have a choice of being a retard and ruining the game for himself, modern gamedev trend is to just preemptively ruin the game for everyone, make it purely with retard in mind as a target audience. So paradoxically, if you try not acting like a retard and don't savescum, you go against the game design, and end up with even more retarded experience.

If you don't want to savescum, play a game which was built from the ground up with an assumption that player isn't a retard. Take something like Battle Brothers - ironman makes the game 100x more fun, rewarding and exciting, because devs consciously made it that way. But 99% of modern RPGs are made for retards, so you have to reject sanity and embrace being a retard, if you want to have any fun playing them.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I get the impression that you need to lower the difficultly drastically. You may also be pressing too far in an adventuring day. PF:KM is about party planning, resource management, and attrition. Being familiar with 3E/PF ruleset is not enough. Try resting more often and review your spell selection. Also be sure to use consumables freely. They are abundant and never stop being accumulated. They make a major difference.

 

[Ol' Willy]

You know, sometimes there are situations when game makes a roll with binary outcome, initiative for example, and the outcome is decisive. Sometimes, when me and my opponent have the equal chances to win - with ~50% rolls favoring each side - I reload the game like ten-fifteen times just to see the distribution. Instead of 50-50 it usually goes 70-30 for AI. I don't know if it is a perception bias or rigged rolls but shit like this removes all my wish not to abuse reload

 

[TripJack]

i absolutely love savescooming my f5 and f9 keys are worn down to little nubs and my index fingers are fucking RIPPED

 

[ExposedBrainMatter]

I never savescum which is why older rpgs are annoying to me tbh. It's not fun to play the game five times, learn all the tricks, and STILL fucking die to an Enclave plasma pistol critical and watch your 10 hour permadeath character in Fallout 2 die because of a random encounter. RPGs should reward intense autism by offering legitimate but tough ways to avoid just instantly dying with no chance to avoid even if you know the area.

 

[Metronome]

If they allow for save scumming then I usually take it to mean they didn't plan out the gameplay. It might be okay but how am I supposed to know without spoiling myself? Save spots are what I like best. That way the developer knows not to throw bullshit at you and you know not to basically cheat. But I guess anything can be done right or wrong. There are some things I just don't understand though.

 

[Dramart]

You can't finish most wrpg without savescumming. My advice, save often if you don't want to get frustrated. The older games or inspired in them are not possible to finish without saving all the time and the new ones are very easy almost for the retarded. Try jrpgs if you want to play a well designed game where your skill really matters instead of luck and you can actually finish a dungeon or a long battle without saving every three minutes.

 

[gurugeorge]

The next best thing to the kinetic immersion of Ironman is half a dozen rolling autosaves and half a dozen rolling quicksaves. That way you don't have to think about saving, you can just reflexively hit F5 whenever you feel like it, and you're pretty much guaranteed to have something far back enough to avoid really big mistakes.

It's the thinking about saves and nervously shepherding your one precious quicksave that kills immersion.

 

[Tigranes]

It's not "reload once and you have ruined the game" thing, it's more about what excessive savescumming does to the game experience - e.g. if it's encouraging you to mindlessly try the same tactic and go for a lucky roll instead of trying different things and improve the party.

I've also seen people rageload when they lose a party member or think something's going wrong, instead of seeing if they can make it out with the one cleric hanging on by the teeth or something. It's not such a big deal if then the player consoles the raise dead instead of traveling back to town in IWD.

 

[jackofshadows]

learn all the tricks, and STILL fucking die

Because you haven't learn all the tricks. Next time raise EN PE and stealth in addition to outdoorsman and maybe you will finish your ironman run.

 

[Desiderius]

Play games however you enjoy doing it most. No need to uphold an anti-savescumming stance as some sort of universal principle. Do it in those games in which it's warranted, don't do it in those where it isn't.

ESPECIALLY if he is playing a game like PF Kingmaker on its higher difficulties, with the absurd stats bloat. The game clearly is balanced around liberal use of the save button.
Or, imagine playing an Elder Scrolls game without quick saving every 5 minutes, and getting fucked by some glitchy interaction or engine fart with your last save 30 minutes ago.

You could have saved typing time and just said that you suck and are too lazy to figure out how to get better. Why even play at all with that attitude?

The tools are there to blow out any difficulty level. Wrath on the other hand…

 

[rusty_shackleford]

savescummers disgust me, I keep a list of codex posters who savescum

 

[Desiderius]

I think it would be very interesting to play without any save reloads (except on MC death) but the chest thing fucking annoys me. No way I would restrict myself to one attempt per level on chests.

Git gud. I truly don’t get this. You can’t critically miss. You’ve got a companion who starts with skill focus and another two that trivially buff you past the RNG. If somehow you fail you can come back next level.

There’s a generation who grew up on Gold Box and Wizardry who are just disappointed in the facerollers then there’s old fucks like me who grew up on coin-ops and I don’t have any idea what you’re even doing.

 

[Gregz]

Play games however you enjoy doing it most.

If he played games for enjoyment he wouldn’t be playing Kingmaker.

 

[Desiderius]

Tinman is good for games where the game gives you the tools to take the RNG out of play (like P:K for non-retards) but for games with bounded accuracy/skills I can see savescumming unless they’ve created specific content gated behind the bad outcome (which should be a design standard for such systems).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

or just learn to live with a non-optimal playthrough

 

[Parabalus]

I think it would be very interesting to play without any save reloads (except on MC death) but the chest thing fucking annoys me. No way I would restrict myself to one attempt per level on chests.

Git gud. I truly don’t get this. You can’t critically miss. You’ve got a companion who starts with skill focus and another two that trivially buff you past the RNG. If somehow you fail you can come back next level.

There’s a generation who grew up on Gold Box and Wizardry who are just disappointed in the facerollers then there’s old fucks like me who grew up on coin-ops and I don’t have any idea what you’re even doing.

This is even more degenerate than savescumming tbh, being able to buffstack above the RNG is worse and shows a design failure in the system.

 

[Catacombs]

savescummers disgust me, I keep a list of codex posters who savescum

 

[purupuru]

When I played Kingmaker I always load my priest with restoration and resurrection spells, and stock up on those potions and scrolls. I don't have a thing against savescumming but my load time was so atrocious past a certain point that there was no way I'd bother savescumming unless it's absolutely necessary.

 

[Desiderius]

Designing for redundancy (playing Chiurgeon over Grenadier to get the Rez for instance) so you can survive bad beats crowds out a lot of the OP shit that makes the game boring so you end up with a smoother play experience.

Suboptimal missing out on a big chunk of content due to bad rolls outside your control is different from suboptimal only getting six masterpieces instead of eight because you forgot to trigger a couple quests.

 

[LudensCogitet]

People who say "play the game however you want" seem to be missing an important case: not enjoying savescumming, but feeling compelled to do it.

I enjoy games much more when I force myself to live with failure and adapt. But the temptation to just reload and try again can be very strong.

Giving into the temptation makes the game feel like a series of disconnected incidents rather than a cohesive thing, and so many items, etc. lose meaning.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Giving into the temptation

Then don't.

 

[Impressive Organ]

Savescum forever. I pickpocket who I want when I want.

 

[Yosharian]

Pathfinder doesn't have critical failure for skills and the Open Lock use doesn't have any rules for failing by X or more points, so it doesn't make sense to say that the CRPG doesn't include 'critical miss' as if this somehow compensates for the loss of Take 10 or Take 20 AND the batshit introduction of 'you only get one attempt at a lock per level'.

But of course you would defend such a sadistic and nonsensical interpretation of the original rules, because you hate your life or something...

 

[LudensCogitet]

Giving into the temptation

Then don't.

Indeed. My point was just that "don't worry about savescumming, do it if you want to!" is an oversimplification. There are obvious "benefits" to savescumming, but there are also many negatives. It's a pretty interesting design question, really. In many (most?) games (RPGs especially), the save system itself is not really part of the game. It is a convenience like saving any other thing in progress on a computer. Savescumming is taking that convenience and using it as a strategy in the game, which utterly breaks design that depends on actions having consequences.

People talk like "oh whatever, it's a single player game do whatever you want". But this is a shitty argument. You may enjoy hitting fine art prints with baseball bats, but it doesn't change the fact that you are defacing the art, not engaging with it as it is meant to be engaged.

But yes. Like you said. Don't.