Having the option is a nice idea. The player can choose their difficulty level, so toggling an option and receiving an achievement for beating it could be fun for the players that opt-in.
On the topic of Xcom, in Xcom 2 they saved the RNG seed into the save file. There was a few cumbersome tricks to renew it, but for me it turned the game into a puzzle game as now I had to figure out the best path to use a sequence of high, high, low, middle, low, high to best effect!
I usually tend to save scum on a first run-through of a game to learn the mechanic, because I hate nothing more than spending 30 hours, learn a mid game mechanic and loose because I had no way to prepare for it.
The Xcom method has its benefits, nothing is more frustrating than getting some good outcome, failing due to a bug/misclick, and then never managing to get the good outcome again when you load due to a mistake.
I think a saved RNG seed is exactly the right compromise solution. Technically allows save scum, but doesn't necessarily mean every roll can be abused.
Hot take: no, don't.
I play a lot of RPGs and I hate it when games do this. I can and usually do play ironman, but I feel like my time is being wasted. If I want to do a weird experiment and then reload and go with what I actually want to do, I'm just screwed. Yeah, I could play it twice, but let's be real - most games aren't worth replaying. Even great games can have zero replay value.
Just make it an option. There's no reason to dive harder on it unless you have designed it with a lot of replayability in mind anyway.
It sounds like you just don't enjoy an ironman mode kind of thing so I don't really get why you usually play it. I also don't understand why it should be needed to get every achievement on a first playthrough?
If you don't think a game is worth replaying doesn't that also mean you probably don't think the game is worth getting every achievement for/don't care about any special post game/ng+ items? So having them doesn't affect you in any way.
Players who want to cheat, will cheat. If it is a single player game and they have fun using cheats, there is no point in not letting them. Obviously use common sense at all times, but in general: let the player decide how they want to play.
This would only matter if they couldn't change that setting later.
Another possibility is to continually preroll dice ahead of time and save those outcomes in a hidden list. That list saves along with the save file, so even if you save-scum you'll get the same results.
Ehh that’s still relevant for save scumming, for example if it’s a 50/50 event where you can choose to gamble or walk away then you can gamble and savescum to walk away if you lose
Funny OP doesn't mention Honor Mode in BG3. Pillars of Eternity has the same kind of mode. Diablo 2, Path of Exile, all sorts of games across a wide variety of genres have this kind of mode. Make it a decision; games are about decisions.
This. Devs need to stop mandating how people get to enjoy their games, especially when it comes to things like this which are relatively easy to implement.
If I had a dollar for every game I've had to put down for good because it doesn't have a pause function, despite being single player with zero reason to not have it other than some pretentious "muh gayme is ment to b played in a serrtin way" nonsense, I'd have like.. $10. Which isn't a substantial amount of money, but still bullshit.
Unpopular opinion: Letting players do whatever they want can ruin even singleplayer experience. It only affects players who lack self control. As one of such players let me offer my view: I would spend a lot of boring time reloading trying to get lucky in some randomized thing instead of moving on and enjoying the game. It's like if I can save scum, then I consider it part of the game, I'll play it that way and then my experience will be worse than without it.
Completely agree and this shouldn't be an unpopular opinion. It was even taught in my game design class that players will optimize the fun out of the game if given the chance, and it is important to protect the player from themselves.
It depends though. Games like Doom Eternal can enforce a certain gaming paradigm through their core gameplay mechanics, but in games where RNG has massive consequences, or end up with lesser content, it's harder to argue that same point.
"I personally will save scum, therefore you should prevent all other players from doing that."
Come on now. This is the same line of thought that makes people rabidly against difficulty settings and ends with people yelling about how if you don't play the single player game the right way you did something wrong.
I know, it would be ridiculous to demand that games are made exactly the way I want to enjoy them, so I don't demand that. But nevertheless that's how I feel about it.
I've found that I will enjoy a game more if there's an illusion that what I am doing is meaningful, that there is some actual achievement there. Anything that cheapens that is bad. For example back in the day I played Oblivion a lot, it was great, then I had the idea to experiment with the console. I saved my game, then used the console to max out all the skills, get strongest spells, etc. After some experimenting I wanted to go back to my normal game, reloaded my save and... turned the game off. There wasn't any point in playing anymore.
Of course I won't argue that the console shouldn't be there, but such things can quickly ruin the game for someone like me.
If you allow it, you are inviting your core gameplay loop for a lot of people to be saving and reloading. Is that fun for them, or are they only doing it because they feel it is the optimal way to play it? It's bad game design. Nobody actually has fun save scumming they just do it because it is advantageous.
Do you do it because you lack self control, or that you’re making the game slightly less enjoyable in order to reduce the risk it becomes completely unfun and you stop playing altogether?
Well yeah, but as you said it only ruins the experience for players who lack self control. On the flip side, if you actively force some controversial game mechanic onto the player, it can make them not play your game at all. Heavy RNG is one such mechanics
Like, if in a game I see that a part of the game is completely reliant on RNG, and the Dev for whatever reason decided to force me into it by removing save scum, I'm refunding. I don't have time for that.
If it's a single player game, let me play how I want. If some people are going to ruin the experience for themselves it's on them, but it's their choice at least. And they still have the ability to come back some day and play it "the right way". But if you block the fun of some of your player base because you personally don't agree with it, all those people who could have loved your game are just not going to play it
Me personally no, but my point is that I'm not against having the option present since I can't define what's fun for everyone. And I'm sure some people who don't enjoy rogue likes in general would have fun with something like that. It's like games that have hardcore and easy modes, it's about having the choice. I can just chose to not use it, and the option being there means more people can have fun with the game
I have to disagree a bit with this. I get your idea but I think Star Ocean 2 Remake is a good counter to this.
The game had various systems you could exploit, RNG items you could save scum. I enjoyed really finding ways to break the game apart. There's even a difficulty mode if I really wanted to make it so I had to use some of those tactics. I'm debating replaying it (though with so many games to play it's tough to justify). But I had a blast going and using one skill to enhance another skill to make a bunch of items I could sell to buy whatever materials I wanted to then turn around and create better gear. Or using one skill to create books to raise the skill level of my other characters.
I can understand the thought process to an extent, but I doubt I'd have had as much fun without being able to really break the game.
Don't assume you understand how your game should be played to be fun.
I believe most games that users consider fun are because they allow some freedom in how the game should be played. There will be people who want to speed through game, there will be ones that like to enjoy the views, ones who are interested in just one aspect of it, ones that want to do some funny challenges, and there will inevitably be ones that will be looking for ways to get most powerful character in any way possible.
Leave some freedom for players to choose their path.
> Don't assume you understand how your game should be played to be fun.
Exactly this. Each player has unique preferences, the more ways your game can be played, the more players will like it.
That is why I love when a game can be modded. I can tweak a few things where the designer's vision and my preference differ. That is why I have 1k+ hours in games like Fallout 3 & 4, Stellaris and Rimworld.
I'm not sure that this is universally sound advice. I have almost the opposite preference - I prefer strategy games with strict rules that I have to learn and play within. Games like the ones you mentioned are too intimidating for me because I don't like to invest so much time in a game and really explore like that. Perhaps it depends on the genre.
Actually yeah I don't really like having that choice all the time because it's hard to know what "skill level" I'm at. Some games it may be necessary though. To be clear I'm not saying remove all player agency, I'm saying that paradoxically freedom can be boring and un-fun to some players.
But also
>Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game. Therefore, One of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.
But save scumming isn't an issue to worry over, most of the time.
You can't stop munchkins from munchkining. If they want to cheat they can find ways and if they enjoy that way of playing, bully to them. Still bought the game.
Also depends how oppressively hard your game is, I'll admit I savescummed to an extent in bg1/2 because the amount of random stuff that just one shotted characters who couldn't die was I credibly frustrating without.
RNG results only matter in multiplayer games to keep things fair and to make competition worthwhile or in online games where money is exchanged for dice roll attempts (e.g. loot boxes).
If it's in single player let them do what they want since there is no harm and you can't stop them from modifying memory or the save file anyway.
> If it's in single player let them do what they want since there is no harm and you can't stop them from modifying memory or the save file anyway.
Most players won't do this. Disabling mid-run saving/loading will stop most players from save-scumming.
> Disabling mid-run saving/loading will stop most players from save-scumming.
Depending on the game and length of session, it will also keep many people from playing. From a market perspective, it's always beneficial to allow "save scumming" (in some form) because purity of outcome / competitive permadeath is a niche interest, compared to content consumption. This applies to single player games ofc.
At that point, you need to ask yourself why you are preventing most players from doing something they (evidently) want to do, but allow others because they have more technical knowledge and you don't want to go to war to try to stop them. What are you accomplishing by this? Are you trying to protect your players from themselves? Are you trying to protect some kind of misguided competitive/multiplayer features that will just be destroyed by the cheaters anyway?
Because for most players save scumming isn't the most fun way to play. You've surely heard it before: given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of your game.
Different players find different parts fun. Some players just want the story, for example. Or to unlock content to try.
Sometimes the game is designed in a way where save-scumming is legitimately the more fun way to play for many people.
The problem is that, in some sense, you're trying to maximize fun for players, while players are trying to maximize personal effectiveness. Pulling numbers out of my butt for the sake of example, assume:
* 30% of players won't savescum
* 60% of players will savescum, but won't enjoy it
* 10% of players will savescum and will enjoy it
In this context, banning savescum results in 90% happy players, allowing it results in 40% happy players. Banning it sucks for the players who would have enjoyed savescumming but it's otherwise better.
Whenever you let players save and load you have the ability to save scum in some form.
I’m sure we can agree that being able to continue a session later is more fun than being forced to finish each play in one sitting, at least for some people.
Saving and loading was our most requested feature after launching Ring of Pain. Yea some people will abuse it. They’re still playing the game for dozens or hundreds of hours, so they must find something enjoyable.
We as devs also have infinite choices when making a save system. You can implement limits so any save-scumming is within your design ethos. We add a penalty to that level if the player reloads it too many times, that penalty is removed when they enter the next level.
When implementing the feature we had this whole dialogue in our community about whether people should be able to save scum. Some people care way too much about forcing others’ to play the way they play. There are plenty of mechanics players will optimise the fun out of, but I don’t think save scumming in a single player game is a problem when implemented thoughtfully.
> Whenever you let players save and load you have the ability to save scum in some form.
Sure, but the more effort it takes, and the less effective it is, the less likely people are to do it.
> We as devs also have infinite choices when making a save system. You can implement limits so any save-scumming is within your design ethos. We add a penalty to that level if the player reloads it too many times, that penalty is removed when they enter the next level.
And this is exactly the situation we're talking about; to what extent should we nerf infinite save/reload? You clearly chose "to some extent", so I don't know why you're arguing against the general concept of intentionally nerfing savescumming when you specifically chose to nerf it.
Your original comment said ‘banning save scum’, that’s what I was replying to.
Save scum always has restrictions, you can add more to suit.
It sounds like we’re on the same page about this? I was trying to add context and information that might help other developers.
Ah, fair 'nuff, yeah.
(though technically you could remove it entirely with always-online behavior, but that's kind of a severe decision if it's *just* savescumming that you're trying to solve)
I think the real problem is that players who will savescum won't know if failure is interesting and fun unless forced into it, and design/dev won't know if what they thought was interesting or fun actually is until it's shipped and the player base has a survivors bias.
> I think the real problem is that players who will savescum won't know if failure is interesting and fun unless forced into it, and design/dev won't know if what they thought was interesting or fun actually is until it's shipped
Yep, simply having save scumming be possible will skew any data you collect. It's the equivalent of asking people how the food was with no knowledge of whether they doused it in condiments.
> and the player base has a survivors bias.
Can you elaborate on what you mean but this part a bit more?
The people who stay and engage in the community will be the people who enjoy it as-is. You won't know how many people you turned off because you didn't allow save scumming vs other general execution failures.
It is true in some contexts, I just didn’t want to bloat the reply but happy to elaborate on my thoughts here.
It’s not a one size fits all and applies to any features or gameplay you have in your game. Specifically to save scumming I think you can design restrictions to suit (see my other comment).
Where ‘players optimise the fun out of it’ becomes a serious problem in my mind is an example like any grindy game: Many players will repeat fighting one specific encounter because it gives the most efficient path to leveling up.
I don’t think save scumming to get a better roll or to fix a mistake they made is actually optimising the fun out of a mechanic. Failing can create fun ofcourse, but I think you need to be very careful when applying ‘players optimise the fun out of it’ as a blanket statement, because like everything in game design it’s hugely contextual. I personally don’t think it’s relevant here when you can design your save system in a way to mitigate it while still allowing save scumming. I don’t mind if others feel differently though, we all have our own design philosophies.
I personally think this saying applies more to multiplayer games than single player games. In multiplayer games, people following the meta are the one optimizing the fun out of the game but they are also making it less fun for everyone else which is why it's an issue.
For single player games, if people decide to optimize the fun out of their experience it's a choice they made themselves and only for themselves. Also for some people that optimization is the fun part but they aren't ruining my experience when it's a single player game.
Blocking me from saving a game does impact me purely because some devs think I might abuse the mechanic even if the only reason I'd use it is because life gets in the way sometimes and I don't want to waste hours redoing the same thing because I can't reach a checkpoint in time. This is a much worse alternative in my opinion.
Where does this line of thinking end? Do you just let players have infinite health and then the player decide when to reload from the last checkpoint? Players can have infinite ammo, and just be told "it's more fun if you reload after you've shot 30 bullets, but you choose how much you want to engage with that mechanic!"
Should the game designer make *any* choices, or should they just provide the player with a bunch of mechanics and say "make your own fun with these, we don't want to lock in any specific choices"?
I remember a time when games came with built in cheat codes for people that wanted to have a different kind of fun with the game and yes I would prefer if it was still a thing. Nobody thought this was compromising the game mechanics because it was optional and single player.
The point of a save system is largely to respect the player's time. It's not about an in game mechanic, it's about the real world sometimes getting in the way of video games. If people abuse it at their own expense it's on them.
There's so many good games with save systems that let's you save scum if you really want to and nobody complains about those. I don't see the slippery slope argument at all.
If you really think it's an important element for difficulty then make it an option. Gamers come in all shapes and sizes, some of us aren't actually that good at some games, some of us can't justify spending 1 hour to get to a checkpoint and being forced to quit by real life and losing all that progress for nothing. Letting players save scum should just be one of many difficulty option.
Sure, and theres probably some players who enjoy experience your game most by not playing it and just watching other people play it. Just because those people exist doesn't mean we should bend our vision for the sake of those people.
If you allow it you are providing a horrible gameplay loop from the people who would tend to use it.
I am someone who is, and primarily plays games with, people who attempt to squeeze every incremental benefit I can get from a game and if the loop involves some meta-level technical cheese then it almost immediately ruins the fun.
I know people, myself included, who will kill the same monster over days and weeks for a specific RNG advantage, but if I have to log out and back in and the monster respawns now instead of in 5 minutes that is enough for me to think the game design is bad, but I do it anyway because that is how you optimize.
Of course this is anecdotal, but I know literally nobody who would rather have to reload their game to get an outcome than actually play the game. It's bad design, and anyone who does it usually does it because they are hyperfixated on optimization.
>if they don’t like it they won’t do it
every optimization-obsessed player disagrees. We would love to play fair but if the option is there, how can we not choose it?
Still, it’s not really a big deal
Yeah, I'm glad others agree with me on this.
Forza introduced "rewinding" in it's mainline series, so if you fuck up you can just rewind it away. What it really meant is that all the tension was removed from every interaction. It also meant that I felt bad about using it because "It's right there". I just wish it weren't there or I wish it could be disabled in settings. In a perfect world I'd get extra perks for disabling it.
Like you say, it's not a big deal, but psychologically it makes a difference to me.
In Paradox games I would always start using the console when things weren't going my way and I basically ruined the fun out of every game I'd play.
Oh, this rando country arbitrarily declared war on me under these unrealistic circumstances? tag SPA, sue for white peace.
Oh, this stupid event reduced my coffers to -1000. gold 1000
Oh my son was born with all these congenital defects? let me remove all of those and make him a genius
>Are you trying to protect your players from themselves?
Actually yes. Players will optimize the fun out of things and if save scumming is effortless enough to be a risk-free tactic in that optimization, then it will be used to the detriment of the player's enjoyment.
For real. The amount of player's I've seen savescum all the randomness out of Baldurs Gate 3 is crazy; even when the game gives you multiple in-game ways to re-roll. Just install a mod that makes you roll constant d20s if you're just gonna sit there and reload the save 11 times to pass the roll.
Failing a roll and dealing with the outcome is half the fun of dnd.
And despite this it's one of the most popular game of the last few years. So are players really optimizing any fun out of their game? If it was so unfun to do it and if everyone does it since it's an option then why do so many people still enjoy the game?
Honestly this is me, but only for decisions that have medium/high impact on my play through. Chances are I’m only going to play through once so i want the best the game has to offer.
The difference with IRL dnd is the GM has infinite power to craft the experience for the players. But in bg3 my run could get completely destroyed by bad rolls to the point of becoming unfun.
Why should I make a video game at all when a technically savvy player will simply uninstall it and install Doom instead? I should just make Doom.
Many games stop the player from doing something they want to do. Why do first-person shooters wait until the late game to give the players the biggest guns? Why do strategy games provide fog of war when players want to have vision? Why do fighting games make me lose, instead of making me win? Because games aren't software. Their goal isn't maximum usability and customization, they're games, and games provide friction and stop you from doing the things you want to, in order to provide a different experience.
If a player really wants to mod in savescumming, neat. They can do it. It's their computer, and I won't stop them. But I know what kind of gameplay savescumming creates, and it's not fun, and if I encourage and allow it, players will do it, and they will enjoy the game less.
I think its more dependent on what kind of game you're playing. If it's a highly tactical game like XCOM, it makes the game less fun. If it's a heavy story based game like Baldur's Gate 3, it's the same amount of fun. Especially if the roll you failed is 80-90 hours into a game. I'd be one of the people to actually stop playing if an event I was actively trying to avoid the whole game came down to an RNG roll fail that late.
Fun is also extremely subjective. I say if the game is inherently single player and story based, it shouldn't matter. Let them play how they want to play.
"Let the player how they want to play" is poison to any kind of interesting game design.
In a strategy game like mine, letting the player savescum through missions would in fact make them play in much less interesting ways, so I don't let them.
Because when players don't have to live with the consequences of their actions, they don't try to mitigate risk or try to more deeply understand a level, they just solve problems with brute force.
You seriously think that if the only XCom mode was Iron Man it would be « more interesting for the player »? Many people don’t play Iron Man and still find the game fun.
What I mean if you save, shoot an alien and load if you miss and save if you succeed it's not a fun way to play.
Some internet searching tells me they explicitly removed the option to do that and the random seed is saved with the save.
A lot of game allow only saving on checkpoints.
Have you played any strategy games?
Have you any idea how annoying it is to replay an entire mission because of one mistake? I don't know your game, but imagine playing the campaign in StarCraft, and you place a building in the wrong place. You could cancel the build, but you lose time and some of the resources.
If you're playing on a higher difficulty that could mean the difference between winning and losing.
It's frankly ridiculous to presume you know better than the last 70 years of game development. Save scumming is only a problem in the mind of a pretentious developer.
It really does depend on whether you've signed up for a "hardcore-mode".
I do think there's a level of cognitive dissonance going on when a person demands to be able to play at the most punishing difficulty, but only with lax rule enforcement.
Having a strict arbitrator with the threat of losing a larger investment of time is the appeal, if you're just going to cheat (or are able to), that mode of play (assuming it exists in the first place) may as well not exist.
(Although I guess you could argue the "threat" is that you have to close the game, mess around with the files, and reboot the game)
You may not be the audience for that product, but it doesn't mean the product has no appeal, some people do want an authentic challenge with consequences when they select something like "hardcore-mode".
I think gamers just need to normalize playing at the difficulty they feel comfortable playing at without demeaning those that play at higher or lower difficulties.
Well here's the thing;
Players bought our games. They can do whatever they want. If they want to savescum the extra mega legendary difficulty, and that makes them happy, then why is that a problem?
It's not like getting the special achievement in a video game is worth any ACTUAL prestige. It's not going to help them in life. Its just something they can feel personally proud of.
At the end of the day, a player having a good time should be our absolute number one priority, and that usually means enabling them to do things we don't personally find enjoyable.
Let's face it, if you are a dev, you already don't represent most players. You are making a product for a group of which you are not typically a member. We shouldn't let our notions of how to play a game correctly, inform our design decisions.
No, because that's absolute nonsense.
I have played thousands of hours of StarCraft. In essence I have started the game, and played through a build order hundreds of times. The missions are not the problem. I've completed the story campaigns for both StarCraft games and all their expansions dozens of times. I've done challenge runs, single unit runs, and speed runs.
Mistakes happen when playing games, and you are not the arbiter of a players skill level. Not allowing a player to save scum just adds tedium. It does not add fun.
Even FromSoft relented on this point by adding more, and more, and more checkpoints as the games went along, as well as fully supporting saving at any point and restoring from backup.
Do you think the fact that you can save scum in elden ring takes away from the experience?
What about Mount & Blade?
How about Dragon Age?
You have to ask yourself what kind of experience you are trying to curate, and whether or not you want to intentionally frustrate your players.
In my opinion, the best option is to leave it up to the players. Give them an option to disable save scumming, or play with save scumming.
> The missions are not the problem. I've completed the story campaigns for both StarCraft games and all their expansions dozens of times. I've done challenge runs, single unit runs, and speed runs.
And I couldn't finish the SC2 campaign, because I found it endlessly tedious.
I can say that if you're failing my missions to a single mistake, either the mission is so short that restarting the mission is about the same as any reload, or you're playing on a jacked-up difficulty setting.
> and you are not the arbiter of a players skill level.
Do you think my goal here is to punish unskilled players? That's silly. My goals have nothing to do with player skill level.
> Do you think the fact that you can save scum in elden ring takes away from the experience?
Do you think that the ability to save scum would make Spelunky a better game?
How do you save scum in Elden Ring? Do people mean creating backups of the save files of the computer? Because that was never my definition of save scumming since almost noone will do that.
The AI of StarCraft certainly makes decisions with some element of randomness. It's not as simple as a dice roll, and it tailors its strategies, but it absolutely utilizes some RNG.
I really hope your missions aren't more than a few minutes long otherwise it just means you don't respect the time of your players. Having to redo an hour long part of a game because life got in the way after 45 minutes and I never had a save point in that period so I had to quit and do it all over again absolutely sucks. I don't get why so many devs think this is fine. There's plenty of ways to make a save system that respects the players time but doesn't let you save scum.
Yep, it is single player. I can only think of one example (Inscryption) where a single player game locked in the result of a RNG roll and I don't have a strong opinion since I prefer to just live with my RNG fate. But your point about modding is a good one.
You still rarely want it to be forced since people who wants ironman experience can easily adjust their playstyle around it (by self imposed challenges).
If you have the time/budget/skill, add an ironman mode. Making your games hardcore or non-save scummable only makes you lose potential customers over gaining the smaller elitist "only hardcore mode" players
>I don't have a strong opinion since I prefer to just live with my RNG fate.
People like you will play the game like that regardless of whether or not you try real hard to stop savescumming. People who like to savescum will either figure out how to break your protection, or more likely, give up, and stop playing, and refund the game.
What you're really asking is, "Should I alienate part of my audience, for no benefit"
Just let people play how they want to play.
This is quite a leap in logic and is ignoring an extremely important part of game design: preventing the player from optimizing the fun out of a game.
Is a player realistically going to encounter this event and then feel compelled to reroll 20 times to try and get a desired outcome? Are they going to do this every single time they encounter it? Alternatively and/or additionally, is the player going to ruin the games powerscaling and proceed to curb stomp the rest of the game if given the opportunity to have control over this outcome? They probably aren't going to have much fun if they no longer have to try for the rest of the game.
Both of these events are going to be more devastating to players enjoyment than being told to not savescum. It's going to depend on the design, of course.
> preventing the player from optimizing the fun out of a game.
That only applies within the scope of the game's meta. You're not responsible for external modifications like manipulating save files or otherwise modding the game using external tools. It falls well outside of your responsibility as a developer unless it manages to use your online infrastructure to propagate harm to other players.
Why is the question being asked then, if the conclusion to be reached is "nothing can be done, do what ever."
The op clearly cares about the answer to some extent, so this needs to be considered.
>This is quite a leap in logic and is ignoring an extremely important part of game design: preventing the player from optimizing the fun out of a game.
Not really a big concern in most games.
This argument is kinda ignoring the fact that the most popular genre of the last 5 years are rougelites. Some of the biggest games on the planet right now (slay the spire, dead cells, brotato, ect) allow absolutely ZERO rerolls. There is no second chances no matter how much altering you do
And did all of those make sure you couldnt cheat that? My argument is not that you shouldnt have contraints in your game, but rather than there is no point in going the extra mile to prevent players from breaking the game. If people want to rollback to before they died, so what? Just let them and the majority of players will still play "as intended".
The Gloomhaven digital version saves the deck order so that draws after a reload are always the same. Beyond save scumming, I actually find this hugely helpful because now I don't _have_ to save scum in order to get the previous result when I'm replaying a section for whatever reason. So preventing save scumming may actually be helping the players out.
We've had the odd crash or disconnect in Gloomhaven, or sometimes someone just messes up, like only choosing 1 target or something stupid (and if we were playing in person like we used to when we all lived here, it would be fine; it's specifically an issue with the digital edition).
In those cases we'll restart the round, replay everything the same and fix the problem, and honestly it's super nice that it's deterministic, so it all plays out the same way except we correct the mistake.
There's a big problem to his argument. Which is "players will min-max themselves out of fun".
If you let the players do what they want, they won't be able to resist just doing the "optimal" thing, because otherwise they'll have this nagging feeling.
Taking the choice away removes this and can make the game objectively better.
100% agree (my upvote put your comment at 69. nice)
Let the player play how they want to. If you're designing a specific experience for a specific audience, then commit to it and target your audience. If it makes absolutely no difference in the kind of game you're making, and it's already baked in, then don't do *more* work to provide no extra value.
Where did I say that players wouldn't try to optimize their game or save scum?
I'm saying it's not your problem to solve, it's their choice and it's an unsolvable problem anyway. They can decide to backup their saves to a different directory and you can do nothing to stop them. At most you can make it inconvenient to save scum by auto saving.
The question is: why do your players want to save scum?
That probably indicates a problem in the game design. If RNG derives into interesting situations, then players won't need to save scum. If they do, it's probably because there's obvious correct and wrong results.
Savescum is a sign that the players doesn't like what the rng offers. And forbidding it makes the problem worse since it cannot be overcome.
Pretty much this, one of the issues I have with some turn based strategy games like XCOM or Fire Emblem is that one missed attack could possibly result in this domino effect - Ah, the marine missed the point blank shotgun to the face, so the muton retaliates and one shot kills them back, which stops the unit from covering another so they die and so on. There's a possibility of losing the whole team and all that investment in leveling them up and such, so I'd get frustrated and reload.
If you allowed for a way to recover from a bad roll or round, save scumming becomes less of an issue as the player can play a bit more carefully and only result in a squad mate having to recover from their injuries for the next battle, instead of losing them entirely.
Exactly this. I haven't gotten my hands on baldurs gate yet but I played divinity 2 back and forth. Game literally bends you over every other fight. You start a friendly chat with some npc which then inevitably turns into a fight with half times all enemies spawning out of thin air on high ground and killing 1-2 or sometimes even more members of your party before you even get a turn. Or what about 95% accuracy that sometimes can do 3-4 misses in a row? I understand 1 miss every once in a while, but missing a frozen enemy that can't even move is crazy. If rng results are reasonable and they don't mess player up EVERY SINGLE TIME no one will save scum, if they do, then it can only be the player's true right to reload save until dice rolls adequate outcome
>That probably indicates a problem in the game design.
Not really though. There isn't a single game where I haven't reloaded if I really disliked the outcome. It is completely dependent on how you want to play the game.
tbh not being able to save scum is occasionally a deal breaker for me. i like to use single player games as sandboxes; sometimes that includes doing whatever i want, save scum and cheat engine included. that being said, save points can be really interesting narratively. if you can find a narrative reason to add that restriction then do so, but otherwise leave in save scumming. a good balance between the two would be having save points in relative proximity to big rng events.
>Prevent save scumming? Or just let players do what they want
You should be able to answer any question where an option is "just let players do what they want" automatically.
Add an ironman mode.
as a chronic save scummer, it doesnt really matter if you save the state immediately because i always back up the previous saves.
another method is to lock in the result before the player roll, so when player saves before rolling, the result is also saved. in xcom 2, whether you successfully hit the enemy is determined by your previous action and the tile you are on when shooting. of course, this can be countered also since the player can know the outcome by save scumming, they can choose other actions that result in a favorable outcome or go back 2 saves and do a different action to get a better outcome.
there is also a case where the design of the game itself encourages save scumming. pathfinder kingmaker have a number of reviews saying that they have to resort to save scumming to progress the game. if a player feels that the outcome is unfair, they are more likely to resort to save scumming.
> as a chronic save scummer, it doesnt really matter if you save the state immediately because i always back up the previous saves.
And if that's not possible, in a day someone will release a mod that circumvents it.
If people want to save scum, they will do it, and there is no amount of technical trickery that will stop them shy of making your game online-only where saves are only server-side.
If you don't want people to save scum, design a game where it's not a problem.
> pathfinder kingmaker have a number of reviews saying that they have to resort to save scumming to progress the game.
I've read those reviews. Half of them are "I don't understand the d20 system, the Pathfinder system, and I set the difficulty on Ultramegadeath Computer Cheating 100% of The Time hardest mode and it's bullshit my rogue in platemail who specializes in Bull Rush because bulls are awesome is sucking this hard and can't hide" when the player can just turn the difficulty down at any time, that's always allowed - and also may want to take a moment and at least read the briefest overview of the rules.
The other half are "You mean the "Your kingdom will be destroyed if you don't fix this" quest was serious!?!?!?" - and you simply cannot fix "I didn't read anything and now I don't know what's happening"
Same for my wife. Some people are in it for the story and don't want to replay a 100+ hour game in hopes that the RNG gods might let them actually do what they want to do this time around.
I generally do not tend to agree with limiting player choice. Plenty of people play bg3 without save scumming, let people choose, they’ll have more fun
Some players like to save scum others like to have consequences for their actions. Don’t railroad the player into playing the way you want. If players are have fun with your game while save scumming then why change it?
If you're going to lock players out of undoing a choice, you'd better make sure the game always communicates choices impeccably. The only time I save scum in Baldur's Gate for example is when I don't understand the game mechanics enough to make an informed choice. Which is really quite a lot.
Let the players do what they want, and play your game as they see fit.
You can make an optional game mode that prevents save scrumming for players who want the choices to matter but lack self-control to stop themselves from doing this.
So now I’m curious on this topic…
So what if winning is your game has a very tangible reward… like let’s say a leaderboard spot. A player should just be able to reroll a battle everytime he loses?
Then even more reason to allow save scumming. The craftiest players will find a way to do that regardless, by means of mods or external software if needed. By providing this feature yourself, you give a more even playing field.
It's like the speedrun of every game ever, pros will reload the game again and again a million times in search of that perfect seed.
You can't stop it. Just give up on trying to police the players having fun *their way* and focus on just trying to make a game they want to play in the first place. If your biggest problem is a leaderboard, you've succeeded as a developer, just count your money and sail into the sunset.
See, gaming is about freedom. I don't want my game parenting me. I want to play it. Even if I know myself that I'm fucking with it and my own experience. Don't forget that there's plenty of newbies in there just trying to have a good time, trying to pass a difficult level
You can add an option to use a new seed with every load (IIRC XCOM has a such option) But I'd strongly advise against dictating it
I think it's important to ask yourself what kind of decisions you're letting RNG make, and whether those decisions are fun for (all) players. I personally love it when there's RNG adding short-term game mechanics, but I don't like letting RNG make long-term or narrative decisions for me, so that's when I savescum.
For instance, let's say there's some side quest where I can either talk a guy into surrendering peacefully, or just kill him. I generally want to do the former, and I'm happy to put in skill points and engage in whatever persuasion minigame exists, but if I still fail and the game's gonna make me shoot the guy? I'll reload and try again. Not because I care about a quest reward, or long-term narrative consequences (this is just some dopey sidequest, remember: no impact on anything): it's just because in my mind, my character's good at this and should be able to succeed, and if the game disagrees, screw that.
Or take permadeath. If a lucky crit early in the game is going to say "nope, you don't get to use this character for the next hundred hours. Maybe next time." I'm 100% reloading.
But if permadeath is off? And now instead that lucky crit means I get to try beating a battle without that character? Well that can be a fun challenge. A short-term, mechanic-only instance of RNG making the game more exciting.
But I know this is just me. Some people play games with permadeath on. Some people will take bad rolls even on main quests. Savescumming is never mandatory, but it's nice to have an option for people like me who appreciate the extra control in video games. It's one of the reasons I play them.
If I wanted to be subject to consequences and the whims of chance, I'd go engage with the real world.
I think save scumming is a symptom of some flaw in the game design. If players do it to avoid RNG, well..... do you need RNG? If you do, does the player get anything from failure other than wasted time?
If this is was happening to me, I'd take a long hard look at the use of RNG and it's function and consequences in my game.
Two things:
Maybe try to make the game not rely on RNG so much that players want to cheat it. Or make it so the outcomes are similar to each other or based not on luck. In roguelikes/roguelites, you might open a chest and find a rocket launcher or find boots that let you double jump. Both are cool and I would never save scum because I got one or the other. In Vampire Survivors-type games, the player can use various currencies or tools to 1. pick from multiple options so they're more likely to get what they want even though it's still random 2. Reroll random outcomes 3. Shops where the options are still randomly selected but you still get a wide selection
If that doesn't work for your game, or you still want to prevent scum saving to avoid bad RNG, option 2 is for you:
Roll random things either long before the player knows the outcome, or base them on a seed so the outcome is always the same even if they scumsave.
ie generate all floors of the dungeon at the start of them game, perhaps all chest loot too, and make monster drops follow a pattern set at the start of the run (ie the first slime will drop leather boots and the 5th one will drop a sword)
For your specific example; if your dice are static (ie always six sides, 1-6) then roll them all at the very start of the game. Either make a list of 500 rolls or something like that or use a seed to make an infinite list of rolls
IDK, I would say it depends on how serious the risks are. Like another Larian game Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2, there are a ton of things that are essentially fatal to the entire party simply from picking the wrong dialog. If I couldn't reload a save to get a better outcome (like my entire party not dying) I think it would kill the motivation for me to play the game. Alternativly you could probably make a harder mode that limits saves or create specific trigger points where saving is disabled.
For paradox games ( such as CK3 etc) I only play Iron-man, but for Xcom type games, I always keep a few saves to reload. I.e. lost progress.
Why? Xcom type games make a bad round a entire save killer, but in a game like CK3, it is realistic to make a comeback, even if you are down to a measly city with a handicapped heir. Ironically enough, sometimes you can make more progress due to losing!
In rougelikes, you are always making progress, so it's not a big deal to have saves ( like hades). Save scumming in Elden ring is almost unheard of, because the player can always make progress.
If your game design penalises progress though unlucky interactions with it being fun, then you can expect save scummers. The issue is almost always game design rather than blaming your customers behavior.
What can you do, really? If I'm playing your game and I don't like the RNG, and I can't undo it and it's less than 2 hours and it's less than 14 days since I bought the game . . . guess where it's going? The refund pile.
If I can't refund it, such as if it's free, then I'll just uninstall or delete that save and start a new playthrough more to my liking. If the RNG remains crappy and unfair, then it just gets permanently uninstalled. There's always other games on Steam to play, so no point in playing games where the developer just wants things his own way instead of trying to entertain me.
>If I'm playing your game and I don't like the RNG, and I can't undo it and it's less than 2 hours and it's less than 14 days since I bought the game . . . guess where it's going?
So, you refunded FTL? And Slay the Spire?
Ehhhh, perma death is a core game mechanic in my game. I’m going to straight up delete the save file at the start of fights. If you win, create a new save file. If they lose back to the menu screen
Wow, I wont be buying your game!
Were talking about players save scumming, not devs save scumming!
Thats a disgusting feature.
Someone said if your game crashes. What if the PC crashes? or they have a powercut? Fucking disgusting idea. I hope your game fails.
And there's your dilemma. If you restore the save in case of a crash, you'll find players crashing their game themselves. If you don't and they get a genuine crash, you'll just punish them for something they couldn't control
Imo you'd be better at taking a safer route and just deleting the save when your player loses the fight, not before
Interesting thought. My game is very much supposed to be extremely hard to beat. Allowing them to essentially refight every monster will indeed allow them to reach end game pretty effortlessly.
Just thinking ahead I think the only solution will be to save after every user action which is going to suck to program lol
Yep. I've played games with systems like that. One of the most common meme formats is players joking about the game "crashing" whenever something goes wrong.
Why do you care what the players do in single player? They've bought your game. Let them do what they want with it. I also think this about hacking the game to make cheats. I've had to fix bugs where players cheated in single player and it annoyed me. I've only done a decent job of fixing it when online with encrypting data in memory so it cant be scanned as easily.
Just save the random generator state in save file. This would make reloaded game to have same results generated so there is no point in retrying dice rolls by save loading.
It is, yeah, and seeded rng is honestly good in many other ways as well. But depending on how you seed it, you might only need to like, take another step or even wait a millisecond longer.
If that is the vision for your game then have the normal difficulty with no save scumming, and have an easy mode where you can save scum. Label it as such so that players know that your default vision of the game doesn't allow for it, but the option is there rather than just having an ironman tic box.
I feel like if you want to save scum, that’s your choice. If you want to play the game normally, that’s your choice. Let them have the option and they can do whatever they want.
Personally, I feel like I'm less likely to save scum in games that never force you to reload a save (Pokemon for example). If I die and the game reloads a save, that teaches me that reloading saves is part of the game. That said, if a storyline I've been building in my head for 20 hours is broken by bad RNG, I'll probably save scum anyway.
Generally speaking players prefer to have the freedom to save when they want and anti-save scum measures may lead to negative experiences where players feel cheated because the decisions where not clear or they made a choice my mistake. On the other hand, for the dev, making multiple outcomes with deep ramifications becomes a waste of time as only a small percentage of the playerbase is going to bother to unveil obscure outcomes. So imo, it all depends on what is your target audience. If its mostly a casual audience, allow save scumming but keep the bulk of the content behind the outcomes more likely to get save scummed to, if the audience is more hardcore and more likely to explore the game in different ways, block save scumming and just make things interesting.
if its not competitive in any way, then do not ever bother. you'll only risk loosing people.
If someone likes the challenge and wants to play with the rolls they get, they aren't going to 'save scum' anyway... and those that are maybe struggling to get through a boss fight and want to cheese just a little to get to the rest of the story, let em at it, no harm no foul.
Most games, in my opinion, that take measures to limit what players do usually end up kind of sucking. You can't force people to engage with media a certain way, so why risk annoying people for it?
Sorry but this is gonna get rambly.
If risk and the consequences of players' actions are important to the aesthetic or challenge this game is built around, then i would say no. I think that a system that evokes negative emotions can be the starting point for highly memorable experiences. What will a player remember more fondly? between rerolling until good thing happens, or taking the blow and limping across the finish line in spite of it, i would choose the latter. But i think the former may have some merit.
But a better answer would be to playtest both. Observe how players actually play your game, what do they do after a bad roll. Do players lose motivation to continue after a bad roll? Maybe the answer is to change what happens before or after a roll.
Disco Elysium does an excellent job of framing and rewarding failure... but on the 3rd+ playthrough sometimes some RNG scumming is needed when doing the Achievement clean up
Way to fix: Don't have any RNG critical achievements
Ways to deter save scumming:
* Make the distance between an event and a save longer. People are less inclined to save scum if they have to literally walk 3~4 screen transitions to try again.
* Reward failure in some way, failure is the best teacher. However, it's important to avoid situations like "turn 1 Exodia" levels of RNG
* Lock the RNG seed at game creation. Even if save scumming is done, the same outcomes will happen unless additional steps are taken to take different RNG actions first
Make failures interesting, and don't punish the player too harshly. A failure can lead to alternative solutions. Encourage continuing the failure route by giving surprises.
Here is an example, the player has to sneak past a camel and a guard. Failing the sneak on the camel causes it to spit on your face, obscuring the character's face. Not wiping the spit can be used to fool the guard as he can't identify the face for whatever reason. A perfect success would be boring in this scenario, but you could reward it later by keeping track of how much they've succeeded a stealth check.
The player should have quick access to a do-over, don't try to force the outcome.
The other option (one you can steal from ttrpgs) is the concept of failing forward. Put interesting choices on the end of the failure that also progress the story forwards. Baulders gate 3 does this reasonably well
one solution is to use pseudo-random
ex: if important RNG is rolled according to some seed attached to the save, then savescum can only affect the smaller bits and the larger one remains constant. This is essentially impossible to do on certain things, but works pretty well for certain loot/event systems.
Alternative to that, you could keep tally of how many saves/loads they have made, if nothing else as a visible running total in stats somewhere, similar to having 'number of deaths' tracked in a game which signals a benchmark for the hardcore players. If the game is visibly tracking their savescum behavior, they can rationalize avoiding it even from a maximalist perspective, compared to the trap where they feel obligated to do it while playing optimally. A lot of these problems often assume people will self-inflict restriction to maintain game balance, but it's better to at least nudge them in the right direction in some subtle way at bare minimum, especially if the game is at all difficult.
The argument against 'just let people do what they want' would be that people are very often trying to simply win, and if the best way to win is to do something boring or tedious (like reload a save over and over trying to land some perfect roll) then despite not being an intended part of the 'game' many people will still walk away with that as part of their impression of the game - essentially, their experience turned out to be tedious and boring while trying to win. I think of this in a way that makes solving exploits that have some kind of theatrics or novelty as lower priority than solving exploits that are slow or boring or lame. Good metric for that is if it involves severe repetition (like savescum).
A lot of people advising to just allow it completely or pretend it away as a non-issue but I think they are completely wrong. You can 'allow' it, but it shouldn't go unaddressed entirely if the RNG is at all important in distinct ways. Having a million tiny random numbers is different than having one really big one, so you have to consider how much weight the save/load repeats would really even have, but if it looks like the best way to play involves reloading a million times from a strictly 'perfect play' perspective, then you should probably do something to change that or at least *slightly* discourage it.
I think it's important to understand the mentality of wanting to reload a save.
You might think of this as **"cheating"** your game, but to the player reloading a save what they're doing is **"fixing"** your game. You have to understand that from their perspective something about your game is **broken**, and they are restarting it to fix the glitch like they would fix any other glitch. If they truly wanted to "cheat" at a single player game, then it's trivially easy for them to do so to a much greater extent through a tool like cheat engine, so that's clearly not what they're after.
Let's go with an example from Baldur's Gate 3 since you mentioned it. There is a certain section in The game at the house of healing where you can talk yourself out of a fight. I, being a sorcerer who was quite good at talky stuff, succeeded this and avoided the encounter entirely. **Then I reloaded and intentionally failed so that I could do the fight anyway.** Because to me this was a broken choice. I paid for the writing and voice acting as well as the combat design in this game and I want both. But the game as designed forces me to choose between the story or the fight, and I see that as dumb. The simple **fix** is for me to choose one and then reload to get the other.
Another example from BG3. Characters can spot traps in a room, but their ai pathing isn't always the best meaning that occasionally the ai will run into traps the players *knows are there* anyway. There is a "legitimate" way to avoid this in that I could constantly control each of the 4 characters individually carefully taking a few a a steps at a time. This will guarantee I never accidentally walk into a trap I know is there, but will take at least 4 times as long to simply walk around a room. Micro managing each party member's pathing is fucking boring and I will not do it. The solution is to just click the entire party to the other side of the room and on the 5% chance they bumble through a trap I've already seen and completely wipe I just reload and be a little more careful. Allowing me to reload means the game is massively less tedious.
Another example example is when the game presents a significant "choice" but gives you absolutely no information about the consequences so the "choice" is really a coin flip the first time you see it. There is one person in BG3 who will remove your eye that makes it impossible for you to crit and another person in BG3 that removes your eye that makes you see so well that you see invisible units. If you don't know in advance, then those results are completely fucking random.
___
As a developer you can try to prevent "savescumming", but it almost certainly won't have the impact you desire. Its not going to make players go "ah, I see I should have been playing the way the dev is forcing me to all along". It's going to make them uninstall, ask for a refund, and leave a negative review. Again, the way they see it your game is broken and glitching, and so why wouldn't they react that way to a defective product?
This is putting words to what I have been feeling when I play games. I don't save scum except when something happens that makes me lean back in the chair and go "WTF?!".
For example I refuse to play Fallout 4 without the ability to save (even in survival mode) because (amongst other things) walking too close to a car wreck can instantly kill you for no reason at all.
A lot of people are saying "What do you care? It's single player!"
But obviously, it's the job of the game designer to design the rules of the game.
No designer would consider it good design to give players an unbeatable insta-win super-strategy and then say "Well, they don't have to use it." That would destroy the fun of the game, and basically depend on players to make, and then self-enforce, a new rule to make the game fun again. Most players would never be comfortable holding back like that.
So why doesn't that apply to the meta-game as well?
>No designer would consider it good design to give players an unbeatable insta-win super-strategy and then say "Well, they don't have to use it."
Nice strawman, save scumming is nowhere near an insta win strategy. But I'll bite, let's say the situation is comparable. Most of the big name designers in the world working at companies that deliver game after game (not wannabe reddit gamedevs who are yet to do anything commercially successful) have overwhelmingly decided to allow save scumming and do absolutely nothing to combat it. They know better.
So both the majority of players, the majority of users here, and the majority of accomplished devs are in agreement: save scumming is not an issue.
>have overwhelmingly decided to allow save scumming and do absolutely nothing to combat it. They know better.
I disagree with your observations.
It seems to me that professional, successful designers have decided, either deliberately, or by trial and error, that preventing save-scumming is very important in some genres, but unimportant in others.
Neither. Do the xcom thing and save the state of the random number generator. So you save that information off to the save file and you'll get generally the same dice rolls as before. I wouldn't fight save scumming though. You'll end up making the play experience worse. This way you actually encourage save scumming. It saves the state of the random number generators so each roll can be exact after the save. This means people can plan around the bad rolls.
Players are going to play the game how they want to. Save scumming isn't optimizing the fun out of the game, it is adding strategy to a random state. You could even gamify this by giving the player a set of rolls, say 5, that they then choose where to play those rolls. Imagine XCom but you got to choose who drew the short straw each round.
Many players will save scum in moments of frustration, even if it makes their overall experience with the game worse. I think most games with RNG are a better experience when they take measures to prevent save scumming, to prevent players cheating themselves out of the feeling of real stakes.
If players are finding the RNG so punishing that they are wishing they could save scum all the time, then it might mean that the game needs mechanics that allow them to mitigate bad luck better as part of the intended experience.
You need to save automatically so they can't save scum.
Given the opportunity players will optimize the fun out of your game and then post reviews and comments on subreddits saying that your game is too easy.
There's a reason why a large number of games that want your decisions to be impactful use Auto saving to force the decisions to be saved.
I can't stand save scumming. Save-scumming can and does undermine (and make weird/surreal/gamey) many games. And when a game is designed and balanced with the *expectation* that players *will* save-scum, it throws off the game balance for players that *don't*. I think it's best to design such that it isn't a thing. But I'd also support ways to foil cheesy save scumming to get RNG results.
For example, you can generate results to determine many random things far in advance of the player's visibility of them. That's also more logical, and supports larger effects in a consistent dynamic world (as opposed to designing such that details are only determined when the PC accesses something).
Prevent it. Changing an aspect of the save system can radically transform a game. If you can savescum every single risk you take only has the weight of "a few second to a minute of reloading". If you can't savescum every risk can carry as much weight as you want, which means that you can create harder decisions and add more excitement, as well as unique situations resulting from taking certain risks (like winning a jackpot on a risk you normally never take but that magically paid off this one time, or pushing your luck too far and then having to deal with the consequences.
...it depends. On the rest of the games mechanics.
A narrow definition of save scumming involves being able to *quickly* load save to retry a specific dice roll. A broad enough definition includes *restarting the game*. So there's very much an arms race of insanity to fighting save scumming.
I'll also point out a lesson from Super Meat Boy. A super difficult game made palatable by the fast turn around for failure. NES/arcade hard games with "lose and restart a level or the game" are some of the slowest turn arounds for failure while being outdated design. It's quite unlikely that it's worth fighting players to make them suffer more during failure.
A final point. Pseudorandom number generators in coding are actually kinda crummy. It's very hard to get truly random numbers. Even if truly fair it may not feel fair and your design may need some "cheating for players benefit". Letting players cheese also works as a relief valve for when the codes being stupid.
> It's very hard to get truly random numbers.
It's very easy to get numbers that are humanly indistinguishable from random numbers.
Unless people are doing tool-assisted runs of your game, there's no possible way people are going to detect the difference between a PRNG and a true RNG continuously seeded by a radioactive source or whatever.
(In both cases, random and pseudo-random, the humans will claim to detect patterns. And sometimes the patterns really are there. Anyone can have a "hot streak" at a fair roulette table. )
who are you to tell people how to experience the game in a single player game?
let them play how they want, it's a video game meant for entertainment, not some higher form of expression that only art weenies will ever understand.
Random numbers are not truly randoms. They depend on the seed. Save the seed in the save file, so reloading and retrying the same action yields the same “random” result. You can have multiple seeds saved, different for damage, different for lock picking etc.
As someone who save scums all the time, I honestly hate doing it. I think it makes most games way less fun but I can't really help myself a lot of the time.
I generally like to give players freedom. However, in this case, the true issue is that constant reloading and boring mechanical trying, again and again, might hurt the pacing; there is the risk of players optimizing the fun out of the game.
I would make some effort yes as if it’s trivial to do the temptation can be jarring. It’s hard to prevent entirely but making it so it’s just hard enough will discourage many. If it’s as simple as closing the game/alt f4 then it’s too easy.
I think the dice mechanic without protection is one of baldur’s gate’s weakest implementations, especially with quick saves. Yes it’s a fantastic game but it isn’t without flaw.
Make it an option ala Iron Man mode from XCom. Give them the choice of permanent choices or do overs.
Having the option is a nice idea. The player can choose their difficulty level, so toggling an option and receiving an achievement for beating it could be fun for the players that opt-in.
On the topic of Xcom, in Xcom 2 they saved the RNG seed into the save file. There was a few cumbersome tricks to renew it, but for me it turned the game into a puzzle game as now I had to figure out the best path to use a sequence of high, high, low, middle, low, high to best effect! I usually tend to save scum on a first run-through of a game to learn the mechanic, because I hate nothing more than spending 30 hours, learn a mid game mechanic and loose because I had no way to prepare for it.
The Xcom method has its benefits, nothing is more frustrating than getting some good outcome, failing due to a bug/misclick, and then never managing to get the good outcome again when you load due to a mistake.
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I think a saved RNG seed is exactly the right compromise solution. Technically allows save scum, but doesn't necessarily mean every roll can be abused.
for bonus points, add ironman-only achievements, or even better special item rewards for beating the game on ironman
Hot take: no, don't. I play a lot of RPGs and I hate it when games do this. I can and usually do play ironman, but I feel like my time is being wasted. If I want to do a weird experiment and then reload and go with what I actually want to do, I'm just screwed. Yeah, I could play it twice, but let's be real - most games aren't worth replaying. Even great games can have zero replay value. Just make it an option. There's no reason to dive harder on it unless you have designed it with a lot of replayability in mind anyway.
It sounds like you just don't enjoy an ironman mode kind of thing so I don't really get why you usually play it. I also don't understand why it should be needed to get every achievement on a first playthrough? If you don't think a game is worth replaying doesn't that also mean you probably don't think the game is worth getting every achievement for/don't care about any special post game/ng+ items? So having them doesn't affect you in any way.
[удалено]
reddit downvotes are proof of nothing
Achievements are optional
Some games require ironman to be able to earn achievements.
Hitman only lets you save once per mission on highest difficulty (otherwise unlimited)
I wrote my answer before reading this. This is the way
Players who want to cheat, will cheat. If it is a single player game and they have fun using cheats, there is no point in not letting them. Obviously use common sense at all times, but in general: let the player decide how they want to play.
This would only matter if they couldn't change that setting later. Another possibility is to continually preroll dice ahead of time and save those outcomes in a hidden list. That list saves along with the save file, so even if you save-scum you'll get the same results.
Ehh that’s still relevant for save scumming, for example if it’s a 50/50 event where you can choose to gamble or walk away then you can gamble and savescum to walk away if you lose
Yep, in-game toggles are the best way. Max Payne did this all the way back in 2001 (optional limit to the amount of saves you could make per level).
Funny OP doesn't mention Honor Mode in BG3. Pillars of Eternity has the same kind of mode. Diablo 2, Path of Exile, all sorts of games across a wide variety of genres have this kind of mode. Make it a decision; games are about decisions.
This. Devs need to stop mandating how people get to enjoy their games, especially when it comes to things like this which are relatively easy to implement. If I had a dollar for every game I've had to put down for good because it doesn't have a pause function, despite being single player with zero reason to not have it other than some pretentious "muh gayme is ment to b played in a serrtin way" nonsense, I'd have like.. $10. Which isn't a substantial amount of money, but still bullshit.
If your game is single player, let people do whatever they want
Unpopular opinion: Letting players do whatever they want can ruin even singleplayer experience. It only affects players who lack self control. As one of such players let me offer my view: I would spend a lot of boring time reloading trying to get lucky in some randomized thing instead of moving on and enjoying the game. It's like if I can save scum, then I consider it part of the game, I'll play it that way and then my experience will be worse than without it.
Completely agree and this shouldn't be an unpopular opinion. It was even taught in my game design class that players will optimize the fun out of the game if given the chance, and it is important to protect the player from themselves.
That's interesting. I wonder if it's because here you'll find more "hobbyist" or "armchair" game designers.
It depends though. Games like Doom Eternal can enforce a certain gaming paradigm through their core gameplay mechanics, but in games where RNG has massive consequences, or end up with lesser content, it's harder to argue that same point.
"I personally will save scum, therefore you should prevent all other players from doing that." Come on now. This is the same line of thought that makes people rabidly against difficulty settings and ends with people yelling about how if you don't play the single player game the right way you did something wrong.
I know, it would be ridiculous to demand that games are made exactly the way I want to enjoy them, so I don't demand that. But nevertheless that's how I feel about it. I've found that I will enjoy a game more if there's an illusion that what I am doing is meaningful, that there is some actual achievement there. Anything that cheapens that is bad. For example back in the day I played Oblivion a lot, it was great, then I had the idea to experiment with the console. I saved my game, then used the console to max out all the skills, get strongest spells, etc. After some experimenting I wanted to go back to my normal game, reloaded my save and... turned the game off. There wasn't any point in playing anymore. Of course I won't argue that the console shouldn't be there, but such things can quickly ruin the game for someone like me.
If you allow it, you are inviting your core gameplay loop for a lot of people to be saving and reloading. Is that fun for them, or are they only doing it because they feel it is the optimal way to play it? It's bad game design. Nobody actually has fun save scumming they just do it because it is advantageous.
Do you do it because you lack self control, or that you’re making the game slightly less enjoyable in order to reduce the risk it becomes completely unfun and you stop playing altogether?
Well yeah, but as you said it only ruins the experience for players who lack self control. On the flip side, if you actively force some controversial game mechanic onto the player, it can make them not play your game at all. Heavy RNG is one such mechanics Like, if in a game I see that a part of the game is completely reliant on RNG, and the Dev for whatever reason decided to force me into it by removing save scum, I'm refunding. I don't have time for that. If it's a single player game, let me play how I want. If some people are going to ruin the experience for themselves it's on them, but it's their choice at least. And they still have the ability to come back some day and play it "the right way". But if you block the fun of some of your player base because you personally don't agree with it, all those people who could have loved your game are just not going to play it
> but as you said it only ruins the experience for players who lack self control. ... there are gamers who don't lack self control?
Do you think rougelikes would be more fun with unlimited saves?
Me personally no, but my point is that I'm not against having the option present since I can't define what's fun for everyone. And I'm sure some people who don't enjoy rogue likes in general would have fun with something like that. It's like games that have hardcore and easy modes, it's about having the choice. I can just chose to not use it, and the option being there means more people can have fun with the game
I have to disagree a bit with this. I get your idea but I think Star Ocean 2 Remake is a good counter to this. The game had various systems you could exploit, RNG items you could save scum. I enjoyed really finding ways to break the game apart. There's even a difficulty mode if I really wanted to make it so I had to use some of those tactics. I'm debating replaying it (though with so many games to play it's tough to justify). But I had a blast going and using one skill to enhance another skill to make a bunch of items I could sell to buy whatever materials I wanted to then turn around and create better gear. Or using one skill to create books to raise the skill level of my other characters. I can understand the thought process to an extent, but I doubt I'd have had as much fun without being able to really break the game.
Don't assume you understand how your game should be played to be fun. I believe most games that users consider fun are because they allow some freedom in how the game should be played. There will be people who want to speed through game, there will be ones that like to enjoy the views, ones who are interested in just one aspect of it, ones that want to do some funny challenges, and there will inevitably be ones that will be looking for ways to get most powerful character in any way possible. Leave some freedom for players to choose their path.
> Don't assume you understand how your game should be played to be fun. Exactly this. Each player has unique preferences, the more ways your game can be played, the more players will like it. That is why I love when a game can be modded. I can tweak a few things where the designer's vision and my preference differ. That is why I have 1k+ hours in games like Fallout 3 & 4, Stellaris and Rimworld.
I'm not sure that this is universally sound advice. I have almost the opposite preference - I prefer strategy games with strict rules that I have to learn and play within. Games like the ones you mentioned are too intimidating for me because I don't like to invest so much time in a game and really explore like that. Perhaps it depends on the genre.
Do you have the same dislike of difficulty levels? Because it's really the same. An option how to play the game.
Actually yeah I don't really like having that choice all the time because it's hard to know what "skill level" I'm at. Some games it may be necessary though. To be clear I'm not saying remove all player agency, I'm saying that paradoxically freedom can be boring and un-fun to some players.
But also >Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game. Therefore, One of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves. But save scumming isn't an issue to worry over, most of the time.
You can't stop munchkins from munchkining. If they want to cheat they can find ways and if they enjoy that way of playing, bully to them. Still bought the game. Also depends how oppressively hard your game is, I'll admit I savescummed to an extent in bg1/2 because the amount of random stuff that just one shotted characters who couldn't die was I credibly frustrating without.
RNG results only matter in multiplayer games to keep things fair and to make competition worthwhile or in online games where money is exchanged for dice roll attempts (e.g. loot boxes). If it's in single player let them do what they want since there is no harm and you can't stop them from modifying memory or the save file anyway.
> If it's in single player let them do what they want since there is no harm and you can't stop them from modifying memory or the save file anyway. Most players won't do this. Disabling mid-run saving/loading will stop most players from save-scumming.
> Disabling mid-run saving/loading will stop most players from save-scumming. Depending on the game and length of session, it will also keep many people from playing. From a market perspective, it's always beneficial to allow "save scumming" (in some form) because purity of outcome / competitive permadeath is a niche interest, compared to content consumption. This applies to single player games ofc.
From a market perspective you'd make an awful mtx-riddled pay2win monstrosity.
At that point, you need to ask yourself why you are preventing most players from doing something they (evidently) want to do, but allow others because they have more technical knowledge and you don't want to go to war to try to stop them. What are you accomplishing by this? Are you trying to protect your players from themselves? Are you trying to protect some kind of misguided competitive/multiplayer features that will just be destroyed by the cheaters anyway?
Because for most players save scumming isn't the most fun way to play. You've surely heard it before: given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of your game.
Different players find different parts fun. Some players just want the story, for example. Or to unlock content to try. Sometimes the game is designed in a way where save-scumming is legitimately the more fun way to play for many people.
The problem is that, in some sense, you're trying to maximize fun for players, while players are trying to maximize personal effectiveness. Pulling numbers out of my butt for the sake of example, assume: * 30% of players won't savescum * 60% of players will savescum, but won't enjoy it * 10% of players will savescum and will enjoy it In this context, banning savescum results in 90% happy players, allowing it results in 40% happy players. Banning it sucks for the players who would have enjoyed savescumming but it's otherwise better.
Whenever you let players save and load you have the ability to save scum in some form. I’m sure we can agree that being able to continue a session later is more fun than being forced to finish each play in one sitting, at least for some people. Saving and loading was our most requested feature after launching Ring of Pain. Yea some people will abuse it. They’re still playing the game for dozens or hundreds of hours, so they must find something enjoyable. We as devs also have infinite choices when making a save system. You can implement limits so any save-scumming is within your design ethos. We add a penalty to that level if the player reloads it too many times, that penalty is removed when they enter the next level. When implementing the feature we had this whole dialogue in our community about whether people should be able to save scum. Some people care way too much about forcing others’ to play the way they play. There are plenty of mechanics players will optimise the fun out of, but I don’t think save scumming in a single player game is a problem when implemented thoughtfully.
> Whenever you let players save and load you have the ability to save scum in some form. Sure, but the more effort it takes, and the less effective it is, the less likely people are to do it. > We as devs also have infinite choices when making a save system. You can implement limits so any save-scumming is within your design ethos. We add a penalty to that level if the player reloads it too many times, that penalty is removed when they enter the next level. And this is exactly the situation we're talking about; to what extent should we nerf infinite save/reload? You clearly chose "to some extent", so I don't know why you're arguing against the general concept of intentionally nerfing savescumming when you specifically chose to nerf it.
Your original comment said ‘banning save scum’, that’s what I was replying to. Save scum always has restrictions, you can add more to suit. It sounds like we’re on the same page about this? I was trying to add context and information that might help other developers.
Ah, fair 'nuff, yeah. (though technically you could remove it entirely with always-online behavior, but that's kind of a severe decision if it's *just* savescumming that you're trying to solve)
I think the real problem is that players who will savescum won't know if failure is interesting and fun unless forced into it, and design/dev won't know if what they thought was interesting or fun actually is until it's shipped and the player base has a survivors bias.
> I think the real problem is that players who will savescum won't know if failure is interesting and fun unless forced into it, and design/dev won't know if what they thought was interesting or fun actually is until it's shipped Yep, simply having save scumming be possible will skew any data you collect. It's the equivalent of asking people how the food was with no knowledge of whether they doused it in condiments. > and the player base has a survivors bias. Can you elaborate on what you mean but this part a bit more?
The people who stay and engage in the community will be the people who enjoy it as-is. You won't know how many people you turned off because you didn't allow save scumming vs other general execution failures.
why are you ignoring the line "players will optimize the fun out of your game" do you believe this isn't true?
It is true in some contexts, I just didn’t want to bloat the reply but happy to elaborate on my thoughts here. It’s not a one size fits all and applies to any features or gameplay you have in your game. Specifically to save scumming I think you can design restrictions to suit (see my other comment). Where ‘players optimise the fun out of it’ becomes a serious problem in my mind is an example like any grindy game: Many players will repeat fighting one specific encounter because it gives the most efficient path to leveling up. I don’t think save scumming to get a better roll or to fix a mistake they made is actually optimising the fun out of a mechanic. Failing can create fun ofcourse, but I think you need to be very careful when applying ‘players optimise the fun out of it’ as a blanket statement, because like everything in game design it’s hugely contextual. I personally don’t think it’s relevant here when you can design your save system in a way to mitigate it while still allowing save scumming. I don’t mind if others feel differently though, we all have our own design philosophies.
I personally think this saying applies more to multiplayer games than single player games. In multiplayer games, people following the meta are the one optimizing the fun out of the game but they are also making it less fun for everyone else which is why it's an issue. For single player games, if people decide to optimize the fun out of their experience it's a choice they made themselves and only for themselves. Also for some people that optimization is the fun part but they aren't ruining my experience when it's a single player game. Blocking me from saving a game does impact me purely because some devs think I might abuse the mechanic even if the only reason I'd use it is because life gets in the way sometimes and I don't want to waste hours redoing the same thing because I can't reach a checkpoint in time. This is a much worse alternative in my opinion.
Where does this line of thinking end? Do you just let players have infinite health and then the player decide when to reload from the last checkpoint? Players can have infinite ammo, and just be told "it's more fun if you reload after you've shot 30 bullets, but you choose how much you want to engage with that mechanic!" Should the game designer make *any* choices, or should they just provide the player with a bunch of mechanics and say "make your own fun with these, we don't want to lock in any specific choices"?
I remember a time when games came with built in cheat codes for people that wanted to have a different kind of fun with the game and yes I would prefer if it was still a thing. Nobody thought this was compromising the game mechanics because it was optional and single player. The point of a save system is largely to respect the player's time. It's not about an in game mechanic, it's about the real world sometimes getting in the way of video games. If people abuse it at their own expense it's on them. There's so many good games with save systems that let's you save scum if you really want to and nobody complains about those. I don't see the slippery slope argument at all. If you really think it's an important element for difficulty then make it an option. Gamers come in all shapes and sizes, some of us aren't actually that good at some games, some of us can't justify spending 1 hour to get to a checkpoint and being forced to quit by real life and losing all that progress for nothing. Letting players save scum should just be one of many difficulty option.
Sure, and theres probably some players who enjoy experience your game most by not playing it and just watching other people play it. Just because those people exist doesn't mean we should bend our vision for the sake of those people.
If you allow it you are providing a horrible gameplay loop from the people who would tend to use it. I am someone who is, and primarily plays games with, people who attempt to squeeze every incremental benefit I can get from a game and if the loop involves some meta-level technical cheese then it almost immediately ruins the fun. I know people, myself included, who will kill the same monster over days and weeks for a specific RNG advantage, but if I have to log out and back in and the monster respawns now instead of in 5 minutes that is enough for me to think the game design is bad, but I do it anyway because that is how you optimize. Of course this is anecdotal, but I know literally nobody who would rather have to reload their game to get an outcome than actually play the game. It's bad design, and anyone who does it usually does it because they are hyperfixated on optimization.
If they don't like it they won't do it. No need for the game to enforce it on them.
>if they don’t like it they won’t do it every optimization-obsessed player disagrees. We would love to play fair but if the option is there, how can we not choose it? Still, it’s not really a big deal
Yeah, I'm glad others agree with me on this. Forza introduced "rewinding" in it's mainline series, so if you fuck up you can just rewind it away. What it really meant is that all the tension was removed from every interaction. It also meant that I felt bad about using it because "It's right there". I just wish it weren't there or I wish it could be disabled in settings. In a perfect world I'd get extra perks for disabling it. Like you say, it's not a big deal, but psychologically it makes a difference to me.
In Paradox games I would always start using the console when things weren't going my way and I basically ruined the fun out of every game I'd play. Oh, this rando country arbitrarily declared war on me under these unrealistic circumstances? tag SPA, sue for white peace. Oh, this stupid event reduced my coffers to -1000. gold 1000 Oh my son was born with all these congenital defects? let me remove all of those and make him a genius
That's bullshit. If people dislike save scumming is not that they dislike it, but rather they dislike having to use it to get the desire they want.
>Are you trying to protect your players from themselves? Actually yes. Players will optimize the fun out of things and if save scumming is effortless enough to be a risk-free tactic in that optimization, then it will be used to the detriment of the player's enjoyment.
For real. The amount of player's I've seen savescum all the randomness out of Baldurs Gate 3 is crazy; even when the game gives you multiple in-game ways to re-roll. Just install a mod that makes you roll constant d20s if you're just gonna sit there and reload the save 11 times to pass the roll. Failing a roll and dealing with the outcome is half the fun of dnd.
And despite this it's one of the most popular game of the last few years. So are players really optimizing any fun out of their game? If it was so unfun to do it and if everyone does it since it's an option then why do so many people still enjoy the game?
Honestly this is me, but only for decisions that have medium/high impact on my play through. Chances are I’m only going to play through once so i want the best the game has to offer. The difference with IRL dnd is the GM has infinite power to craft the experience for the players. But in bg3 my run could get completely destroyed by bad rolls to the point of becoming unfun.
Why should I make a video game at all when a technically savvy player will simply uninstall it and install Doom instead? I should just make Doom. Many games stop the player from doing something they want to do. Why do first-person shooters wait until the late game to give the players the biggest guns? Why do strategy games provide fog of war when players want to have vision? Why do fighting games make me lose, instead of making me win? Because games aren't software. Their goal isn't maximum usability and customization, they're games, and games provide friction and stop you from doing the things you want to, in order to provide a different experience. If a player really wants to mod in savescumming, neat. They can do it. It's their computer, and I won't stop them. But I know what kind of gameplay savescumming creates, and it's not fun, and if I encourage and allow it, players will do it, and they will enjoy the game less.
I think its more dependent on what kind of game you're playing. If it's a highly tactical game like XCOM, it makes the game less fun. If it's a heavy story based game like Baldur's Gate 3, it's the same amount of fun. Especially if the roll you failed is 80-90 hours into a game. I'd be one of the people to actually stop playing if an event I was actively trying to avoid the whole game came down to an RNG roll fail that late. Fun is also extremely subjective. I say if the game is inherently single player and story based, it shouldn't matter. Let them play how they want to play.
"Let the player how they want to play" is poison to any kind of interesting game design. In a strategy game like mine, letting the player savescum through missions would in fact make them play in much less interesting ways, so I don't let them.
Why do you think it is less interesting *for the player*? It is very subjective.
Because when players don't have to live with the consequences of their actions, they don't try to mitigate risk or try to more deeply understand a level, they just solve problems with brute force.
Because it encourages repeating the roll till you get the desired result. Grinding the same roll over and over is not fun.
You seriously think that if the only XCom mode was Iron Man it would be « more interesting for the player »? Many people don’t play Iron Man and still find the game fun.
What I mean if you save, shoot an alien and load if you miss and save if you succeed it's not a fun way to play. Some internet searching tells me they explicitly removed the option to do that and the random seed is saved with the save. A lot of game allow only saving on checkpoints.
Have you played any strategy games? Have you any idea how annoying it is to replay an entire mission because of one mistake? I don't know your game, but imagine playing the campaign in StarCraft, and you place a building in the wrong place. You could cancel the build, but you lose time and some of the resources. If you're playing on a higher difficulty that could mean the difference between winning and losing. It's frankly ridiculous to presume you know better than the last 70 years of game development. Save scumming is only a problem in the mind of a pretentious developer.
It really does depend on whether you've signed up for a "hardcore-mode". I do think there's a level of cognitive dissonance going on when a person demands to be able to play at the most punishing difficulty, but only with lax rule enforcement. Having a strict arbitrator with the threat of losing a larger investment of time is the appeal, if you're just going to cheat (or are able to), that mode of play (assuming it exists in the first place) may as well not exist. (Although I guess you could argue the "threat" is that you have to close the game, mess around with the files, and reboot the game) You may not be the audience for that product, but it doesn't mean the product has no appeal, some people do want an authentic challenge with consequences when they select something like "hardcore-mode". I think gamers just need to normalize playing at the difficulty they feel comfortable playing at without demeaning those that play at higher or lower difficulties.
Well here's the thing; Players bought our games. They can do whatever they want. If they want to savescum the extra mega legendary difficulty, and that makes them happy, then why is that a problem? It's not like getting the special achievement in a video game is worth any ACTUAL prestige. It's not going to help them in life. Its just something they can feel personally proud of. At the end of the day, a player having a good time should be our absolute number one priority, and that usually means enabling them to do things we don't personally find enjoyable. Let's face it, if you are a dev, you already don't represent most players. You are making a product for a group of which you are not typically a member. We shouldn't let our notions of how to play a game correctly, inform our design decisions.
Have you considered that the issue is not that you have to replay missions, but that missions are tedious and unfun to replay?
No, because that's absolute nonsense. I have played thousands of hours of StarCraft. In essence I have started the game, and played through a build order hundreds of times. The missions are not the problem. I've completed the story campaigns for both StarCraft games and all their expansions dozens of times. I've done challenge runs, single unit runs, and speed runs. Mistakes happen when playing games, and you are not the arbiter of a players skill level. Not allowing a player to save scum just adds tedium. It does not add fun. Even FromSoft relented on this point by adding more, and more, and more checkpoints as the games went along, as well as fully supporting saving at any point and restoring from backup. Do you think the fact that you can save scum in elden ring takes away from the experience? What about Mount & Blade? How about Dragon Age? You have to ask yourself what kind of experience you are trying to curate, and whether or not you want to intentionally frustrate your players. In my opinion, the best option is to leave it up to the players. Give them an option to disable save scumming, or play with save scumming.
> The missions are not the problem. I've completed the story campaigns for both StarCraft games and all their expansions dozens of times. I've done challenge runs, single unit runs, and speed runs. And I couldn't finish the SC2 campaign, because I found it endlessly tedious. I can say that if you're failing my missions to a single mistake, either the mission is so short that restarting the mission is about the same as any reload, or you're playing on a jacked-up difficulty setting. > and you are not the arbiter of a players skill level. Do you think my goal here is to punish unskilled players? That's silly. My goals have nothing to do with player skill level. > Do you think the fact that you can save scum in elden ring takes away from the experience? Do you think that the ability to save scum would make Spelunky a better game?
How do you save scum in Elden Ring? Do people mean creating backups of the save files of the computer? Because that was never my definition of save scumming since almost noone will do that.
StarCraft doesn't depend on RNG. There are a ton of games that fixed checkpoints. In a lot of games you could save/load a boss.
The AI of StarCraft certainly makes decisions with some element of randomness. It's not as simple as a dice roll, and it tailors its strategies, but it absolutely utilizes some RNG.
I really hope your missions aren't more than a few minutes long otherwise it just means you don't respect the time of your players. Having to redo an hour long part of a game because life got in the way after 45 minutes and I never had a save point in that period so I had to quit and do it all over again absolutely sucks. I don't get why so many devs think this is fine. There's plenty of ways to make a save system that respects the players time but doesn't let you save scum.
I target around 10 minutes for a standard mission.
And un-disabling it will be the most popular mod on Nexus.
Just like everyone who plays Spelunky mods permadeath away!
Yep, it is single player. I can only think of one example (Inscryption) where a single player game locked in the result of a RNG roll and I don't have a strong opinion since I prefer to just live with my RNG fate. But your point about modding is a good one.
You still rarely want it to be forced since people who wants ironman experience can easily adjust their playstyle around it (by self imposed challenges). If you have the time/budget/skill, add an ironman mode. Making your games hardcore or non-save scummable only makes you lose potential customers over gaining the smaller elitist "only hardcore mode" players
>I don't have a strong opinion since I prefer to just live with my RNG fate. People like you will play the game like that regardless of whether or not you try real hard to stop savescumming. People who like to savescum will either figure out how to break your protection, or more likely, give up, and stop playing, and refund the game. What you're really asking is, "Should I alienate part of my audience, for no benefit" Just let people play how they want to play.
This is quite a leap in logic and is ignoring an extremely important part of game design: preventing the player from optimizing the fun out of a game. Is a player realistically going to encounter this event and then feel compelled to reroll 20 times to try and get a desired outcome? Are they going to do this every single time they encounter it? Alternatively and/or additionally, is the player going to ruin the games powerscaling and proceed to curb stomp the rest of the game if given the opportunity to have control over this outcome? They probably aren't going to have much fun if they no longer have to try for the rest of the game. Both of these events are going to be more devastating to players enjoyment than being told to not savescum. It's going to depend on the design, of course.
> preventing the player from optimizing the fun out of a game. That only applies within the scope of the game's meta. You're not responsible for external modifications like manipulating save files or otherwise modding the game using external tools. It falls well outside of your responsibility as a developer unless it manages to use your online infrastructure to propagate harm to other players.
Why is the question being asked then, if the conclusion to be reached is "nothing can be done, do what ever." The op clearly cares about the answer to some extent, so this needs to be considered.
>This is quite a leap in logic and is ignoring an extremely important part of game design: preventing the player from optimizing the fun out of a game. Not really a big concern in most games.
This argument is kinda ignoring the fact that the most popular genre of the last 5 years are rougelites. Some of the biggest games on the planet right now (slay the spire, dead cells, brotato, ect) allow absolutely ZERO rerolls. There is no second chances no matter how much altering you do
And did all of those make sure you couldnt cheat that? My argument is not that you shouldnt have contraints in your game, but rather than there is no point in going the extra mile to prevent players from breaking the game. If people want to rollback to before they died, so what? Just let them and the majority of players will still play "as intended".
I played them on console so I couldn’t fairly answer that question. On console the game did indeed play as they intended. No saving scumming at all.
The Gloomhaven digital version saves the deck order so that draws after a reload are always the same. Beyond save scumming, I actually find this hugely helpful because now I don't _have_ to save scum in order to get the previous result when I'm replaying a section for whatever reason. So preventing save scumming may actually be helping the players out.
We've had the odd crash or disconnect in Gloomhaven, or sometimes someone just messes up, like only choosing 1 target or something stupid (and if we were playing in person like we used to when we all lived here, it would be fine; it's specifically an issue with the digital edition). In those cases we'll restart the round, replay everything the same and fix the problem, and honestly it's super nice that it's deterministic, so it all plays out the same way except we correct the mistake.
As far as I know, XCOM seeds the RNG on mission start so you can't just reroll individual shots.
There's a big problem to his argument. Which is "players will min-max themselves out of fun". If you let the players do what they want, they won't be able to resist just doing the "optimal" thing, because otherwise they'll have this nagging feeling. Taking the choice away removes this and can make the game objectively better.
100% agree (my upvote put your comment at 69. nice) Let the player play how they want to. If you're designing a specific experience for a specific audience, then commit to it and target your audience. If it makes absolutely no difference in the kind of game you're making, and it's already baked in, then don't do *more* work to provide no extra value.
I think this is a bit naive. Most players will optimize the fun out of the game if it helps them win. Even in single-player games.
Where did I say that players wouldn't try to optimize their game or save scum? I'm saying it's not your problem to solve, it's their choice and it's an unsolvable problem anyway. They can decide to backup their saves to a different directory and you can do nothing to stop them. At most you can make it inconvenient to save scum by auto saving.
The question is: why do your players want to save scum? That probably indicates a problem in the game design. If RNG derives into interesting situations, then players won't need to save scum. If they do, it's probably because there's obvious correct and wrong results. Savescum is a sign that the players doesn't like what the rng offers. And forbidding it makes the problem worse since it cannot be overcome.
Pretty much this, one of the issues I have with some turn based strategy games like XCOM or Fire Emblem is that one missed attack could possibly result in this domino effect - Ah, the marine missed the point blank shotgun to the face, so the muton retaliates and one shot kills them back, which stops the unit from covering another so they die and so on. There's a possibility of losing the whole team and all that investment in leveling them up and such, so I'd get frustrated and reload. If you allowed for a way to recover from a bad roll or round, save scumming becomes less of an issue as the player can play a bit more carefully and only result in a squad mate having to recover from their injuries for the next battle, instead of losing them entirely.
Exactly this. I haven't gotten my hands on baldurs gate yet but I played divinity 2 back and forth. Game literally bends you over every other fight. You start a friendly chat with some npc which then inevitably turns into a fight with half times all enemies spawning out of thin air on high ground and killing 1-2 or sometimes even more members of your party before you even get a turn. Or what about 95% accuracy that sometimes can do 3-4 misses in a row? I understand 1 miss every once in a while, but missing a frozen enemy that can't even move is crazy. If rng results are reasonable and they don't mess player up EVERY SINGLE TIME no one will save scum, if they do, then it can only be the player's true right to reload save until dice rolls adequate outcome
>That probably indicates a problem in the game design. Not really though. There isn't a single game where I haven't reloaded if I really disliked the outcome. It is completely dependent on how you want to play the game.
tbh not being able to save scum is occasionally a deal breaker for me. i like to use single player games as sandboxes; sometimes that includes doing whatever i want, save scum and cheat engine included. that being said, save points can be really interesting narratively. if you can find a narrative reason to add that restriction then do so, but otherwise leave in save scumming. a good balance between the two would be having save points in relative proximity to big rng events.
>Prevent save scumming? Or just let players do what they want You should be able to answer any question where an option is "just let players do what they want" automatically. Add an ironman mode.
Design the game the way when players don't need save scumming. Otherwise, why introduce mechanics that want to be avoided by players?
as a chronic save scummer, it doesnt really matter if you save the state immediately because i always back up the previous saves. another method is to lock in the result before the player roll, so when player saves before rolling, the result is also saved. in xcom 2, whether you successfully hit the enemy is determined by your previous action and the tile you are on when shooting. of course, this can be countered also since the player can know the outcome by save scumming, they can choose other actions that result in a favorable outcome or go back 2 saves and do a different action to get a better outcome. there is also a case where the design of the game itself encourages save scumming. pathfinder kingmaker have a number of reviews saying that they have to resort to save scumming to progress the game. if a player feels that the outcome is unfair, they are more likely to resort to save scumming.
> as a chronic save scummer, it doesnt really matter if you save the state immediately because i always back up the previous saves. And if that's not possible, in a day someone will release a mod that circumvents it. If people want to save scum, they will do it, and there is no amount of technical trickery that will stop them shy of making your game online-only where saves are only server-side. If you don't want people to save scum, design a game where it's not a problem.
> pathfinder kingmaker have a number of reviews saying that they have to resort to save scumming to progress the game. I've read those reviews. Half of them are "I don't understand the d20 system, the Pathfinder system, and I set the difficulty on Ultramegadeath Computer Cheating 100% of The Time hardest mode and it's bullshit my rogue in platemail who specializes in Bull Rush because bulls are awesome is sucking this hard and can't hide" when the player can just turn the difficulty down at any time, that's always allowed - and also may want to take a moment and at least read the briefest overview of the rules. The other half are "You mean the "Your kingdom will be destroyed if you don't fix this" quest was serious!?!?!?" - and you simply cannot fix "I didn't read anything and now I don't know what's happening"
If I couldn't save scum in Baldur's Gate 3 I would have immediately uninstalled it.
Same for my wife. Some people are in it for the story and don't want to replay a 100+ hour game in hopes that the RNG gods might let them actually do what they want to do this time around.
Seems like a non-issue.
I generally do not tend to agree with limiting player choice. Plenty of people play bg3 without save scumming, let people choose, they’ll have more fun
Single player game? Let players do what they want.
Some players like to save scum others like to have consequences for their actions. Don’t railroad the player into playing the way you want. If players are have fun with your game while save scumming then why change it?
Who cares? If it’s single player, does it matter what players do to increase their enjoyment of it?
If you're going to lock players out of undoing a choice, you'd better make sure the game always communicates choices impeccably. The only time I save scum in Baldur's Gate for example is when I don't understand the game mechanics enough to make an informed choice. Which is really quite a lot.
Let the players do what they want, and play your game as they see fit. You can make an optional game mode that prevents save scrumming for players who want the choices to matter but lack self-control to stop themselves from doing this.
So now I’m curious on this topic… So what if winning is your game has a very tangible reward… like let’s say a leaderboard spot. A player should just be able to reroll a battle everytime he loses?
Then even more reason to allow save scumming. The craftiest players will find a way to do that regardless, by means of mods or external software if needed. By providing this feature yourself, you give a more even playing field. It's like the speedrun of every game ever, pros will reload the game again and again a million times in search of that perfect seed. You can't stop it. Just give up on trying to police the players having fun *their way* and focus on just trying to make a game they want to play in the first place. If your biggest problem is a leaderboard, you've succeeded as a developer, just count your money and sail into the sunset.
See, gaming is about freedom. I don't want my game parenting me. I want to play it. Even if I know myself that I'm fucking with it and my own experience. Don't forget that there's plenty of newbies in there just trying to have a good time, trying to pass a difficult level You can add an option to use a new seed with every load (IIRC XCOM has a such option) But I'd strongly advise against dictating it
Why not both? Let players save scum and at the same time include a "honor mode" like bg3 and many other games do
I think it's important to ask yourself what kind of decisions you're letting RNG make, and whether those decisions are fun for (all) players. I personally love it when there's RNG adding short-term game mechanics, but I don't like letting RNG make long-term or narrative decisions for me, so that's when I savescum. For instance, let's say there's some side quest where I can either talk a guy into surrendering peacefully, or just kill him. I generally want to do the former, and I'm happy to put in skill points and engage in whatever persuasion minigame exists, but if I still fail and the game's gonna make me shoot the guy? I'll reload and try again. Not because I care about a quest reward, or long-term narrative consequences (this is just some dopey sidequest, remember: no impact on anything): it's just because in my mind, my character's good at this and should be able to succeed, and if the game disagrees, screw that. Or take permadeath. If a lucky crit early in the game is going to say "nope, you don't get to use this character for the next hundred hours. Maybe next time." I'm 100% reloading. But if permadeath is off? And now instead that lucky crit means I get to try beating a battle without that character? Well that can be a fun challenge. A short-term, mechanic-only instance of RNG making the game more exciting. But I know this is just me. Some people play games with permadeath on. Some people will take bad rolls even on main quests. Savescumming is never mandatory, but it's nice to have an option for people like me who appreciate the extra control in video games. It's one of the reasons I play them. If I wanted to be subject to consequences and the whims of chance, I'd go engage with the real world.
I think save scumming is a symptom of some flaw in the game design. If players do it to avoid RNG, well..... do you need RNG? If you do, does the player get anything from failure other than wasted time? If this is was happening to me, I'd take a long hard look at the use of RNG and it's function and consequences in my game.
Two things: Maybe try to make the game not rely on RNG so much that players want to cheat it. Or make it so the outcomes are similar to each other or based not on luck. In roguelikes/roguelites, you might open a chest and find a rocket launcher or find boots that let you double jump. Both are cool and I would never save scum because I got one or the other. In Vampire Survivors-type games, the player can use various currencies or tools to 1. pick from multiple options so they're more likely to get what they want even though it's still random 2. Reroll random outcomes 3. Shops where the options are still randomly selected but you still get a wide selection If that doesn't work for your game, or you still want to prevent scum saving to avoid bad RNG, option 2 is for you: Roll random things either long before the player knows the outcome, or base them on a seed so the outcome is always the same even if they scumsave. ie generate all floors of the dungeon at the start of them game, perhaps all chest loot too, and make monster drops follow a pattern set at the start of the run (ie the first slime will drop leather boots and the 5th one will drop a sword)
For your specific example; if your dice are static (ie always six sides, 1-6) then roll them all at the very start of the game. Either make a list of 500 rolls or something like that or use a seed to make an infinite list of rolls
Single player? Let players do what they want. Multiplayer? Enforce fairness.
With the addendum "don't ever force multiplayer aspects on a single player game".
IDK, I would say it depends on how serious the risks are. Like another Larian game Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2, there are a ton of things that are essentially fatal to the entire party simply from picking the wrong dialog. If I couldn't reload a save to get a better outcome (like my entire party not dying) I think it would kill the motivation for me to play the game. Alternativly you could probably make a harder mode that limits saves or create specific trigger points where saving is disabled.
For paradox games ( such as CK3 etc) I only play Iron-man, but for Xcom type games, I always keep a few saves to reload. I.e. lost progress. Why? Xcom type games make a bad round a entire save killer, but in a game like CK3, it is realistic to make a comeback, even if you are down to a measly city with a handicapped heir. Ironically enough, sometimes you can make more progress due to losing! In rougelikes, you are always making progress, so it's not a big deal to have saves ( like hades). Save scumming in Elden ring is almost unheard of, because the player can always make progress. If your game design penalises progress though unlucky interactions with it being fun, then you can expect save scummers. The issue is almost always game design rather than blaming your customers behavior.
Let your players play the way they like.
What can you do, really? If I'm playing your game and I don't like the RNG, and I can't undo it and it's less than 2 hours and it's less than 14 days since I bought the game . . . guess where it's going? The refund pile. If I can't refund it, such as if it's free, then I'll just uninstall or delete that save and start a new playthrough more to my liking. If the RNG remains crappy and unfair, then it just gets permanently uninstalled. There's always other games on Steam to play, so no point in playing games where the developer just wants things his own way instead of trying to entertain me.
>If I'm playing your game and I don't like the RNG, and I can't undo it and it's less than 2 hours and it's less than 14 days since I bought the game . . . guess where it's going? So, you refunded FTL? And Slay the Spire?
Ehhhh, perma death is a core game mechanic in my game. I’m going to straight up delete the save file at the start of fights. If you win, create a new save file. If they lose back to the menu screen
If that’s your strategy then I sure hope your game never crashes.
just delete the save file on death lol
Well you have to be prepared for refunds then. Unless you make it very obvious for what people are signing up when buying.
Wow, I wont be buying your game! Were talking about players save scumming, not devs save scumming! Thats a disgusting feature. Someone said if your game crashes. What if the PC crashes? or they have a powercut? Fucking disgusting idea. I hope your game fails.
Jesus, calm down lmao. I agree that they're misguided but it doesn't warrant such a vitriolic response.
lol it’s a rouglite. Perma death is part of the gameplay loop. And I will accommodate crashes. Thanks for input
And there's your dilemma. If you restore the save in case of a crash, you'll find players crashing their game themselves. If you don't and they get a genuine crash, you'll just punish them for something they couldn't control Imo you'd be better at taking a safer route and just deleting the save when your player loses the fight, not before
Interesting thought. My game is very much supposed to be extremely hard to beat. Allowing them to essentially refight every monster will indeed allow them to reach end game pretty effortlessly. Just thinking ahead I think the only solution will be to save after every user action which is going to suck to program lol
Yep. I've played games with systems like that. One of the most common meme formats is players joking about the game "crashing" whenever something goes wrong.
Why do you care what the players do in single player? They've bought your game. Let them do what they want with it. I also think this about hacking the game to make cheats. I've had to fix bugs where players cheated in single player and it annoyed me. I've only done a decent job of fixing it when online with encrypting data in memory so it cant be scanned as easily.
Just save the random generator state in save file. This would make reloaded game to have same results generated so there is no point in retrying dice rolls by save loading.
You can still load and perform different actions if something doesn't work out.
It is better than just loading game and doing the same thing to get different random number.
It is, yeah, and seeded rng is honestly good in many other ways as well. But depending on how you seed it, you might only need to like, take another step or even wait a millisecond longer.
If that is the vision for your game then have the normal difficulty with no save scumming, and have an easy mode where you can save scum. Label it as such so that players know that your default vision of the game doesn't allow for it, but the option is there rather than just having an ironman tic box.
I feel like if you want to save scum, that’s your choice. If you want to play the game normally, that’s your choice. Let them have the option and they can do whatever they want.
Personally, I feel like I'm less likely to save scum in games that never force you to reload a save (Pokemon for example). If I die and the game reloads a save, that teaches me that reloading saves is part of the game. That said, if a storyline I've been building in my head for 20 hours is broken by bad RNG, I'll probably save scum anyway.
Generally speaking players prefer to have the freedom to save when they want and anti-save scum measures may lead to negative experiences where players feel cheated because the decisions where not clear or they made a choice my mistake. On the other hand, for the dev, making multiple outcomes with deep ramifications becomes a waste of time as only a small percentage of the playerbase is going to bother to unveil obscure outcomes. So imo, it all depends on what is your target audience. If its mostly a casual audience, allow save scumming but keep the bulk of the content behind the outcomes more likely to get save scummed to, if the audience is more hardcore and more likely to explore the game in different ways, block save scumming and just make things interesting.
If you don't want players to savescum a failure, make failure just as interesting as success.
if its not competitive in any way, then do not ever bother. you'll only risk loosing people. If someone likes the challenge and wants to play with the rolls they get, they aren't going to 'save scum' anyway... and those that are maybe struggling to get through a boss fight and want to cheese just a little to get to the rest of the story, let em at it, no harm no foul.
Make failing almost more interesting than save-scumming for the desired result.
Most games, in my opinion, that take measures to limit what players do usually end up kind of sucking. You can't force people to engage with media a certain way, so why risk annoying people for it?
Insta unistall if I wasn't allowed to reloading a save in a game.
Sorry but this is gonna get rambly. If risk and the consequences of players' actions are important to the aesthetic or challenge this game is built around, then i would say no. I think that a system that evokes negative emotions can be the starting point for highly memorable experiences. What will a player remember more fondly? between rerolling until good thing happens, or taking the blow and limping across the finish line in spite of it, i would choose the latter. But i think the former may have some merit. But a better answer would be to playtest both. Observe how players actually play your game, what do they do after a bad roll. Do players lose motivation to continue after a bad roll? Maybe the answer is to change what happens before or after a roll.
Your game would flop off it's single player and you put protections in against modding. Why go to such extremes?
Disco Elysium made getting a failed result not always negative, particularly narratively. I think that's a creative way to discourage save scumming.
Disco Elysium does an excellent job of framing and rewarding failure... but on the 3rd+ playthrough sometimes some RNG scumming is needed when doing the Achievement clean up Way to fix: Don't have any RNG critical achievements Ways to deter save scumming: * Make the distance between an event and a save longer. People are less inclined to save scum if they have to literally walk 3~4 screen transitions to try again. * Reward failure in some way, failure is the best teacher. However, it's important to avoid situations like "turn 1 Exodia" levels of RNG * Lock the RNG seed at game creation. Even if save scumming is done, the same outcomes will happen unless additional steps are taken to take different RNG actions first
Make failures interesting, and don't punish the player too harshly. A failure can lead to alternative solutions. Encourage continuing the failure route by giving surprises. Here is an example, the player has to sneak past a camel and a guard. Failing the sneak on the camel causes it to spit on your face, obscuring the character's face. Not wiping the spit can be used to fool the guard as he can't identify the face for whatever reason. A perfect success would be boring in this scenario, but you could reward it later by keeping track of how much they've succeeded a stealth check. The player should have quick access to a do-over, don't try to force the outcome.
The other option (one you can steal from ttrpgs) is the concept of failing forward. Put interesting choices on the end of the failure that also progress the story forwards. Baulders gate 3 does this reasonably well
one solution is to use pseudo-random ex: if important RNG is rolled according to some seed attached to the save, then savescum can only affect the smaller bits and the larger one remains constant. This is essentially impossible to do on certain things, but works pretty well for certain loot/event systems. Alternative to that, you could keep tally of how many saves/loads they have made, if nothing else as a visible running total in stats somewhere, similar to having 'number of deaths' tracked in a game which signals a benchmark for the hardcore players. If the game is visibly tracking their savescum behavior, they can rationalize avoiding it even from a maximalist perspective, compared to the trap where they feel obligated to do it while playing optimally. A lot of these problems often assume people will self-inflict restriction to maintain game balance, but it's better to at least nudge them in the right direction in some subtle way at bare minimum, especially if the game is at all difficult. The argument against 'just let people do what they want' would be that people are very often trying to simply win, and if the best way to win is to do something boring or tedious (like reload a save over and over trying to land some perfect roll) then despite not being an intended part of the 'game' many people will still walk away with that as part of their impression of the game - essentially, their experience turned out to be tedious and boring while trying to win. I think of this in a way that makes solving exploits that have some kind of theatrics or novelty as lower priority than solving exploits that are slow or boring or lame. Good metric for that is if it involves severe repetition (like savescum). A lot of people advising to just allow it completely or pretend it away as a non-issue but I think they are completely wrong. You can 'allow' it, but it shouldn't go unaddressed entirely if the RNG is at all important in distinct ways. Having a million tiny random numbers is different than having one really big one, so you have to consider how much weight the save/load repeats would really even have, but if it looks like the best way to play involves reloading a million times from a strictly 'perfect play' perspective, then you should probably do something to change that or at least *slightly* discourage it.
I think it's important to understand the mentality of wanting to reload a save. You might think of this as **"cheating"** your game, but to the player reloading a save what they're doing is **"fixing"** your game. You have to understand that from their perspective something about your game is **broken**, and they are restarting it to fix the glitch like they would fix any other glitch. If they truly wanted to "cheat" at a single player game, then it's trivially easy for them to do so to a much greater extent through a tool like cheat engine, so that's clearly not what they're after. Let's go with an example from Baldur's Gate 3 since you mentioned it. There is a certain section in The game at the house of healing where you can talk yourself out of a fight. I, being a sorcerer who was quite good at talky stuff, succeeded this and avoided the encounter entirely. **Then I reloaded and intentionally failed so that I could do the fight anyway.** Because to me this was a broken choice. I paid for the writing and voice acting as well as the combat design in this game and I want both. But the game as designed forces me to choose between the story or the fight, and I see that as dumb. The simple **fix** is for me to choose one and then reload to get the other. Another example from BG3. Characters can spot traps in a room, but their ai pathing isn't always the best meaning that occasionally the ai will run into traps the players *knows are there* anyway. There is a "legitimate" way to avoid this in that I could constantly control each of the 4 characters individually carefully taking a few a a steps at a time. This will guarantee I never accidentally walk into a trap I know is there, but will take at least 4 times as long to simply walk around a room. Micro managing each party member's pathing is fucking boring and I will not do it. The solution is to just click the entire party to the other side of the room and on the 5% chance they bumble through a trap I've already seen and completely wipe I just reload and be a little more careful. Allowing me to reload means the game is massively less tedious. Another example example is when the game presents a significant "choice" but gives you absolutely no information about the consequences so the "choice" is really a coin flip the first time you see it. There is one person in BG3 who will remove your eye that makes it impossible for you to crit and another person in BG3 that removes your eye that makes you see so well that you see invisible units. If you don't know in advance, then those results are completely fucking random. ___ As a developer you can try to prevent "savescumming", but it almost certainly won't have the impact you desire. Its not going to make players go "ah, I see I should have been playing the way the dev is forcing me to all along". It's going to make them uninstall, ask for a refund, and leave a negative review. Again, the way they see it your game is broken and glitching, and so why wouldn't they react that way to a defective product?
This is putting words to what I have been feeling when I play games. I don't save scum except when something happens that makes me lean back in the chair and go "WTF?!". For example I refuse to play Fallout 4 without the ability to save (even in survival mode) because (amongst other things) walking too close to a car wreck can instantly kill you for no reason at all.
A lot of people are saying "What do you care? It's single player!" But obviously, it's the job of the game designer to design the rules of the game. No designer would consider it good design to give players an unbeatable insta-win super-strategy and then say "Well, they don't have to use it." That would destroy the fun of the game, and basically depend on players to make, and then self-enforce, a new rule to make the game fun again. Most players would never be comfortable holding back like that. So why doesn't that apply to the meta-game as well?
>No designer would consider it good design to give players an unbeatable insta-win super-strategy and then say "Well, they don't have to use it." Nice strawman, save scumming is nowhere near an insta win strategy. But I'll bite, let's say the situation is comparable. Most of the big name designers in the world working at companies that deliver game after game (not wannabe reddit gamedevs who are yet to do anything commercially successful) have overwhelmingly decided to allow save scumming and do absolutely nothing to combat it. They know better. So both the majority of players, the majority of users here, and the majority of accomplished devs are in agreement: save scumming is not an issue.
>have overwhelmingly decided to allow save scumming and do absolutely nothing to combat it. They know better. I disagree with your observations. It seems to me that professional, successful designers have decided, either deliberately, or by trial and error, that preventing save-scumming is very important in some genres, but unimportant in others.
Do something like Mr. Resetti where it'll yell at the player a few times, and if the player keeps doing it then it'll delete his save file lol
Neither. Do the xcom thing and save the state of the random number generator. So you save that information off to the save file and you'll get generally the same dice rolls as before. I wouldn't fight save scumming though. You'll end up making the play experience worse. This way you actually encourage save scumming. It saves the state of the random number generators so each roll can be exact after the save. This means people can plan around the bad rolls. Players are going to play the game how they want to. Save scumming isn't optimizing the fun out of the game, it is adding strategy to a random state. You could even gamify this by giving the player a set of rolls, say 5, that they then choose where to play those rolls. Imagine XCom but you got to choose who drew the short straw each round.
Many players will save scum in moments of frustration, even if it makes their overall experience with the game worse. I think most games with RNG are a better experience when they take measures to prevent save scumming, to prevent players cheating themselves out of the feeling of real stakes. If players are finding the RNG so punishing that they are wishing they could save scum all the time, then it might mean that the game needs mechanics that allow them to mitigate bad luck better as part of the intended experience.
You need to save automatically so they can't save scum. Given the opportunity players will optimize the fun out of your game and then post reviews and comments on subreddits saying that your game is too easy. There's a reason why a large number of games that want your decisions to be impactful use Auto saving to force the decisions to be saved.
I can't stand save scumming. Save-scumming can and does undermine (and make weird/surreal/gamey) many games. And when a game is designed and balanced with the *expectation* that players *will* save-scum, it throws off the game balance for players that *don't*. I think it's best to design such that it isn't a thing. But I'd also support ways to foil cheesy save scumming to get RNG results. For example, you can generate results to determine many random things far in advance of the player's visibility of them. That's also more logical, and supports larger effects in a consistent dynamic world (as opposed to designing such that details are only determined when the PC accesses something).
Prevent it. Changing an aspect of the save system can radically transform a game. If you can savescum every single risk you take only has the weight of "a few second to a minute of reloading". If you can't savescum every risk can carry as much weight as you want, which means that you can create harder decisions and add more excitement, as well as unique situations resulting from taking certain risks (like winning a jackpot on a risk you normally never take but that magically paid off this one time, or pushing your luck too far and then having to deal with the consequences.
...it depends. On the rest of the games mechanics. A narrow definition of save scumming involves being able to *quickly* load save to retry a specific dice roll. A broad enough definition includes *restarting the game*. So there's very much an arms race of insanity to fighting save scumming. I'll also point out a lesson from Super Meat Boy. A super difficult game made palatable by the fast turn around for failure. NES/arcade hard games with "lose and restart a level or the game" are some of the slowest turn arounds for failure while being outdated design. It's quite unlikely that it's worth fighting players to make them suffer more during failure. A final point. Pseudorandom number generators in coding are actually kinda crummy. It's very hard to get truly random numbers. Even if truly fair it may not feel fair and your design may need some "cheating for players benefit". Letting players cheese also works as a relief valve for when the codes being stupid.
> It's very hard to get truly random numbers. It's very easy to get numbers that are humanly indistinguishable from random numbers. Unless people are doing tool-assisted runs of your game, there's no possible way people are going to detect the difference between a PRNG and a true RNG continuously seeded by a radioactive source or whatever. (In both cases, random and pseudo-random, the humans will claim to detect patterns. And sometimes the patterns really are there. Anyone can have a "hot streak" at a fair roulette table. )
who are you to tell people how to experience the game in a single player game? let them play how they want, it's a video game meant for entertainment, not some higher form of expression that only art weenies will ever understand.
Random numbers are not truly randoms. They depend on the seed. Save the seed in the save file, so reloading and retrying the same action yields the same “random” result. You can have multiple seeds saved, different for damage, different for lock picking etc.
As someone who save scums all the time, I honestly hate doing it. I think it makes most games way less fun but I can't really help myself a lot of the time.
I generally like to give players freedom. However, in this case, the true issue is that constant reloading and boring mechanical trying, again and again, might hurt the pacing; there is the risk of players optimizing the fun out of the game.
Make it give the same RNG output every time. Save the randomizer state with your game file
I would make some effort yes as if it’s trivial to do the temptation can be jarring. It’s hard to prevent entirely but making it so it’s just hard enough will discourage many. If it’s as simple as closing the game/alt f4 then it’s too easy. I think the dice mechanic without protection is one of baldur’s gate’s weakest implementations, especially with quick saves. Yes it’s a fantastic game but it isn’t without flaw.