Play video games the way YOU want to and stop worrying about how other people play. This is a major problem in MMOs/Multiplayer games, I don’t know why we should open the door for people to be upset about someone else’s Singleplayer experience.
Save scumming is the only way I can tolerate games like this. For as awesome as the game is (very awesome) sometimes consequences fall within the range of acceptability and sometimes they don't. When they don't, save scumming is what keeps me from putting the game down for good.
I try to think of it in terms of how it would go at a D&D session.
For example, if i roll perception well, seeing a tile is trapped, and tell the DM i avoid it, he's not going to have some NPC trigger it because i forgot to tell them to stop following me, so i feel justified in reloading a save in that case.
Lmao I often forget to unlock my party when dealing with traps only to have Shadowheart haphazardly wander right into the painfully obvious tripwire as the trap dice check is loading
I’m the first area with Withers I didn’t fully understand traps. I saw one and we avoided it then I turned off turn based mode. What I didn’t notice was the fireball traps on the walls. It was extremely confusing but hilarious watching it unfold. It wasn’t too big of a deal but I totally get what you mean. Even apart from that it’s annoying how they don’t just avoid ones other people saw.
I don't think there's ever been a save scum debate. Most people just do it, especially the game is unreasonable or has easily missable / permanently locked content that you lose out on forever after dozen or hundreds of hours of playtime unless you save scum.
It's more like most people do it without shame because they have lives, jobs, families, and limited time and energy to play, and a vocal minority of tryhards and internet trolls (who also save scum but lie about it) who try to force their twisted values on the majority for no other reason than to try to control everyone because of some personal dysfunction.
The gripes I see about save-scumming usually come from those who would prefer not to but don’t have impulse control, so they’d prefer developers to take away from players who don’t care, and have valid reasons for doing so like you listed.
Developers disallowing saving when I want make me so irrationally angry. Let me play the game in a way that I know I will have fun. Not allowing it has always been a way to extend your game artificially.
Also it means I can’t pick it up to play unless I have a large block of time I know will be free and I rarely have that so basically I can’t play the game.
Octopath's final battle is a gauntlet of eight or so bosses, followed by the last boss with two forms. One of those forms, if you don't manage to dispatch a specific enemy at a certain perfect moment, runs the risk of actually trapping the player in an endless loop as everything keeps healing itself faster than the player is able to take anything down.
This is a known possibility that forces you to restart the entire gauntlet again from the beginning just to have a chance, and you can't save in that room. Guess whether I've technically finished Octopath or not. You're goddamn right I'm going to figure out how to glitch it and save anyway, because I don't and will never want to sink genuinely 2-3hrs of my life each time I try to beat that, with less than zero guarantee that I actually will. I get the feel they were going for, but who the fuck is responsible for this decision.
Where Baldur's Gate is concerned, I do clinically have difficulty making decisions but I'm mostly only doing it because I love the writing so much. 90% or more of my save scumming is dialogue related and I'd take it as a huge compliment.
I severely dislike role-playing in a way that makes me choose options I don't actually believe in, so every file I've ever played for any game tends to be identical. But in this game and this game only, I desperately want to see what happens if I do and it's almost always rewarding. It's SO good
First of all, I don’t think there is any right or wrong and everyone should just play the way they enjoy most, whether that is rolling with their failures or ensuring they get the outcome they desired (because they might perhaps not have time to do a second playthrough of a 150 hour game).
Secondly, I think the desire to savescum usually materializes because of inherent game design issues. Failures are often less interesting and satisfying than successes, regularly closing the door on additional content which leads to the player feeling like they’re missing out. In pen-and-paper, improvisation between both players and the DM usually means there are other ways to access that same thing if the first option fails, but this is much harder to implement in a CRPG and so many checks end up being “succeed or miss out”.
The only game I’m aware of that really tried hard to design around these types of problems is Disco Elysium (though even that game had several instances of fascinating content possibly missed because of a dice roll). Still, I really wish more RPG developers would study this example and adopt a similar “fail-forward” design principle.
My philosophy on it, specifically for this game, is that the game is so damn huge to start with it's impossible to see and experience all the content in one or even several playthroughs. I'd rather just put my completionist impulses aside, think of the game more as "D&D" than a video game, and just go forward, no matter what happens in game.
But that's just my thought for this specific game. As has been stated several times - it's your save file, do what you want with it. No wrong way to play.
I literally restarted the entire game when Dark Urge chopped off Gale’s hand on the option “fantasize about chopping the hand off”, that’s not the sort of gas lighting experience I want, I’ll just play the normal custom character first then maybe play that later
I approached some goblins by a windmill and combat started with the narrator saying “you were warned to stay away”. Nobody said anything about that, so I reloaded my save and stayed away. The goblins let me into their camp even, why would I suspect these ones wouldn’t let me talk to them?
I would get bored of a D&D session that started the exact same way every time I fucked up and died though. I'm not great at these games and I am embarrassed to say I was killed more than once on my first playthrough before even leaving the crash site.
Hoping mods or expansions (which seem unlikely) open the world up a lot more and allow for other starting scenarios.
I’m doing mild save scumming, not to have a flawless playthrough but because like you say it’s a huge game and I don’t have a million spare hours so odds are I’m only going to do one good serious playthrough then take a break and maybe do a evil play through or something later.
It’s not like I’m going to see everything so I might as well use the magic of time manipulation to explore alternate realities - the characters talk about that sort of weirdness all the time so for me I don’t even feel it’s world breaking.
Though honestly the only mistake I wish I could go back and fix is completing pretty much the whole first area with only two characters because I missed talking to all the NPCs who’d join me - did make it more challenging tho which was fun I guess.
On one end, I do want my choices to matter. On the other hand, when a bug wipes 20 hours of progress because of one item you accidentally clicked on 20 hours ago. You start playing it safe.... very safe....
IMHO, no harm in a single/cooperative multiplayer game. If the player wants to go through the hassle of saving and loading repeatedly, that’s their decision. No harm to the community at large.
I love that not a single one of us has a controversial take on this matter. Sounds like it’s not really a debate and just a trash editorial from a trash media outlet.
They didn’t put quick save and quick load on single-keys in easy reach because they expect you to live with the consequences of what happened. Anyone who doesn’t recognize that save-scumming is part of the design intent is lying to themselves.
In a game that takes dozens of hours to get through? Of course I’m save scumming to get the result I want. If I don’t care about some consequence maybe I’ll let a failure slide but for the big stuff, I’m not starting again and doubling my playtime, I’m usually burnt out on the title by the end of the first run.
This is definitely it for me too. On games like this I’ll happily savescum because I want to see the ending I desire. If I love the game enough I may replay it, and in that case I’ll just roll with whatever happens as I explore new paths.
Disco elysium did failing checks right. Even if I failed a check I never wanted to scum (except for kim) because the different outcomes were so interesting. I feel like in baldurs gate I fail a check and just fight. There is very rarely a different outcome. Maybe I’m just unlucky tho
I've passed two skill checks only to find out it perma-kills someone in my group. Or at least the first time was permanent, idk if the second one was because I only just retrieved Withers today, I'm always flat broke, and I didn't want to deal with it when I could definitely bring them back to life for the low cost of waiting out the loading screen. Either course of action would undo the same mistake.
Most of my save scumming is because I've almost never had a game present me with multiple great options that I mentally can't pick between, though you're right that a lot of times failure just results in arguing and murder attempts. Really look forward to playing Disco Elysium after this from everything I've ever heard about it
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