Baldur’s Gate 3’s huge launch has reignited the age-old debate about save scumming.
Bigger question is who gives a crap?
It’s a single-player game, let people enjoy things the way they want to. I personally don’t save-scum the skill and ability checks, but I will save-scum on a tough fight if I’m in a losing position - and I ain’t gonna knock on people who do and don’t do that in a single-player game.
For multi-player, I would discourage it since dealing with your friend’s fuckups is like, half the fun of a tabletop session.
I think reloading a difficult fight you’re losing isn’t necessarily savescumming. What’s the alternative, letting it play out until you get a TPK and then starting over with a new level 1 character because “that’s what would have happened in pen-and-paper”?
Yeah, and that’s an extreme take I’ve seen some people take on games in the past - basically treating every game as if they had an Ironman mode.
I personally don’t even see reloading the game after losing as “save-scumming”, but there are the rare individuals who would consider it as such.
I think this is the challenge for some who don’t want to reload a save. But random dice --with 1 always failing and 20 always hitting are just that random. No play skill involved.
I agree. But hey, people do permadeath no-reload challenges of XCOM, too. Some folks are crazy.
I just don’t think reloading a save after losing a fight counts as savescumming. That functionality is such a core part of games that we had to invent an entire genre to design around not doing that (Roguelikes).
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.
Save summing is enjoyable. If I wanted to live with my horrible decisions I’d turn the game off and engage with reality. Anyone debating how someone else enjoys something they paid for is a muppet.
There’s no debate. Mind your own business.
I try to play games on their intended difficulty. Difficulty level wise this usually means “normal”, unless “normal” = “a chore in early game without any items or skills, then at the exact moment your arsenal becomes viable you obtain the pointy acid sword and the ‘double all acid damage’ skill, which trivializes the rest of the game”. In that case I pick “hard”.
Why is this relevant? Because the industry has developed a standard protocol to prevent save scumming, such that when a game starts I instantly know where the devs stand. You know the drill: ‘this game features an auto-save system; when you see the spinning circle, first don’t turn off your system, and second take note that your fuck-up right now has been recorded for posterity and cannot be undone’.
As far as I’m concerned, nowadays if the game lets you save scum, then this is an intended part of the experience. The most blatant example of this is immersive sims (Deus Ex, Cyberpunk 2077, Dishonored) that hand you a bazillion save slots with manual saves, auto-saves and quick saves, all but outright telling you “go ahead, ‘Life is Strange’ your way through this shit”. Conversely, we have games that don’t let you save scum and this is also a part of the experience – Soulslikes, Choose-Your-Own-QTEs (Until Dawn, Detroit: Become Human, etc), roguelikes, and a great many other genres where save scumming abolitionists can celebrate their successful conquest. The devs pick carefully, and I believe they usually know best.
It’s reached the point where when I see an overpowered save system in a game, I don’t only feel zero guilt about taking advantage of it, I actually interpret it as a necessary concession from the devs – an essential feature to be ignored at my own peril (think of Al Lowe, designer of ye olde sadistic point and click quests, who said the quiet part out loud: “Save Early and Save Often!”). If the devs chose to allow save scumming, this must be because they knew a lot of game scenarios are frustrating, counter-intuitive and capricious when encountered the first time, to a degree that can make the game not fun. I’m just not up for that.
Is only game. Why you heff to be mad?
Play video games the way YOU want to and stop worrying about how other people play. This is a major problem in MMOs/Multiplayer games, I don’t know why we should open the door for people to be upset about someone else’s Singleplayer experience.
Attention everyone! MEH! Thank you and have a nice day.
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.
Yeah, absolutely reloading after I click on a barrel to search but it’s not that kind of barrel so my character smashes it and explodes us all.
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’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.
What debate? I will save scum and there’s nothing anyone can do about it lol.
