Where exactly has this really horrible sounding phrase come from? It's almost as if whoever came up with it is trying to make people who make use of the tools they're given feel bad.
Save Scummer
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Like Yahtzee I tended to, as a child, keep my fingers in those pages of Pick a Path stories, partially because I wanted to read every ending, but also partially becuase I wanted to get the best ending.
Sadly in Dishonored I save scummed more than I did play the game. Why? A mix of both of the prior reasons.
I wanted the story, all of it. If I missed some NPCs chatting because I alerted them, I didn't want to have to miss that, so almost every time I alerted a guard, bam loaded. If I started randomly stabbing guards at frustration of my failed sneak attempts, bam loaded. If I missed a bit of dialogue because someone was talking outside, bam loaded. I also wanted to be able to explore freely, and as you can imagine, that involved clearing out most of the enemies in some areas to allow me to find all the hidden booty.
I wanted the best ending. Primarily a problem with 'moral choice' media, is that you can get stuck with the shitty ending if you stab just one more person, I was not taking that risk, attempting to go through all missions by silencing my opponent non-lethally, hiding his body, and moving on. So, naturally, anytime I was forced into confrontation, BAM loaded.
This was less of a problem in my lethal playthrough, and was probably part of the reason it was more enjoyable, but I still savescummed in order to preserve my gear for some future boss battle that never came.
Games have taught me to be stingy with my use of items incase I be forced into a situation where I will actually need them, except it never happens. They have also taught me to explore everywhere, even when the costs may outweigh the benifits (leading to a hell of a lot of save scrumming) and I will forever pay the price.
Sadly in Dishonored I save scummed more than I did play the game. Why? A mix of both of the prior reasons.
I wanted the story, all of it. If I missed some NPCs chatting because I alerted them, I didn't want to have to miss that, so almost every time I alerted a guard, bam loaded. If I started randomly stabbing guards at frustration of my failed sneak attempts, bam loaded. If I missed a bit of dialogue because someone was talking outside, bam loaded. I also wanted to be able to explore freely, and as you can imagine, that involved clearing out most of the enemies in some areas to allow me to find all the hidden booty.
I wanted the best ending. Primarily a problem with 'moral choice' media, is that you can get stuck with the shitty ending if you stab just one more person, I was not taking that risk, attempting to go through all missions by silencing my opponent non-lethally, hiding his body, and moving on. So, naturally, anytime I was forced into confrontation, BAM loaded.
This was less of a problem in my lethal playthrough, and was probably part of the reason it was more enjoyable, but I still savescummed in order to preserve my gear for some future boss battle that never came.
Games have taught me to be stingy with my use of items incase I be forced into a situation where I will actually need them, except it never happens. They have also taught me to explore everywhere, even when the costs may outweigh the benifits (leading to a hell of a lot of save scrumming) and I will forever pay the price.
My favourite episode of emergent failure gameplay was in Guild Wars, when my entire party was murdered in the Hall of Heroes - except for me as I was the only one who'd brought along any skills that increased movement speed. I ran away and hid, then everything turned into a cat-and-mouse stealth game as I snuck around the dungeon trying to resurrect everybody. Successfully putting my party back together and finishing the dungeon was quite the rush.
I only really save scum in games to avoid repetition. If death means I have to go back through a bit and do it pretty much exactly the same as before, then it quickly descends into tedium. If I can avoid that, I will.
I only really save scum in games to avoid repetition. If death means I have to go back through a bit and do it pretty much exactly the same as before, then it quickly descends into tedium. If I can avoid that, I will.
That's exactly what it's trying to do.Quicksilver_Phoenix said:
'Save-scumming' places the blame entirely on the player. I don't think that's right. The game has to take some responsibility for making it possible (and advantageous) to do something like that, and at the same time should also make sure the bulk of the gameplay isn't spent replaying large sections that you've already done because of some silly death you ran into.
Amnesia was a game I thought did this right. I don't remember needing to save much because I barely died in the game. Yet there were plenty of times I felt threatened enough that I WAS going to die, or go insane, which made the game more entertaining. When you have a game like that you don't feel the need to save much at all.
Oh, and checkpoints suck.
I'm a full-on shameless save scummer because today's games just do not give a fuck about those who are unable to 200% them and cure all the world's diseases.
Developers/writers are going in a very wrong direction, in more ways than one.
Developers/writers are going in a very wrong direction, in more ways than one.
So Dishonored comes along with an achievement for never being seen all game long. As I see it there are 3 possible tracks to this achievement.
1. Be insanely lucky. No amount of sitting on a rooftop looking around with binoculars will save you from every hidden ambush or tight corridor patrolling guard.
2. Play the game until you've memorized every npc's location & path. Perhaps this is what they intended with the achievement, in which case they should be able to log quicksaves and DQ you.
3. Save scum.
Now, I hate achievements, (that's another story) so I just want to get them all out of the way so I can play my game in peace and quiet. So I opt for option 3. Is it enjoyable? Not terribly, and even less so when I realize the immersion and reality of the scenario are going right down the drain. But I blame this particular instance on the achievements. The only other time I end up save scumming is early on in Bethesda games when you're not sure if the room you're walking in to will have 12 enemies twice your level due to some scaling mechanic. And then it's not so much reloading if I lose a little health, it's reloading because I got utterly destroyed and need to find another route or simply avoid the area.
1. Be insanely lucky. No amount of sitting on a rooftop looking around with binoculars will save you from every hidden ambush or tight corridor patrolling guard.
2. Play the game until you've memorized every npc's location & path. Perhaps this is what they intended with the achievement, in which case they should be able to log quicksaves and DQ you.
3. Save scum.
Now, I hate achievements, (that's another story) so I just want to get them all out of the way so I can play my game in peace and quiet. So I opt for option 3. Is it enjoyable? Not terribly, and even less so when I realize the immersion and reality of the scenario are going right down the drain. But I blame this particular instance on the achievements. The only other time I end up save scumming is early on in Bethesda games when you're not sure if the room you're walking in to will have 12 enemies twice your level due to some scaling mechanic. And then it's not so much reloading if I lose a little health, it's reloading because I got utterly destroyed and need to find another route or simply avoid the area.
Speaking of turn-based games and voices, remember how much character the many varied voices in the early Jagged Alliance titles added to those games? It's a small investment by the developer that goes a long way towards fleshing out a player's team of soldiers.
So that's what it's called? I used to do that all the time back in the day. I don't do it very much anymore, mostly because most games these days utilize checkpoints instead. I still don't see how it's in any way detrimental to the gaming experience though.
The first (and currently only) time I played the first level of Deus Ex I got both of them killed. I do not play many RPGs with dialogue options. I don't seem to be very good at them.TizzytheTormentor said:
OT: I used to save scum a lot more than I do now (chasing down the "perfect playthrough"). These days I'm far more inclined to just go with the flow. After about nine hours on one character in Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword, I made a badly-timed mistake that led to me losing all my stuff and getting dragged around as a captive. I almost reloaded my save from an hour before, but decided not to. Instead I sat twiddling my thumbs as the game span in fast-forward mode until my captors finally let me go and I could start my journey to greatness all over again.
It's the only time I've really "got" the idea of roleplaying. Up until that point, I hadn't really been thinking of my little red-head avatar as a character. But after that humiliating defeat, she and I had something to prove. Once I'd built up my strength again, I got revenge on my former captor by assisting in the invasion of his country and burning his fief to the ground.
I haven't tried XCom classic difficulty yet, but my ironman (i.e. no reloading saves ever) normal difficulty run was a lot of fun. My most fun moments came when one or even two of my guys got mind controled, and the controlers were on the other side of the UFO surrounded by heavy gunners. I even managed to salvage the mission on the battleship-ufo, when the game bugged out and decided that my mini-tank was still standing in the only dooropening with indestructable walls after it had passed through. So my tank couldn't go back out, and the other 5 soldiers couldn't go in. One of the soldiers had an Archangel armor and could fly around. I spent the whole mission playing cat and mouse with the huge army in the center of the UFO, luring them into the firing line of the four soldiers on the far side of the door. Won too, no casualies.
Now, I have to admit I never lost an entire squad that game. I never even got close. I think I lost one max-level guy in my whole playthrough (got mindcontroled, which caused the soldier next to him to panik and shoot him in the face, which left me with insuficient firepower to kill the etheral, who then drained the last of my guy's health to heal himself) I don't know if I could have recovered from a full whipe. But I did make a point of having more than 6 good soldiers. You can recover from fairly large fuck-ups in XCom if you don't just bring the same 6 guys on every mission. If you have to train a new squad from scratch after losing your only 6 colonels, then you're probably screwed. And as a side benefit, I was able to perform the last mission with 6 max level guys, 5 of whom were also max level psionics. My other 8 non-psionic colonels could sit that one out. Shame I could only put one in the Gollop Chamber, but hey.
Now, I have to admit I never lost an entire squad that game. I never even got close. I think I lost one max-level guy in my whole playthrough (got mindcontroled, which caused the soldier next to him to panik and shoot him in the face, which left me with insuficient firepower to kill the etheral, who then drained the last of my guy's health to heal himself) I don't know if I could have recovered from a full whipe. But I did make a point of having more than 6 good soldiers. You can recover from fairly large fuck-ups in XCom if you don't just bring the same 6 guys on every mission. If you have to train a new squad from scratch after losing your only 6 colonels, then you're probably screwed. And as a side benefit, I was able to perform the last mission with 6 max level guys, 5 of whom were also max level psionics. My other 8 non-psionic colonels could sit that one out. Shame I could only put one in the Gollop Chamber, but hey.
You could just ignore them. I only bother with achievements that sound fun. E.g. I expended a serious amount of time and energy getting the Borderlands 2 achievement for killing a flying enemy by throwing a gun at them, but I haven't bothered starting a duel with my coop partner just to get the achievement for that.RobfromtheGulag said:
When doing my first playthrough of a game, I want to enjoy it as much as I can whilst everything is still fresh.
X-COM was a bit of a shock to the system for me, it's definitely much more merciless than the original IMO. I don't think that's all down to the tactical missions though. I've had to restart my game from scratch because of the way the panic system works.
My main gripe is the way Alien abductions increase panic. These missions force you to make a hard choice, which is fair enough, but then heap the pain on by raising panic across a whole continent rather than an individual country. Short of buying a bucket load of expensive satellites (and attendant base facilities), there's no way to claw back the panic fast enough. You'll always loose a country somewhere along the lines, and the game outright if you aren't successful in pretty much every mission.
This is a bad idea so far as I'm concerned as it encourages reflexive saving to recover a mistake. I've resisted so far (hence the restart), but I do lament the lack of opportunity to make good after a disaster; the original never got this difficult this fast.
My main gripe is the way Alien abductions increase panic. These missions force you to make a hard choice, which is fair enough, but then heap the pain on by raising panic across a whole continent rather than an individual country. Short of buying a bucket load of expensive satellites (and attendant base facilities), there's no way to claw back the panic fast enough. You'll always loose a country somewhere along the lines, and the game outright if you aren't successful in pretty much every mission.
This is a bad idea so far as I'm concerned as it encourages reflexive saving to recover a mistake. I've resisted so far (hence the restart), but I do lament the lack of opportunity to make good after a disaster; the original never got this difficult this fast.
I want to bring up an example of a video game - including expansions - that also pull this concept off quite well: Mount and Blade.
I absolutely adore this game, both for what is possible to achieve in this game and just the general feel of combat and how it works. To transition quickly from this, though, I have to tell you of a story involving one of my characters, a Lady Rose-Lynn.
Lady Rose-Lynn is a Vaegir - which, for those who don't know, are basically the equivalent of East Europeans in the Mount and Blade lore - who is struggling to make her mark in the world, equivalent to the historical Joan of Ark. However, for a massive section of the game that sometimes carries on even when I still play the character, she has consistently been beaten down by opposing armies, captured who knows how many times and has always had to start from scratch, all the while barely able to raise the kind of support needed to raise a proper army. To make matters worse, the fact that she is a lady is almost always often brought up by other lords. In short, she has almost never had luck on her side.
However I was persistent as hell and I tried to find other ways to bring her luck around. Eventually, it did pay off for a good amount of time: she finally had a worthy standing army to fight alongside, she had beaten an opposing lord or two, and she finally had some land to her name. I haven't had the chance to go back to her, but safe to say that, for the time being, her luck has gotten better.
I absolutely adore this game, both for what is possible to achieve in this game and just the general feel of combat and how it works. To transition quickly from this, though, I have to tell you of a story involving one of my characters, a Lady Rose-Lynn.
Lady Rose-Lynn is a Vaegir - which, for those who don't know, are basically the equivalent of East Europeans in the Mount and Blade lore - who is struggling to make her mark in the world, equivalent to the historical Joan of Ark. However, for a massive section of the game that sometimes carries on even when I still play the character, she has consistently been beaten down by opposing armies, captured who knows how many times and has always had to start from scratch, all the while barely able to raise the kind of support needed to raise a proper army. To make matters worse, the fact that she is a lady is almost always often brought up by other lords. In short, she has almost never had luck on her side.
However I was persistent as hell and I tried to find other ways to bring her luck around. Eventually, it did pay off for a good amount of time: she finally had a worthy standing army to fight alongside, she had beaten an opposing lord or two, and she finally had some land to her name. I haven't had the chance to go back to her, but safe to say that, for the time being, her luck has gotten better.
Its how you choose to play isnt it ? I mean if you want to take every game you play and turn it into "survivor mode from minecraft" then thats great. At the same time any game that got released without a decent, flexible save feature would be canned from asshole to breakfast time.
I think what you have to keep in mind is your own "goals" as a player. If you want to finish the game some time in your life, hell you may have to load a save every now and then no matter what game and no matter good you are. But if all your focussed on is finishing without saving, well keep in mind it might take a while.
For the longest time I beat myself up over loading saves (playing PC games for over 20 years now). I started to get over it REAL QUICK when I realised sometimes your save game is the only insurance you have against cheating AI and bad programming. When the AI bends the rules, all bets are off in my mind.
I think what you have to keep in mind is your own "goals" as a player. If you want to finish the game some time in your life, hell you may have to load a save every now and then no matter what game and no matter good you are. But if all your focussed on is finishing without saving, well keep in mind it might take a while.
For the longest time I beat myself up over loading saves (playing PC games for over 20 years now). I started to get over it REAL QUICK when I realised sometimes your save game is the only insurance you have against cheating AI and bad programming. When the AI bends the rules, all bets are off in my mind.