/v/ - Video Games

Because they trust players to modulate their own difficulty. I try to avoid save scumming but some games are a pain in the ass to run through just to get back to that tricky part I was at before.

I save cum into your mother **haha faggot*

Seriously though, I don't understand it, I feel guilty for using it, and I've recently started playing CRPGs, there's no way in hell they didn't foresee folks popping saves like pills. Some games get around this by making the hardest difficulties have perma-death or limited states (Divinity II is a recent example)

which then puts things into perspective, but simply allowing you to use the tools and the systems as efficiently as possible, thus prepping you for the higher difficult and limited save runs.

>>15123610

In games like Doom or Quake, I only ever quicksave when I need to jump over an instant death pit or do some tricky platforming, because a game where you are slowly whittled down by all the enemies but then have to make a precise jump over an instant death pit is ludicrous. It would have been more consistent if when you fell into such a pit, that you'd be instead teleported back to solid surface but did take some 15HP damage.

At least one benefit of savescumming is that you can sidestep the designer's bullshit on your own terms (Marathon featured saving through save checkpoints only and there were a LOT of terrible third-party maps made worse by awful checkpoint placement), though this is more of a case of "works when done right, is shit when not done right".

>>15123612

I wouldn't have minded so much if savescumming was just a thing in easier difficulties and harder difficulties actually limited saving in some major regards. At least on harder difficulties it would actually feel like you have to use every resource available to survive.

I can somewhat understand the prevalence of savescumming in cRPGs, because those games feature a lot of down time which would make dying in such a game where you need to constantly travel, manage your party, and fight the same fights, incredibly tedious and frustrating. At least most cRPGs don't let you save during combat.

>>15123599

if a game allows it then it's a game mechanic and it's ok

Savescumming in a shooter or action game is not even savescumming, even if its a little moment, its still determined by your skill.

Savescumming in rpgs and turn based strategies during combat is cancer however. They need static rolls to combat that, like the ones x-com has.

Never done it but always laugh when I see it. Improve or stop playing. I also have an issue with people looking up walkthroughs, guides, or anything beyond the manual and then claim they've beaten the game you've beaten nothing.

Using save states isn't bad if it's officially supported part of the game.

It's only shit if it is something like an emulator or a hack.

>>15123706

does it remove a few features like sa2? where if you try to look on the map on the easy difficulty with 7 saves, you can check every person's point of view's direction, but on harder difficulties, it doesn't show you that.

>>15123713

I can't remember off the top of my head, but looking it up, it says that difficulty affect AI sophistication, agency assistance, mission rating based on evidence, and the highest difficulty removes everyone from the map besides you, VIPs, and targets.

I should go back and play the game again.

>>15123706

Blood Money.

I've only read the second greentext and I already know it.

Honestly the earlier games were harder, you don't even need to savescum in BL because the game is pretty easy. Figuring out how to get Silent Assassin is hard but actually beating a level isn't.

The moment I realized that I could savescum wherever I wanted in Styx, the game felt 100 times easier. Ruined the whole experience tbh.

>If the developers determine the level of challenge through enemy and level design, why should they not also determine the degree of punishment?

>in most games the freedom with which you can savescum is the same across all difficulties.

>people [can still] savescum every five seconds on the hardest difficulty, which kind of contradicts the point of playing on the hardest difficulty (playing for a challenge), and people [can still] redo sections over and over to nail them perfectly.

>The challenge becomes vague when the game makes no distinction between completing a level without using saves and someone who savescums like a grandmother.

This is really only a problem for games like Contra or Mega Man, in which the player has a limited number of lives and must traverse an entire section of obstacles and hazards. If the player decides to circumvent some portion of the obstacles by using a save state, then they've effectively rendered the game impotent in its ability to punish them for their mistakes. Compare this to Deus Ex, which allows the player to save at any time in between and during major sections of gameplay, and you may realize that the scenarios require different skills and input from the player. While it is commendable to complete the entirety of Deus Ex without ever being noticed by a guard, it also would require a large amount of time and dedication in order to execute, which itself would require numerous cycles through various sections of the game, given that there are large sections of "down time" between the major stealth and combat scenarios. Using appropriately chosen save points can help facilitate this endeavor.

In short, save scumming is only a problem in certain types of games.

>>15123599

Let the players decide, if i want to play without saves, then i don't save. There's nothing worse than having to wander around for the save point when you're in a hurry to quit the game. Or losing progress because of shitty placed checkpoints that is either too far away from eachother, or too close. Which in turn forces the game developer to be competent in that aswell.

If i want a challenge or cheese the game, then let me do it on my own? I don't need a fucking developer telling me what's the okay way to play the game.

Yes, savescumming shouldn't be allowed ever. It's like…we've implemented all these mechanics for you to use, and then come and SHIT on them by including quicksaving. So pointless.

>>15123873

>Not having enough self control to play how you'd like

>Instead wanting devs to babysit you the "right" way

>>15123876

But savescumming is literally babysitting.

>CRPGs

I savescum like crazy, because I can't really see the game being played in a different fashion, it's almost like they were designed with this way of playing in mind. I don't mean making choices, but RNG can fuck you over in those games sometimes.

>Shooter games

Only save at the start of the level and whenever I want to check something that could kill me.

>Stealth games

Savescum like crazy because I'm shit at them and not saving makes me so fucking nervous that I cannot progress, if I didn't save I would never finish those games because getting caught makes me feel like I should restart the level outright because I already fucked up

>>15123706

>Implying Blood Money is hard

The levels are so short that stuffing up isn't a problem

checkpoints are objectively the only good answer

honestly i hate checkpoints. sometimes i have shit to do and i don't want to turn it off and lose all my progress.

>>15124056

People who try to pretend there are things more important than videogames should just stop.

>>15123893

Meme Souls does it extremely wrong. It often forces you to slog through boring non-challenging enemies (and even sometimes artificially slows you down with things like elevators) just so you can get to the boss. It's like if the game just outright barred you from reloading the game for five minutes, but even that would've been better because you would've been able to read a book or shitpost on the internet instead of doing boring unnecessary stuff.

I savescum in roguelikes if I've been in a retarded amount of time. Or, if I've started a dwarf fort and I've got a good layout, I'll make a save right after I finish the layout so I can start over with the same fort. Also Unreal World, which requires obscene amount of time to get anywhere. I saved in the beginning of each season.

>>15123678

I normally hate looking up stuff as well but sometimes the solution to something is so fucking random I cant help it.

>Play arx fatalis

>get permission to go into reservation

>there is a chest I cant open

>you have to open it.

The key is hidden under a goblin quartermasters pillow

Granted the goblin in question was obviously the thief hiding his stash but way later you get something even worse.

>temple of illusions

>solve a few puzzles

>turns out the golden snake you got was fake

>There is yet another hidden chest that i cant open

The way to open it is to hit a wall adjacent to the chest

The riddle on the wall does mentions the "wealthy snakes weakness lies where its sword crosses its mace and apparently this means you have to hit the back side of a mural, has to be the back side too if you hit the front nothing happens

I still like this game but its complete bullshit.

>>15123768

Same thing happened to me with Valkyria Chronicles, but I did the whole game without knowing you could save during battles.

Savescumming is a choice on the part of the player to control how difficult they want their game to be. While it can sometime be a cop-out that leads the designers to make poor decisions when creating levels and crafting the flow of their game, I can't disagree with putting the control of the gaming experience in the hands of the people playing the game. If you savescum every 5 minutes, you know deep inside your heart that you are a scummy little bitch who can't play the game for real. Nobody else needs to know that, but you do.

If you want to be a bitch, then you should know you're being one.

>>15123599

If a game has unlockables and you're trying to get them all, then why the fuck not use the feature? Stupid boy.

>>15124177

I already thought that game is shit and that just seals the deal.

Can even one dev make an SRPG that isn't mechanically shit?

Save scumming is a failure of the designer. Developers who do not have deliberation and trust their audience who is by and large seeking to get through the game in any way possible will gladly subvert any challenge. Design levels with check points in mind and if you have to leave half way through a section? Too bad. Do it over.

>>15123599

Doesn't really pertain to the topic, but quicksaving/loading is essentially a game mechanic of Halfquake, which I found an interesting take on the issue.

Sage for off-topic

>>15124281

So what is playing the game normally? Quicksaving every 30 seconds? According to who, you?

>>15124287

Saving before you stop playing.

You have to understand - quicksaving removes the "game" part of gaming. Games are designed around NOT saving, and then devs include that shit. It's so pointless.

Quicksaving is fine when it has a dedicated slot for it and it deletes that save file when you load it. That way you can limit the player's hard-saving opportunities without removing his ability to stop playing anywhere and come back to where he was.

>spending more time juggling saves struggling to get past a section of the game that would be a thrilling challenge that might not need many retries if you learned from your mistakes and acquired proficiency

>Suffer retrying a 17 second section of the game instead of gitting gud enough to enjoy the game for minutes at a time

Savescumming is it's own punishment.

There are people out there who actually defend quicksaving. Holy shit.

>>15124287

>So what is playing the game normally? Quicksaving every 30 seconds? According to who, you?

That's the problem. With infinite quicksaving, there's absolutely no way to determine what constitutes "playing the game normally", short of directly buggering the developers themselves. How saving factors into "the intended way to play" when you're able to do so infinitely, is often just sidestepped and never really acknowledged. Kind of like how girls with kemonomimi ALWAYS have haircuts which cover up the place where their human ears should be. With two pairs of ears it just looks stupid, and with only animal ears and there visibly not being human ears where there should be, it looks uncanny. So to avoid the question, just cover it up.

The result of this is that two players with different saving behaviors will have clashing experiences with the game, because it can be hardly said that they both experienced the game the way it was meant to be played. Are you supposed to play Thief start to finish without saving, or is it fine if you save every minute? Nobody knows for sure, so trying to discuss challenge becomes very hairy when everyone experiences the game differently.

On the flipside, you could be talking about a difficult boss in Devil May Cry and some faggot would chip in saying "oh yeah I just spammed health items for that fight", but everyone knows that's a scrub's way of doing things because the game literally penalizes your score for using items. It's made very obvious how you're supposed to play the game because of the ranking system. If a game would penalize you score-wise for quicksaving, then that would immediately clear up any misconceptions. Otherwise you have examples like Metal Gear Rising where the Fox Blade makes the game incredibly easy because it breaks all armor instantly, but you can still keep getting S-ranks with the Fox Blade, so casuals might mistake using the Fox Blade as a legit way to play. But because it is not explicitly made clear you're not supposed to, people are robbing themselves from the intended experience, and trying to convince them otherwise online is a major fucking hassle.

>>15124344

Save states aren't developer intented so they don't count, fag.

The guy who quicksaves before every jump in Mario and the guy who beats it in one go without dying once are both at the exact same level of skill.

>>15124287

Playing it normally would be the game not having quicksaves and using any other way of keeping progress.

>>15124308

Doesn't fix it. If you play longer sessions you'll be more fucked up if you die.

>>15124347

>That's the problem. With infinite quicksaving, there's absolutely no way to determine what constitutes "playing the game normally", short of directly buggering the developers themselves. How saving factors into "the intended way to play" when you're able to do so infinitely, is often just sidestepped and never really acknowledged.

This dude gets it

>>15124352

they're added by developers because otherwise obese manchildren with no sensation in their fingers wouldn't be able to finish the game

>>15124352

So fucking what, in practice they're the same thing. The difference is developer who made a game without quicksaves designed the save system or lack of one around the game's difficulty and the ones that do have quicksaves is a lazy fuck.

>>15124385

The dude was talking about emulator savestates. That saves the state of the whole machine and then reverts back to it. It's different than in-game quicksaving. Those aren't made by the devs of the games, but the emujlated machine can do it in any game that doesn't feature quicksaving.

>>15124394

They're not the same. If you play the game on the native hardware it's not possile. In emulation, it's considered an external tool that can assist you in the game. If you're using it, you're not just using a mechanic that is part of the game. You're not legitimate playing the game using savestates, but quicksaving is a legit par of the game, not cheating or tool-assisted.

I'd rather have quicksaves and not abuse them than hope that developers haven't fucked up their checkpoint placement. If you are thinking that everyone should be treated equally, you are communist.

>>15124410

gid gud when that happens instead of wanting everyone the same treatment of beating the game without any challenge of hardship.

DEFEND THIS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3Msea20Eic

>>15124420

Yeah let's just allow soccer players to retry the goal shoots if they mess it up, fam.

Nothing wrong with it, the skill will be the same so there's no need for getting the ball closer to the goal again XD.

The team that does that and the team that doesn't do it have the same odds of winning basically, it's just the same skill, the first team is just saving time.

I've completed 100 irl marathons, by the way. I just run 200m every day and save my progress and continue the maratons later. It's the same thing. :^)

>>15124406

Thanks for clarifying it to them, its sad to see some people don't even know the difference between quicksaving and save states.

>>15124421

>wanting everyone the same treatment of beating the game without any challenge of hardship

Are you so weak-willed that the only thing stopping you from quicksaving every ten seconds is their absence? Then why do you even think you have a right to tell anyone to "git gud"? This is fundamentally similar to gun control arguments. "Well abloo bloo bloo some people abuse their guns/quicksaves, therefore no one should be allowed to have them".

>>15124368

The act of making the jump itself, probably.

But with non-stop savescumming you eliminate the aspect of endurance and consistency in execution in terms of display in skill. Like, when playing Ninja Gaiden for the NES, first I'd make a savestate for each state and redo it until I could beat each stage without losing a live. This way, I "beat" the game in around two days. But that's just practice. After that, I'd reset the game, and I would try to beat the game in one go. No continues, no savestates. It would take me another additional week of practice before I was consistent enough in my approach to actually beat the game, and by now it's embedded in my muscle memory.

Sometimes a game will try to whittle you down rather than expect you to do everything perfectly with next to no room for mistakes. And at other times there's an element of long-term planning involved where you often find yourself having to improvise on the fly. Then being able to quicksave infinitely would strongly counteract these aspects of a game's challenge. If it's challenging you on your performance over a longer stretch, quicksaving would mess that up completely.

Like when playing nuPrey on the new Survival Mode, I found myself having more fun playing on Normal than on Hard, where Hard only increases damage taken. On Normal I didn't feel as obliged to constantly quickload and redo sections perfectly because not every encounter was instantly lethal. The ensuing decisions which came with cutting your losses and dealing with the consequences made many of the game systems interactions much more interesting and the resulting decisions to be made more meaningful. Especially in its roguelite DLC which involves permadeath and no quicksaving at all. It's a completely different and much more involving way of playing the game.

>>15124406

That's just fucking mental gymnastics, to defend poor difficulty balance and player ineptitude. Keep in mind that wii u's virtual console games allow de facto save states consider that Nintendo got the licensing rights to those games that must mean it's publishers are okay them. Also the mini snes hasrewinding as well just like snes emulators. So is it okay because nintendo put emulator functions in those games years after those games release?

>>15124420

There's a deference between doing a triatlon and doing a sprint.

>>15124441

>>15124450

Emulators are emulators and save-states are tools external to the game, it doesn't fucking matter if they're made by nintendo or not.

And I stand by my opinion that Quicksaving can be useful if its done correctly, aka just as a tool for taking a break from the game (Save and quit). If quicksaving can be used akin to save-states for savescumming purposes then it's obviously bad if the game isn't designed around that.

Elder Scrolls games have quicksaves because they're fucking buggy abominations that could crash at any moment. I'll quicksave 1000 times in a single session playing Morrowind, but I'll only save in Doom II when I need to leave.

>Now obviously apply this to video games

Compare games to games. In order to win a football match, you have to be consistently good for the duration of it. You can start the whole match anew (next time your'e playing), but you can't save halfway through. If you could, it would alter the whole experience. Winning will be a matter of time invested (replay goals until you score), not skill. THAT is a correct analogy. Thank you.

I'd recommend against using savestates, because it undermines the whole point of playing a challenging game.

The whole point of playing a challenging game is overcoming it's challenge. There's nothing else. Beating it is only an end in itself in cinematic experiences. Actual video games consist of an obstacle, a set of rules and tools, and overcoming the obstacle by following the rules and using the tools. If you simply remove the obstacle by arbitrarily augmenting rules, you're ridding yourself of the only meaningful aspect of the experience.

The use of savestates trivializes gameplay in the worst way. Why the fuck are you playing a video game when you despise putting any effort into playing it so much? You may as well just watch a movie at that point.

>>15124458

>A triathlon is timed, whereas a video game is not

There are games that do have timers you know.

>Plus in a triathlon you do not come into any risk of being disqualified and being forced to restart

The risk is losing, and the lost time is a whole fucking year (or when ever they do it again) so the stakes are even higher.

>>15124461

>And I stand by my opinion that Quicksaving can be useful if its done correctly, aka just as a tool for taking a break from the game (Save and quit).

That's not a quicksave that's a suspend save.

>>15124489

It's still an all-around terrible analogy. When you fuck up in a triathlon or even in a sprint, you can't rewind the timer on the stopwatch and go back to the exact place you were at that point in the run. Find a better analogy and I will honor you.

>>15124496

>When you fuck up in a triathlon or even in a sprint, you can't rewind the timer on the stopwatch and go back to the exact place you were at that point in the run.

But that's strengthens my point even further. You can't say that you did a 1 mile sprint under 2 minutes if you took 5 minute a breather break. You have to run the whole mile without stopping.

>>15124441

>the only thing stopping you from quicksaving every ten seconds is their absence?

And the only thing stopping me from firing fireballs in Mario is when I don't have them, when you're Fire Mario there's no reason not to use them. Same things for games that have quicksaves.

>>15124458

>makes a retarded post

>gets a a retarded reply poking fun at it

>"lol u dumb, I'm a winner!"

>A triathlon is timed

Wrong, kiddo, it goes on until you've finished it. If you take an entire day to do it, but actually finish it, you complete it. People compete for fastest time, but that doesn't mean the losers of that competition didn't complete the actual triathlon. You become disqualified if you don't follow the rules and if you stop racing to do anything else you need to start over, you can't pick up another day from where you left.

Jesus Christ how retarded can anon be.

>>15124496

You came up with the triathlon analogy you mongoloid.

>>15124569

>You came up with the triathlon analogy you mongoloid.

Scratch that.

What I meant is that post is you just agreeing with the analogy.

>>15124489

>That's not a quicksave that's a suspend save.

I don't think I've played a game that calls it a "suspend save", but I guess it would make more sense.

>>15124569

>people compete for fastest time

Thank you for making my point, smeghead. I don't know a single person who competes in triathlons 'just to finish them', it's all about their time. Even being in first place doesn't matter that much if you did worse than your last PB.

>>15124525

I am not strengthening your argument because the analogy is bad in the first place.

>>15124589

I'm not agreeing with the analogy; rather, I was trying to fix it, but that proved to be a herculean task. Won't someone provide me with a good analogy?!

>>15124600

Going Down gets really bad on the later levels as well.

>>15124478

I never use savestates unless I'm playing a shitty old arcade style game that uses passwords and I'm on level select.

>>15124486

Having to refight the robot masters every time you fail to perfectly evade Wily Phase 2's attacks in Mega Man 7 was too much, I put up with the bullshit up until that point.

>>15124569

>And the only thing stopping me from playing on easy mode in Mario is that there isn't one, when there's an easy mode there's no reason not to play on it. Same things for games that have quicksaves.

We all already know that you're a scrub, no need to convince us any further.

>>15124617

>>15124621

In the end, the only one that can stop a player from ruining his own fun is the player himself. And that goes both ways: Abusing save-states at every turn trivializing any challenge the game offers, or refusing to use them at all, even on situations that would make no difference challenge-wise if you did (like huge ass cutscenes or a long sequence full of nothing before a boss)

Of the two extremes, not using them at all is definitely better overall, though

>>15124485

>impossible to save in multiplayer experiences no matter what video game you play

Except it's not. Probably not in realtime because it would be fucked when loading, for both players. But turn based games or games where there are pauses at some points, like soprts games after scoring, it's very possible.

It's not done because most games have the common sense that saving in the middle of a match is cheating. Even against AI it would be, but the AI wouldn't mind. If you could save in between turns in a turn based game you could theoretically save just before a diceroll to get optimal results, and if you got the optimal results the other player would load before you got it. That's the reason it can't be done in multiplayer, not AI.

You never lose with save-states, the game doesn't end you fail, it continues from whenever you weren't failing. This isn't a problem in singleplayer because the AI doesn't care and can't load after failing, either.

But if it's done in a multiplayer game, no player will ever lose, therefore no player would ever win.

It furthers prove the point that quicksaving defeats the purpose of challenge.

>>15124606

On the contrary, most people don't do stuff like that or the marathon to be the winner, just for the achievment of being able to actually complete it. Or do any kind of gameplay other than speedrunning not a valid form of challenge?

>the analogy is bad in the first place.

>I'm not agreeing with the analogy.

That's based on the fact you got wrong about the triathlons. The analogy stands, just not based on your incorrect information.

>>15124621

>Using a thing that the game has by default is easy mode.

I bet you think being a white straight man is easy mode for real life, faggot.

Bottom line is, I don't have unlimited time to play video games. I don't want to have to redo shit I've already done if I fuck up later on, it just makes the game longer than it should be. It becomes a tedious grind.

The only time savescumming is wrong is in shit like Football Manager, which allows you to do poorly but doesn't end the game and or prevent you from progressing further if you do.

>>15124155

If it's in a game and you have to look it up because your brain is too shit to figure it out then it's a fucking puzzle you stupid faggot fuck

>>15124682

Delete that shit, it's disgusting

>>15123599

Well savescumming is a difficult one. If there's some area I want to explore but I'm not sure if I'll die, I'll just miss out on it if I can't save because I don't want to risk it. If I save I can visit every area and click every dialogue option.

>>15124675

>Reading a recipe book is cheating

>Reading a ikea manual is cheating

>Calling technical support is cheating

>Getting a education is cheating

ITT: Autists cry that you don't play video games the same way they do.

>>15124703

>looking up the solution to a puzzle is not cheating

If the puzzle is badly designed and you cheat to get skip it because you can't be bothered, just admit it instead of making retarded analogies

>>15124664

>If the developers don't put in some kind of limitation, it's fair game. It's called "Dominant Strategy" and it's something game designers are very aware of.

You're very optimistic and relying on devs.

I wouldn't be suprised if most actually know it but fail to factor in seving and loading as a mechanic.

>>15124669

Might was well just use cheat engine and have infinite health or lives if you don't wanna fail and lose progress as intended that much.

>>15124703

Bad analogies, there's no hidden solutions that you need to figure out by yourself as part of a challenge on the things you mentioned.

>>15124707

I don't give a shit if people savescum or use cheat engine or watch the whole game's playtrough on youtube or some shit.

What I dislike is games being worse because of such a simple mechanic.

>>15124682

Pretty much, I didn't want to have to deal with the waste of time that was beating the piss-easy robot masters again and again every time I failed to beat the much harder boss that comes after them.

>>15124714

>Might was well just use cheat engine and have infinite health or lives if you don't wanna fail and lose progress as intended that much.

Losing 5 hours of playtime is not fun.

>>15124714

>there's no hidden solutions that you need to figure out by yourself as part of a challenge on the things you mentioned.

That's because I don't see getting advice or information about a challenge a puzzle. The execution of the challenge is the challenge, that's how it works in most cases in real life.

>>15124744

>Losing 2 minutes of playtime is not fun

Dam. The 4cuck hoardes really have taken over.

>>15124771

Name something that you need to look up that you don't need to figure out in a game. Something that you need an external source of information for that is also so plainly obvious that you don't need any outside information whatsoever.

>>15124362

>>15124462

>being this asshurt over a feature that allows the player to experiment and have fun

>>15124778

Oh that's easy, animation cancels. The majority of games won't tell that's it possible most of the time they never consider it was possible in the first place so you might just let the animation follow through. If you're familiar animation cancels you'll probably just try to see if any are cancel able.

>>15124797

Pretty sure that anon wasn't referring to exploits.

>>15124773

Games are enough of a waste of time as it is.

>>15124809

I also would feel like I was wasting my time if I was slamming the quicksave key every 3 minutes.

>>15124809

I agree, that's why I pay other people (of color only) to play video games for me.

>>15124797

I absolutely despise the design philosophy behind animation canceling - hidden mechanics or "meta" mechanics are 100% cancer. Especially when the devs are aware of it, but do nothing to supplant them and instead just leave them "as is". Fuck fightan games, and fuck GunZ. They're games made for autistic turboniggers to feel superior for memorizing retarded inputs, rather than actually combating another player with skill or tactics that would be inherent in the game's design.

>>15124316

Despite being loading zones, dumb cunt, you can just trigger an elevator after using it to reset its position, retard.

>>15124836

>fuck GunZ

I unironically agree.

Thank god it's dead. Should have renamed it to ShotgunZ with how gay and limited the (((viable weapon selection))) was, a katana and a shotgun on a game with rocket launchers.

I like how Pokémon Mystery Dungeon handles saving. Saving in a dungeon is just a temporary save that exits the game deletes itself after being loaded, while proper saves can only be done in town or at certain checkpoints. At first I hated it because if I died I'd lose my stuff and couldn't restart without losing progress, but now I appreciate the higher difficulty it imposes compared to main series games.

TL;DR PMD's saving forces you to git gud

how are the regular mystery dungeon games?

>>15124808

Sometimes the developers do expect you to do cancels. I'm pretty sure in DMC1 jump canceling was a bug, but in later games it became a mechanic. Hell you can't jump cancel in DMC4 until you buy a certain ability. But like >>15124836 it's not really a good idea design philosophy.

>>15124865

Devs should tell you then if it's working as intended. Honestly, shit like that reminds me of dota and other e-sports.

>>15124797

>The majority of games won't tell that's it possible

By this alone it is a puzzle, regardless of if it was intentionally implemented. It is something that must be figured out. Just like unlisted moves in a fighting game.

>If you're familiar animation cancels you'll probably just try to see if any are cancel able.

Okay you recognize that this is something that you seek out in the game already. What's your point? If you don't feel like gittin gud then you'll look it up? Is that what you're trying to imply you casual son of a bitch?

>>15124600

Same applies to the latter half of Inferno and pretty much all of the Doom II levels. Fuck Sandy Petersen, Romero should've fired his ass before he took a fat shit over the rest of what was otherwise a masterpiece. A talentless hack that couldn't design a level to save his life, and when he made something half-competent it was either with Tom Hall, or something that Hall had already rejected and left unfinished.

>>15123678

> I also have an issue with people looking up walkthroughs, guides, or anything beyond the manual and then claim they've beaten the game you've beaten nothing.

Fuck you, Doom 2 has alot of bullshit that is near impossible to get on your first try, like the switch you have to shoot in The Courtyard and the entirety of The Citadel.

>>15124714

>I wouldn't be suprised if most actually know it but fail to factor in seving and loading as a mechanic.

Then they get what they deserve.

it really depends on the type of game you are playing let me just give you an example

Way of the samurai is an easy ass game until you start playing on the harder difficulties. On the harder difficulties the enemies become beasts and some enemies have like these 1 hit kill combos that not only end your life but without savescumming would take away all your hard earned shit and your playthrough is dead. 4 introduced an advanced savescumming system where you savescum all the time and honestly it improved the game because in a game where enemies can get a random parry or you can get hit by a random 1 hit kill combo it's totally fucked.

There are reasons for savescumming and it's mainly(I'm doing this because I don't have an extra 10 hours to spare)

>>15124919

Anyway, it's simple what you have to do to fix the savescumming problem:

>Implement quicksaves that are time, distance and gameplay limited, with perhaps a cost to your resources as well

What I mean with those first 3 is under normal circumstances (i.e. free roam) you can only save once per 15 minutes of gameplay. To stop you from idling or hiding like a pussy, said time limit will only apply once a set distance has been crossed. Likewise, if you're in a long mission where pacing is important and a player's skill is tested, you'd want to disable it entirely.

With the last of those, consider how GTA 2 made you pay $50000 ingame to save at the churches.

>>15124714

>there's no hidden solutions that you need to figure out by yourself as part of a challenge on the things you mentioned.

There is when calling technical support.

>>15123599

I hate savescumming. Feels like bad game design. Like when I see a game that's full of bugs. I wish games didn't have it and instead had a built in way to handle saving that didn't give the player that much freedom. If I see the savescumming option, I'll use it. It's IN the game and it's not considered cheating. But then I use it and the game becomes tedious and boring. So I end up hating games with savescumming

>>15123706

Most of the Hitman games follow a similar style, but I only play on hardest or second hardest when I play Hitman.

>>15123706

I guessed Silent Assassin. I didn't even now blood money disabled saving on harder difficulties, but the game was honestly a fucking breeze for me. Silent Asassin though….

>>15123657

>It would have been more consistent if when you fell into such a pit, that you'd be instead teleported back to solid surface but did take some 15HP damage.

That's exactly what Metroid Prime does, unless you're using the space jump in Prime 2, in which case, you take zero damage. But, those were good games.

Constantly saving and loading just robs the player of the chance to GIT GUD. Saving right after you finished some pain in the ass segment of the game just prevents you from abandoning the game due to frustration and irritation later.

>>15123599

save and load is the main character super power, nothing wrong on using it.

I savescum all the time just to play through games without spending days/weeks on them. The only games I don't savescum are ones I genuinely enjoy getting better at. I don't have enough time in my life to get good at every single game I play just to swing my big dick around on the internet, although I do respect people who have that competitive edge and ambition.

if the player wants to save scum, let them do that, dont resrict what the players want to do because they might achieve it bia mods or trainers by themselves.

a quicksave abuser is either already a bad player, or they'll suffer in the future by not learning how to play properly, so games without easy saves will be a struggle.

The only times I savescum is when the AI do absolutely retarded stuff or a cool dynasty one with a cool looking shield goes extinct in CK2

I only quicksave frequently because of bug related bullshit like fallout new vegas. That shit crashes randomly for me even with the nvac plugin. I still roll with the punches, it's just that I just pray that the next instance won't freeze my computer.

>>15126407

i've done the same many, many times. I even managed to save the Zunbils once and settled them in the Carpathians

Savescumming makes you a filthy casual, unless you're doing it to eliminate chance from things like lottery systems, and that's cause those suck ass.

>>15126574

Savescumming to win chance games is casual as fuck.

>>15126581

Chance games in and of themselves are casual, as it allows for no skill or learning. All players are equally fucked by games of chance, unless you know how to beat the system, in which case that's the closest thing there is to skill about them.

I say it's casual not to savescum chance games.

>>15126593

>waaah i want to win so i have to cheat

Chance games are the least casual thing there is.

>>15126662

But I don't savescum chance games because I'm not a scared little pussy.

>>15124368

no, they dont.

the act of saving before hand is basically them self-admitting (i could fuck this up)

granted confidence exists in bad players but when there's no one around to impress im more inclined to believe someone's self estimate of their own skills. i.e. a guy who puts it on hard b4 they play is more skilled than the person who always leaves it on normal

Why does it matter? Savescumming just removes the tedium of doing the same thing over and over to getting to the point your stuck on. Its not like you are somehow skipping the challenging part of a boss by save scumming. In a game that lets me savescum, I'm avoiding having to repeat all the easier parts of the game I have already completed and it puts me right at where I'm stuck.

It can be argued that any form of saving is actually savescumming. Why couldn't you beat the whole game in one go?

>>15124664

>i'll play like a faggot unless someone stops me

if you could win an entire game by holding left and smashing a, would you? Or would you try to get good, acquire skill maximize ur damage output and go for a real win?

Granted there are times to exploit qsaves,i guess it all comes down whether you enjoy the game as intended or not. but if you just want to beat it the easiest way possible, you aren't fooling anyone but yourself.

>>15126714

it matters as much as anything you waste your time on matters to you

it says something about you and the game itself if you do it, that's all. Whether you want to ignore those implications is up to you.

>>15123599

Savescumming is like drinking: if you do it in moderation and can control yourself, there's literally nothing wrong with having the option. For people like me, with no willpower and an overwhelming need to tick all the boxes and miss nothing on my playthroughs, savescumming sucks all the fun out of a game and I can't prevent myself from doing it.

It's why I'm grateful for games that either autosave or give an ironman option that I can turn on at the start to prevent reloading. I like others to have the option to savescum, but also like the option to turn off my ability to do so.

>>15126788

>or give an ironman option that I can turn on

You know you have touched the bottom when you're savescumming an ironman playthrough turns out read only files / copy pasting saves works in most cases

>>15124956

No you're skipping a step of gud gittin, the step of figuring it out on your own. I never said anything about dumbing down games, those are your words.

>>15123599

If you don't like save scumming go play online.

I really dislike it. I want games to be challenging and to force me to try all the tricks just to progress. When I have to stop and think whether I should or shouldn't use a certain available feature, like savescumming or an OP weapon, that kind of ruins the experience. I'm no longer trying my best to beat the game. It suddenly starts to feel like playing a racing game with a friend who is way worse than I am. It's just not fun when you can't be a tryhard.

This is a cuckchan meme. Nobody actually reloads save games constantly, unless it's for beating dice rolls.

Fun fact: On the first F.E.A.R., when you reload a save after dying, sometimes it will display the message "Remember to quicksave (F5) often". (can't be arsed to take a screenshot)

>>15123599

Quicksave is a miracle. Games should be challenging not punishing. OP is just a cocksucking faggot who forces people into agreeing with his shit taste. Plus nowadays games have an option to disable quicksave to please OP's hunger for sadomasochism.

>>15141138

Aren't speedrunners Traps? Are Traps casuals?

>>15141181

That's a legitimate example. I forgot about GDQ turning into a day care center for traps.

>>15141138

If they look up how to beat the game the first time they play through yeah I do

>>15141222

And if they look up puzzles first time solving them

And if they look up fighters instead of learning them

>>15124860

This. It's not that much more difficulty, but it's a pretty damn fun way of handling it.

friendly reminder that jews savescum irl

>>15141355

The only jews in this situation are the devs who are to lazy to implement a better system.

>>15124673

This nigger gets it

Who cares how people play single player games you nerds women are gamers too get over it

>>15141676

In what way does it negate skill? Save juet allows you to keep your progress but you still have to make it in the first place

You're retarded

>>15142738

Do you condone saving every single time in a boss fight every time you succesfully avoid a single attack?

>>15141676

>telling lads not to smoke in fucking Trinity College

I feel better when i have to beat a hard game with no saves. I had to work for that end game credits! I couldn't just save and load whenver i died! You go and do some hard shit and then die over and over again and keep pushing through the shit and bam, you win! It is far better than cheap easy wins. It's that way in battlefield 4 with me.

On operation locker it's no fun when my team spawncamps the other team for 15 mintues getting cheap kills

It's fun when both our team's asses get kicked and we narrowly get a 10-0 victory.

I would rather have a brutal fight to win that takes an hour and leaves the winning team with 1 ticket left over having no challenge at all and winning 350-0

>>15123599

i understand what you are saying but i also really dislike games that remove this feature. i never savescum but i do get off as soon as i am done playing. i dont like having to go to some saving station. i also really dislike limited saving though my only experience with this is haydee, its a lot of pressure since i dont know when is a good time to save or when i may get more. i see it as going too far to control the players experience, save scumming is cheating in the same way as spawning items in, but are you going to remove the option to spawn items in? do you feel bad winning that way? to me that is enough, i play games to have fun and to me that would take away the fun so i wont try to sabotage myself. meanwhile if someone enjoys playing with savescumming they also have this option

>>15140622

>Should singleplayer games enable anti-cheat measures to insure that players aren't also using Cheat Engine to give themselves unlimited health on the hardest difficulty?

Well net hack does have anti-cheat measures, so yes. It isn't really a rouge like if you don't have permadeath.

On that note of reading walkthroughs, the nethack commuity has this to say about "spoilers" >>15133463 :

>NetHack is a difficult game, by design. Knowing how to bypass every single problem presented is considered by some to be against the spirit of the game. Explore mode was implemented to allow newer players to experience the game without having to constantly worry about losing their character.

>Other people consider spoilers to be a kind of "manual" that is missing from NetHack. Because of that and because so many players choose to spoil themselves, the community usually does not consider spoilers to be degenerate behavior

Kinda like what >>15124956 said?

>>15152898

That's an argument for suspend saves not quicksaves. suspend allows you to quit the game anytime you want but forces you to quit the game and erases the save when you load it up. It gives you the convinces of quicksaves but without the ability to abuse them. unless you find where the saves are stored on your HDD and copy paste them like the cheating fucker you are.

>>15143380

It's not about other people using it.

It's about taking the fun and challenge away from a game that would otherwise have it.

Sure you could go trought a hard area using actual skill and perseverance, but why would you bother? You just had to save after every small gap you had to cross, you just chose to make the challenge harder by "refusing to use tha game mechanic". Something like free quicksaving and loading is so powerful and has much more impact than any other game mechanic or thing you can make in the game, that it takes away from the actual things you should be doing in the game.

Why have a character with high luck stat when you can always save right before a luck check and load until you get the desired result?

Why spend gold buying that better armor when you can just save and load before every enemy encounter and cheese them all out. When quicksaving, both become viable options but quicksaving is so much better and easy to do it becomes a dominant strategy, everyone with half a brain will just use it instead of going trough the trouble of using other stuff.

It's bad game design, you're forced to use the system even if you don't want to because you need to save your progress sooner or later, there's no reason not to use it more than you need to.

>>15147712

This dude gets it.

If you overcome a challenge using skill and there was no shortcut to it, it's way more satisfying.

If the game has quicksaving and you had to choose not using it the victory feels empty.

>>15143380

some singleplayer games do use anticheat, just to make sure you get the meaningless achievements the RIGHT way. i think on steam if you use cheat engine or whatever else in some singleplayer games you will be banned, it seems ridiculous. achievements were a mistake

>>15152944

i dont like suspend saves either though, in games like super mario world for example i felt cheated when lives and my score i earned were just taken for no reason at all. and then if i game overed it would just give me 5 more lives, it was pointless at least in that game. but i cannot imagine a system where it ever made sense. i dont see why in quake i should lose all my weapons if i reloaded a save for example, but if i died that would make sense for me (like how it works in doom). save is supposed to maintain my progress not punish me for leaving

>>15152953

>i think on steam if you use cheat engine or whatever else in some singleplayer games you will be banned, it seems ridiculous. achievements were a mistake

There's a handful of games that use VAC protected singleplayer, although it's generally limited to games where SP is just MP with bots.

In most case dev either don't do anything or ban you / delete your scores from the LB system.

>>15153007

i misunderstood, that does sound better

>>15153026

>If you don't make it ostensibly clear what the intended experience of a game is, you end up with shit like WebM related.

Since when is being rewarded for playing conservatively an issue?

> doom2_finalboss

This is neither the final boss nor DOOM 2

>>15153114

>This is neither the final boss nor DOOM 2

It's the final boss for DOOM (1).

>>15153114

>This is neither the final boss nor DOOM 2

I accidentally the filename

>Since when is being rewarded for playing conservatively an issue?

The context is missing here. That level (and all levels in Inferno) were designed around pistol starts. However, most people will just save so their weapons carry over between levels, because losing all your weapons after every level feels illogical. So actually, it's supposed to play out like embed related, where you're running along the edges of the arena to get the Spider Mastermind to infight with other demons while you pick up all the rockets and can safely pick up a plasma rifle and blue armor in the central structure while the Mastermind is occupied. But what most people will do is take out their BFG and shoot it three times before the Mastermind has the chance to do anything. Except this level was never designed around the idea that you would start with a BFG, so this fight ends up being pathetically easy as a result if you do have one.

However, in the game or the manual it's never alluded to that you're supposed to pistol start all levels, because the game itself doesn't actually enforce that. All the Petersen levels are designed around an element which the game never even enforces, because id probably forgot to include it or something. As with savescumming, whether you're really supposed to pistol start each level, it's made very unclear.

The end result of this lack in clarifying your intentions: a pathetically easy boss 'fight'.

>>15143284

I would not do that, but you still need to avoid those attacks in that case.

Make it so you can save as much as you want in-between encounters

>>15153278

>in-between encounters

then you'd have to segment the levels into arenas like nuDoom

Savescumming is a balance between casually playing a game and difficulty. There are times and games where savescumming is justified like bugs or retarded instakill rng, but in most situations it's s crutch for skill. If you savescum all the time you remove the ability to make a mistake and consistently lose at the game.

>oh you fucked up? Just reload your quicksave you made 10 secs ago

>saves cumming

>>15153176

>All the Petersen levels are designed around an element which the game never even enforces,

That does clarify it a bit.

I doubt even changing a few things would have prevented DOOM from being a cakewalk outside of the Xpack though but that's another debate.

In general making good single enemy encounter in

FPSes is hard without resorting to crutches (changing the game style entirely, forcing conditions, swarming the player with fodder, making the boss invulnerable unless X condition is achieved by the player), probably one of the best tries is the White/Black variants of enemies in Colorful Hell actually.

>>15152951

>It's about taking the fun and challenge away from a game that would otherwise have it.

You could argue somebody who saves every minute could still have fun if that's how they wanted to play it. In the end of the day all of your complaints are just substituting the fact that the devs fucked up, not the player. If I'm able to save scum I'm going to because it's not an unintended method of playing the game. You can state somebody doesn't have skill for save scumming, but who wants to have skill for a broken game in the first place?

>>15123599

The reason save Savescumming was a standard practice on PC was because PC are inconsistencies with their hardware and software specifications, thus it was much easier to allow the player to have as many backups as possible. Random crashing and bugs where unavoidable issues and savescumming was the easiest solution. Secondly, most "game designers" back in the day were first and foremost programmers and not really worried about a sophisticated blueprint for "level of challenge". They traditionally determined the level of challenge based on their own playthroughs and on player feedback. If the friend who playtested it had too much trouble they would make it easier if you were lucky enough to have it playtested.

are full of inconsistencies*

>>15153026

>But if that's the case, why can't I just edit the enemy stats directly myself?

back in the day on PC hex editors where abundant and developers where rather liberal about weather a player is at liberty to use them. So in a sense there was a time in gaming when this phenomenon acually happened offten.

btw, I like the way you think dbfad0. Good quality post

>>15126744

>if you could win an entire game by holding left and smashing a, would you?

Yes I would. That's what "dominant strategy" is. It's just human nature to choose the quickest, easiest solution available.

Depends on the game and how horseshit the RNG is. X-COM is a good example.

>99% to hit with steadied assault rifle from high ground at long range

>miss

>enemy breaks cover and runs

>entire team engages overwatch fire on fleeing target

>combined arms maelstrom, shotguns to MGs to snipers

>all miss

>fled enemy gets free return fire shot

>long range

>at targets in heavy cover

>with a height disadvantage

>with a pistol

>Critical Hit, instant kill

>entire team fails morale roll, run into waiting spawns

>enemy AI always gets free turns on contact

>whole team wiped out

The devs and their sycophants defend this and chastise you for not playing Ironman Mode.

One of the things I like to do with savescumming is to save before playing someone in a minigame in an RPG like gwent in witcher or pazaak in kotor2, this way ensuring that I always win and keep the credits hehe

Also off topic what's with all the japanese gaming on these boards? Its like 70% of the chan /v/ is japan crap

>>15153707

Except that argument is shit. Minimaps and quest markers replace good level design and direction. Saving (nearly) whenever you want is nowhere near the same. Thief's levels aren't made redundant because you can save scum, Doom doesn't intend for you to save scum after every combat scenario.

>>15159304

>steadied assault rifle

Yes anon if you play Long War 2 bullshit will find you

>>15159943

I could be remembering wrong on that part. I've never played 2 and this was before I knew about Long War. Point is I had a fully prepared gunline miss every shot and then get wiped out completely due to RNG.

>>15160029

I mean I obviously can't tell you the game doesn't feel bullshit at times because it really does, but if you actually look back at it you always find the point of failure to be from your actions sometime it's harder to see because it's down to how you built your team or some very minute subtlety in LoS but it's pretty much always the case

It's not like there's a shortage of people doing I/I LW playthrough and seeing them through out there so it's certainly not all "down to luck"

>>15123599

If the game has RNG where you can get fucked over on a roll of the dice you bet your ass I'm skipping it. In Victoria 2 for example if you're forming the Danubian Federation it's altogether possible to get randomly fucked over on the acceptance events even if you've got perfect conditions for the best results.

only save state at the start of the level to avoid going through loading

i dont like loading

>>15124506

where do you think we are