/v/ - Video Games

If you use a savestate for any other reason than stability concerns or an inability to have your emulator manage a proper save, you're a fucking scrub and a faggot.

The only acceptable instance is just play the way you damn well fucking want, this is your hobby, not a social status

The only time I ever used save states was in Serious Sam and it felt justified with its long levels and that one windy room with the spiked walls.

>>16358120

>scrub

Sure is 2009 in here. Go be a tryhard somewhere else.

save states are important for me because my electric lines are shit and drunk tourists keep hitting the poles, so if the power cuts I want to be able to control where I come back, not in a terrible spot and be punished for a autosave

>>16358115

Savestates often go against what the game was balanced for. A really good example of this is with NES games. The vast majority of NES games are really really short. Like you can beat the entirety of Contra in an hour just with using savestates.

>>16358141

it's a copypasta from a twitter meme

>>16358138

>>>/reddit/

>>16358138

Torfriend is right. Cheating at games is beyond gay

1) you're cheapening an experience you paid for

2) you turned a fun digital adventure into a homework assignment with file directories and downloads

3) you must suck ass at video games if you really need to do this

>>16358177

>an experience you paid for

If a game makes you want to use save states, then it's probably not very fun and you might as well just quit playing.

>>16358133

>it's current year

>implying putting effort into something is a bad thing

>>>/polygon/

>>16358115

>it's time to start and potentially end the debate.

>a debate which ends up in endless petty squabbles over personal preference

OP sucking cock as usual.

>>16358115

The game should delete itself and you have to pay for another one if you die.

>>16358234

>>16358216

>XCOM RNG

It works like a giant roll of lottery tickets. Yes, the odds say you have a 1:10 chance of winning the smallest prize, and a 1:50 chance of winning the next prize, and so on. But the order the tickets on that roll is predetermined, and the rewards for each ticket are randomized when printed, not when you scratch them.

If you optimize your purchases by waiting for other people to buy losing tickets before you buy winning ones, or by only buying losing tickets when you know the last ticket you'll buy is a big winner, then you can cheat the system. But if you just keep going back in time and buying the same three tickets over and over, you'll never win.

>>16358141

It's a meme you dip.

tbh, i'm ok with being able to savescum, i wouldn't want to have to waste 10 minutes running back every single time i die

I used to savestate in megaman zero because I hated using retries and I also hated going through the same 15 seconds of dialog and menus to get back into the same mission from reloading a stage, so I'd savestate on mission start and go from there.

Save states are only valid when the gameplay is inferior to the story.

>>16358115

If you're under 18 you've no right to use them, because you need to learn your lesson, and if you're above 18 you're old enough to understand that doing the same action repeatedly without any reward, is in fact a waste of time, therefore save states are the most logical thing to use.

>>16358393

So every game?

>>16358401

t. anon who just turned 18

>savestate = cheating

Are you actually talking about savescumming? Savestate is merely a different kind of savefile.

There was a time when I thought I could rely on the game's savefile. Then I lost a 30h savefile right before the final boss, just because I closed the emulator at the wrong moment. The game didn't even signal that it was writing to the savefile. The next start greeted me with some kind of damaged savefile error message, and then every save slot was a "New game". Now I rely on savestates to keep progress.

Savestates save keyboards from destruction.

There is also experimenting. Savestates helped me see that the slot machines in Pokemon are evil. There is no reason for a video game to be so realistic as to copy actual slot machine bullshit, especially a game for kids.

I'm sad. I read the OP's title as

>slave States

and got excited that niggers would be hanging in store aisles again.

>>16358115

Not everybody who dabbles in emulation is a fucking super autistic turbofaggot.

Nobody fucking cares if you don't use save states.

If you're so hardcore, why aren't you playing on an original console on a CRT screen?

Sometimes I used save states, but only if I have to quit suddenly for a reason (so I can pick up where I left off) or if I've just gone through some unskippable bullshit that repeats when you die. I just want to skip those bits.

Doing anything else is pretty casual.

>>16358441

Couldn't have said better myself. This applies to save states, cheat codes, and using walkthroughs. If you're playing an offline SP game by yourself and need validation for using it or not, you're a subhuman.

>>16358451

>why aren't you playing on an original console on a CRT screen

well duh!

it's about the authentic retro experience

You can save scum every step of the way or not at all. Who gives a shit? I try to avoid doing it, mostly do it for shit like unskippable cutscenes. I'll save scum right at the start of the fight or level to avoid that shit again.

>>16358217

There's putting in effort, then there's being a fart huffing elitist faggot.

Hobbies are meant to be for enjoyment, not for lauding your perceived superiority over others who share your interest.

Why don't you go shill your speedrunning channel while you're at it.

>cheap

Depends on the game in question.

Some games, especially older ones, are balanced around the sum of failures on the long term, rather than the short term. Or in layman's terms: Some games allow you to fuck up tons; as long as you compensate for it elsewhere. Others kill you instantly if you fuck up and upon success undo all your other mistakes through mechanics like regenerating health.

In the former, using save-states definitely cheapens the experience, as the fail-state depends on the overall performance. Every time your create a save-state that you intend to reload upon failure, you shrink the window upon which you are judged for your mistakes. If you save-stated after doing something right, then this makes the game easier. If you save-stated after doing something wrong, the game becomes harder.

The latter is not affected by it. You either do it right and continue playing, or you do it wrong and have to start over. If sections are long, then the game will feel like a chore, and save-stating becomes completely reasonable. It makes it much easier, but the gameplay is not really affected.

The reality is that most games sit somewhere in the middle. Judge for yourself what's reasonable.

>acceptable

When you feel like it. It's your game, cunt. As long as you don't write a fucking article about how good you feel about beating a game with savestates, nobody cares.

Your image, Dark Souls 2, is very relevant. Dark Souls sits somewhere in the middle as it do judges you for overall performance by limiting healing, whilst also making death an immediate threat by having enemies kill you in only a few hits. Dark Souls 2 and Demon's Souls shit this up by allowing you to easily obtain near-infinite healing. Once you farm a pile of 99 grass/lifegems, the game is pushed into the second category. Dark Souls 1 technically allows you to do the same with Humanities, but you kinda have to go out of your way to do so.

>>16358417

>There is no reason for a video game to be so realistic as to copy actual slot machine bullshit, especially a game for kids.

It's educational. :^)

save states? thats proper save you console faggot, the fact your shitty game only saves at beginning of the level or some similar shit show just how inferior the thing is

>>16358115

Save states are a crutch. They're especially cheap because they can be used to incrementally progress through a stage or boss battle. You'll die if you take another hit, but you want to try again without having to go through the trouble of getting to the boss? Great! Just cheat your way to the boss room! Hell, why stop there? Why not cheat your way through the boss fight? Reload if you take damage, then constantly save so you can progress through the fight without having to worry about losing a single shred of health!

>yeah but some games are bullshit though

Yeah, well then why even play them? If you need a save state to get through a game, then that's a pretty good indication that the game in question is irredeemable shit.

>>16358599

thats like every pc game until 2004

console peasants are PATHETIC

Only acceptable if you have to outright fuck off instead of finishing a game.

>>16358621

>implying that people who refuse to use save states ever have to go anywhere.

>>16358115

Only use it for practicing 1cc runs.

>>16358115

Only millennials with no self control complain about quicksaves. It's not the game's fault if you abuse them, the cheap one is YOU, not the game.

>>16358628

Are you equating emulation to maximal autism? That seems a bit unfair.

>>16358666

That was mostly banter. But it is reasonable to say that autists are overrepresented in things like classic gaming and emulation.

>>16358168

>>16358120

acceptable

>>16358234

faggotry

>>16358668

Both of the new-era XCom games straight up lie to the player about hit probabilities.

>>16358640

This logic justifies the existence of an infinite use invincibility button in every game. Or how about an infinite use button that instantly solves a puzzle for you? Or that option to skip gameplay entirely that hamburger helper from Bioware wanted.

I use savestates in following instances

>I want to check if a pit in game will kill me.

>Like a normal save, I'm saving in instances where I could save anyways to avoid waiting and going through couple screens to save.

>On a beginning of a sequence that the game puts me on anyways after I gameover so that I can skip waiting through continue screens and gameover screens, or killing myself a few times to replenish lives and get at the same point.

>To skip unskipable cutscenes

>To repeat a sequence of the game if I thought my win was cheap

>To save at a point when I need to go away from the computer.

>>16358461

>>16358743

This is how they should be used.

Using save states to save scum a game renders the entire experience pointless, but I guess I can see where women and whiny retards like >>16358451 have a hard time grasping the idea. It seems like it'd be easier to just watch a Let's Play on Jewtube if you're either extremely constrained for time or (more likely) even the littlest bit of challenge causes you to chimp out.

I used savestates for the platforming and chance based sections of Super Mario RPG when I was playing through it on my phone.

Platforming is impossible with touch controls and I don't give enough of a fuck to win all the minigames organically.

>>16358115

I typically play the game the way it was meant to. However I do use it to save progress if the game uses some faggot code system or it's real long or repetitive to progress like road rash 3, some times you wanna go fast and have the ai fight you with out spending 10 minutes getting there every time. I don't use them if the game supports saving. I don't use them mid level, that's not playing how the game was designed. part of the difficulty is the punishment of failure and the lack thereof is killing games today. Even dank souls is baby shit compared to nailing Willeys castle or beating ninja gaiden or attempting battle toads with no warps or RUNNING LUCKY LUC OFF THE FUCKING ROAD THAT OIL THROWING PIECE OF SHIT!

>>16358753

you want true masochism do ninja gaiden on your phone. I got to stage 6 but the boss there is just nuts for touch screen.

>>16358699

Eh, eck, oo, eef, auuuu. We aren't talking save scumming, or are we?

>>16358115

>Is there a proper way to use them

absolutely.

>game has completely gratuitous retarded RNG

for example, Digimon World 1's Bonus Try slots, which are rigged to make you lose 50% of the time even with perfect timing (10% if you go for golden poops). Or Digimon World 3's stupid gyms that may waste your Training Points, forcing you to grind a few more hours for TP chips.

>game is unstable or prone to glitching (self-explanatory)

>you want to break the game (e.g. sequence of pixel-perfect jumps to go out of bounds)

>to "bookmark" certain unrepeatable sections of a game (e.g. a one-time minigame, an unrepeatable side-quest) so you won't have to start from scratch to get there again

There is nothing forboding in nuCOM. Nothing but the shite RNG. Please, cunt. Do yourself and this board a service by not being such a willy dancer.

>>16358218

>I have no argument and I must smug my cuck

>>16358690

You're under the impression that anyone cares about your opinion anon.

>>16358138

Wow yeah I'd certainly love the thrill of going through 10 hours of gameplay all over again to get to the part I died at.

It would be nice if there was a way to filter only replies.

>>16358858

Why are you so bad at games? Maybe you should just go full homosexual and write about them instead.

>>16358885

>if you can't complete every game without ever dying, you are bad at games

Really, nigger?

>>16358895

>he dies in video games

I remember when /v/ wasn't full of casuals.

>>16358561

>fart huffing

Found the jew.

>>16358850

learn how to accept the consequences of (You)r mistakes.

>>16358895

Don't reply to him, he's a sodomite and a faggot. They'll always use the argument that "m-muh save states are bad! you're bad at video games!" when it's fallacious from the start.

>>16358115

> Are they cheap?

oy

>Is there a proper way to use them

Ney

>should you use them at all?

Nop

Depends on what you're playing. If you're playing a game with long levels, no checkpoints, and it's relatively difficult you're going to want a few save states here or there. If you're playing something with short levels, or if the game is very fast paced you're not going to be wanting to save/load every few seconds. Save states can also be useful for practicing certain parts of a game if you're planning on doing challenge or speed runs. Also fuck you if I'm playing a slaughter wad and I'm getting to the parts where 50 barons of hell, 7 spiderdemons and 2 cyberdemons pop up every few seconds I'm going to save scum as much as I want and you can't stop me.

>>16358138

>tornigger posting twitter memes

expected nothing still disappointed.jpg

Let me rephrase for you:

>it's time to start and potentially end the debate.[Cheats,] Are they cheap? Is there a proper way to use them or should you use them at all? What is an acceptable instance of using cheats in retro vidya?

Answer yourself.

>>16358115

I just use them to replace hardsave or continue spots usually

If you're literally savestating every single hit you get on a boss for example you're not really learning anything

But if you're savestating at the beginning of a stage and loading every time you fuck up badly in that stage then at-least you still know how to play that stage

So in the end I generally just do whatever I feel like, liie for example in the classic MM I just dropped a savestate at the beginning of the stage and loaded it until I could end the stage without dying too much, because the only difference not using them would have made was me farming for life for longer which is not skilled nor fun.

If a game is really fucking hard I'll divide the stage into subsection and whenever I feel like I understand a specific section well enough (usually when I did it fine several reset in a row) I'll just save after it and repeat until I'm done, but I'll rarely consider I've "beaten it" until I do a regular run afterwards.

I'll have no qualms using it more aggressively if the game tries to pull something I consider bullshit (shmups with lives and continues that strips them entirely and makes you game over on the final stage, series of RNG checks in an otherwise normal game, bullshit precarious precision platforming in a game that is clearly not made for it,stealth segments in games where it doesn't work)

The only thing I handle in a specific way is doom which is always plays on UV or UV -fast if the WAD is too easy, I use one savestate per third of the enemies killed or some random arbitrary number over 100 on extremely large and hard maps I can't handle the other way which doesn't happen that often

>>16361273

That's the most braindead way to go about that

If you want to savescum XCOM and still learn something you save at the beginning of your turn and at the before the mission (read after the RNG has been decided but before embarking) and repeat the turn with small variations until you get it right literally just scumming until the 1% shot hits is 100% retarded.

I actually handled it that way on my first time through XCOM (not EW) and spent over 100hrs on a single classic campaign because I redid some mission up to 5 times (especially fucking gangplank and confounding light)) then I did an impossible run and only reset a mission a handful of time with maybe half of them being my own fault

>>16361463

>These are forgiving games

>xcom

Old X-com sure, especially unmodded but even something like Xpiratez you can recover from multiple fairly big fuckups

nuXCOM has the bomb disposal missions where if you your campaign is most likely fucked and they're random so they can 100% fuck you over completely if you're not omniscient especially since they tend to throw 20 thinman at you when you're still in the early ballisitcs / no armor stage

>>16358115

>and potentially end the debate.

It was never a debate you faggot, use them if you want, don't use if you don't.

Stop looking for acceptance and "gamer cred" like a fucking retard you cum guzzler.

>>16358561

inferior enjoyent is still inferior

>>16366108

enjoyment

>>16358115

do you think you could beat the challange without the save state?

if yes, abuse it

if no, git gud scrub, and earn the right to use it

Yeah, save states are cheap, same goes for save-anywhere style games that let you save scum with quick saves. Checkpoints are the ideal way to design a game. Only Journos would argue for save scumming.

>>16366148

>Checkpoints are the ideal way to design a game.

Checkpoints are harder to do well in certain genre, and sometime you can still scum them pretty much as hard as quciksaves

I still remember Far Cry where you could metagame the checkpoint sytem pretty hard because they were just tied to a specific area which you could go around and clear stuff after it to make some sections laughably easy.

>Only Journos would argue for save scumming.

I actually don't recall many article arguing for quicksaves and similar but rather for full on assist modes / skip the gameplay buttons

>>16358120

>implying I'm a dumb faggot for satiating my nostalgia by simulating leaving my console on and game paused all night through the next day so i could continue my progress after school

i can't wait for all these zoomers to die of GRIDS or suicide after cutting their dicks off

>>16358217

You're putting in effort that has no value.

Go pass high school or do exercise. There's at a hundred more better things to effort in than time wasters.

>>16366148

Save states are cheap but it's not the players fault for (ab)using a game mechanic built into the game by the developer. If anything it's a poor design choice.

Kingdome Come had a decent way of doing it by having their 'save anywhere' feature require the use of a consumable.

>>16358234

>You can't claim the chance is 99% and then have it miss more than 1 time out of 100.

You absolutely can. You have a 50/50 chance to get heads or tails flipping a coin, but a coin can come up heads or tails more multiple times or even everytime. It just isn't likely. For the 1% miss doesn't mean you only will miss 1 out of 100. It means that you are 99 times more likely to hit.

>>16366522

exactly the aliens (regarding xcom) have the same probability, i've hit stupid 30/40%s were that would be "unfair" to the alien, it is what it is, we just remember the 80%+ chances that miss.

it can seem like bullshit but it makes you learn to judge every single possibility before carrying out an action

one of my favourite things is being careless and activating a pod or two and having to spend 5+ minutes on every possible (bad or good) outcome, savescumming just encourages you to wing it and if you fuck up, you just load again

>>16366091

>if you lose your campaign is most likely fucked

Yes, that is forgiving.

Compare say roguelikes or card games. Randboss kool aid mans in and crit one shots during your move action? All in with aces preflop and lost in a tourney? Oh well. Double check how you got into that situation to see if you can improve anything, and then hope your luck holds next time.

>>16358115

Cheap, but who gives a fuck? Half the retro games that are so hard you need save states relied on codes to make things tolerable anyway, and intentionally so as the codes were used to sell magazines.

There's no shame in outcheaping a cheap merchant.

I use save states in every single Fire Emblem game. Slot 1 for start of turn and slot 2 before every action. If it's not favorable, I reload and RNG abuse until I get the desired result.

>>16369825

lel fucked the name up

who's kirk then?

>>16369879

I only use save states if my emulator or game crashes at specific spots

>>16369931

thats okay, as long as you arent saving every few minutes

>>16369939

I've had some games crash every so often so every 10 mins so I'd make saves inbetween I eventually beat said game so it was pointless to save state, I only use them if I really can't pass a part in a game otherwise

>>16366124

Would agree if the game wasn't known to be buggy and you could possibly have your save corrupted (in EW and EU anyway). I mean you could make some file backups but you would be doing that constantly if you didn't want to lose progress.

>>16358115

They are alright

Those break the difficulty of the game, but that creates an opportunity where you can have a super hard and unfair game beyond your souls game and still be playable

>Are they cheap? Is there a proper way to use them or should you use them at all?

How much does it beak the game depends on the player, and how stupidly made is the game

This shouldn't be needed since a good game should have enough checkpoints for the difficulty of given tasks

>What is an acceptable instance of using a save state in retro vidya?

The same as a check point, but that depends on the game

Being lazy and putting more is not an "acceptable" thing but it can happen

<having fun how dare you

>>16370156

I'm more than aware of the concept of a punishment for failing. In fact I praise monster hunter for how it does it (world is trash), forcing you to walk through the whole stage to reach the monster again and eat up your resources.

I'm talking about shit like Ninja Gaiden and how you have to fight a multi stage boss and if you die you have to go through three bullshit stages to even attempt to fight him again.

>>16370118

>why is there elitism in a board for video game :____:

Are you on welfare my nigger

>>16370156

>Comparing shit filler meant to pad out the length of the game to a very selectively crafted film narrative

This is your brain on "games are art", 90% of games have absolutely pointless and un-fun sections that would immediately make the game better if removed outright (nonetheless if they were replaced by something worthwhile, but that would take effort). Games aren't carefully crafted "narrative experiences", even absolutely great games are software shit out by programmers for the entertainment of vidya autists and children, as such un-fun sections are by definition not worth playing.

Things like the shit filler you have to slog through to get to a special boss aren't at all comparable to the scenes in a great film, they're much more like bloopers or shitty scenes left on the cutting room floor because a good director has no interest in padding run time (in fact it's quite the opposite, there's often good content left out in order to trim a film down; whereas vidya devs are encouraged to pump out as much lazy shit as possible).

If you use something that wasn't an original, intended part of the game to give yourself an advantage in completing it, yes, it's cheap. You can use them as a utility to avoid other shit (random crashes, backups in case of the oddball save corruption etc.) but using them to cheese a fight is obviously cheap.

You mean like on an emulator? Abusing save states to beat the game = bad. To see alternate paths, etc. when the game only allows one save = good.

>>16358441

>he doesnt cheat online with the sole purpose to have a leg up and grief people

LOL

>>16370702

>Pannencoek will become a tranny in your lifetime

Save states are the only way I can beat Death in Castlevania. Therefore, save states are awesome.

Depends. I use them as an effective replacement for a password system in games like Metroid and River City Ransom. I also use it if I need to quickly turn off the game and don't want to lose progress. Savescumming is "cheap" for sure, but there's no wrong way to play a game as long as you're having fun.

It's like the Sekiro easy mode and cheat engine debacle. There is nothing wrong with using easy mode or cheating to enjoy a game, but it's retarded to brag about beating a game in that case.