Unless you’re aiming for a specific path (when replaying, for example), I do find it’s much more satisfying when an RPG allows you to fail and then follow through with the consequences, without just hitting a hard stop or making you feel like you got a lesser experience as a result.
But it does rely on trust - I need to trust that a game is designed to do that before I commit to playing in a way where I don’t immediately reload a save when I fail a skill check.
I don’t like to fail a quest/mission.
It feels like I closed a plot path and am now missing out on content.
I’d accept if the game would allow me to retry it after a reasonable in game time has passed.
I’d also like to see a more permanent impression on the in game world e.g.
If I drop a big bomb and it creates a crater, it shouldnt just reset the area after 10min
If I go on a mass killing spree and NPCs just respawn after going a bit away and back (and passed time in-game amounts to just 1h).
Same for cops in the area to be more vigilant than before if I escaped the hunt (and not just switching from “WHERE ARE YOU?! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU” to “Huh. Must have been the wind” after I had murdered 40 NPCs in cold blood)
Even BG3 failed at this. A few times I had to navigate a minefield using a guide for something I didn’t want to miss out on. It’s more fun to just blast through without loading, but sometimes the consequences are dire for messing up some little detail and I can’t bring myself to just not have good endings.
On my first playthrough I did the game blind. It was really fun, but I missed out on 5 companies (!) It was like I played a different game than my friends
I love doing this in my TRPGs. Nine out of ten times an event was memorable was because of a horrible failure rather than a successful win. My table eats it up. I wish more games did this too
Tabletop games are good because you can trust your DM to guide the failures in an interesting way. Unless it’s a bad DM and you can’t.
I had a DM who believed strongly that failure was what made it interesting, he loved to say “The characters in Star Wars failed almost every time and that’s why it was good!” But actually watching the movies, failures bad enough to result in grievous bodily harm are relatively rare.
One time during our first session of a new game we were somewhere dark and a creature was there. He had me roll athletics with no explanation and I rolled high. Then he had me roll acrobatics, high again. Athletics again, high. Constitution check, high. Athletics 11. Then he cackled and eagerly described how a dragon cut off my arm.
My character was built entirely around two handed weapons, this made me borderline useless. Based off of his comments, he didn’t have any plans to provide a way for my character to recover his limb, he just thought it would be cool to mutilate me and decided to force me to roll until I failed.
I hate the term “save scumming,” like I’m supposed to feel dirty for playing how I want (e.g. using quicksaves and such as checkpoints) and using shit that is built into the fucking game.
Kenshi is a pain in the fucking ass (still love it though). Do you realize how many times you’d have to restart from scratch, like totally restarting the game from the very beginning, if you didn’t use the save system?even just from dust bandits kicking the shit out of you when you first spawn in, to getting yourself killed off because you happened to enter an area at the wrong angle, the game is unforgiving as hell. You almost need to constantly save just to keep your progress.
And that’s not even getting into if the game crashes.
I considering save scumming only when I try to do something fatal (e.g. jumo from cliff, box/ignore social space of a random cop on the street).
But I’d honor a game story decision if I made it myself and not save scum.
That doesnt sound like save scumming to me. Save scumming is usually referring to reloading a save over and over until you get the RNG you want. Like an xcom mission where you need to make a 25% shot and you save and reload until you hit that shot.
So for bg3 save scumming would be seeing that you have a low chance to get a roll, saving and then reloading until you get lucky.
Interesting failure states has to be one of the most difficult things to implement in game design. To this day I struggle to think of many examples besides Disco Elysium that manage to discourage save scumming purely by virtue of having failed rolls often lead to equally or more beneficial and interesting results as successful rolls.
I savescum because there are too many games where not doing something perfectly means you go from one difficult to get ending to the ending that 80% of people will get.
BG3 is unfortunately a really great example of this, where one roll can cost you your SO and their destiny.
People will save scum to reach their goal. “Interesting” won’t really factor in unless that’s what they are going for, and even then usually a quick search for a video on that will make up for it.
I disagree with you . At least for anecdotal personal experience, I always save scummed as this usually provides better/more satisfying result/experience. However this changed with disco elysium,when losing rolls still always produced interesting outcomes. I would absolutely love more games when not getting best outcomes does not mean having subpar experience
Should be less of a requirement in Divinity anyway. D&D isnt suited to be a video game, it was made for table top. I “save scummed” a lot lot less in DOS2.
The random game over screens sucked too, its like why even have the dialogue option if you are just going to be hit with game over and no other cutscenes.
Also you had to quick save a lot because of all the bugs and inconsistencies.
Most of my save scumming comes from being annoyed at the random factor. Like I have a +8 on Skill and it rolled me a 3, failing? Nah that’s stupid. Reload.
Less random, less save scumming. You can have good systems with low random factors.
Inspiration helped in bg3, but it’s a pretty limited resource and can still fail.
I did save scum once in a fight where I rolled four natural 1s in a row. The odds of that are too low for me to believe that was legitimately random.
That’s why I did it too, but let’s be fair, dice are supposed to be random.
Yeah, I realized in my older age that I don’t actually like a lot of random. I liked new Vegas where you either had the skill or you didn’t. In tabletop games I like dice pools to make the results less evenly distributed among all possible outcomes, and then options like fate points and “succeed at a cost” on top of that.
Some people I guess really like the random dice effects, but usually it just makes me grumpy. To each their own.
I enjoy Warframe because even the 2% rolls happen because I’m able to retry as much as I please. 2% doesn’t translate to a single attempt very well, so padding the odds would be warranted.
Scripted drops and stories like new Vegas where everything does something and you don’t often walk away feeling unpaid? Absolutely top shelf games. Or if it’s one more linear like Tales of ___ games where I grind for exp and resources but the thing is where it is you just have to go get it. Some skill or building up elsewhere and you become king.
In torment: tides of numenera, and I’m guessing tides I never played the tt, when leveling you could increase resource pool maxes used to boost roll totals or increase your min roll from a pool. It was pretty cool and gives a choice between a pass on low challenge rolls vs more boosts before a rest.
I know torment tides of nuneneria ran with this idea, and in a fair few instances failure lead to alternative or better results. I still had a quick save habit though
Needing to quick save through a run takes all the joy out of it anyway. It’s an administrative feature to ensure we always have an opportunity to save.
Manipulating quick save to get the story outcomes you want is a bizarre way of playing a game and I question why even play a story game if you’re just going to manipulate it to get the story you want.
I do it because I want to see the other endings, or mess with the loot thats available on one path versus another. It’s a way of exploring the game as a construct. I’m curious why you question that approach?
“Repeated quicksave” =/= save scumming, as quicksaves are overwritten by consecutive ones. 🤦🏼♂️ Tell me your article is AI-gen without saying it is. 🖕🏼
The term is not exclusive to BG3 by a long shot, and while quicksave scumming is pseudo-possible in BG3, the syntax of the article is imprecise, misleading, and incorrect. Don’t apologize for shite “journalism”, citizen. We are now living through what happens when that’s normalized, FFS. 🤌🏼
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Unless you’re aiming for a specific path (when replaying, for example), I do find it’s much more satisfying when an RPG allows you to fail and then follow through with the consequences, without just hitting a hard stop or making you feel like you got a lesser experience as a result.
But it does rely on trust - I need to trust that a game is designed to do that before I commit to playing in a way where I don’t immediately reload a save when I fail a skill check.
I don’t like to fail a quest/mission.
It feels like I closed a plot path and am now missing out on content.
I’d accept if the game would allow me to retry it after a reasonable in game time has passed.
I’d also like to see a more permanent impression on the in game world e.g.
If I drop a big bomb and it creates a crater, it shouldnt just reset the area after 10min
If I go on a mass killing spree and NPCs just respawn after going a bit away and back (and passed time in-game amounts to just 1h).
Same for cops in the area to be more vigilant than before if I escaped the hunt (and not just switching from “WHERE ARE YOU?! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU” to “Huh. Must have been the wind” after I had murdered 40 NPCs in cold blood)
I very much agree on the trust part. I don’t want to muss out on an important companion over a dialogue fail
Even BG3 failed at this. A few times I had to navigate a minefield using a guide for something I didn’t want to miss out on. It’s more fun to just blast through without loading, but sometimes the consequences are dire for messing up some little detail and I can’t bring myself to just not have good endings.
On my first playthrough I did the game blind. It was really fun, but I missed out on 5 companies (!) It was like I played a different game than my friends
I love doing this in my TRPGs. Nine out of ten times an event was memorable was because of a horrible failure rather than a successful win. My table eats it up. I wish more games did this too
Tabletop games are good because you can trust your DM to guide the failures in an interesting way. Unless it’s a bad DM and you can’t.
I had a DM who believed strongly that failure was what made it interesting, he loved to say “The characters in Star Wars failed almost every time and that’s why it was good!” But actually watching the movies, failures bad enough to result in grievous bodily harm are relatively rare.
One time during our first session of a new game we were somewhere dark and a creature was there. He had me roll athletics with no explanation and I rolled high. Then he had me roll acrobatics, high again. Athletics again, high. Constitution check, high. Athletics 11. Then he cackled and eagerly described how a dragon cut off my arm.
My character was built entirely around two handed weapons, this made me borderline useless. Based off of his comments, he didn’t have any plans to provide a way for my character to recover his limb, he just thought it would be cool to mutilate me and decided to force me to roll until I failed.
Needless to say I didn’t go back.
I hate the term “save scumming,” like I’m supposed to feel dirty for playing how I want (e.g. using quicksaves and such as checkpoints) and using shit that is built into the fucking game.
Kenshi is a pain in the fucking ass (still love it though). Do you realize how many times you’d have to restart from scratch, like totally restarting the game from the very beginning, if you didn’t use the save system?even just from dust bandits kicking the shit out of you when you first spawn in, to getting yourself killed off because you happened to enter an area at the wrong angle, the game is unforgiving as hell. You almost need to constantly save just to keep your progress.
And that’s not even getting into if the game crashes.
I considering save scumming only when I try to do something fatal (e.g. jumo from cliff, box/ignore social space of a random cop on the street).
But I’d honor a game story decision if I made it myself and not save scum.
That doesnt sound like save scumming to me. Save scumming is usually referring to reloading a save over and over until you get the RNG you want. Like an xcom mission where you need to make a 25% shot and you save and reload until you hit that shot.
So for bg3 save scumming would be seeing that you have a low chance to get a roll, saving and then reloading until you get lucky.
so my Kenshi rule is to only reload a save if my VIP character dies. Anyone else is technically expendable
Interesting failure states has to be one of the most difficult things to implement in game design. To this day I struggle to think of many examples besides Disco Elysium that manage to discourage save scumming purely by virtue of having failed rolls often lead to equally or more beneficial and interesting results as successful rolls.
I am too old and have too little time not to save scum.
I savescum because there are too many games where not doing something perfectly means you go from one difficult to get ending to the ending that 80% of people will get.
BG3 is unfortunately a really great example of this, where one roll can cost you your SO and their destiny.
People will save scum to reach their goal. “Interesting” won’t really factor in unless that’s what they are going for, and even then usually a quick search for a video on that will make up for it.
I disagree with you . At least for anecdotal personal experience, I always save scummed as this usually provides better/more satisfying result/experience. However this changed with disco elysium,when losing rolls still always produced interesting outcomes. I would absolutely love more games when not getting best outcomes does not mean having subpar experience
Should be less of a requirement in Divinity anyway. D&D isnt suited to be a video game, it was made for table top. I “save scummed” a lot lot less in DOS2.
The random game over screens sucked too, its like why even have the dialogue option if you are just going to be hit with game over and no other cutscenes.
Also you had to quick save a lot because of all the bugs and inconsistencies.
Absolutely - a dialogue choice that leads straight to a game over state is a failure of narrative design.
Looking forward to how they’ll do that.
Lizard sex.
Hopefully not a fade-to-black this time. :V
The only roll should be the damage roll.
DnD needs a GM to not regularly ask for die rolls of good or important actions of the player.
I think loot table rolls are fair too. Locking narrative behind a skill check is lame though.
i try so hard not to save scum. but i can’t help it. i didn’t mean to shoot that npc to death 😭 over and over again
Most of my save scumming comes from being annoyed at the random factor. Like I have a +8 on Skill and it rolled me a 3, failing? Nah that’s stupid. Reload.
Less random, less save scumming. You can have good systems with low random factors.
Inspiration helped in bg3, but it’s a pretty limited resource and can still fail.
I did save scum once in a fight where I rolled four natural 1s in a row. The odds of that are too low for me to believe that was legitimately random.
That’s why I did it too, but let’s be fair, dice are supposed to be random.
With D:OS not being tied to strict D&D rules can def help that.
Yeah, I realized in my older age that I don’t actually like a lot of random. I liked new Vegas where you either had the skill or you didn’t. In tabletop games I like dice pools to make the results less evenly distributed among all possible outcomes, and then options like fate points and “succeed at a cost” on top of that.
Some people I guess really like the random dice effects, but usually it just makes me grumpy. To each their own.
I enjoy Warframe because even the 2% rolls happen because I’m able to retry as much as I please. 2% doesn’t translate to a single attempt very well, so padding the odds would be warranted.
Scripted drops and stories like new Vegas where everything does something and you don’t often walk away feeling unpaid? Absolutely top shelf games. Or if it’s one more linear like Tales of ___ games where I grind for exp and resources but the thing is where it is you just have to go get it. Some skill or building up elsewhere and you become king.
In torment: tides of numenera, and I’m guessing tides I never played the tt, when leveling you could increase resource pool maxes used to boost roll totals or increase your min roll from a pool. It was pretty cool and gives a choice between a pass on low challenge rolls vs more boosts before a rest.
They did well enough for me in BG 3 already. Hope this won’t turn out ugly
I know torment tides of nuneneria ran with this idea, and in a fair few instances failure lead to alternative or better results. I still had a quick save habit though
Needing to quick save through a run takes all the joy out of it anyway. It’s an administrative feature to ensure we always have an opportunity to save.
Manipulating quick save to get the story outcomes you want is a bizarre way of playing a game and I question why even play a story game if you’re just going to manipulate it to get the story you want.
I do it because I want to see the other endings, or mess with the loot thats available on one path versus another. It’s a way of exploring the game as a construct. I’m curious why you question that approach?
“Repeated quicksave” =/= save scumming, as quicksaves are overwritten by consecutive ones. 🤦🏼♂️ Tell me your article is AI-gen without saying it is. 🖕🏼
BG3 has a limit of quick saves it keeps. I think by default it keeps 10.
But just the same, it’s still save scumming if you save just before a check and reload if it fails. You don’t need several saves to do that.
The term is not exclusive to BG3 by a long shot, and while quicksave scumming is pseudo-possible in BG3, the syntax of the article is imprecise, misleading, and incorrect. Don’t apologize for shite “journalism”, citizen. We are now living through what happens when that’s normalized, FFS. 🤌🏼