I'm not arguing that if you add a chance to save and reload before and after it changes the difficulty of what comes in between.Internet Kraken said:Again, how does being able to save anywhere outside of combat make battles any easier? You haven't really answered this.
The battles do not get any harder. The enemies do not get any weaker. Being able to save anywhere has no influence on combat difficulty. A boss is still going to rape me if I am unprepared, regardless of whether or not I have a save right outside of his domain. The only difference is that I don't have to spend 20 minutes fighting the same enemies all over again.
I really don't see your logic.
If I play Super Mario World on an emulator using save states then none of the jumps get easier but a level where I have to do 20 jumps does get easier if I make a new save state after every jump. In reality, if Super Mario World was created with save anywhere in mind then I imagine that Nintendo would have changed the design a lot. This game where a developer just adds save anywhere and changes nothing is not a real world game. Or at least not a very good one.
If someone is creating a combat encounter for an RPG they might do something like increase a monster's critical hit rate if there is no real penalty for to death add a higher blind luck factor the game. Risk vs reward is a key factor that keeps a lot of players interested in a game.
You are also working on the assumption that nobody is thinking about adding save points during combat when, in fact, in a real time game it can be quite hard to work out when saving should be disabled. Also, in practice, many turn based western games do allow saving inside combat mode.
Of course, in competitive multiplayer the concept of one person quick saving every turn and reloading if something goes badly for them would not fly. It would be like admitting defeat. I believe that the rougelike save scheme of only being able to save on exit is still the best scheme for properly balancing challenge in single player games. And before you point out that if they just added that to existing games without changing anything else then it would be absurd, I know. They would have to change a lot.