Save Scumming and You

[TheMigrantSoldier]

Depends on the game in question. If the game is unstable and riddled with glitches (Bethesda, duh), then I'll be a paranoid quick saver. There are times when I like to experiment with certain situations dealing with enemy placement so I save and load a lot in some FPSs and action RPGs like FEAR and Skyrim.

Sometimes I just save-scum to keep the flow of the game. Like in Mount and Blade when I needed that 4000 gold prize money from the randomized tournament to support my starved army. In most cases, I just like keeping some suspense and practicing self-discipline. Climbing out of a hole I dug up in a game is a great way to learn from mistakes.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

If the game allows it, its within the "rules" and therefore free-game. However I try to avoid doing so in most games (except the original X-COM series where the RNG is stacked against you... yes it is, don't tell me its not). I'm not against it at all, it allows me to repeat things over and get it right. Something I can't do in real life. I do use restraint with it though... and there have been times where I've done so well in a game (X-COM) that I forget to save before I quit... holy hell thats annoying.

 

[MrBaskerville]

I don´t play a lot of games where it´s possible, but when i get the chance i usually just saves in the beginning of a level and if i die, i reload my save. I don´t like having too many saves or checkpoints because i think it takes away some of the excitement and makes things a lot more tedious, it isn´t as exciting to play something when you know that failure only means you lose 10 seconds of gameplay (Unless the game sucks, then i´d hate to replay an entire level). I´m always quick to save after those tedius and unskipable "forced walking" segments they tend to throw in games these days, and after unskipable cutscenes because there´s no way in hell i sit through those again, ever.

 

[Flammablezeus]

I only do it when something bugs out or behaves in a way not intended by the developers. Or if something seems like an incredibly terrible design decision. I'm talking about having a dog in New Vegas who runs up and gets itself killed even though I told it to sit still and not be aggressive 200 metres away from the fight. Or any time Caesar's Legion showed up hunting me down at the start killing any companions I had, since they were grossly overpowered and would take every explosive and bullet I had on me to kill.

However, the rest of the time I live with my mistakes, and often see parts of games that I would have completely missed out on if I had save-scummed. It's much more organic and rewarding to play this way. I did it when I was a kid, but then when I was around 20 or so, I realised how boring and formulaic playing that way was, and then I knew I'd only been cheating myself out of some great experiences and reasons to improve my gaming skills.

 

[Keoul]

I've only done it for one game, dishonored.
I really wanted the good ending so I ended doing it quite a few times since I got detected and had to kill everyone.

Don't see what the habub is though, calling it save scumming and all that, especially if people do it on a single player game.

 

[JochemHippie]

I only really savescum for RNG bullshit.

Generally whenever there's a random drop involved on something that doesn't respawn, I'm gonna savescum till I get what I want.

 

[Keoul]

I've only done it for one game, dishonored.
I really wanted the good ending so I ended doing it quite a few times since I got detected and had to kill everyone.

Don't see what the habub is though, calling it save scumming and all that, especially if people do it on a single player game.

You realize you could run away and hide again...

I also felt guilty.

 

[Gankytim]

If I'm exploring a really elaborate area or one where I'm not sure what's left and right I'll save at the entrance or somewhere I can easily find my way back from. I don't save before every enemy encoutner, that's borderline cheating.

 

[Tygerml]

All games should let you save whenever, wherever you want. Anyone who has a problem with that, don't use it. Anyone who calls it 'scumming' or looks down on someone that uses a save game feature really needs to get a life.

 

[RealRT]

Well for one, i think it should be re-named. The word "scum" is way too serious sounding for such an innocent action.

Anyway, I generally don't reload if I make a wrong decision on a moral or strategic standpoint. If I lose a battle, or one of my party members gets taken out et cetera, then I'll usually reload but in games where there are prominent choices to be made (Witcher, Mass Effect et cetera) then I'll stand by my decision.

The best thing about The Witcher is that consequences usually bite you in the ass way after you make them, so you either stick with them or lose hours of playtime.

 

[Denamic]

I tend to save less than I should, or rely overmuch on autosaves even when the game barely has them. I've lost many, many, MANY hours of playtime because of it over the years.

 

[rodneyy]

i tend to forget to save sometimes in games any only spam quicksave if im having trouble with a bit and have died a few times and there is a big gap between where i start and the bit im dieing at.

that said games that dont allow manual saves can be worse imo. it all depends on the game and how much effort they put into making it.
bioshock infinite while only had auto save was on the whole good in where it placed its saves. only one time did i run into a place where it was badly done. right before the 3rd handyman fight, a whole room to loot and upgrades to buy and then a bit fight that you die in a lot forcing you to redo the looking all over again became a real pain on 1999 mode. other than that it was fine.

then you have games that do it terribly sniper v2. got it a while ago when they were giving it out for free and just giving it a go the last week or so. in a game where you are quite squishy and are not supposed to run and gun more stay back and take your time taking them out 1 or 2 at a time it can leave you with massive gaps between save points. either through design or sometimes having 1 and only 1 rout through the level that is approved by the developer and anything else you are out of luck.
sometimes you start a level and need to take out 10-15 guys manage it after a few goes then advance forward new enemys spawn flank you and kill you before you know whats happened and no save point so start the whole damned thing over again.
not the end of the world normally but in a game where the main way to tell where an enemy is located is by walking around until they shoot you then taking cover and killing them when your health has regereated it can get old very fast.

so save scumming might be looked down upon by some developers and gamers but it is down to the person playing it at the end of the day. a game can have its flaws papered over with manual saving but if you dont have them all those flaws come to the surface and can really impact gameplay.

 

[LaoJim]

Alright, so outside of specific cases like harder difficulties in level based games e.g. Hitman; let's first acknowledge that unlimited, save-anywhere PC style save systems are probably the ideal.

I'm not too sure that we can acknowledge this. There are problems with unlimited save-anywhere systems.

1) It leads to save-scumming, as we are discussing.
1a) It takes you out of the game as you are constantly worrying about if you should save.
1b) It can encourage "lazy" gaming since you don't have any penalty for doing a section badly.
1c) It can encourage "obsessive" gaming where, having completed a section, you immediately want to go back and redo it, but avoid using the two health potions (or whatever).
2) The reverse of save-scumming, where if you forget to save your game you can lose a lot of progress (hence why most RPGs offer a autosave feature along with save-anywhere)
3) It is possible to FUBAR your current playthrough by saving just before an unavoidable death. (Experienced gamers will work around this by keeping multiple saves around, but you can still lose hours of progress)
4) The file sizes are larger for save-anywhere because the developer has to record more information. In accordance with 3 games like Skyrim or Fallout where the saves are (IIRC) about 10MB and if you have tens of saves, can take up a not insignificant amount of space. (This is less of an issue on PC, but for console where you might only have a 20G or 60G game it can become a problem, especially if you have a lot of games like this)

Save-anywhere works well in some games (usually RPGs) and not so well in others. The time where I save-scum the most is with old emulated games, games I couldn't complete when I was young and want to see what the later levels were like. (But not enough that I constantly want to replay the game everytime I die)

All games should let you save whenever, wherever you want. Anyone who has a problem with that, don't use it. Anyone who calls it 'scumming' or looks down on someone that uses a save game feature really needs to get a life.

My understanding is that people tend to use the term "save-scumming" when it becomes compulsive or "cheaty" behaviour and they're usually referring to undesirable behaviour in themselves. For example, I while ago I was playing an old Mario game and on the later levels I was pressing the autosave key on practically every platform I landed on. Once I realized this I tried to relax a bit and just enjoy playing the game. Now I'm free to play that way, but if I went around boasting how awesome I was at Mario afterwards, I'd deserve to be looked down upon. On the other hand if someone is criticising me for not being hard-core enough to complete Skyrim in one 20 hour sitting without saving, then whose being ridiculous then.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Well for one, i think it should be re-named. The word "scum" is way too serious sounding for such an innocent action.

Anyway, I generally don't reload if I make a wrong decision on a moral or strategic standpoint. If I lose a battle, or one of my party members gets taken out et cetera, then I'll usually reload but in games where there are prominent choices to be made (Witcher, Mass Effect et cetera) then I'll stand by my decision.

The practice was coined 'scumming' due to it's use not in games in general but specifically in Rogue-likes. Rogue-likes do not have a traditional save feature, instead a hallmark of the genre is a game that creates a savefile when you close the game (to save your progress) but deletes the file when you re-open the game (to ensure the challenge of the game is maintained by not allowing players to erase their mistakes). As this was, and is, a core feature of those specific game mechanics, bypassing the system by taking backups of save files before reloading the game was seen as cheating on a fundamental level - hence the term scumming.

Although now the term refers to, as the OP was saying, using any save feature to save the PC from ever doing anything wrong or having to deal with adverse situations.

Spoiler: I feel this is appropriate

OT: As a grew up playing Rogue-likes I'm pretty conditioned against save-scumming, and in most games I follow the original convention of only saving when I close down a game. As I'm not a complete masochist, however, I keep my daily saves intact rather than deleting them. The exceptions to this rule are Bethesda games, in which I've learned to stick a save down every couple of hours or so to protect against the inevitable crashes.

 

[lechat]

i was once save scumming a game of hitman back in the day and accidentally pushed the F key at the wrong moment.
took me about 5 hours worth of glitching and sneaking 1 millimeter at a time to un-fuck that situation.

as for how i feel about quick saving. my game. mind your own business.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

The worst I used to do was in Final Fantasy: Tactics Advanced on a Gameboy emulator years ago... I played it to death on the Gameboy, but when replaying it on an emulator I used to spam the screenshot save function. This meant that I would save before each attack incase it missed... I would also replay all attacks sometimes until I hit a critical... I would always go back if I broke a law, and I managed to do pretty damn well. Yeah, I cheated my way through that one. Even though I had already played it properly it still made me feel dirty!

 

[RyuujinZERO]

Ultimately, save scumming is less the problem and more of a symptom of a problem. If games were designed with better death mechanics, then players might be more prone to living with those errors in judgement

Take Skyrim for example - when you die in Skyrim you are sent back to the menu screen, you have no choice but to reload a save, so saving frequently and reloading over and over til you succeed is not only a valid tactic but one the dev's encourage you to make. Contrast this to games like Braid, or Fable which have actual game mechanics that make "death" into a component of gameplay, scumming is something that pretty much stops entirely.

Alternatively, you simply take away the option to even try scumming, like in Minecraft. Either way, death is an important aspect of any game and scumming is a symptom of Devs not giving the issue enough thought, because as ironic as it sounds, dying is one aspect of the game that has to be engaging because it's likely to be something your players do frequently.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

I really think the term is a little bit too heavy as well. Especially on the XCOM forums (or other difficult games like that) people get hostile when you admit to it.

But I personally just use it as a means to learn from my mistakes and try out new tactics. For example: I "save scummed" a lot of times when trying my first playthroughs of XCOM: EU on impossible. But after doing so, I developed new tactics that carried me through an ironman playthrough where reloading saves was impossible.

If I had just needed to start an entire new playthrough every time, I probably would have quit the game way earlier than I did.