WhiteTigerShiro said:
SmallHatLogan said:
WhiteTigerShiro said:
You, nor anyone else, has yet to adequately explain how "save scumming" removes the challenge from a game.
It depends on the game. Take 90s FPS games for example. Your goal is to reach the end of the level without dying. There's no regenerating health and health pick ups are limited. Your main danger isn't the individual enemy encounters, it's getting your health whittled down over time. Each level is essentially an endurance challenge. If you save before each encounter and reload until you get through it without taking damage then you are making the game easier and therefore removing some of the challenge. I would never argue that save scumming can remove
all of the challenge from a game but it can reduce the difficulty.
There are also plenty of examples I can think of regarding save states in emulators but I assume we're just talking about games that allow you to manually save.
The given example is no more heinous than allowing players to play the game through several times. Are you suggesting that games self-destruct once you beat the game or hit a "game over" condition, such that everyone can only talk about their initial playthrough? Well no, of course you aren't. Still, the point remains that
time is the only thing that can said to have been saved by "save scumming" through the levels in that manner. Rather than having to start from square one time and time and time again, the player is able to go back to the most recent point where they felt they were in a good position. What challenge is gained by forcing the player to have to replay the entire game to get back to that point?
There is a huge difference in "long term" challenge and "short term" challenge that can be achieved with save scumming. instead of for example fighting through a room with five opponents if you don't save in the middle of it, you have to survive all five. if you do, you just have to survive one, save, die maybe three times before taking out one more and then you've already reduced the challenge of dealing with five opponents simultaneously to dealing with three guys. If that is not reduced challenge I don't know what is.
This way you can also save resources like grenades or rockets that you might normally need to survive the encounter on one go for some even more difficult encounter, effectively reducing even those often obsolete because saving, loading and the most basic weapon can be effective enough when you mostly need to concern yourself only with getting one enemy down without receiving damage and saving.
Also an example that has been said multiple times is cheating the random number generator until you receive favourable results. for example that shot in x-com killing your soldier, reload until the shot misses resulting in your soldier being close to opponent and having a good chance of killing it instead of just dying because that's what would have happened without reloading. or saving before capturing an alien and reloading until succesful. That is not just about time, it's conserving resources, needing less planning as you might not need to weaken or disarm before attempting capture. And it could still fail so you'd have to have another plan for that, and then maybe even a plan c if capture fails and you miss the shot you arranged as a safeguard.
Or to go to super meat boy, there are levels that are closer to minute long for the grade A+ time, so if you would "save scum" in that game, you would for example do small 5 second runs of portions of the level until you achieve enough progress and proceed to next 5 seconds. now again doing twelve 5 second challenges is easier than doing a one minute long challenge for many reasons, for example concentration, increased psychological pressure and such. while if you have practised the portitions separately that way the whole mission becomes easier because you learn it, but it is still more challenging to do it on one go than 5 seconds at a time.
As for what op is saying, he/she is habitual save scummer(it's not very nice expression but it is the accepted term so that's why it is used) and it takes something out of the enjoyment, not because what others think but because it takes away from experience for him/her. Habits aren't that easy to control and i can relate to this particular habit. I try to conciously avoid it myself for same reasons.
For the issue of other people doing it I'm neutral. If that is the way you enjoy playing, game on. If you find yourself using it as a habit and disliking it, well remapping quicksave out of the keyboard or using a controller makes the saving slightly longer process and you less likely to spam it as much. It's not very optimal, but i've used it to some success.
