Baldur’s Gate 3’s huge launch has reignited the age-old debate about save scumming.

  • CIWS-30
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    1411 months ago

    I don’t think there’s ever been a save scum debate. Most people just do it, especially the game is unreasonable or has easily missable / permanently locked content that you lose out on forever after dozen or hundreds of hours of playtime unless you save scum.

    It’s more like most people do it without shame because they have lives, jobs, families, and limited time and energy to play, and a vocal minority of tryhards and internet trolls (who also save scum but lie about it) who try to force their twisted values on the majority for no other reason than to try to control everyone because of some personal dysfunction.

    • BadlyDrawnRhino
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      611 months ago

      The gripes I see about save-scumming usually come from those who would prefer not to but don’t have impulse control, so they’d prefer developers to take away from players who don’t care, and have valid reasons for doing so like you listed.

      • @[email protected]
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        1111 months ago

        Developers disallowing saving when I want make me so irrationally angry. Let me play the game in a way that I know I will have fun. Not allowing it has always been a way to extend your game artificially.

        • @Meowoem
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          411 months ago

          Also it means I can’t pick it up to play unless I have a large block of time I know will be free and I rarely have that so basically I can’t play the game.

          • Nepenthe
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            11 months ago

            Octopath’s final battle is a gauntlet of eight or so bosses, followed by the last boss with two forms. One of those forms, if you don’t manage to dispatch a specific enemy at a certain perfect moment, runs the risk of actually trapping the player in an endless loop as everything keeps healing itself faster than the player is able to take anything down.

            This is a known possibility that forces you to restart the entire gauntlet again from the beginning just to have a chance, and you can’t save in that room. Guess whether I’ve technically finished Octopath or not. You’re goddamn right I’m going to figure out how to glitch it and save anyway, because I don’t and will never want to sink genuinely 2-3hrs of my life each time I try to beat that, with less than zero guarantee that I actually will. I get the feel they were going for, but who the fuck is responsible for this decision.

            Where Baldur’s Gate is concerned, I do clinically have difficulty making decisions but I’m mostly only doing it because I love the writing so much. 90% or more of my save scumming is dialogue related and I’d take it as a huge compliment.

            I severely dislike role-playing in a way that makes me choose options I don’t actually believe in, so every file I’ve ever played for any game tends to be identical. But in this game and this game only, I desperately want to see what happens if I do and it’s almost always rewarding. It’s SO good

      • JackbyDev
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        211 months ago

        The debate often pops up in rogue like games when you say there should be a save and quit option.