Save States, Reloading, and the Art of Save-Scumming

[Spuuky]

When you play games, do you constantly reload if you don't like the results of your actions?

For instance, in a game like Valkyria Chronicles or XCOM, you can have squad members permanently die. It's a built-in game mechanic, and you can recruit more people (obviously at some cost). If one of your team members dies on a mission, do you automatically reload? Do you honor their noble sacrifice and let them remain dead?

What about in a game with significant choice? If you're playing Skyrim (lol "significant" choice) and your actions assist one faction that you didn't intend to, do you reload? What about something like Dragon Age, where your companions have approval ratings, and come to hate you, or even attack you? If you try to steal something and an NPC becomes hostile and assaults you, do you reload that?

In emulated games and combat-available quicksave games, do you reload if single skirmishes or fights or turns or jumps don't go as you'd hoped? Does the difficulty of the game matter? If you stroll all the way to the Dragon Lord in Dragon Quest, do you save-state before fighting him to save you time if you lose? What are your rules?

I prefer to let all my choices play out as I made them. I enjoy it more when I'm able to make mistakes of judgment, as I might in real life if I weren't me.

I hate bugs, though. I always reload if I run into a significant bug. That's a separate issue.

[Sephex]

It really depends on the situation or type of game. If I have played a game "honorably" before than all bets are off. I will usually stay away from saving a billion times simply because the game will become boring and the act of saving becomes a task in itself.

On the other hand, I will allow myself to bend or break my own rules because as an adult, I don't have as much time to play games anymore. I don't feel like getting stuck failing the same task over and over again, so I might save more than usual so I don't repeat the same part of a game as often. This is a rare occurrence, however.

I'll also make multiple saves if a long game has branching paths. Sorry, even if I was a kid, I am not starting some 40+ hour game from the beginning multiple times just to see slightly different dialogue or an ending.

[Bolivar]

Could go either way, I've played Mega Man both ways.

Towards the end of Tactics Ogre you're fighting your way up this hanging gardens type place and is real easy for your guys to fall off insta death style. I had one dude fall, with no lives remaining. I came too far to not keep moving, despite misssing out on a meal at the end of my playthrough because of it.

[Pike]

It depends on the game.

For instance, in a game like Valkyria Chronicles or XCOM, you can have squad members permanently die. It's a built-in game mechanic, and you can recruit more people (obviously at some cost). If one of your team members dies on a mission, do you automatically reload? Do you honor their noble sacrifice and let them remain dead?

For the original X-Com, no, I do not savescum. It is a glorious bloodbath, as it should be.

For the new XCOM, I do sometimes if I realize after the fact that I have a better tactic that I want to try. Not often though.

With 4X games... usually not. Monty is gonna Monty, regardless of how many times you reload.

With grand strat I am more apt to switch between countries than savescum. England just declared on me, plucky little Ulster? Well no worries, let me just tag on over to France and declare on England, and then tag on over to all of England's allies and White Peace with me, and then tag on over to Scotland and Sweden and have them declare on England too!

It's great fun. And probably cheating, but I have played through whole "games" of EU or whatnot cheat-free so I feel like I've earned it.

And then there's Crusader Kings 2. The whole point of CK2 is that your family dynasty waxes and wanes over generations so crushing defeats are part of the game and savescumming sort of tosses that idea out the window, so I usually just play that one straight.

[Mirage]

Yes and no. In games where characters die permanently, I usually reload if I get them killed. I sometimes do luck manipulation in games with extremely annoying 0.5% chance to get item X things. It's a time thing, not a difficulty thing. If something requires me pouring hours into a random number generator and hope for the right number, I will definitely try to find a way around it.

[Quindiana Jones]

I did it with Dishonored all the time. I really enjoyed experimenting with that game, though, so it wasn't so much a matter of "Whoops, I smurfed up; better reload!", but rather "Ah, so that's what happens. What if I do this?"

If I make a decision that I want to make - or that I want my character to make, if I'm roleplaying - then I never reload based on consequences. Those consequences are a key part of enjoying the game, and I feel they add to my experience, good and bad.

[Skyblade]

I Save-Scum all the time. In pretty much every game I play. I think it's a side effect of my OCD obsessiveness. In an RPG, if a character dies, I reload. Do I have revive items/magic? Yes, but it doesn't matter. I reload. Characters don't die on my watch. Which, in places like the Battle Maison in Pokémon, mean I rarely get that far. Getting through it is problem enough. Getting through it with no Pokémon fainting? Good luck.

This is made worse if the game tracks your deaths. More and more, I am finding games do this, somewhere in statistics. Assassin's Creed II was a really bad one on this, as it would include deaths in the near impossible to control vehicles, and, with no way to just reload, it meant that I had to restart the game if I screwed up.

This "anti-death" obsession is also one of the reasons that I don't play competitively a lot. Again, using Pokémon as an example, I'm not going to battle a lot of people at random. Because even if I win, a Pokémon is going to faint, and that is a failing on my part.

XCOM was really bad in this regard, and my Ironman run got so wearing that I had to quit my EoFF run, because the pressure of not having people die while I was playing through was eating away at my nerves and causing me some serious stress, and I don't exactly go to games looking for stress.

MMOs are pretty much the only genre where I've gotten over the entire "no one is allowed to die" thing. But even then, only if deaths are not tracked. I got extremely upset when Lord of the Rings online tracked deaths (or at least had an achievement for not getting killed for the first 20 levels), and forced me to restart several times, including once at level 17 when I had to go AFK and turned out to be slightly too close to an enemy encampment.

This also gives me a very clear view on death mechanics in a game. A boss or enemy that relies on unavoidable, instant-kill attacks is not going to be rated very highly by me. It's a cheap mechanic, it negates skill, and it is the number one way to ensure that I complain about your combat mechanics in any discussion of the game. If something is only a challenge because it can kill you instantly, and there is nothing you can do about it (including several in the FF universe, such as Ozma or Yiazmat), that is a clear indication that you don't know how to properly design a boss or encounter. Versus games like Shin Megami Tensei or Persona, where bosses can instant kill you, but either only do so under very strict circumstances (such as trying to face them with an Omnipotent Orb, or letting time run out too long), or have their instant-death attacks able to be blocked (Negate Light/Dark magic, Homunculus, etcetera).

So, yeah, I Save-Scum.

[Old Manus]

I use savestate on emulators so much to the point where I can't play console games anymore.

[Tasura]

If I save-state during emulation is entirely dependent on the type of game, and the situation in said game. For instance in a Pokemon game I'll save-state before each E4 fight and when I get a Legendary Pokemon in a good capturing state (1 HP + negative status effect). In an RPG along the lines of FF I'll save-state in dungeons if the actual save points are few and far between, or if I just found good treasure. I'll also save-state regardless of game/situation if my power is threatening to go out, just so I don't lose any playtime since last save.

Games that have story changes based on player responses/choices I generally won't reload because if I made a choice, it's cause I wanted to make that choice. I will reload in an Elder Scrolls game if I horribly smurf up and piss off the guards/store NPCs.

I tend to avoid games with perma-death because I don't want to have to deal with reloading a bazillion times before everyone keeps dieing, but if for some reason I do play one, I'll only reload if 'Unique Person A' dies, I don't really care about 'John Smith 12324'.

[Loony BoB]

I tend to have my first playthrough with heavy saves, and after that I might try new challenges. There are some exceptions... Civ just isn't suited to going back to saves. I do save on some games despite never going back to them (eg. Football Manager) if only because I want to save myself from the damage a single bug can cause to a game. In FM, a scout could cause a bug in your game about two seasons after you sign him. It's horrifying, but if you are already seven seasons in, you just go back to the fifth season and carry on (after huddling in the corner of your shower and crying for a good half hour).

[Psychotic]

I will always do it before doing something sneaky in a town in TES/Fallout. Either pickpocketing or trying to kill someone without being discovered. I just do it on a whim for a bit of silliness and I cba to deal with the consequences if caught.

[Dr Unne]

I remember reading a discussion of Baldur's Gate shortly after release where someone remarked "Save/reload is the most powerful spell in the game". It's true, it breaks games.

If you use savestates or save files to progress in a game that you can't otherwise progress through, I think it's cheating. Cheating (in single-player games) is fine, have fun however you want, that's what games are for, but don't kid yourself that you're playing the game as intended. I don't feel any sense of accomplishment if I beat a game with savestates.

Examples of when I think it's OK to rely on save games:

* A game's consequences for mistakes are too big. You just misclicked and murdered a shopkeep instead of talking to him, and now you're incapable of shopping for the rest of the game and your reputation plunged into Evil.

* Some insanely bad luck just ruined your game. An enemy got 5 critical hits in a row and perma-killed your best character, and now you're faced with a miserable rest of the game if you continue.

* The game is so unbalanced that save-scumming is the only way to actually do anything, yet you still want to play it for some reason.

* You have goals beyond the scope of the game. In Fire Emblem I set a goal to beat the game without losing a party member. When someone dies, I consider it a Game Over. I think this is fine. I consider each battle a mini-game. Same for X-Com.

Question: Does the existence of Ironman Mode in X-Com give you implicit permission to save-scum when you aren't playing Ironman? I think it kind of does.

[Spuuky]

I believe X-COM was designed with the belief that people would do it, yes. And obviously, it's a single player game, so yes, cheat if you want to, whatever. I personally don't find it fun. I like to have consequences for my failures.

But come on, I know people who will play "hardcore" mode in a Diablo-style game, but alt-F4 if they are about to die, so that they live and continue. Why play that game mode, if it's just a test of your ability to crash your own game fast enough? Doesn't that defeat the point?

[Pumpkin]

Depends on the game. Like for example, I see that I'm struggling a lot in a boss fight, even if I can beat it, the fact that I've had to struggle so much to do so is an issue. So I'll reset and go build up my characters more. In Suikoden, during the war type battles, if one of your characters died, you couldn't use them anymore, so I would reset. If it involved me permanently losing a character, always reset. Other than that, I don't really do it that much.

[Ayen]

Some times yes. Like how that jerk who inspects the Normandy in the first Mass Effect was a douche and I wanted to rip him a new one. Most of the time no.