What I mean by save-scumming is persistently reloading a save to get a favourable outcome. For example, I used to resort to it in Fallout 2 in New Reno where, if you were good enough at unarmed combat then you could become a champion boxer by defeating 3/4 boxers in a row. Since I never bothered to pour skill points into unarmed, defeating those boxers weren't feasible at all, that is, not without resorting to save-scumming: by saving and loading, a lot, you could manage it that you only land critical hits while your opponent's punches never hit at all. It almost felt worth it as well since people in New Reno then start to refer to you as 'the champ'. Frankly it's more rewarding to become a porn star, but that requires a certain amount of endurance and charisma, more than I ever have on my characters. That can be bypassed however without save-scumming, with reconstructive surgery, sunglasses and, uhm, performance enhancing drugs. Fallout 2 is awesome :)
In any case, as for the boxing example, it isn't necessary to resort to save-scumming, since being a champion boxer in New Reno isn't important. So my question is, in what other games to you feel you are sometimes 'forced' to resort to a bit of save-scumming? Off the top of my head I can think of two examples.

The original XCom, where sometimes it can be absolutely crucial to take out a specific alien, such as turning a corner and being faced with an alien with enough time units for only one shot. However, in XCom I found myself to then fall into a routine of routinely save-scumming, till it reached the point that I was only fighting with 8 soldiers who could never die, because I loaded a save whenever one perished. I quickly became bored with the game because there was no challenge left, and so I restarted and resolved to not rely on save-scumming at all. This forced me to change my strategy by playing with far more soldiers, and accepting the loss of one of them, which was usually my fault. It actually made the game more fun for me. So I think that perhaps XCom doesn't really qualify, but one that I think might very well qualify is:

Jagged Alliance 2. Seriously, I never thought turn-based combat could be more difficult than it was in the original XCom. Boy, was I wrong. Recently I tried to fight off 80 soldiers in the Drassen counter attack, at least half of them elites. I only have 4/5 mercs at that point, and if I lose my main machinegunner or indeed any of my mercs, then I really am screwed, so if the enemy get's a lucky shot in on him, then I have to reload. Since there are easily 10 enemies firing on a merc at a time, that means a lot of potential for lucky shots even if the merc is behind cover. I.e. a lot o reloads. Then, if I somehow manage to survive the enemy turn, I have no option but to drop several of them during my turn, but my mercs for some reason have supreme difficulty hitting things 5m away from them, so if one of them fires off 15 rounds and doesn't score a single hit, you bet I'm going to reload. Granted I am using the 1.13 mod with the new hit system, which I think is perhaps a bit wonky in the beginning until you get good guns and your mercs become better marksmen. Still, in comparison to XCom, it does not appear to me that by playing smart I can avoid save-scumming all the time. Luckily, in contrast to XCom, regardless of whether or not I sometimes have to save-scum, it doesn't ever seem to take away from the fun of the game, perhaps because save-scumming turns are balanced out by all those turns where your smart tactics just manage to come together so nicely, like when you manage to flank a group of soldiers that have one of your mercs pinned, and then proceed to throw a grenade right in the middle of them!

So, any other such examples/comments?

Morrowind comes to my mind. In that game the items in crates, chests etc. are randomly generated. If you discover a crate with a magical item, I save, look into it, and relaod until there is an very good and usefull item inside. That way you can easy get a demon weapon at the beginning or a rings that makes you invisible.

In Deus Ex The Fall and maybe in Human Revolution too, there are credit sheets you can collect. The Value of that is different. With save scumming you can get the maxmimum credits for it.

I don't savescum for loot, and i don't like games to allow it.

But i've started to savescum a bit in Men of War. Some missions have too unforgiving "destroy that tank now or your whole line of defense will crumble" moments.

In some RPGs, i sometimes savescum to get through a very hard spot, usually due to a mistake of mine (typically encountering or triggering something i am not levelled enough for), when the alternative is to reload a too older savegame to avoid that mistake. But also, early moments may be savescum-needing, when you just start the game with your baby party and face the first fight. Knowing that i'll toughen up fast, and that it won't be a habit, i can tediously savescum through it. Again, i suppose that the alternative cost is re-rolling a party. I never have the patience to go back to character creation...

Generally I don't. I mean there are times, Baldur's Gate for instance if your solo'ing, where you need to have multiple saves, try out various strategies etc. Personally I think that is fine and in keeping with spirit of the thing. Actually saving and loading endlessly just to get a special item (HanselPete, looking at you here) seems to me to be cheating a bit. I mean that Dremora Big Smashy Mace at level 1 will detract from the game play if everything goes down in one hit.

On the flip side, those games with checkpoint saving, god how that is awful. I am playing the game, I want to decide things.

I usually find it more enjoyable to not save scum. In Deus Ex for example, if I got an unfavorable result or wasted resourses I would continue on in the spirit of survivalism. Now that was fun, adapt and survive.

Xcom: Enemy Unkown I named all my marines after Aliens marines, if Hicks or Hudson got killed, they were dead. It's game over for you Hudson.

Arma 2, I purposefully didn't use saves at all in the spirit of simulation. Died, restart from the beginning, adjust tactics, survive.

But the worst offender I can remember would be the Jabberwock in American McGee's Alice. I had around thirteen save files for that one battle.

Quicksave: The Game.

God, I'm depressed about not playing Deus Ex right now. Thanks for the thread that rubs that right in Matewis. :P

Tong, where are you buddy? Must be cybernetically enhanced unatco agent... or will die.

When I run into a situation where I am save scumming, I generally try to figure out which of two kinds of situation it is:

1. This situation is super difficult because the devs have seriously messed up the difficulty curve.
2. This situation is super difficult because I am not properly prepared.

Or some combination of both.

For example, if there is one mission in the middle of a string of missions, and it is harder by far than any of the rest, and if the progression of the game is linear and completely depends on this mission being successful - then I will save scum to get by it and I will blame it on the devs.

If I come across an enemy who is just handing my butt to me, but progression is not linear - then I decide to fight another day. Or I reexamine my build choices. Maybe i threw all my points into charisma only to find out that the game is light on the talking. Or I sold my warhammer of +2 Beat the Deathclaw right before I met my first Deathclaw. In either case, I might still curse the devs for not making an absolutely perfect game taht caters to my desires for absolute freedom. But, nah, I'll just go back to an earlier point and do things differently. maybe even to the beginning. Especially since I find the first third of most games to be the best.

Dune 2, maybe even Dune 2000

When you are playing against the Harkonnen, sometimes they send those nuclear missiles at your way which can do massive damage to your base, and there is no real defense against them. The only saving grace is that they are very inaccurate, so they may miss your base.

Try to save the game just before you hear a missile is coming. The reload and replay the part many times until the missile either misses your base altogether, or only causes small damage to some unimportant buildings.

I don't quite remember if this worked also for Dune 2000, or only for Dune 2.

Gorky 17

When you enter a new battle, the enemies, their placements, as well as the placements of your units, will always be the same for that specific battle. So, it makes sense to:
- save the game just before the battle
- enter the battle
- make a mental note what monsters there are, where they are, and where each of your units are
- also fight the main opponent a bit to see if it has any resistances or invulnerabilities, e.g. against cold or fire.

Then just reload the save game before the battle and use your acquired knowledge to prepare for the battle properly, e.g. giving the correct weapons to correct units. It is like you have gained the ability to see to the future. :)

Starcraft

If a Terran Ghost was able to pinpoint a nuclear attack to my base, I would routinely load an earlier save game and send a group of units to kill the Ghost before she could reach my base. Same maybe if a Dark Archon was able to convert one of my important units, or a Zerg Defiler was able to use a Plague attack on some important units or buildings (albeit in that case I might choose to just take the damage and move on).

Wanted to play it, the game wouldn't let me bind shooting to any button on my mouse though. :l

I remember back in the day when PC gamers used to mock console gamers for not being able to save anywhere or use quick saves. Now that most games even on PC use similar checkpoint systems (to the point where Grim Fandango Remastered had to blithely point out at the start of the game that it DOESN'T do that), and because console games also offer save-anywhere features, the gloating has more or less stopped.

I've often found quick save to be effectively cheating, and any game which is overly reliant on being able to quick save/quick load an excellent example of appallingly bad game design. This includes pretty much any Quake 2/Quake 3-engine first-person shooter, which basically encouraged you to keep your finger near the F5 key by constantly launching instant death your way that could only be avoided if you actually knew it was coming from previous experience.

I did like how Soldier of Fortune handled this - giving you a limited number of quick saves each level on higher difficulties.

Wizardry 4. In fact, I believe the developers intend for you to do that.

The first clue is that the game provides 8 (!) save slots, and allows you to back your saves on to another disk if that isn't enough. (I find myself using 4 of them for real saves on any given playthrough.) Also, the fact that the game allows you to save and reload the save is a departure from past Wizardry titles.

There is an interesting downside to saving in that game; when you save, you are kicked out to the title screen, and when you reload, the level is reloaded, causing all the enemies you have killed to respawn. If you kill every wandering enemy without saving, there will be no encounters with them until you save or change floors.

Also, it seems that the game is all about risk management, as there are plenty of things that can screw you over that you need to watch out for. Thief stole an important item? Reload, or go back to the place you found the item and get it again. (You can also do this if you dropped the item, and you can even change which one of the special swords you have this way.) Enemy cast MAKANITO? Instant game over. Equipping the item that protects against MAKANITO? Well, it won't work unless you Invoke it, and when you do, it has a 15% chance of exploding. (This needs to be done at every Equip action.) Using the Dreampainter Ka to fully heal you? Again, 15% break chance. Hence, the strategy becomes trying to minimize risk as much as possible and reload if things go wrong.

(Another thing: The game warns you before the point of no return and strongly hints that there is an item from earlier that you will need. How many games are nice enough to do that? Wait a minute; Did I just call Wizardry 4 "nice"?)

Then again, in games like Tomb Raider (1996) the save-anywhere allowed you to try out hard or even impossible jumps. The game was definitely not always clear if some place could be reached with a long jump, or not. You just had to try it, sometimes even many times just to be sure.

Missing the jump would quite often mean you'd fall to your death (or even if you survived, you'd have to run and climb back up a long way, wasting time), so if the PC version had not have save anywhere, it would have discouraged at least me from exploring the levels fully and doing dangerous jumps. Apparently the Playstation version didn't have save-anywhere, so I am glad I was able to play the PC version. It gave me more enjoyment for exploration.


So if i got you right, you think save-anywhere is a bad thing as it may allow game developers make questionable design choices regarding the game difficulty etc.? At the same time, you mention that nowadays many console games offer save-anywhere. So are you against more console games offering save-anywhere, or what was your actual complaint? :)

It is really sad the option to manually save has become that rare it is now considered a major exploit but has a horrible name attached to it. Are we scum because save scum? It just sounds horrible.

I'll frequently save in every game I play because is how I roll and that is how I have always done it. I'd rather make my own check points then have some modern gaming prat make me wait an hour between two.