As I said, those who cheat and then complain about the game being easy because they cheated receive the title of "dumbarse" and should be disregarded.
But they're not disregarded. They give feedback on the forum about difficulty balance and that, in turn, has an impact on the rest of us. Because nobody "save scumming" is giving feedback on balance and including the phrase
"by the way, I'm save scumming, so take my feedback with a grain of salt".
Besides, how are you going to stop people from using the game editor, or a hex editor, or a dev console code etc... to cheat the game? You aren't and that is why you balance the game for "inside" influences and not outside ones.
There's a pretty big and obvious difference between trying to stop someone from hacking the game versus a loot mechanic that is so easily exploited by simply abusing the save/load feature provided by the game. Like you said in your speech,
"..there are two types of game influences, 'inside' game influences and 'outside' game influences..", and hacking is definitely an "outside" influence, while easily abused reward mechanics are an "inside" influence.
After all, this is a game, not a vending machine. /shrug
Precisely. Which is why the current setup that allows players to treat treasure-giving devices like a vending machine should really be fixed.
