But (I'll bite), why assume it's a minority of players who use the save/load feature when a special container fails to yield useful rewards?
So assume a majority of players are save scumming at least with bosses and special containers. Is the difficulty going to be cranked up so high that no tactics can help, and the only way to survive on the hardest difficulty is to save scum as well?
I don't know about
"cranked up so high that no tactics can help", but adjusted, certainly.
During the beta tests at Larian Studios, they mentioned that when people were playing co-op they were much less likely to reload (even for things much more significant than loot).
Well.. that's difficult to accurately judge as (up to now) reloading a saved game while playing co-op has been plagued with problems (companion sorting issues, for example). I can say for me personally (as I play co-op) those problems have been annoying enough that I do avoid reloading as much as possible, but mainly because of those problems. Once those problems are gone reloading in co-op becomes completely painless. It will always be likely to be less frequent, however, because reloading in co-op usually relies on first discussing the action with your partner (unless you're playing with someone who just breaks out surprise and arbitrary reloads on you, in which case I doubt you'd be playing with them for very long).
That said, prior to picking up an NPC companion, a friend I play co-op with tends to play the save/reload game at special loot containers. And since the possibility for something better always exists on that next re-roll of the dice, she tends to never be quite satisfied with what's coming out of the treasure chest. So, 10 minutes and ~20 reloads later I find myself having to ask
"can we just go play the game now instead of playing slot machines some more?".And that really is the meat of the problem - why create that issue to begin with? Players take advantage of this loophole in the design because it's there to take advantage of. And since there are better ways to implement this, ways that don't leave this mechanic open to abuse, perhaps they should be pursued. That's what we generally do with abusable mechanics that are bad for the integrity of the game - we try to fix them, even if it's a single player game. That's why the "Raistlin" and "Lone Wolf" traits are no longer compatible, that's why summons don't award XP anymore, and that's why save-scumming should be minimized.
Some people in this thread have been using the ridiculous argument that it's pointless to try and fix save-scumming because players can just cheat through other means (hex editor, trainers, etc). I label that argument as ridiculous because, going by that flawed logic, we might as well not fix any exploitable mechanic. Apparently no matter how much we fix there is always a way to break something else, and suddenly two wrongs make a right, there will always be bugs and things that need fixing and tweaking, so let's just ship the game now.
That's all just a load of nonsense. You fix what you can, and hope the rest doesn't bite you in the bum. You don't avoid fixing a problem because someone might work around your fix by using an editor.