Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why devs should(n't) care about save scumming ?

Example: I find a good set of armor at a merchant. I buy it, equip it, and make a new save file. Now, if I die later, I'll always have that armor. Save early, save often, save before, save after. This has been a mantra in these games since BG 1.

I think it is the latter. There have been threads before going on about having the devs do something to stop or limit "savescumming". So hate it, some have no issue with it. Personally, I don't see any problem, since it is a personal choice, and any player can choose to not do it. Some games literally require savescumming like Xcom 2. Though they actually have a cool system of maintaining like 3 or 4 save points every minute apart while you play. That way if you die, you can choose to just reload say 2 minutes in the existing battle to try and change the outcome. But I STILL save before starting a new mission regardless.

Immersion is a personal thing, different for everyone. Some things that "break immersion" for some, do not do so for others.

Savescumming could partially be fixed by adding an option for Iron Mode where you only save when you rest or the game constantly autosaves making actions permanent.
Personally I don't see issue with save scumming

I think you pretty much nailed that right on the head.

Yeah, save scumming is going to happen no matter what. Designing ways to discourage it is a complete waste of time at best, unless it's a major part of your design philosophy. Solasta actually used to preserve random seed by default, following the lead of games like Fire Emblem and XCOM. People hated it in Solasta because unlike those other two games, Solasta had dialogue skill checks and failing those always meant you were forced to murderhobo someone. Then they introduced an option to turn that off, but preserving was still the default option. Then they had it turned off by default afterwards, because most people didn't know that option existed and what it meant.

Though while your topic of barrelmancy is valid too, I personally don't see it as that much of a problem, as it could be easily fixed by just increasing their weight to the point where you can't put them in your inventory period. Even if nothing happens to the barrels, it's not a core mechanic, you actually CAN just ignore them as people like to argue, as it's not like enemies are picking them up to nuke your whole party at once either. In that respect, I'd have bigger problems with the frequency of throwable flasks and special arrows than barrels, as enemies do use those.

You can't really ignore height/backstab advantage and disadvantage though.

There are many reasons players reload and not all of them are for "bad" reasons.
Re-doing a battle isn't a bad form of savescumming for example, but if you want to limit the amount of times players do it, then do it through positive gameplay design.

There is nothing worse than feeling you've been conned out of something good due to a poor die roll and that's it. Get an item vs don't, save a person vs don't. Something positive vs something negative.

If I know that a couple of die rolls = a cool piece of gear and failing means I get nothing, then yeah, chances are players will reload until they get the item. But what about if getting said item meant also something negative? Like a faction hunting down the owner of said magical item, harassing the player(s), or meaning you miss out on a character joining you later on as a result of you owning said item. What if failure just mean you had to seek a different opportunity. You failed the charisma check, but you open up the opportunity to threaten, or take/achieve by force.

Say for example in the grove I fail to save the child via talking? What if I have a chance, to physically intervene, what would the ramifications be? Give me choice, rather than giving me success or failure so close together that re-loading just frankly makes sense. I appreciate it's a lot of effort to do this all the time, but the player is imho much less likely to reload (other than to see different outcomes out of curiosity), if they still feel in control of their destiny.

I don't particularly mind the option to save scum in single player games. But I do think that when players feel incentivised to do so regularly, there might be a problem with how things are designed. This is where the D20 ruleset shows some cracks when adapting form a tabletop format to a game.

As a DM, I don't let my players "take back" their rolls. Them failing at something just becomes part of the story going forward and gets incorporated into the way content unfolds. And I can do that because my stories are only as limited as I make them. A game, on the other hand, have very strict limitations for what it can and cannot do. Failing dice rolls can easily just lock you out of content and the more rolls you have to do in a row, the less likely you are to succeed. Failing a dice roll only to have someone blow up the entire room, likely killing you, is particularly annoying.

Let's take the Zhentarim hideout as an example. I don't remember the exact DCs, but they're not too bad individually. I think ~12 to 15 in increasing difficulty or thereabouts. So let's say the 4 skill checks are 12, 13, 14 and 15. Let's further assume you have 16 Dexterity and Charisma, as well as proficiency where it is relevant.

First check: Pure dex, so 9 or higher with +3.
Second check: 8 or higher with +5.
Third check: 9 or higher with +5.
Fourth check: 10 or higher with +5.

That's 4 checks that are each nearly just a coinflip that you have to pass. A rough headcalc. estimate gives me somewhere between 8 and 12% chance of success WITH the stats and proficiencies relevant. Even with Guidance (+1d4), you're looking at maybe 20% chance of making it. You can bypass having to do these specific checks via a quest, but that's not exactly obvious until you've done it and if you bumble your way into the place before that, you can lock this part out with a single bad roll.

Previous D&D games like Neverwinter Nights had mechanics like "Take 10" or whatever it was, where you could often bypass having to make a roll by simply checking your current bonus. This was typically done outside of combat and was a way to reward players for investing in a skill. We even have something like it in BG3 with the class specific dialogue options.

I think one possibly solution would be to alter how some (not all) of these interactions work. Instead of automatically going to the dice roll, maybe having proficiency with a skill could sometimes be counted as an automatic success. Let's say giving us the option to bypass DCs that would be equal to or lesse than 8 + skill bonus if (and only if) we're proficient.

I agree, I think there are really to many dice rolls in regards to conversations etc. I mean 1 here or there is fine, but when you have to do a roll check like 2 or 3 times in a single conversation it gets annoying.

This is a very solid summary of the matter...

...And this a perfect example of it.
It has been said countless times over the years and across several games, but the "trick" is designing the entire game under the assumption that even failing every single dialogue/story skill check won't just "lock you out of things" but simply opens new possibilities. Even at cost of putting some cleverly disguised crutch to help the player... Which doesn't mean "loaded dice". It means that the failure must become the starting point of a new scenario rather than an excuse to bash the players on their head.

A perfect example of this already present in BG3 is when the priestess captures you and if you fail the TWO chances to free yourself the game "cheats" and sends you a new NPC (a dwarf woman) introducing herself as one of Raphael's lackeys and freeing you instead... This time remarking that "You will own him one" for the favor.
See? It's a failure, but it's one that opens a new narrative scenario instead of cutting you out interesting content. Hell, arguably it's MORE Interesting that just succeeding.

This was one of my favorite parts of BG3.
Failing checks and resolving myself to reload or enter an unavoidable combat, but instead I'm given cool new content. More of this please.

Yep, totally agree. Consideration of all possible narrative strands is a major attraction of RPGs for me. Sadly, most games "choices" are largely flavour, and frequently structure thamselves around rather banal combat ( whatever the system being used ) in a somewhat lame hierarchy of "bosses"; presumably because the videogame player base mostly like to hit things.

One of the reasons I have the BG3 EA is because I sensed from what was shown that Larian were getting a lot better at building a more complex narrative than with their DOS games. The more that can be achieved by "talking" and "doing" rather than "hitting", the better the game will be ( for me, anyway ).

As I understand it, save-scumming isn't about reloading to try to do better or exploring different options - save scumming is about abusing RNG to cheat your way through the content, and not engaging with design in intended way. So less about reloading battle until you do well enough, and more about spamming finger of death that you have no chance of landing until you roll 20. Not playing iron-man is not the same as save-scumming. Bypassing mechanics through abuse of RNG: is.

I think people who will complaint about save-scumming are people who are susceptible to it, and don't enjoy it. How game design influences players is something devs should very much consider, though of course it is impossible to make a tailor-game made game for everyone. If we talk about skill-checks things few things to consider would be:

How many people reload if they fail a check?
Is failing a check our character is highly proficient with in some way engaging? Is winning a check we have little chance to succeed in rewarding?
Does RNG in skill checks make playthroughs more varied, or do players gravitate toward the same path, as their character choices are being bypassed through save-scumming?

Personally, I had a fine experience with BG3 skillchecks - most of them went as expected, there were few unfortunate failures, and few unexpected wins. With straight 20 roll, it is a matter of luck, and I can see things going terribly wrong for someone (assuming it is a flat 20d roll - FiraXCOM1&2 cheats quite a bit with their percentage, and players still complain about those few misses - something that I didn't find that commong in my many, many playthroughs. Some people will just dislike RNG). More importantly, I don't recall BG3 failing me into an instant failure state - having things go into unexpected direction is A-OK in my book, killing me (I mean pernamently - game over/try again) for rolling a wrong number is not.

Agreed!
I thought of an alternative solution that may balance the Save Scumming to reroll an encounter and Saving to shield progress:

Aside from the Autosaves the game applies, tie Progress saves to Short Rests (we have 2 of them) and perhaps the Camp and Waypoints.
You get 2 "free" saves out in the world but need to either return to camp or a Waypoint location for additional saves. You can still do it 100 times if you want but you have to leave the region ... in essence, pulling you out of the action. It becomes a choice; "do I use a short rest to save? Leave and come back? Or, roll the dice and take what comes?"

Or, we just leave it alone? If we start to redesign a game every time someone says "but that's open to abuse", we'll never get a game. This is a perfect example, I won't be "scumming" saves, but I will be saving just as I have since games with saves were made. I can remember when there was no such thing, or where autosaves were the only options. I think saving during combat is a bad thing, so I don't do it. However, how many here complaining about that loved Skyrim? You could, after all, save during combat, I've seen videos where people did it. Regardless, if I'm not save scumming, and Joe Normal is, how is that affecting my game? If we're not playing MP, it's not affecting me at all. Can they make it where we can't save during combat? I'm sure they can, others have. Is it necessary? No. From where I'm sitting, this topic is a whole lot of "but someone might do better at x than me because they "cheated" to do it", but if we're all tooling along in SP, it doesn't matter in the least bit what they managed to do. Some people love to use mods, but I don't. How many threads have I started insisting that mods have no business in games? None. Because it doesn't affect me, unless we're playing MP together. In that instance, if they're using mods, and I'm not, I can just quit that game, and look for another, or just play SP.

This is one of those topics that has me putting my head in my hands and asking "Why can't we all just get along"?

You are absolutely correct in your assessment. How you play your game has ZERO impact on how I play mine.

It shouldn't matter one iota if you want to save scum or not.

The only thing I would perhaps suggest is an achievement that unlocks if the player finishes without reloading once.
But again, purely a vanity feature and of no real importance.

The other thing I've noticed about BG3, is due to the way encounters are designed, you get AMBUSHED a lot.
That is to say, there's an aspect of the fight that isn't telegraphed early on that can really blindside you and wipe you out.

I tend to find myself reloading combat, because sometimes, things just go sideways and I wasn't able to adapt correctly.
The same comes for when your attempts to get a certain outcome in the game are foiled by a dice roll.

I don't have the time to replay the game over and over again from scratch, just to try and follow the story path I *actually* wanted to follow.

In a game where pathing will cause your party to literally jump off a cliff instead of climbing down a ladder, I cannot believe we're still debating any save limitations.

As I stated earlier in this thread, it isn't about people's option to save/reload until the game works out the way they want it to and more about the underlying designs that encourage save scumming. As Yahtzee Croshaw once said: "You can't blame someone for breaking a window if the only door is in the roof."

This typically comes with 2 elements; one is that the is a 'right' and a 'wrong' outcome to a skill roll, usually involving the player being locked out of content or rewards simply for having bad luck instead of being locked out because of player choice. The other is when several of these dice rolls happen in a short amount of time and failing any one of them leads to the 'wrong' outcome, which drastically stacks the deck against the player. The Zhentarim are particularly annoying to deal with, not just because there are many skill checks in a row, but because failing any of said skill checks have a fair shot of simply killing your party because they blow up the room you're in.

There are very simple ways to fix these problematic elements, some of which are already present in the game.

1: More class based dialogue options bypassing skill checks. They are usually really neat to have from a world-building and roleplaying perspective too. My Ranger calling out the tiefling wizard apprentice who wants to flee by saying something like "I AM the hunter, NOT the hunted" was a fun option to get. Or the Rogue interacting with the kids grifting passersby.

2: Proficiency based options bypassing skill checks. Makes sense to me for someone with proficiency with Persuasion to get to skip some (not all) dice rolls that goes on that skill.

3: Don't have a lot of checks required for a single outcome. 1 will usually do when we're rarely above 65% chance of succeeding the harder ones. Having a dice roll followed by having to pick a dialogue that can still screw it up still works fine. Having more than 1 should be reserved for very special encounters, IMO, because of the % chances the D20 system tend to work with. I am not counting dialogue perception checks in this, those seem to largely be fine.

4: Don't have people blow up the room you're standing in for failing a dialogue check. It feels very unfair that a bad dice roll during a dialogue can lead to Xd6 worth of unavoidable fire damage that I won't even get a chance to react to. Lock the doors, set things on fire and all of that, but give me a chance to get out of the way and treat it as a realtime "escape" encounter.

5: And most important of all, try to always have a narrative outcome other than just 'you failed' for whenever a dialogue check is called for. Like Raphael sending someone to free you if you can't do it on your own, because it is in his best interest that you feel like you're in his debt. A debt he will almost certainly come to collect, which adds tension and anticipation to the story going forward. A dice roll should decide which story paths you have available, not block them off without alternatives.

Personally, I don't mind the chance to 'fail' as I go along. It can make the story interesting and add replay value, but I do mind when the rolls are set up in a way that encourage save scumming because it feels so obvious that not succeeding was the wrong outcome. Not an alternate path or a setback, just the wrong outcome.

Is this the case with all of the dialogue checks in the game? Nope. But there are enough of them to notice and since we're in Early Access, this is the best time to call attention to the parts in the system we want improved. I think we can all agree that we don't want a system that encourages save scumming, even if doing it remains an option.

Yeah, but I think there is a seperate discussion to be made regarding combat rolls, and skill checks. For the most part my reply was meant toward combat encounters (that's what I understood Maximuus was refering to).

I do think that skillchecks as they currently are have a much higher chance of being unenjoyable and therefore save-scummed through - personally I had an ok time with it in my playtrhough, but I can also easily imagine alternative universe when it wasn't the case. As such I was always in favour of flat skill checks in cRPGs, and I like Josh Sawyers's preference of double dice rolls.

I will also agree that loosing rolls in BG3 is ususally not very interesting. Loosing content is never fun. If it results in death in coop, it might not be a problem due to resurrect, but I find that resurrecting my main in singleplayer cheapens the stakes, and disengages me. I think BG1&2 might have had a right idea afterall by making PC death as a game over state. Then again in BG3 no one and everyone is a PC.

Overall, I think you are absolutely correct in everything you have listed .

idk I kind of like that my PC can die. It's led to some great in game story moments.

I'm with Sawyer on this one. A 2d10 system as base sounds a lot less tedious than a D20 precisely because of the bell curve. Maybe I'll give it a test run with my own group sometime. Having an option to have the game run on one sounds neat and would probably go a long way to solve the janky interaction between D&D and a singleplayer experience.

Generally I don't find the rolls in combat to be a big problem, because there are usually a need for numerous failed rolls for the RNG to be the thing that kills you and because of that the results even out a lot more. If you lose a combat, the most likely reason is because you made suboptimal decisions before or during the encounter, though it is still possible to be at the complete mercy of the RNG even here.