Did you check out the link I posted? Because that's really not the point I'm making. The point I'm trying to make is it's risky to let people choose to make the experience less enjoyable for themselves. What is the correct amount of save scumming? I think it should be pretty much zero, if people are reloading to deal with bugs or have either died or backed them into an unwinnable situation that's fine. If people are reloading to get out of suffering negative consequences then I'd argue that's pretty much always a problem. If the game can prevent or disicentivise this it won't affect people who don't use saves in this way and will improve the game for people who do.
The upside is if people are using save scumming to get around other design flaws. This isn't an ideal situation but shouldn't be completely ignored. If there's no interesting consequences for failing actions and important plot points are permanently locked behind skill checks. This is an old GM rule of thumb of "don't make players roll dice unless you're prepared for them to fail" The game shouldn't be worse if players fail a check. If it is then save scumming isn't the solution, instead skill checks need to be revised or removed.
The other upside is what about players who just don't ever want to suffer bad consequences? If we can trust players to make this decision (which is risky) then save scumming is a really inelegant solution. Maybe we can give players infinite inspiration, or have an option for it. We can make NPCs immune to death or able to be targetted by revivify or raise dead. This has the dual advantage of making fixing these problems simpler and making it explicit to the player what they are choosing. Players tend to have a lot more resistance to selecting an easy mode than making the game easier by abusing saves.
I read the article but I am having trouble putting myself into the shoes of someone who thinks like that. Even if I optimize the crap out of one character and breeze through a game it is easy for me to play the next time with a character who cannot do these things. I have no temptation to switch back to the easy method on them. Some of the examples given also seemed to make sense for efficiency and removing them because a few felt compelled to always use them seems silly to me. I despise handholding and railroading just because others are apparently weak willed. I think having an easy mode for the chronic savescummers and a toggle for the anti savescummers should be fine for this game.
I already mentioned a while back that the best way around save scumming for story elements at least, is to make outcomes of your choices only transpire further down the road.
The immediate consequence of a decision promotes save scumming as it becomes obvious what is "good" and what is "bad", Give me grey and then later on let me find out what that decision meant, either way.
This would be great. I especially like options where the good choice leads to bad results and vice versa. However some people will look up what is supposed to happen in online guides and make decisions accordingly. :P
