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 think there's at least some common ground here. My philosophy on games design holds that the most fun way to play and the most efficient way to play should be the same. That said I don't think we need to agree on the best way to design a game to agree on how to approach the issue. I might ideally I'd have an option where you couldn't manually save and the game autosaved whenever the player fails a roll but that isn't actually practical because of the risk that poor luck or a bug would create an unwinnable situation.
In reality I'd want something like:
1) Seed dice rolls. If you reload because you rolled a one then retry the same action you're gonna get that one.
2) Have an options menu labelled as "Cheat Options" In here you can deactivate seeded dice rolls, toggle NPC immortality, allow unlimited use of inspiration in dialogue and auto roll 20s in dialogue.
That's pretty similar to what you said should be fine, it's really only different in terms of framing.
