And I’d save scum in real life too, if I could!
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This is why xcom games have iron man mode. Save scumming is so much a known part of the game that it’s considered an extra challenge to play in a mode where you can’t save scum. I love xcom but I’ve never done iron man mode because there are some moments occasionally that are just serious bullshit and I don’t have the tolerance for it.
Play the way thats fun to you. That’s the point of games.
Save Scums Ironman Mode 😎
(Actually a thing btw)
Not to take from your point (which I fully agree with)…. But doesn’t XCom do an anti scum method of feeding the RNG seed in a way that prevents save scumming?
I know I’ve tried to scum some hacks in that game that always returned the same value.
Sort of. It depends where your save point is. If you’re on the world screen and save before selecting a mission your mission can generate differently when it loads. If you save in mission making the same moves will always give the same results, but changing your moves slightly will cause some different background math and change the chances on a shot hitting, etc. All the enemy groups are generated already if you save in level, so if you get ambushed in some horrific way you can avoid them on reload. I would typically save just before selecting a mission, another at mission start once I’m deployed, and then once more on mission completion. I would rarely use it and eat most of my mistakes, but on a few occasions I would have one of my units get totally fucked by a group somehow hidden one space away around a corner or something like that and then the scum power comes out to save my ass.
Yeah XCom is ridiculously bullshit with how RNG can completely screw up a mission. Ok if you miss a 90% shot, sure there’s a 10% chance you miss so that can happen. Missing multiple 90% shots in a row and getting completely slaughtered because of it? Complete bullshit.
It should add some compensation for this, like if you miss a 90% shot you get some extra points added to the next roll. There’s nothing realistic about rolling an RNG number to check if something happens or not so it’s being too strict on that just to make the game needlessly frustrating. Like if I’m doing perfect tactics and lose because of a string of unlucky rolls, it’s just the game randomly telling that I lose. Not much fun.
I remember one in particular where point blank shotguns with 2 soldiers and then my sniper all missed hitting the same damn enemy, all with 90% chance to hit. Resulted in my team getting absolutely steamrolled the next round. This may be the incident that caused me to figure out how to properly save scrub, haha, I was fucking pissed!
The RNG will return the same sequence of random numbers, but doing things in a different order will have those numbers used for different purposes. So saving and trying the exact same shot again will give the same result. If you rolled a 23 and you needed >25 to hit, it will always miss no matter how many times you reload it because 23 will always be the first number in the sequence. But if you do some other action, that 23 gets used for that, and if 56 is the next number in the sequence then that shot will hit when you do it on the next action.
I’m just surprised some people care. If you want to play with rules for limited saving that go beyond what the game is programmed to do, good for you champ, but some people enjoy playing all of the systems for their maximum advantage, and even more simply do not care.
Remember when Elden Ring came out and how mad the hardcore souls enthusiasts were when casual players (like myself) wished there was an easier mode? I couldn’t get past the first harder enemies and it just wasn’t fun because I’m awful at those kinds of games. Some people really hate when you don’t play for difficulty or the challenge. Personally I play games to get lost in a digital world not to prove I’m the best.
I still haven’t beat even 1% of the game because I gave up on it and went back to games I’m better at. Like my 500th playthrough of Half Life 1 or Hell Divers 2 on medium haha.
wished there was an easier mode
Okay, that’s a completely different issue though. The reason that difficulty selection gets push back is because developers are often very lazy in how they implement it, and it makes the “hard” modes little more than an exercise in tedium rather than an actual challenge. So people who enjoy the Dark Souls style games tend to get protective over one of the very few significant titles which scratches that itch these days. There are a wealth of significantly easier games to explore (and frankly better, too, unless you are there for the challenge).
That’s a great point and I definitely agree from that perspective. I didn’t really mean that it necessarily should have been implemented so much as the people that actually got mad that “you wouldn’t be playing it the way it was meant to be played”. I absolutely understand the technical issues that go into it (built server APIs at an indie game studio for some years if you can believe that after saying how bad I am at Elden Ring). It was just that the very idea that someone could want a more forgiving experience causing some other gamers to seeth over it for some reason as if someone’s casual gaming desire affected their ability to enjoy the game.
seeth over it for some reason
I told you what that reason was though, and you ignore it in favour of imagining strangers as entirely unreasonable antagonists.
Seething over someone wanting to enjoy a game they bought is unreasonable. Some people get pissed at the suggestion it should have an easier mode.
Accessibility takes nothing away from the way those players want to play Souls games. Simple, small adjustments to enemy health, damage, invincibility frames, and speed could go a very long way to making the game worth the money people paid for it.
It’s especially frustrating that Elden Ring was constantly pitched as the most accessible souls game, but it’s still not nearly as accessible as fans and reviewers made it out to be.
Exactly. It’s like some players want to gatekeep the game in a way where it’s an exclusive experience with this weird “If you’re trash then git gud or you shouldn’t play” mentality.
Weird how there’s this “there shouldn’t be an easy mode” mentality yet the community absolutely ate up the whole “Let me solo her” meme where another player literally came in and fought people’s fights for them and that was totally acceptable.
They only like those games so they can feel better than others. Gatekeeping is part of their fun.
If the souls games had much more to offer than difficulty like they claim, then the game would still be good with a lower difficulty.
Some people get pissed at the suggestion it should have an easier mode
Do they really though? Or are you just imagining the people you argue with online in the least charitable light?
Have you been on Reddit? I’m not saying this is the ER community as a whole by any means. My entire whole point is “why does anyone care how I or anyone else wants to play a single player game” even if it’s only a few people. I’ve seen comments verbally berating players for saying they wished there was an easier mode. Yes they’re the minority but my point was never “all players are like this”.
I didn’t ignore it, I just didn’t address your points individually. I just don’t think someone being “protective” of a game is a good reason to be mad when people who readily admit they suck but still wish they could play it because there’s nothing else really like these games for combat, pace, and worlds etc.
I don’t intend to act like all the fans are these angry seething fools. I’m just saying that it’s ridiculous that some of them would get mad about the idea that someone would actually prefer an easy mode. As if their enjoyment of the game is directly impacted by the level of difficulty another player plays on. Like the OP here, if someone save scums then who cares? If I’d love an easy mode for Elden Ring then who cares? It literally only impacts the person playing it. I like to play games for the worlds they create. Not to challenge myself. My job and life does that enough for me.
If there was an easy mode where enemies had say 50% HP (just an example) how would that impact anyone but me? Why is it justified for hardcore Souls-like fans to be upset about that?
A few tips, one of my favorite games but it is daunting.
Early enemies that you can’t beat like the horse rider mini boss are meant to be skipped initially and returned to later. There are a lot of immediately accessible areas which are pretty tough, but there’s also beginner dungeons. You kind of have to poke around and find them.
Co op makes this game way, way easier. Use the furled finger to place a sign down and be summoned as a helper. This is a great consequence free way to learn. If you die you keep all your runes and can upgrade and purchase stuff, and you can figure out where enemies hide, traps are, or what moves enemies use. Sometimes other players will show you useful tactics, and having someone distract enemies while the other person attacks from behind trivializes a lot of fights. Finally, helping someone beat a boss rewards you with a chunk of runes, and a finger remedy.
You can use a finger remedy to summon help to your world. This can have the consequence of allowing invaders, but you can summon two helpers at a time usually, resulting in a 3 on 1 fight for invaders. If you get lucky your helper will destroy bosses for you so keep an eye out for summoning signs at boss doors. Often times those people are well prepared to assist and may know the boss weakness and move sets.
If you don’t want player help but still want an assist you can use “summoning ashes” with a summoning bell. You can get this at the church where one of the first merchants is - go there at night after you’ve acquired your horse. As you play further you’ll find more powerful summons to help you, some with special abilities, some more useful than others. It requires mana to use these and will replace player helpers (only one at a time), but you won’t get invaded, can resummon them if you have mana, and they are useful as a distraction to enemies.
There’s a lot to discover, and bypassing harder parts to backtrack later is highly recommended. Beginner dungeons usually reward you with summoning ashes after defeating their bosses. Knowledge is power in Elden Ring, don’t be afraid to die to gain that knowledge.
It’s still a tough fucking game though, so I don’t blame you if it’s still not your thing. If any of that seems helpful though maybe give it another try!
games are supposed to be fun! let people have that fun however they want to! :)
Woooooah, slow down there Satan…
I save scum sometimes. I did a lot in bg3 because the skill checks have such a big random factor.
I don’t save scum in my favorite rogue like (Crawl: stone soup). Most of the time losing feels like my fault, and not just random.
I did it in BG3 after telling myself I wouldn’t.
But annoyingly, I’d walk into a room of enemies that I didn’t know were there and just get absolutely shredded, where the whole party would die.
Or I’d fail a check 4 times and feel like an entire quest line got closed off or that I couldn’t finish a quest because the fight was too difficult. Kind of annoying.
I play games with cheats so that I don’t have to struggle getting materials, or other annoying things that games do to pad out time. I play games within a small time frame, therefore, I do not want to spend the little bit of time I do have doing mind-numbingly boring shit, and get back to having actual fun. :)
Fuckin right.
I think they’re called trainers now though! WeMod is a good source
YES! I was going to say WeMod, but chose cheats instead, because some games I play require Cheat Engine since WeMod doesn’t have the cheats I’m looking for. Sometimes, Cheat Engine also has more options, and can always be used to make your own.
Thanks! Will look up Cheat Engine
Those of us who grew up on Atari and Commodore games don’t see it as cheats, just a little help with our slightly slower reactions 😂
Stardew Valley on paper oughta be easy to save scum, but in practice you do so much in a day, it’d be tedious to.
I definitely would save before risky moves in Morrowind, and would reload when it went poorly.
I recently played System Shock 2 for the first time and after some digging, realized the hacking puzzles were pure RNG. Fuck that.
INB4 someone mentions the bit from Rick and Morty.
Additional off my chest:
I’ve never intentionally watched an episode of Rick & Morty, and I never will.
So, I know the fans can be obnoxious, I get that, but just hear me out.
Like you, I wasn’t interested in watching it, then somebody posted this clip on Reddit. I watched it and thought, damn, I gotta check this out.
Im like 4 seasons behind, and I’m in no rush to get caught up, but maybe someday if I’m bored. If you have some personal vendetta or point to prove, then nevermind my comments, but if the popularity just turned you off, it’s not all bad.
I appreciate your assessment and it seems fair. However, there’s something about the writing and characters that I really don’t like and can’t get into.
I watched for a while, but dropped it as I liked everything about the show except Rick and Morty. The way those to talk is just annoying between the burps and the whining.
So yeah, I can relate to not getting into it.
I can totally see that. Everybody’s a real piece of shit on that show. I just put it in the genre of Seinfeld or It’s always Sunny, a bunch of assholes being assholes so we can laugh at them.
The burps and whining mere diminished once Justin Roiland got kicked from the team for calling underaged girls in Morty’s voice.
It is a lot more tolerable in the last season.
One of the best parts of that episode is Mr. Poopy butthole is in every scene of the intro sequence
…And hasn’t been in any episodes prior. He’s obviously the original prime parasite, right?
Right?
Okay, cool?
Cheats are enabled on my personal Minecraft server because it’s Minecraft and the only one being cheated on is the player’s feeling of accomplishment
I have definitely cheated into spectator when I fell in a 1 block wide hole with 5 villagers I wanted alive.
My siblings hates tedium and cheats a lot of it away.
Ain’t no competition.
it depends on the game imo. in the end so what it takes to enjoy it it’s your free time. but it’s also easy to remove the enjoyment entirely, and at some point you are better off just modding what you want in.
Nethacks a good example of that. permadeath is pretty key to the way the game was designed. restoring a backup save file does help when youre starting out but then why not just enable explorer mode and keep going?
Or if you’re reloading saves in bg3 every time the dice rolls are bad… why not just get a mod to do infinite rerolls or always roll perfectly?
