You Can't Prevent "Savescumming" in Stealth Games, and Nor Should You - by marbleman
demagogue on 5/8/2023 at 21:00
Re: what heywood just said, we had this debate for The Dark Mod, and one thing we decided, well first, one design principle we talked about is that soft mechanics are often better than hard mechanics. In this context, a hard mechanic is when the game enforces some limit, like a limit in the number of saves/loads, and a soft mechanic is just when the game tracks it.
So for this we decided to go the soft route. At the end the stat screen lists the number of times the player saved and loaded. It doesn't enforce anything, but when you're looking at that stat screen, if you have like 80 saves/loads listed, it's kind of an embarrassment, and you're less inclined to share it.
So the next time you play, there's that little inner pressure to save and load less just so it doesn't look that bad on the stat screen. And of course if you ironman it, no saves or loads at all, then that "0" stat on the screen is going to be a nice badge of honor, in combination with the 0 alerts stat for ghosting, which you can share a screenshot of and feel proud of.
Pyrian on 5/8/2023 at 21:09
Forums don't have upvotes or reactions, so I'm forced to post here just to say, "what demagogue just wrote".
Thirith on 6/8/2023 at 13:57
Definitely some good arguments, though heywood's post was explicitly not about either/or but about offering both options (note the toggle for unlimited saves). I understand games not doing it, but I know a number of games where I would totally go for the option of limited saves per mission myself.
Sulphur on 7/8/2023 at 03:11
RE: save limiting, I think in both principle and practice it's a pretty terrible idea. I know of two games that did this - AvP 1999, and Hitman Blood Money. Let me tell you now that regardless of whether the limit is lenient or not, the fact that it's there means that it asserts a certain kind of tension on your playthrough, and in both cases it actively undermined the playing of the game.
Blood Money rewarded exploration and discovery, so the fact that experimenting was punished by a limited number of player-set checkpoints meant you'd instead be subconsciously steered towards a more conservative playthrough for a first run of any level. I never actually ran into the limit, but this was still true regardless of my save count. Meanwhile, AvP 1999 killed me fairly easily, and a limit of 4 saves per level meant the level of tension I got from it was deeply irritating, and did not contribute to the overall feel of the game positively when I had to restart from the beginning and let rote memorisation guide my way. I do not see how chunking this system and sprinkling it over parts of a game would fare any better.
I think save points are a decent halfway house in games you're not trying to ghost if they're done right (like NV said). Alien: Isolation's save points were placed well, and positively contributed to the tension of the game because while A:I seemed bastard hard, you actually had a lot of tools at your disposal to not be insta-killed every time the Xenomorph was about to discover you. Having said that, I think playing through the Dishonoreds with only save points would have been a design miscalculation - not because the games are unforgiving, but because the levels are huge, and no map means they'd have to be dotted all around the place to not be frustrating to the player, and/or introduce the idea of 'safe zones' like Resi where your space is sacrosanct (mostly). MGS actually had a decent way of dealing with this by allowing you to save any time you could make a codec call - meaning, not in the middle of combat, so essentially when you were in any 'safe' area, undetected by enemies. These methods all work only to varying levels, but they're indubitably better than cutting off a player at the knees.
In the end, there's nothing wrong with quick saves. I'm not a fan of pure ghost runs, but I can see marbleman's argument, as quick saves are pretty much the only real enabler for that sort of playstyle. Player self-control or lack thereof is up to the wherewithal of each individual, and there's nothing wrong with incentives for playing a game by getting good at it as a healthy feedback loop to gently steer someone who cares about how much they're save scumming. Give a player a cosmetic item for fewer saves in a run; give them achievements for a ghost run; but most of all, give everyone the tools to play the game the way they want both diegetically (Dishonored, various MGS games) and through the ways you meter out progress and abstract out saving. We're adults (mostly), and we can be responsible when we want to be.
nicked on 7/8/2023 at 06:47
It depends on some aspects of the design as well. Quicksaves can be a problem if the player can get into a "soft" fail state - like being in a situation where it's impossible to avoid being killed by the alien in alien isolation, or say, you quicksave just before guards discover a bunch of stripped corpses in Hitman. Multiple save slots help, but there's still times in a lot of games where it's just not a good idea to save again until you've completed some sub-goal, so putting a set number of saves in total means you think more carefully about when to save.
The other thing to consider, especially with indie games coming out today, is that save systems are really fricking hard. A quicksave is several orders of magnitude more difficult to implement than a simple save point that just tracks certain progress variables. It's not an excuse of course, but it is likely to be the reason why some smallwr games don't have quick save.
Nameless Voice on 7/8/2023 at 13:04
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I know of two games that did this - AvP 1999, and Hitman Blood Money.
I played the original version of AvP 1999, not the Gold where they actually added in-mission saving.
I remember it as being one of the most tense games I've ever played. Especially, for some reason, as the Predator, hiding in a corner waiting for my medicomp to recharge while holding off aliens who came hunting for me.
I quite like the way Gloomwood has set up its save point system, where you can keep unlocking shortcuts back to the safe area so you can re-use a single safe area multiple times as you progress. I really don't like the idea of the limited saves system though, so I'd say even if I play on Blood Moon difficulty, I'll be turning that off straight away.
Quote Posted by nicked
The other thing to consider, especially with indie games coming out today, is that save systems are really fricking hard. A quicksave is several orders of magnitude more difficult to implement than a simple save point that just tracks certain progress variables.
Tell me about it. I recently spent
a lot of time implementing a general save game system in Unreal Engine. Still can't believe that the main engines don't just have these built-in from the start.
Of course, there are implementations available (including free ones), but none of them seemed to just do generic saves properly out of the box.
Not sure how similar the situation is for Unity.
heywood on 7/8/2023 at 14:46
I'd have no need for quick saves in a stealth game if auto-save systems were given a little more design attention. Level designers should be smart enough to design in an auto-save point before they're going to surprise the player in any significant way. Whether it's a scripted event like a set piece or big ambush, a boss battle, a plot twist, a forced choice, a long cut scene, or whatever, we shouldn't have to be regularly mashing the quicksave button just in case there's a surprise around the corner. Most games are decent about placing save points before boss battles, but designers often forget to save before trapping you in an unexpected cut sccene or dialogue tree at the end of which you make a plot choice. Games should also keep multiple auto-saves. No matter how good the auto-save system is, it will sometimes save at inconvenient times. If games would just keep the last 5 autosaves, I'd feel pretty confident in having something usable to roll back to. Fix those two things and I'd never quick save. The only other use I have for manual saves is bookmarking.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Let me tell you now that regardless of whether the limit is lenient or not, the fact that it's there means that it asserts a certain kind of tension on your playthrough
But that's the whole point. Big games today are all carrots and no sticks. The tension I used to feel in games of old, which I still feel when I've gotten to the door at the top of a castle when playing Mario with my kids, is pretty much missing from stealth games and imm sims if I let myself save often. Take away the risk and along with it goes the satisfaction of having finished a mission or beaten a level. Along with the risk goes some of the immersion. Stat pages may be enough to influence some gamers, but when I played Thief I rarely looked at them.
I can also see the connection between players using quick saves to break difficulty systems in stealth games, leading to players adopting restricted play styles like ghosting to find challenge. And then on to achievements. In my opinion, they are a crutch and we've let designers get away with bad difficulty balancing.
Like Thirith said though, I think we should still give players the option of saving just about anywhere.
Sulphur on 8/8/2023 at 04:23
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
I played the original version of AvP 1999, not the Gold where they actually added in-mission saving.
I remember it as being one of the most tense games I've ever played. Especially, for some reason, as the Predator, hiding in a corner waiting for my medicomp to recharge while holding off aliens who came hunting for me.
I think that makes sense - because the part of it I hated was the marine campaign, which is where you have the least amount of tools or abilities at your disposal. The alien and predator sections were much more manageable because, even with the save limit, you had some kind of edge you could use to keep your playthrough tenable.
Quote:
I quite like the way Gloomwood has set up its save point system, where you can keep unlocking shortcuts back to the safe area so you can re-use a single safe area multiple times as you progress.
That's quite smart, yeah. I haven't played it yet, but I'll get to it... eventually. (I guess I should make that my member title instead, huh.)
Quote Posted by heywood
Games should also keep multiple auto-saves. No matter how good the auto-save system is, it will sometimes save at inconvenient times. If games would just keep the last 5 autosaves, I'd feel pretty confident in having something usable to roll back to. Fix those two things and I'd never quick save. The only other use I have for manual saves is bookmarking.
This is something games are getting steadily better at, and Dishonored 2 actually does it. I wouldn't mind multiple quick-save slots either, though I can't remember the games that do that.
Quote:
But that's the whole point. Big games today are all carrots and no sticks.
That's literally untrue. Every single Soulsborne game is carrots and sticks, and I think a quantitative analysis might yield more sticks on balance. I don't think the threat of losing all progress in a level because you failed too much is a particularly constructive way of making a player better at a game; in this regard, I think we can agree that if a game's onboarding and teaching a player how to master it is on point, and it remains consistently fair throughout, then this is mitigated to a great extent, and limiting saves is an additional challenge you can
choose to put on top of it. The problem is there is no universal yardstick for this for every single player.
Quote:
The tension I used to feel in games of old, which I still feel when I've gotten to the door at the top of a castle when playing Mario with my kids, is pretty much missing from stealth games and imm sims if I let myself save often. Take away the risk and along with it goes the satisfaction of having finished a mission or beaten a level. Along with the risk goes some of the immersion. Stat pages may be enough to influence some gamers, but when I played Thief I rarely looked at them.
Mario's a very good example - because I hated every single NES Mario game I've ever played. Oh, I finished a whole bunch of levels, for sure, and even got to the end of one game; but the overall experience wasn't particularly compelling. But regardless of my feelings towards Mario, I'd say the lives + 1UP system works better for platformers which have comparatively fewer variables to contend with than an imsim or a stealth game. For Mario, you're working mostly on mechanical reflexes in concert with memorisation to get past a challenge. For Hitman and Thief and even the average modern FPS like Doom Eternal, you're juggling a lot more different things at any given point in time, and they're at least an order of magnitude or two more complex and reactive. Limiting your ability to get better at these games by punishing you for trying to figure them out teeters on the edge of sadism or masochism, I'd argue; though if you want that, like I said, all you have to do is be responsible for your save choices. Quick saves literally are a player choice. It's up to you to decide how to use them, and if that means exercising self-control, maybe consider that as part of the metagame.
Quote:
I can also see the connection between players using quick saves to break difficulty systems in stealth games, leading to players adopting restricted play styles like ghosting to find challenge. And then on to achievements. In my opinion, they are a crutch and we've let designers get away with bad difficulty balancing.
adopting ghosting as a way to surmount the player-created issue of save-scumming does not make rational sense. Ghosting is essentially the satisfaction of being what the game is telling you you are - you're Sam Fisher, you're Garrett, you're whoever, master thief, spy, blah blah, and you don't get caught unless you're not a master thief or spy. Quick saves don't break difficulty unless you're spamming F5 every five seconds because your ability to overcome a challenge is essentially stochastic and a quick load is a way to re-roll the dice - if that's the case, I'd say either the game isn't for you, or you should probably learn how to play it better by taking your finger off F5 and observing and learning instead.
Sulphur on 8/8/2023 at 11:55
Quote Posted by heywood
But that's the whole point. Big games today are all carrots and no sticks. The tension I used to feel in games of old, which I still feel when I've gotten to the door at the top of a castle when playing Mario with my kids, is pretty much missing from stealth games and imm sims if I let myself save often. Take away the risk and along with it goes the satisfaction of having finished a mission or beaten a level. Along with the risk goes some of the immersion.
Forgot to add, this is mostly what the roguelike format does anyway, so that sort of experience has definitely not died, it's just evolved into something a bit different. You can probably guess what my disposition to most roguelikes is from what I've posted already.
Thirith on 8/8/2023 at 14:23
@Sulphur: Regarding your earlier comment about all of us being grownups: I would be lying if I said that having a quicksave option didn't influence how I play a game, and I probably F5 more often than is best for my enjoyment of certain games. I wouldn't want these games to remove the option because I don't have better self-control, but I do appreciate the occasional game that makes me live with my decisions and mistakes, such as the Souls games. I know that my experience with these would be very different, and much less intense, if I could just save anywhere. Obviously not all games have to function like a Soulslike, but I can see the benefit of optional modes that restrict saves.
