And I’d save scum in real life too, if I could!
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.
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.
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.
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! :)
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.
