Savescumming, respeccing, and cheating in RPGs

[J1M]

To be fair, there is a factor of wasted time though. A complete road block build that can not succeed should be something avoided. Granted, you can't dumb it down to the point of stupidity, so yes... in a perfect storm of such choices, I am not against a character/party becoming unplayable... but... I think in situations like this, it should be something that is apparent early on and also pretty obvious when considering the choices.

The danger is poor design by the developer where the choices don't properly reflect the function in game. In those situations, it isn't the player making a bad choice, it is the developers implementation.

The consequence should always produce a means for a player to succeed, though it may require extremely clever approaches to overcome them. Getting 40 hours into a game and hitting a wall would make most reasonable people not play the game (unless the game specifically catered to this style of play and the player understood this).

You expect your least-capable players to discover and overcome recovery challenges that require "extremely clever approaches"? It sounds like you are pitching a design to train people to use quickload.

Why would you cater to them? They aren't the intended audience.

This also is solved with new game start settings, but I still would design the game for the intended audience and if the "least-capable" needs to "quickload", well... that is their choice, but it won't be a default mechanic of play, nor will the game design around it. Use at your own gaming experience risk.

I would put the most interesting challenges that allow for clever approaches on the primary path, since something like that is probably indistinguishable from "permanently stuck without a game over screen" for anyone who needs recovery paths in the first place.

[Xenich]

You expect your least-capable players to discover and overcome recovery challenges that require "extremely clever approaches"? It sounds like you are pitching a design to train people to use quickload.

Why would you cater to them? They aren't the intended audience.

This also is solved with new game start settings, but I still would design the game for the intended audience and if the "least-capable" needs to "quickload", well... that is their choice, but it won't be a default mechanic of play, nor will the game design around it. Use at your own gaming experience risk.

I would put the most interesting challenges that allow for clever approaches on the primary path, since something like that is probably indistinguishable from "permanently stuck without a game over screen" for anyone who needs recovery paths in the first place.

How would that work in a situation where lets say the player picks the worst possible choices in character and party creation and selections. Don't you think there should be a point where if you accumulate "worst case scenario" decisions like that, it should for the most part make continued progression very unlikely? I mean, if you design it around the lowest common denominator, won't this directly effect the players at the higher end of the spectrum?

[J1M]

Why would you cater to them? They aren't the intended audience.

This also is solved with new game start settings, but I still would design the game for the intended audience and if the "least-capable" needs to "quickload", well... that is their choice, but it won't be a default mechanic of play, nor will the game design around it. Use at your own gaming experience risk.

I would put the most interesting challenges that allow for clever approaches on the primary path, since something like that is probably indistinguishable from "permanently stuck without a game over screen" for anyone who needs recovery paths in the first place.

How would that work in a situation where lets say the player picks the worst possible choices in character and party creation and selections. Don't you think there should be a point where if you accumulate "worst case scenario" decisions like that, it should for the most part make continued progression very unlikely? I mean, if you design it around the lowest common denominator, won't this directly effect the players at the higher end of the spectrum?

I think it is the height of arrogance for armchair or professional game designers to think that they have an encyclopedic understanding of which are the suboptimal and above-par character building choices. Even in the unlikely scenario where your math is correct, and you have perfect knowledge of what the other designers are doing, it's still highly likely that a bug in the code or an unintended interaction wildly swings things.

Not to mention the issues related to players reacting in unintended ways: not understanding interactions, missing things the dev team thought were obvious, fixating on certain things due to social contagion, and so on.

[Xenich]

I would put the most interesting challenges that allow for clever approaches on the primary path, since something like that is probably indistinguishable from "permanently stuck without a game over screen" for anyone who needs recovery paths in the first place.

How would that work in a situation where lets say the player picks the worst possible choices in character and party creation and selections. Don't you think there should be a point where if you accumulate "worst case scenario" decisions like that, it should for the most part make continued progression very unlikely? I mean, if you design it around the lowest common denominator, won't this directly effect the players at the higher end of the spectrum?

I think it is the height of arrogance for armchair or professional game designers to think that they have an encyclopedic understanding of which are the suboptimal and above-par character building choices. Even in the unlikely scenario where your math is correct, and you have perfect knowledge of what the other designers are doing, it's still highly likely that a bug in the code or an unintended interaction wildly swings things.

Not to mention the issues related to players reacting in unintended ways: not understanding interactions, missing things the dev team thought were obvious, fixating on certain things due to social contagion, and so on.

That however didn't answer my question.

[J1M]

How would that work in a situation where lets say the player picks the worst possible choices in character and party creation and selections. Don't you think there should be a point where if you accumulate "worst case scenario" decisions like that, it should for the most part make continued progression very unlikely? I mean, if you design it around the lowest common denominator, won't this directly effect the players at the higher end of the spectrum?

I think it is the height of arrogance for armchair or professional game designers to think that they have an encyclopedic understanding of which are the suboptimal and above-par character building choices. Even in the unlikely scenario where your math is correct, and you have perfect knowledge of what the other designers are doing, it's still highly likely that a bug in the code or an unintended interaction wildly swings things.

Not to mention the issues related to players reacting in unintended ways: not understanding interactions, missing things the dev team thought were obvious, fixating on certain things due to social contagion, and so on.

That however didn't answer my question.

Maybe you'll have to clarify. Either you don't let players have choices or you accept that some choices are going to be trap choices.

[Xenich]

I think it is the height of arrogance for armchair or professional game designers to think that they have an encyclopedic understanding of which are the suboptimal and above-par character building choices. Even in the unlikely scenario where your math is correct, and you have perfect knowledge of what the other designers are doing, it's still highly likely that a bug in the code or an unintended interaction wildly swings things.

Not to mention the issues related to players reacting in unintended ways: not understanding interactions, missing things the dev team thought were obvious, fixating on certain things due to social contagion, and so on.

That however didn't answer my question.

Maybe you'll have to clarify. Either you don't let players have choices or you accept that some choices are going to be trap choices.

What I mean specifically is player picking a horrible party selection design, like the absolute worst combination possible. That should cause them to either struggle greatly, or possibly fail (though I have never ran into a situation where it actually fails, it just becomes EXTREMELY difficult to win certain situations because of it). In those cases, I would be fine with a player having to start over and rethink their approach to how they design their character/party.

Honestly though, in such cases, that focus should be caught early on I would think.

I started out some games with a poor party (thinking I was going to be better later on or attempting a certain focus) and they would do well in key situations, but because it was such a limited scope of focus on my part, I greatly struggled in some encounters (to the point where I didn't think I would be able to win until I figured out some refined strategy, prayed to the RNG to give me some key rolls in my favor). As frustrating as it was, I actually enjoyed those circumstances once I was able to overcome them.

[WhiteShark]

As @rusty_shackleford was saying, a lot of older mechanics of play aren't as common (or exist) anymore because people don't want the "inconvenience" of a negative in play.

No, they don't exist because of quickload. Walked on a trap? Quickload. Equipped a cursed item? Quickload. Your favorite party member died? Quickload. Mechanical choice and consequence goes out the window when the consequence can be undone with a single button press. They still exist in roguelikes. This is seprate from the buildfag issue.

That is what I have been saying, I just push it a step further as to the reasoning for this mentality in play. The mechanic may have fostered the behavior, but the core reasoning behind it is inability to accept consequence to manage a less than ideal situation. The "buildfag" also sits in with this mentality as well for some (ie the "need" to have everything be "perfect").

Again, I am not speaking in absolutes here, there are reasonings for doing these things outside of that evaluation, but I think it plays a part with certain behaviors in gaming, more specifically with those players who go on about "fun" being a design objective and expect games to be "entertainment", not a contest.

The desire to avoid negative consequences is a core gamer, probably a core human, instinct. The extreme form of accepting negative consequences in gaming would be the strawman some users in this thread keep attacking: quitting a game permanently upon the first party wipe. The problem is not that people don't want negative consequences. The problem is the save system that makes negative consequences trivial to undo. I will reiterate: roguelikes still have the sorts of mechanics being here discussed, and they work because their consequences cannot be undone using only the the tools provided by the game―that is, without cheating.

The buildfag problem is related, as you say, but the instinct behind it is likewise not mistaken. The gamer's desire to do things better, faster, and more efficiently is normal, even laudable. It is natural for a gamer to wish to correct a subpar build or optimize an already good one. Whether the game should allow that is a different question. Roguelikes typically don't because it is a genre with a focus on (real, mechanical) choice and consequence. Some RPGs, especially JRPGs, make respeccing a core part of gameplay: reconfiguring your party is how you're expected to tackle new challenges. Both of these are fine designs. What's not fine is the compromise approach taken by some RPGs in which the game is ostensibly designed around build immutability but a respec system is provided to appease buildfags.

[rusty_shackleford]

The desire to avoid negative consequences is a core gamer, probably a core human, instinct.

[J1M]

That however didn't answer my question.

Maybe you'll have to clarify. Either you don't let players have choices or you accept that some choices are going to be trap choices.

What I mean specifically is player picking a horrible party selection design, like the absolute worst combination possible. That should cause them to either struggle greatly, or possibly fail (though I have never ran into a situation where it actually fails, it just becomes EXTREMELY difficult to win certain situations because of it). In those cases, I would be fine with a player having to start over and rethink their approach to how they design their character/party.

Honestly though, in such cases, that focus should be caught early on I would think.

I started out some games with a poor party (thinking I was going to be better later on or attempting a certain focus) and they would do well in key situations, but because it was such a limited scope of focus on my part, I greatly struggled in some encounters (to the point where I didn't think I would be able to win until I figured out some refined strategy, prayed to the RNG to give me some key rolls in my favor). As frustrating as it was, I actually enjoyed those circumstances once I was able to overcome them.

I think you should be allowed to make a party of 4 fighters or 4 white mages in Final Fantasy. Whether it works, the player muddles through, or starts over, they have had a novel experience, which is what games are supposed to be providing.

Given that players have been trained and naturally inclined to build a 'one of everything' party, I think this is an imaginary problem. As in, it only exists in the designer's imagination.

[rusty_shackleford]

It's not about being able to succeed by purposely choosing the least optimal, it's whether you can succeed when making uninformed choices. The massive majority of potential players would be unable to beat Underrail without looking up a build, it's one of the reasons I consider it to be poorly designed.

Ironically, the system used most by mix-maxers is the classic XP system which lets them get around progress blocking by resorting to XP grinding.

[J1M]

No, they don't exist because of quickload. Walked on a trap? Quickload. Equipped a cursed item? Quickload. Your favorite party member died? Quickload. Mechanical choice and consequence goes out the window when the consequence can be undone with a single button press. They still exist in roguelikes. This is seprate from the buildfag issue.

That is what I have been saying, I just push it a step further as to the reasoning for this mentality in play. The mechanic may have fostered the behavior, but the core reasoning behind it is inability to accept consequence to manage a less than ideal situation. The "buildfag" also sits in with this mentality as well for some (ie the "need" to have everything be "perfect").

Again, I am not speaking in absolutes here, there are reasonings for doing these things outside of that evaluation, but I think it plays a part with certain behaviors in gaming, more specifically with those players who go on about "fun" being a design objective and expect games to be "entertainment", not a contest.

The desire to avoid negative consequences is a core gamer, probably a core human, instinct. The extreme form of accepting negative consequences in gaming would be the strawman some users in this thread keep attacking: quitting a game permanently upon the first party wipe. The problem is not that people don't want negative consequences. The problem is the save system that makes negative consequences trivial to undo. I will reiterate: roguelikes still have the sorts of mechanics being here discussed, and they work because their consequences cannot be undone using only the the tools provided by the game―that is, without cheating.

The buildfag problem is related, as you say, but the instinct behind it is likewise not mistaken. The gamer's desire to do things better, faster, and more efficiently is normal, even laudable. It is natural for a gamer to wish to correct a subpar build or optimize an already good one. Whether the game should allow that is a different question. Roguelikes typically don't because it is a genre with a focus on (real, mechanical) choice and consequence. Some RPGs, especially JRPGs, make respeccing a core part of gameplay: reconfiguring your party is how you're expected to tackle new challenges. Both of these are fine designs. What's not fine is the compromise approach taken by some RPGs in which the game is ostensibly designed around build immutability but a respec system is provided to appease buildfags.

What we have yet to see, and what a studio needs to make in order for players to be open to negative consequences in an RPG, is a game where the best (as in most interesting and fun) content is gated behind failures along the way. Such that a cursed helm doesn't just give you +10 STR and -20 WILL, it also starts a lengthy quest line with the Lord of the Underworld where you can choose to join him or try to break free from the curse.

[Nooneatall]

No, they don't exist because of quickload. Walked on a trap? Quickload. Equipped a cursed item? Quickload. Your favorite party member died? Quickload. Mechanical choice and consequence goes out the window when the consequence can be undone with a single button press. They still exist in roguelikes. This is seprate from the buildfag issue.

That is what I have been saying, I just push it a step further as to the reasoning for this mentality in play. The mechanic may have fostered the behavior, but the core reasoning behind it is inability to accept consequence to manage a less than ideal situation. The "buildfag" also sits in with this mentality as well for some (ie the "need" to have everything be "perfect").

Again, I am not speaking in absolutes here, there are reasonings for doing these things outside of that evaluation, but I think it plays a part with certain behaviors in gaming, more specifically with those players who go on about "fun" being a design objective and expect games to be "entertainment", not a contest.

The desire to avoid negative consequences is a core gamer, probably a core human, instinct. The extreme form of accepting negative consequences in gaming would be the strawman some users in this thread keep attacking: quitting a game permanently upon the first party wipe. The problem is not that people don't want negative consequences. The problem is the save system that makes negative consequences trivial to undo. I will reiterate: roguelikes still have the sorts of mechanics being here discussed, and they work because their consequences cannot be undone using only the the tools provided by the game―that is, without cheating.

The buildfag problem is related, as you say, but the instinct behind it is likewise not mistaken. The gamer's desire to do things better, faster, and more efficiently is normal, even laudable. It is natural for a gamer to wish to correct a subpar build or optimize an already good one. Whether the game should allow that is a different question. Roguelikes typically don't because it is a genre with a focus on (real, mechanical) choice and consequence. Some RPGs, especially JRPGs, make respeccing a core part of gameplay: reconfiguring your party is how you're expected to tackle new challenges. Both of these are fine designs. What's not fine is the compromise approach taken by some RPGs in which the game is ostensibly designed around build immutability but a respec system is provided to appease buildfags.

The reason a roguelike works is because each run is a confined session that takes 2 seconds to get a new run up and the game play is the focus. Failing is part of the game loop and is expected.
Games as a whole are not designed like that. That are designed as a linear experience that you go through in order and have long cinematic sequences, tutorials, and dialogues.
Theres very few players that would play BG3 and then restart if that failed an encounter or check. Not even dark souls works like this, you lose your souls and go back to the last bonfire, it doesn't delete your character.
If the games were designed around pure gameplay this wouldn't be such a problem.
For instance, we know we will have to restart from the beginning in ghost and goblins. I don't need to save scum in a link to the past, you can't mess up the game.


I think really it comes down to time and game design. I'm not interested in starting a 40 hour story driven game over from the beginning because I accidentally made a bad choice.
I'm fine restarting castlevania or tome

[rusty_shackleford]

A major issue with most modern CRPGs is the game ends when your character dies. This is despite the fact that most settings have ways to revive people that have died.
I should say "when your character falls", rather than dies, however.

Settings that don't have access to revival magic can still work around this e.g., don't have the player die on defeat — an example here is Outward where you're captured upon defeat but this could easily apply to any advanced sci-fi setting with futuristic medical technology. Kenshi has you enslaved upon being defeated in many scenarios, Gothic has humans beat you up and rob you, but leave you alive, etc.,
Or the player character does die, but death is different: dork souls games send you back to the last bonfire, The Nameless One in Planescape Torment is nearly immortal and death is a setback not gameover, so on and so forth.

[Xenich]

A major issue with most modern CRPGs is the game ends when your character dies. This is despite the fact that most settings have ways to revive people that have died.
I should say "when your character falls", rather than dies, however.

Settings that don't have access to revival magic can still work around this e.g., don't have the player die on defeat — an example here is Outward where you're captured upon defeat but this could easily apply to any advanced sci-fi setting with futuristic medical technology. Kenshi has you enslaved upon being defeated in many scenarios, Gothic has humans beat you up and rob you, but leave you alive, etc.,
Or the player character does die, but death is different: dork souls games send you back to the last bonfire, The Nameless One in Planescape Torment is nearly immortal and death is a setback not gameover, so on and so forth.

[WhiteShark]

Theres very few players that would play BG3 and then restart if that failed an encounter or check. Not even dark souls works like this, you lose your souls and go back to the last bonfire, it doesn't delete your character.
[...]
I'm not interested in starting a 40 hour story driven game over from the beginning because I accidentally made a bad choice.

I don't think anybody's arguing for this. I was just making the point that, with regards to players' scrupulously avoiding all negative consequences, the fault lies with the save system, not human nature. I don't think every RPG needs to be a roguelike. The Dark Souls system is a perfectly viable alternative.

[Red7]

A major issue with most modern CRPGs is the game ends when your character dies. This is despite the fact that most settings have ways to revive people that have died.
I should say "when your character falls", rather than dies, however.

Settings that don't have access to revival magic can still work around this e.g., don't have the player die on defeat — an example here is Outward where you're captured upon defeat but this could easily apply to any advanced sci-fi setting with futuristic medical technology. Kenshi has you enslaved upon being defeated in many scenarios, Gothic has humans beat you up and rob you, but leave you alive, etc.,
Or the player character does die, but death is different: dork souls games send you back to the last bonfire, The Nameless One in Planescape Torment is nearly immortal and death is a setback not gameover, so on and so forth.

only reason u cant reload in real life is limitations of compute power/sharing it with other *******.
but in man made emulation that runs for u only, u absolutely should have failure state and ability to rewert to correct it, so u can achieve something; error correction/avoidance.

lack of failure state that FORCES correction means u have 0 reason to improve in objective manner as there is no cryterium of improvement even, u could just cycle in loop of respawn at infinity.
i hate respawn on death system, even if i have to manualy replace save file to retrace to place where i ****** up.

those systems are digusting and ********. plus waste time

[Red7]

Theres very few players that would play BG3 and then restart if that failed an encounter or check. Not even dark souls works like this, you lose your souls and go back to the last bonfire, it doesn't delete your character.
[...]
I'm not interested in starting a 40 hour story driven game over from the beginning because I accidentally made a bad choice.

I don't think anybody's arguing for this. I was just making the point that, with regards to players' scrupulously avoiding all negative consequences, the fault lies with the save system, not human nature. I don't think every RPG needs to be a roguelike. The Dark Souls system is a perfectly viable alternative.

if avoiding negative consequences is impossibole its bad game design.
or designer wants player feel weak/no real agency and ****** ergo ******** design too.

[Xenich]

Theres very few players that would play BG3 and then restart if that failed an encounter or check. Not even dark souls works like this, you lose your souls and go back to the last bonfire, it doesn't delete your character.
[...]
I'm not interested in starting a 40 hour story driven game over from the beginning because I accidentally made a bad choice.

I don't think anybody's arguing for this. I was just making the point that, with regards to players' scrupulously avoiding all negative consequences, the fault lies with the save system, not human nature. I don't think every RPG needs to be a roguelike. The Dark Souls system is a perfectly viable alternative.

Makes me think about why I enjoyed some of the aspects of some early MMO's design on death. You can't cheat it, there is no quick fix, you must deal with the consequences.

I guess that is why I liked EQ. I am not talking about the "lose your corpse due to decay", that was always a technical limitation. What I liked was the consequences of long term travel, respawning naked somewhere and having to figure out how to get back and to your corpse to recover.

I think some form of this "style" of implementation at its core could be a nice change from the more traditional save game mechanics. Granted it would require a lot of redesign of a single player games structure, but I think it is an interesting thought.

Take a game like Baldur's gate 3. You die, you are spawned back at some location that is limited in selections, you are naked, and when this happens, numerous areas that have been cleaned out have limited respawns (though logically reasoned) and now you and your party have to scavenge your way back to where you died, picking up any loot to aid you get back to where you died to recover your items and continue on.

Again, it would have to be reasoned so it doesn't feel campy (and there would be some roadblocks to consider), but with this style of approach, it creates a nice risk vs reward.

[WhiteShark]

if avoiding negative consequences is impossibole its bad game design.
or designer wants player feel weak/no real agency and ****** ergo ******** design too.

Of course there should be a way to avoid negative consequences, and that way should be the primary gameplay of the game: play well and one won't suffer bad things. Undetectable traps that can straight kill the player character from full health, for example, are bad in both roguelikes and other RPGs because no amount of skill can prevent deaths to them. It's when things that should be avoided by player skill and good decision-making are instead negated by quickload that the problem begins.

[Nooneatall]

Theres very few players that would play BG3 and then restart if that failed an encounter or check. Not even dark souls works like this, you lose your souls and go back to the last bonfire, it doesn't delete your character.
[...]
I'm not interested in starting a 40 hour story driven game over from the beginning because I accidentally made a bad choice.

I don't think anybody's arguing for this. I was just making the point that, with regards to players' scrupulously avoiding all negative consequences, the fault lies with the save system, not human nature. I don't think every RPG needs to be a roguelike. The Dark Souls system is a perfectly viable alternative.

Makes me think about why I enjoyed some of the aspects of some early MMO's design on death. You can't cheat it, there is no quick fix, you must deal with the consequences.

I guess that is why I liked EQ. I am not talking about the "lose your corpse due to decay", that was always a technical limitation. What I liked was the consequences of long term travel, respawning naked somewhere and having to figure out how to get back and to your corpse to recover.

I think some form of this "style" of implementation at its core could be a nice change from the more traditional save game mechanics. Granted it would require a lot of redesign of a single player games structure, but I think it is an interesting thought.

Take a game like Baldur's gate 3. You die, you are spawned back at some location that is limited in selections, you are naked, and when this happens, numerous areas that have been cleaned out have limited respawns (though logically reasoned) and now you and your party have to scavenge your way back to where you died, picking up any loot to aid you get back to where you died to recover your items and continue on.

Again, it would have to be reasoned so it doesn't feel campy (and there would be some roadblocks to consider), but with this style of approach, it creates a nice risk vs reward.

One thing you could do is have a monkey with a hammer delivered with the game. When the player fails the game in some way the moneky is shocked remotely until it is ****** off enough that it starts hammering the **** out of the player's johnson with a hammer.

[rusty_shackleford]

While I don't endorse ironman(game over = new character), this guy makes Daggerfall significantly more interesting by not savescumming and is a great example of my argument throughout this thread.



He spends a lot of effort on preparation to bring the right consumables, etc., to be able to survive in a dungeon long enough to finish the quest, discusses attrition, why flawed characters can improve a game, and so forth.

Thanks @Brother Michael

[Norfleet]

That's true, the game designers did want my progeny to be gay and there's several events that enforce that. I guess I should give up this mod and just let everyone be gay, bi, and asexual.
You know, even worse, if I couldn't mod the game and then I save scummed when my heir turned gay.

Hmm... ok.. not sure on the games features... but do this...

Set an arranged marriage, impregnate the wife yourself, send the heir off to some conflict you know he will die in. Problem solved. Line continues, bad seed removed.

Essentially, this game is quite easy in a lot of ways so every time there is an update or DLC the devs try to make it harder. When it first came out I reinvigorated the roman empire and I don't remember there being this much gay stuff. If you've played their other games they do the same thing, the base version is easy and there are not many features and then they keep adding stuff (for better or worse).
There's a ton of different things you can do if your son is gay. For instance, one thing you might do is to murder your gay child. But obviously if you aren't playing a high intrigue character that's going to be very difficult and you will get found out. One other thing you'd do is force the gay son to join a holy order or become a priest. The devs are so smart and really want to balance the game so they added a BS mechanic to counteract you from doing stuff like that and you are pretty much forced to play with the gay son.

Honestly, having a gay heir isn't the worst outcome you could have. It's really only a slight opinion malus and fertility penalty. Excess fertilty can be somewhat of a headache anyway, so this is an entirely manageable outcome. Push comes to shove, you can always make him a crusader. Either he will distinguish himself sufficiently in battle to offset the penalties, or he will die with honor.

If it was just a symbol that showed he was gay you might be able to ignore it, but there are events where characters do gay stuff and other weird stuff.

I don't remember things being quite so uncomfortably graphic, but maybe they've gotten more so in CK3.

[Lord of Riva]

Savescumming is great, respeccing is not.

[Valter]

If an optional feature takes little dev time to be implemented, just let the player decide whether he uses it or not.

[WhiteShark]

If an optional feature takes little dev time to be implemented, just let the player decide whether he uses it or not.

It'd be really easy to implement a god mode and bind it to a key by default, too, but I doubt most would want that.

[Lord of Riva]

If an optional feature takes little dev time to be implemented, just let the player decide whether he uses it or not.

It'd be really easy to implement a god mode and bind it to a key by default, too, but I doubt most would want that.

Interesting take but wrong, sorry for the late posting but the decline in freely available cheats is a huge decline in gaming. There is nothing wrong with iddqd and Idkfa.

[WhiteShark]

If an optional feature takes little dev time to be implemented, just let the player decide whether he uses it or not.

It'd be really easy to implement a god mode and bind it to a key by default, too, but I doubt most would want that.

Interesting take but wrong, sorry for the late posting but the decline in freely available cheats is a huge decline in gaming. There is nothing wrong with iddqd and Idkfa.

I don't see any value in cheat codes, but, regardless, there's one big difference: cheat codes are explicitly cheats, whereas quickload is presented as a legitimate game mechanic. That's impactful in two ways: the devs won't design the game around cheats, and the players will understand that using them is illegitimate. Someone who wouldn't think twice about quickloading would probably still hesitate to use a "rewind cheat".

[rusty_shackleford]

Cheats are no longer marked as cheats because it would upset the people who rely on them to beat games.

[TKVNC]

Cheats are no longer marked as cheats because it would upset the people who rely on them to beat games.

Reddit and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[Lord of Riva]

It'd be really easy to implement a god mode and bind it to a key by default, too, but I doubt most would want that.

Interesting take but wrong, sorry for the late posting but the decline in freely available cheats is a huge decline in gaming. There is nothing wrong with iddqd and Idkfa.

I don't see any value in cheat codes, but, regardless, there's one big difference: cheat codes are explicitly cheats, whereas quickload is presented as a legitimate game mechanic. That's impactful in two ways: the devs won't design the game around cheats, and the players will understand that using them is illegitimate. Someone who wouldn't think twice about quickloading would probably still hesitate to use a "rewind cheat".

Games are designed to be fun, when cheats, like in doom were implemented it was because of debugging and playtesting, of course, however that they remained is a testament to them being fun. The same is true for quicksaving and quickloading which is mostly a QoL feature.

There are some system design choices that influence game-design for sure, microtransactions for example need to change the game-design to sell they **** instead of rewarding their players for their gameplay.

What you suggest is a non-sequitur, games can and are designed without qucikload and quicksave in mind, there simply is not evidence for that impacting design. From my own experience in gamedev it simply is a generally accepted practices of most games to allow saves, after that it is simply just a simple change to associate a button to that.

There are games in witch saving whenever you want are detracting from the experience, in my eyes basically solely games that have a short playthrough cycle and high randomness, like rogue(likes) in most other cases it simply does not affect game design at all or detracts from it.