Baldur's Gate 3

Oh no! I'll be nothing but hair by the end! (ｰдｰ)

Nice another basedscummer, in Morrowind I and everyone else I knew had a "kill Vivec" save just for when you want to kill Vivec.

I'm pretty sure every single conversation I've had with that man has started with an audible IRL "Ah, God, just fuck off, Volo"

I don't hate him enough to murder him but I do definitely hate him enough to make snide comments and minimize his conversations as much as humanly possible. Maybe I should just heave him in the ocean and call it a day. Is he useful for anything later?

So there are different degrees of save scumming.

For example let's say you go to disarm a trap, and fail. The trap probably goes off and you take some damage. It you load and reroll on the trap, that's one version of save scumming.

Maybe you have a particularly hard battle. You enter the battle and a specific character doesn't roll high enough initiative or maybe their first attack/debuff fails. You load until a certain character or debuff hits, that's save scumming.

Maybe you have a few different dialogue choices. You want to ensure a specific reaction/outcome. Maybe you need to roll to make that happen. You load until that happens.

Maybe you're given a dialogue choice. You think your character is being snarky. You think you're being playful with your characters. Turns out you're wrong. You load and pick a different option.

Maybe you're mid battle. You realize you're going to lose. Maybe you'll survive with one character, but realistically you'll all die. It's not worth playing another 20 minutes just to die. You call it and load an old save.

Maybe you know you're going to win a fight. You only have enough resources for one fight. Maybe a character will die that you can't revive without going on a long adventure. You can do it. It's going to be easy. But it's going to take a bunch of time. You figure you aren't that far into the battle. Reload.

It's ultimately a single player game (yes, you can play with friends). If you're having fun, save scum all you want. If you think the game is "too easy" maybe save scum less.

Consider it you do save scum, you might be missing out on something. A character who always succeeds might not be fun. A character should have flaws. Going into a battle under prepared could make things more interesting.

Long story short, no, people who despise save scumming still reload an old save. Unless you're playing "hardcore" (you die, you die) you go back in time. You save scum.

Do what's fun.

I load when I enter fights I don't want to take. This is not because of the fight or it's outcomes, it's because it takes 5+ minutes to conclude the engagement and often times your party gets owned.

I don't have much time to play so I prefer to load out and make a marker and just deal with that at some point later.

The difference is that if you lose in battle the game can't go on, your only choice is to reload or start a new game. Making a choice in a dialouge is not the same thing at all and will never force you to reload. I always try to live with my choices even if the outcome is bad, it's all part of my own story.

Often enough the game gives you hints on time what companions think about certain topics. I rarely run into situations my party disapproves.

Also a chance to reconsider/appease/apologize before being attacked for a comment. Sometimes I don't get the exact meaning of what my character is saying until it's too late.

That's a great idea. I'd probably reconsider some choices if the right party member asked me to. And if Astarion disapproves, then I know I must be doing something right lol.

did you try to steal the idol to buy time?

Happened to me too. No idea wtf was going on and as of today I have no clue. I feel like I just skipped everything of act 2 (?). Gonna fix it on my second run somewhere in the future.

I did the same thing. I was so happy with my destruction until I started realizing who I had killed.

I do have file versioning on my save game folders. Hourly backup. Have saved my ass a couple of times when a game has limited number of save slots. Like BG3 has. 😅 Dont judge me, i easily do 25 quicksaves in less than 15 min sometimes.

Was it? I got it on my first try because i convinced half the duegar to work with me, then forced them to go away haha

I mean, I use the term to describe the action to others when I do it. I don't actually hold some elitist view that it's wrong, rather, I'm being ironic to make fun of those who do. It's a useful term in an of itself, without having to be exclusively for elitist use. It's convenient short-hand for something like "I save-scummed my way past that boss", or "I save-scummed every time I failed stealth" when simply describing how you played something to someone else.

And save scumming is absolutely and an intended mechanic in games like BG3, preventing it would be the easiest thing ever, but lots of games even go out of their way to make managing multiple saves convenient. Immersims go even further, in Deus Ex there are hotkeys to let you instantly set a save point at any time so you can load back to it when things don't go your way, or you want to try multiple approaches before committing to one.

It's even taken into consideration as a max difficulty option in some games, were the game will prevent you from backing up your save, and delete it upon getting a game-over.