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Save states, yay or nay?


Save states, yay or nay?  

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  1. 1. Do you use save states?

    • Yes
      82
    • No
      40


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I remember when I started playing FE. I was 13, and it was on emulator. And then I discovered savestates and the wonders of RNG variance.

Boy, did I abuse the hell out of it.

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That is different to the example I was proposing, but it is an effective one nonetheless.

My argument has nothing to do with luck or any thought processes required at all. I'm asking why you think the execution part is important enough to the point that you should always restart and do the whole chapter in one sitting.

Given you think it's okay (but less skilled) to utilise saves to experiment with enemy behaviour in order to formulate a better strategy, why should someone who has experimented and successfully deduced a good plan of action promptly restart the map and simply do the exact same things that lead to the exact same scenario? You can argue that they may be less skilled because of how they reached their conclusion, but how can they be worse players for simply not spending an extra minute or two moving units around following a checklist?

Alright, my turn to jump in.

For the GBA FEs, the RNG is set. Thus, I see no difference between using a save state and writing down the result of every single move/RNG burn. In other words, your point holds, and for the life of me, I don't see why memorizing everything is "superior", given the circumstances.

For the DS FEs (and Awakening), the RNG is a lot less predictable. Sure, I could reset my clock for the DS FEs to get what I want, but that is more effort than I'm willing to put in. Thus, I can sort of see where Chiki has a point (though save points are quite handy for rigging arena battles).

I have no idea how the RNG works in the Tellius games, and the single RN games are blargh.

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>Someone is "unkind" for you.

>Call him dick.

ibzctqQHGj5Olh.gif

Whenever I press Shift + F1, Chiki slaps me across the internet. It's quite impressive, really.

It shouldn't even matter.

Is it bad to discuss what is effective? What is cheap tactic, what not?

Please, guys tell me: what makes you to restart chapter so often that you need to use save stats?

SF looks kinda like a mutual admiration society. I'm thinking about leaving this forum. I'm also preatty sure no one would miss me.

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SF looks kinda like a mutual admiration society. I'm thinking about leaving this forum. I'm also preatty sure no one would miss me.

okay? There's a reason people dislike Chiki, by the way.

Is it bad to discuss what is effective? What is cheap tactic, what not?

It is fine to discuss, I just didn't think a simple question about whether you use savestates would segue into how to judge people who are bad players in a single player game. Edited by Tryhard
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Chiki, I think what you're referring to is effort. A player that has its strategy well planned and excecutes it with savestates, is not necessarily a player improvising and just trying different moves in a segmented part of the whole chapter. And it doesn't give more merit to a player that did it without save states. The important part is effort, one excecutes it "cleanly" without saves and the other one excecutes it without the need of restarting the whole chapter. If the strategy is well done and is consistent enough to clear a chapter, then the only issue with it failing is the RNG aspect, while one of the players just needs to restart from the previous state, the other one needs to restart the entire chapter. This just means one needs to deal with the chapter with much more effort than the other. This has nothing to do with skill or whether who is a better player than other. Skill is better measured by the quality of a strategy and whether a player finds out different ways to clear a chapter, for example.

Part of it is effort, yes. A football player who exerts more effort than another player with equal skill is the better player. I think this is pretty intuitive.

The other part is that it takes more thinking to come up with an RNG-proof strategy. It's not a necessary indication that some player is better than another (since I could just go and save state abuse right now for the rest of my life when I play FE, but I'd still be good at the game), but it's entirely possible that some player may not be able to come up with a good RNG-proof strategy while another, more skilled player could.

My argument has nothing to do with luck or any thought processes required at all. I'm asking why you think the execution part is important enough to the point that you should always restart and do the whole chapter in one sitting.

Given you think it's okay (but less skilled) to utilise saves to experiment with enemy behaviour in order to formulate a better strategy, why should someone who has experimented and successfully deduced a good plan of action promptly restart the map and simply do the exact same things that lead to the exact same scenario? You can argue that they may be less skilled because of how they reached their conclusion, but how can they be worse players for simply not spending an extra minute or two moving units around following a checklist?

I'm confused. It's not just doing the exact same thing since the RNG changes upon restart, right? You need to plan an RNG-proof strategy.

For the GBA FEs, the RNG is set. Thus, I see no difference between using a save state and writing down the result of every single move/RNG burn. In other words, your point holds, and for the life of me, I don't see why memorizing everything is "superior", given the circumstances.

The RNG is the same as other FE games in Tellius games. Unless the RNG changes in FE678 upon restart, then the only point that holds is the point I made about effort.

Ive also had enough stones to apologize to the person that was directed at in private. And ooohohoooh yes you have. You have never ever owned up to being an asshole. You never apologize for your behavior. You also think you are objectively correct when in truth, all im seeing is BS. Let me remind you that people on this forum barely tolerate you.

The dickishness of this post is off the goddamn charts.

Calling people bad players for simply using an emulation option. Yeah im such a cunt compared to you...obviously.

:facepalm:

Apparently its hurting Chiki because he has to make himself look oh so superior.

Oh dear, I called someone a bad player at a video game. What a horrific insult. Why don't you report me to the mods?

Lol, I honestly don't care about what people who consider "bad player" to be a serious insult think. You're over 30 years old, I'd honestly expect you to be more mature than that.

Edited by Chiki
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okay?

Okay.

It is fine to discuss, I just didn't think a simple question about whether you use savestates would segue into how to judge people who are bad players in a single player game.

It's simple question, but important question. Spamming savestats is equal to cheating. Other forms of using savestats makes game a lot easier. Especially in FE aren't many bullshit moments. I recall only few: Saias enter stage in FE5, Gel in FE6. Maybe I miss something but overall only few moments in series. I don't think that's the reason to use savestats.

Other reason which comes to my mind are moment's when you miss 99% hit or other strange rns. But it doesn't happend all time.

So again, plz tell me what's the reason to use savestats?

Edited by Nicolas
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So again, plz tell me what's the reason to use savestats?

Make up for a lack of skill. Save states make it trivial to fix your mistakes and they also allow you to manipulate luck as you choose so you get your desired outcome.

Before I was even a teenager, I used to use save states for almost every move because I just wasn't good enough to beat chapters while keeping my units alive. I needed to manipulate luck to fix the mistakes I made. Obviously, I improved (all of my LTCs are done on console). People here should do the same if they want to be considered as a good player.

Edited by Chiki
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The RNG is the same as other FE games in Tellius games. Unless the RNG changes in FE678 upon restart, then the only point that holds is the point I made about effort.

Alright, if anyone else has anything to say about this, smack me over the head, because I'm going off of my memory. This should be verifiable via some program that spits out the state of the RNG, but I'm too lazy to do that.

As far as I know, the RNG state is preserved upon a fresh restart in the GBA FE games. Thus, I don't see the point in trying to do everything in one shot - the RNG will pan out exactly the same, and it's up to me to find the inconvenient numbers to burn. Shadow Dragon and beyond use the clock as part of the RNG process, so an emulator save state will preserve the RNG sequence, while a restart will alter it (I think the RNG resets on save point reloads, too). Thus, I can see why resorting to save states can be seen as less-than-ideal in the DS games.

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Make up for a lack of skill. Save states make it trivial to fix your mistakes and they also allow you to manipulate luck as you choose so you get your desired outcome.

Before I was even a teenager, I used to use save states for almost every move because I just wasn't good enough to beat chapters while keeping my units alive. I needed to manipulate luck to fix the mistakes I made. Obviously, I improved (all of my LTCs are done on console). People here should do the same if they want to be considered as a good player.

Hey, I want to hear that from them! :smug:

But every FE game, which I recall allow you to make some errors. Even if you lose few units you can replace them by other. In FE5 you have 52 units. In most chapters you use ~14. In Fe6 you have 53 and most of them are usable. In FE8 you have 33 and Seth. Remember you also have some special weapons like killers, silvers and legendary, which allow you to use weaker units without feeling their weakness.

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Alright, if anyone else has anything to say about this, smack me over the head, because I'm going off of my memory. This should be verifiable via some program that spits out the state of the RNG, but I'm too lazy to do that.

As far as I know, the RNG state is preserved upon a fresh restart in the GBA FE games. Thus, I don't see the point in trying to do everything in one shot - the RNG will pan out exactly the same, and it's up to me to find the inconvenient numbers to burn. Shadow Dragon and beyond use the clock as part of the RNG process, so an emulator save state will preserve the RNG sequence, while a restart will alter it (I think the RNG resets on save point reloads, too). Thus, I can see why resorting to save states can be seen as less-than-ideal in the DS games.

Awakening doesn't seem to use the clock for RNG or if it does it sets all the variables at the start of a turn. I'm currently playing Lunatic+ on Classic mode and making use of the in game save state. If a unit hits with dual strike once you can guarantee they will hit with dual strike again the next time you load that save. However the numbers reset if you actually restart the chapter so you can manipulate the first few turns until you get reliable kills. Are you saying the gameboy advanced games have set RNG even on chapter restarts? So Roy will always get a crit on turn one even after resetting the game?

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I used them when I played FE6 in order to arena abuse. I've been meaning to replay FE6 without doing that, but haven't gotten around to it because I hate using a keyboard to play FE and I don't have a USB controller.

Like many people have stated above, I also used them in FE4 as a mid-chapter save aside from the "save every turn" option. Honestly, I think save states screwed me over in FE4 way more than they helped me.

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Who cares if someone uses save states. Seriously.

It shouldn't of anyone's damn concern on how you play FE. Or any video game for that matter. I don't see why a couple of people here are making a big deal about something so trivial and insignificant.

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Make up for a lack of skill. Save states make it trivial to fix your mistakes and they also allow you to manipulate luck as you choose so you get your desired outcome.

Before I was even a teenager, I used to use save states for almost every move because I just wasn't good enough to beat chapters while keeping my units alive. I needed to manipulate luck to fix the mistakes I made. Obviously, I improved (all of my LTCs are done on console). People here should do the same if they want to be considered as a good player.

The problem here is that you're assuming the only use for save states is abuse. Your points about abusing them are valid, but using them for the sake of convenience =/= abusing them. This is why there is friction in this thread. Edited by Ownagepuffs
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The problem here is that you're assuming the only use for save states is abuse. Your points about abusing them are valid, but using them for the sake of convenience =/= abusing them. This is why there is friction in this thread.

I'm asking third time: what is your reason to use savestats?

Plz, give me reasons, examples.

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The problem here is that you're assuming the only use for save states is abuse. Your points about abusing them are valid, but using them for the sake of convenience =/= abusing them. This is why there is friction in this thread.

That's absolutely not what I'm assuming. I already brought this up in either my first post or my second post. If I were doing an LTC run of FE9 and I had save states available, I'd use them to get that 7% crit on Petrine in 23, for example. Convenience is fine as long as it doesn't get in the way of my making a strategy.

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=48539&p=3187095

Anyways, I don't really care much if anyone is a bad player. That doesn't give me a reason for arrogance, nor does it give me a reason to look down on anyone. It's just a game; there's only overly sensitive children (and one child in the body of a 30 year old) here who take it far too seriously.

Edited by Chiki
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The only child here is you Chiki. You look down on others you constantly insult them because they aren't you or play like you. With that kind of arrogance is it any wonder the majority of us don't like you?

You may act like you don't like in your most recent post but honestly your attitude in multiple threads and pure elitism is outright heinous.

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I'm asking third time: what is your reason to use savestats?

Plz, give me reasons, examples.

Have you read the thread? I gave an example beforehand, of utilising savestates in order to figure out enemy pull tables in FE12 Ch3 on Lunatic. The way all of those enemies interact is linked in different ways, and you are going to have to understand how the pull mechanics work to have a fair chance of beating the map. Now of course, one can do that without savestates, by restarting the map and repositioning all their units repeatedly in order to test what the conditions are for a group to aggro. But savestates are simply saving time in that scenario.

Or, for another example I recently used the first map save (works on the same basis as a savestate) on ch4 of that game to experiment with the kind of positioning I needed a unit to have in order to get 4 enemy units to move south instead of north, which was neccessary to prevent a bunch of stranded units from getting overwhelmed.

People are still ignoring the very good point that eclipse makes about GBA FE RNG. Upon resetting the map, the RNG upon a chapter load is fixed. If you preform a set of actions in a specific order then you are 100% guaranteed to get the same result every single time. If someone is playing in a way that takes this into account, what effective difference does it have on whether they decide "okay I will restart then preform ALL the exact same moves I have just written down here, except this time I won't attempt to use a ranged attack on an enemy first, and will attack at 1 range in order for the high rns on the next set of attacks to be burnt via the enemy missing instead of me."?

I'm confused. It's not just doing the exact same thing since the RNG changes upon restart, right? You need to plan an RNG-proof strategy.

My point is that you CAN do the exact same thing every time and it always happens that way. That's why I'm asking, what difference does it make?

Part of it is effort, yes. A football player who exerts more effort than another player with equal skill is the better player. I think this is pretty intuitive.

Exerting effort over a task that is not actually related to the skill in question is not an indication of higher skill. A player who exerts greater effort into kicking the ball with greater force is not inherantly better at actually scoring a goal. Memorising an exact sequence of moves to do and repeating it everytime something goes wrong to get to the exact same point isn't skill, it's memorisation.

Edited by Irysa
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My point is that you CAN do the exact same thing every time and it always happens that way. That's why I'm asking, what difference does it make?

Unless you're only talking about the GBA games, that's not the case at all.

Exerting effort over a task that is not actually related to the skill in question is not an indication of higher skill. A player who exerts greater effort into kicking the ball with greater force is not inherantly better at actually scoring a goal. Memorising an exact sequence of moves to do and repeating it everytime something goes wrong to get to the exact same point isn't skill, it's memorisation.

You keep saying I'm only talking about memorization, but I'm not. Coming up with an RNG-proof strategy is not memorization.

Skill is a necessary condition of being a good player, but is it sufficient? Seems unlikely. Would the most skilled Fire Emblem player in the world be the best player overall even if he never played Fire Emblem? Probably not. So skill isn't enough to be considered a good Fire Emblem player.

People are still ignoring the very good point that eclipse makes about GBA FE RNG.

? I answered it already.

The RNG is the same as other FE games in Tellius games. Unless the RNG changes in FE678 upon restart, then the only point that holds is the point I made about effort.

Edited by Chiki
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Stuff.

Those are great examples. Now tell me that all of guys who use savestats are doing that because lunatic in FE12.

How many guys are using savestats because difficulty is too high?

That's my point since beginning. I think that those people are doing that because they are too lazy for do a good plan. The reason why I think that is simply: when I was using savestats, that was my reason.

Edited by Nicolas
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Unless you're only talking about the GBA games, that's not the case at all.

Which are, funnily enough, the most consistent example of where people utilise savestates. Attempting to dismiss the argument because it only applies to 3 games in the series does not decrease the significance of my point.

Why is the player who restarts, preforms all the exact same moves up to the point he was at in the exact same order, any "better" than the person who reloaded a savestate and went from there? The answer is they are not, they are simply more dedicated and/or have more time to spend. Now in the case of a different game in the series it's true, the RNG doesn't behave the same every single time. But, harder the game is (or the more demanding your goals are, such as LTC), the more specific things need to occur for successful clears to happen. Having a unit crit off irons in higher difficulties is something that you cannot avoid, and it means you would have to instantly restart because now they get exposed to multiple enemies due to killing a unit instead of just damaging it. I think part of the implementation of the mechanics of map save feature in DSFE was due to the fact that on the very high difficulty levels, you are forced to rely on strings of events working out as you envision them, and if they don't, you have to restart. You can't adjust for an errant miss or crit as easily when the enemies are that powerful.

Even in casual play, people who have a plan will usually stick to it unless the strategy itself is obviously problematic. If someone's strategy is sound enough that they can consistently get to the same point on the same turn, even with minor variables here or there, such as a miss or crit occuring, then I don't believe that if they decide to utilise a map save before the boss or difficult segment that relies on small chances not popping up for security they are somehow "worse" players.

Those are great examples. Now tell me that all of guys who use savestats are doing that because lunatic in FE12.

How many guys are using savestats because difficulty is too high?

That's my point since beginning. I think that those people are doing that because they are too lazy for do a good plan. The reason why I think that is simply: when I was using savestats, that was my reason.

I haven't been advocating savestate abuse for most of the easier scenarios at all. The topic at hand is "using savestates", not abusing them, and part of my debate with Chiki here also relates to use of map saves, present within the game for DSFE. I simply think that there are enough convenience reasons to utilise them that don't neccessarily revolve around the concept of savescumming to get through a difficult portion of the game. IE: I personally would never hold it against anyone for wanting to savestate to rig a level up on a character they like to use , nor would do I care if they rig Rutger to hit and crit a boss in FE6 because I can see why people would want to do those things.

Or, here's another example; I used savestates the last time I played FE8 so that I could get a seamless non chapter reset RN string, if I wanted to restart a map I used suspend > restart, and because of the lack of reset the RN string was different. Obviously to maintain this though, I had to use savestates to preserve the current game status, as loading the game would ruin everything.

There are ways to use savestates that don't necessarily revolve around rigging the hell out of stuff in order to succeed, that is the only point I am trying to defend.

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I'm asking third time: what is your reason to use savestats?

Plz, give me reasons, examples.

It's quicker than autosave. I can boot up a save state before the title screen even shows up.

I also said earlier that I use them Genealogy style, at the start of every turn to save my progress. I simply don't feel like redoing the same first 5 turns because of a mistake I make on turn 6. It saves time. By the way, I use them for the GBA games AKA fixed RNG. In Genealogy I use them when I forget to use my start of the turn save. It happens.

There's also the people that use it for mechanical reasons.

That's absolutely not what I'm assuming. I already brought this up in either my first post or my second post. If I were doing an LTC run of FE9 and I had save states available, I'd use them to get that 7% crit on Petrine in 23, for example. Convenience is fine as long as it doesn't get in the way of my making a strategy.

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=48539&p=3187095

Anyways, I don't really care much if anyone is a bad player. That doesn't give me a reason for arrogance, nor does it give me a reason to look down on anyone. It's just a game; there's only overly sensitive children (and one child in the body of a 30 year old) here who take it far too seriously.

Reading your posts, it sounded like you were conflating the use of save states with lack of adequate strategy. If that's not what you're trying to say then no problem.

Abusing save states does interfere with strategy. If that's the only point you're trying to make then I agree.

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I'm not really for or against anything here but I do feel like pointing out that if one is willing to use save states then one would be much more likely to take risks and play in such a way where failure is a lot more possible. I'm not going to say that's better or worse but knowing you will have to spend another hour setting things up does effect how things are played.

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Those are great examples. Now tell me that all of guys who use savestats are doing that because lunatic in FE12.

How many guys are using savestats because difficulty is too high?

That's my point since beginning. I think that those people are doing that because they are too lazy for do a good plan. The reason why I think that is simply: when I was using savestats, that was my reason.

How about the possibility of being more experimental because you know you're not going to have to restart the entire map. Sort of what Jotari said.

Also, ambush spawning.

In the end, it shouldn't matter what reason people have for savestating. Play however.

Edited by Tryhard
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People use savestates as a safety net in case they get unlucky or make a mistake. I know a few times I've done stuff like accidentally made a unit rescue instead of heal, or heal the wrong unit because I accidently pushed a once too many times. I mostly use them to see how the AI will react in certain scenarios, like while trying to figure out chapter 11 in my fe 8 ltc run, I tried giving Franz a steel lance instead of a javelin because I needed Artur to have more health the next turn, and more enemies went after Franz because he'd get doubled now. Chapter 11 isn't a hard chapter by any means either.

Edited by General Horace
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I'm asking third time: what is your reason to use savestats?

Plz, give me reasons, examples.

Convenience, for one. If I don't have time to finish a chapter, I'll savestate it and continue later.
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