Continue is a cheat

[Agent_Ash]

I discovered that you can quit the game and then just continue where you left, resetting any encounter and even dying, and not only can it be achieved via Alt-F4, but also by simply quitting via the game menu.

It looks like plain cheating to me.

While it can be difficult to find a proper way to deal with this when it comes to resetting encounters, I believe that the possibility to reset DEATH is certainly inappropriate. I think that the game should save its state immediately after the player receives a killing blow, so that if they decide to quit and come back, they will not see the beginning of the encounter, but the endgame sequence when they are presented with new unlockables, etc.

[🚦AlphaDiode🚦]

To each his own I guess. Game saving before boss fights has been around since PC gaming was in its infancy decades ago. Nobody complained about it back then. Then consoles came along with their no saving checkpoints. Then at some point, that mentality grew into one where game saving became cheating. Personally I think it's very consolish IMHO and just plain aggravating when you have to restart and grind through the same stuff over and over just to get to a boss fight.

[Wally]

This may sound complex, but one could just choose to NOT do this? :x

[Agent_Ash]

Originally posted by AlphaDiode®:

To each his own I guess. Game saving before boss fights has been around since PC gaming was in its infancy decades ago. Nobody complained about it back then. Then consoles came along with their no saving checkpoints. Then at some point, that mentality grew into one where game saving became cheating. Personally I think it's very consolish IMHO and just plain aggravating when you have to restart and grind through the same stuff over and over just to get to a boss fight.

Like I said, this is a roguelike game. It has many of the elements of a traditional dungeon crawler. And dungeon crawlers never offered any kind of saves, not even before a boss fight.

Originally posted by Wally:

This may sound complex, but one could just choose to NOT do this? :x

I'm not talking about choices, I'm talking about the fact that this is an actual possibility in this game, while I believe it shouldn't be possible.
Besides, I have a very different idea of such things. I love difficulty and challenge, and yet at the same time I always use all means at my disposal; for example if a game boss has a weak point, I will always abuse it, because the game allows it, and it's not a glitch. This option to continue is not a glitch either, and I tend not to use it, but it's annoying for me to just know it is there. And again, irregardless of that, I think the presence of this option contradicts this game's design.

[Daclusia]

To be fair, I don't want to use that method either, but when i end up having the dryads in the dealer run and then having some of the most powerfull items while fighting the dealer, it's aggravating that i die only because the rat and squale trios are such cheap ass fights. Game decides to be cheap? I'll be cheap right back at it.

[FancyMustelid]

Too much pain to quit and go back into the game just to save scum. Save and quit function is fine. If it were specifically a reload save function, it would bother me. But while I will typically use game features to try to win, I'm too lazy to reset the game over it. For anyone who intentionally uses it as a save scum feature, let them have fun their own way. Though, since the game was obviously not meant to be save-scummed, I suppose this qualifies as a bug.

[Gekkibi]

Originally posted by Agent Ash:

Like I said, this is a roguelike game. It has many of the elements of a traditional dungeon crawler. And dungeon crawlers never offered any kind of saves, not even before a boss fight.

I don't accept your definition of "dungeon crawler". Dungeon Master is a dungeon crawler, and so is Stonekeep. I'd go nuts if I have to finish those games in one sitting.

Roguelike is a very specific (and very different) genre.

Originally posted by Agent Ash:

Originally posted by Wally:

This may sound complex, but one could just choose to NOT do this? :x

I'm not talking about choices, I'm talking about the fact that this is an actual possibility in this game, while I believe it shouldn't be possible.

Then what do you suggest? Not possible to continue at all? That's a little bit rought especially because endless runs can last several hours.

[Agent_Ash]

Originally posted by J.C Daclusia:

To be fair, I don't want to use that method either, but when i end up having the dryads in the dealer run and then having some of the most powerfull items while fighting the dealer, it's aggravating that i die only because the rat and squale trios are such cheap ass fights. Game decides to be cheap? I'll be cheap right back at it.

This is EXACTLY the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Originally posted by stickyka:

Too much pain to quit and go back into the game just to save scum. Save and quit function is fine. If it were specifically a reload save function, it would bother me. But while I will typically use game features to try to win, I'm too lazy to reset the game over it. For anyone who intentionally uses it as a save scum feature, let them have fun their own way. Though, since the game was obviously not meant to be save-scummed, I suppose this qualifies as a bug.

It's just a few seconds, not too much pain at all.
I believe it's sort of a fail-safe to make sure we can continue if something goes wrong, the power goes out or your PC freezes.

Originally posted by Gekkibi:

Then what do you suggest? Not possible to continue at all? That's a little bit rought especially because endless runs can last several hours.

I'm not going to argue about this, because this is not the point. To me it's a roguelike game, just like, say, The Binding of Isaac.

As for my suggestion, it would be a very simple and quite natural one: to make the player begin from the beginning of the floor when they re-enter the game, and obviously to re-generate this floor randomly, so that they would face a different floor if they leave the game and come back.

This would stimulate players not to use this function, because while it can still save you, it might give you a much less fortunate scenario on re-entry. And you'd have to go through the whole floor again in case you decide to quit during an unfortunate boss fight. At the same time you'd still be able to continue playing a long game: you would simply need to stop after you enter a floor, so that you can quit and come back later. Changing floors would work as a traditional checkpoint.

Also, you missed my other point. You actually can use this AFTER DEATH, i.e. by Alt-F4-ing out of the game and launching it again, which is certainly a bug.

[Gekkibi]

Originally posted by Agent Ash:

Secondly, my suggestion would be a very simple and quite natural one: to make the player begin from the beginning of the floor when they re-enter the game, and obviously to re-generate this floor randomly, so that they would face a different floor if they leave the game and come back.

This would stimulate players not to use this function, because while it can still save you, it might give you a much less fortunate scenario on re-entry. And you'd have to go through the whole floor again in case you decide to quit during an unfortunate boss fight. At the same time you'd still be able to continue playing a long game: you would simply need to stop after you enter a floor, so that you can quit and come back later. Changing floors would work as a traditional checkpoint.

But then it can be used for different kind of exploitation. For example if you want to get rid of curses then you can restart the floor until you get a priest or a healer. It would hinder legit players quite a lot because you can't quit playing until you've finished the level. What if your coffee break takes longer, or you're late for work, or your favorite TV soap opera starts in 5 minutes.

Originally posted by Agent Ash:

Also, you missed my other point. You actually can use this AFTER DEATH, i.e. by Alt-F4-ing out of the game and launching it again, which is certainly a bug.

Hmm, maybe the developers should do something about that... "I'm late for work" argument doesn't cut in this scenario... ;)

[Agent_Ash]

Originally posted by Gekkibi:

But then it can be used for different kind of exploitation. For example if you want to get rid of curses then you can restart the floor until you get a priest or a healer. It would hinder legit players quite a lot because you can't quit playing until you've finished the level. What if your coffee break takes longer, or you're late for work, or your favorite TV soap opera starts in 5 minutes.

This is true, but it seems to me that it's a much less significant exploitation that the opportunity to reset each fight until you win. We get a priest or a healer almost on every floor as it is. As for other things, you should either just plan ahead and stop at the beginning of the floor, knowing that you don't have much time left, or simply pause the game and continue later (I do that sometimes and even leave it running in the background). Doesn't sound like a lot of trouble to me. In the 90s we played insane arcade games with a limited number of lives and no saves and didn't complain :) I mean, this game is pretty hard, and such a simple way to save-load without any loss or downside just seems wrong here.

[ColdWonder]

Agree continue should continue from the exact moment you quit - to stop you scumming.

Sadly as a programmer It doesn't look like a bug to me. It's likely an architectural decision they made - to save and resume from the level you got to. It's easy to save that progress into a file. Its more awkard to save and load the entire game state.

Basically they arn't going to change it because it would be difficult to do now.

[Gekkibi]

Originally posted by Agent Ash:

Originally posted by Gekkibi:

But then it can be used for different kind of exploitation. For example if you want to get rid of curses then you can restart the floor until you get a priest or a healer. It would hinder legit players quite a lot because you can't quit playing until you've finished the level. What if your coffee break takes longer, or you're late for work, or your favorite TV soap opera starts in 5 minutes.

This is true, but it seems to me that it's a much less significant exploitation that the opportunity to reset each fight until you win. We get a priest or a healer almost on every floor as it is. As for other things, you should either just plan ahead and stop at the beginning of the floor, knowing that you don't have much time left, or simply pause the game and continue later (I do that sometimes and even leave it running in the background). Doesn't sound like a lot of trouble to me. In the 90s we played insane arcade games with a limited number of lives and no saves and didn't complain :) I mean, this game is pretty hard, and such a simple way to save-load without any loss or downside just seems wrong here.

But this method would be more powerful than just simply retrying a fight. You can roll the RNG dice again and you might get a lot better encounter cards as well. And no, healer/priest cards are not that common. My "record" is something like 6 floors before I was able to find one.

One floor can take from just few minutes to over 30 minutes. It's possible you underestimated how much time is required.

Savescumming is something that is possible in numerous roguelike-like games. Haven't tested in FTL, but I would assume the game doesn't save during combat. Even if the game would somehow hinder the players, a dedicated savescummer can still swap savefiles.

Plus Hand of Fate is a singleplayer game, so consesus tends to be that people are allowed to cheat. The point is to have fun, and what is fun is subjective. Someone using IDDQD doesn't affect you personally.

[ColdWonder]

Originally posted by Gekkibi:

Originally posted by Agent Ash:

This is true, but it seems to me that it's a much less significant exploitation that the opportunity to reset each fight until you win. We get a priest or a healer almost on every floor as it is. As for other things, you should either just plan ahead and stop at the beginning of the floor, knowing that you don't have much time left, or simply pause the game and continue later (I do that sometimes and even leave it running in the background). Doesn't sound like a lot of trouble to me. In the 90s we played insane arcade games with a limited number of lives and no saves and didn't complain :) I mean, this game is pretty hard, and such a simple way to save-load without any loss or downside just seems wrong here.

But this method would be more powerful than just simply retrying a fight. You can roll the RNG dice again and you might get a lot better encounter cards as well. And no, healer/priest cards are not that common. My "record" is something like 6 floors before I was able to find one.

One floor can take from just few minutes to over 30 minutes. It's possible you underestimated how much time is required.

Savescumming is something that is possible in numerous roguelike-like games. Haven't tested in FTL, but I would assume the game doesn't save during combat. Even if the game would somehow hinder the players, a dedicated savescummer can still swap savefiles.

Plus Hand of Fate is a singleplayer game, so consesus tends to be that people are allowed to cheat. The point is to have fun, and what is fun is subjective. Someone using IDDQD doesn't affect you personally.

Yea it varies as to how far they go to prevent scumming.
Dungeons of Dredmor for example literally deletes the save from disk the moment you load it.
This means your progress is only stored in RAM. If you pull the plug or alt+f4 you loose everything. If you don't scum and save and exit properly it will write the save back to disk.

Obviously the dedicated scumbag can still backup his save before each session. But I guess it prevents rage-scumming.

[Swirler]

I think it's not a big problem.

Though it makes the leaderboards questionable the single player experience isn't really affected by savescumming.

If you're trying so hard that you need to savescum then that's your choice, goodness knows maybe I should try it to unlock some of the more annoying tokens in the game but I can't be bothered.

Time spent doing this, or even developing the habit isn't necessarily time saved in future.
If anything you're spending more time to push the final result higher.

Thus you're left with the problem of "well I had a bad rng roll with that combat/card result whatever" so i'll restart. When do you stop?
Logically speaking, every single instance where you lose you should always restart the effort.


I have to ask myself if i'm cheating at playing the game (which I have in the past for various reasons), am I really having fun in such a manner or have I just created a new job for myself?
Is this a change that is natural for the setting?
Is this a change that could even deserve it's own gamemode?
Is this a change that i'm happy to adopt in future games?
Would I play any other game in the past like I do now?

Perhaps in some situations it is the right decision, perhaps the game goes out of it's way to throw bad rolls in your direction, perhaps there's some OP cards that just need further testing and fixing.
Certainly some of the bosses in this game test my patience.


You beat the encounter, you beat the dealer, you beat the odds, given enough tries you could get through any amount of bad luck. By sheer force of will.
There's merit to that mindset, really there is. It takes fortitude to think like that. There are some occupations IRL that revolve entirely around that concept, the idea of starting from the beginning to get things right.
That you need to hammer your head against a brick wall and eventually the wall will collapse.

If that method of play is fun for you or anyone else then by all means go ahead. But when does a game stop being about fun and start becoming work?

Is this something the devs really need to devote time toward changing?
Are there other modes of play that some of the playerbase want? (such as being able to save the game normally for each encounter for instance)
Or is this just human nature in the face of adversity?

[ColdWonder]

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

I think it's not a big problem.

Though it makes the leaderboards questionable the single player experience isn't really affected by savescumming.

If you're trying so hard that you need to savescum then that's your choice, goodness knows maybe I should try it to unlock some of the more annoying tokens in the game but I can't be bothered.

Time spent doing this, or even developing the habit isn't necessarily time saved in future.
If anything you're spending more time to push the final result higher.

Thus you're left with the problem of "well I had a bad rng roll with that combat/card result whatever" so i'll restart. When do you stop?
Logically speaking, every single instance where you lose you should always restart the effort.


I have to ask myself if i'm cheating at playing the game (which I have in the past for various reasons), am I really having fun in such a manner or have I just created a new job for myself?
Is this a change that is natural for the setting?
Is this a change that could even deserve it's own gamemode?
Is this a change that i'm happy to adopt in future games?
Would I play any other game in the past like I do now?

Perhaps in some situations it is the right decision, perhaps the game goes out of it's way to throw bad rolls in your direction, perhaps there's some OP cards that just need further testing and fixing.
Certainly some of the bosses in this game test my patience.


You beat the encounter, you beat the dealer, you beat the odds, given enough tries you could get through any amount of bad luck. By sheer force of will.
There's merit to that mindset, really there is. It takes fortitude to think like that. There are some occupations IRL that revolve entirely around that concept, the idea of starting from the beginning to get things right.
That you need to hammer your head against a brick wall and eventually the wall will collapse.

If that method of play is fun for you or anyone else then by all means go ahead. But when does a game stop being about fun and start becoming work?

Is this something the devs really need to devote time toward changing?
Are there other modes of play that some of the playerbase want? (such as being able to save the game normally for each encounter for instance)
Or is this just human nature in the face of adversity?

The best solution would be to offer an "easy mode" option that has multiple lives, save-scumming and seperate achievements. It works for other roguelikes I play. Obviously the dealer would need to frequently mock them for choosing it.

[Lex]

Why does it matter how others like to play their own singleplayer games?