What's your stance on Save Editors? (BL2/BL3)

[Freya Crescent]

Since the topic was closed on the official Gearbox forums, I'll ask it here. Here's the OP's opening comment:

Let me first preface this by saying I love the Borderlands series as a whole, and I’m all for players of all types playing the game the way they want to play it; being a speedrun to level up on their first go, a slow playthrough every other night that takes a whole month for them to beat the game or even people who will purchase the game and use 3rd party software and divert the way the Game Creator’s intended play. But I do have some serious gripes about the last group.

I understand, cutscenes suck, leveling sucks, grinding sucks, but this is all a tradeoff for loot and a badass character that you can be proud of. Ideally, every vault hunter you encounter can get a sense of what you have gone through, respect if you will; and it is that feeling and sense of community self-sacrifice (10+ hours for the character, 50+ for damn good loot) that makes a closer bond between players and the community. This also means since little people will ever get THE PERFECT LOOT, there is always a reason to keep playing and an item to grind for in the end game.

Clearly Gearbox doesn’t want to de-sensitize the player base to good loot if you read the most recent hotfix notes 1 but if they don’t put in countermeasure to people just editing what loot they have, they make the grind useless to all other legit players.

In my opinion, as soon as people start to save edit and load in modded weapons they ruin the value of the hard work other people put in and will then cause other people not to care about the grind. Soon they too will just load in their items and eventually make the game dead for themselves as they have nothing to grind for. Please Gearbox, make me still want to play Borderlands for years to come <3
___________________________

Personally, I'm all for save editors. I'd rather play with someone who has user-generated, perfect loot than someone using a hack that one-shots everything to FARM for their preferred loot. The editor gets to enjoy the game their way, but the hacker ruins it for his whole party.

[Nakos]

Save editors destroy fun.

It's better to play the game, either solo, or with same-level friends. The developers were pretty smart guys, and ... at least the first time ... you should play the game the way they intended.

ARPGs are meant as a standing wave of challenge. That is: They are meant to provide a (more or less) consistent level of challenge/effort throughout the activity curve they are meant to encompass. They provide incremental rewards, meant to be just enough to allow you to assail the next challenge in line. Those rewards come in a variety of forms, including levels, skill points, and gear.

The goal of any game is to provide the player with the feeling of victory. But in order to do that, the game must, in turn, provide the feeling of adversity. You have to start at the bottom if the top is going to mean anything.

Save Editors allow the unwary to skip past all that. To rush to the end.

To miss all the fun.

This game (and the others in the series) are finite. They end. They aren't MMOs, there isn't a huge dev team constantly making more content. There isn't even a vast max-level raid culture. The end game (in contrast to MMOs) is tiny and short.

So, my advise is to avoid the save editors. Play the game for yourself, it'll be a much more engaging experience. Or it won't, in which case this style of game isn't right for you and you should move on anyway.


On the other hand ...

Save editors are the lesser of two evils.

However much I might encourage people to refrain from using save editors, some people are still going to ignore everything I said above. They're going to want "god mode", they're going to want to rush to the end of the game. And no matter how much I try to explain to them how much fun they're cheating themselves out of, they're going to ignore me, and do it anyway.

For them, the choices are: Use a save editor. Download a max level save from a mod site, or (the most evil choice) "power leveling".

Power-leveling (in my opinion) is a horrible plague, that clogs up forums and drowns out legitimate conversations. For those who refuse to do their own leveling ... a save editor is a better choice than power-leveling.

Those people I will encourage to use a save editor.

[FroGG2]

i used the save editor to get some gold keys because i didn't want to go through that whole shift-code crap.
if i now play a new char i use some keys every 10 lvl or so, to speed up the progression a bit and thats it.

[Draekus]

Originally posted by FroGG2:

i used the save editor to get some gold keys because i didn't want to go through that whole shift-code crap.
if i now play a new char i use some keys every 10 lvl or so, to speed up the progression a bit and thats it.

not true. a save editor will not give you Gold Keys. a Profile editor will.

and, in my honest opinion, Gold Keys are not necessary.
Shift codes ? sure, for heads, skins, and maybe a special item. but for Keys ? nope.

if you have to rely on the Gold chest in Sanctuary, then you should learn when and where to look for gear.

there are several areas in the main game that seem designed with farming in mind.
Thousand Cuts is a good example.


now, back to the topic at hand.

when anybody mentions " Save editor ", most people think " Loot ".
however, a save editor has other uses as well.

botched a mission objective ?
Doctor's Orders is a good example.

with a save editor, you can correct that. IF you know what you're doing.

want to get to a certain area that has a one-way Travel station ?
Bunker, Fire Control Alpha to name a couple.

yup, save editor to the rescue.

[sarcastic_godot]

I mostly use a save editor - pretty regularly - to change the sights on my better guns (Bandit scope sncks...)... ...because I feel that there should be a merchant for that purpose.

...also every time I get back to the game, I use it on my first char to make up for all those BA ranks I lost with my old machine. Too lazy to upgrade all my game saves or save everything on an external device, cloud is bad when I have bad ISP day. Also, some machines die(d) pretty abruptly.

And I fully agree - using it regularly to cheat yourself über gear or wealth takes the fun from the game.

[Duck]

Save editors have their place in games. Each person has their own preference in what they want out of a game, and if a save editor is used appropriately, it can enhance their experience without taking away from themselves or those they play with.

Consider badass rank, for example. There is a recommended selection to allow your character to use specific strategies more effectively, such as health gating or hyperion weapons (recoil reduction makes them worse). You cannot undo your selection and without being aware of these details, which many players wont be unless they do their homework before it is too late, they may invest so much that the best strategies available are not as effective as they would have been. That doesn't even cover the stats that aware players will probably never add to.

Being able to reset your token usages for badass rank is desirable but devs, that seemingly don't understand gamers, disagree. We can take the matters into our own hands for this and various other features without ruining the experience.

[Matthew]

Originally posted by Nakos:

Save editors destroy fun.

It's better to play the game, either solo, or with same-level friends. The developers were pretty smart guys, and ... at least the first time ... you should play the game the way they intended.

ARPGs are meant as a standing wave of challenge. That is: They are meant to provide a (more or less) consistent level of challenge/effort throughout the activity curve they are meant to encompass. They provide incremental rewards, meant to be just enough to allow you to assail the next challenge in line. Those rewards come in a variety of forms, including levels, skill points, and gear.

The goal of any game is to provide the player with the feeling of victory. But in order to do that, the game must, in turn, provide the feeling of adversity. You have to start at the bottom if the top is going to mean anything.

Save Editors allow the unwary to skip past all that. To rush to the end.

To miss all the fun.

This game (and the others in the series) are finite. They end. They aren't MMOs, there isn't a huge dev team constantly making more content. There isn't even a vast max-level raid culture. The end game (in contrast to MMOs) is tiny and short.

So, my advise is to avoid the save editors. Play the game for yourself, it'll be a much more engaging experience. Or it won't, in which case this style of game isn't right for you and you should move on anyway.


On the other hand ...

Save editors are the lesser of two evils.

However much I might encourage people to refrain from using save editors, some people are still going to ignore everything I said above. They're going to want "god mode", they're going to want to rush to the end of the game. And no matter how much I try to explain to them how much fun they're cheating themselves out of, they're going to ignore me, and do it anyway.

For them, the choices are: Use a save editor. Download a max level save from a mod site, or (the most evil choice) "power leveling".

Power-leveling (in my opinion) is a horrible plague, that clogs up forums and drowns out legitimate conversations. For those who refuse to do their own leveling ... a save editor is a better choice than power-leveling.

Those people I will encourage to use a save editor.

After the first playthrough, save editors are more less needed if you really want to do some experimentation on various playstyles. Given the choice between devoted 30 minutes generating a character with some of the greatest available gear at end-game levels, or 40 hours grinding to max level and getting the best gear... it's no wonder why many players prefer going with save editing.

[Raging Amy]

I prefer to just play the game however I'm glad it exist as it saved my current save game when it was glitching

[Double]

My views are -
Singleplayer = Anything goes
Multiplayer = Don't be a douche and ruin other's fun with hacks/cheat engine tables and OP weapons. Legit parameters set via save editing is fine (not that you'd be able to tell if someone save-edited their stuff anyway)

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Originally posted by ArchSublime:

My views are -
Singleplayer = Anything goes
Multiplayer = Don't be a douche and ruin other's fun with hacks/cheat engine tables and OP weapons. Legit parameters set via save editing is fine (not that you'd be able to tell if someone save-edited their stuff anyway)

Even then, if you edit legitly, I dont want to be playing with you because if you have all OP gear 'legitly' save edited, whats the point? It still ruins my fun of playing coop.

I dont mind dieing having a hard time =)

[Brandon]

Originally posted by NaliWarcow:

Originally posted by ArchSublime:

My views are -
Singleplayer = Anything goes
Multiplayer = Don't be a douche and ruin other's fun with hacks/cheat engine tables and OP weapons. Legit parameters set via save editing is fine (not that you'd be able to tell if someone save-edited their stuff anyway)

Even then, if you edit legitly, I dont want to be playing with you because if you have all OP gear 'legitly' save edited, whats the point? It still ruins my fun of playing coop.

I dont mind dieing having a hard time =)

How do you tell the difference between somebody who farmed for a OP10 flying sandhawk with the correct element, and somebody who save edits one in?

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Originally posted by Brandon:

Originally posted by NaliWarcow:

Even then, if you edit legitly, I dont want to be playing with you because if you have all OP gear 'legitly' save edited, whats the point? It still ruins my fun of playing coop.

I dont mind dieing having a hard time =)

How do you tell the difference between somebody who farmed for a OP10 flying sandhawk with the correct element, and somebody who save edits one in?

OP asked my stand. Thats my stand, no matter if I can tell or not tell.

I dont need to be able to tell the difference when its about principle.

[Double]

Originally posted by NaliWarcow:

Originally posted by ArchSublime:

My views are -
Singleplayer = Anything goes
Multiplayer = Don't be a douche and ruin other's fun with hacks/cheat engine tables and OP weapons. Legit parameters set via save editing is fine (not that you'd be able to tell if someone save-edited their stuff anyway)

Even then, if you edit legitly, I dont want to be playing with you because if you have all OP gear 'legitly' save edited, whats the point? It still ruins my fun of playing coop.

I dont mind dieing having a hard time =)

That's fair. I don't edit gear myself, but I always play solo anyway, so it wouldn't matter if I did. I run mods like Reborn since I don't find vanilla that much fun anymore.

[Zylon]

They should add a seperate queue for playing with players with edited safe states and cheats.
And a queue for those that want to play together that play legit.

Done..

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Originally posted by Zylon:

They should add a seperate queue for playing with players with edited safe states and cheats.
And a queue for those that want to play together that play legit.

Done..

Agreed but thats never gonna happen. Any game that has 'clientside' saving has this problem. Dragonball Xenoverse 2, you can max level w/o getting flagged like that. Same with Torchlight ea. But when modded items come into play, your char will be flagged for life as a cheater with I believe asterix infront of name or so to indicate you use or have used modded items.

[Double]

Originally posted by NaliWarcow:

Originally posted by Zylon:

They should add a seperate queue for playing with players with edited safe states and cheats.
And a queue for those that want to play together that play legit.

Done..

Agreed but thats never gonna happen. Any game that has 'clientside' saving has this problem. Dragonball Xenoverse 2, you can max level w/o getting flagged like that. Same with Torchlight ea. But when modded items come into play, your char will be flagged for life as a cheater with I believe asterix infront of name or so to indicate you use or have used modded items.

I would really like some sort of split system for Diablo III. Since everything is server-sided in D3 on PC, modding is impossible. Console players don't have this restriction but as a result, online play is not nearly as pure as the PC community. Personally, I'd much rather have access to a completely offline version of D3 and have the ability to install a bunch of content mods than play online.

With a split system (one for client-side and one for server-side) modding would be possible as it was with the older Diablo games and people could still enjoy a pure online experience free from cheaters and modders. It's a win-win for everyone really. I guess it's too much extra work for the devs to do both in these types of games, idk.