XCOM: Enemy Within adds 'save scum' option for players that exploit quicksave

In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the dice rolls have already been set when you save the game. Enemy Within lets you turn that off so you can better abuse the quicksave system.

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Save. Shoot. Die. Reload save. Take cover. Save.

While many players love the brutal nature of Iron Man mode in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, many other players chose to exploit the game's quicksave options. By saving in between every action, players could always revert to an earlier save if a tactical decision ever goes awry. And in XCOM's case, that is probably very often.

However, in Enemy Within, the dice rolls have already been set when you save the game. So, if you miss a 50% shot to hit an enemy, you'll always miss that shot, no matter how often you reload the game. That feature is going to change in Enemy Within with the "save scum" option.

"It's called Save Scum," lead game designer Anand Gupta told PCGamesN (via RPS) "It resets the random number seed whenever the game is loaded. For people who really want to keep shooting until that 80% shot hits."

So, feel free to abuse the save system in Enemy Within. Just be mindful that Firaxis won't think very highly of you. There is a reason why it's called scum, after all.

Enemy Within will be available on November 12th.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    October 16, 2013 12:45 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, XCOM: Enemy Within adds 'save scum' option for players that exploit quicksave.

    In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the dice rolls have already been set when you save the game. Enemy Within lets you turn that off so you can better abuse the quicksave system.

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      October 16, 2013 1:18 PM

      I just hope the balance the percentages to actually reflect the odds of you hitting. More than one time in Iron Man mode I have had 90%+ hit chance and completely miss multiple times.

      Once I had a sniper in position on an enemy who couldn't move from its position and she had a 65% chance of hitting. So just to test how accurate the percentages are I only attacked with her over and over until I hit the alien. Took me 8 or 9 tries before she actually hit the alien. That is not a 65% chance...

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        October 16, 2013 1:32 PM

        [deleted]

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        October 16, 2013 1:33 PM

        yes it is

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        October 16, 2013 1:34 PM

        I ran into that all the time. It made Iron Man mode nearly impossible because missing some of those high percentage shots meant death on the next round for my units.

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        October 16, 2013 1:35 PM

        each missed shot doesnt give you a better change the next time.

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        October 16, 2013 1:40 PM

        probability how does it work

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        October 16, 2013 1:45 PM

        Probability, how does it work?

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        October 16, 2013 1:46 PM

        1 hit is well within the margin of error for 65% probability and n=7. If you ran the simulation 10000 times, you'd run into several groups of 6 misses in a row.

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        October 16, 2013 3:22 PM

        human random != real random

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        October 16, 2013 4:24 PM

        this is the reason i hate RNG games. its why i loathe roguelikes. i mean, a little RNG is fine when doing damage rolls, but when its a "roll X you win, roll Y you die" thats just game design i dont like anymore. its not so bad when the design of the game is more forgiving of individual actions in a series of actions, like in WoW or something, where youll whack an enemy 50 times and missing a few times is not a big deal, but in something where 1 hit or miss is literally game over or VICTOLY, i hate it. i love my Jagged Alliance 2, but christ almight it is such a crapshoot especially early on

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      October 16, 2013 1:34 PM

      When I wasn't playing Ironman (seriously everyone should play this, it makes the game so much better), I actually liked the fact that the dice rolls were saved. It meant you knew that a particular move wouldn't work, so you had to think about an alternate way of solving the problem.

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      October 16, 2013 1:40 PM

      haha cool of them to make that change - im totally doing that

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      October 16, 2013 1:41 PM

      thank god! i need this to make it through the terror missions on my classic game. so hard! :'[

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      October 16, 2013 2:09 PM

      I found that it's still basically possible to save scum in the vanilla game, just tweak your tactics slightly so you get the same/similar percentages but your characters are in different positions. usually that's enough for the seeded rng to give you a different result on your roll, and it's only slightly more involved than just loading a save.

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      October 16, 2013 2:55 PM

      Cool they're adding this option, even if I won't use it. Even cooler they call it "Save Scum"!

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      October 16, 2013 4:32 PM

      i'd like to see an update where they go back to the more complicated projectile simulation of the old xcom

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      October 17, 2013 6:13 AM

      Iron man mode 4 lyfe yo

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