Is Save Scumming Gear (Not Rank) Cheating?

[AbsentPlayer]

Now that splatfest is over I have loads of super sea snails to use on loads of stuff! That wasn't the case for me. I used 4 on adding slots to gear and the rest went to re-rolling this 1 shirt and I still don't have what I want! I have one thing to say and one thing only, Spyke is a c**t! I want to take matters into my own hands so I ask you this: is save scumming my gear cheating. I will never use it for my rank but the amount of money spent and sea snails I've wasted on this guy is stupid!

 

[Floating Eyeball]

Personally, I don't think it's cheating at all. As long as you actually earned the p or Sea Snails, I feel like you ought to be able to get the abilities you hope for. Since it's based on chance, someone could get the abilities they want in one roll while someone else has to spend dozens more. There's no actual skill to it, whereas actually getting the opportunity to reroll in the first place and planning out what abilities to use does.

 

[mm201]

You're only using tools the game and/or console has given you, so no, it's not cheating.

 

[Cyan]

I agree with what has been posted above, it's not cheating since you have to deal with the dumbest of RNG that the game offers. Save Scumming rank is cheating as you're inflating your rank to a place it shouldn't be, then pulling other players down by losing matches because you aren't good enough to compete with other players. However, I believe hacking the gear is cheating because you are taking out the money, snails and RNG, allowing you to have whatever gear combos you fancy, even if they're very difficult to get.

 

[Posso]

Is it cheating? Yes
Is it frowned upon? Heck no

 

[AlsoDededork649]

Is it cheating? No
Is it frowned upon? Heck yes

FTFY

 

[Posso]

FTFY

How could it be frowned upon if it isn't cheating? That has 0 correlation.

 

[Posso]

FTFY

Cheating is the getting of a reward for ability or finding an easy way out of an unpleasant situation by dishonest means. That line was ripped straight from wikipedia and aligns perfectly with save scumming. Since reloading a previous save gets you out of the unpleasant situation of wasting snails, it IS cheating and not up for debate. Thing is, since is provides no actual benefit to set you a step higher than non scummers, it should not be frowned upon compared to those that blatantly hack for infinite range luna blasters with aimbot with rapid fire.

 

[Dessgeega]

Who cares? It doesn't affect you or anyone else. Seriously, it doesn't - there is no gear in the game that will trump skill. It can help but it won't win matches, so in the end it doesn't really matter.

 

[Elecmaw]

It's cheating, but me(and a lot of other peeps) don't care anyway because the current system is unfair and tedious.

 

[Edgy Page]

I'm going to use Pokemon logic here and say that if you're saving time to achieve what is technically possible or ideal gear for a multiplayer situation then it's not cheating in any sort of evil way. It's cheating to beat a system that shouldn't be so awful but you still have to use the gear appropriately to beat other players so it's not particularly relevant how you got the gear in question.

 

[Posso]

I'm going to use Pokemon logic here and say that if you're saving time to achieve what is technically possible or ideal gear for a multiplayer situation then it's not cheating in any sort of evil way. It's cheating to beat a system that shouldn't be so awful but you still have to use the gear appropriately to beat other players so it's not particularly relevant how you got the gear in question.

You have my exact same stance on this.

 

[AlsoDededork649]

I'm going to use Pokemon logic here and say that if you're saving time to achieve what is technically possible or ideal gear for a multiplayer situation then it's not cheating in any sort of evil way. It's cheating to beat a system that shouldn't be so awful but you still have to use the gear appropriately to beat other players so it's not particularly relevant how you got the gear in question.

^

 

[Posso]

^

You literally just admitted to it being cheating after saying it wasn't.

 

[Captain Woomy]

I personally think of it as cheating whether you're doing it for your rank or for your abilities. The reason for ranked is sort of obvious. But for abilities, there is no retry option directly in the game if you used all your cash and super sea snails and are unhappy with your results. And since this retry option is not in the game and you're technically not even supposed to be save scumming, I disapprove of it and frown upon those who do it. Of course abilities don't mean everything when it comes to a player's true skill in battle, but it definitely makes me think less of them if I know they're a save scummer.

 

[Award]

I have to agree with @Captain Woomy , I also consider it cheating. The justification that "you're using the tools provided by the console" is pretty thin - you're abusing a console data backup feature intended for restoring last data due to system corruption or the need to save storage space as a way of getting additional retries at a game of chance that uses in-game currency within a game by restoring to a prior state. Lack of foresight for game data integrity when deciding on storing it console side rather than server side with regard to a data protection backup system allowed by the OS may make scumming POSSIBLE but to consider it "allowed" is a pretty big stretch of moral relativism. It's the use of OS features for a use other than what they were intended for due to an oversight by the designers.

@Captain Woomy to expand on your thinking, in terms of the way the rerolls were INTENDED by the designers, the extreme low probability of getting a specific roll was almost certainly considered from a context of how often a given combination may or may not appear in the game, and the RNG designed to keep stacks very rare in the game by sheer number of permutations and manage the overall player gear base in the game within certain ratios of abilities + some allowance for EXTREME RNG via Spyke orders. Scumming completely destroys the otherwise well planned and managed ratios and breaks a critical game system server-wide. By the real numbers encountering more than a few all dmg+ eliters in your entire play history would have been miraculous. Thanks to scumming and the subsequent spike orders from the scummers, they became highly common to the point of having to nerf the weapon, for example.

I'd agree that gear is no substitute for skill and I'm often running 0, 1, and 2 slot gear these days either experimenting with builds (in live ranked) or leveling up gear (in live ranked) and generally don't have most of the 3 slot gear and built my alts with no snails until these past 2 splatfests. And often I'm still giving the best showing or top 2 in the lobby ,and don't really notice or feel a difference. But I'm sure if I could stack ANOTHER 3 swim speeds up on my rollers and cheat my way to becoming almost twice as fast, I could "do better". Which is exactly why it's cheating.

 

[Ulk]

Yes, very much so. It's an exploit, it not an intended mechanic and it's definitely not fair towards other players. But just because something can be qualified as cheating, that doesn't mean it can't be justified. I've mentioned this before, but I entirely excuse everyone who either save scums or hacks the gear that they want, simply because I'm convinced that the rolling system is absurd and limits this game. Getting a perfect roll is not an achievement based on skill, talent or effort. It's purely luck. A ridiculous amount of luck that makes you settle for less because you have limited amount of tries and, regardless of time and effort invested in this game, unrealistic chances.

 

[Award]

Yes, very much so. It's an exploit, it not an intended mechanic and it's definitely not fair towards other players. But just because something can be qualified as cheating, that doesn't mean it can't be justified. I've mentioned this before, but I entirely excuse everyone who either save scums or hacks the gear that they want, simply because I'm convinced that the rolling system is absurd and limits this game. Getting a perfect roll is not an achievement based on skill, talent or effort. It's purely luck. A ridiculous amount of luck that makes you settle for less because you have limited amount of tries and, regardless of time and effort invested in this game, unrealistic chances.

I wont disagree reroll system is frustrating and annoying. But it was also put in place specifically to keep "perfect builds" from being very possible and frequently seen because "perfect builds" break the game in the opposite direction by making players rely on gear advantage. The reroll system incentivizes playing a lot to get a CHANCE to get that perfect build that the design otherwise says nobody REALLY gets - and gives a "jackpot" reward as a bit of a gambling mechanic for luck.

What makes it truly cheating is that by using an exploit, it gives players who are willing to stoop to use an exploit to get the advantage that they "deserve" a material advantage over players who play the actual game as designed. If 2.9 grants "unlimited rerolls are free" then all players have equal chances at everything and there is no cheatng. But right now what we have is "players who are craven enough to knowingly abuse an exploit", and "players who are willing to justify abusing the exploit because it gives them what they want in the game even though the game isn't designed to give it to them" an actual play advantage over players that play the game at face value. I.E. The honest players are disadvantaged from the exploit users. The same logic could be used to hack a range boost to the carbon roller into the game because "not having the range of a tentatek limits what the weapon can do" Nobody here would defend a weapon hack that advantages players who do it over players who don't, yet people don't mind defending an exploit that also advantages the players who use it over another simply because it doesn't involve an illegal piece of software.

I don't like the reroll system either. I also don't like the short range of the carbon roller. I wouldn't use an exploit to "fix" the latter, and I wouldn't use an exploit to "fix" the former.

Of course in competitive play the existence of the cheat creates a conundrum: If your opponents cheated, you must cheat to be on the same level as them. Which confirms the nature of it as a cheat.

Yes, I know you and many others do it, and I'm not judging you per-se on it. But at least we can all be honest about what it actually is :)

 

[ϛ(°³°)/`]

I'd say it is cheating because it exploits a somewhat unavoidable consequence of allowing backups at all, but that it's also completely excusable given the terrible RNG based system that was given to us for ability slots. I'd say it's about as much of a cheat as turning off your game without saving in any Pokémon game. In addition, gear doesn't make a player good; it's simply another tool for players to make use of to augment their gameplay. A Tenacity headpiece with 3x swim speed sounds good on paper, but it won't help an E-Litre much, and it's up to the player to pick and choose their abilities wisely.

Honestly abilities should be independent of gear entirely.

 

[Cyan]

From the objective point of view, yes save scumming is cheating, but when you analyse it further it becomes murkier. You can refer to it as a scratch card, there are loads of wins which only give you the money back that you used to buy it with. This is essentially the same as the scumming, you buy 4 scratch cards, and all 4 give you the money you spent back, so you can go and buy more. Save scumming gives you the money back and places you at square one again, you regained what you spent, but have nothing to show for it. So you try again, hoping for a different outcome, only this time you buy the 4 scratch cards and 3 give you the money back, but one gives you a bigger win. This one is the triple roll you were going for, so you keep it and move on to try something new.

However, things get even murkier when people are scumming for shiny and pure rolls, since they are not going for the brand favoured ability triple. This is where it tilts the scales onto the cheating side of it. You are resetting your money/snails until you get a 1/4492 roll in like 10 or less "real" rolls (the ones that you used on that scum). This can become unfair when people start compiling builds that are technically impossible or extremely unlikely, since they can create a playstyle and role in a match that shouldn't be possible for the weapon in question.

Then again you have to consider the chance that people get these rolls purely by chance, and just imagine now that save scumming wasn't possible at all. How would you feel if you could never get natural rolls without 50+ rerolls on a piece of gear, yet here people are who get the natural triple after buying the gear (I have had this with the Strapping Reds, White Tee and Varsity Jacket) or re-rolled a piece of gear once and got a shiny or pure (I got triple QR on the Squid Hair Clip, and triple Swim Speed on the Shirt & Tie, both in 1 reroll)? It becomes very dubious and would fragment the player base with those getting slight advantages by having organised gear whilst others are getting screwed by RNG constantly. Sure, abilities aren't everything, but having things stacked and planned out to the point of maximising your efficiency and performance with a weapon can still have a significant impact on the outcome of a match, even if only slightly.

Based on how many people scum, and how easy and accessible it is to do, save scumming is not cheating in my eyes. You have to rely on the game giving you the roll you desire, which is completely RNG-dependant and has no reflection on the skill level of the player. Yes, the dictionary definition of the word makes save scumming cheating, but when you think about the masses who do it, and how it effectively allows everyone to be on a level playing field (except the more casual players who won't really go for all slots and the like). It isn't exactly harming people, and it isn't having a major impact on the matches or tourneys, so I wouldn't bother worrying about it. I don't see the point of looking down on save scummers, unless they deliberately do it to inflate their rank past their skill level, because abilities are so trivial and so small in their impact on matches, that it isn't a big deal. People will always have differing views on this, but at the end of the day, "If you can beat them, join them", because you can't beat their gear rolls unless you get extremely lucky.