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DISCOURAGING SAVE SCUMMING
Posts
PsychoFreaX
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CloseDoes everyone know what save scumming is? If not, here's a link.
Anyway, the first project I'm planning will have only quick saves. Which exits the game after saving and loading the game deletes the save afterward. Which means you need to quick save every time you exit or you won't be having a save file when you return and if you die it's all the way back in the beginning again. So you can't just restart fifty times against a boss. Good thing is the project is only like 10 hours of gameplay. The one downside though is if you have a power outage which exits the game without you meaning to.
If I ever get to the second game which is about 50 hours of gameplay, however. Yes, you still use quick saves but this time when you die you only go back to the last check point. The catch? Your death goes down in your games record and accumulates over time and at the end of the game, you get graded based on these death counts and dying too much can't get you an A-rank completion. Though you'll still need to quick save every time you exit the game and there's always the same fatal flaw with effing power outages which would be even worse when you play for 50 hours.
So does anyone think this is a good way to discourage save scumming? To make death actually be something you want to avoid? How do you do it if at all?
Anyway, the first project I'm planning will have only quick saves. Which exits the game after saving and loading the game deletes the save afterward. Which means you need to quick save every time you exit or you won't be having a save file when you return and if you die it's all the way back in the beginning again. So you can't just restart fifty times against a boss. Good thing is the project is only like 10 hours of gameplay. The one downside though is if you have a power outage which exits the game without you meaning to.
If I ever get to the second game which is about 50 hours of gameplay, however. Yes, you still use quick saves but this time when you die you only go back to the last check point. The catch? Your death goes down in your games record and accumulates over time and at the end of the game, you get graded based on these death counts and dying too much can't get you an A-rank completion. Though you'll still need to quick save every time you exit the game and there's always the same fatal flaw with effing power outages which would be even worse when you play for 50 hours.
So does anyone think this is a good way to discourage save scumming? To make death actually be something you want to avoid? How do you do it if at all?
I don't view it as a problem, actually.
If people want to do this, they what's it to me? I don't really care if they don't play the game as I intended them to play it.
but yes, to overcome the (non?) issue of save scumming, you would have to have a single save file that you erase when you load a game automatically, and save on exit.
If people want to do this, they what's it to me? I don't really care if they don't play the game as I intended them to play it.
but yes, to overcome the (non?) issue of save scumming, you would have to have a single save file that you erase when you load a game automatically, and save on exit.
It's not all about making other players play the game like how you want them to. But even players who want to play the game properly will want a reason to fear dying. Don't tell me you never get the feeling in an RPG where you say, "what does it matter if I die, I'll just restart the fight right away."
Darken
3952
I do not think starting over the entire game all over again due to wanting a perfect run in a 50 hour RPG is fun. I recall the Metal Gear Solid games grading you on how many saves you've made (and/or continues idk) and other factors such as people killed, alerts etc. Thing is they're rather short if you skip the cutscenes/codec calls and can be played through in bite sized chunks.
Assuming you're using RMXP or higher I bet you can detect how many times the player has loaded a save, so if you realllllllllly want to add in a badass badge, you should base it on that and not trouble the regular players who simply want to beat the game.
Assuming you're using RMXP or higher I bet you can detect how many times the player has loaded a save, so if you realllllllllly want to add in a badass badge, you should base it on that and not trouble the regular players who simply want to beat the game.
Well, since I am an old fogey who played video games back when they were hard, I learned to fear death in videogames. So I try to avoid it the best I can.
But I am not sure if this issue is worth tackling (esp. in an indie game) and you have to question whether it is worth it for you to implement it in your game, and more importantly if it truly improves your game. (hey, it might! Just give it some careful consideration!)
But I am not sure if this issue is worth tackling (esp. in an indie game) and you have to question whether it is worth it for you to implement it in your game, and more importantly if it truly improves your game. (hey, it might! Just give it some careful consideration!)
Shinan
4314
I think limiting saves is a horrible thing. I remember on Silent Storm on harder difficulties apart from adding cool stuff like more difficult enemies and better AI it also imposed a limit that you could only save when the game was not in turn based mode. Well a mission took a couple of hours to finish so there was no way I was ever going to enjoy those harder difficulties because of the fact that I just couldn't save whenever I wanted.
I understand in certain genres the idea of one save file is what "makes the game", and there's always the "Iron Man" mode in many games that can add a bit of challenge and stakes to a game.
But it shouldn't really be default. And it should be kept out of the regular difficulty options. (another game that I remember doing a similar thing was Max Payne 2 where on the hardest difficulty you were only allowed to save three times per level)
But yeah, certain kinds of games (especially roguelikes thrive on this, because they're designed to be very play-die-play) are okay with this kind of not allowing saves system. But if a "regular" game has it I won't play it.
F5 for quicksave for the win.
EDIT:
And I died.
I haven't played the game since.
EDIT2:
This talk:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014889/Evoking-Emotions-and-Achieving-Success
has some good points about the Fear of Death. vs actual failure states.
I understand in certain genres the idea of one save file is what "makes the game", and there's always the "Iron Man" mode in many games that can add a bit of challenge and stakes to a game.
But it shouldn't really be default. And it should be kept out of the regular difficulty options. (another game that I remember doing a similar thing was Max Payne 2 where on the hardest difficulty you were only allowed to save three times per level)
But yeah, certain kinds of games (especially roguelikes thrive on this, because they're designed to be very play-die-play) are okay with this kind of not allowing saves system. But if a "regular" game has it I won't play it.
F5 for quicksave for the win.
EDIT:
author=PsychoFreaXOn the other hand, dying in that moment usually means the game is never played again. (I remember in the Gamecube Metroid, which had those save point thingies. I had just beat a boss and moved onwards, hoping to find one of those godforsaken save points (save points are evil by the way). Well on my way I was killed by some new weird monster in this new area I unlocked after killing the boss (I was moving forward, which seemed like the right thing to do).
Don't tell me you never get the feeling in an RPG where you say, "what does it matter if I die, I'll just restart."
And I died.
I haven't played the game since.
EDIT2:
This talk:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014889/Evoking-Emotions-and-Achieving-Success
has some good points about the Fear of Death. vs actual failure states.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
The problem with save scumming is that it allows you to manipulate random events to always give you the best outcome. This is problematic in games like, say, Dragon Age 2, where each treasure in the game has randomly generated contents that are generated at the time when you loot the treasure. So you save, open the treasure... get a mage item. Reload, open the treasure... get a longbow. Reload, open the treasure... get a junk item worth 30 copper. Reload, open the treasure... get a pendant that you already have 12 of. Repeat until you get something you can use. This then trivializes the rest of the game - it's essentially cheating. If the designers thought the game should actually work like that, if they thought the game should give you a useful item every time, they would make it work like that. They didn't make Dragon Age 2 work like that - we don't make our games work in ways that players necessarily "want" - because it makes the game objectively worse. Designers know what makes the game better or worse, and players don't. That's our job.
On the other hand, reloading the game because you failed at something is not save scumming. It is a central, intended aspect of gameplay. Removing it is utterly ridiculous - it makes it impossible to include any real challenges in the game because the player isn't allowed to fail at them. A good challenge is one that the player can just barely defeat if he plays to the best of his ability - but not all players have the same ability level, so if a challenge's difficulty is "perfect", some players will take a few tries to get it right. Unless you design a different game for each individual player (think tabletop games) this is absolutely inevitable.
That doesn't mean that any time it's a matter of life and death, it's not save scumming. You can definitely abuse save scumming to survive. Tool-assisted speedruns for RPGs are built on this premise - create a save state every second, and every time you don't get a critical hit or don't dodge an attack, reload your save. The ket difference here, the thing that makes this save scumming and reloading after dying to a boss not save scumming, is that you're abusing the random number generator, not just retrying something you failed at. There is a very real difference between failing at the game and getting bad dice rolls. Unless the game is a heap of badly designed intolerable bullshit, getting bad dice rolls will never stop you from winning - it will only make it harder.
Of course, some games don't mind save scumming. Easy mode in Fire Emblem is actually built on the premise that save scumming is allowed and expected. If you play the game on easy mode, you can save mid-battle and load that same save repeatedly with no penalty, retrying the same turn over and over until the enemy archer doesn't crit your pegasus. While in normal and hard mode, loading a mid-battle save deletes the quicksave data (but you can still load from the beginning of the battle). This is actually the only difference between easy and normal mode, in some of the Fire Emblem games. I think it's lame and unfun, but it's undeniably intentional. It exists to train the player, in fact - around the 8th time in a row that your pegasus gets shot out of the air, you hopefully will figure out not to use this strategy again in future battles, and so the scumming is actually teaching you strategy.
All this has nothing to do with the fact that, unless your game stores its saved games online, PsychoFreaX's proposed method does nothing at all to prevent save scumming. It just changes it from something you do in the game menu to something you do in Windows. You cannot prevent save scumming on a computer game without cloud hosting - if the player has the save file, he can copy and paste the save file. You can try to do crazy stuff involving timestamps and random hashes and registry entries, but this doesn't stop people, it just means they have to know as much about computers as you do.
On the other hand, reloading the game because you failed at something is not save scumming. It is a central, intended aspect of gameplay. Removing it is utterly ridiculous - it makes it impossible to include any real challenges in the game because the player isn't allowed to fail at them. A good challenge is one that the player can just barely defeat if he plays to the best of his ability - but not all players have the same ability level, so if a challenge's difficulty is "perfect", some players will take a few tries to get it right. Unless you design a different game for each individual player (think tabletop games) this is absolutely inevitable.
That doesn't mean that any time it's a matter of life and death, it's not save scumming. You can definitely abuse save scumming to survive. Tool-assisted speedruns for RPGs are built on this premise - create a save state every second, and every time you don't get a critical hit or don't dodge an attack, reload your save. The ket difference here, the thing that makes this save scumming and reloading after dying to a boss not save scumming, is that you're abusing the random number generator, not just retrying something you failed at. There is a very real difference between failing at the game and getting bad dice rolls. Unless the game is a heap of badly designed intolerable bullshit, getting bad dice rolls will never stop you from winning - it will only make it harder.
Of course, some games don't mind save scumming. Easy mode in Fire Emblem is actually built on the premise that save scumming is allowed and expected. If you play the game on easy mode, you can save mid-battle and load that same save repeatedly with no penalty, retrying the same turn over and over until the enemy archer doesn't crit your pegasus. While in normal and hard mode, loading a mid-battle save deletes the quicksave data (but you can still load from the beginning of the battle). This is actually the only difference between easy and normal mode, in some of the Fire Emblem games. I think it's lame and unfun, but it's undeniably intentional. It exists to train the player, in fact - around the 8th time in a row that your pegasus gets shot out of the air, you hopefully will figure out not to use this strategy again in future battles, and so the scumming is actually teaching you strategy.
All this has nothing to do with the fact that, unless your game stores its saved games online, PsychoFreaX's proposed method does nothing at all to prevent save scumming. It just changes it from something you do in the game menu to something you do in Windows. You cannot prevent save scumming on a computer game without cloud hosting - if the player has the save file, he can copy and paste the save file. You can try to do crazy stuff involving timestamps and random hashes and registry entries, but this doesn't stop people, it just means they have to know as much about computers as you do.
If a player has to restart a battle against a boss fight fifty times, I would tend to think that's more an issue with how difficulty the said boss is rather than trying to get a "perfect" on said boss.
Anyway, the potential to loose all progress one has made is very off-turning for a player of an RPG. Even if a game is 10 hours long, the potential to loose to the final boss fight means that you have to play those 10 hours all over again instead of picking up where you left off (or close enough, anyway), learning from the mistakes made, and reconfiguring your setup.
*Edit: This post was drafted whlie LockeZ made his, if that's any assurance.
Anyway, the potential to loose all progress one has made is very off-turning for a player of an RPG. Even if a game is 10 hours long, the potential to loose to the final boss fight means that you have to play those 10 hours all over again instead of picking up where you left off (or close enough, anyway), learning from the mistakes made, and reconfiguring your setup.
*Edit: This post was drafted whlie LockeZ made his, if that's any assurance.
Dyhalto
7536
If you're worried about people save scumming for items/stats, just generate the necessary numbers an hour or two of gameplay in advance. For items, generate them while traversing one of the earlier dungeons. For stats, generate a string of numbers and draw from it. It's extra coding, but it'll solve your problem without frustrating the player into deleting your game.
LDanarkos
430
I really don't think this is necessary at all. But here's my general thoughts on the subject:
a) If you have something like important information that an NPC is willing to sell you, or you get one of several important questions answered, then "save scumming," is an easy way to get that information without paying the bill, or get all of your important questions answered instead of just one. To avoid this, don't make it so that there's a save point right next to the info. Make it so that the NPC selling you information is at the end of a dungeon or something. If you hit "reset" after you pay for his information, you also lose all of the EXP and GOLD that you gained while raiding your way to that point in the dungeon. Similarly, if you get an important question answered for free, make it come immediately after a hard boss battle with no save points in between. If they want to hit reset, beat the boss again, and get another question answered, then fine, but it's hardly open for abuse.
b) If battles are low variance, and you can't save mid-battle regardless, then I don't care about save scumming. If you have a spell that costs all of your MP, misses 92% of the time, and deals a million damage 8% of the time; then it would be open for obscene abuse if you had very powerful, very high reward enemies near save points.
c) If you have an emulator, and you can save every two seconds, mid-battle and everything, then sure, save scumming is abusive. If we're talking about raiding a dungeon that is very lengthy and takes, say, 20-50 minutes, with no save points inside, and wiping sends you all the way back to your save point outside the dungeon, then what's wrong with that? Do you really feel like a 40-minute setback isn't enough of a setback?
d) Are we talking about a community-based amateur game? You think players would brave a 6-hour setback and start all over because they're that dedicated to playing your game? I think not, because players have massive ADD when playing community games. You have to work from the assumption that you barely have their attention, not that they're glued to their monitors.
a) If you have something like important information that an NPC is willing to sell you, or you get one of several important questions answered, then "save scumming," is an easy way to get that information without paying the bill, or get all of your important questions answered instead of just one. To avoid this, don't make it so that there's a save point right next to the info. Make it so that the NPC selling you information is at the end of a dungeon or something. If you hit "reset" after you pay for his information, you also lose all of the EXP and GOLD that you gained while raiding your way to that point in the dungeon. Similarly, if you get an important question answered for free, make it come immediately after a hard boss battle with no save points in between. If they want to hit reset, beat the boss again, and get another question answered, then fine, but it's hardly open for abuse.
b) If battles are low variance, and you can't save mid-battle regardless, then I don't care about save scumming. If you have a spell that costs all of your MP, misses 92% of the time, and deals a million damage 8% of the time; then it would be open for obscene abuse if you had very powerful, very high reward enemies near save points.
c) If you have an emulator, and you can save every two seconds, mid-battle and everything, then sure, save scumming is abusive. If we're talking about raiding a dungeon that is very lengthy and takes, say, 20-50 minutes, with no save points inside, and wiping sends you all the way back to your save point outside the dungeon, then what's wrong with that? Do you really feel like a 40-minute setback isn't enough of a setback?
d) Are we talking about a community-based amateur game? You think players would brave a 6-hour setback and start all over because they're that dedicated to playing your game? I think not, because players have massive ADD when playing community games. You have to work from the assumption that you barely have their attention, not that they're glued to their monitors.
I only dislike this when people complain that the gameplay sucks in reviews because they can just restart and do better. That's like every game ever.
Who hasn't reset a game just so they can get that special drop? There's nothing wrong with it. If you're willing to waste time resetting, playing the same part over, then resetting again, why shouldn't you be allowed to? There's something inherently human about trying to take the easiest path to success - after all, that's how a lot of inventions were created.
If you don't want the player to abuse something, then make it a bit harder, but chances are that if they really want to abuse it, they'll find a way. It's the same reason people clock out the max hours/gold/items/stat points. In the case of only allowing one save file, well, it's easy enough to make another copy of the game with that file and continue one path on one copy and another path on another.
It's like unlocking a game just because it's been locked up, really. There's not point to it.
Just my two cents.
If you don't want the player to abuse something, then make it a bit harder, but chances are that if they really want to abuse it, they'll find a way. It's the same reason people clock out the max hours/gold/items/stat points. In the case of only allowing one save file, well, it's easy enough to make another copy of the game with that file and continue one path on one copy and another path on another.
It's like unlocking a game just because it's been locked up, really. There's not point to it.
Just my two cents.
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
Didn't we have this same conversation before about three months ago and in one of your own threads that, oddly enough, ended with more "nay"s than "yea"s anyway?
With that aside, I would probably distance myself from any game of any length longer than half an hour that withheld my ability to save whenever I felt the need (inside dungeons is the only viable exception). Even so, you brought up the risk of a power outage rocking your neighborhood and completely undoing everything you've fought for to that point, so why would you even consider this?
With that aside, I would probably distance myself from any game of any length longer than half an hour that withheld my ability to save whenever I felt the need (inside dungeons is the only viable exception). Even so, you brought up the risk of a power outage rocking your neighborhood and completely undoing everything you've fought for to that point, so why would you even consider this?
Oh God, yes. I have to add this. When doing an LP it is terrible to play a game where you can't save for upward of 20 minutes. I was doing one yesterday where I couldn't save for over an hour. There were no save points anywhere! Unfortunately the file corrupted (as it does when it goes over 1GB worth of recording) so I can't exactly post it up. Needless to say, though, I was quite annoyed. >.<
author=Corfaisus
Even so, you brought up the risk of a power outage rocking your neighborhood and completely undoing everything you've fought for to that point, so why would you even consider this?
Surely people don't want or their achievement and hard work torn up only because of a power outage that has nothing to do with their gaming skills?
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I will note that save scumming is the reason I hate casinos in RPGs because they're the one place I can't help myself from abusing it. Like seriously, how hard is it to figure out that casino + save point is not a combination of gameplay elements that works. Stop doing this to me, games! I don't actually enjoy it but you give the casino Dragon Armor or something so I have no choice.
But man, dude, if you have to get rid of one, get rid of the casino, not the save points.
The same goes for most other things that are abusable via reloading. Just make them not abusable via reloading. Don't get rid of reloading.
But man, dude, if you have to get rid of one, get rid of the casino, not the save points.
The same goes for most other things that are abusable via reloading. Just make them not abusable via reloading. Don't get rid of reloading.
Shinan
4314
author=LockeZ
The same goes for most other things that are abusable via reloading. Just make them not abusable via reloading. Don't get rid of reloading.
Last night at work I listened to the latest Three Moves Ahead podcast where they talked about Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri they mentioned the fact that they stored a random seed into the game, so that upon reloading a battle would always end the same way as it did last time. (to prevent reload abuse) It turned out that playtesters (and in fact later actual gamers) thought that this was a bug "I played through this battle 50 times and every time I lost!"
They apparently learned from that experience and in later games they let people "save scumm", because who's to determine how to play a game anyway?
I know personally that I tend to reload occasional battles in certain strategy games (or in fact, Football Manager games) just because a fight (or football game) didn't end quite the way I wanted it to. I'll take the Football Manager example for instance. My plucky little team has fought its way up a cup it has no place in. Dramatic justice dictates that I should continue to fight my way in the cup with some dignity. And not, say, lose 6-0 to a Premier Division team. (instead I'll reload until I either win, or... say, get a more dignified 2-1 result) It's just... sort of more dramatic and in keeping with a certain narrative...
In the end I get a more pleasing experience out of the game.
trentinxd
12
Well, I'll tell yall, save scumming is up to the user whenever theirs the option to save.
But you can do it without it, in Final Fantasy 7 I left my playstation on for a week and decided to fight emerald weapon and got owned because I lost my memory card. I lost a week worth of data but i didn't make a big deal. If you really want it to be played like this I would make it an option that can be turned on or off. And give score points when they spend a certain amount of time into the antiscumsaving mode and put a long cooldown to switch it off. And pherhaps make a way to spend points on items or vanity items to encourage people to use your system and then at the end of the gave you get a average of the total points you earned and average ranking.
But you can do it without it, in Final Fantasy 7 I left my playstation on for a week and decided to fight emerald weapon and got owned because I lost my memory card. I lost a week worth of data but i didn't make a big deal. If you really want it to be played like this I would make it an option that can be turned on or off. And give score points when they spend a certain amount of time into the antiscumsaving mode and put a long cooldown to switch it off. And pherhaps make a way to spend points on items or vanity items to encourage people to use your system and then at the end of the gave you get a average of the total points you earned and average ranking.
author=trentinxd
If you really want it to be played like this I would make it an option that can be turned on or off. And give score points when they spend a certain amount of time into the antiscumsaving mode and put a long cooldown to switch it off. And perhaps make a way to spend points on items or vanity items to encourage people to use your system and then at the end of the gave you get a average of the total points you earned and average ranking.
Why have it turned on or off? If you aren't going to use it (turn the option off) then you don't need to have an option, do you? You just don't do it.
Really, if someone has taken the time to download your game and play it, let them play it how they like. If they want to save scum, let them. It's not like it makes a difference to you, does it? You're not the one who's playing the game and benefits from it. I don't know, I didn't even know it was an issue until I read this thread.
Compared to things like battle balance and gameplay bugs it's such an unimportant thing.
I've played through Breath of Fire V, which had a somewhat similar system to what you are describing (you had quick saves, but you could also find items you could use to make permanent saves, scattered sparingly throughout the game). Given that the game was a race against the clock and took place entirely in a subterranean dungeon, the inability to save frequently and often did add to the dread of the experience. I knew that if I screwed up at the end of the game, it was all over and I'd lose hours of progress. Thankfully, Breath of Fire V rewarded careful strategy and planning, and there weren't any 'cheap deaths'.
Even though Breath of Fire V did this sort of thing rather well, I doubt I'll ever play through it again. Having to worry about the save system all the time is pretty taxing, and if I had ever really screwed up I probably would have just quit the game altogether.
My main design rule is making things fun for the player. Challenge is fun, and having something to lose can enhance the challenge, but I think basic features such as saving the game should be accessible and easy unless there is a good reason for them to be otherwise.
One of the most unpleasant gaming experiences I've ever had was playing The Nightmare of Druaga for the PS2. In that game, the penalty for dying was the player losing all of their equipment and having to start from scratch every time, and it was very easy to get killed in that game due to its random dungeon designs. Not only was this game based entirely on trial and error, it also went out of its way to punish the player for 'save scumming' (in this case, trying to keep your items before the game auto saved your death). If you did this, the 'Goddess' would show up and lecture the player for a good FIVE MINUTES about how wrong it is to save scum, and then ask a series of yes or no questions about whether the player understands and apologizes. You can't skip through these questions either, as the Goddess switches the yes and no answers up, forcing you to go through the ENTIRE speech again if you answer incorrectly. Even worse, if you are a 'repeat offender', the speech gets even LONGER. You can't even just copy your save game in the PS2 menu, as the designers put safeguards against that as well. I have never seen a game that punishes the player for playing it quite that much.
So yeah, I don't suggest making things harder on the player than they need to be within the existing limitations of the system. You don't want to be like the designers of The Nightmare of Druaga and create a game so punishing that it isn't any fun at all to play.
Even though Breath of Fire V did this sort of thing rather well, I doubt I'll ever play through it again. Having to worry about the save system all the time is pretty taxing, and if I had ever really screwed up I probably would have just quit the game altogether.
My main design rule is making things fun for the player. Challenge is fun, and having something to lose can enhance the challenge, but I think basic features such as saving the game should be accessible and easy unless there is a good reason for them to be otherwise.
One of the most unpleasant gaming experiences I've ever had was playing The Nightmare of Druaga for the PS2. In that game, the penalty for dying was the player losing all of their equipment and having to start from scratch every time, and it was very easy to get killed in that game due to its random dungeon designs. Not only was this game based entirely on trial and error, it also went out of its way to punish the player for 'save scumming' (in this case, trying to keep your items before the game auto saved your death). If you did this, the 'Goddess' would show up and lecture the player for a good FIVE MINUTES about how wrong it is to save scum, and then ask a series of yes or no questions about whether the player understands and apologizes. You can't skip through these questions either, as the Goddess switches the yes and no answers up, forcing you to go through the ENTIRE speech again if you answer incorrectly. Even worse, if you are a 'repeat offender', the speech gets even LONGER. You can't even just copy your save game in the PS2 menu, as the designers put safeguards against that as well. I have never seen a game that punishes the player for playing it quite that much.
So yeah, I don't suggest making things harder on the player than they need to be within the existing limitations of the system. You don't want to be like the designers of The Nightmare of Druaga and create a game so punishing that it isn't any fun at all to play.
