Do you feel savescumming should be removed for Ranking?

Posting this question here as well because I want a mature response haha:

I had a discussion recently with a buddy of mine, about how getting Pure Platinum are generally not a result of skill and determination, but trial and error paired with save-scumming. There are frightfully low amount of videos online of a single-segment run where a player gets a Pure Platinum on the whole stage in one go. Most are edited affairs and use back-up saves where needed.

This is in stark contrast with games like Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe which - granted - lack a mid-mission save option and whose missions are generally a lot shorter. But titles like Vanquish, MGR:R and Wonderful 101 do allow it, and sometimes even seem built around it - which I find a shame.

Because as it stands now, it's more a middle ground that only serves to annoy you. The games ranking system seems to rely on the player going through a painfully annoying process to 'retry' a fight. Would you prefer a fight gave a 'retry' option at the end? Or that it doubles down and permanently saves a fight result (like getting hit, resetting, and then doing a perfect run resulting in a Stone Rank since you still got hit in your previous attempt).

What are your takes on this?

I'm not actually familiar with the concept of save scumming.

So you mean like in MGR, when you feel you're going to fail (or DO fail) you can retry from the last checkpoint or start of the fight without rank penalty?

If so, it seems to be a result of longer stages. I don't like it. I've always been of the opinion that if I fail I need to get better, but if stages get super long, the percentage of making a mistake goes way up.

What's the trial and error part though? You still have to be skilled at these games to get the rank regardless of whether or not you can retry however many times you like.

The trial and error part is mostly that one can, technically, get a Pure Platinum rank just by trying over and over again. If you get hit or fail, just press "return to title screen". In Bayonetta 2 it was very combersome and required back-up saves, menu hoping and more sometimes resulting in nearly 5 minutes of work just to get another attempt. But it did result in PP ranks being more a matter of 'how many times do you want to press restart?" than a matter of how skilled you were as a player.

It is an artifact of the stages being longer for sure. Not sure how this could best be done.

MGR:R did try to circumvent it by saving immediately after, and if you died it would remember that meaning all the data of your dying attempt was added on your retry. I think it might help if the game just auto saves the second you get hit and before you get the rank-screen, so you can't cheese out of it. Would be a bit cruel, but at least make the ranking ... mean something.

Grinding vs consistency... I just think the latter should be rewarded, not the former (which is also why I suck at scoring in games...)

But I also think scoring system should be more creative. Bayo has a better scoring system than DMC imo because the score it's actually achieved by using core mechanics, lie gunning while comboing and wicked weaves. In DMC, scoring is formally based on style, but style is given more by spamming certain moves than by being stylish. Let alone finding orbs or time bonus... please.

But yeah, try to be more creative. Or just don't invest time into a scoring system and just make the game more fun to play, or more polished, Bayonetta has a lot of slowdowns.