Castrum: I can't imagine what might be causing this. Was there something in the patch that changed some underlying game fundamentals?
Kezardin: There are some suggestions regarding mm7che problems in
this thread Thank you immensely, Kezardin. Your link helped me solve my problem.
For anyone who encounters this problem themselves, it was a Windows 7 problem where I had to run the Editor as an Admin. I had been wondering about that, but had dismissed it since the data seemed to be writing to the save file, according to the Editor. I checked again, after I enabled Admin, and it was the in-game values the save was showing when I booted it up.
I know I should try to enjoy the M&M games without cheats, which I have in the past, but as me replaying them is primarily due to nostalgia, I feel like I just want to breeze through the game, maybe find a bit of challenge in the latter part of it, and experience the storyline.