Games With Single Slot (Auto) Savegames

[Pebkio]

I instantly missed being able to manually save in Infinite. But then it made up for everything by offering a chapter select after you win the game.

...I just lost the game...

Anyway, I recognize the desire for manual saving, but it did keep me from doing what I seem to automatically do in games: Save Scumming. I appreciate that they're trying to make things more challenging. Keep it on the rpgs though. Seriously, keep it on the goram rpg. We needs our saving for optimization, and really, how are we supposed to figure out our favorite builds if we can't experiment?

 

[amara2021]

it sucks, especially when you cant back track. resident evil 6 does that too.

you think "oh, hey i need to go here, but first i am going to explore over there for ammunition and stuff"
well to bad, ************! turns out "over there" was the real way to progress the story.
and god damn i hate that.

This. This so much in Bioshock Infinite. They got me with this twice already and then locked a fucking gate behind me to boot. Any linear game with collectible items like voxophones and RPG elements should not deprive players opportunities to collect them. It's like they don't even want me to find them since they keep shoving huge blinking mission objectives in my face every time I stay in one area for more than 60 seconds. It took them years to design every single nook and cranny of this gorgeous game and I'm damn well going to take the time to fully appreciate all of it.

 

[4RM3D]

This. This so much in Bioshock Infinite. They got me with this twice already and then locked a fucking gate behind me to boot...

That sucks, but at least you got a navigation pointer where your next main objective is. Thus I try to go everywhere BUT the objective pointer. It has worked out pretty well so far. Also backtracking is rewarded every now and then.

 

[zidine100]

I was under the impression that sticking to one save is tempting fate

you know mabie on the off chance that the save gets corrupt.

Its not like its happened to me so bloody often i cant even count it on one hand, just sayin.

 

[theevilgenius60]

There is a way to get around it, once, on 360 at least. I've had to do it on Dragons Dogma and LotR War in the North. Save once on hard drive. Other playthrough on the cloud. We had to do that for my brother to get a playthrough.

 

[Nocenious]

I personally like having the ability to save on the fly. Its extremely annoying when you have to stop gaming and have to redo the area again just because you did not reach a checkpoint.

 

[SwimmingRock]

There is no reason not to have multiple save slots.

There is one actually. To stop save-scumming. To stop the player reloading a save over and over again until they get their desired outcome. It gives weight to the gameplay. Dieing in Dark Souls is a big deal because you might actually lose stuff if you're not careful.

Obviously not every game needs that though. I don't know about Bioshock Infinite but Tomb Raider can't be abused with save-scumming, so I don't see the point of only having one save in that.

Dark Souls is pretty much entirely built around the player dying, being punished, and learning from the experience. Removing the death penalty removes a major thematic asset to the entire game.

I was going to point out the same thing, but then remembered a friend of mine refusing to buy the game (no matter how much I praised it) precisely because he didn't want to be under that kind of pressure. He wanted the leniency of being able to fuck up. You could argue that goes against the nature of the game, and make a fine case for that idea, but it does strike me as unnecessary to force this uniformly on all players.

That said, I would like to vent about Sniper Elite V2, which not only auto-saved, but had all the grace of a drunk clown in doing so. "Saving" the game would claim. The text would disappear and I'd haphazardly and gleefully run into a room full or enemies. After my inevitable yet joyous death, I would elect to continue only to find that the game had actually saved several seconds after it had told me it was done saving.

Respawning in the middle of being shot at and getting caught in a permanent death-loop, which forces you to restart a mission from scratch 50 minutes in will sour any gaming experience. If a developer feels the need to implement this kind of unpleasant and unforgiving system, they should at least put in the effort to get it right. Dark Souls planned this shit out. SEV2 half-assed it and shit the bed.

Side-note: Your Naoto avatar made me squee out loud.

 

[Innegativeion]

*snip*

Well I *would* say that's the nature of the game, and that Dark Souls probably just isn't for him. It's specifically trying to convey an experience he specifically doesn't want a part of.

No different from Yahtzee disliking JRPGs and RTSs.

Some games just benefit from the single-save system, in the experience they are trying to convey.

I would say the loss of a few sales of people who don't like that kind of pressure to be worth it for making a niche game like Dark Souls, which is a cult classic for a reason. That is why Dark Souls 2's apparent focus on broadening the audience worries me that they might be cheapening the experience, but it's too early to tell there just yet.

PS:

Thank you, more people need to bask in the warm sight of unbinded, sleeveless Naoto.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

snip

That is entirely beside the point.
What I am trying to get across is why the hell would a developer add bother adding in the first place, when it would be used to play the game in a way the dev didn't intend?
I'm not arguing whether or not its a good feature. Simply that nobody in their right mind would put in the effort to add something that would possibly take depth or difficulty out of their game.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

snip

That is entirely beside the point.
What I am trying to get across is why the hell would a developer add bother adding in the first place, when it would be used to play the game in a way the dev didn't intend?
I'm not arguing whether or not its a good feature. Simply that nobody in their right mind would put in the effort to add something that would possibly take depth or difficulty out of their game.

So no one in their right mind would work to give people an option they want which would make the game more enjoyable for them? That's absolute and complete bullshit. There's TONS of things that developers put into games that may "clash" with their intention for the game, but they do it anyway to make the game more enjoyable for people, or to reach a wider audience.

 

[Gladys Knight]

A few fun points...

Dynasty Warriors 6 (and I think 5 as well, but 6 was the worst of all the games, including 1) had a "limited saves depending on difficulty" feature which I found to be rather hilarious because "saving" was being factored in to the difficulty of the game. So when people attempted the harder difficulties they had to finish the mission straight through or leave the machine on.

Silly, really.

I, of course, had become very accustomed to "save scumming" (nice little derisive spin on the practice) and thought this was silly but what was even more hilarious was how it basically taught people the concept of save scumming.

See, not everyone thinks to use save features in such creative ways. Many people... a LOT of people, actually, use saves to do just that... Save when they are going to stop playing or when they reach a save point because it's what they are "supposed" to do. Keeping save backlogs to rewatch cutscenes or planning on restarting if you miss something or make a mistake is not the super widespread practice people think it is. But when people found out they couldn't save in cahos mode in DW6 they all learned right then what they could have been using saves for all along.

So let's look at us, the players. The consumers. I understand that a developer controls the vision. The ultimate goal, of course, should be to provide the best experience to the player that they reasonably can while staying as much in line with their vision as they can. However I think there are boundaries and it gets to be a little problematic when developers start feeling like they have more control over player perceptions than they really do.

To use the Dynasty Warriors games as an example again... I was staunchly against the franchise at first. Warmed up to it but wasn't a die-hard like I am today. A lot of the things I did, save scumming being one, in order to guide myself through to the desired results (that I still had to achieve either way) built and strengthened my fandom.

As a serious fan now I have a lot more patience for the game and view my experience in a bit of a different light. But I'm not about to tell another budding potential fan that he has to "pay his dues" if he wants to learn to respect the franchise like I do.

That's the big thing with games... Some people may not care that much. Why in the world are we at war with people who may have just enough interest in a title to cheese their way through it but not enough to go through the "right" way? It's one of the things I miss about Game Genie/Game Shark. There were tons of games I wouldn't have given a chance to if I had to play normally either because I just wasn't interested enough at first in devoting the time or, more often, because the game was so poorly designed that I pretty much needed a cheat device to make it work better (Final Fantasy 8). I know a person who likes games like I do but not as much as I do. A lot of these new... directions are simply keeping this person from playing the games at all rather than forcing them to play them "right."

We silly video game fans... What do we gain in the war against save scumming?

We give developers a convenient "noble" cause to try to monetize the fact that another person in the same household won't be able to start their own game without deleting yours (someone wanted to see the story of Warriors Orochi 3 from scratch and my only choice was to delete my save or mess around with nonsense rather than select a simple slot).

We keep dastardly players from going through their games "wrong."


And what do we lose?

Protection from corrupted saves.

Multiple people in a household enjoying a game.

Protection from bad game design.

Protection from bad game pacing.

Protection from lack of level select options.

Smart.


A good protection against save scumming = save points. You can't save in the middle of battle in Sengoku Basara Samurai Heroes so if you fail or restart to "try again" you go back to the beginning of the level. Stapling the consequence onto people the moment they die or fail simply isn't worth it.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Tomb Raider has 3 save slots. At least on PC.

But the game auto saves in 1 slot only. The other 2 slots are for new playthroughs.

No, you can tell the game to auto save in any of the 3 slots. If you change the auto save slot, the previous earlier save is kept.

But you can only change the save slot when starting a new game, no? You can't change mid game, thus the problem still exists.

No, you can change it mid game. Believe me - I did it.

 

[4RM3D]

No, you can change it mid game. Believe me - I did it.

Well, the devs could have explained it better then. Heck, if they give you the option, they might as well remove the 3 slot limit.

 

[Ren_Li]

What infuriates me is that- for me- it limits exploring what the game has to offer.
I'll often go, "oh, gee, I wonder what happens if I do this, or go here when I'm not meant to, or..." But obviously, if it's just going to autosave after I've done this potentially really stupid thing just to see what happens, I'm not going to do it.
Which kind of sucks, because that's a way to learn about the game- when you're curious but you KNOW it'll probably have negative consequences that you don't want to deal with, you either save it, see what happens and then re-load, or you don't do it at all. And that seems like you'll be missing out on stuff just because you don't want to take the risk.

Some of you might say that's a good thing. But why can't you choose? If I want to throw myself off a cliff to see if I can land without dying, or see what happens if I hit on that NPC, or see what happens if I HIT that NPC, or if fire will kill me... Shouldn't I be able to explore what the game has to offer if I so choose, and other people don't do stupid stuff "just to see what happens" if that's how they'd rather play? If it's single-player, the way each person chooses to play affects nobody else.

This, of course, excludes Dark Souls. Although I wouldn't mind a save slot at the beginning of each New Game + (or ++, or +++, whatever) so I can go back to the game from the beginning with my character, instead of half way through when I can't even remember (or care about) what I was doing. Other than that, yeah, a single save slot works with Dark Souls due to the "point" of the game

 

[Palmerama]

One of the reasons I like multiple save slots is that when my brother comes over for a gaming fix & a break from the kids he plays on my Xbox and the games he wants to play. A house with only 1 console & more then 1 person playing makes sense to have multiple saves.

Multiple saves definately are needed for rpgs that have character creation. As you will need a save slot for each character. Yes this inlcudes Dark Souls! You can have one save slot as a knight and another one as a thief where you go down the stairs in one save & up the stairs in another and you can see more of the world.

Doing this doesn't take away anything from the punishment of death as they're two different characters in different areas. All that happens is that you get to sample different parts of the game that you wouldn't be able to with just one character and not have to worry about getting rid/replacing the character you've spent so many hours with.

 

[Kirov Reporting]

it sucks, especially when you cant back track. resident evil 6 does that too.

you think "oh, hey i need to go here, but first i am going to explore over there for ammunition and stuff"
well to bad, ************! turns out "over there" was the real way to progress the story.
and god damn i hate that.

ARGH! Maddening! I detest games that don't realise what a pain this is. If you're going to have areas that will be shut off, give us a clue - especially where the path forks, otherwise you end up feeling like you're taking a 50/50 chance on missing something great or crucial, and feel like you need to have an FAQ to stop you missing out due to a lack of psychic powers or intuition.

And that really does ruin a game. That feeling of needing to know what you're doing before you do it (and I don't mean hand-holding, I mean 'if you don't do it in the order you couldn't possibly know, you may miss out) is much more cloying and aggravating than knowing that you could 'save scum' if you have a mind to, and apparently having the feature is a GAEM BRAEKER for most of its opponents here..

And what do we lose?

Protection from corrupted saves.

Multiple people in a household enjoying a game.

Protection from bad game design.

Protection from bad game pacing.

Protection from lack of level select options.

Smart.

I'm going to save now, then ask you to marry me - that way I can reload the save if you say no, and preemptively punch you in the arm. You've summed it up really, I can't understand why people are crusading against save systems, which primarily are there for convenience and safety (taking a break to prevent RSI and embolisms perhaps, as well as the wealth of bug potential) and I can only assume you're right, and that people are seen to be DOING GAMING WRONG.

Silly, really.

One of the reasons I like multiple save slots is that when my brother comes over for a gaming fix & a break from the kids he plays on my Xbox and the games he wants to play. A house with only 1 console & more then 1 person playing makes sense to have multiple saves.

This to a limited extent seems to be what different profiles can be useful for. That said, with how darn clunky the 360's sign-in system is (reloading the whole game with every signin/out, if you don't know exactly what is on which profile, then you'll be there for 10 minutes or so trying to figure it out. It's not an ideal solution, especially when there can also be DLC issues (I'm sure at least some titles are profile-locked for DLC, I may be wrong) and progress-unlock issues when there is one profile that's unlocked x y and z and person 2 doesn't have time to spend 20 hours unlocking it also.

Multiple saves cut clean through all of this, and yet people are derided for wanting them.

Double you, tea eff.

 

[GundamSentinel]

God, I hated that in Dragon's Dogma. Long games with multiple choices/different endings along the way. It's a big no-no for me in those games. If people want to save-scum, let them. No real harm in doing that in a single-player game. Me, I just want to enjoy different parts of a game at my leisure, especially after I've finished it already.

 

[Shocksplicer]

This is something that I hate. I blame consoles because this feature didn't start showing up on PC titles until developing on consoles and porting to PC became common. It used to be standard for PC games to have a save menu. Now it is rarely seen, and checkpoints and auto-saves are the new norm. Then again, some developers do it on purpose to prevent players from having it too easy. Either way, I can't stand not having a good old-fashioned save system where I can save when and where I want!

I mainly hate it because I can't play the game the way I want or replay my favorite parts easily.

Oh please, consoles had nothing to do with it. Don't go blaming consoles every time something happens that you don't like.

OT: Yeah it's annoying. To be fair though, some games don't need multiple save spots, for example they wouldn't affect Bioshock Infinite in any way. I would, however, like to be able to save anywhere in Infinite, as the game tends to send me back an unreasonable amount.