Saving systems. Lets get them right, yeah?

[Sennz0r]

Quicksaves suck, they make a game ridiculously easy, especially big RPG's.
Damn, Hitman got it right, a limited amount of saves per mission.. Maybe they could implement that into an RPG as let's say a limited amount of saves per level, with the amount depending on what level you are..? But then you might get a problem with quitting...

 

[Credge]

Quicksaves suck, they make a game ridiculously easy, especially big RPG's.
Damn, Hitman got it right, a limited amount of saves per mission.. Maybe they could implement that into an RPG as let's say a limited amount of saves per level, with the amount depending on what level you are..? But then you might get a problem with quitting...

It depends on the RPG. Games like Diablo auto save every time you quit. In the case of Diablo, it works incredibly fine. The same could be said about most action-rpg's as well.

Games like KOTOR require it in some parts of the game.

All in all, quick saves are fine if the game requires or benefits from it. The beauty of it, though, is that it only makes the game easier if you let it make the game easier. If you, the player, want to abuse it then you can. If you don't then it won't.

 

[Sennz0r]

Quicksaves suck, they make a game ridiculously easy, especially big RPG's.
Damn, Hitman got it right, a limited amount of saves per mission.. Maybe they could implement that into an RPG as let's say a limited amount of saves per level, with the amount depending on what level you are..? But then you might get a problem with quitting...

It depends on the RPG. Games like Diablo auto save every time you quit. In the case of Diablo, it works incredibly fine. The same could be said about most action-rpg's as well.

Games like KOTOR require it in some parts of the game.

All in all, quick saves are fine if the game requires or benefits from it. The beauty of it, though, is that it only makes the game easier if you let it make the game easier. If you, the player, want to abuse it then you can. If you don't then it won't.

The problem with this however, would be that because game designers know that most players just save all the time to avoid great penalties when dying, they make the game harder to play in response to this, by adding insanely high critical hits or powerful traps. This will force the ones that wish to challenge themselves and not quicksave all the time into quicksaving all the time, because the higher difficulty almost makes the game impossible to play without all these saves. There's an article about this on this site, it has a point and I think game designers should look into this. I was never a fan of saving around every little corner, so when I went from a decent old RPG to one that inserted random ubertraps that killed me in one hit I was kinda fucked. I'd like to be able to play a game through that is challenging but doesn't force me to save so much, it sort of ruins the atmosphere.

 

[Credge]

The problem with this however, would be that because game designers know that most players just save all the time to avoid great penalties when dying, they make the game harder to play in response to this, by adding insanely high critical hits or powerful traps. This will force the ones that wish to challenge themselves and not quicksave all the time into quicksaving all the time, because the higher difficulty almost makes the game impossible to play without all these saves. There's an article about this on this site, it has a point and I think game designers should look into this. I was never a fan of saving around every little corner, so when I went from a decent old RPG to one that inserted random ubertraps that killed me in one hit I was kinda fucked. I'd like to be able to play a game through that is challenging but doesn't force me to save so much, it sort of ruins the atmosphere.

I don't find that to be true at all. Never once have I played a game and said "Man, this game was designed JUST BECAUSE of autosave" nor have I heard any devs talk about this. Besides, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from not autosaving every 15 seconds. If a game is too hard for you then you're probably playing on a difficulty that is too hard for you. Autosaving doesn't make a game easier, it just means the downtime from making a terrible mistake is less.

It's very bad game design to try to extend the length of a game by having a player play through the same 30 minutes of game he just played through because he didn't realize he was supposed to rush his way through a closing door. Stuff like that is only appropriate in racing games and RTS's... not RPG's and FPS's.

It's also very bad game design to have designated save points. This, again, artificially extends the length of the game by having a player stick around a save point to 'grind away' on the monsters around it (A-La FF7-10) in an attempt to be strong enough to beat the boss at the end of the dungeon.

Again, if you as a player find that you have to save every 15 seconds to succeed... that's user error. I've never, in my 16 some year gaming history, ever had to save frequently while playing games (with the only exception being Baldurs Gate while doing a solo character challenge).

Of course, this all depends on how the game is made. An action-rpg requires a solid save feature which should either be inspired by the save system found in Diablo (as done with TQ) or the saving system found in games like Morrowind. In a JRPG, it's better to have certain spots you can save >as well as< the ability to save on other places, like the world map, similar to what is found in the FF series... except with an intelligent system.

Very rarely is the save point system actually a good design. More often than not save systems like that make people stop playing a game mainly because people get tired of playing through 30 minutes of the same content over... and over... and over again.

 

[Sennz0r]

I don't find that to be true at all. Never once have I played a game and said "Man, this game was designed JUST BECAUSE of autosave" nor have I heard any devs talk about this. Besides, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from not autosaving every 15 seconds. If a game is too hard for you then you're probably playing on a difficulty that is too hard for you. Autosaving doesn't make a game easier, it just means the downtime from making a terrible mistake is less.

I feel that if I play a game on normal difficulty, I have to be able to play through it fairly well. Still challenging, and only dying when all of it is my fault. You mean to say you never died in an RPG because you wanted to open a chest, forgot there might be a trap attached to it and then got blown away because the trap did some weirdass x3 critical hit damage? That's a consequence of people quicksaving around every corner. And no of course no one's gonna say "yeah we put some random traps and overpowered critical hits into the game to annoy the people who save after every step they take."
If I can play one RPG on normal difficulty and play through it fairly well save for the event when I come across a challenge that is legitimately out of my league because I am not skilled enough. When I die then it's all fine and dandy, but if I die because some guy in a totally different RPG on the same difficulty level pulls some kind of uber damage dealing superskill out of their ass which they're normally not supposed to have pisses me off.

Maybe I'm explaining my point all wrong, it's really late here and I might not be thinking all that clearly anymore, so here's the article on it, it'll explain my point of view on this, in the highly likely case I am unfit to put it to good words myself.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_84/475-Killjoy

 

[Leorex]

You know what I hate? When games don't let you save whenever you want. There is absolutely no reason to have "save points" anymore. e should have evolved beyond them by now.

There are plenty of reasons for save points... the most important is so you don't get yourself in a situation where you save at a point where no matter what you do you're going to die, and then have to restart your game. Second, there is no challenge involved in taking two steps, saving, taking another two steps, saving, and loading every time something doesn't go exactly how you want it to.

1) ff has plenty of time where you can get to a save point and then meet the boss in the next room and realize that your 10 levels to low.

2) i just because i have Restless Save Syndrome dosent mean i dont have feelings.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

Overlord. That game has a really annoying save system, because it takes a while to figure out how it works properly. To be on the safe side I always return to the tower (my EVIL tower) before I save. I always wonder why it ocassionally says *Autosave Complete*, when I have no idea how it works, or what would happen if I relied on one of them to remember where I was.

Also, Mass Effect needed more frequent Autosave points, but other than that the save system was fine.

 

[JakubK666]

Overlord. That game has a really annoying save system, because it takes a while to figure out how it works properly. To be on the safe side I always return to the tower (my EVIL tower) before I save. I always wonder why it ocassionally says *Autosave Complete*, when I have no idea how it works, or what would happen if I relied on one of them to remember where I was.

I think Overlord saved your game progress but not your location so you kept respawning at the Tower.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

You know what I hate? When games don't let you save whenever you want. There is absolutely no reason to have "save points" anymore. e should have evolved beyond them by now.

There are plenty of reasons for save points... the most important is so you don't get yourself in a situation where you save at a point where no matter what you do you're going to die, and then have to restart your game. Second, there is no challenge involved in taking two steps, saving, taking another two steps, saving, and loading every time something doesn't go exactly how you want it to.

1) ff has plenty of time where you can get to a save point and then meet the boss in the next room and realize that your 10 levels to low.

2) i just because i have Restless Save Syndrome dosent mean i dont have feelings.

I mean situations more like in Starcraft if you were to save, and as soon as you unpaused the game you heard "Nuclear laun--nucle--nuclear launch de--nucl--nuclear launch detected."

 

[Samuel71]

SteelSeries 4H headset. Buy it, buy it, buy it.