What the hell, Amalur!?

[GabeZhul]

I recently decided to dust off my copy of Kingdoms of Amalur and play the DLCs. So, I did Dead Kel and was quite happy with it, then wanted to continue on with the Teeth of Naros DLC, but ran into a game-stopping bug.

Right at the very beginning in the cave, there is a point where the mage of the party is supposed to inspect a body and then run away. However, I accidentally triggered Fateshift at the end of the previous encounter, so, wanting to get the most out of it, I ran ahead to find and beat up some guys for the bonus XP. Of course by the time I got to the next enemy it ended, but whatever. So, I went even further ahead and found a dead-end.
Okay, I said, let's go back and get the others, since this door obviously needs to be triggered by one of them. However, it turned out that the mage got stuck while the expedition-leader went ahead and started walking in circles, so neither of them could trigger the next event, meaning that I can't open the door, meaning that I can't proceed... and yet that's NOT the punchline.

The punchline is that my last hard save is from before I started Dead Kel, and by the time I noticed the bug, the game overwrote the autosave by one that was after the bug triggered, effectively shutting me off from proceeding with the questline. Cute, right? -.-

So, just to give a point to this post beyond me bitching: How come developers still can't do a backlog of auto/quick-saves!? It's not that hard, and it could really help these kinds of situations...

 

[sanquin]

It may be that they do so on purpose. Heck, games used to not have auto saves at all. All you could do was either manually save, or you would have to start the entire level over. Auto saves only made things easier. A back log of auto saves would make things too easy, imo. Granted, it sucks that this bug happened to you. But you should learn a lesson from this: Save before every mission. Not just because of bugs, but because of any reason that might put you back to your last save point.

 

[GabeZhul]

(...) Granted, it sucks that this bug happened to you. But you should learn a lesson from this: Save before every mission. Not just because of bugs, but because of any reason that might put you back to your last save point.

I hate to admit it, but I guess you are right. In games like the Elder Scroll series or other notoriously buggy/complicated RPGs I tend to save at every corner, but Amalur was just so damn straightforward and relatively bug-free that I got eased into relying on the autosave alone. Serves me right I guess, but it's still infuriating...

 

[Ranylyn]

Aaaah, the wonders of autosave, one feature I wish would die in a fire and NEVER RETURN. EVER.

Not only does it make things like the above happen (I've needed to restart sprawling levels and even huge games because of glitches that got autosaved because I didn't go the exact way the game intended me to.) but in games that ONLY have the autosave, it literally prevents you from experimenting with builds and the like (which, let's face it, is basically one the main draws in a game like Amalur in the first place!)

The worst was in games like Bioshock where the Autosave OVERWROTE MY HARD SAVE. That was stupid. Probably my fault for wanting the first slot for my hard save, but the autosave should go to the first FREE slot >_<.

I mean really. If I can't be assed to take 10 seconds to save my game every so often, I kind of deserve to lose my data, you know?

 

[Ganath]

Reminds me of the time my little brother forgot to save his pokemon game after playing for 3 hours straight. He howled in frustration, I believe. But yeah, it's painful when that happens. Very painful. As for auto saves.. well. I havn't had much trouble with it personally. Ever since some stuff had a habit of overheating, I've been very aware of my saves.

 

[Smertnik]

I have never trusted autosaving - I much rather save manually every 20-30 minutes to be on the safe side.

 

[piinyouri]

As many times as autosave has screwed me over, it's saved my ass equally as many times.

I've learned to live with it. It's not ever going to go away.

 

[felbot]

auto saved has covered me way to much for me to honestly hate it or even dislike it.

the only thing that is really bad about it is the fact that it made me used to it, as a result i dont hard save as much as i used and should.

 

[aguspal]

Autosave...


Yes it has screwed me once or twice, but thats nothing compared to the times it saved me...

Its something around:
10% > owned by AUTOSAVE;
90% > Saved by AUTOSAVE.

I still tend to make Hard saves whenever convinent (such as before a big fight, or even a moderatly big one even).

That begin said, I turned it off in Skyrim and other BETHESAD games after I discovered that Autosaves turned on = Longer loading screens. And nobody likes loading screens. At least everyone I know dosnt. While we are at it, instead or removing AUTOSAVE there should be an option to turn it on/off. Simple, really.

 

[aguspal]

Damn it, I went into this thread hoping it was a ***** session about KOA: Reckoning. What a terrible game.

Yeah...autosave. Yeah guys! *Runs away*

Yeah the game does kind of suck. But your post is so awesome because of the honesty you have. LOL.


I rememeber that one time where I went to expecting it to be like Skyrim, Mainly gameplay and little to no story. The game got it backwards. Maybe its not bad, but for my tastes, it damn was. Not the worst of the worst, thougt. Also. TOO. FUCKING. EASY. Yes, even EASIER than freaking SKYRIM somehow... god.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

I tend not to get screwed by Autosave. One example of my methods would be Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Deus Ex has your manual save, an auto save, and the previous auto save it made before that one.

But when I play, I typically have two manual saves for the same file. I play for a while and I'll save on Slot 1. I'll play for a while and I'll save on Slot 2. Then I'll alternate saving on those two files. Then I've got my auto save sitting on the sideline as a sort of extension of my own saves. If something goes wrong with my auto save, I have a manual save to fall back on. Should that one end up corrupted as well, I fall back on my backup manual save. From there, I mend the corruption by proceeding as normal, alternating the two save slots. It is a method that has saved me numerous times.

And I didn't realize there was another DLC for Amalur out. Dammit now I want to get it and play it. My only gripe about Amalur is that it was quite definitely VERY easy. The hardest difficulty was still super easy. I played a Might-Sorcery type character and everything died too quick.

 

[GabeZhul]

Damn it, I went into this thread hoping it was a ***** session about KOA: Reckoning. What a terrible game.

Yeah...autosave. Yeah guys! *Runs away*

Actually, there would be a LOT to ***** about regarding KoA, like how there are no real characters, no emotional investment, the plot is crap while the lore and background is way too over-emphasized, the final battle is a joke and how the ending with Alyn's monologue is just ridiculous... So yes, autosave-problems are just the tip of the iceberg, but it's still good for a little hacky-slashy fun every now and then.

 

[krazykidd]

Damn it, I went into this thread hoping it was a ***** session about KOA: Reckoning. What a terrible game.

Yeah...autosave. Yeah guys! *Runs away*

Yeah the game does kind of suck. But your post is so awesome because of the honesty you have. LOL.


I rememeber that one time where I went to expecting it to be like Skyrim, Mainly gameplay and little to no story. The game got it backwards. Maybe its not bad, but for my tastes, it damn was. Not the worst of the worst, thougt. Also. TOO. FUCKING. EASY. Yes, even EASIER than freaking SKYRIM somehow... god.

People don't call it "babies first rpg" for nothing .

OT: soooo you didn't manually save and you are complaining that the auto save screwed you over? Are you new to gaming? There is a reason manual saves exist and i HATE it when games are autosave only , exception being Dark souls , THAT made sense , every action had weight .

 

[GabeZhul]

Oh yeah, leave it to strangers on the internet to immediately deduce how many games you have played based on whether you decided to rely on auto-saves in a single, piss-easy, non-branching and completely straightforward RPG.

Marvelous deduction, Sherlock. Here, let me give you a handful of butterfly-farts as a reward, let's all hope they won't turn into a hurricane by the time they get to you.