Quote:Original post by Wavinator

Quote:Original post by Kest
With a good game design, those mistakes will stem from a lack of concentration, awareness, and planning. Save and restore diminishes the need for any of them. Why be careful all of the time when you'll only need to reload once in a while because of carelessness?

I have a hard time pinning this down. What in your mind is the point of the game? Is it to make a player plan, concentrate and be aware? Is this what makes the design good?

The point of interacting with just about any game is to make better decisions. Planning, concentration, and awareness heavily contribute to making better decisions. Coincidently, so does time travel.

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In the meantime, I would rather face unfair gameplay hardships than be given the capacity to exert an unfair advantage over the game when I see fit.

Okay, and we part company here. Given that situation, I'd rather the game suffer.

The difference is that I suffer in both scenarios. With reloading, I suffer through almost every difficult moment of the game, fair or not, by being forced to decide between some transparent version of honor, or victory. With no unlimited saving, I only suffer with those rare badly designed moments. And with most of them, I actually find a lot of enjoyment in the fact that I'm facing an unfair challenge.

Quote:I think I'd be mildly insulted, though, if the menus stated:

New Game
Continue
Enable God Mode --> Restore Last Game Ya Cheatin' Bastard

(or some other such imprication)

You're pretty good with those exaggerations. Was the actual menu label I brought up not extreme enough to get the point across? Doesn't that say something about the point itself?

Just as a reminder, the mode is titled that way because the game has been balanced to be played without it. It's there for those who don't mind having overwhelming power when facing (what will seem like mild) challenges, while also being a clear message to avoid it for those who do. If you want to title the option as "save anytime mode", and include descriptive details about the game being balanced for not using it, that would be just as good.

Quote:Even in games like Project Eden, in which death means absolutely nothing (die >> tunnel of light >> respawn at last body scan point) I save, simply because I don't know if the game might crash, or I don't want to have to remember if I've collected things or thrown switches, or I want to try and do something a specific way.

There are methods to avoid losing progress on a crash, and methods to help players remember details about the game and their past actions.

That only leaves the concept of trying things without consequences. Try before you buy will just have to take one for the team. If you want to try things out, you'll have to live with the result. In most situations, that's not a big deal. Online games don't seem to suffer much because of it.

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Quote:I've made it extremely clear that I myself am very susceptible to abusing the save and restore ability when it hangs over my console through every grief stricken moment in the game. That's my entire issue with the feature.

And it would or would not matter if it was buried in a menu? Or if you started an "Iron Man" game that you couldn't change afterwards?

It would matter. I want the ability to cut it off from myself as an option in trying situations. With a clear mind, I understand how it diminishes the entire experience. But during those stressful situations, that isn't enough to stop me from using it. Most of the time, I'm blinded by an urge to unleash vengeance against the AI. Do I want to travel back in time to before I got my ass handed to me, to have my revenge against the punk that took away my pride? Hell yes.

Quote:Maybe it helps to be concrete. How would you do this for, say, a jumping puzzle? Would you never design a jumping puzzle that lead to death? I'm assuming that this means you can't take damage from falling period, because if you do you can never be sure that the player has 1 HP before falling.

Death, as in losing all of your health, can inflict negative consequences without leading to a game over. I'm sure Grand Theft Auto III+ had a few puzzles that you could relate this to, and it didn't allow unrestricted saving. Worst case scenario, you slap the player with a mild negative and give them a chance to climb back up.

Still, I'm not going to pretend that things won't change. A designer's inability to end the game with finality due to failure has its drawbacks.

Quote:But I've played far too many arbitrary games that have needed it and I've never met a limited or no save game where the feature was optional that I liked.

There are two ways it can be optional. One is to balance the game for saving and implement, as you put it, Iron Man Mode. The other is to balance the game for no saving, and implement, as I put it, God Mode. The difference is that the gameplay is balanced for one or the other, and you should expect it to be very easy or very hard with the special mode. Just as Iron Man is titled in a way that describes difficulty, God Mode is titled in a way that describes ease.

What game have you played that was balanced for no saving and gave you the beginning option mode to save anyway? I know of only one; Mount&Blade. A game that shines as an example for the fact that you can have all of the thrills of combat without the possibility of player death. In fact, it probably has the most thrilling melee combat I've ever experienced in a game. But part of that was probably because I tried to fight 200 man armies, single handedly.

Quote:In RTS / RPG / FPS games, however, missing the feature would be a dealbreaker. I think it may have to do with the density of activity in the environment (not sure) or how fast it takes to get to and from your objective. Air combat sims can have as much going on an RTS / RPG / FPS, but traditionally you're only ever allowed to save at a friendly base.

I still think you're forgetting that the game has been balanced to work without reloading. Again, Mount&Blade (RPG) is a shining example. As far as I know, there are not a lot of RPGs that have been balanced that way. Okay, I know of no others besides Mount&Blade.

Quote:Okay, but without a concrete example this feels very much like handwaving. You have n points of interaction in your game, be they mission encounters or monsters to be slain or whatever. While I'm completely for the idea of not repeating gameplay (at least not excessively), how much content will the game have if you can opt to not repeat these interactions?

I actually thought you meant repeating gameplay that you've already completed. Save and load doesn't help you bypass interactions, does it? You may be cheating failure, but you still have to win.

Just be careful with your negative afflictions on the player, and the player can continue trying the difficult task within the same timeline. How is that any worse than reloading? If the player is really bad, they may end up getting extra skill points out of it for applying so much extra effort. A realistic side effect.

Quote:But then what do you propose? You encounter some enemies, kill a bunch but misjudge and get nailed by one guy hiding behind a crate. Now what happens?

You wake up as a prisoner, in a hospital, or in your safe house. Your friend finds you, your dog drags you to another room, or your super stimpack kicks in. You live.

Quote:The problem is that they don't see the vision as egotistical. They're preserving the purity of the experience. They don't want you saving and restoring after a loss either because it's their game or (more mildly) good players shouldn't need to.

I still see no distinction between any given game rule and a limit on saves. Are you saying these ego-maniacs apply this line of thought to all gameplay confining decisions? If so, why is it being brought up now? Finding an unreasonable alternative motivation to limit saves might make it seem more reasonable to dismiss the implications of unlimited saving, but it doesn't solve any of the problems it causes. It doesn't do anything helpful.

Quote:Original post by Tangireon
But I'm going to change sides here, for I'd have to agree, as I have agreed in other threads on such similar things about adopting or modifying standardizations, that it would probably be met with a lot less resistance if quicksaving/quickloading becomes a game's primary save method if only because such a feature has become the standard in many popularly recognized games. When you take this away, people will start asking questions, and you might get things like the elitist labeling/mislabeling (I don't care which one you think) here.

If your game is an RPG, and is going to be designed and balanced with traditional concepts, then yes, players are going to be looking for an ability to save before every tough encounter. Even I would want that.

But in any other case, I think you're mistaken. Players aren't going to question it. Especially not nearly as much as designers have questioned it here. RTS, TBS, FPS, etc. If players can quit-and-resume when they want, they aren't going to cry about not having the capacity to backup before every shot is fired. If the game feels right without it, then it doesn't need it. If you can't personally discern whether the game feels right without it, then I guess it's a lost cause anyway.

I pretty much agree with most of what Trapper Zoid says.

In addition, I'll add that quicksave/reload almost always does have an effect on game design, even if the designer swears up and down that really, he's totally ignoring the fact that it's there, for real, honest. The accepted notion of quicksave/reload leads to lazy death mechanics. Tons of games just put up a "Game Over" screen when you run out of health, with the assumption that you probably quicksaved a while ago. And that's the entire "challenge" mechanic of the game. It's not actually a gameplay challenge anymore at that point; it's a sort of meta-challenge. The strategy in the game comes down to knowing when and how often to quicksave to ensure you replay as little as possible.

There are lots of games that do just fine without quicksave/reload: for example, nearly every online game. MMO's don't let you reload, but plenty of people play and enjoy them. The key is that they actually bother to implement a death system, rather than just taking the lazy way out and using a Game Over screen.

If someone made a game with quicksave/reload and it absolutely 100% had no effect on the rest of the game design (ie, the game would still be playable, beatable, and enjoyable even if you never reloaded at all), then I'd say it would be fine. But that's not how it works in the real world.

Also, as a player (not just a designer), I strongly dislike the philosophy that players should have unlimited freedom to manage their own challenge levels. I would absolutely hate playing chess if my opponent kept saying "Just tell me whenever you want me to make a bad move, so I can make sure you win". I would hate to be in a bike race where the guy next to me kept asking me "You want me to go slower? A little faster? Just let me know. How about I'll swerve a little bit?" As a player, the only time I like to decide my challenge level is outside the actual game. I don't mind picking my chess opponent before the game starts. I don't mind setting the point limit on a game of basketball before the game starts. But I don't want the freedom to change the rules once I'm actually playing and competing, and I want my opponent to work as hard as he can to defeat me.

That's why, as a player, I really don't like quicksave/reload. I hate having to try to manage my own challenge level using it, because I know that in the usual design (say, Oblivion, for example), that there's no way I can actually "lose", I will inevitably beat anything if I decide to quicksave before it. It helps a little bit if a game is divided into levels or missions, as at least then, there is a sort of structure for me to try and base my challenge on. For example, Warcraft 3 is divided into separate missions that are affected very little by previous missions, and I would just save at the beginning of each mission and never quicksave/reload within one. But in a game like Oblivion that lacks discrete "rounds" and where each point in time is entirely dependent on earlier points in time, it's impossible to really "create your own challenege" until you've played through the game enough to know where to set reasonable save points and goals. And I had no desire to play through Oblivion twice.

Quote:Original post by makeshiftwings
The accepted notion of quicksave/reload leads to lazy death mechanics. Tons of games just put up a "Game Over" screen when you run out of health, with the assumption that you probably quicksaved a while ago.

That's a good point. The game over screen implies that you should have saved. You were supposed to. Either that, or the designer expects you to start again from the beginning. And if you don't want to start again from the beginning, where and when do you want to restart? Twenty minutes ago, or five seconds ago? The answer is obvious.

Why wouldn't a player save right before miniscule danger? There's no rule or regulation that says such things are without honor. Most games recommend it in the manual, and enforce it with game over screens, or by jumping to a load menu on death.

There's no reason not to use save frequently, beyound a tedious self-appointed challenge to punish yourself with repeated gameplay when you fail. What kind of choice is that? It's not a choice at all, it's a game moderated instruction. I guess my message as a player to designers is, "Don't incite me to play with lame strategy."

Quote:Original post by Tangireon
2. Include these features separately, but in one package. Many games have separate options you can choose such as an Iron Man mode where saves are limited, then a normal mode where quicksaving/quickloading is allowed.

Perhaps the best/optimal solution to the original question is to include both play styles in the game, but have them as separate features/modes (#2).

If you're going to design and balance your game to allow unlimited saving, then it doesn't do much good. Even I, as blood-thirsty for challenge as I am, would rarely ever choose an Iron Man mode in an average RPG game. That's like asking for massive amounts of my time to be wasted. The occurences of death in most of those games have nothing to do with player awareness. Death can just slap you in an instant. And that would be it - All of the time you spent playing is gone. That's why it's called Iron Man. It's hardcore.

On the other hand, if you design your game to be played without unlimited saving, where failure or death doesn't mean the end of everything you've contributed to the game, then the title of "Iron Man" doesn't fit. The Iron Man mode should be "Normal".

Of course, I'm mostly referring to the RPG and FPS genres, where the game can be very long, and gameplay must be repeated after death. I wouldn't be so quick to judge these option titles in an RTS or TBS, where saving in the middle of individual map battles wouldn't be essential, regardless of how the game is designed. Or in other words, I would never want to use save in a strategy game, so I would always choose the Iron Man mode.