Can saving/loading anytime actually ruin the challenge?

David Wu · 2008-07-02T01:55:46

Assuming there is a game that is out only for PC/Mac, and that game allows you to save your game progress and reload previous save files at any time during the course of your play, can such a feature ruin the challenge originally presented by the game? If the save/load game feature was limited, do you think this would boost the game experience or hinder it? Here are a few cases to look at: 1. First-Person Shooter games (say Half-Life, Doom, and other titles). Both Half-Life 1 and 2 allow you to save and load games at any time during your progress through the game. Would you enjoy these games more if they implemented a "Save Point" feature to which you could only save your game in certain limited areas in the game? 2. Strategy games (say X-COM, Civilization series, and etc). If you were allowed to save and load anytime, doesn't this defeat the original purpose of the strategy game, to which is to present a number of variables to the player and have them guess as to what the outcome would be? Wouldn't the save/load feature allow players to "cheat", in that they are able to get a glimpse at the various futures of their decisions and pick (or load a saved file) which they thought was better? Or, in the case of X-COM, keep reloading the game until one of your soldiers finally made an accurate hit? 3. Adventure/Puzzle games (say Myst, the Monkey Island series, etc). Many adventure games implement the save/load anytime, anywhere feature because "Death / Game Over" in these games may also involve getting stuck with a puzzle to which you messed up forcing you to reload a previous saved game. What if limited saving/loading were implemented here, in that only when you have completed a "level" or game area can you then save - would this decrease your enjoyment of that game? 4. Story-driven Games with Multiple Endings. Many story-driven games that have multiple endings have their endings branching off from something you did earlier in the game story, and as such, have the save/load-anytime feature to allow players explore multiple endings simply by loading a previous game file and then playing it differently. What if limited saving/loading were implemented here, in that right before the story branches off into one of its endings, players will be presented a save point in a manner how they are presented save points right before a boss battle - would this decrease your enjoyment of the game? If limited game saving were to be implemented in any of these games, would the frustration of replaying a portion of an already-mastered level far outweigh the enjoyment of having a greater sense of challenge due to increased risk of dying/getting a "Game Over"? Or would it be vice-versa? Or, do you think that the increased sense of challenge presented by having limited "saves" or "save-point" areas in the game would actually be the cause of frustration itself? Now, many platform games implement the "Save Point" feature and don't allow you to save whenever you wish like what a computer game does, such as Grand Theft Auto (only allows you to save in a house you bought) or Super Mario Bros. (saves after each time you beat a level). Do you find these games more challenging or fun to play with than a game that allows you to continually save and load previous games any time?

domhnall4h

183

June 25, 2008 10:55 PM

Quote:
Quote:
I wouldn't bother trying to stop players from cheating to win. If they want to cheat, that's fine with me. But I want to make sure they realize that reloading in my game is cheating.

On the other hand most player will only save a lot if they expect to die a lot. In half life I barley ever saved unless I just wanted to take a break. In the dozens of other FPS's where the designers think its funny to have twenty enemies spawn 10 feet behind my back or have traps I couldn't have possibly spotted ahead of time I do save every ten second.
Saving is a good way to balance a game since it gives the player power but most player will only use that power if they need it.

That's really being nitpicky, labeling saving as a cheat. Maybe you should play GTA III or wizardry 8 without saves, since it's "cheating"?

My current design has a simple option in the difficulty menu; Perma-death on/off. Turning it on means the save is deleted automatically, and you lose out if you have a TPK. It is not labeled as a cheat, but as a means to increase the difficulty.

I like a challenge too. My version of a challenge is probably more extreme than most. I've designed the game-play mechanics around that; a variable challenge. You can adjust the relative strength of the enemies you face, alter character skill development speeds, and a myriad of other options; including perma-death and no ressurect/limited ressurect.

Good design should mean that the save is really there to ensure that when the power goes out, you don't lose your game. Or if the wife/gf comes in wearing a skimpy nighty, and y'all knock the computer over and unplug it; you're still safe. Or if little Timmy blows his hand off when he held a firecracker until it exploded, you can shut down quickly and leave.

Having designated save points is bad design, by my standards. A bad design attempting to cover for other bad design. Conversely, if saving and loading at will ruins the challenge for the players, then the designer failed. The game should present a challenge so long as the player doesn't use real cheats, such as infinite ammo or God mode; or hack the save files.

For the record, I'm probably going to leave the dev-mode open for the players to mess with; and maybe even include a character-editor (assuming I ever get my game finished) I rather leave it in the player's hands to determine how hard they want the game to be, and simply provide them with hopefully an enjoyable way to get that challenge.

Kest

547

June 25, 2008 11:13 PM

Quote:Original post by Kaze
On the other hand most player will only save a lot if they expect to die a lot.

Or fail a lot. Dying with a game over makes reloading essential. Failing in any other way doesn't. It's okay to fail and keep playing. Or at least it should be, but it usually isn't. It usually isn't, because a reload feature is present. As a designer/developer, why go out of your way to create interesting branches of game events when players are just going to reload from failures and not see them anyway? We have to put our efforts where it matters. That's just one way, among many, that unlimited saving simplifies and limits gameplay.

Quote:In half life I barley ever saved unless I just wanted to take a break. In the dozens of other FPS's where the designers think its funny to have twenty enemies spawn 10 feet behind my back or have traps I couldn't have possibly spotted ahead of time I do save every ten second.

Note that the save feature is not what made Half Life better than the other games. It's just what made the other games tolerable.

Quote:Saving is a good way to balance a game since it gives the player power but most player will only use that power if they need it.

I don't agree. I think player saving is the absolute worst way to balance a game. How can players know when they'll need that power? You're expecting your players to know when save-worthy trouble is ahead? If not, then you're expecting your players to save every few moments of play, just in case save-worthy trouble is ahead. And if you're expecting that, you may as well automatically save it every few moments for them. And if you're going to do that, you're essentially implementing a 30-second gameplay repeat as a punishment for death.

Repeating gameplay for failure may be acceptable in some games, but definitely not in all of them. When it's not, find a better way to make failure undesirable. One that doesn't require the player to leap outside of the game world and time to recover from.

Quote:Original post by domhnall4h
That's really being nitpicky, labeling saving as a cheat. Maybe you should play GTA III or wizardry 8 without saves, since it's "cheating"?

You're not referring to the same type of saves. Note the word anytime in the thread title. And just because unlimited saving isn't considered cheating in one game doesn't mean it can't be considered cheating in another.

ruby-lang

232

June 26, 2008 12:21 AM

Quote:Game balance is a big one. Do you balance the game difficulty for people who only plan to save occasionally in order to quit, or do you balance the game for those who save ten seconds?

I think the ability disparity between gamers is much wider than that, so the point can easily be reversed. Letting players save allows them to fine tune the difficulty.

Quote:I can't help feeling that many games I play on the PC have been balanced for those who save very frequently. Many games have sudden deathtraps, snipers, unbelivably long boss battles, poor weapon and healing item distribution and so on.

You just described NES games, and all they gave you, when they were feeling generous, was a password between levels, so quicksaves don't deserve the blame.

That all said, there is a reason this subject shows up every month in the forum: in the end, the choice is subjective. You can't bring up hard data and say "look, this approach is 33% more immersive and 25% more entertaining". Not with a straight face.

wodinoneeye

1,691

June 26, 2008 12:45 AM

Saving at anytime can be useful when there are bad sections of the game where its too difficult/tedious to replay the same section up to that one spot where you die like a fly over and over (and over and...)

Ive actually snapped the CD in half and threw it and the manual in the garbage rather than continue to waste my time on part of a game that was too poorly tested (and had poorly chosen save points)

( Oh and yes I had already tried to use cheats, but many of these console port games dont bother to port the cheats in any workable fashion, so that other standard method of getting around a problematic game bottleneck hadnt worked)

--------------------------------------------[size="1"]Ratings are Opinion, not Fact

Wavinator

2,020

June 26, 2008 01:46 AM

Quote:Original post by Kest
Simple fact is that if you give your players too much power, your game will lose meaning. And that's not an opinion-based fact, that goes for humans in general. Having too much power can destroy the purpose of existing. It's all about the struggle.

Ontology aside, one can have plenty of struggle and save anywhere, anytime. I play both ways. With FPS games I have a habit of finishing on normal and saving whenever, wherever, then replaying on nightmare and trying to save as little as possible.

Two of the best experiences I ever had involved quicksaves and low health / limited ammo (one in Morrowind where I had to escape from Red Mountain with no health and a broken weapon, another in System Shock 2 trying to take a shuttle bay filled with mutants with 2 bullets and 5 health). The challenge was there because I was too proud to reload an earlier game. In both I died several times. In both I had a blast. Had it been forced, I would have been one of those demanding a patch (as has happened, take the first Alien vs. Predator as a great example).

The point is that I got to play the way *I* wanted to play. A huge number of games are filled with what I call "repeat and die" gameplay. The game designers often appear to have little or no interest in whether or not I (their customer) completely understand the situation, have the time to endlessly replay a challenge I can't beat, or am playing as well as the seasoned Quality Assurance team that's often wrongly used as a baseline.

Quote:
I wouldn't bother trying to stop players from cheating to win. If they want to cheat, that's fine with me. But I want to make sure they realize that reloading in my game is cheating.

No, actually, being dumped into a game designer's ego driven, artificially constructed pet conflict, with little or no knowledge of upcoming challenges, no way to bypass them, no way of trading one consequence for another and rarely any way of drawing on one's own years of real-world problem solving experience is cheating (the player).

The very notion of most challenges are cheats themselves. Many games draw on versimilitude, if not outright realism, in order to create a proper framework for the game. Yet few people in any conflict would (or even should) fight fairly given the chance. SWAT recons the objective thoroughly and has no problem bugging the pizza, modern armies try to achieve a greater than 5 to 1 advantage, and in conflicts thoughout history there's been plenty of honor in living to fight another day.

We accept that most games are in an artificially confined space for many reasons. There's no calling for a lifeline. You can't call the cops, ask for mercy, send in the marines, trade prisoners, barricade the building until the zombies starve or just say screw it and keep running when the aliens attack.

Save and restore is a bit of a ripcord. Artificial? Yes, but no more so than the patently absurd basis that makes up the reason for challenges in most games (and makes them fun). It helps balance not including the yellow pages and a network of consultants, experts and friends, and all the things you reallly should be able to do but can't because it's a game.

--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

Trapper Zoid

1,370

June 26, 2008 02:15 AM

Quote:Original post by ruby-lang
I think the ability disparity between gamers is much wider than that, so the point can easily be reversed. Letting players save allows them to fine tune the difficulty.

True. But this is the laziest way to fine tune difficulty. You're passing all the onus to the player to manage their own game.

This is why I regard saving to be a crutch as far as game design goes. The actual problem you're trying to solve here is that your game may have challenges that could stump players. There's plenty of solutions to this problem:

Allow the player to save part way through a challenge.
Play test the game considerably and ensure the difficulty is a gradual curve.
Have a variable difficulty rating that is changable within the game.
Make all challenges optional. You don't need to pass a challenge to continue the game.
Have multiple paths around each obstacle, so you only need to complete one of a series of challenges.
Have soft failure. It's not game over, and the challenge is still partly solved when you have another attempt.

Saving is just one of multiple methods around the issue, and it's also one of the more onerous on the part of the player.

Quote:You just described NES games, and all they gave you, when they were feeling generous, was a password between levels, so quicksaves don't deserve the blame.

Ah, the days of Nintendo Hard games (warning, TV Tropes link! [grin]).

The thing is, today we recognise that Nintendo Hard games generally suffer from really bad game design. Adding quicksave to that doesn't alter the fact; all it does is allow players to get around the Fake Difficulty (warning, another TV Tropes link!)

Quote:Original post by wodinoneeye
Saving at anytime can be useful when there are bad sections of the game where its too difficult/tedious to replay the same section up to that one spot where you die like a fly over and over (and over and...)

This is true, and I think it's what fuels the whole argument here. Save anywhere is better than bad limited saving. Giving the player a crutch to get around bad game design points is better than giving him no crutch at all. And I'm sure most of us have played some old game with a really bad set of save points (i.e. the era of Nintendo Hard), and in those games the bad save policy is really obvious.

But these days, I just don't think we need to have save anywhere. It's an extra burden for the player that they don't need to deal with. It's a direction I see most casual games going in for example. Nearly all casual games I've played recently have no manual saving; the game handles it for you.

Kaze

948

June 26, 2008 02:26 AM

Quote:Original post by Trapper Zoid
This is why I regard saving to be a crutch as far as game design goes. The actual problem you're trying to solve here is that your game may have challenges that could stump players. There's plenty of solutions to this

I view it as more of a safety net than a crutch. I want control of saves because I don't believe any game designer is infallible enough to completely avoid stupid contrived deaths/punishments even if I don't play the games exactly the same way as the play testers.
Also the simple fact that statistically far more games have been ruined by poor save systems than helped.

Trapper Zoid

1,370

June 26, 2008 02:35 AM

Quote:Original post by Kaze
I view it as more of a safety net than a crutch. I want control of saves because I don't believe any game designer is infallible enough to completely avoid stupid contrived deaths/punishments even if I don't play the games exactly the same way as the play testers.
Also the simple fact that statistically far more games have been ruined by poor save systems than helped.

Oh yes, that's a great point. It's a real immersion breaker when the game throws a curveball at you like that. It's also a problem with things outside the parameters of the game, like computer crashes or bugs in the program.

In my experience that's still more of a problem with games that rely on save anywhere though, in particular if they don't also have an autosave facility. The worst cases are the ones that generally don't suffer from Fake Difficulty, so you can get sucked into the immersive properties of the game only to get a Game Over and realise your last save is two hours ago.

Kest

547

June 26, 2008 03:27 AM

Quote:Original post by Wavinator
Quote:Original post by Kest
Simple fact is that if you give your players too much power, your game will lose meaning. And that's not an opinion-based fact, that goes for humans in general. Having too much power can destroy the purpose of existing. It's all about the struggle.

Ontology aside, one can have plenty of struggle and save anywhere, anytime. I play both ways. With FPS games I have a habit of finishing on normal and saving whenever, wherever, then replaying on nightmare and trying to save as little as possible.

Depends on what your definition of plenty is. What you quoted was in response to the concept of not limiting the player's total power and abilities when it is a single player game. With too much power, rather than employing strategy and concentration to win, you're handicapping yourself to make the game seem more interesting. Totally opposite ends of the spectrum. One requires serious engagement, and the other is mearly amusing. If you want serious depth to your gameplay, then don't provide a power option that sits there just in case the player needs it.

Quote:
Quote:I wouldn't bother trying to stop players from cheating to win. If they want to cheat, that's fine with me. But I want to make sure they realize that reloading in my game is cheating.

No, actually, being dumped into a game designer's ego driven, artificially constructed pet conflict, with little or no knowledge of upcoming challenges, no way to bypass them, no way of trading one consequence for another and rarely any way of drawing on one's own years of real-world problem solving experience is cheating (the player).

It sounds like you've been seriously mistreated and abused in your gaming sessions. All I can say is that you've probably been unlucky.

I'd also like to remind you of the fact that you can't simply imagine a game that has save-anytime without it. It would obviously be too cruel, unforgiving, and unbalanced. Two very different worlds. I'd also like to mention that the accusation of game designers restricting saves for or because of ego seems totally laughable. To be honest, I don't even understand where that comes from. How does something like that feed an ego?

Quote:Save and restore is a bit of a ripcord. Artificial? Yes, but no more so than the patently absurd basis that makes up the reason for challenges in most games (and makes them fun).

For me, this isn't about save and restore being artificial. It's about having the capability to bend time when things get too rough for me. Deciding when things are rough enough to use it is too much authority in my hands. I don't want that kind of power in games, and having it seriously reduces my experience.

stonemetal

288

June 26, 2008 07:21 AM

Quote:Original post by Trapper Zoid
Quote:Original post by stonemetal
Nope not at all related. Being able to save isn't a game play mechanic(unless you are talking about that penn and teller game).

Of course it's a gameplay mechanic. You gave an example of how it affects the way you play a theoretical game of X-COM. Take any game and think about how you'd play through it could save and load anytime versus only suspend and quit, and it's almost certain to play differently. For example, take any NES or SNES platformer on the original console versus on an emulator with a save feature.

No actually I don't think I played Diablo 2 differently than any other game I have played. I guess you could force it to be a gameplay mechanic by making consecutive enemy encounters to difficult to overcome with out having done all previous encounters perfectly, but I can't say the last time I heard saving and loading in that game was the most fun I have had in a long time.

Let me state it a different way. If save and load is a gameplay mechanic in your game your game is broken(unless you expect game play to revolve around the save button. Then I just find you odd.) In X-COM when you save and load to get zero misses You are exploiting a bug in the game. The bug is incorrect saving and loading of hit probabilities. Not to sound like a broken record but If save/load makes your game easier then your game is busted. If you depend on the fact that the player can't save anywhere to control difficulty then your game difficulty is broken.

Can saving/loading anytime actually ruin the challenge?

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Can saving/loading anytime actually ruin the challenge?

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