In games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim, the save/load feature never really made me feel less immersed. In fact, if I felt I had to go through with my decision to lop someone's head off and face the entire city full of guards and citizens afterwards, I would rarely do it and wouldn't end up having much fun...

Maybe it's just because these games are the type where, if you die, you load your last save and try again instead of having the storyline changed. However, I still feel like I'd like to win if I can, whether it's on the first try or the seventh. I'd prefer trying multiple times.

I don't think this would ruin immersion, because in my opinion, immersion isn't "thinking you're inside the game" - you'll almost always be aware that you're playing a game, but if you're immersed, you'll care more about what happens in the game. If your players care enough to repeatedly try to beat the specific fight, then why stop them?

I say, let them save/load, but tell them and remind them throughout the game that they don't have to win to progress.

Not to derail this post back on-topic, but...this! All of this! It's fun to have the option to try out a few strategies before settling on just one, and sometimes it's fun to just go total rampage on a village, without having the consequences of such permanently tied to your character. Save/load gives players greater options to play the game the way they want to play it; it causes less anxiety about making sure you're always doing the "right" thing, regardless of what you actually feel like doing.

But really, for me it still all boils down to the simple fact that I need to be able to quit and turn off the game when I'm done playing. If a game's going to hold me hostage, making me play for another half-hour before I can save and quit, then I'm not going to be playing that game all that much. Period.

(blah)

(blah)

Please keep it civil guys. Balance is a complex issue, and extremely difficult to evaluate for all but the simplest rulesets. Strong statements such as 'Starcraft is balanced' or 'Classes are always imbalanced' are actually pretty difficult to support, and frankly, off topic for this thread. If you want to discuss balance, please do so in a new thread.

[quote name='GHMP' timestamp='1325627085' post='4899397']
In games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim, the save/load feature never really made me feel less immersed. In fact, if I felt I had to go through with my decision to lop someone's head off and face the entire city full of guards and citizens afterwards, I would rarely do it and wouldn't end up having much fun...

Maybe it's just because these games are the type where, if you die, you load your last save and try again instead of having the storyline changed. However, I still feel like I'd like to win if I can, whether it's on the first try or the seventh. I'd prefer trying multiple times.

I don't think this would ruin immersion, because in my opinion, immersion isn't "thinking you're inside the game" - you'll almost always be aware that you're playing a game, but if you're immersed, you'll care more about what happens in the game. If your players care enough to repeatedly try to beat the specific fight, then why stop them?

I say, let them save/load, but tell them and remind them throughout the game that they don't have to win to progress.

Not to derail this post back on-topic, but...this! All of this! It's fun to have the option to try out a few strategies before settling on just one, and sometimes it's fun to just go total rampage on a village, without having the consequences of such permanently tied to your character. Save/load gives players greater options to play the game the way they want to play it; it causes less anxiety about making sure you're always doing the "right" thing, regardless of what you actually feel like doing.

But really, for me it still all boils down to the simple fact that I need to be able to quit and turn off the game when I'm done playing. If a game's going to hold me hostage, making me play for another half-hour before I can save and quit, then I'm not going to be playing that game all that much. Period.
[/quote]
I agree. It's annoying when you feel like you "have" to play longer because you'll lose progress if you stop now. Quick-save features like Fallout 3 and Skyrim had were life-savers in situations like these, and both of those games were ones I was immersed with.

[quote name='Stroppy Katamari' timestamp='1325723143' post='4899778']
(blah)

(blah)

Please keep it civil guys. Balance is a complex issue, and extremely difficult to evaluate for all but the simplest rulesets. Strong statements such as 'Starcraft is balanced' or 'Classes are always imbalanced' are actually pretty difficult to support, and frankly, off topic for this thread. If you want to discuss balance, please do so in a new thread.
[/quote]
You made my night with those quotes...they were so fitting of the situation.

[font=verdana,geneva,sans-serif]I remember playing Half-Life back in 1998 and constantly abusing the Quick Save hotkey. That was such an immersion breaker, yet I had a lot of fun with that FPS due to its awesome scripted events, scary encounters and, of course, its original story. Ten years later, in 2008, I play Fallout 3 because, to be honest, I was a huge fan of the Fallout series. Didn't think F3 would make it and yet, I was pleasantly surprise.

What a great game! The experience was very immersive for me: I was stopping to watch the water, I care for every NPC who was killed by rebels, I remember I was very angry about those people in Andale. I didn't felt the need to save in F3. Every time you enter a building or travel on the map, the game AUTO-SAVES my progress, which worked great for me.[/font]

What if you want to make a game, any game whatsoever, where combat is involved, and you really want for player to lose some battles. Not that the battles are scripted for player to lose, any given battle is winnable, but rather that winning or losing a battle will direct the story in different directions...

[font=verdana,geneva,sans-serif]All games should be made that way in my opinion. A rigid game is a dead game in a short time. I remember in Fallout 3 a Brotherhood commander asking for my help to rescue his apprentice from a building guarded by mutants. I accepted but failed to protect the commander and he died. I entered the building looking for that boy and I found him dead. What's interesting is that, a couple of months later when I played again the game, I managed to keep the commander safe and I rescued the apprentice from the mutants. To my surprise, the boy was now alive. To recap: accept quest to save apprentice from commander. If commander dies, you found the boy dead. If the commander survives, you can rescue the boy. You succeed or you don't, the world goes on. ;)[/font]

To recap: accept quest to save apprentice from commander. If commander dies, you found the boy dead. If the commander survives, you can rescue the boy. You succeed or you don't, the world goes on. ;)

This is only one side of the coin. The fact that the game makes a certain decision transparent to you, that is , you believe that your decision was without an alternative, avoids a load/save session, but on the other side, you want to give the player a challenge.

Think about a simple game: the rule is, you need to throw a basketball in the basket 10 times in a row. When you fail, you need to start again.

This is hard for an unexperiented player, but with time and practise he will master this challenge. Now think about a save/load mechanism, this would allow the player to count every hit and even an unexperiented player will archieve the goal after 40,60 or maybe 100 tries. An experienced player will need only 15-20 tries first time. After this, just ask the player and most likely the experienced player will say, that it was too easy, not really a challenge at all, boring...

The funny thing about this is, that we often tell our children that every hit counts, when we see that they are not able to master the challenge yet and don't have the ambition to archive it. In the game designer world we react in a similar way. We see that the casual player is not able to master the challenge, nor has he the ambition to do so, that is the reason we reduce the challenge or take it away completly [s]to get their cash[/s]... to get them on board.

The 'truth' is , when you want to deliver a challenge, you need to get rid of the save/load mechanism. When the game gets too hard, you need to change the challenge instead (easy = 5 hits, normal=10 hits, hard=20 hits in a row). Thought a 'stop now and continue later' option is always useful to give the player the choice to when and how much to play your game.

I believe that this is one of the reasons that multiplayer games like MW3,BF3,L4D,TF2 gets so popular, because they deliver a much higher challenge than current single player games.

This is hard for an unexperiented player, but with time and practise he will master this challenge. Now think about a save/load mechanism, this would allow the player to count every hit and even an unexperiented player will archieve the goal after 40,60 or maybe 100 tries. An experienced player will need only 15-20 tries first time. After this, just ask the player and most likely the experienced player will say, that it was too easy, not really a challenge at all, boring...

Here's a question, though: if the player thinks that playing that way--saving after every throw--is boring, then why would they play that way? Save/load doesn't require you to save all the time, it just gives you the option. It's like how in some fighting games, you can get through them by just mashing buttons, but if you're doing that, and you're not having fun, it's totally your fault, not the game designer's. Or like in Scribblenauts--people complained about how you could keep using the same few items to solve every puzzle, but it's not like the game's making you do that; you're choosing to play the game in a way that makes it uninteresting to you.