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Autosaves in TDM


kingsal

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Hey all, do auto saves work yet in 2.05? Has anyone integrated them in a map/ tested this?

 

I'm thinking of putting them in my mission, but it so close to being done I'm hesitant to add something that could introduce more bugs.

Thanks!

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They were implemented a few updates back, but I don't know if any missions have made use of them.

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Interesting, I wonder how people would feel about a mission where expert difficulty doesn't allow saving and has checkpoints instead.

Thanks guys.

 

Cool idea!

 

I think it's a good idea too!

Interesting. Back in the day when I made the suggestion to add this feature, most people argued against it because they thought the purpose of it was to increase the difficulty. But now this approach is suddenly a "good idea". :)

 

Personally, I don't think adding a checkpoint/restricted save feature on higher difficulty levels is a good idea. Using checkpoints or restricting the amounts of saves is a gameplay decision, and thus the gameplay and therefore the whole design of a mission (for example its layout) should be designed around it. If you design it with the latter in mind, giving the player different amount of saves to vary difficulty would probably work, though.

 

If you designed your mission with the possibility to save every time in mind and restrict the saves on higher setting, it will probably not be good, and if you design it with savegame restrictions in mind but give the player the possibility to save every time on lower settings, it is not optimal either.

 

You should have a clear idea on why you want this feature, and then design the mission with that in mind imho. As much as I would like to see this feature finally get put to use, adding features just for the sake of adding them is what most modern AAA titles do, and it is the reason why most of those games aren't very good gameplay-wise. Just think of the rope arrows in Thi4f.

 

Good examples for games with savegame restrictions are Alien:Isolation or Darkest Dungeon. Both use it to increase the tension, but none of these games are difficult. Of course there are games who use such a feature to make the game difficult (The Surge for example), but again, they create their games with that approach in mind.

 

So I would like to see this feature in action, but only if used properly. :)

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Interesting. Back in the day when I made the suggestion to add this feature, most people argued against it because they thought the purpose of it was to increase the difficulty.

 

 

My argument was always that I didn't think mappers should force that playstyle on players. But having it only one one difficulty level makes it a player's decision to use it or not. It seems like an effective way to increase difficulty without relying on no-kill/no-ko restrictions, which are far more limiting.

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I agree, the designer should carefully consider restricting saves as they do with any aspect of their level. Talking about in theory is fine I guess, but really it just requires someone doing it and seeing the outcome.

Edited by kingsal
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My argument was always that I didn't think mappers should force that playstyle on players. But having it only one one difficulty level makes it a player's decision to use it or not. It seems like an effective way to increase difficulty without relying on no-kill/no-ko restrictions, which are far more limiting.

By "most people" I didn't neccessarely meant you. I only quoted you and Goldwell because of the completely different reaction here compared to the one mentioned in my post above. :)

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One of my pet ideas has always been designing a level around a checkpoint conceit, like the save crystals in Legend of Grimrock. There are other examples of checkpoints, of course, like the notebooks in Silent Hill or the terminals in Dead Space, but I bring the crystal analogy up since I feel you would have to provide a lore explanation of sorts for something like that. Checkpoints that activate when the player is in a place or has done an objective seem a bit too arbitrary and meta to me.

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I always thought, checkpoints are an artifact that arrived on PC because of bad console ports. Past-gen consoles where extremely RAM-limited and therefore could not assemble a real safe containing the current state of the game world. So they settled on storing the last checkpoint or safe zone reached and respawned the full world on reload.

 

If it is about difficulty: Don't do it. Players can decide to limit their safe count rather easily by just not safing as often or restarting instead of reloading.

Keep the difficulty tiers for switching additional traps, lights, AI, easy solutions...

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I always thought, checkpoints are an artifact that arrived on PC because of bad console ports. Past-gen consoles where extremely RAM-limited and therefore could not assemble a real safe containing the current state of the game world. So they settled on storing the last checkpoint or safe zone reached and respawned the full world on reload.

 

If it is about difficulty: Don't do it. Players can decide to limit their safe count rather easily by just not safing as often or restarting instead of reloading.

Keep the difficulty tiers for switching additional traps, lights, AI, easy solutions...

Agreed. But that doesn't neccessarely mean that you cant use such systems to create a certain kind of gameplay, except from increasing the difficulty (which isn't a neccessary consequence of checkpoints).

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If it is about difficulty: Don't do it. Players can decide to limit their safe count rather easily by just not safing as often or restarting instead of reloading.

 

 

The same argument could be made about no-kill or no-ko objectives.

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I actually do generally prefer not to have compulsory no-kill/no-knockout/forced-ghost objectives (ITB makes an exception for characters I may want to reuse, alive). It's one reason I seldom play on Expert, even though I normally avoid killing humans.

 

The case of saving, though, is distinctive in that it brings up (1) patience for redoing the same tasks after failing at some later task, in order to get back to where you failed, and (2) life outside the context of the game, where you save simply because you got called away from the computer for a while.

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patience for redoing the same tasks after failing at some later task, in order to get back to where you failed

This is a matter of how the checkpoints are set up and whether the mapper gives the player enough possibilities to deal with errors (beeing detected etc...). So it is a matter of proper game design. There is no, "this feature is good" or "this feature is bad", it depends on how it gets used. In the games mentioned above it is used good, in Styx 2 for example they used it on the highest difficulty level to make it more challenging and it just sucked (after fulfilling three mission objectives and none of those caused an autosave, I gave up after dying and restarted the game on a the second highest setting).

 


The same argument could be made about no-kill or no-ko objectives.

Those are very artificial goals, though. The intention is often to avoid the players to empty the map, which would ruin the experience, and those objectives are just the least creative way of reaching this goal.

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The case of saving, though, is distinctive in that it brings up (1) patience for redoing the same tasks after failing at some later task, in order to get back to where you failed, and (2) life outside the context of the game, where you save simply because you got called away from the computer for a while.

 

 

Right. I can understand why some people would prefer not to play on a setting that used them. On the other hand, there is no denying that not being able to save can really ratchet up the tension. That's why I think it would be suitable for higher difficulty levels.

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I too think checkpoints are more about game design than difficulty. If they supplement the design and they're triggered often enough, they're like chapters in a book, or even paragraphs on a page. You stop thinking about saving after a while, and the whole system alters your play style a bit, i.e. you divide your playing sessions to get to next checkpoint.

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The same argument could be made about no-kill or no-ko objectives.

Yes, and for that reason i am against these too (no-kill seldom is a restriction though). For me, emptying the map is an additional goal for most missions. Therefore i would love to be able to always chose the "difficulty" tier wich features the most traps, AI, lights... and then defeat all the obstacles by disabling each trap, ko-ing each AI, robbing the place blind. For me, "difficulty" tiers are more like content tiers anyway - you get the most gameplay on the highest tier most of the time. Lower tiers often hide some of the stuff from you or dumb the mission down too much.

 

I too think checkpoints are more about game design than difficulty. If they supplement the design and they're triggered often enough, they're like chapters in a book, or even paragraphs on a page. You stop thinking about saving after a while, and the whole system alters your play style a bit, i.e. you divide your playing sessions to get to next checkpoint.

Checkpoints provide a subset of the features of the regular save system. They would probably do what manual saves do but are not directly controlled by the player. So they are the same tool but with added use restrictions.

Gameplaywise most missions feature multiple areas of relative safety already. Some of that areas would probably become checkpoints. Players already use such areas for saving. But players also save occasionally before trying risky actions or in case of crashes. Removing the latter use of the save system means to discourage experimentation.

 

Milestone-dependent autosaves are most likely the better choice in almost all cases. They do not discourage experimentation. They also relieve some players of the need to remember hitting the quicksafe key once in a while.

But designing a mission so that it contains some sanely spaced out safe areas is a good idea regardless whether it actually implements checkpoints or not.

 

So checkpoints add nothing a player could not add himself without touching DR.

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So checkpoints add nothing a player could not add himself without touching DR.

 

 

The majority of difficulty effects could also be player controlled. Players could just decide not to KO anyone, to find all the loot, to drop all their equipment at game start, and to never save the game.

 

Checkpoints are no different in that regard.

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The majority of difficulty effects could also be player controlled. Players could just decide not to KO anyone, to find all the loot, to drop all their equipment at game start, and to never save the game.

 

Checkpoints are no different in that regard.

I mentinoned my opposition to no-ko objectives in the same post you are citing.

To make my point even more clear: Both - ko/kill restrictions and save restrictions - can be emulated by the player quite easily and therefore are to be avoided in mission design.

I most often try to use as few ammunition and one-use items as possible and also try to get as much loot as i can without getting bored.

 

Loot goals are meant to give players some sense of achievement. They are normally easy to achieve even on hardest difficulty tier. They are certainly not neccessary but the mission goal achieved sound effect is something a lot of the players like to hear. In my opinion, loot objectives should be optional when there also is a less generic main objective.

 

Start equippment is a valid point. There are missions based on the player starting without gear and some missions are based on the player being broken and starting with basic equippment only. But for most missions it indeed makes sense to start with a diverse set of equippment. And so it already is: Most missions give you plenty of it even on hardest. Sure, most of the time all the lights you would like to douse are electric and not switchable... but lack of equippment was not what i experienced in most missions on hardest.

 

There also are missions that have non-limiting "checkpoints" implemented as ticking off (possibly optional) objectives (like "find a way into the mansion") as the player explores the map. That are fine. I just see no benefit for implementing save-system-crippling checkpoints.

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I think even saving can be immersion breaking, especially when players use save scumming and play it safe. Actually, a good checkpoint system would encourage experimentation and not relying on save system too much. That said, the level design would have to enable improvisation and failure, e.g. some spots where player can retreat too after failing and alerting the AI.

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... adds nothing a player could not add himself without touching DR.

You can give this argument about everything, as Spring already mentioned. More important, it is a difference whether a rule is established by the game or is added by the players choice. And rules are the fundament of all games, whether they are digital or not. If you compare it to chess for example, you could also argue that the fact that specific figures can only move in certain ways are an unneccessary restriction that the player could just add for themselves. But this argument doesn't make sense, neither for chess nor for TDMor any other game.

 

Rules shall make sure that the game is actually enjoyable, and restrictions of any sort are a type of rules. It is a terrible consent in modern game design, that games are build with at least restrictions as possible, to create something that appeals to an as broad audience as possible. The result are games like the latest thief. Those games aren't neccessarely bad, but they aren't overhelming either. Like good movies, books or music the good stuff will always be the stuff that only appeals to a small audience. Not everyone likes classic music (me neither), but it is still high art. Lots of people like pop music, is it good for the sake of that?

 

Abu, you are partially arguing with your own attitude, which is ok. You say what you like, and for mappers who want to appeal to an audience like you this is useful. But there are other players around here who like other stuff. And for those your arguments simple don't count. Personally I always play a game the easiest way possible, and I am not talking about the difficulty level, I choose the highest one normally. What I mean is that I see games as a sum of problems I have to solve, and I am always searching for the easiest and sometimes most elegant solution. I would never restrict myself in the ways you mentioned. Why should I? If I have to give myself additional restrictions or have to pursue a certain playstyle (playing elegant as mentioned before), this normally means that something is wrong with the game I am playing, as it is not able to entertain me enough so I don't have to do this stuff to have fun.

 

I am not the biggest fan of no-KO/no-Kill objectives either, as I mentioned in an earlier post. But not because I don't like the restriction, I am fine with that, but because it is simple an very artificial and overused approach to avoid a certain player behaviour. I think mappers or game designers in general can become quiet more creative when it comes to leading the player through the game, which is, and here the circle closes ( ;) ), the fundamental purpose of all game rules.

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I haven't played the Thief reboot, but I was under the impression it was noted for heavily contextualised controls down to whether the player had a jump button available.

 

Why should you restrict yourself? Because you want to, if and only if you want to. I suspect we're not going to arrive at a meeting of minds on the idea that a playstyle (in a single-player game at that, which chess in its many variations isn't) can be desirable if and only if imposed by an external agency. Or even on a treatment of save systems as wholly internal to game mechanics: if I have twenty minutes available and the mapper has rashly decided I ought to have had thirty... but as I said, if we're at the point of raising philosophical differences of opinion about the relationship between desires and rational activity then I don't think we're going to reach agreement about save mechanisms. My practical recommendation to the OP would be to keep Expert for the kinds of restrictions noted in this thread and make everything else available on lower difficulty as well.

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Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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