Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Guhndahb

Member
  • Posts

    2
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation

0 Neutral

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. Spectacular video, and what a wonderful treat. I particularly enjoyed the team name and the meaningful quotes which just gave me chills. And, of course, the in-game shots thrilled me. Tremendous work you lot are doing. Thank you.
  2. This has certainly been an interesting thread to read. I got through all 13 pages, although I had to skim a few of the longer posts. Most if not all of the arguments regarding savegames that I personally have, one way or another, have already been discussed. So all I can do is give a "what I'd like" comment and hope it's of use to the devs. I generally believe strongly in giving the FM author the control over the player's experience. For example, I thought the idea of squeaking boards with no visual indicator was perfectly sensible, although it would be dangerous due to misuse. In fact I liked most of obscurus' thread-initiating ideas as usable tools for the FM devs. I have a few ideas with regards to the squeaky boards implementation, but I'd rather not dilute the core issue of my post regarding savegame restrictions. With regards to saving, though, I really have to urge the devs to err on the side of caution. Implement whatever save restrictions you wish, but please make them optional as well as completely separate from any other difficulty settings. One of the (many) great things about the original System Shock was that there were a number of different difficulty options, not just one slider like so many non-simulators have today. I liked maxing them all except for the time limit one because I liked, even back then, to play the game as a FP sneaker. I agree that over-saving is cheating, to me it clearly is, but I do argue that if a player chooses to cheat then let them, so long as there is no form of MP or competitive rankings involved. I personally would do everything in my power to circumvent any forced save restrictions, not because I like to cheat, but simply to maximize my enjoyment of the game. There are two primary reasons for this. First, for me, if there are restrictions other than those I impose on myself, I think about them...constantly. You may well argue that is my flaw as a player, and I'd agree, but unlimited saves allow me to not think about saving at all. I can think of a number of reasons for my having this "flaw", primarily years and years of gaming which allowed it, but that's not really important. More important to me is my second reason. When I was young I was perfectly content to play the same (sometimes very long) sequence over and over, until I did things the way the devs expected me to. But I'm no longer all that young. Every minute of my playing time is now precious to me because, as an adult, I find very little free time available to me. So, indeed, I prefer to save all I want and then strive very hard to load as infrequently as possible. But I like to be able to choose. Sometimes, I'll even reload from an older save (not just relying on quicksave) to replay an area that I felt I played poorly, because I really care about earning my progress. But, if I just died after a particularly unenjoyable session, I'd rather take my most recent save. I never want to suffer when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself. There's enough suffering in real life. In pure single-player gaming, it's rarely a mistake to let the player choose their own preferred method of play. Do I have any right to play this way and then either complain a game is too easy or gloat about my prowess? Hell no! But an intelligent and experienced gamer is not going to do this. obscurus' save on exit, die forever, option is actually quite reasonable, perhaps the most realistic of all options, but I'd be miserable playing such a game. My gameplay stress would be so high I couldn't really enjoy myself. Indeed, that system is used in several of my all-time favorite games, such as the magificent classic Nethack and Origin's Autoduel. Indeed, it would be a great additional option for the truly hardcore and should be reasonably easy to implement. The arguments in favor of savepoints make sense, but I think savecount limiting is more sensible, although only if optional. That's purely opinion and I can't really back it up with anything other than it seems to make more sense to me in a game with such flexibility. So, just as a gamer, I'd like to vote, with whatever small voice I have, in favor of optional save restrictions. I think an ideal (both for giving the most options to players and for ease of development) would be to give players all three of the following options, without otherwise affecting anything else in gameplay: 1) Completely unlimited saves 2) Limited savecount 3) Hardcore-obscurus-mode Additionally, for "2) Limited savecount" I feel the best option is user-assigned but with a FM author recommended default. Purely FM author assigned isn't really taking into account the out-of-game issues players have to deal with. Sorry for the length of the post, I just had really strong feelings on this and wanted to give some substance to my opinion. I hope I didn't step on any toes, as I have a lot of respect for this project and its developers.
×
×
  • Create New...