Ultra Realism Possibilities?

[Domarius]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was going to say.

[Springheel]

Maybe you would also find that your skill level - your ability to complete games without relying on excessive quicksaves - improves markedly if you avoid saving, and instead rely on your wits and reflexes to see how far they get you. Go on, try it!

 

Ah, so now playing without quicksaves isn't just more fun and challenging, it proves you're more L33T as well.

[Ishtvan]

Yes, my skill has everything to do with whether the FM author properly made a table in the middle of a marble floor mantleable, or if for some game engine reason it's impossible to mantle onto it, and when I try I'll jump up and down on the marble floor and alert every AI within 100 feet.

Edited June 7, 2005 by Ishtvan

[Pyrian]

Obscurus, you're missing a very basic point, here:

 

It's not those of us arguing with you whose experience is "ruined" by quicksaves. I don't abuse quicksaves, at all - quite the contrary. I prefer to play all the way through without ever having to re-load unless I outright die (the only times I died in T:DS were when I fell into water ), and, get this, I can do this all by my little self without any need for someone to restrict when and where I can stop and/or save. So, for me, and frankly most gamers, what you're proposing is nothing but a lessening of convenience.

 

The "problem" you have is with people (you?) who have no self-control and feel somehow addicted to the quicksave AND quickload and abuse them to make the experience easier. You have this weird notion that this describes "everyone". It doesn't. People like to play games, not endlessly re-do one section to save a bullet or a few points of health.

 

The problem I have is that your "solution" (not yours, Domarius!) is targeted at a rather small subset of people (who really just need a sense of perspective) but instead hits everyone.

 

Anyway, I repeat, challenge me with the in-game world and not with the out-of-game interface.

[obscurus]

Well, hopefully the FM author has playtested their mission thoroughly before releasing it (and had others playtest it) so that problems like un-mantleable tables on a marble floor don't occur.

 

Game bugs aside, a player who is patient, thoughtful, careful and above all stealthy should be able to complete the mission objectives without too much difficulty - not a walk in the park, just challenging and fun without too much frustration - and without saving more than a few times, and hopefully without actually needing to load from any of those saves. It is my personal preference for missions that make it easy enough to complete your objectives if you play well, but very hard to access every area of the mission and get 100% of the loot. You have to leave something for the L33T among us

 

 

Whether or not playing without quicksaves makes you more L33T I won't comment on, what I was trying to get across is that if you challenge yourself, your skills will naturally improve, just like practising any skill will lead to improvement. Actually, playing multiplayer deathmatches is a very good way to improve your skill - no savegames there, and if you practise, you get better, and you also get better at single player games. Thievery is a good way to practise your skills, if you are good at Thievery, you will probably be able to get through TDS without saving at all (provided the game doesn't crash and you leave it running the whole time). And Thievery doesn't let you save, but that doesn't detract from the game at all, or make it less fun. OK single player games and multiplayer games are different, but the skills required are the same...

[obscurus]

I don't abuse quicksaves, at all - quite the contrary. I prefer to play all the way through without ever having to re-load unless I outright die (the only times I died in T:DS were when I fell into water ), and, get this, I can do this all by my little self without any need for someone to restrict when and where I can stop and/or save. So, for me, and frankly most gamers, what you're proposing is nothing but a lessening of convenience.

If that is true, why would it then bother you if the facility to quicksave was removed? Since you claim you are not using it significantly, why would you miss quicksaves? How would it really inconvenience you?

 

Anyway, I repeat, challenge me with the in-game world and not with the out-of-game interface.

 

Exactly what I am trying to do! Quicksaves take away the in game challenge, and if the in game challenge is balanced properly, and you are playing well, you will very rarely need to experience the out of game interface (crashes and bugs aside)...

[Pyrian]

If that is true, why would it then bother you if the facility to quicksave was removed?

Because I can't just up and leave whenever I feel like, or run out of time, or real life otherwise intrudes. It's deliberately inconvenient. You should know by now that that's one of the primary charges that's been leveled against your approach almost constantly throughout this thread. It forces me to think about saves when I'd rather not think about them at all, since it's clearly a game mechanic and not part of the immersion of the game world. It further reduces convenience in situations where the program, the computer, or the game character dies.

 

Note the use of the word "convenience". This is intentional. Re-doing Thief levels isn't as much fun as doing them the first time - even tetris has random factors! You're not promoting more real gameplay, or more real challenge - you're punishing people with drudgery and inconvenience. That's not a good idea when the core goal is fun.

 

Exactly what I am trying to do!

Nonsense. You're deliberately making the out-of-game-world interface more restricting and therefore more challenging, in a way that has nothing whatsoever to do with what's going on in the in-game-world.

 

Quicksaves take away the in game challenge...

No, they don't change the in-game challenge AT ALL. It's a purely meta-game construct, no matter how you look at it. And it's use is utterly optional.

[obscurus]

Because I can't just up and leave whenever I feel like, or run out of time, or real life otherwise intrudes. It's deliberately inconvenient.

Well, I'm not suggesting that you have no saves at all - you can still up and leave any time you feel like - you just wouldn't be able to use the save systems to make a mockery of the game.

 

You should know by now that that's one of the primary charges that's been leveled against your approach almost constantly throughout this thread.

 

Oh, yes, I know almost no one else here agrees with me... Maybe oDDity and Domarius, up to a point...

 

It forces me to think about saves when I'd rather not think about them at all, since it's clearly a game mechanic and not part of the immersion of the game world.

 

Then why wouldn't you prefer autosaves or objective saves? Then you wouldn't have to think about it at all (and I am talking about autosaves that can only be triggered once in the game, so you can't go running back through them and saving again, and they are placed so thet you won't have much risk of the save being a dud). I'm not saying you don't get a few save slots, but so far, no one has presented a good argument as to why they need unlimited capacity to save every four feet in the game...

 

 

Note the use of the word "convenience".  This is intentional.  Re-doing Thief levels isn't as much fun as doing them the first time - even tetris has random factors! 

 

Which is why I have been pushing for lots of random things in game design, and making levels that are nigh on impossible to see in their entirety in one play of the game - that way it WILL be different every time you played it. One of the biggest flaws with thief was that you could easily knock out all of the guards in each mission, and then explore the map at your leisure. It is better IMO to have a map that makes the player make choices about which pathways they will choose, and making players commit to a path that automatically means they miss out on other paths - they can do it a different way the next time they play the game. And I clearly don't think a save system needs to be so convenient as a quicksave key - convenience is a double edged sword, and is not all it is cracked up to be. Take the stairs, not the elevator - it might not be as convenient, but it is better for your health.

 

You're not promoting more real gameplay, or more real challenge - you're punishing people with drudgery and inconvenience.  That's not a good idea when the core goal is fun.

 

Rubbish. I am only punishing those who couldn't be bothered playing the game properly, ie, stealthily, carefully, quietly, intelligently. If you plan your aproach to the game properly, and play smart, you will not experience any reloading drudgery (OK you might if the game crashes, but lets say that for most people this isn't a big problem). So if you aren't having fun, you are probably doing something wrong or playing like a lame duck...

 

Nonsense.  You're deliberately making the out-of-game-world interface more restricting and therefore more challenging, in a way that has nothing whatsoever to do with what's going on in the in-game-world.

 

Making the out of game interface more challenging?! If you find having a few save slots or autosaves challenging, god help you when you are playing Thief!

And I suppose quicksaving compulsively has something to do with the in game experience? Well it kinda does, but not in a good way...

 

 

No, they don't change the in-game challenge AT ALL.  It's a purely meta-game construct, no matter how you look at it.  And it's use is utterly optional.

 

You realise it is optional. I realise it is optional. But there are a huge number of people playing games out there not realising that quicksaving your way to victory is lame, and they might actually discover a whole new type of fun if they are forced to play the game using their brains, rather than using the quicksave key and brute trial and error and luck to get to the end...

 

Did I mention I was a dictatorial totalitarian bastard?

[Pyrian]

Well, I'm not suggesting that you have no saves at all - you can still up and leave any time you feel like - you just wouldn't be able to use the save systems to make a mockery of the game.

Doesn't compute. You can't have it all ways, fella.

 

Then why wouldn't you prefer autosaves or objective saves?

I love autosaves. They add convenience. Pay attention. I'm objecting to limits on the meta-game, not added features.

 

Which is why I have been pushing for lots of random things in game design, and making levels that are nigh on impossible to see in their entirety in one play of the game - that way it WILL be different every time you played it.

That's great, but has so little to do with the topic at hand that I don't think it's particularly relevant.

 

And I clearly don't think a save system needs to be so convenient as a quicksave key - convenience is a double edged sword, and is not all it is cracked up to be. Take the stairs, not the elevator - it might not be as convenient, but it is better for your health.

Making saving less convenient does nothing for my health, and means I get to have less fun playing the game. Excuse me if I'm not excited. I walk a lot, but I still like having a car.

 

I am only punishing those who couldn't be bothered playing the game properly, ie, stealthily, carefully, quietly, intelligently.

Nonsense. Those people aren't going to be bothered to play your idea of a game at all. The people you're punishing are the people who just want to play with as little trouble from the interface as possible. The people you're punishing are the people who want to play the game without having to think about saves.

 

If you plan your aproach to the game properly, and play smart, you will not experience any reloading drudgery (OK you might if the game crashes, but lets say that for most people this isn't a big problem).

Planning a game design around nothing going wrong isn't realistic. There's always something (how many people were claimed by the trap-door under the Pagan's area in Auldale? "Hmm, looks dark, I'll jump down and take a look... Ooops, water...").

 

So if you aren't having fun, you are probably doing something wrong or playing like a lame duck...

I am having fun, and I'm wondering what your problem is and why you and oDDity are so determined to interfere with other people's fun?

 

Making the out of game interface more challenging?!

That's exactly what you've constantly said you want to do - change the out-of-game interface to make the game more challenging to make largely imaginary people change their behavior to the way you want them to behave (which won't often work, BTW, never does).

 

And I suppose quicksaving compulsively has something to do with the in game experience?

No. Saving is an out-of-game-world function. That's not profound. Dunno why you don't get it. All out-of-game-world functions and interfaces should be as convenient as possible. That should be obvious.

 

You realise it is optional. I realise it is optional.

You don't show much evidence of it.

 

But there are a huge number of people playing games out there not realising that quicksaving your way to victory is lame, and they might actually discover a whole new type of fun if they are forced to play the game using their brains, rather than using the quicksave key and brute trial and error and luck to get to the end...

There are a few quicksave/quickload addicts, but I don't think they're anywhere near the majority. And on top of that, they're not going to change their tune because you restrict their fix - they'll simply find a way around or play a different game. You're not going to get any "converts" that way at all.

[obscurus]

People like to play games, not endlessly re-do one section to save a bullet or a few points of health.

Then play the game! Don't reload just because you used one too many bullets, or lost a couple of health points. Use your brain and deal with it! That is the beauty of Thief compared to most FPS games - you can think your way out of a difficult situation rather than shoot your way out, which means that you don't have to reload just because you alerted a guard, it merely means you have to modify your playstyle to deal with the new challenge.

 

If you die, you die, but until you do, you should keep playing with what you have. So what if you wasted all you arrows at the start of the game, and they would really come in handy at the end? Use your noggin and skill to figure out another way around that pesky guard! Savegames, or more importantly, reloading from saved games, kills that dynamic, because instead of trying to deal with tricky situations and mistakes, you just hit reload and keep going with mindless trial and error until you happen to get it right. Which is more fun? Well, I know what I like at any rate, and moving through games via incremental quicksaves and dumb luck is not something I enjoy. Obviously, though, many people do like it, for reasons that are really just silly IMO.

 

And like I said before, people are way too hung up on convenience. I mean, what next, being able to conveniently make all that annoying geometry dissapear, and having the loot conveniently piled up on the floor? All the guards conveniently falling asleep so you can burgle with abandon? I know! The ultimate convenience! Don't play the game at all! :lol:

 

Inconvenience is what drives people to action, and forcing people to play the game better by imposing a slight inconvenience upon them can only be a good thing for gameplay...

[obscurus]

That's great, but has so little to do with the topic at hand that I don't think it's particularly relevant.

Well, you were the one who brought it up by saying tetris was more random than Thief, and therefore had more replay value...

 

 

Nonsense.  Those people aren't going to be bothered to play your idea of a game at all.  The people you're punishing are the people who just want to play with as little trouble from the interface as possible.  The people you're punishing are the people who want to play the game without having to think about saves.

 

That makes absolutely no sense - I don't care about the people who dont want to play my kind of game, and the people who do want to play my kind of game are not going to be put off by a reasonable restriction on savegames. Splinter Cell was quite popular, even though the savegame interface would be tremendously inconvenient by your standards, and I thought it had one of the most balanced savegame interface I have seen in a while.

 

Planning a game design around nothing going wrong isn't realistic.  There's always something (how many people were claimed by the trap-door under the Pagan's area in Auldale?  "Hmm, looks dark, I'll jump down and take a look...  Ooops, water...").

If you were paying atention to the game, you would have realised in advance that 1) deep water is fatal in TDS and 2) there were plenty of clues to warn you that you needed to drain the sewer before jumping down that hole, and 3) it wasn't the best level design I've seen.

 

Sure there will be situations where the player might do something stupid, which is why the level designer will put autosave spots at locations near those places where people regularly do something stupid.

 

I am having fun, and I'm wondering what your problem is and why you and oDDity are so determined to interfere with other people's fun?

 

Because I am just mean and spiteful

 

.

That's exactly what you've constantly said you want to do - change the out-of-game interface to make the game more challenging to make largely imaginary people change their behavior to the way you want them to behave (which won't often work, BTW, never does).

 

No, it is not to make the game more challenging, it is to stop people from using what amounts to a potential method of cheating, by using incremental saves and trial and error to progress instead of actual skill and brains. And if these people are largely imaginary, then there is really no one who will complain if unimited saves and quicksaves go out the door, is there. You would be surprised at how easily people adapt to the limitations that are imposed on them, and I really think you are overestimating how much people value convenience.

 

 

No.  Saving is an out-of-game-world function.  That's not profound.  Dunno why you don't get it.  All out-of-game-world functions and interfaces should be as convenient as possible.  That should be obvious.

Not if it can be used to make virtual cheating in-the-game world possible. Saving is the bridge between the in game and out of game worlds, and convenience in this respect should be limited for reasons that yI have already expounded.

 

There are a few quicksave/quickload addicts, but I don't think they're anywhere near the majority.  And on top of that, they're not going to change their tune because you restrict their fix - they'll simply find a way around or play a different game.  You're not going to get any "converts" that way at all.

 

Then who is left to complain about reasonable restricitons on savegames? Since you obviously restrict your own saving, and like autosaves, I can't really see how not being able to quicksave, or having a limitation on the number of available save slots, would realy affect you in the slightest. Three save slots + autosaves should be ample convenience, and you have in no way presented any kind of argument that you need the dubiously added convenience that more than that would supposedly give you...

[Gildoran]

[in response to saying that taking out quicksaves doesn't inconvenience people who have only a short amount of time to play]

Doesn't compute.  You can't have it all ways, fella.

Pyrian: Did you read my suggestion for an auto-deleted saveslot upon exit? That

would prevent quicksave abuse without harming people who only have a short amount of time to play.

 

(again I wish to note that it's as easy to turn on god-mode as it is to back up save files)

 

Edit: I decided to add this instead of doing a double post:

Also, taking out quicksaves shouldn't make the game more challenging via an "out-of-game mechanism", if its difficulty is properly balanced and playtested... The problem is that currently the game is being made too easy by an "out-of-game mechanism". I want to fix that. Games shouldn't be hard based on random chance. They should be hard because they pose interesting puzzles.

Edited June 8, 2005 by Gildoran

[obscurus]

again I wish to note that it's as easy to turn on god-mode as it is to back up save files

If not much easier...

 

If you wan't to go on an exploratory tour of a mission, to see the sights etc, few things could be as convenient as god mode (add in noclip and you are on a roll!). God mode, BTW, was primarily implemented for level designers, to enable them to play through the map quickly as part of the level testing process. Very convenient, much more so than saving and reloading I would have thought... But again, a convenience that makes for pretty lame gameplay.

[Bhruic]

If you die, you die, but until you do, you should keep playing with what you have.

Please, stop telling me what I "should" do when playing a game.

 

It really comes down to simple options. With quicksave, can people play the way you want? Yes. Can they save as much as they want? Yes. Therefore it gives them the option of playing how they want to play. With your system, can people play the way you want? Yes. Can they save as much as they want? No. Therefore it gives them no option of playing how they want to play.

 

Your position is really unjustifiable. You want to remove a game option in an attempt to make people play the game the way you feel they should be. Sorry, but your opinion is just that - your opinion. How other people choose to play, and the method they choose to enjoy a game is up to them, not you. And that's the way it should be.

[obscurus]

I will explain why I am "telling people how to play the game" .

 

I view playing a computer game as being like a game of chess, with the level designer as my opponent, or the player if you are the designer. The level designer builds a puzzle in which the things the player can do or not do are more or less defined, and sets the rules of the game, which can be things like "you only get two saves in this level, be careful". Just like you wouldn't change the rules on your opponent during a game of chess, you should respect the rules that the level designer has given you, and play within the paramaters. If the level designer decides that there will be no quicksaves, so what? That is the part of the game and its rules.

 

If you want to quicksave, put god mode on, pull out a level walkthrough, these should not be default options unless the game designer says they are. As a level designer, I want to give the player certain limitations, some of those being limitations on savegames.

 

I feel it is disrespectful to the level designer, who has gone to all that effort to set a challenge for you, for players to then just cheat and blunder their way through as though they have accomplished something.

 

My position is entirely justifiable: it is, and always should be, up to the level designer how you can play the game. they may give you lots of freedom, or very little, but it is up to them.

 

And yes, that is just my opinion.

[obscurus]

Anyway, I repeat, challenge me with the in-game world and not with the out-of-game interface.

Have you by any chance played a game called Outcast? This game had a very unusual approach to savegames. It made it explicitly clear that savegames WERE part of game play. Early on in the game, one of the NPCs gives you a crystal called a Savgam (get it?). The savgam worked by allowing the player to restore their being to an earlier time. It imposed some restrictions on it's use: you had to be standing still, with no weapons drawn, and if you were shot at while you were using it, you wouldn't be able to save (therby preventing the player from loading a dud save), and it gave you about five save slots. No doubt you would think that to be highly inconvenient, but I thought it was a very innovative approach, and it blows the notion that savegames are an abstraction disconnected from gameplay out of the water. It might not seem like it (most games don't make it as clear as Outcast did), but save games ARE very much part of the game, no matter how hard they try not to be, and no matter how hard you protest that they are meta-non-game-abstracto-thingies.

 

Therefore it is entirely reasonable for the designer to consider them as part of designing the challenges of a game. Believe me, when you design a game, you have to take what sort of save system the game has, and how players might use it, when designing levels, because it actually does affect gameplay quite heavily, in spite of what you might think to the contrary.

[Springheel]

If you die, you die, but until you do, you should keep playing with what you have. So what if you wasted all you arrows at the start of the game, and they would really come in handy at the end? Use your noggin and skill to figure out another way around that pesky guard!

 

This seems to be the primary argument raised by people who don't like quicksaves. Obviously, quicksaving every step is an abuse of the feature (although I still don't know why anyone should care). However, I doubt there are more than a handful of people out there who actually play that way. To argue quicksaving should be removed because a few people abuse it is like saying we should remove the ability to increase the gamma level of the display, because some people will raise it so high that they can wander about in the shadows with ease, when everyone knows it is much more immersive to have to strain your eyes and wonder if you're about to walk over a cliff in the darkness.

[SneaksieDave]

So, saving your game = cheating. Hilarious. If we couldn't save, we'd still all be playing pac-man. Hell, if we're going to extremes, then why save ever, and not just play from the intro movie straight through to the end? If you fail, you fail - 30 hours of your life lost, suck it up. Just like pac-man. Maybe I should go Iron-Man my way through Ultima VII... fun!

 

It's never up to anyone else how I do something. That's why I'm doing it, and not them. When an experience is forced on someone and they're told how to do it, you will invariably find that people consider it a bad experience. That probably has something to do with why this design paradigm is so rarely implemented - and often lamented - in game development. I understand suggesting someone try something a particular way, and I'm all for that; a friend of mine played through Thief by running(!) through areas (with AI chasing him of course) to get an idea of the layout, and then reloaded to "play for real," and it bugged me terribly. But in the end, you've gotta let people do their thing.

 

The good part (aside from it being optional in TDM, which makes this whole discussion sorta moot), is that since the code is available, no one can force anyone to do anything, anyway, that they don't want to. So in the end, the only ones that will end up frustrated are those telling people how they should do things. Ha-ha, neener, neener.

[obscurus]

I never said saving = cheating.

 

What I said was in essence, incremental saving + random trial and error = looking up a level walkthrough, which is a form of cheating.

 

I have never played a game that has limited savegame capacity, where I then thought it was a bad experience because there were restrictions on how often I saved. It might have been a bad experience for other unrelated reasons, but then I still felt it was a good thing for my experience that I could not save wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

 

I like it when the game designer has made it clear that the player is expected to make a certain amount of progress in the game without dying before they earn the right of saving their progress. Thus, I am in favour of a save game system that completely (or almost completely) removes all control of saving from the player, and puts saving in the level designer's hands by way of autosaves of some form. Actually, this is how most console games work, and the people who play these, and a lot more people play consoles by the way, obviously don't all think it is a bad experience because of it (although I guess you could argue that sales of game walkthroughs indicates that a lot of players lack the patience and persistence to see things through, or that there are a lot of badly designed games out there)...

 

The old "you can't tell people what to do, they won't play it, it makes for a bad experience" arguments are not borne out by reality - many people really don't mind, and many actually enjoy it when the burden of figuring out when to save is taken off their shoulders.

 

I think one of the reasons people become addicted to quicksaving etc, is because they have no idea where to save, because the designer has left it completely open, and start saving everywhere out of nervousness, and this soon develops into a full blown quicksave abuse problem. They then get so used to this that it becomes a shock when they play a game that makes it very clear they have to earn their saves, and like many of you posting on this thread, become apoplectic at the suggestion that they should have to earn their saves....

 

And by the way, while you might think that, as a player of a game, that

It's never up to anyone else how I do something. That's why I'm doing it, and not them.

, in reality, very little is is up to you: the designer decides what geometry defines where you can walk, the designer decides what AI to place and where, the designer decides how much loot is in the mission, the designer decides what the game interface will be, the designer decides what kind of savegame system will be there. You as a player only have the freedom to do what the designer has allowed you to have, and the only way around that is to cheat, either by turning the gamma up, turning on god mode, looking up a walkthrough, hacking the game files, opening up the editor....

 

And yes I know this argument is moot, because TDM will make it optional etc, but that still doesn't mean that people who go to the trouble of taking days, months out of their lives to craft a finely tuned gaming work of art, don't have a right to say how it should be played. When I make a level, I wan't the player to know that saving anywhere other than where I let them by default is not part of the game, and I would prefer to do that by disabling a few features by default.

 

It would still be optional what people do: they can still quicksave with gay abandon if they want, but they have to enable that option in the same way they would enable god mode or any other non-default option that makes gaming easier, or would spoil the intent of the author's design... Quicksaves etc should be optional, yes, but not the default option. Sure some people will always cheat or play in a way that is not in the spirit of the game, but there is nothing wrong with making it a bit less convenient to do so...

Is that so unreasonable?

 

How long before this thread is closed? Damn it is getting long!

[SneaksieDave]

I never said saving = cheating.

Indeed, but it was possibly hinted at:

 

If you want to quicksave, put god mode on, pull out a level walkthrough, these should not be default options unless the game designer says they are.

 

How long before this thread is closed?

Yeah really, I think it's all been said.

[Ishtvan]

Well it seems like we're just re-hashing old arguments now, so:

I think Fingernail made a good point that if the player is actively thinking about when they are going to save, where they are going to save, how many times they're going to save, what they're going to do after they save and before they reload, then the game has already failed to keep the player interested.

 

When you let people regulate their own saves, you are essentially letting them give themselves the best experience from the mission, by letting them decide what is fun enough to do-over again.

 

Believe it or not, people have different tastes, and there is no perfect mission that everyone will enjoy 100% of. For example, I like sneaking past people, so I rarely save at these points, since I wouldn't mind doing it again. I hate jumping puzzles. The enjoyment and immersion I get from the game is greatly enhanced when I can save right before and after an annoying jumping puzzle, because I hate repeating that section of the mission.

 

If I was playing a mission that made me replay ~30 minutes of it each time I failed to successfully jump across 6 beams over a pit of lava, I would just stop playing and never finish the mission. I would not say "wow, the FM author is such a genius for making me replay 30 minutes of the mission every time I jump off this board slightly too late or slightly too early, because unlike in reality I don't know exactly where my feet are in this game. I had better spend the next 8 hours of my life replaying the same 30 minute long section only to spend 1 minute trying and failing to jump across these beams over lava, because that is how the mission is meant to be played."

Edited June 8, 2005 by Ishtvan

[Pyrian]

Obscurus, your last set of responses to me made it painfully clear that you're arguing for the sake of arguing and not actually responding to the points being brought up - many of your responses were complete non-sequitors, and all of them ignored the central arguments.

 

This is a waste of time.

[obscurus]

Obscurus, your last set of responses to me made it painfully clear that you're arguing for the sake of arguing

Well, that is partly true, I did want to see how long a thread that has strayed so far off topic could go before it was closed

 

...not actually responding to the points being brought up - many of your responses were complete non-sequitors, and all of them ignored the central arguments.

 

Not true at all, I responded to all of the points brought up, and I don't think you really know what a non-sequitor is.... looking at your arguments (which I very pointedly did not ignore) in previous posts it is very clear that your arguments support my point of view more than they do yours...

 

And Ishtvan makes a good point, but like I have said a thousand times, a properly playtested and designed level using autosaves will put autosaves at the appropriate places, so that you don't have to replay huge chunks of game to repeat annoying jumping puzzles and things like that (I hate jumping puzzles too). Doesn't make a case that you need a quicksave key, but, yeah I get it, I am just arguing for the sake of it, since I am in a very small minority here, and everyone obviously likes to play in different ways, which is really fair enough

 

This is a waste of time.

 

Of course it is, but I get bored occasionally when I'm at work, and have nothing better to do...

[FishFace]

Except, Obscurus, that Ishtvan said he wouldn't mind not having saves after/before sneaking. You're trying to cater to everyone's tastes, but the system just can't do that - someone else will require saves around such sneakpoints, someone else would detest them. Same applies for jumping puzzles. You're assuming that the FM designer is a carbon-copy of the player in every respect, whereas, whilst the player will most likely enjoy a mission put in front of him, he won't necessarily play it the same way as its creator.

 

Before you suggest that the autosaves around, say, sneakfests can simply be optional, that is going to force the player to either not save at all, or to save where he may not want to. Funnily enough, that's not good.

And returning to the "autosaves are bad" principle, if you make autosaves optional, and once you've used them you can't do it again, you've just prevented people from ghosting a section, returning and reghosting with the same level of security. Just because you've got past a section doesn't mean it's complete, nor does it mean that it is not complete - it's up to the player, and so should saving.

On the same subject as this, that is why forcing any one number of saves is bad - some people may want to go around a level very thoroughly in one go, whereas others will want to revisit areas, but will probably want the same level of scrutiny - the latter will require more saves as they're effectively doing the mission more than once (probably less than twice though) as has been said - let the player decide, before you restrict playstyles unnecessarily.

Edited June 9, 2005 by FishFace

[Domarius]

Thanks for excluding me from your argument Pyrian. This thread is getting a little exhausing and it's probably going to get to the point where people will join in without reading everything that's been said, and all my posts would be for nothing.

On that note, this thread needs to be summarised into main arguments for each side if we still need to debate this as a game option (or options, since some people are arguing for different solutions).

 

I prefer to play all the way through without ever having to re-load unless I outright die (the only times I died in T:DS were when I fell into water)

That sounds like my games - I only died in Calendra's Legacy twice, on the hardest mission of the campaign.

 

I was still placing my self-imposed save points for tension etc.

 

Remember, my suggestion is just an extension of what I'm doing there, but the AUTHOR get to place the save points because they have the best idea of where they should go.

 

Oh, yes, I know almost no one else here agrees with me... Maybe oDDity and Domarius, up to a point...

FishFace is also in that list - he's for limited saves, but not for save points. I wonder if he's read my recent posts here though.

Oh and Gildoran, for putting our point of view out there so well.

 

Bhruic, are you opposed to save-limiting if it were an option you could turn on and off, and was off by default?

 

I feel it is disrespectful to the level designer, who has gone to all that effort to set a challenge for you, for players to then just cheat and blunder their way through as though they have accomplished something.

That's the way I feel too, but I'm all for it being an option, even if it means it might be largly ignored initially. I'm hoping that it would slowly catch on through experimentation and word of mouth.

 

Have you by any chance played a game called Outcast? This game had a very unusual approach to savegames. It made it explicitly clear that savegames WERE part of game play. Early on in the game, one of the NPCs gives you a crystal called a Savgam (get it?).

I'm pretty sure it was Gaam Saav or something similar.

 

it blows the notion that savegames are an abstraction disconnected from gameplay out of the water.

Totally agree. I wish we could see more of this. Back then it made me squirm at first, but then I realised what it offered in return in terms of tension.

People were playing password save games and battery backup save games on consoles for years, and no one complained. And RPG's are the kinds of games that you spend hours on doing non-linear things, such as travelling from place to place, fighting hoards of enemies. Running to the nearest town to save, and being forced to quit the dungeon and start again if they had to stop playing, was not that much of an inconvenience.

 

it is like saying we should remove the ability to increase the gamma level of the display, because some people will raise it so high that they can wander about in the shadows with ease, when everyone knows it is much more immersive to have to strain your eyes and wonder if you're about to walk over a cliff in the darkness.

That's why I think my idea is good. Anyone can turn save points on or off (off by default, majority rules) so just like the gamma setting, its up to the player to dicipline themselves.

I just want the author to have the option to describe the challenge in the form of save points, same as they describe different levels of challenge in the easy setting or the hard setting.

 

I hate jumping puzzles.

That wasn't a good example of your personal preferences, because I don't think that seperates you from the rest of us in any way

 

If I was playing a mission that made me replay ~30 minutes of it each time I failed to successfully jump across 6 beams over a pit of lava,

That example could be avoided by good level design. Don't have jumping puzzles (jumping sucks in all video games, except maybe platformers), and put saving points in decent places, like right before a hard bit.