Quote:

Original post by tolaris Quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage I'll weigh in with the standard caveat about not making it worthwhile to just quickload whenever one of these things happens. Given how the player doesn't lose anything when they load a saved game, any system which does make a player lose even a smallest thing sounds like system that's never going to be used since it's the worse option. Unless it somehow manages to inflict the loss but at the same (or later) time reward a player in way that'll make the system 'worthwile' for them to use it. (but then you have to balance it for people who'll intentionally keep dying to milk the system for its rewards... tricky)

Idea: Remove "quicksaving". I firmly believe that games should be designed with built-in autosaves at *good*, unscrewyourselfable times (yes designers, that will take actual *effort* and *testing*); however, because I also believe that players should be able to quit any time without losing progress, a "save and quit" option should be provided with a one-time reload. "Sure Timmy, you can quicksave. But I sure as hell hope you're going to get on the bus, because in about five seconds you're going to see the desktop."

It might seem invasive for some people to not allow a save-anywhere feature -- screw you guys. Many PC games, especially shooters, suffer from the presence of quicksaving. Far Cry would be a good example of this if it had not been patched to allow quicksaves; the designers weren't trying to torture players as many suspected, but create tension. Naturally, as soon as I discovered this fact I reinstalled the game without the patch to play as the game had been meant to play. Was I frustrated at the annoyingly-difficult volcano battle (endgame)? Yep. But I felt like I'd really accomplished something when I beat it the next day. Did I freak out when I saw the helicopter appear over the mountains as I merrily coasted along on my hang glider? I did. I hit the ground running, and many, many words that I shouldn't repeat ran through my mind as I scrambled all the way to safety (for the record, I got lucky and the helicopter crashed in that for-instance). And I thoroughly enjoyed the game, only once actually wishing for a quicksave.

Gosh this post felt long. Also, pointless.

Oh well.

Quote:

Original post by tolaris Given how the player doesn't lose anything when they load a saved game, any system which does make a player lose even a smallest thing sounds like system that's never going to be used since it's the worse option. Unless it somehow manages to inflict the loss but at the same (or later) time reward a player in way that'll make the system 'worthwile' for them to use it. (but then you have to balance it for people who'll intentionally keep dying to milk the system for its rewards... tricky)

Yes, Prisoner of War doesn't kill you it just sends you to the Prisoner of War camp sick bay, but it takes your acquired items. You can get these back through another prisoner if you pay. It also gives you the choice of reloading, guess what I've ALWAYS reloaded.

--------------

There is a film where people gamble their "luck" and the winner gets the other person's luck. I could see a game where you are trying to get rid of excess luck, like the character in MGS2 who can't be shot.

Quote:

Original post by Boku San It might seem invasive for some people to not allow a save-anywhere feature -- screw you guys.

The more likely scenario you're going to see is the reviewers and customers alike tell you "no, screw _you_", rate the game 'accordingly' and/or go play something else.

You don't create "tension" when you make the player hop through the same obstacle course over and over and over and over, and when the prospect of having to repeat X minutes of gameplay to just get back where they already _were_ keeps looming over their head. All you create is frustration and the "been there done that" type of boredom.

A much better approach imo? Don't create artificial limitations, but instead _reward_ the player if they manage to beat the game without relying 'too often' on save/load routine. MGS had its system of custom titles it'd give the player at the end of the game. IIRC both saving the game a lot and saving rarely was 'punished' and 'rewarded' accordingly (but since it was "just" the end-game title saving often didn't actually punish the player _in game_) An online golf game i play fairly often takes similar approach, by calculating the percentage of times you'd quit in middle of tournament, and showing that number to the whole world in the 'data sheet' of your character that everyone can see... players who practically never quit get slightly customized icon to their name, so they literally stand out from the crowd. (on the other hand people who quit too often, like 20% of time or more, do get some punishment in the form of losing some percentage of money that can be won in the tournament... this penalty is removed when they manage to bring the quit ratio back to reasonable value by playing a number of games 'clean')

Quote:

Original post by tolaris You don't create "tension" when you make the player hop through the same obstacle course over and over and over and over, and when the prospect of having to repeat X minutes of gameplay to just get back where they already _were_ keeps looming over their head. All you create is frustration and the "been there done that" type of boredom.

I still have to disagree, though I know and have experienced exactly what you're talking about. As I mentioned, actual work in *design* has to be done here, just to prevent what I like to call "CrappyAutosaveitis". If you come to a particularly difficult battle, which the level designer is aware of, there should be an autosave just before the beginning, and almost immediately following -- the same places a player might save. In addition, if the player fails, no more than one keypress should be required to send the player back to that point for a do-over. I don't support torturing the players. I do support better level design.

Quote:

Original post by that one guy An online golf game i play fairly often takes similar approach, by calculating the percentage of times you'd quit in middle of tournament, and showing that number to the whole world in the 'data sheet' of your character that everyone can see... players who practically never quit get slightly customized icon to their name, so they literally stand out from the crowd. (on the other hand people who quit too often, like 20% of time or more, do get some punishment in the form of losing some percentage of money that can be won in the tournament... this penalty is removed when they manage to bring the quit ratio back to reasonable value by playing a number of games 'clean')

Hmm...me likey bouncey. Though this doesn't lend itself well to, say, a deathmatch FPS. Still, very, very nice idea. What game, if I may ask?

SIDENOTE: Post 1000. Darn, I was hoping to have an even 1200 rating when I hit 1k.

Quote:

Original post by Boku San I still have to disagree, though I know and have experienced exactly what you're talking about. As I mentioned, actual work in *design* has to be done here, just to prevent what I like to call "CrappyAutosaveitis". If you come to a particularly difficult battle, which the level designer is aware of, there should be an autosave just before the beginning, and almost immediately following -- the same places a player might save. In addition, if the player fails, no more than one keypress should be required to send the player back to that point for a do-over. I don't support torturing the players. I do support better level design.

I suppose you can tweak the system to the point where it's useful for most people, aye. On the other hand something like this save-on-risky-encounters thing... dunno, note it doesn't prevent situation where i'd die because a cat jumped on my keyboard while i was about to perform a trivial jump. This means am pretty much screwed, having to repeat the whole part since last successful 'hard' encounter which could be quite a while ago... and on top of it i now have to plow through 'trivial' stuff i already saw. it just doesn't add anything to the game value that'd justify time spent on developing the whole 'intelligent save' system in the first place. But obviously that's just opinion and ymmv ^^

Quote:

Hmm...me likey bouncey. Though this doesn't lend itself well to, say, a deathmatch FPS. Still, very, very nice idea. What game, if I may ask? SIDENOTE: Post 1000. Darn, I was hoping to have an even 1200 rating when I hit 1k.

PangYa. I don't speak japanese so am missing out on part of the fun, but on the other hand the game is a free download and doesn't have a fee which is considerable plus (they make money from selling _some_ equipment for real money, while other is available to get for in-game currency) And the cuteness level is downright addicting. >.<;

(as for that rating thing lemme see if i can do something about it :s

edit: gah, overdid it...

Quote:

Original post by tolaris I suppose you can tweak the system to the point where it's useful for most people, aye. On the other hand something like this save-on-risky-encounters thing... dunno, note it doesn't prevent situation where i'd die because a cat jumped on my keyboard while i was about to perform a trivial jump. This means am pretty much screwed, having to repeat the whole part since last successful 'hard' encounter which could be quite a while ago... and on top of it i now have to plow through 'trivial' stuff i already saw. it just doesn't add anything to the game value that'd justify time spent on developing the whole 'intelligent save' system in the first place. But obviously that's just opinion and ymmv ^^

It's not clear how a quicksave key helps when your cat jumps on your keyboard unexpectedly. I'd expect to be equally screwed under either save system - either I wouldn't have passed any save points for a while, or I wouldn't have bothered to quicksave for a while...

An alternative to save-points is to allow saving any time, but at a cost of some progress (Halo saves your last checkpoint; Zelda games keep your current status, but when you reload you find yourself at the entrance to the dungeon you were in (or some other set location outside dungeons))


On the main topic, karma points sound suspiciously like a disguised form of extra lives.

Losing a resource and continuing instead of geting game-over when your character "dies" is also reminiscent of extra lives, but with added side effects for the "lives" (Sonic's rings? Mario's mushroom etc?)

In a linear game, "intelligent save" is as easy as "checkpoint reached". If you've played Halo 2, you've seen how effective this can be. You get killed, you find yourself within two minutes of where you died. Usually much closer. On Legendary, it might take fifteen minutes to get to the next checkpoint, but that's because you're on Legendary, and you like that sort of thing.

All the benefit of quicksaving before a tough challenge, none of the jump-save-jump-save-jump-die-load-jump-save crap that wrecks gameplay, and none of the jump-save-die-load-die-load-die-swear-quit that is even worse.

Quote:

Original post by rmsgrey It's not clear how a quicksave key helps when your cat jumps on your keyboard unexpectedly.

I make a fairly frequent use of quicksave key. (since if there's one thing i hate when playing game it's going over the dead-on same thing twice. I have Groundhog Day movie for this kind of experience if i feel like it, and unlike the games the movie makes me laugh) In that sense it helps me, because am likely to save quite a bit more often than arbitrary system managed by the game.

If this degraded into a Quicksave Versus Autosave thread, then I fall on the side of Autosave, or like, Quicksave that saves the last checkpoint you went through, return to the start of the dungeon type of thing.

As for teh whole resolution thing, the problem is of course saving-and-loading. Any resource I lose, I'd much rather reload and try again, since that resource may become crucial in the late game, or the game becomes impossibly difficult without it.

That said, this problem has already been solved with "Lives." And just because you don't want the actual number kept on screen, as though being reduced to Zero lives will cause a gameover, you can always just do it in the other direction, count how many lives were used, doing an Auto-Load on death (i.e. returning to the checkpoint where the quicksave would register), and display this statistic at the end of the game so that players can compete for the Zero Lives Zero Loads win.

Quote:

Original post by Iron Chef Carnage In a linear game, "intelligent save" is as easy as "checkpoint reached". If you've played Halo 2, you've seen how effective this can be. You get killed, you find yourself within two minutes of where you died. Usually much closer. On Legendary, it might take fifteen minutes to get to the next checkpoint, but that's because you're on Legendary, and you like that sort of thing. All the benefit of quicksaving before a tough challenge, none of the jump-save-jump-save-jump-die-load-jump-save crap that wrecks gameplay, and none of the jump-save-die-load-die-load-die-swear-quit that is even worse.

See, but that's the very thing. I don't want _quicksaving before tough challenge_ when i play a game. I want a save/load routine that allows me _quickly_ to get back right where i was a minute ago. It really boils down to the fact that between me and the game it's *me* who knows better how i want to utilize the saving routine. If i like the 'legendary' kind of challenge with infrequent saves then i can very well manage this myself by keeping finger off the save button unless i absolutely feel i must to. And on the contrary, if i like to save before each step then goddamit, let me. By all means keep silent track of the checkpoints and allow a helpful "here, this is last important spot you were in, click the button if you want me to take you there in case the quick save you made isn't good enough" ... but don't get between me and the 'regular' save game. Because it can be as annoying as a "smart" remote that decides for me i can't pause the movie at will, and when i choose to rewind i absolutely _have_ to rewind at least x minutes back and not say, just 30 seconds which happened to be really cool and i'd like to experience them again without the stuff that took place before them...

(note, the "cool stuff" in question is again something that *i* happen to find cool. It might have nothing to do with 'tough challenge' or anything that'd make the designer set a checkpoint there, or not)