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?

I think, that it could be our nature. Many people eat too much, when food is available en mass and cheap, even knowing that it is unhealthy. Many people eat to much and don't feel any better afterward, they even don't enjoy eating any longer, maybe doing it just out of habit. The same could be said about smoking and drinking.

I believe, that when we deliver a tool which is more or less a legal cheat, the player base will use it out of habit, but they don't enjoy the progress any longer. It is like grinding... save/load until you have mastered the 'challenge'. A harsh metaphor would be an ex-alcoholic who doesn't have any alcohol at home to avoid a fallback. Now at his birthday his best friend comes around and put a bottle of wiskey on the table, saying 'come on, have a drink, it is only for once'...

All the multiplayer games don't have any save/load feature and are still fun, still we dig our claws into this feature when developing a singleplayer game, why ? It is time to think about new ways to give the player a continuous way to experience a game without abusing save/load, thought save/load is the easier way for the game designer...

I think, that it could be our nature. Many people eat too much, when food is available en mass and cheap, even knowing that it is unhealthy. Many people eat to much and don't feel any better afterward, they even don't enjoy eating any longer, maybe doing it just out of habit. The same could be said about smoking and drinking.

I believe, that when we deliver a tool which is more or less a legal cheat, the player base will use it out of habit, but they don't enjoy the progress any longer. It is like grinding... save/load until you have mastered the 'challenge'. A harsh metaphor would be an ex-alcoholic who doesn't have any alcohol at home to avoid a fallback. Now at his birthday his best friend comes around and put a bottle of wiskey on the table, saying 'come on, have a drink, it is only for once'...

All the multiplayer games don't have any save/load feature and are still fun, still we dig our claws into this feature when developing a singleplayer game, why ? It is time to think about new ways to give the player a continuous way to experience a game without abusing save/load, thought save/load is the easier way for the game designer...

Still though, I think it's on the player not to abuse it--or, more to the point, if the player's abusing save/load and, as a direct result, isn't enjoying the game, then it's completely their fault; they don't need to do it. Though I will concede that just allowing a quick save would suit me just as well as save/load.

How about an omega hard elite mode after you beat the main game that :
1) has "i wanna be that guy" difficulty, every step has a 1hit kill trap, simple trash monsters can only be killed by kiting and exploiting its dump ai pathfinding, forcing you to save every step.

How about an omega hard elite mode after you beat the main game[/quote]
No.

Anyways...
I've watched this... "thing" with John Wick about P&P roleplaying games, where he basically argues that player should have control over failures as much as over successes, and that negative can become positive if you incorporate it into your design properly. He calls it "style points", and basically the more spectacular the failure - the more style points you get, which in turn are nessessary to achieve cool stuff and get more spectacular successes. One interesting example he gives is players romancing each other gives them both bonus rolls when it is something that concerns them both, but when romance is over - they get bonus rolls when trying to hurt each other because of the broken hearts. And i was thinking if such a thing was possible to implement in any way in videogames...

What i was thinking is to establish a kind of higher level system that would award the player for behaviour that i had in mind when designing the game. For instance, game only saves on exit and reloading deletes the save, but you have combat ahead. How do you determine the risk ? By gathering information about the enemy. Therefore we set a "scouting meter", which will fill as we get more details about the encounter ahead. Someone told you that there is an ambush on the road ahead, and there are likely to be 7 men, 4 of them are likely archers, etc. So the scouting meter is up to 80%, meaning that there is a 80% chance that the enemy will have exactly 7 men and 4 of them archers. So you decide to take your chances in combat, and get defeated. But the amount of struggle you produce gets added to the scouting meter, and fill the "failure meter" which is a bonus you can then spend on getting yourself back on track in some fashion you cant achieve any other way.

So what this does, in my mind, is encourages the player to earnestly try and win every encounter, through preparation, evaluation, and information gathering, and then applying as much of it as possible on the field.

What do you think ?

How about a system where each save takes some kind of penalty if you're saving on the fly instead of back in inn/camp?
Let's say you need certain amount of gold to save a game (and loading it deletes that save file)
What this would do is limit the number of saves someone can do to cheat their way through while still providing a way for those busy people to save when they need to stop playing.

On the same thought, instead of gold limit, you can only save once every 5 minutes in real time (also deleting the load files once save file is loaded)? I don't think you would start a game to play less than 5 minutes (unless it's really casual arcade game, but those usually don't have save/load feature anyways), but also if you want to cheat your way through you would have to wait for 5 minutes, which could accumulate to over hours if you wish to spam save/load your way through, giving the players some penalties for doing so.

This is all coming from someone who likes the idea of perma-death, so....

I don't understand why games don't allow you to do whatever you want. If you want to save every 5 seconds after every move you should be able to. If you want to go die-hard and yippie ki-yay your way through the game until you die then start over you should be able to do that too. After all, as game designers shouldn't we be trying to make a game that as many people as possible will play while minimizing the lack of enjoyment any one type of gamer will have to experience as a result of catering to any other type? I'm a firm believer in more options = more gameplay = more game longevity.

With that in mind as someone who is a firm believer in permadeath how can I encourage players to want to go die-hard? Easy. It's already been done. Diablo. Tailor the rewards for any given playstyle to the level of difficulty of that playstyle. The players want to start a game where they can save at any time? Make the rewards in their game as weak or as little valued as possible. They want to go die-hard and start over if they die? Make the rewards as strong and valued as possible. Players want something in between, like only being able to save X times? Make the rewards somewhere in between.

I just find the attitude of "save as many times as you want" being called cheating to be so stupid. How can it be cheating if the game lets you do it? My goal as a designer should be to get the players to WANT to do what I want them to do, not to FORCE them to do it by demeaning them. And yeah, being called a cheater is demeaning.

So yeah, I think the way Diablo does it is an excellent way to encourage players to want to play "for real" with all of the intense drama that perma-death provides while at the same time allowing players who aren't as "hardcore" to have their own fun with the game.

Take care.

How about a system where each save takes some kind of penalty[/quote]
Personally, i never found these systems working for me. I dont mind anytime save or iron man save, but for everything in-between...
Say, in Hitman you had amount of saves on a level proportionate to difficulty, so on a moderate difficulty you could save 3 times per level. In my mind this is basically a false promise. What this does, is make the player to constantly keep in his head the status of the saving ability. I consider that to be a harmful thing, generally. If you can save whenever - you dont think about it, you just save when you want to, anytime. If you cant save - you also dont think about it, and just play.

My goal as a designer should be to get the players to WANT to do what I want them to do, not to FORCE them[/quote]
No disagreement from me here.

If you want to save every 5 seconds after every move you should be able to[/quote]
But i do disagree here. You should not be able to save every 5 seconds in every game ever. It actually does deliver a different experience, which you may or may not want. If you confer free saving ability on Dungeon Crawl players - it will not nessessarily become a bad game, but it will be quite different. I do not understand how people can argue that saving ability does not affect player's experience, it so obviously does.
Just because you are looking out for your customers - doesnt mean you should cater to their every whim.

Personally, i never found these systems working for me. I dont mind anytime save or iron man save, but for everything in-between...
Say, in Hitman you had amount of saves on a level proportionate to difficulty, so on a moderate difficulty you could save 3 times per level.

It wouldn't be good to limit the number of saves you can do per whatever area you choose. There should be unlimited saves possible, but it should somehow stop you from saving/loading every 3 seconds.

What this does, is make the player to constantly keep in his head the status of the saving ability. I consider that to be a harmful thing, generally. If you can save whenever - you dont think about it, you just save when you want to, anytime. If you cant save - you also dont think about it, and just play.

I agree with this part. That's why in my post I mentioned in my post there should be penalty only if you're saving on the fly,and also there should be a save without penalty if you're in an area that does not need save/load spamming, such as inn.

How about a system where each save takes some kind of penalty if you're saving on the fly instead of back in inn/camp?

And that penalty should be balanced so that player should not have to worry about it while playing game, and it only matters when there is a huge amount of saving/loading in a short amount of time.

I don't understand why games don't allow you to do whatever you want. If you want to save every 5 seconds after every move you should be able to. If you want to go die-hard and yippie ki-yay your way through the game until you die then start over you should be able to do that too. After all, as game designers shouldn't we be trying to make a game that as many people as possible will play while minimizing the lack of enjoyment any one type of gamer will have to experience as a result of catering to any other type? I'm a firm believer in more options = more gameplay = more game longevity.

So yeah, I think the way Diablo does it is an excellent way to encourage players to want to play "for real" with all of the intense drama that perma-death provides while at the same time allowing players who aren't as "hardcore" to have their own fun with the game.

You give the argument that players should be able to play however they want. If they want to save every 5 seconds then they should be able to. Diablo tailors the different difficulties with different levels of reward. Allowing players to save however they want, load whenever they want, is a problem with giving players the same reward for different difficulties.

If we allowed quicksaving and quickloading in D3, then you could have the hardcore players, playing through, only saving seldomly, restarting entire levels if/when they die, and eventually getting a reward out of it.

Or you'd have the so-called cheaters, quicksaving after every mob they've killed, or before every group they engage. If they die on a group, they reload and try a different attack, or reload and approach from a different angle, or reload and reload and reload and just spam until they get lucky, then quicksave.

In the end they get the same reward, but the difficulty is not the same. The first guy had to think, plan, maybe adjust his plans if things went less than perfectly. The second guy just continuously charged until things went his way.


Putting it a different way: play a game of monopoly, but you're allowed to keep re-rolling the dice until you get the roll you want. The game is the same, the mechanics are the same, but if players can repeatedly try and try and try again, the gameplay is completely changed.


You have to encourage players to do what you want. Sometimes you have to forcefully make them behave like you want. In my mind, being able to quicksave and quickload whenever you like will more often than not, ruin gameplay.

I just find the attitude of "save as many times as you want" being called cheating to be so stupid. How can it be cheating if the game lets you do it? My goal as a designer should be to get the players to WANT to do what I want them to do, not to FORCE them to do it by demeaning them.

Well, you're right and wrong. Games have rules, else we would have not a game, right ?

I just find the attitude of "save as many times as you want" being called cheating to be so stupid. How can it be cheating if the game lets you do it?

This is valid, when the game let you save/load, it could be seen as rule and therefore is part of the game design.

My goal as a designer should be to get the players to WANT to do what I want them to do, not to FORCE them to do it by demeaning them.

And here you're wrong. As said, the game designer designs the game, that is, he defines the rules, and if one rule is 'game over once you die', then that is valid.

The problem is, that most gamers don't see or accept, that load/save/permadeath is a game design rule. They see it as simple feature, but a simple feature is something that would not affect the game design in such a way. Loading/saving mechanism should be part of the game design.

Soccer/Football example:
The FIFA could define the rule, that the players can choose to attempt as often as the like to execute a penalty kick. The result is predictable, they just need to grind to "win", but every player will not be forced to play this way, the can stop whenever they want. A valid rule, but I fear that this will not gain a lot of popularity.