"Experience"-based saves : This was intended as an extension/improvement of hwo save games are handled on consoles. I personally don''t think it''s that good, but console games tend to adhere to precedented conventions far more frequently than personal computer games.
"You messed up, so, hah!" : Saving in the Objective-based system is only supposed to happen when a certain group of events have occured and or items have been retireved. Do something out of order which gets you stuck should not become a trap since a save should not occur unless the order is correct. It becomes a responsibility for the designer to take care of, but I feel that if the sequence is created properly the save game check will simply become an extension of the process. (I''ll explain in further detail if you want, I just felt this was become long-winded.)
Saveaholics Annonymous : *raises hand* Yup, I''ve done it too. My first addiction? Tomb Raider. (No, NOT because of her!) There were far too many jumps that required perfect execution, too many hidden ammo stashes and weapons, and just too many enemies that make cheap-shock horror movies look like a barren wasteland. In short the design became excrutiating rather than entertaining to me.
I mistankingly equated the act of saving more often than the designer intended as the reason why the gameplay experience became bad. What I chould have said (and what I meant to say) is that if the person feels like saving wherever and whenver that''s fine, but to feel like they need to or actually needing to save that often ruins the experience. The reason is that most likely they die often and retracing prvious steps will be tedious, boring, and time-consuming.
Of course there are people who will save literally every 15 seconds, not because of real-world time constraints or difficuly of the game, but beacuse they want to achieve perfection (personally I don''t think it should be rewarded in most genres.)
Which brings me back to Objective-based auto saving. My idea is that the game can be picked up and put down at any moment because the saves will happen at logical breaks. Also, I feel the saving should never have to be truly initaed by the player as that can break the immersion of playing. The only time they should think about a saved game is when the come back to the game.
Lastly I completely forgot one huge chunk of the Obhective based saving system. It is supposed to generate a new slot in a list of saved points. All of the points would be part of a single save game file or folder (I think a folder would be prefereable for integrity reasons.) That way multiple players on one system need only change the file/folder to resume their own quest.
Let''s not all make the mistake of blaming bad gameplay on the ability to save whenever you want.
