Save-game-itis

[Thrawn05]

The content could be sold as modules costing, say, from 50 cents up each, for, say, a dollar per hour of gameplay or a cap of 50 bucks for unlimited access to all present and future content. The player would put cash up front for the amount of content they want, and the delivery platform would monitor the "opportunity space" your character is in and deliver only the modules that fall within that space.

Consumers can't handle more then three or four choices. If you barrage them with a litany of choices, they might back away from the product. Best stick with a full version, or if you’re insisting, just the full and a “lite” version.

 

[Prime Junta]

Consumers can't handle more then three or four choices. If you barrage them with a litany of choices, they might back away from the product. Best stick with a full version, or if you’re insisting, just the full and a “lite” version.

You're missing my point: the only choice the consumer would make would be between an unlimited subscription and X buck's worth of content. The delivery platform would select the modules based on what the player is doing (i.e., by looking at what quests the character is capable of triggering with its current stats, and delivering the modules that contain those quests).

 

[Thrawn05]

You're missing my point: the only choice the consumer would make would be between an unlimited subscription and X buck's worth of content. The delivery platform would select the modules based on what the player is doing (i.e., by looking at what quests the character is capable of triggering with its current stats, and delivering the modules that contain those quests).

How you worded it, sounded to me like people would have to pick and purchase which packages they wanted.

Even still, a subscription service is still a bad idea. With all the MMO's out there as is, what makes you think people who already got suckered in that would want another game subscription? Stick with the upfront full game cost, you can always add expansion packs later to add some revenue. And considering that your target audience here will be cRPG people, save yourself the money and go with some sort of download method. Bittorrent is your best bet, but I'm told that having a dedicated BT server is very expensive (bandwidth costs and all).

And you can always go free and beg for PayPal donations.

 

[denizsi]

From a commercial standpoint, unlimited subscription hits me as a bad idea, if you intend to earn money for real. And paying per module sounds like a half assed thing, especially if the game is not complete in means of story without even one module, but this depends on the game's design. I think I'll agree with Thrawn here, full and lite versions sounds better.

However, with sensitive pricing, and tying it to the in game mechanics or story, modules might be good though. A specific example hits me as, being unable to go to a specific area in the game, because there's a specific in game reason to it, and when and if you pay for the next module, that area will be accesable due to some in-game event. But it's very exploitable by the developers from the gamers' point of view.

 

[Prime Junta]

How you worded it, sounded to me like people would have to pick and purchase which packages they wanted.

Even still, a subscription service is still a bad idea. With all the MMO's out there as is, what makes you think people who already got suckered in that would want another game subscription? Stick with the upfront full game cost, you can always add expansion packs later to add some revenue. And considering that your target audience here will be cRPG people, save yourself the money and go with some sort of download method. Bittorrent is your best bet, but I'm told that having a dedicated BT server is very expensive (bandwidth costs and all).

And you can always go free and beg for PayPal donations.

I just figured that lowering the cost of entry would help bring in customers. Say, you drop five bucks to see if you like it, if you do, either upgrade to the full subscription or drop another ten bucks on it. Works for what we're doing now. But in any case it's very early days for those kinds of questions...

 

[Prime Junta]

However, with sensitive pricing, and tying it to the in game mechanics or story, modules might be good though. A specific example hits me as, being unable to go to a specific area in the game, because there's a specific in game reason to it, and when and if you pay for the next module, that area will be accesable due to some in-game event. But it's very exploitable by the developers from the gamers' point of view.

You got it, that's precisely the kind of thing I had in mind. I'm thinking of the modules in terms of "opportunity space," and the only way a player would notice that new modules had been added is that new opportunities (expressed usually in dialogues) would come up. Alternatively, you could request the player pay the captain of a ship to travel to a new area, in real money, with the payment for passage buying the area.

My main design idea here is to try to figure out creative ways to limit metagame intrusions into the experience.

The point is that this type of option makes it possible to deliver content early and often. I wouldn't pay 50 bucks for a game that I know isn't yet finished (and, reality being reality, may never be finished), but I might pay five if it's otherwise interesting.

(That said, I have dropped 50 bucks on unfinished games before. It's just that I only found that out after trying to install. This did not make me a happy Junta.)

 

[Limorkil]

I am showing my age here, but some of the really old adventure games / rpgs did not allow you to load saved games without completely restarting the game. You could save any time, you just couldn't reload. Back when games loaded from tape this was quite a disincentive to reload because you had to wait 5-7 minutes.

I hate the save/reload mentality but it is very hard to discourage it without making people hate your game. One of the problems with many games is that you can die for reasons that are "not your fault". Now I put that in quotes because everyone has a different definition of what is not your fault. Some people would argue that if you find a dragon at level 1 and you fight it and it kills you then it is "not your fault". My point is that the game has to be carefully designed, and it probably won't appeal to many.

A simple way to discourage reloading is to have more interesting consequences that the usual "succeed" and "fail". In many games "success" leads to another plot line, but what you don't see too often is a different event for "fail". One thing I liked about Daggerfall was that there were a couple of quests where failing was actually more interesting that succeeding - there were some quests you could only get if you failed another quest.

People generally reload for three reasons:
1. The game forces them to reload. For example: the player character dies.
2. They want to get a different reward. For example: a chest containing random items.
3. They missed a chance to see particular content. For example: quest line ends when quest is failed.

(1) Can easily be solved by writing some form of resurrection into the game. Of course, explaining this in the story is the hard part. You also have to discourage people from dying with some penalty or it just makes players as reckless as they are when they can reload.
(2) Can be solved by making random elements predefined. In other words, the chest contains random loot each game but the actual contents are fixed at the start of the game.
(3) This is the trickiest issue. Having content that is not just tied to "success" helps. There may be different content for failure, or another way to get back "on track".

Overall I think designing the game so that the player will not want to reload even if he can is much preferable to imposing some sort of artificial limitation on saving/loading.

 

[Klinn]

I am showing my age here, but some of the really old adventure games / rpgs did not allow you to load saved games without completely restarting the game. You could save any time, you just couldn't reload. Back when games loaded from tape this was quite a disincentive to reload because you had to wait 5-7 minutes.

Heh-heh, I guess the modern day equivalent could be forcing the player to sit through an unskipable cut scene.

I prefer save-anywhere schemes, simply because my play style may not match what the developer had in mind. It seems I usually save after a dangerous encounter, not before. Rather than using the mechanism to reduce the perceived risk when starting a dungeon crawl, it’s more like saying “OK, I’ve cleared out that area or resolved that quest, just barely survived, healed myself a bit, gathered some phat lewt, now it’s time to save so I don’t have to go through all that again”.

It may seem like semantics to say that I’m saving at the end of a section, rather than before the beginning of my next adventure, but I guess thinking of saves in that way prevents them from appearing as a cheap way of reducing the danger my character is facing. And I don’t think I have ever done the save & reload cycle in an attempt to get better random loot or other outcome. What happens, happens. Occasionally I have saved just before what appears to be a major plot branch when I’m curious about the results of making other choices.

 

[Prime Junta]

A simple way to discourage reloading is to have more interesting consequences that the usual "succeed" and "fail". In many games "success" leads to another plot line, but what you don't see too often is a different event for "fail". One thing I liked about Daggerfall was that there were a couple of quests where failing was actually more interesting that succeeding - there were some quests you could only get if you failed another quest.

People generally reload for three reasons:
1. The game forces them to reload. For example: the player character dies.
2. They want to get a different reward. For example: a chest containing random items.
3. They missed a chance to see particular content. For example: quest line ends when quest is failed.

(snip by me)

Overall I think designing the game so that the player will not want to reload even if he can is much preferable to imposing some sort of artificial limitation on saving/loading.

You nailed it, this is exactly what I'm after.

Edit: fix attribution.

 

[Norfleet]

I think that the entire save-game-itis and general immersion thing can be summarized in this cartoon.

 

[Thrawn05]

I just figured that lowering the cost of entry would help bring in customers. Say, you drop five bucks to see if you like it, if you do, either upgrade to the full subscription or drop another ten bucks on it. Works for what we're doing now. But in any case it's very early days for those kinds of questions...

A free demo should be the entry. Perhaps a special world seperate from the full game that highlights the dialoge, UI, combat, etc..., instead of a limited version of the full game.

But you are right, this is way too early to think about this.

I think that the entire save-game-itis and general immersion thing can be summarized in this cartoon.

Yeah, I can see that working. :D

 

[Barenziah]

I find that if you donot save every so often and all sudern the power flick on and off that the last 3 hours of game playing just disappear. Or the computer reboost for some unknow reason. This is than issue that game computer try to solves and never did. In some games they penality you 500 EP if you save out of temple, than your power guid is lately have brown out or blackout at ramdon.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

Does anyone know when RPGs switched to "save anywhere" (rather than save at the king or something) and, more importantly, when they switched to "reload and appear where you save" rather than appearing at level 1 of the dungeon or in the castle or whatever?

 

[Zomg]

I saw your question earlier, but I couldn't think of anything specifically so I thought I'd let someone else say something. Since it appears that's not going to happen I'll say the first game that I recall with save anywhere/reload to the same spot and gamestate: Moria, the Roguelike (although of course this is in a save and quit configuration). It may be Rogue itself is the same way, but I've never played it.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

Yeah, I know the roguelikes. I'm thinking mainstream commercial, though. IIRC, the Gold Box AD&D games had you save in inns and sundry similar locales, and you restored to those locations. The earlier Ultimas restored you to LB's throneroom, right? I know by Ultima VII you were restoring to where you saved. I'm fairly sure that Might & Magic let you save anywhere but restored you to the starting point. . . .

 

[Zomg]

Actually, the Gold Box games are save anywhere/restore anywhere (aside from the combat field). I recall being able to save in lettered slots A-J, which was weird enough to leave a memory. That's in the later EGA PC version, anyway, which was 1990ish. I can't speak for the C64/Amiga /Apple II versions.

I didn't want to speak for the early Ultimas since my memories of the NES versions and C64 versions are all conflated.

 

[Drakron]

Save/load at any time is better ... it saves the player from having to be forced to saved at certain points because he might have no chance to do so when to shut down the computer.

Restrict saving/loading does not make the game more immersive, just far more anoying to the player ... one of the funny things in CRPGs with save points is we know when a boss fight is comming because there is a save point right before it.

Quite franky the only people that like the idea of limited saves or save points are jackasses without any self control, I do not mind to say I save at various points because I like to revist then without having to replay half the game and if I am beaten by a major fight then I like to try it again WITHOUT being forced to clear the road AGAIN.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

Actually, the Gold Box games are save anywhere/restore anywhere (aside from the combat field). I recall being able to save in lettered slots A-J, which was weird enough to leave a memory. That's in the later EGA PC version, anyway, which was 1990ish. I can't speak for the C64/Amiga /Apple II versions.

I didn't want to speak for the early Ultimas since my memories of the NES versions and C64 versions are all conflated.

Weird. I sort of remember FR: Unlimitted Adventures (the last Gold Box I "played") having restricted saves. The A-J thing sounds right, though. (It's not totally crazy, since that's 10 slots, but why go alphabetical?)

 

[Prime Junta]

Save/load at any time is better ... it saves the player from having to be forced to saved at certain points because he might have no chance to do so when to shut down the computer.

Restrict saving/loading does not make the game more immersive, just far more anoying to the player ... one of the funny things in CRPGs with save points is we know when a boss fight is comming because there is a save point right before it.

Quite franky the only people that like the idea of limited saves or save points are jackasses without any self control, I do not mind to say I save at various points because I like to revist then without having to replay half the game and if I am beaten by a major fight then I like to try it again WITHOUT being forced to clear the road AGAIN.

Fuck you too.

What you're saying is only true if the save game system doesn't fit the gameplay -- as it doesn't, most of the time. However, if the gameplay is specifically geared towards a limited savegame system, it can work. Case in point: Nethack. The gameplay would be completely ruined if it had anywhere/anywhere saves and restores. I mean, why bother looking for scrolls of identify if you can just save, quaff a potion to see what it does, and restore if it does something bad?

I don't like save points either, though. What I'm after is a game that's specifically built around Nethack-style saving -- save-on-quit, if you will.

 

[St. Toxic]

I mean, why bother looking for scrolls of identify if you can just save, quaff a potion to see what it does, and restore if it does something bad?

Why play the game if you can just read about it on the übernette? We're not talking game features here, we're talking self control.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Save/load at any time is better ... it saves the player from having to be forced to saved at certain points because he might have no chance to do so when to shut down the computer.

Restrict saving/loading does not make the game more immersive, just far more anoying to the player ... one of the funny things in CRPGs with save points is we know when a boss fight is comming because there is a save point right before it.

Quite franky the only people that like the idea of limited saves or save points are jackasses without any self control, I do not mind to say I save at various points because I like to revist then without having to replay half the game and if I am beaten by a major fight then I like to try it again WITHOUT being forced to clear the road AGAIN.

Fuck you too.

What you're saying is only true if the save game system doesn't fit the gameplay -- as it doesn't, most of the time. However, if the gameplay is specifically geared towards a limited savegame system, it can work. Case in point: Nethack. The gameplay would be completely ruined if it had anywhere/anywhere saves and restores. I mean, why bother looking for scrolls of identify if you can just save, quaff a potion to see what it does, and restore if it does something bad?

I don't like save points either, though. What I'm after is a game that's specifically built around Nethack-style saving -- save-on-quit, if you will.

As long as everygame i play crashes to desktop sooner or later: no thanks. Maybe as an ini-file or character creation option but otherwise, no thanks. I save often, but it's entirely to avoid backtracking on death or crash. Sometimes (rarely) I go back in old savegames to see how things play out differently - but only after finishing (or when shelving) the game and if I don't feel like actually replaying. So yeah, self-control is a good thing

 

[Prime Junta]

As long as everygame i play crashes to desktop sooner or later: no thanks. Maybe as an ini-file or character creation option but otherwise, no thanks. I save often, but it's entirely to avoid backtracking on death or crash. Sometimes (rarely) I go back in old savegames to see how things play out differently - but only after finishing (or when shelving) the game and if I don't feel like actually replaying. So yeah, self-control is a good thing

How hard do you think it would be to have the game quietly auto-save every time something of significance happens? You wouldn't even think of the game in terms of save-games: you'd just pop in and out of it, much like a MMORPG (I guess, I've never actually played one).