Savegame limitations?

[rusty_shackleford]

If someone finds instantly winning the game "fun", we must design the game around being instantly won?

How do you design a game around instantly winning the game?

The same way you design it around players being able to manipulate time at will: remove all difficulty.

 

[Peachcurl]

That's ... not instant. That's CYOA.

 

[WhiteShark]

The problem is that they don't want to be labeled cheaters even though they know they're engaging in cheating behavior.
Sort of like how journalists want games to be easier without playing on easy difficulty because it makes them feel like babies.

If they make save backups in roguelikes or use save states in emulators, certainly - that would be cheating. The problem isn't that players who use quicksaves in games that have it are cheating, as it's clearly allowed by the game's rules. The problem is that developers implement quicksave and expect the player to use it, negatively influencing game design. Furthermore, among those who prefer quicksave but are against "savescumming", there's this idea of a boundary between "normal usage" and "savescumming" that they use to defend quicksave. The distinction is, of course, nebulous and totally subjective. Certainly the designers don't seem to make that distinction when they balance around constant quickloading.

The same way you design it around players being able to manipulate time at will: remove all difficulty.

This is half the issue. The other half is that developers add systems to their games that not only go totally unused because of quicksave but are actually fundamentally broken; see Sreggin Etah I's complaint earlier. The only reason developers can get away with such poorly thought out designs is because they know the player will never fully engage with it anyway due to the save system.

That's ... not instant. That's CYOA.

You're right, he should have said "effortless victory" instead of "instant victory". But yes, you've cottoned on to the complaint - quicksave approaches CYOA.

 

[Peachcurl]

But yes, you've cottoned on to the complaint - quicksave approaches CYOA.

Sure, but only if someone massively abuses it. I can live with that 'risk', if it means I can quit anytime I like and don't get frustrated by some crash-to-desktop eradicating my progress.

 

[WhiteShark]

But yes, you've cottoned on to the complaint - quicksave approaches CYOA.

Sure, but only if someone massively abuses it. I can live with that 'risk', if it means I can quit anytime I like and don't get frustrated by some crash-to-desktop eradicating my progress.

Two birds with one stone! It's really thrown me for a loop how many of you there are on the Codex.

Furthermore, among those who prefer quicksave but are against "savescumming", there's this idea of a boundary between "normal usage" and "savescumming" that they use to defend quicksave. The distinction is, of course, nebulous and totally subjective. Certainly the designers don't seem to make that distinction when they balance around constant quickloading.

There appear to be three factions in the pro-quicksave camp:
...
3) Those who have never heard of "save & quit" nor continuous autosaving

 

[Peachcurl]

At no point was the discussion in this thread only about quicksave.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

But yes, you've cottoned on to the complaint - quicksave approaches CYOA.

Sure, but only if someone massively abuses it. I can live with that 'risk', if it means I can quit anytime I like and don't get frustrated by some crash-to-desktop eradicating my progress.

Two birds with one stone! It's really thrown me for a loop how many of you there are on the Codex.

Furthermore, among those who prefer quicksave but are against "savescumming", there's this idea of a boundary between "normal usage" and "savescumming" that they use to defend quicksave. The distinction is, of course, nebulous and totally subjective. Certainly the designers don't seem to make that distinction when they balance around constant quickloading.

There appear to be three factions in the pro-quicksave camp:
...
3) Those who have never heard of "save & quit" nor continuous autosaving

You have to understand, it's a groundbreaking newly researched advanced feature of "Save & Quit" as seen in uh... Ultima IV.

 

[Peachcurl]

This thing needs save on quit.

Yeah. Never heard about save on quit, guys. Please explain that concept.

 

[WhiteShark]

At no point was the discussion in this thread only about quicksave.

This thing needs save on quit.

Yeah. Never heard about save on quit, guys. Please explain that concept.

Are you sure you know which thread you're in?

 

[Peachcurl]

Are you sure you know which thread you're in?

You suggested I never heard about save on quit. I provided a counterexample from another thread.

 

[WhiteShark]

You suggested I never heard about save on quit. I provided a counterexample from another thread.

Ok, but I'm still not sure how this

At no point was the discussion in this thread only about quicksave.

follows from anything that was being said before.

 

[Peachcurl]

I'd say there's been a fair number of different limitations discussed, such as limitations (frequency, time, location) on autosaves.

If the question really is only "quicksave: yes or no", then yeah... would that mean having frequent autosave with infinite save slots would be ok?

 

[Nifft Batuff]

But yes, you've cottoned on to the complaint - quicksave approaches CYOA.

Sure, but only if someone massively abuses it. I can live with that 'risk', if it means I can quit anytime I like and don't get frustrated by some crash-to-desktop eradicating my progress.

Furthermore, among those who prefer quicksave but are against "savescumming", there's this idea of a boundary between "normal usage" and "savescumming" that they use to defend quicksave. The distinction is, of course, nebulous and totally subjective. Certainly the designers don't seem to make that distinction when they balance around constant quickloading.

There appear to be three factions in the pro-quicksave camp:
...
3) Those who have never heard of "save & quit" nor continuous autosaving

You have to understand, it's a groundbreaking newly researched advanced feature of "Save & Quit" as seen in uh... Ultima IV.

The manual page you quoted demonstrates that you don't even know what you are talking about. Read better next time.

 

[Bad Sector]

Good point, but some consequences of the player's actions are still immidiate in nature, i.e. combat outcome. I doesn't only mean the death of your own character, which is obviously game over, but the death of any of your party members if it's a party based game, number of consumables used etc. With a limited save system, you are much more pressed to put up with the outcome and it also provides for a more tense gameplay which is a part of the gaming experience. It's not a difficulty or playtime stretching thing only. Also, I don't think that "cumulative consequences" should be the only C&C mechanics. It just doesn't make sense, you may want situations in which your decision has an immidiate effect.

Being "pressed up to put up with the outcome" and providing "more tense gameplay" is just another way of saying that it makes the game more difficult - and this is for the wrong reasons because instead of the game relying on you mastering its rules, it relies on you wanting to avoid repeating sections of the game you've already proven you can beat by introducing artificial limitations to the game's interface with the player (with "interface" here i do not mean just the buttons, menus, HUD, etc but everything the "ruleset + world state" uses to communicate with the player). Also it doesn't have to be about game over - death of a party member, a "bad" choice in a conversation screen, etc are the same thing as a game over: undesirable states.

And again i'll use controls as an example: imagine if you had to use only arrow keys to move and Delete/End/PageDn to look up/center/down in Doom 2016. As far as the game's rules are concerned you can aim anywhere you want, so everything in the game's ruleset still applies. And i'm sure everyone would agree that the game would also be much more challenging and difficult by doing that. However i hope we'd also agree that this challenge wouldn't come from the game's own rules being challenging - not from a better AI on the enemies, not from more devious level design or resource management or weapons stat upgrades or anything along these lines - but instead it would come from the way the game interfaces with the player.

I disagree completely with this notion that save systems lie outside the ruleset of the game. Arcade games and roguelikes are two very obvious counterexamples. Their save systems are integral to their respective genres and the experience changes completely if you introduce quickloading. No longer would they be tense genres requiring true mastery of their systems to succeed. No more careful resource management, no more long-term consequences of any kind

Arcade games were designed so you can waste coins so they were intentionally difficult and in addition they were made for play in public environments (arcades) so saving wouldn't really be possible considering the hardware at the time (AFAIK in recent years it is possible to save your game's state in some arcade machines in Japan on customer cards, but this is a niche anyway).

Roguelikes restricting saving is IMO an arbitrary decision that isn't necessary exactly because the world is randomly generated you do not gain much from being able to load. Many roguelikes do allow saving and loading - either by default or by an explicit game mode - and people play them just fine.

But yes, these limitations do make the games harder, this is never something i argued against - what i argue is what i replied to Pentium above: that difficulty is cheap, it comes from the game's implementation instead of the game's actual rules. After all by the time you save you have already made several choices which they have or can have consequences and those would still apply.

after all, if you mess up you can just rewind a little bit and do something different!

And there is nothing wrong with that, the game's rules should not be so easily defeated by an implementation detail like the savesystem, especially in genres like RPGs where your character's statistics (which are part of the game's rules and state) are supposed to be more important than the player's abilities (e.g. a character can either pass a skill check or they cannot, being able to saving shouldn't affect this - even if there is a randomness element by making the random number generator's state part of the game state). But this applies to other genres too: in an adventure game you can either solve the puzzle or not.

Even in games that rely on player skill, like a platformer, you can either perform the control combinations in the expected time sequences to pass the obstructions (e.g. jump over a large gap by run+jump at the right position) or you cannot. After you have demonstrated (to the game) your ability to do that there isn't a reason to put the player in a position where they have to repeat something they've already demonstrated their ability to overcome just so that there game's length and difficulty can be artificially increased. This is why i call relying on implementation details like the savesystem a sign of bad design: even in the case of player skill based games, the game should introduce something different and more challenging for the player to overcome instead of using the repetition introduced by a limited (intentionally broken) save system.

In general, IMO, if a game's difficulty can be defeated by the game running under an emulator with savestates (assuming one exists) then the game wasn't that challenging in the first place and relied on gimmicks for artificially increasing its perceived difficulty.

Of course i will repeat here that this is just a small design issue i'm describing here, i'd play a game - and have played a ton of games - with design issues way more glaring than just their reliance on the savesystem for difficulty if i found the game in question interesting regardless. But if there is a question between "savegame limitations" vs "no savegame limitations" then i'm certainly on the latter camp and i can explain why i think that.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Of course i will repeat here that this is just a small design issue i'm describing here, i'd play a game - and have played a ton of games - with design issues way more glaring than just their reliance on the savesystem for difficulty if i found the game in question interesting regardless. But if there is a question between "savegame limitations" vs "no savegame limitations" then i'm certainly on the latter camp and i can explain why i think that.

This is often more than a small design issue, in my experience. Games with limited saving often force you to continue playing past the point when you need to stop just so you can reach the next save point, but you don't always have time to push forward to the next checkpoint when real life calls. If you don't reach the save point in time, they basically force you to complete the exact same mundane tasks over again, with no reason.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

being able to save and load anywhere gets rid of any consequences to your choices, it's antithetical to the RPG genre. Roguelikes are the closest thing that exists to tabletop RPGs.

When people talk about permadeath, they talk about us three being mean. 'Oh, they wanted to make it extra hard, so they threw in permadeath.' … permadeath is an example of 'consequence persistence.' … Do I read this scroll, do I drink this potion? I don't know. It might be good. It might be bad. If I can save the game and then drink the potion and—oh, it's bad-then I restore the game and I don't drink the potion. That entire game mechanic just completely goes away. So that was a whole reason why once you have taken an action and a consequence has happened, there's no way to go back and undo it.
…
The good stuff is just as permanent as the bad stuff.

Unsurprisingly, roguelikes aren't very popular with a certain crowd here that also thinks CYOA books are RPGs.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

In general, IMO, if a game's difficulty can be defeated by the game running under an emulator with savestates (assuming one exists) then the game wasn't that challenging in the first place and relied on gimmicks for artificially increasing its perceived difficulty.

name some games that aren't less difficult when you can use save states so I can tell you why you're wrong and that's a retarded opinion

"oh, chess is just ARTIFICIAL difficulty. If you can just save after every move it's not actually difficult, you can beat anyone!"
wtf
yeah, cheating makes games easier lmao

 

[Peachcurl]

Your example's get worse. Video games are not tabletop, and they can't be.

Chess ... I mean, come on.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Your example's get worse. Video games are not tabletop, and they can't be.

Chess ... I mean, come on.

there are plenty of chess video games you dip

come on, name games where savestates wouldn't make the game easier.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

When one is so obsessed with other people "savescumming" it's a sign that it's time to take a pause from playing videogames...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

When one is so obsessed with other people "savescumming" it's a sign that it's time to take a pause from playing videogames.

are you auditioning for a job at kotaku?

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Meanwhile, I'm replaying Jagged Alliance 2. Sometimes I "abuse" the save system, sometimes I don't. I'm having a great time. I don't feel like a baby for reloading until I'm satisfied, nor do I feel special for winning a fight without loading a single time. As for the game being designed around player being able to save and load anytime, because he can, I don't see it. At least in this game.
Alright, back to Arulco, where I may, or may not, "cheat" to my heart content, according to my desire. Eat shit Rusty !

 

[Bad Sector]

This is often more than a small design issue, in my experience. Games with limited saving often force you to continue playing past the point when you need to stop just so you can reach the next save point, but you don't always have time to push forward to the next checkpoint when real life calls. If you don't reach the save point in time, they basically force you to complete the exact same mundane tasks over again, with no reason.

Yeah i agree, but i think it is a small issue compared to other design issues a game might have. At least personally, all other things equal, i'd prefer a game with a checkpoint system and good combat over a game with a properly unlimited save system and bad combat.

name some games that aren't less difficult when you can use save states

I explicitly wrote "But yes, these limitations do make the games harder, this is never something i argued against". You tagged my post as too long to read, but if you do not read it and still respond you are making responses based on incomplete information which is a waste of time.

"oh, chess is just ARTIFICIAL difficulty. If you can just save after every move it's not actually difficult, you can beat anyone!"

wtf

I never wrote that.

Chess is also a physical two player game which greatly affect its ability for save states. Yet regardless of that, there are databases that contain chess games, essentially a saved state of a game that can be replayed from any position by different people - or in a program with a computer opponent - if so they choose, since chess has specific rules and multiple implementations (boards, computer games, etc) which are independent of each other. In fact you could just take a piece of paper, rip it into smaller pieces and make your own board, go to the site above, pick a random game and play it on your paper chess by following the game's rules.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This is often more than a small design issue, in my experience. Games with limited saving often force you to continue playing past the point when you need to stop just so you can reach the next save point, but you don't always have time to push forward to the next checkpoint when real life calls. If you don't reach the save point in time, they basically force you to complete the exact same mundane tasks over again, with no reason.

Yeah i agree, but i think it is a small issue compared to other design issues a game might have. At least personally, all other things equal, i'd prefer a game with a checkpoint system and good combat over a game with a properly unlimited save system and bad combat.

name some games that aren't less difficult when you can use save states

I explicitly wrote "But yes, these limitations do make the games harder, this is never something i argued against". You tagged my post as too long to read, but if you do not read it and still respond you are making responses based on incomplete information which is a waste of time.

"oh, chess is just ARTIFICIAL difficulty. If you can just save after every move it's not actually difficult, you can beat anyone!"

wtf

I never wrote that.

Chess is also a physical two player game which greatly affect its ability for save states. Yet regardless of that, there are databases that contain chess games, essentially a saved state of a game that can be replayed from any position by different people - or in a program with a computer opponent - if so they choose, since chess has specific rules and multiple implementations (boards, computer games, etc) which are independent of each other. In fact you could just take a piece of paper, rip it into smaller pieces and make your own board, go to the site above, pick a random game and play it on your paper chess.

none of this has to do with how stupid your savestate argument is

 

[Bad Sector]

none of this has to do with how stupid your savestate argument is

How does what i have written so far fail to explain why i think save limitations are a bad design?