R Soul on 4/1/2024 at 22:01
I quicksave a lot but have found some satisfaction in continuing to play on through minor things, like low-level alerts. For me the thing that usually leads to reloading is getting attacked or triggering a long search.
Bearing in mind the original discussion point was for stealth games in general, not just Thief: I have an idea for an alternative to limiting by number or at checkpoints: restrict how often the game can be saved, E.g. only allow it every 10 minutes. Some people would save, go to the other end of a corridor (takes 5 seconds), wait 9:55 and then save again, but I'm sure most people would learn to just get on with it.
Freedom of choice is important, however, so the players could have a game option that allows conventional saving, with a UI message reminding them that it's more satisfying to play through mistakes and overcome them, but not obstructing the choice. However I think the main motivation for saving a lot is possiblity that a small mistake (e.g. getting seen but then getting out of trouble) could lead to a situation later on where some increased alertness makes some other task excessively hard.
Midgard on 5/1/2024 at 02:24
Only peripherally related to the topic but it's my understanding that constantly saving (not necessarily QS) in different, multiple slots is practically required for some FMs that are very heavily scripted because you can so easily break that script and end up not able to progress and need to reload an earlier save. Emile Victor for example, which I understand makes no provision for when you knock out or kill a certain NPC needed to trigger a script otherwise it becomes game breaking. This has even opened up my eyes a bit to the notion that maybe you shouldn't risk playing an FM in that style of killing or knocking out EVERYBODY and perhaps limit all your attacks or incapacitations to guards or aggressors. I'm going to experiment with that style that involves attacking or harming no non-aggressors (servants, non-threatening NPCs, etc) whereas before I tended to BJ everything).
Twist on 5/1/2024 at 04:42
Have any of you tried using Thief Buddy? How would that alter your thoughts on this matter, at least regarding Thief?
You could set it to auto quicksave every 15 seconds, keeping unlimited backups of your autosaves, then turn off the quicksave notification so you feel like you're playing ironman style. Still, if you need or want, you can load a save from any point in your play in increments of 15 seconds.
That's extreme, but I did almost that while playing The Black Parade. I set the autosave to every three minutes, then still (very rarely) hit quicksave for something where I was more worried about a situation requiring enough repeated attempts it might frustrate me. I tried to manually quicksave sparingly. I only did a menu save at the very end of each mission.
That three-minute window (which can be a long time in Thief) and not knowing exactly where I was in that window kept the tension high. But at the same time, I always had lots of saves to return to if I needed to, which prevented me from growing frustrated if I got lost or came upon a tricky section. I could still hit quicksave manually if I didn't want a section to frustrate.
In general, I side with giving the player the choice. If they want to play ironman-style, they can, but if they wish to savescum for incessant experiments, let them have at it. At a minimum, a developer has to have a compelling argument for not providing at least the ability to save & quit at any point. That capability saved Dark Souls for me.
I liked Starker's description, and it is worth considering how savescumming affects immersion and tension. I really like Skacky's idea, which sounds a bit like how Gloomwood initially implemented the highest difficulty (though they may have backed down on it).
Sometimes, you have to respect a creator's intent. That doesn't mean you have to like what they make or choose to play it, but sometimes a game designer wants that tension to be a critical part of their experience, of the world and fiction they're building. It annoys me when players rage at a game's lack of unrestricted saves when a creator has a particular experience and atmosphere in mind.
Don't like it? Don't play it.
It may be best to give the player the choice, but sometimes, it may be best to let the creator express their purpose without compromise.
It seems simple, but instead, people will rage against a game in development, deliberately trying to poison the perspective of anyone considering that game by flooding the various communication channels with angry rants about that one game design decision. Those people suck.
Another variable we should consider, particularly for independent developers, is that taking an accurate snapshot of the game world and the location and state of all entities in it is more complex than many gamers realize. We tend to take it for granted.
In following various Kickstarter or Early Access projects over the years, I've realized it can be an enormous headache to get right. Even intelligent, experienced developers struggle with it. Sometimes, developers invest their limited time and money in other parts of the game instead. I've learned to respect that, even if it might mean I spend less time with their game.
Darkness_Falls on 6/1/2024 at 01:23
Quote:
what other reasons are there for save restrictions?
- Developer feels they know what's best for the player
- Developer feels they can force tension on the player and don't want players to ruin their intentions
- Developer thinks their game is perfectly bug-free and issue-free and will be perfect forever and so there are no reasons to allow multiple savepoints or user-specified save locations
- Developer wants to force players to play how they want them to
- Some players want or need forced save limitations because they can't self-manage if they see multiple available save slots
You say you're curious about QuickSave restrictions, but I think you just mean restrictions on when the user is allowed to save, and maybe how many save slots are available, right?
Any game that doesn't allow multiple user-specified savepoints, whether it be through F5 (QuickSave) or through the main menu, is immediately annoying to me. QuickSaving (F5) is just a convenient way to make a manual save.
Subnautica has only one save slot and it hinders my ability to experiment and explore because one wrong move and I will regret it (through the loss of hours of work, or by losing things I've built). Sure, I could save before venturing forth on explorations/experiments, and I do that, but it's often a one-way ticket into the ether not knowing what you might lose along the way. After exploring the ether for an hour+ without saving, I just end the game, knowing I've learned some stuff, but will have to re-do it all someday from the pre-save because I'm out of water, food, or power/energy. If I was allowed to make my own save checkpoints, I could at least go back to a save point maybe 30 mins into the journey. It's just the developer forcing their playstyle on me, or what they want all players to do, and I'm not usually a fan. Same goes for
Stranded Deep and plenty of other games, like GTA, Red Dead Redemption, and Diablo
I can't remember if you can save scum in
Uncharted games, but I don't think you can. That's one game I don't mind having a lack of user-specified savepoints because checkpoints are frequent enough and it's a pretty linear game and story.
@Twist raises a good point about certain devs or games maybe being harder to capture accurate snapshots. I don't know the technicalities of that, but it seems reasonable that some devs/games may not be able to do that very well. On the other hand, if they know how to make one snapshot save, then it seems like it should probably be possible to
copy/paste the code for that +1 to allow for multiple? Oh well...
Skaruts on 16/6/2024 at 12:49
Quote Posted by Phantom0914
I really don't think there's any reason behind it except that it might look more impressive. It would take more skill, practice and patience to ghost without quickloads.
Not even skill, I think it's outright impossible in any game with this level of complexity and precision gameplay. You can do perfect runs on games with simple mechanics, because they are easy to make 99% consistent (like the old arcades), but in these games there's always flaws in the gameplay or in the maps that you have no control over and will ruin everything. Like trying to mantle in T2 and failing or getting footstep noises. That's just one example.
I ghosted my own TDM mission a billion times, which is rather small and simple and even made with ghosting in mind, and my best attempts still involve 10-15 quickloads at best.
Your post makes a lot of sense to me, though. I've been involved in some discussions on this topic and I've not seen any actual good reasons for being against save-scumming. Iirc it's usually either subjective taste (not enjoying videos where they keep quickloading), or some kind of argument from inexperience.
I've had someone arguing the game is more enjoyable if you take the consequences of your mistakes and run with them. But this is entirely subjective. I tried it in the past, and I just got bored. Running away from guards and waiting in the corner until they simmer down isn't really satisfying gameplay to me. It's not even what I'm playing the game for, to begin with.
Ultimately, I think every single person I talked to wasn't considering the four most important factors that I can think of about quicksaves:
1- they're absolutely necessary in certain games, or else players will be unjustly punished for the games' own flaws.
2- they're not mandatory. Each player is free to use them or ignore them.
3- removing quicksaves, removes the ability for players to play the game the way they enjoy the most, and to experiment with different ways to play.
4- without quicksaves, a lot would be unexplored by players, because they would be playing safe to avoid having to replay the same sequence over and over, which is not fun.
(Save points work in games like Penumbra and Amnesia, because they don't require precision gameplay and players aren't constantly on the brink of failure.)
Quote Posted by Twist
Another variable we should consider, particularly for independent developers, is that taking an accurate snapshot of the game world and the location and state of all entities in it is more complex than many gamers realize. We tend to take it for granted.
Just want to point out that this is completely irrelevant to players, though, and it's not actually something we should be considering as players. I know from experience that it's difficult to serialize data, but my development struggles change absolutely nothing in the perspective of the consumers. The consumer doesn't (and shouldn't) have to care about the difficulties in development. All they have to care about is whether or not they're satisfied with the product, and how the experience compares to that of other products in the market.