I got a horror story for you...

[Arnoxthe1]

So let me tell you a tale of trembling. When I first played Skyrim, it was at launch. 11/11/11, baby. I've been playing it constantly ever since. About a month ago, I exchanged my launch copy for a new Legendary Edition. I still have my original 2011 receipt though and have put it into the Legendary Edition case as a memento.

And now here we are at today's date. It's been almost two years since I made my first and main character which I still play. I finished up some business with a new side character of mine and went to the menu and saved...

over my main character.

Two years of collecting powerful weapons and armor. Two years of getting a cool wardrobe together. Two years of collecting every potion and ingredient I could lay my hands on. Two years of collecting any awesome books I found in my travels and wanted to keep. Two years worth of questing done and all the main missions finished (both the original and DLC stories). TWO YEARS of level building.

All of it, gone. Forever. With a single negligent click of a button.

Which brings me to my next Elder Scrolls idea! Savegame Safety! Basically, all this will do is, if the Safety is on and you try to overwrite one character save with a different character save, the game will block it from happening. You have to turn the safety off in the options to do it.

Simple, effective, and could save years of a person's Elder Scrolls life. If any Bethesda employee is reading this right now, please. Learn from me. Implement this simple little feature. Save lives.

 

[ZCAB]

You mean you had just one savegame for a character you've been playing for, what, dozens of hours? That's not the game's fault.

Though I don't understand why the Elder Scrolls games still don't just go with having "profiles" for each character.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

You mean you had just one savegame for a character you've been playing for, what, dozens of hours? That's not the game's fault.

Of course it's not the games fault. I didn't once blame Bethesda for bad design. I simply STRONGLY recommended a small feature for a future ES release.

Now, technically I do have multiple saves of that character... BUT, they were all saves in notable points in the main quest storyline. My latest save from that archive is QUITE old. About a year or so I'd wager.

 

[piinyouri]

I have backups of all my PS3 saves, but I did something very similar on Phantasy Star Universe. Level like...200 something cast ranger, overwritten by a new experimental toon I was playing with, all because the save slot selection in that game is ass.
I haven't played it seriously since.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

So let me tell you a tale of trembling. When I first played Skyrim, it was at launch. 11/11/11, baby. I've been playing it constantly ever since. About a month ago, I exchanged my launch copy for a new Legendary Edition. I still have my original 2011 receipt though and have put it into the Legendary Edition case as a memento.

And now here we are at today's date. It's been almost two years since I made my first and main character which I still play. I finished up some business with a new side character of mine and went to the menu and saved...

over my main character.

Two years of collecting powerful weapons and armor. Two years of getting a cool wardrobe together. Two years of collecting every potion and ingredient I could lay my hands on. Two years of collecting any awesome books I found in my travels and wanted to keep. Two years worth of questing done and all the main missions finished (both the original and DLC stories). TWO YEARS of level building.

All of it, gone. Forever. With a single negligent click of a button.

Which brings me to my next Elder Scrolls idea! Savegame Safety! Basically, all this will do is, if the Safety is on and you try to overwrite one character save with a different character save, the game will block it from happening. You have to turn the safety off in the options to do it.

Simple, effective, and could save years of a person's Elder Scrolls life. If any Bethesda employee is reading this right now, please. Learn from me. Implement this simple little feature. Save lives.

Well if you play on PC you can cheat your way out and get all the items you had by console commands.

 

[Adultism]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Sorry I had to let that out. I've got a good one for you.

Like 600 hours on Persona 3 and 4, EACH. Memory card eventually becomes so old that it corrupts or something and I could not access the card. Some other games were on there but I was really into Persona

 

[Keymik]

We have all been there.. This is the reason I don't play Skyrim as much anymore, it's just not the same without that character who I saw the world through for the first time.. You will not be forgotten Bjorn the Nord.

 

[Battenberg]

snip

You don't have an backup save anywhere you could recover? If you have PS+ for example you can set a game to create backup saves in online storage every night (although if you have got this you'll need to recover the save before it updates it next).

 

[EHKOS]

I was going for all fountains to unlock the secret ending for PoP WW. I didn't save for about five hours, and in a cutscene, the game froze. I hadn't saved once in that five hour period. Haven't tried to do it since, although I do feel like trying again soon.

 

[BoogieManFL]

That sucks dude, but you should really have multiple saves. I have like 20 Skyrim saves that I constantly cycle through as I save. And periodically, I back up the whole save game folder. Never leave it to chance deletion/overwriting or save game corruption..

I feel for you, but in every game I usually at least cycle through 4 save games.

 

[Unsilenced]

Except that everyone would turn the safety off and never look back. Especially if they're someone with the foresight to use multiple saves. Doesn't it pop up a thing telling you that you're overwriting a save anyways?

 

[Weaver]

Why do you have so few save files? In Oblivion I had over 5,000 save files that took up like 4 gigabytes or something.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Like 600 hours on Persona 3 and 4, EACH. Memory card eventually becomes so old that it corrupts or something and I could not access the card. Some other games were on there but I was really into Persona

I don't think I've ever put that much time into a game except maybe Unreal Tournament, and that obviously doesn't need save games. HOWEVER, I did have my old Xbox die on me. I took out the HDD, threw the rest away and tried to backup the saves onto the computer. Didn't work. All of those saves are gone now. And I played a lot of original Xbox games.

You don't have an backup save anywhere you could recover? If you have PS+ for example you can set a game to create backup saves in online storage every night (although if you have got this you'll need to recover the save before it updates it next).

Well, Xbox Gold members have Cloud Storage they can use but I have that membership on and off as I need it so it wouldn't do me too much good.

That sucks dude, but you should really have multiple saves. I have like 20 Skyrim saves that I constantly cycle through as I save. And periodically, I back up the whole save game folder. Never leave it to chance deletion/overwriting or save game corruption..

I feel for you, but in every game I usually at least cycle through 4 save games.

I'm kind of an anal person when it comes to how many saves I have floating around. I really don't like just having a huge mess of save games that take up a lot of space and make it to where sometimes you have to sort through all that just to get to your desired save. Not only that, I'm still using a small 20 GB HDD so I have to conserve a lot of space.

Except that everyone would turn the safety off and never look back. Especially if they're someone with the foresight to use multiple saves. Doesn't it pop up a thing telling you that you're overwriting a save anyways?

I think you're misunderstanding me. It would allow you to overwrite a character save with a save that has the same character but if you tried to overwrite, say Arnoxthe1 with, oh Boodon or something, Skyrim would just block it.

 

[Muspelheim]

That would be a nice feature. I'm dreadfully save paranoid. I make multiple hard saves, and always have a respectable save in a less-likely bugged interior cell. All of which I've learned the hard way from S.T.A.L.K.E.R...

Thankfully, I've got a terrible havit of starting new characters, so if it does go terribly wrong, I've got an extra standing by.

Why do you have so few save files? In Oblivion I had over 5,000 save files that took up like 4 gigabytes or something.

Oh, Oblivion does not like that... Not one bit...

 

[twistedmic]

I've always run multiple saves for RPG games. In fact, just about every time I save I choose the New Save option and end up with thirty or forty save files per character in addition to the typical quicksave file.
I learned to do that after a mistake caused me to double save a game of Ninja Gaiden (the one on Xbox) right before a mini-boss battle with no healing or recovery items, no currency to buy them with, no nearby store to buy them from and with less than a tenth of a health bar left (equal to about one or two hits).

 

[piinyouri]

Why do you have so few save files? In Oblivion I had over 5,000 save files that took up like 4 gigabytes or something.

My computer just shot out sparks when I read that.

 

[Weaver]

Why do you have so few save files? In Oblivion I had over 5,000 save files that took up like 4 gigabytes or something.

My computer just shot out sparks when I read that.

I did have to trim them down because the save/load screen started taking ages to open.

Though, I got a bit of a problem with saving things. Once I had 1.39 Gigabytes of bookmarks in my web browser.
It took me like 10 minutes to scroll through them.

Luckily I now have 7 Terabytes of space

 

[michael87cn]

You kept saying click, so I assumed you were using a PC to play Skyrim. I was going to suggest the "restore previous version of this file" option you can use in Windows 7... but then later on you said Xbox.

Unless I'm mistaken Xbox Controllers don't click

Though I'm sorry to hear about that (I've done the same thing a couple of times, though I haven't lost as much time as you).

Let this be a lesson, have at least two saves. If not for miss-'clicks' your save could have gotten corrupted or something else could have happened to it. HAVE BACKUPS.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I've always run multiple saves for RPG games. In fact, just about every time I save I choose the New Save option and end up with thirty or forty save files per character in addition to the typical quicksave file.
I learned to do that after a mistake caused me to double save a game of Ninja Gaiden (the one on Xbox) right before a mini-boss battle with no healing or recovery items, no currency to buy them with, no nearby store to buy them from and with less than a tenth of a health bar left (equal to about one or two hits).

Just a shot in the dark here from a fellow NG fan. Was it Alma?

Let this be a lesson, have at least two saves. If not for miss-'clicks' your save could have gotten corrupted or something else could have happened to it. HAVE BACKUPS.

You can "click" 360 controller buttons. But indeed. Though that can get kinda large over time. Let's say you have 3 characters you're playing. That's 6 saves in total. Not including any other saves you want to make.

 

[twistedmic]

I've always run multiple saves for RPG games. In fact, just about every time I save I choose the New Save option and end up with thirty or forty save files per character in addition to the typical quicksave file.
I learned to do that after a mistake caused me to double save a game of Ninja Gaiden (the one on Xbox) right before a mini-boss battle with no healing or recovery items, no currency to buy them with, no nearby store to buy them from and with less than a tenth of a health bar left (equal to about one or two hits).

Just a shot in the dark here from a fellow NG fan. Was it Alma?

No, actually. I beat her the first time fairly easily (as in no rage-quiting or broken controllers/T.V. screens) and even beat Duku. My mistake came during the caverns level, right before I came to the Fire Worm.
In fact, I'd even beat that mini-boss once but died a few minutes later when I missed a small jump and ran into a trap.
Having to start over from the beginning when I was so close to the end of the game (I was over half way through level 12 of 16) was so discouraging, and the game so fucking hard, that I gave up on it and never played again.
P.S. I had to check an old FAQ/Walkthrough to get the level info right, I didn't remember this right off the top of my head.