limiting saves.

[Halo Fanboy]

Free actions are stupid. Like Pot of Greed in Yu-Gi-oh. Banned for being a freebie in nearly an circumstance. You wouldn't want a move in a fighting game or a unit in an RTS to give free advantage. Obviously being able to do something for free is atrocious balance. Yet saves are nearly always free.

Its time saves were incorporated into the general balance of resource manipulation. Resident Evil had a cost to its saves and it broadened the general concept of inventory management and item collection in the game.

A couple of ways to limit saves...
- require a cost to use a save
- have a specific requirement needed to be completed to use a save
- reward players for not saving
- remove saves entirely

Discuss the effect of games that utilize save limitions or think of new ways to incorporate new save limitations into games in this topic.

 

[Durxom]

I say just keep out the quicksaves. They pretty much take out any challenge what so ever.

Savepoints? Ok!
Checkpoint saves? Ok!
Save anywhere anytime? Not Ok, especially in an Action type game.
It pretty much takes away any or all challenge or risk.

Which is probably why I love Devil May Cry so much. Saving mid-level doesn't really save your progress in the level, just your collectables. And with levels being a short 10-20 minutes each, it was a perfect trade-off in my eye.

 

[Mike Richards]

I never really play games like that for the challenge, if I'm in the mood for that I'll just go play TF2. I'm the kind of person who will readily turn the difficultly down if I feel it's inhibiting my ability to enjoy the experience, so no. I think limiting saves is in general a horrible idea.

I hated when RE did that and usually only like checkpoints when they are very frequent, a good example of that being Assassin's Creed 2 in my opinion.

Maybe if you had some way of deciding which way you wanted to play? I've thought for a while games need to have custom difficulties, where you could individually change things like player health, enemy health, how good the AI is, whether or not they have friendly fire, whether or not you have friendly fire, that kind of thing.

That way you could manually build the kind of experience you want instead of being limited to just the three settings the devs gave you, or worse: no settings at all. Prototype and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories I am looking directly at you.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

No i'd rather not have limited saves. What if i'm in a rush and need to save quickly? i don't want to have a debate with myself to decide whether or not i need to hold in a poop or keep going on with a game and risk shitting my pants.

 

[thenamelessloser]

All single player saves should be free and frequent as possible simply because there are other things in life besides video games. If a player wants to make things easier for themselves by using save and loading, they aren't hurt anyone's else chances. If someone thinks saving too much or often is cheap, they can just choose to save less themselves.

I mean, I have basically no life, but I still do things such as sleeping, eating, and going to the bathroom. The idea that I shouldn't be able to save whenever and often as I want is ridiculous as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, seriously, what if like a friend, girlfriend, family, boyfriend, etc calls for people with lives? What if an emergency happens? I don't' get how anyone could be against the option of saving.

 

[thenamelessloser]

No i'd rather not have limited saves. What if i'm in a rush and need to save quickly? i don't want to have a debate with myself to decide whether or not i need to hold in a poop or keep going on with a game and risk shitting my pants.

That's why there's a pause button. >.>

OT: I think having a limited number of saves or something similar could work. It'd be even better if it somehow fit into the game's story. Kinda like (this is how I see it) in New Vegas the books only raise the corresponding stat temporarily, which makes sense because you get shot in the head so your memory probably wouldn't be too good.

'

There also power outages and thunder storms. And some poeple do not want to leave their systems on all the time. Also, people sometimes share TVs/computers with other people.

Also, with the 360 I rather not leave the system on due to over heating and RROD. Some games also have tons of glitches and freezing.

 

[crudus]

Depends on the game really. You want to be able to save anywhere in a game like Fallout 3 or Morrowind. Quicksaves in an action game can make it fun. For example, if you are in a game where you die easily you can quicksave, do something insane/fun, and walk away rather than shoot from cover. This works less and less as your character gets harder to kill. It also depends if the game is separated by levels.

Which is probably why I love Devil May Cry so much. Saving mid-level doesn't really save your progress in the level, just your collectables. And with levels being a short 10-20 minutes each, it was a perfect trade-off in my eye.

Fable learned really quick that was a bad idea. You could just get to the scorpion in the arena, save, and repeat. Then again, DMC never stopped you from farming collectibles so it doesn't matter for DMC.

 

[Veylon]

In

No i'd rather not have limited saves. What if i'm in a rush and need to save quickly? i don't want to have a debate with myself to decide whether or not i need to hold in a poop or keep going on with a game and risk shitting my pants.

That's why there's a pause button. >.>

OT: I think having a limited number of saves or something similar could work. It'd be even better if it somehow fit into the game's story. Kinda like (this is how I see it) in New Vegas the books only raise the corresponding stat temporarily, which makes sense because you get shot in the head so your memory probably wouldn't be too good.

'

There also power outages and thunder storms. And some poeple do not want to leave their systems on all the time. Also, people sometimes share TVs/computers with other people.

Also, with the 360 I rather not leave the system on due to over heating and RROD. Some games also have tons of glitches and freezing.

Ah, right. Wasn't thinking of that. Though I was talking for short term things like taking a dump or making a quick sammich.

There could be a bookmark-type save that saves your place and then, later, after you load, it disappears so you can't "cheat" by using it to go back like regular saves.

 

[Ashsaver]

I like Valve's idea of how game saves works: The game autosave at before and after every encounter,and you can also save game anytime,anywhere you want

Because i don't like the situation where i "Just wanna save the damn game so i can sleep/eat/bath/use the toilet/go to work/go shopping etc.

If someone restricting the save system just to make the game challenging,here's my word to you:


You're doing it WRONG!

 

[Sixcess]

There are some games that I cursed the limited number of save points. Tomb Raider II, I think it was II anyway, was one of them.

Run down the corridor. Shoot those animals. Climb up the wall. Edge along the wall. Jump. Climb. Jump. Shoot some more animals. Jump. Jump. Run run run... Tricky Jump. Flick that switch. Run. Jump oh crap, mistimed it and died. Reload. Run down the corridor. Shoot those animals. Pray I don't mess up on that jump again once I finally get to it...

That's just a generic example. It happened a lot. I doubt I'd have even finished the next game in the series if it hadn't had unlimited saves, since to this day I remember one nightmare of a room near the end where I was literally saving after every jump.

I do make an exception for Doom. Perhaps because I first played the PS1 version, which had no mid-level save points, I've got into the habit of not saving except at the end of a level, even on the PC. Mind you it's probably my favourite game of all time, so replaying is never the chore it can be in other games.

 

[Lyx]

Can't really contribute much to the topic, because i think the "how" depends a lot on the game. As an overall guideline, i however think that "totally unrestricted saving" is about as problematic, as saves being too far away from each other. Optimal usually is, when a saves do not let you "step through difficult sections, one action at a time", but also are not as far apart that you think "bleh, now i need to do all this stuff over again - is this 1980?".

As for the "whiners" - some people in this thread seem to imply, that restricting saves means losing a lot of progress. That argument is flawed in that if that happens, the saving-system is flawed anyways. Having to quickly abort a game, and not being able to save right now, shouldn't result in losing much. *Worst* case should be, that you lose a few minutes.

 

[Vivace-Vivian]

It deppends on the game. I remember when Tomb Raider 3 came out with save crystals, I near peed myself with frustration. The game was not only piss hard but you were terrifyed to ever save in case you met an even bigger challenge later.

 

[De Ronneman]

It all depends on the game. If quicksave/load breaks, then don't use it, only for, I don't know, picking up the phone or answering the door.

I don't think saving would be better if it costed something, because it would cause a scenario where it's 3am, and you don't have enough gold to save after your 8 hour game marathon...

If you don't want to, just don't save.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Tales of Vesperia had this amazing thing where apart from the normal save points, you could find secret ones that you had to pay crystals for, was really cool and it didn't take anything away if you couldn't find them, just made it easier if you could.

 

[SomeLameStuff]

In certain game types, this would work well.

Like in Hitman Blod Money. The limited save feature didn't allow you to reload a save if you screw up and get yourself spotted.

Though I wouldn't apply it to all kinda of games.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

All single player saves should be free and frequent as possible simply because there are other things in life besides video games. If a player wants to make things easier for themselves by using save and loading, they aren't hurt anyone's else chances. If someone thinks saving too much or often is cheap, they can just choose to save less themselves.

I mean, I have basically no life, but I still do things such as sleeping, eating, and going to the bathroom. The idea that I shouldn't be able to save whenever and often as I want is ridiculous as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, seriously, what if like a friend, girlfriend, family, boyfriend, etc calls for people with lives? What if an emergency happens? I don't' get how anyone could be against the option of saving.

How about a system that autyosaves when you quit but you can only load it from the starting screen. Not when you just died.

If you don't want to save, don't.

Your problem is solved!

Leave the rest of us alone please.

If you don't like a move that is completely overpowered, the game isn't broken cause you don't have to use it.
lol, ect.