The AutoSave Screwjob

[tippy2k2]

You know what's super fun? Autosaving! Well, it was super fun...until the autosave autoscrewed you.

I'm playing State of Decay Lifeline (though that might end now) and it is a game that autosaves itself frequently. Normally, I am a big fan of autosave, especially in survival games like State of Decay or XCOM or games where if you screw up and fail, you can really cripple yourself.

However, sometimes that same autosave screws you over. State of Decay has many "escort" missions and in the one I was doing, we had to kill a Juggernaut with melee weapons (if the name does not give it away, that is not an easy task to do). I heroically jump in and start beating the Juggernaut up but it ignores me and goes right after the NPC that I need to keep alive to continue doing these missions. Juggernaut pulls an Incredible Hulk v Wolverine and rips the guy in half.

Great...a bunch of my missions are now locked because Captain Dipshit took it upon himself to fight a Juggernaut and got himself killed. Well no matter, I'll just reload and...wait...what's in the corner? "SAVING". Fuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!!!! So yeah, I might just end the game early because I'm not about to re-do the game to get back to this point and losing all those missions just feels like going on would be a waste of my time now.

So yeah, I have a new Love/Hate relationship with Autosave. Do you like Autosave? Has it ever given you a similar screwjob? Do these jeans make me look fat? Let's discuss.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

Don't blame the poor innocent AutoSave, blame Escort Missions! ,)

Autosave is a good backup for the most time but one should never rely on it.
I always save manually before any undertaking in a game.

Nevertheless, I feel for you. Bummer!

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

It happens. State of Decay especially is buggy. The first time I had to kill a juggernaut in the apple fields, I hit it with a truck, it staggered back, glitched into a tree, and then as it stood up, its body stayed in the tree and a second juggernaut came out. Tried to stand again, third. fourth. fifth.

hightailed it out of there, but unfortunately the game autosaved and dozens upon dozens of juggernauts were all loose in the apple fields. bastards!

 

[tippy2k2]

It happens. State of Decay especially is buggy. The first time I had to kill a juggernaut in the apple fields, I hit it with a truck, it staggered back, glitched into a tree, and then as it stood up, its body stayed in the tree and a second juggernaut came out. Tried to stand again, third. fourth. fifth.

hightailed it out of there, but unfortunately the game autosaved and dozens upon dozens of juggernauts were all loose in the apple fields. bastards!

On one hand, I want to be irked about how buggy the game can be but on the other hand, it was only $15 and the glitches I have ran into have been few and far between (plus with buying the GotY addition, I've already played through the actual game and am (or at least was) enjoying the DLC here where I can really let loose with some guns. I never had anyone killed in the first game (and those escorts weren't any brighter than the brigade you get in this game) and already I've had a handful of NPCs get slaughtered so maybe they tweaked something in the game when they introduced all the guns...

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

It happens. State of Decay especially is buggy. The first time I had to kill a juggernaut in the apple fields, I hit it with a truck, it staggered back, glitched into a tree, and then as it stood up, its body stayed in the tree and a second juggernaut came out. Tried to stand again, third. fourth. fifth.

hightailed it out of there, but unfortunately the game autosaved and dozens upon dozens of juggernauts were all loose in the apple fields. bastards!

On one hand, I want to be irked about how buggy the game can be but on the other hand, it was only $15 and the glitches I have ran into have been few and far between (plus with buying the GotY addition, I've already played through the actual game and am (or at least was) enjoying the DLC here where I can really let loose with some guns. I never had anyone killed in the first game (and those escorts weren't any brighter than the brigade you get in this game) and already I've had a handful of NPCs get slaughtered so maybe they tweaked something in the game when they introduced all the guns...

I found the military campaign to be way harder than the normal one. I only survived until like my 3rd siege, when I was finally overrun by juggernauts and those hunters and boomer zombies. Even with going to town with guns and grenades, it wasn't enough and they tore down the fences, killed the scientists, and eventually killed all the soldiers.

But in the normal campaign, I'm sitting pretty on an expansive outpost, with dozens of smaller settlements and totally cleared areas and fire traps and all the wooden sticks and shotguns I could want.

 

[Saelune]

Im weird and play Skyrim only using auto-save, so...

I mean, sure, I get screwed by it sometimes, but not too often.

 

[wings012]

I've played PC games too long to break the habit of savescumming should the option be available to me. Fingers always on the quicksave and quickload. Granted newer games taking bloody forever to load on my piece of shit PC has curbed the habit somewhat where I decide to live with my shitty decisions and lack of health rather than spend another 5 minutes reloading.

While I don't recall being buggered by autosave, I did quicksave myself into a corner once in Max Payne back in the day. The specifics are blurry now but it involved fire and a minecart or something, in some burning factory level or something? Either way I'd die everytime I reload. But through absolute stubbornness and mashing of crouching, jump and slomo upon load I somehow managed to weasel my way out of that situation.

Always have a few regular saves alongside your quicksaves....

 

[Bobular]

I remember an older game I played once auto saved just before I got hit and killed by an enemy. In this game, upon death it just loaded the latest save so it got stuck in a loop of load, die, load.

I spent a couple of cycles trying to dodge before realizing it was impossible and had to alt-f4 my way out of the game.

 

[McElroy]

I remember an older game I played once auto saved just before I got hit and killed by an enemy. In this game, upon death it just loaded the latest save so it got stuck in a loop of load, die, load.

I spent a couple of cycles trying to dodge before realizing it was impossible and had to alt-f4 my way out of the game.

Had the same thing happen to me in the original Red Faction. The rail gun oneshots both enemies and yourself and I got autosaved (or quicksaved, can't recall exactly) standing in the crosshairs of an enemy rail gun. I could pause it and load another save though.

 

[Xeorm]

Had this happen two days ago. Playing AI war, and fighting a massive invasion. Looks somewhat close, but they make it all the way to my home command center and there's not much I can do to stop them blowing it up. Really kind of depressing, as it was a long fight. Load up the autosave and...I get to watch the ships fly over and blow the command center up again. Well, that's unfortunate.

Really should turn off the autosave overwrite option.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Well I've certainly fucked myself over by quicksaving mid-death. Don't recall autosaving screwing me over except by walling me off collectibles and such.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

I remember an older game I played once auto saved just before I got hit and killed by an enemy. In this game, upon death it just loaded the latest save so it got stuck in a loop of load, die, load.

I spent a couple of cycles trying to dodge before realizing it was impossible and had to alt-f4 my way out of the game.

Similar thing happened to me in Black Ops II, I got stuck on a horse in the open with no cover and immediately would get killed by a helicopter. Eventually I was able to lay down behind the horse and let it suck up enough machine gun fire for me to get a rocket off. Took me a few dozen tries, and I had to watch that poor, beautiful animal get slaughtered by machine gun fire over and over and over

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I try to avoid games with escort missions on principal alone. Who in the modern game industry thinks such a notoriously loathed mechanic is still a good idea?

OT: If the game will allow, I also run with a manual save in addition to the auto save... for just such an occasion.

 

[Pyrian]

Quick and automatic saves really ought to keep at least the last two, instead of just the last one. It's so obvious and so easy to program that I don't get why a lot of games don't bother.

I once drove the Warthog off a waterfall in Halo 1 co-op. Just as we went over the edge, I went to hit quickload, but instead I hit quicksave. So down we went, and then it automatically reloaded us falling from the top. It was like that Portal achievement where you have to line up the portals and fall through them. Shoom-shoom-shoom. We were laughing too hard to do anything about it. After several iterations the game took pity on us and reloaded the last checkpoint.

 

[Avnger]

Quick and automatic saves really ought to keep at least the last two, instead of just the last one. It's so obvious and so easy to program that I don't get why a lot of games don't bother.

The inevitable backlash from a combination of the "Why did you change something!?!?" gamer group and the "You're just dumbing it down for the casuals and special snowflakes" gamer group =/

 

[Recusant]

Maybe it's just because I've played Daggerfall and seen what happens when a savegame gets corrupted, but I'm kind of shocked that anyone still relies on a single save.