I wish all games would just let you save whenever you want to! Why is using checkpoints and auto saves so common?
At least add a quit and save option if you want to avoid save scumming.
These days I just want to be able to squeeze in some gaming whenever I can even if it’s just quick sessions. That’s annoyingly hard in games that won’t let you save.
I wonder what the reason for this is?
Or pause during cut scenes!
Or skip cutscenes.
Or allow you to accidentally skip cutscenes when you didn’t mean to.
Fucking death stranding
To be fair, Kojima games are primarily vehicles for cut-scene delivery. Gameplay is a bonus.
OMG this drives me nuts.
Yes!
That’s a large part of why, with older games, I prefer to use emulators, even if they’re available to me in other ways. I love the “save state” option. It’s terribly exploitable, of course, but it sure is convenient to be able to save literally anywhere.
The exploitable argument never made sense to me for single player games. I play Fallout, if I wanted anything and everything with a 100ft tall character, every companion, and infinite health. But of course I don’t do any of that because it would ruin my own fun.
The issue from a design perspective is that many players have a tendency to optimise the fun out of the games they play. Meaning that if there is a fun thing to do that you carefully made for them to enjoy but there’s an unfun thing to do that wasn’t the point but is a slightly more effective strategy, many players will find themselves drawn to do the unfun thing and hate playing the game, whereas if they had only had the option to do the fun thing, they would have done, wouldn’t have cared in the slightest about the lack of a hypothetical better strategy not existing and loved the time they spent with the game.
Good game design always has to meet people where they are and attempt to ensure they have a great experience with the game irrespective of how they might intuitively approach it.
So… Not having ways for players to optimise all the fun out of their own experience is an important thing to consider.
Dude, I remember people going OFF on Returnal not offering any saves and people having to keep their consoles in rest mode for days at an end because they wouldn’t want their runs to end. I kept arguing with people on rexxit that any respectable rogue-lite/-like has a save function - STS, Hades, Dead Cells - yet they still kept arguing that implenting saves would “ruin the vision of the game” and “make it too easy”.
Guess what Housemarque did: they added a save on exit option. You can now suspend your run and finish it whenever. Not having to potentially brick your console just because you can’t save mid-game sure is a boon lol. The game sure got a lot easier with this implemented. /s
STS does allow you to cheese the game with its save system, which is why most roguelikes also delete the save file after they load it, only saving the game when you need to put a bookmark in it to come back later.
Oh no, some cheated in a single player game!
It’s a problem when cheating changes people’s opinions on how fun the game is. If the game forces you to use a certain mechanic that you otherwise would have ignored, that often gives you a better appreciation for the game. In the case of a roguelike, if you can cheese the save system, you’re no longer required to actually get good at the game systems and can instead keep reloading until the memorize the solution, which is the entire problem the genre is out to solve.
Why do you care? It’s like Sheldon complaining that people are having fun wrong.
I mean, if you’re knowingly turning on cheat codes in a game, you know you’re deviating from the intended experience, but if you’re doing something the software lets you do, that’s something the designer is trying to tune to steer you toward having a better time. Often times you can take a dominant strategy and think less of the game for it being too easy or one-note, which can and does happen when you can exploit a save system like this. I got through the first Witcher game mostly by save scumming, and I didn’t think particularly highly of it, but the sequels did a much better job of introducing me to the potions, oils, and monster hunting mechanics that would have made the game easier and more solvable without save scumming. Had I known for the first game what I knew of the sequels, I might have enjoyed the game more, but that first game especially didn’t force me into learning those systems.
You’re viewing games as perfect and the designers’ vision as always correct. That’s not always true. Take XCom 2. Many people may tell you that ironman mode (prevents save scumming) is the only real way to play but the game is buggy as hell. Not only do things not always work right sometimes the game just crashes. A buddy of mine has lost multiple save files because of it. The game doesn’t force you to use ironman mode so it’s not a counterargument to what you’re saying but it is illustrative of the point I’m making about games not being perfect.
Also, why do you view save scumming as the dominant strategy? In reality, many difficult and unforgiving games all but force players to use specific strategies to win. Everything you’re saying about gamers avoiding fun choices for optimum ones is not unique to save scumming. Many games already force players to do this and things like save scumming can actually allow players to try different builds that are less optimal.
It’s like someone saying the only true way to enjoy a book is by physically reading a physical copy and that audiobooks are more optimal and therefore less fun. No. Different people just want different things.
Many of the B side challenges in Celeste I played with the 90% speed accessibility option. Trying for 30 minutes to try and get a single damn strawberry was just too much for me. I still had a blast playing it.
I’m neither assuming that a game is perfect or that the designer’s vision is always correct, but the designer is intending for you to experience a game a certain way, and it’s often most fun that way. If certain strategies are dominant such that they invalidate large portions of the game that are there, it usually results in that game being boring. Your mileage may vary, of course, but that’s how these things tend to go. The Witcher is a much more interesting game for me when you utilize potions, oils, and monster manuals, and I found the combat to be quite boring when I didn’t know how to interact with those systems and instead just reloaded saves for better dice rolls. By forcing you to play a certain way, like by omitting certain save systems, they’re making sure you play the way they intended, and if the game is as good as they hoped to have made it, it will result in the most people having the best time.
Here’s another example. Batman: Arkham combat is an amazing replication of what Batman is in video game form. It’s one man taking on dozens of others, usually more lethally armed than he is, with some athleticism and a bunch of gadgets. You’re incentivized via the scoring/XP system to never button mash, use every move in your arsenal at least once, never get hit, and to take out every enemy in the room in a single flowing combo. However, it didn’t steer most players into playing that way very effectively (at least on normal difficulty), and many leave the combat system disappointed that they can beat it just by attacking with X and countering with Y.
Fair, not the best example
I hate when folks ask for this and assholes say “people will just use this to save scum, don’t cheat.” As if working adults with children should be able to dedicate a whole hour totally uninterrupted.
Also, who cares? It’s your game; play it however you like. I mean, isn’t the whole reason why people play video games is to have fun? If save scumming is your idea of fun, I say scum away.
The problem being that a lot of people don’t actually know what it is that will make them happy. Winning is good, right? Yeah, but not if it’s too easy. Being to save the game state at any point makes a lot of games much too easy to be any fun. And while you might argue “well just don’t save all the time,” people are also bad at creating their own handicaps to increase fun.
Yes, there are exceptions to every generalization (see: OSRS Ultimate Ironman) but by and large there’s a reason why the most popular kind of games are set up the way they are.
You ever play Monopoly Go? Straight-up not fun because it’s basically impossible to lose.
Winning is good, right? Yeah, but not if it’s too easy
That’s how you feel about it, though, not an objective thing everybody feels the same about. I absolutely cheat whenever I’m finding a game too difficult, and I assure you, I’m still enjoying the game. I don’t know what people get out of what I find to be the extremely infuriating act of repeatedly failing over and over until I finally get it right, but I have not ever felt the sense of accomplishment I’m told I should feel after finally beating something I struggled with. I feel angry and like I wasted a bunch of time when I could have been enjoying something more fun.
I’m just trying to have a good time, not compete with myself or prove that I can learn just the right way and right time to hit certain button combos or whatever.
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The too-easy levels of notfun are very far away from the too-hard levels of notfun.
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Different games are for different styles of fun and for different people. Heck, some games are more like walk-through stories than actual games. If the game is too hard for you to enjoy, then that game just isn’t for you, that’s all. Let other people have their difficult games and find a different one to enjoy. When I played Monopoly Go and found it boringly easy, I didn’t complain that they should make it harder so I could enjoy it, I just recognized that I wasn’t the kind of player they were targeting and found something else to play.
These are subjective statements though and different people want different things. And difficulty variation can broaden the audience while not really changing the game. Sometimes I love a fight. Sometimes I want a story. Sometimes I want to couch coop with my youngest kid and he struggles with some games that he otherwise loves (looking at you Cuphead) that an easier mode would totally fix. And he absolutely loves Sonic, but the originals would be unplayable for him if not for modern saving and non permadeath. Or emulation with save states and cheat codes.
Why are you trying to convince people that if a game is too difficult or long periods between saving doesn’t work for them then it is their fault and not that of the game design. That’s a weird stance to take. If someone designed a car that was generally very nice but with the gear shift next to the passenger seat door, would you say that is just a car for people with super long arms or would you say that was a poor design choice that is going to massively limit an otherwise nice car?
This is more like you complaining that some cars don’t come with automatic transmission options. Sorry buddy, some of us like sports cars and having an automatic transmission option would devalue the very concept of what that particular car is.
I still haven’t beaten Super Mario Brothers. I’ve gotten very close, but I choked on the final Bowser multiple times. I’m not mad at Nintendo for that. I’m not even mad at myself for that. I had loads of fun playing Super Mario Brothers and being able to save would lower the value of the game.
I don’t understand why you’re insistent that all games need to cater to your desired difficulty level. Some games are made for you, some games are made for other people. Chasing the widest audience possible is how you end up with bland art, be it games, movies, social media platforms, or any other thing people enjoy.
Look, you said it yourself. Different people want different things, and what some people want is fundamentally incompatible with what you want. So, you get a different set of games than they get.
This seems to act like games and their default difficulty options are commandments carved in stone when they’re not. If I find a game to difficulty to enjoy and then find it enjoyable by cheating, that’s what I’m gonna do.
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I know what will make me happy and it’s not being forced to sit for a full hour through a rogue like just because of whiny goobers complaining to the devs so they don’t implement save and quit.
Pretty much this. And if they’re worried about that just make it so you can only save and quit?
Omg remember games that didn’t have saving but had a code you had to write down on physical paper to get back to where you were?
JUSTIN BAILEYVery much so! For the longest time I had a xerox of some gaming magazine with all the save codes for Lemmings!
Reason is “Game state is hard”.
If you want to save, you gotta be able to take the current state of everything and serialize it, then read what you’ve serialized and put it back. If you only do checkpoints, you can make assumptions about game state and serialize less.
Generally, it is much easier to develop AI and such when you never have to pull it’s state out and then restore it, because if that is done improperly you get bugs like the bandits in STALKER forgetting they were chasing you after a quicksave-quickload because their state machine is reset.
With checkpoints, you can usually say “right, enemies before here? Dead or dealt with. Enemies after here? they’re in their default state. Player is at this position in space. Just write down the stats and ignore the rest.”
And autosaves just make it one less menu to fiddle with.
This is a big part of what I like about the steam deck, being able to stop instantly is huge, especially on a handheld.
Piggybacking your comment to mention that for single player games on PC, setting CheatEngine’s “speedhack” to 0x multiplier will effectively pause many games, albeit this does eventually crash some games.
I use it on a toggle hotkey to go get water, let the dogs out, take out my laundry, sign for a delivery, etc. when playing games with no pause system.
In my opinion, single player games without a pause function are disrespectful to the player and I’m not going to reward them with money.
“But my game is hard! You should never be able to feel safe! Not even to pause! Because it’s hard!”
Yes, well, sometimes I have to use the toilet.
I never thought “being able to pause the game” would be on a list of deal breakers for me, but here we are.
I think creators should make the games they want and users should buy the games they want
Meh, annoying save systems won’t stop me for buying an otherwise great game but it will somewhat bug me while playing.
Sounds like you’re buying what you want.
Well of course. There’s always room for improvement though.
One of my favorite things about the DS family was its pick up and play nature. Sure not every game would let you save and quit, but you could just shut the lid and come back later and everything will still be right where you left it.
Same, and now one of my favorite things about the Switch and Steam Deck 👍
I just watched a video that covered this in part. You want to keep the player immersed in the game experience. The more interfaces you give them, the more they’re taken out of the experience.
So autosaves are a great way to keep the user interacting with the game and feeling immersed.
Autosaves are great and all… I just want to be able to quit whenever. There’s usually a confirmation when you’re trying to quit anyway. Just save and quit then. :P
I’m glad at least some games still allow you to do that.
The easiest way to break immersion is frustration. Not adding options to take color blindness into account does not add immersion for colorblind people because it’s more like the real world or has less UI. It adds frustration and ruins any chance of them being immersed. What frustrates us is not a universal and static list of concepts, so neither is immersion.
Recently playing Child of Light. The game has this autosave system that whenever you use a skillpoint or craft an oculi (gives attributes) by accident, it just saves then and there. Kinda fucked me up often
That was my only issue with the otherwise excellent Shovel Knight! It had very long levels and only saved once you beat them.
I’d never play that on PC. It would work on xbox though since quick resume just let’s ju pop out to the dashboard and resume whenever. It’s not foolproof but I’ve only had to restart from a checkpoint a few times.
Like someone else above said, on PC you can just use Cheat Engine to speed hack it to 0x speed, pausing the game!
Back in the day of 8/16bit computers we had the solution for this. The action replay cartridge. Could save the exact machine state at any time.
Save states would be nice. Just dump the game’s data from ram to disk.
That would probably take up a ton of space though. :)
Kill enemy, save, make certain jump, save. Takes a lot of risk out of the game. I like when games let you save anywhere but if you restart the game or load your save you start in the beginning of a room regardless of where you saved from. (Like ocarina of time)
Takes a lot of risk out of the game.
Indeed. But on the other hand, the thing at risk is the player’s time, and only the player can manage it appropriately. A game that doesn’t respect that can quickly become a chore.
It’s a balancing act, artistic choice and such. Also depending on the company, it might be designed to increase engagement to keep you addicted
it might be designed to increase engagement to keep you addicted
Perhaps, but that can just as easily backfire. A game that disrespects my time earns my contempt, both for it and for the people who made it.
For example, I returned Red Dead Redemption 2 and now avoid Rockstar games, in part for this reason.
I liked on Postal where if you saved too often it would announce “My grandmother could beat the game if she saved as much as you do”
That can be overcome by handling save and exit and continuing from those saves differently to normal saves (is have normal saves be possible whilst continuing to play and be loadable as many times as you wish until it is overwritten, but have “save and exit” create a seperate save file that is deleted after successfully loaded.) One type of save allows you to undo in game events, the other only allows you to end your session an resume it at another time.
Does mean more work to do to make it work properly though.
I have to agree with this, for certain games limiting the saves is the correct answer honestly.
Something like the Fear and Hunger series wouldn’t work as well with unlimited saves anywhere because a large part of the appeal is to have to struggle and power through horrible conditions, that would be lost if you could reload every time one of your pals got their arm cut off in a fight and stuff like that
This just reads to me as an excuse for people with no self control to ruin the experience for others. I you want to limit saves, no one is making you use a quick save feature but yourself.
That’s the reason for a lot of gameplay design decisions these days.
Players have zero self-discipline so developers need to adjust their games so that players don’t optimize the fun out of them.
The medium is full of design decisions that measurably saved players from ruining their own good time.
For a well adjusted person that seems absolutely, ludicrously stupid.
I will avoid or return any game that doesn’t respect my agency as a human being. I don’t need external systems to limit me because I’m not a mental toddler and I understand how to have fun.
I understand limiting saves to avoid savescumming. Not allowing you to save and quit whenever you want in Funger makes no sense though. I quickly installed a mod for Termina to suspend and resume the game because it’s ridiculous to have to play 3+ hours straight before being allowed to close the game.
The only reason is hardware limitation. I imagine it’s more difficult to load at any point in the game in a massive game due to how much is stored in your memory.
Let’s say you’re playing a game and there’s 6 NPCs outside and they’re doing their own thing.
If the game has a traditional save system, when you exit the save location it’s normal for these entities to rest let their position. Maybe at best their properties (maybe they were wet because of rain) are saved.
But it’s much easier to just not save any of this info and reload everything from scratch and only save your progress and location.
Some games seem to manage it quite well though? But yeah, they probably had to pit a lot more energy into implementing it.
I think some custom game engines have creative solutions for handling instant saving and loading. For example System Shock has save and load without any delay. But it is a fairily simplistic game at the same time.
