Castle Paradox

[Joe Man]

Since another thread was getting a bit side-tracked, I decided to bring the whole "permasave anywhere" discussion, which has plenty of room for expansion, into its own thread.

I think the topic was well covered by Sirlin in his article Save Game Systems, but there's plenty to add to it. Have you ever thought about being a sick sonova bitch and forcing the player to solve a puzzle
before saving? Do you feel that some games would be better off without saves at all? When do you think permasave anywhere is justifiable?

Just to provide a basic idea of different save systems, here's a little list:


Save Points: These are the typewriters in Resident Evil, the Save rooms in Castlevania and Metroid.

Check Points: These are invisible points throughout the game where progress is automatically or manually saved, either temporarily or permanently. Gears of War has invisible check points, while Super Mario World has manual ones.

Save anywhere: Obviously, allows the player to save anywhere. This may be manual, such as in the Nintendo Wars series, or in some rare cases, automatic, such as in Fire Emblem.

Overworld save: This limits where exactly the player can save. This is most common in RPGs, where the player can save anywhere outside of battle or perhaps only in a certain area (usually the world map).

Massive saves: These are only in games that have to make massive saves, such as Animal Crossing or MMOs. They can fit any of the above categories, but the key defining trait is they are quite massive and take a long time to do.

Save Marker: Not many games have this, but this is a feature that allows the player to save progress at any time, but the game is turned off after saving and the save marker is deleted when the game is reloaded. These are usually combined with save points.
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"Everyone has 200,000 bad drawings in them, the sooner you get them out the better."
~Charles Martin Jones

Last edited by Joe Man on Fri Dec 13, 1957 1:21 am; edited 2,892 time in total

[Newbie_Power]

[Joe Man]

Systems that delete your save are called save markers (a term invented by the Castlevania series) I suppose I could have been more distinct, but i just wanted to provide a few examples for reference.
_________________
"Everyone has 200,000 bad drawings in them, the sooner you get them out the better."
~Charles Martin Jones

Last edited by Joe Man on Fri Dec 13, 1957 1:21 am; edited 2,892 time in total

[Calehay]

[Rya.Reisender]

Yeah, it just makes me want to say again that Darkavern is one of those games who greatly benefit from saving anywhere because otherwise they are hell frustrating. And you keep saying it would hurt the game although that's not really true...

Temporary saving doesn't make sense in games where you die every 3 secondes. Temporary saving however is good in games that consume a lot of time in which it would be a really bad decision to place a permanent save spot due to the unique gameplay (for example in Unlimited Sa-Ga).

Many of the mentioned save systems are actually pretty useless because they just support making boring "resource" games. In my opinion the challenge should never be to get from point A to point B in a game. If there's is challenge in the game it should be in short time intervals, meaning, you should be "challenged" various times in an hour and are forced to use intelligence / skill (depending on gameplay). Not a single challenge like "Were you prepared enough 30 minutes ago or do you run out of items?". I wouldn't even call grinding and stocking up on items a real challenge... well of course it's a challenge of endurance ("how long can I grind before getting bored") but I don't think that should be put into a game ever. The games that are popular or even good with that system and most likely not good because of that system.

So I personally can support following systems:
- Permanent saving anywhere (in games with instant death or where any battle can be deadly)
- Temporary saving (in long games where you usually don't die often and shouldn't be able to permanently save due to gameplay)
- Not being able to save at all (if the game is short, random, focused on "high score" and you can at least survive on the easiest mode to get far enough to enjoy the game, it doesn't really need a save feature)

If anyone supports other save systems it'd be nice to hear some good reasons why they can be good.

The only good reason I heard so far was that "not being able to save everywhere" is good because it creates some kind of "fear" like "if I die now I'll have to replay 20 minutes playing time" and apparently some people enjoy this fear.
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[Onlyoneinall]

[The Drizzle]

[Onlyoneinall]

[Newbie_Power]

[Rya.Reisender]

The gameplay of Darkavern wouldn't change even if you were able to save anywhere, but I'm tired of explaining you why so I'll just ignore all posts about it now.

[Joe Man]

[Rya.Reisender]

Yeah I was just thinking of Passage and Gravitation for example, where the goal basically is to "feel the message". I think from a game design point of view those goals are awesome while games that are like "Follow the evil guy over the whole game and then beat him" have a boring goal.
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[Bob the Hamster]

Has anybody played SoulFu?

In its current incarnation, it has absolutely no save system whatsoever, but is still quite a cool game.

I personally would like to see it implement a save/load system similar to the one used by Powder. I really like Powder's compromise on the saving issue. You can save anywhere and load anywhere, but once you have died, you save is marked as "dead" and loading it again brands you a "Save Scummer" for the remainder of the game.

That way the purist can accept permadeath and start over, for the satisfaction of trying to beat the game without save scumming, yet the rogue-newbie can choose to keep playing with a dead character by loading an old save, in the manner allowed by most non-roguelike RPGs.

[Moogle1]

That's already the case in many Roguelikes. NetHack provides a "wizard mode" that lets you cheat death. The game is still very difficult if you don't know what you're doing.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[TwinHamster]