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[Dragonmaw]

So let's start a topic on saving your game and its relation to design. The last topic on this was in 2008, and it's woefully outdated. So here's a new one. I'll post my thoughts later, but here's some of the major modern save systems:

- Manual saving: Player enters a menu and either saves or chooses a slot to save to. They can then select their save, usually with some sort of information on the surface to indicate what save it is, and load it. Player can save either at any time or at specific points.

- Autosaving: Player passes a certain point, and the game automatically saves his progress. This autosave is usually not selectable or interactable except by pressing "Continue" at a main menu. Player only saves at specific points.

- Quicksaving: Player presses a single button to save instantly (or as near to it as possible). Can be done at any time, and normally only one quicksave is kept. Saving overwrites the older quicksave.

Discuss penalties for saving, games which benefit from different systems, etc.

[rek]

What about saving without player initiation?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

that's what "autosaving" means

[rek]

that's what "autosaving" means

I'm talking about saving regardless of what the player is or isn't doing. Dragonmaw has defined autosaving as as player initiated event – passing specific checkpoints.

What I mean is more like how games with time manipulation "save" your progress every fraction of a second so you can rewind it. But without the rewind option.

[Dragonmaw]

That falls under autosaving, as the "player progress" can be defined as "time spent in game." Indeed, some games do autosaves based on time. Usually strategy games.

[1982]

I mostly prefer system between quick saving and manual saving. I think in GTA series it was done well, when you decided when to save, but game ruled how to save.

But yeah, it mostly depends on the game which form of saving suits best. Gaming is so casual for me that I want to decide when to save and leave the game. I am actually sucker for save/restore feature in emulators so that it has become part of the play mechanics.

[Bandages]

totally game-dependant

Megaman Zero games would be boring and shitty if you could save in the middle of a level

Skyrim would be terrible if you had to find a save book or whatever in order to save

There's not going to be a universal "is savin' good" answer, but maybe situational agreements about "is savin' good for this game" discussions

But there's no game I've played where I've been toooo particularly upset about being able to save or not. My favorite saving system ever, though, was Majora's Mask.

[Dragonmaw]

There's not going to be a universal "is savin' good" answer, but maybe situational agreements about "is savin' good for this game" discussions

That's the point of this thread. You don't need to explain what I've already said. There is nowhere that I said that one save system is better than another, or that there is a universal answer. This is to talk about the design of save systems, which is something most people don't really think about.

Contributions, rather than needless redundancy, would be nice. Explain your reasons for liking/disliking particular systems. Pick them apart. Be critical.

Discuss penalties for saving, games which benefit from different systems, etc.

[McMutton]

 What do you guys think about "Checkpoint" systems like Metroid Prime had, where you can only save at specific areas? I certainly enjoyed the added tension of gaining a powerup, only to have to try and make it back to a savepoint via areas that, while previously empty, are now full of new danger.

[Glyph]

Dark Souls benefits greatly from its saving system: everything you do has been done forever, irrevocably, because the game autosaves constantly. There would not be nearly as much tension as there is if you could just save at any time, or if every try didn't count.

EDIT: Speaking of penalties to saving, the Resident Evil 'limited number of saves' thing was definitely interesting.

[SundownKid]

I think the Metroid Prime save system did make it more exciting to find another save point, especially in an unfamiliar location, so that you could be able to explore it. On the other hand, sticking those kind of saves in inevitably makes the game more tedious when you die at some point and have to repeat that part (which happened to me a lot).

In RPGs at least, I find that "save anywhere" generally makes the game more fun. Of course, this is contingent on how much there is to actually explore, but set save points usually work better in arcade-focused games. FFIII remake was just... ouch with the save points. I would never play something like that again.

[Bandages]

Contributions, rather than needless redundancy, would be nice. Explain your reasons for liking/disliking particular systems. Pick them apart. Be critical.

Right. Well.

I'll explain why I think Majora's Mask had a delightful save system now in excruciating detail.

There were two types of saving. One you could only use at certain spaces (Owl statues) and it preserved your time during the day as well as everything you were holding. Basically it was a "okay pause and go do something else" system. The statues were located in a slew of places and you could actually teleport to them with a song. Totally convenient, didn't allow for hand-holding, and there was no real punishment for using them.

The other type of saving could be used anywhere. It was a song that would remove all your acquired items except for masks and heart containers, and put you back at day 1. There were clear stakes for using it, and the reward was you got to go back to the beginning of the 3-day cycle.

So the game had two dynamic saves that basically covered any reason why you might need to save, and were convenient and worked in quite well with the general gameplay.

BUT ALSO! The best part is that they actually matched the theme of the game. Not very many saving systems actually manage to do that. In fact, a lot of the player-meta aspects of games are entirely arbitrary to how to the game plays or how it is trying to make the player feel. But Majora's Mask and its rad as fuck saving systems actually managed to be relevant to the theme of the game, which was time-cycles, hopelessness, losing what you loved, and gaining it back.

Compared to a save system of its sister game, OOT, it was much less accessible and instantly gratifying. In OOT you opened the start menu, pressed B, pressed start, and you were playing again, no real risk or reward. It had nothing to do with the sense of adventure or heroism. Not a bad thing, because OOT didn't have a need for a complex save system.

All in all, a game that can manage to have design elements match the theme of their games are going to have a much better chance of being more thematic, telling a better story, and generally have more depth.

I haven't played a single other game where I've felt the method of saving actually managed to be relevant to anything other than my convenience/challenge as a player.

(Better? Sorry if my last post was kinda shitty..)

[Hangedman]

Dark Souls benefits greatly from its saving system: everything you do has been done forever, irrevocably, because the game autosaves constantly. There would not be nearly as much tension as there is if you could just save at any time, or if every try didn't count.

EDIT: Speaking of penalties to saving, the Resident Evil 'limited number of saves' thing was definitely interesting.

I personally love the permasave sort of system, and think that some games that don't have it could benefit from it and have systems in place to prevent it from being utterly ruinous (imagine system shock 2 without the ability to just go back and undo mistakes, might be much more gripping imo)
But it should be used very selectively. A game like EYE benefits from it because penalties for death are minor but significant over time.

Limited number of saves frustrates the hell out of me, just because it seems like an artificial way to elicit tension. I think if used properly, it can be just as good as limited save locations, but if being as good as a better mechanic is the best it can be, maybe it shouldn't be used. I'm having difficulty thinking of a game where it would be a good idea, and a way you could not abruptly screw over the player when they suddenly realize they're out of saves.

[xrabohrok]

There are a lot of issues at work here, lets see if this can't be broken down a little.

Saving can be looked at from different angles, like:

As a utilitarian function: I'm fairly certain everyone here is not going to argue that saving in general is bad.  Those who would obviously hasn't had to enter a password into a NES game to get to where they were.  Life happens, we need to step away, power goes out, etc. 

As a method of progression:  TV tropes lists this as "Save Scumming", and I think that is fitting.  Save Scumming refers to placing a save at every favorable moment, in case of catastrophic failure.  X-Com players are very guilty of this, and for good reason.  A well placed alien grenade in the transport will end a mission before it even starts, and well placed saves prevents having to redo months of game play.  I draw my personal line at a mission failure, not whenever I lose someone.  I'm willing to defend save scumming to some degree, as my time is valuable and I don't want to redo a ton of stuff all the time.  Anything to prevent ragequit, right?

As a method of min-maxing:  A player comes to a branching decision, so they leave a save, then try both options.  They then take the option that is best.  This is a more specific, devious form of save scumming.  This is a point of contention for a lot of people, designers, and otherwise.  I, personally, do not like min-maxing in general.  I think the best parts of Skyrim are missed when this method is employed. 

As a method of enforcement:  Save structures in which the player cannot go back.  This manifests itself as an auto checkpoint system or, in extreme senses, saving only when quitting.  These save systems actively deny the min-maxing method described above.  I do not mind this as long as the checkpoints are placed in non-retarded places.  I do not want to fight rooms full of guards before the boss every time I die.  In fact, if done right, it can make a game much less frustrating, but boy does it show when done poorly. 

As a game mechanic :  Arguably, it is always a game mechanic, but I'm talking about where the act of saving is just as important to the protagonist as it is the player.  Typically, saving is only allowed under certain landmarks or situations, manifesting as a manual checkpoint system.  However, limiting saves (i.e. ink-ribbons)  is artificial.  It achieves nothing.  Playstations have a restart button, right on the front.  All this does is encourage a more frustrating form of save scumming, where the player runs the gauntlet again.  The lesser skilled players get punished, the harder core players do the aforementioned technique, and the net gain is nada.  The money isn't in limiting saves, its in making the act of saving more important.  Dark Souls respawns all the monsters when you light a bonfire, so saving is a more sacred decision, as an example.  Majora's Mask kept with the theme of the time warp in its save mechanic.  It can be done, but ham-handing it is a good way to piss people off.   

 

[s0]

i think all modern games, regardless of what other save systems they might have, should have an "interrupt" function or w/e it's called, meaning you should be able to quit the game and pick up where you left off.

[DavidCaruso]

Glad there's a thread on this now. Save systems and retry structures are easily one of the most important parts of designing a game, and it's weird how little they're talked about.

Generally, I think the best type of system for a lot of games would be something like autosaves/checkpoint saves plus a suspend save (i.e. one-time save that erases itself, in case you get interrupted.) The main problem with a save-anytime system for me is the same problem I have with stuff like grinding -- what the developer is doing is basically asking the player to balance a fundamental element of the game's system and difficulty himself, because they couldn't decide how to. When I first play any particular game, I obviously have no idea at what points and how often I should be saving if I want the game to be reasonably balanced, tense, and challenging. Likewise, if I actually do hit a brick wall, due to how the option is presented the first instinct is usually to save some more rather than fight it out, just like the first reaction to hitting a brick wall in a game with an unrestricted leveling system is usually "oh shit, I must be underleveled." It's basically forcing the player to design restrictions that the developers should have already put in place and creating a dumb sense of uncertainty (in the bad way, not the good way.)

The other issue is that the presence of a save-anywhere system can give developers less incentive to provide balanced, well-spaced checkpoints. That being said, quite a few games do have great checkpoints along with quicksaves, like Crysis or Serious Sam 3: BFE (hey look I plugged that game again), so it's easier in them to just ignore quicksaving and use checkpoints only. On the other hand, many other games have pretty shitty ones, like the original Sam games or Deus Ex (though it'd be extremely hard to implement a good checkpoint system in the latter given how the game is structured, so that's a case where I can understand it even if ideally I'd prefer something else.) And then there are the games which don't even provide proper checkpoints at all...

Note that most of the above mainly applies to action games, though some of it could also be used in strategy titles to a lesser extent.

I am actually sucker for save/restore feature in emulators so that it has become part of the play mechanics.

You're neutering the experience, man.

[s0]

The other issue is that the presence of a save-anywhere system can give developers less incentive to provide balanced, well-spaced checkpoints.

Yeah the save anywhere system really just becomes a problem when the rest of the game is designed around reloading every 2 minutes. For me it's less about whether the option exists but whether not using it is viable (i.e. fun).

[xrabohrok]

Oh man, I got so mad at the first Half Life because there is no auto save at all.

[ntdb]

I do not mind this as long as the checkpoints are placed in non-retarded places.

I entirely agree. I have angry memories of getting a checkpoint in Halo: CE as a Hunter is charging me.

In Halo the checkpoint system bolstered both the game's progression and intended play style. It's a big deal to actually move through a fairly long stage but, let's face it, you're almost certainly going to die along the way. Checkpoints, flawed though they are at times, allow the player to run into a room guns-blazing (as intended) with confidence that they won't be heavily penalized for it and a hope that they will accomplish something with lasting significance to their play session.

[gunswordfist]

Let's see:

I think that large action RPGs, Doom style FPSs and TPSs with similar level designs to the Doom style should be pretty much the only games with quick saving. And even then they should have autosaving for just in case.

Everything else (just about) should have set auto save checkpoints and manual saving at save points imo.

Also, what's with games limited the amount saves? Not RE style, but giving you like 3 save slots or the even worse "Continue" option with no other save spots possible? Is there something I should know? I remember on Xbox they pretty much let you save asmany times as your memory would allow you to for many games. Same for the memory card era.