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[Guert]

What about automatic save systems? Those don't allow the player to save, because they save automatically without the player telling it to do so, but they are save systems nonetheless. Immortal Defense and my next game Saturated Dreamers both use automatic saving systems: the game is saved automatically without the player's notice every time the player does something that's worth saving, the player doesn't have to tell it to do so.

Quick reply to this: Auto-save systems allows the player to save a game state on a storage device but does it without any constant/forced input during the experience. A well engineered game will allow the player to turn on or off the save system somewhere in the game settings so the player does have to give his input at some point (here, the player's inaction is the action of consenting). Why would someone want to turn off an auto-save system? Playing on a limited storage machine, not wanting to mess someone else's profile, reducing machine lags, self-challenging to beat the game without saving are a few of many reason a player may come up with. You cna't predict what the player will ahve in mind so it's best to be ready for all eventualities.

Just thought I'd clear up what I meant

[Shambrook]

If I know that I won't ever hit a brick wall and be unable to progress then I know that I'll win the game and I might as well not play it and just pretend I played it and won. Not like any other outcome was possible.

Sorry but the object of a game in my oppinion is to have fun. A player should want to play your game because it's fun. That really should be enough incentive.

And why stop there? If the player needs to take more than one hit before dying in Metal Slug to beat a boss, then that's the player's choice.

See thats a completly diffrent thing. Thats making the game easier by way of just making it easier.
Say for example you're playing a rom of a game. Is it inhernetly less fun because save states exist? You don't have to use them. If you personly think it's cheap to use them then don't. Just save when you're heading off to do something.

Save points effectivley punish the player for having a life outside fo the game. I should be able to stop playing a game when I feel like it and not be punished by having to redo anything.

[Gnarf]

Right. I'll ramble. Saving your progress tends to serve two purposes. One is to let the player quit the game without having to start from the beginning when he starts playing again, and the other is to not make the player have to start from the beginning when he's defeated or some such. One is about convenience and the other is about challenge.

If a game is not meant to be played from start to finish in a sitting or two it often makes sense to let the player permanently complete parts of the game instead of having to beat the whole game "in one go" (whether or not that one go includes taking breaks from the game or not). Still, the more often the player get to permanently save his progress the easier the game becomes. Fairly straightforward. IMO, getting the difficulty of a game right is part of the game design, and not something that should just be left for the players to decide.

As far as I'm concerned, letting the player quit the game at any time without losing his progress is very fine indeed (although in certain games it might not really be very important to be able to do that), but allowing for this save creeping thing is no good at all. Most of the challenges in the game become pointless and can be overcome simply by saving often enough. I'd argue that it becomes impossible to make challenges that require the player to master any skills rather than just "potentially being sort of capable" of something. E.g. having ten hard jumps in a row requires more mastery from the player than just one, because if he's just sort of capable of doing a hard jump then chances are he'll have fucked up and died before the 4th or 5th or something. If you let the player save between the jumps, it becomes repetition rather than a challenge, and you might as well have put just one there and called it a day.

That said, playing a game with an emulator that supports savestates doesn't change things an awful lot for me, because I know that using savestates to get through the game would be cheating. I know that the game is not designed with savestates in mind and so I should not take advantage of those in order to make the game easier. In general I consider using savestates in order to save the game when taking a break from it to be all right though.

In your run-off-the-mill save anywhere system, it's far less obvious what you're meant to do. Generally speaking, you're not meant to save every other second and you're not meant to start from the beginning of the game when you die. Being fair yet not retarded lies somewhere in between. Most likely you can't just choose to not use the save system and expect to have a reasonable chance at beating the game, and so you "have" to choose what you think is fair, guess how difficult the game is meant to be and so on. Often as not it ends up with the player just saving more often as he gets further into the game to counter for the game getting harder. Not my idea of fun. I think it is a lot more fun to try to beat a well-designed challenge than to just "play through" a game, tuning the difficulty as I go.

In most cases I think it would make more sense to use a save-point-like system for permanently saving your progress and a save-and-exit-anywhere system so that you could still quit the game at any time without being "punished". Although if having to redo anything is harsh punishment indeed I'm questioning how fun those games that are all about being fun really are :P

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Quick reply to this: Auto-save systems allows the player to save a game state on a storage device but does it without any constant/forced input during the experience. A well engineered game will allow the player to turn on or off the save system somewhere in the game settings so the player does have to give his input at some point (here, the player's inaction is the action of consenting). Why would someone want to turn off an auto-save system? Playing on a limited storage machine, not wanting to mess someone else's profile, reducing machine lags, self-challenging to beat the game without saving are a few of many reason a player may come up with. You cna't predict what the player will ahve in mind so it's best to be ready for all eventualities.

Just thought I'd clear up what I meant

I still think it should be up to the designer. I think it's fine not to give the player an option to turn it off if the designer doesn't see a reason to turn it off and thinks that the option to turn it off would be a bad idea. It might take away from the play experience to turn it off. Imagine if auto-save in Nethack were able to be turned off, then it wouldn't be Nethack.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Say for example you're playing a rom of a game. Is it inhernetly less fun because save states exist? You don't have to use them. If you personly think it's cheap to use them then don't. Just save when you're heading off to do something.

I actually do think the temptation that they're there makes many games less fun as ROMs. I prefer to play the real game, and that's part of the reason. And sure, I could always resist the temptation and not use them, but my will power isn't that strong, if there's an easy option to cheat in a game, I'll use that option, so I prefer if there is no easy option to cheat.

[Dacke]

Gnarf, you just said everything I felt had to be said. Well done!