Death Penalty and Saved Games [poll]

[ffordesoon]

I voted for unlimited saves despite that not being my preference, for one simple reason: this is a PC game, and PC games will have bugs on at least a few systems. There's simply no way to plan adequately for all hardware/software configurations on this budget. I mean, Valve and Blizzard don't always get this stuff right, and they have far, far more resources at their disposal than inXile. This is to say nothing of power outages and the like, which is what makes auto-saving helpful.

I like the other ideas a lot, but they're just not comparable in utility to unlimited saving and frequent autosaves. An Iron Man mode should be an option, as well as a Dark Souls "Your mistakes are autosaved forever" mode. But I honestly think the Skyrim save system is the most useful for the greatest number of players, if only because significant progress is so rarely lost.

I agree with the OP in principle, but you just can't win against shit happening, you know?

I'm sure someone's already brought all this up, but I don't wanna read through this thread now, so...

EDIT:

Aaaaaand I completely misread the poll and everything about it. Oops.

[Tartantyco]

This is why we have difficulty levels. Just give me the option to turn it on instead.

[paultakeda]

This is why we have difficulty levels. Just give me the option to turn it on instead.

You haven't read any of the posts on this thread, have you?

[Greenpee]

Aaaaaand I completely misread the poll and everything about it. Oops.

... but you just can't win against shit happening, you know?

I know, man, I know. ><

[Tempered]

I think the whole save game debate is absurd. Games of the past only allowed one save slot due to technical difficulties more than anything else. A modern game should have multiple save game slots that can be labeled with a custom name or automagically generate a name. I see no valid reason for restricting saves. Allowing only one save slot would just cause people to manually back up multiple saves, thus reducing enjoyment of the game. As for penalties, why penalize some one for a computer glitch, power outage, bad AI or programming? These things happen often. Again, this would decrease my enjoyment of the game.

A person can always enforce a dead is dead or single game save play style upon themselves if they so desire. If the game is hard coded with this, then those that hate it are stuck with it and normally scream for their money back.

[Kimotei]

......it could maybe use a superhardcore mode where upon dying your saves would be erased and the computer would punch you in the face, you know - for the true masochists out there.

lmao

Yeah. Permadeath makes more sense in a realtime game like a mmo. I hate games that thinks saving is a game difficulty future. Its not. Its just very very annoying. One might argue that its difficult to cope with that annoyance. Still doesnt make the in-game gameplay more difficult. Just your real life.

So yeah, to follow up the sarcasm: why not having the game pull $10 of your real life bank account every time you die. In the prosess it shold reset your graphic and sound card drivers, and un-install the whole game. And to make the death penelty like super-duper hardcore, make it so that every time you die, you have to play from the very begining a double ammount of time: If you die 3 times, youd have to play through the game 12 times to get past the death point. Hell, why stop there. You shold have to re-install the game increasingly at the same page. It certainly would get the price for the most "difficult" game ever!! Awesome!


Wether a game future is annoying or difficult is perhaps individual. But why must in-game difficulty be mixed with real life difficulty!

[JonVanCaneghem]

I think that the prevalance of constant saving is the result of a positive feedback system between developers and players.

To properly create a game where "there is no going back", you have to design the game around this concept, or else it feels unfair. When a player feels they've been killed off "cheaply" because of something they could not have planned for, AND they get a permanent death, that's when it's not fun. You need to do a whole lot more to increase player knowledge of the game world so they can avoid fights/areas for which they are not ready. The inquisitive player must be able to find out where they might be able to handle and where they might not... and things like being able to forsee threats and especially to avoid conflict altogether are paramount. Risk and outcome assessment have to be built into the game as ways the player can find the right path without stepping on the landmines. This is type 1.

Let's say you don't want to spend all that time coding in-game subtle hints. Just let players romp on their merry way, to respawn the moment they die (sometimes before their body hits the ground). This is much, MUCH easier of a game to design. The player receives a giant's club to the face that sends him flying into the troposphere, and that serves as the subtle cue that, "I guess I'm not ready for those." Moments like these are funny, but eventually they accumulate into the sort of feeling where you're an AI bot that eventually finds the right path, simply by finding all of the incorrect ones first. This is type 2.

People who are quick to dismiss the possibility that a game with harsher penalties (1) will be fun are making one critical error... they are applying this system to games that already exist (2). The problem is, with most modern RPGs, difficulty is able to inflate to ridiculous levels, since the consequence for failure is a quickload back a few minutes to a previous save. Game designers can be a lot more haphazard with how the game is structured, because their errors in game design are fixed with the quick band-aid of loading a previous save. Since this type of design is ubiquitous, we as players have accepted it as the "standard", even though we could be getting a lot more.

Type 2 games also are able to have more "beginner's traps", like instant-death traps you have no idea to look for until you are fried by one. Loading = Learning.

The other type of game would actually discuss things like this inside the game and in context. For example, say some farmer had one of his cows wander off and trigger a rune trap somewhere. You travel to that location and see what these things look like, etc. In a game with permanent death, you would actually have to treat a trap like this as a problem to be solved. Could it kill you? Maybe. But you don't want to walk on it to find out. You throw a rock (or a bunny, if you're evil) from a safe distance and see if that triggers it. You consult a local mage to see how to disarm them. In this scenario, the trap in question might only do a single point of damage. Maybe it was meant to kill rodents? But even still, by the time you have figured out what it does, you've already engaged your brain and felt like your character might be in danger, even though he/she was not. The point of this example is that the game doesn't NEED to kill you to be exciting. It is the POSSIBILITY of player character death that is exciting. Compared to modern RPGs, death needs to be more avoidable in a perma-death game.

The disadvantage of a perma-death game is you'd never want to shove players into an epic fight that they hadn't time to prepare for, and where odds were really low of success. Fights would be less summer-blockbuster and more Sun-Tzu, where the man who chooses the battleground and the terms of engagement would be favored. The change from cinematic to "realistic" (relatively) would be a stark contrast that would be tough for many to swallow.

[Kimotei]

@JonVanCaneghem

Ok, i see your point. Having to be very carefull and having a high risk is exiting. I still think permadeath fits better in a mmo or co-op game though. RPGs for me is all about exploring. I enjoy taking on bosses thats impossible to win. Id rather reload the last minutes and get killed by the boss a few times, learn my lesson and move on, then having to play through the game for hours just to accomplish the same thing. For the record I love and prefer permadeath in realtime mmo games. Mortal Online comes to mind.

If it is not a huge programing task for the developers, why not include both options then. Hardcore mode with permadeath and normal mode with saves. For me, (and a lot of others) deep games like these are first and foremost about taking time exploring all the details in the world. Not going through it like it was some extreme sports game. Permadeath kills a lot of the exploring enjoyment part. Simply becase content becomes too booring when repeated for hours. I dont want to read a book over and over again from half way through. But in a realtime game that analogy doesnt work, becase the story continualy evole, regardless of what you do. If you have to start all over, the game world is different each time. Permadeath makes more sence as a game future.

Auto saves at key locations is an alternative, but its no different to permadeath. You only get pulled back for a shorter period of time. I still prefer choosing where those saves can be done. In any save scenario I like to not being able to save in fights.

Ok, heres a possible variation: what if you could save wherever you want, but only do so at certain time intervalls? Shorter times for easy mode and longer for hardcore. It would make you more carefull in certain areas, but still have the option to save at the exact location you want to. The green light that says "you can now save" could also have a time limit before it resets.

[suz]

The green light that says "you can now save" could also have a time limit before it resets.

People who don't like save restrictions can't edit the game code to remove them.

People who do want hardcore can use an egg timer to simulate the mechanics you described.

It seems more like inability to hold up a word given to yourself;
"If I die I won't reload cause I'm that hardcore... (after dying) Well may be I'm not that hardcore, I can't resist reloading!".

[Kimotei]

People who do want hardcore can use an egg timer to simulate the mechanics you described.

If you die, a dog will shit in your best shoe. And a Super Mario look-a-like clown will follow you arround, claming to be your long gone shadow. "for it is said, that thus went the days and the nights during summer, for the hardcore gamer and the lonesome plumber"

[Jobby]

Personally i ike the idea of resource limited saves, i.e. the saves limited to radio batterys and camping on the world map simmilar to resident evils typewriter inks, imo it would add another layer of tactics to the game and discourage quicksaves quickloads when a speach criteria is not met, however i'd be fine with save anytime also.

[newyawk]

I'm all for save to continue and limited save points. My fear? Power outages, baby pulling plug... etc. Those are the only reasons (along wig corrupted saves) that I would worry about save limits.

[BadMojoRising]

Unlimited saves/ self imposed permadeath seems best. Grow some gaming willpower (to those
That want teh game to impose perma death.

[ToasterRepairman]

I wouldnt even think about purchasing a game with the first two systems listed

The last one is the only really acceptable system and of course thats why its winning by a huge margin

[ButchinMelancholy]

There is one thing for sure, I want to be able to have multiple savepoints of my own. It's important for me to be able to set a turning point from where I have the choice of taking a path I am not sure of and eventually return to it and, perhaps, decide to go for the other(s) possibility(s), or just have the freedom to have fun and do whatever entertains me at the moment.

I think that it is possible to design the game a way that you can't really "cheat" with saves* (or do it without paying the cost someway -by breaking the fun mostly-), and this "tension" of irretrievability isn't something I for one am expecting in a single player game. The difficulty takes a different path in my opinion, as the overall experience.
Some have already mentionned that kind of things, but there is no real interest in forcing the player to undergo those constraints in a single player experience, as it belongs to anybody to choose the way he plays as it doesn't affect anyone else in this case. Again, if the game is well designed, we would certainly feel as much if not even more achievement in overcoming a challenge we had to persist and improve ourselves to succeed than having to suffer a penalty and go ahead. It is part of the pleasure to explore too.

That said, I would be pleased by the possiblity of a kind of "hardcore mode" in parallel, that allows this permanent death setting (I like the time setback one too, pretty much like in Fallout), and as such I agree with this :

Make it a laundry list of difficulty options

*For example, you can simply imagine that your skills doesn't only determine your chance to succeed on something, but also if you are basically able to do it in the first place. Take one of the most common cases which is stealing. If you're an average thief, you would have a better chance to steal careless people while it will be harder with others, but you shouldn't be able to have even a chance to steal something with a much higher level of security, because your character just can't technically implement the adequate dexterity for that.

[bloodyDziq]

the "save at any time" option could very much exploited during combat, saving during combat should not be possible

and i very much like the "Permanent Death" (aka Hardcore mode) but i would add some more auto save to it - after conversation, after combat, after using skill so the player can't "go back" if something goes wrong

[suz]

I don't get why people are riled up against cheating in single player games.

1) It doesn't affect you in any way if someone cheats.
2) If someone wants to cheat they'll find a way, trust me

[ButchinMelancholy]

i very much like the "Permanent Death" (aka Hardcore mode) but i would add some more auto save to it - after conversation, after combat, after using skill so the player can't "go back" if something goes wrong

This would only be annoying in my opinion. This is still a pure single player experience, so that wouldn't make much sense to use this nearly-MMO system (as it would be saving after any significant action). I would still want to explore the game's possibilities freely, but I would just know that if something goes wrong there would be no mercy. We could imagine that, a bit like with the "Time Setback" settings, this would not be allowed to save or even load the game in any condition, like during a combat, so you couldn't easily override the constraint.

[hiptanaka]

I don't get why people are riled up against cheating in single player games.

1) It doesn't affect you in any way if someone cheats.
2) If someone wants to cheat they'll find a way, trust me

Speaking for myself, it's not that others are doing it that bugs me, it's when the rules of the game makes it very easy for me or even encourages me to "cheat". It's like in all those games that would be challenging if you couldn't pause and use infinite potions without penalty, but are easy because of that. It feels stupid to have to refrain from using all features of a game to make it fun and challenging. On the contrary, I want to use all my wit and skill and really push the game in order to win. I want the game to be cleverly designed to be challenging when the player utilizes everything he/she can. Using a trainer is a completely different thing, because that's not part of the game design.

Not that I haven't beaten Mega Man 9 without using the shop, but I wish the shop wasn't there, or had less über items, so I didn't have to make those rules for myself.

So I propose, at least, no save during battle.

[ffordesoon]

Gotta say, I hate being unable to save in combat if I have control of saves everywhere else. It feels arbitrary and annoying, like the designers are putting a Band-Aid over their poor design choices.

At the same time, I understand the concept; you don't want people just shrugging off combat like it's nothing because they know how to save-scum. Not only is that not fun for the players who are willing to let the chips fall where they may, but it's not fun for the person doing the save-scumming, because the battle becomes a boring slog rather than a tough fight. I get that. It may just be the price you pay for unlimited saves, though.

Then again, perhaps a compromise can be reached. What if you had limited saves during battle, but unlimited saves out of it? Like, you need a certain item to save in battle, and when that resource is depleted, you have to reload? Or maybe there could be an experience reward for completing a fight without reloading? Or maybe the amount of experience you get from killing things is halved every time you reload?

There are ways to penalize save-scumming without limiting player choice, is my point. It just requires a bit of ingenuity.