I just started playing Bioshock Infinite. I’m not all that far along (no spoilers please), suffice as to say I’ve gotten a chance to punch, shoot, use a couple ‘vigors’, jump on a couple skyhooks and shoot some more. I love the franchise and it’s as beautiful and atmospheric as I’d expect.
But I don’t think I’ll get much further. Petulant or not, my interest took a nosedive after learning that their autosave checkpoints are the ONLY way to save the game. And the only way to tell if you’ve recently saved is to either catch the 1/8-second flash of a notice at the top right of the screen (out of my nominal line of focus) or continually go back and forth to the exit screen to see if the timestamp changed.
I don’t understand at all. I do get that there may be a cohort of people out there who consider themselves ‘true’ gamers or something and think that the ability to freely save makes games too easy or something–but then why do they have the easy mode?
Or maybe the developers wanted you to make choices and stick with them or something. But that means I can’t re-do a battle five or six times because it’s, well, fun. What’s not fun is repeating the previous ten minutes poking into every nook and cranny. Or not being able to run far back in the map to check something and then have to retrace (slowly) my steps to continue on.
But these are just reasons why I think the checkpoint-based save game is an abomination and how I feel that it detracts from the overall experience. But the decision to use that kind of system must have been thought through, and play-testers must have approved, no? Can someone tell me what the good points are?
Checkpoint-based saved games make quick time events seem less annoying by comparison?
Some game designers seem to want to control rather tightly the experience of the gamer. Hence why the main way to gain health in some games is sitting behind cover for a few seconds rather than medikits. It’s also why a lot of games are little more than a mix of a roller coaster and a shooting gallery. By having predetermined saves, it’s possible to better predict what the player will be able to do. This makes for simpler, cheaper, more reliable player experience and game design.
It simplifies the save system. With a player-activated save, it’s possible for the player to save at the wrong place and without backup saves, his game may be spoiled. Of course, that’s why you want several saves with a few going back but that makes the process less predictable and more error-prone.
So, I would say that checkpoint-based saves are not meant for hardcore gamers, they’re meant for CODites. It’s why ARMA, Fallout and Stalker provide player-activated saves* while COD, GOW and similar games keep you on rails in every way they can. If brodudes are going to be your main player base, you’re gonna need a lot of guardrails.
*With checkpoint-activated saves being a supplement.
I agree that save points aren’t for hardcore gamers. No saves at all beyond save and exit would be more like it.
I think the biggest benefit of a save point is that it allows the developer to manage difficulty. If testers say that a battle or segment is too difficult, add a save point. If it’s too easy, get rid of one.
It makes the save file smaller if the game is also linear, because you only need to encode a handful of things (optional items gathered, current ammo, save point ID) rather than the location and status of every item and enemy.
As I recall, the rationale for such a system being used in Dead Rising—it’s been five years since I’ve played/read up on it, so details are a bit hazy, but Wiki seems to back me up—was that it would make the gaming experience more harrowing, and give the player a “sense of responsibility” for their choices and strategy.
Also to encourage “leveling up” by starting over with your gained experience/skills. Which, I admit, must be a lot less aggravating than playing it straight through. Which was downright Sisyphean.
It worked in Dark Souls, imo. It gave a real sense of progress and the fact that you advanced (currency/level-wise) when you reached your bloodstain made it rewarding when you finally found a new bonfire to use that progress on. Though Dark Souls is a bit different, it saved after almost every damn thing you did. Killed an enemy? Saved. Looted an item? Saved. Died? Saved. Quit a game? Saved. Got invaded? Saved. Checkpoints were purely a game mechanic, not a save system.
I have no explanation for why save spots were used in Bioshock Infinite - it seems like a terrible game to select for them, IMHO.
They CAN be used to do things like reduce save-scumming, but there has to be something to save scum first, and B:I doesn’t really have anything worth bothering with.
One would argue DS really, really needs it, though - it’s already punishing enough as it is, wouldn’t want the player to lose all the souls they’ve been grinding, or the elation of *finally *getting past that fucking Bed of Relentless Cursing At The Screen, to a power outage. Or, god forbid, the game crashing right in front of one’s 250.000+ souls & 23 humanities blood stain, and considering it a death.
The downside being, of course, that you can’t save scum if the Black Knight Shield didn’t drop off the non-respawning one in the Burgs, for example.
I wish I understood more of the gamer terms CODites? Brodudes?
I’m pretty far from a ‘hardcore’ gamer. So far that I don’t want to replay the last ten minutes of exploring because I can’t find a save point. And I don’t get why they have “easy” and “normal” modes if they want the experience to be panic-inducing if you’re running low on health after spending twenty minutes mopping up a section.
Not a fan of them, either. I picked up the very cute-n-casual Costume Quest in a recent bundle deal and was disappointed to see that it has checkpoint-style saves. I’ve played for maybe a half hour as a result. In a casual game, please let me stop whenever I want without having to go back and redo some stuff when I start up again.
Level-based game, like Super-Meat Boy, make checkpoints make sense. That game is crazy hard and has some pretty long hard stretches with no saves. When you finally get a save, it is satisfying.
What games are you guys playing that don’t do this? I haven’t encountered one in a long time. I think some earlier Telltale games allowed you to save, but that’s all I can think of.
And, seriously, Costume Quest, which saves after every battle and every time you get a new costume? That’s the one you pick to be annoyed by?
It’s one thing like in Bioshock Infinite, where I assume the saves may not quite be predictable, or where you might have parts of games you want to replay. (But that’s a problem in not being able to rewind saves, which should always be able to do.) But Costume Quest is closer to Dark Souls, saving after pretty much everything you do of any importance.
As for the general topic, I don’t think most gamers even really think about it. If the saves are often enough, you just know that you may have to redo a small bit when you turn it off. The autosave icon is only there to warn you not to turn off the game while it’s saving. It’s not there for you to watch for so you know you can quit.
If they could get away with handling that, they wouldn’t show it to you at all. The whole point of saving for you is so that you don’t have to think about saving at all. The idea is to make the game much more immersive, where you aren’t thinking about mechanics like that.
(And, seriously, Firefox doesn’t know the word immersive?)
The thing that annoyed me about Bioshock Infinite’s save system was actually my general complete lack of idea when it was that I was last saved. “Is it safe for me to quit now? Or am I going to be replaying the past 20 minutes because there hasn’t been a save spot lately?” x.x
So these games don’t have save and exit along with autosave? This ranges from the casual “I’m not sure if it’s saved but I’m able to force it” (Brütal Legend) to “we don’t let you manually save to avoid save scumming” (Diablo games).
In Bioshock Infinite (which I generally loved, and completed), there’s a bit at the start where you first come across bad guys to shoot and then, perhaps 10-15 minutes of fighting later, you come across a ‘big bad’ mob who drops an object you have to pick up to continue in the game. When I did it, the big bad dropped his object in a place I couldn’t get to it (it was behind a gate), and so I had to restart from the autosaved checkpoint… which was all the way back at the start of the fighting. I damn near stopped playing for good.
The annoying thing about the B:I autosaves isn’t so much that it checkpoints, it’s that it doesn’t tell you where the checkpoints are. There’s a bit of chat in this thread about Dark Souls, and getting the to bloodstains of the checkpoints, thus telling you where it has saved (I haven’t played DS). B:I does its damndest to not tell you when it has saved, to keep the experience fluid, but it frequently doesn’t do it often enough.
*Dark Souls *has both, but (AFAIK) no incremental saves.
That is to say : the game will save whenever you decide to quit the game, and it will also automagically save on any number of in-game events (basically whenever your character is modified in any way, which is any time you do anything whatsoever). But you can’t manually save your game there-and-then to keep it as a failsafe in case anything goes wrong later.
Which would be a waste of time, anyway. It’s Dark Souls. Of course **everything **will go wrong. And you will love it for it.
When I opened the thread it was to comment on Bioshock: Infinite.
It is annoying because the autosaves don’t seem to be at logical points (or at least not consistently). Finished one fight and was ready to quick for dinner and went to exit and no, not autosaved. Asked my wife to sit and watch with me as I just rushed forward as fast as possible hoping to trip a save and asking her to keep an eye out for it (and then still checking the timestamp on exit every two minutes).
But for me it isn’t the annoyance so much of not knowing when I’ll be able to stop, but before I even start not knowing how long I’ll be stuck playing. I enjoy games, but have never been an multi-hour session person. Plus I’m 40 years old and have stuff to do. If I’m not willing to start until I have an uninterrupted hour to kill I’m only going to play once a week and if I only play once a week I’ll forget about it and not play at all.
Taking out manual saves can add to the tension of a game, but then, so can playing it while being attacked by walruses. Having it added in as an optional ironman-like feature is one thing, but when you’re not even given a choice? There is one, and only one, legitimate reason to do that: the system can’t handle the strain. An NES wasn’t powerful enough to let you save anywhere. Are you programming for a system less powerful than that (I shouldn’t have to ask; it’s been almost thirty years- but then, the NES didn’t have loading screens either)? If not, don’t do it.
In-game walruses or live, gonna-mess-you-up-sukkaghhh-ahhhaghh-ahhhghh walruses?
I almost understand the idea that it adds tension, but then they include the ‘easy’ mode that you can change in and out of. And no save-on-exit really undercuts that too–as if part of the tension is wrapped up in searching those twenty corpses, wastebaskets and looking behind each toilet door. And the mindset that would enforce the trade-off between overall enjoyment (not slogging through the empty rooms, replaying a scene over at-will, taking dumb risks just to see if you can take down a Big Daddy with each weapon, etc.) and playing it the way the developer wants it is veritably incomprehensible to me.
I guess if I think of it like Apple’s walled garden approach it almost makes sense. I only know about the crazy guy behind Duke Nukem and Valve’s Gabe, so maybe there is that kind of culture among game developers in general.
CODites? Brodudes?