SHP Forums

"The maturity of a blueberry muffin". I like that. *BWG* It reminds me of the "culture is for yogurt" expression to denote those idiots from the 80s -- I hope they don't exist any more.

Why on earth anyone would think that saving is cheating, I have no idea. Just to give one example, there is one quest in Skyrim -- part of the Main Quest -- where I have to find a horn for a bunch of Graybeards living on their mountain. The horn is held inside one of those burial mounds, and there are two "stages" to the mound (e.g. the "initial" labyrinth, and then a "deeper" mound).

Of course, the game does an autosave when I start the "initial" stage. Unfortunately, it has a bug -- when I move from the "initial" stage to the "deeper" stage, the game freezes and refuses to move on. Then I have to close Skyrim (with Task Manager) and restart it -- and start the quest all over again. Very frustrating.

Of course there's a way around it, but it requires me to save my game just before I move on to the "deeper mound" stage. If I don't, the game freezes.

Now, if Skyrim was designed by the chest-beating idiots that DPX mentions, no-one would ever be able to solve the Main Quest! And there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and people ranting on Steam forums about how Bethesda is "cheating them out of their money", and so on. Luckily, there's a way around this bug, but it's very frustrating.

I didn't say it wasn't possible, just difficult. I'm also not saying that's necessarily an excuse.

I'm sorry? *confused* MI, what is the "it" you're referring to that's possible but difficult?

I was responding to DPX. I was still talking about modern day save-anywhere systems.

MusicallyInspired wrote: ↑Fri Dec 18, 2020 9:11 am I was responding to DPX. I was still talking about modern day save-anywhere systems.

Yeah, I wasn't arguing with you about it, I was just ranting, more or less.

Yeah, it's all good. I was just clarifying just in case lol.

Wouldn't checkpoints require much of the same character, and item, stats variables as save anywhere? Perhaps not a few things like location coordinances or in a 3-D game, point of view, but most of the rest of it.

A lot of checkpoints take place after closed doors preventing you from returning so it doesn't have to save anything that came before.

Collector wrote: ↑Sat Dec 19, 2020 1:24 am Wouldn't checkpoints require much of the same character, and item, stats variables as save anywhere? Perhaps not a few things like location coordinances or in a 3-D game, point of view, but most of the rest of it.

It depends on the game. Some open world games actually do use checkpoints, which I find very aggravating. The only time I've found this tolerable is when a game constantly saves and/or saves after any action. The former means you never lose progress, whereas the latter lets you construct a makeshift manual save.

The Arkham games (Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Batman: Arkham Knight), for instance, save whenever you do anything. So if I go in and out of the inventory screen, toss a batarang, jump into or out of the Batmobile, enter or leave a building, or even just move around a little, or quitting the game itself causes the game to save. The Arkham games even make backup saves just in case anything goes wrong with your save.

Would I prefer manual saves and quicksaves? Yeah, I would, but if a game doesn't include them, this is a somewhat satisfactory compromise in my opinion. At the very least, I never need to wonder, "When is the damn going to save?" and be forced to make a choice between playing until the game saves or losing progress.

That said... I don't know why the developers behind the Arkham games didn't opt for a manual/quicksave system since the save system they use ends up recording everything a manual/quicksave system would anyway. Maybe it's because you don't make any important decisions (Batman has a very defined personality) so they thought it was unnecessary. Whatever the case, it doesn't seem like they really saved themselves a whole lot of work.

MusicallyInspired wrote: ↑Sat Dec 19, 2020 8:26 am A lot of checkpoints take place after closed doors preventing you from returning so it doesn't have to save anything that came before.

(NOTE: I'm not arguing with you )

Which is fine if it's a linear game with little-to-no character choices. Basically, if it's more of a hack-and-slash (and there's nothing wrong with that, those can be fun if you're in the right mood), then checkpoint saves CAN work. The only real concern here is if the checkpoint was designed to remember certain variables, such as health, mana/energy/ammo, consumables, etc.

If the checkpoint save does record all of that, then you could inadvertently get yourself into a situation where the game saves and you have very little HP left and practically no mana/energy/ammo to use. Unless you're an unbelievably talented player and have memorized everything in the game, especially enemy bosses, this would probably lead to a no-win scenario.

On the flipside, if the checkpoint save doesn't record it and instead "tops you up" when you load the checkpoint, this could lead to a situation very similar to "save scumming," which is one of the primary (and in my opinion, very flawed) arguments against manual saves and quicksaves.

I wish developers had games do what Anachronox did: at the start of the game, you could choose between "saving when and where you want" or being limited to specific save points. Once you made that decision, that playthrough was locked in. I thought that was a great way of handling it.

Some other games have done similar things, like Mount & Blade: Warband or Thief (2014).

M&B:W lets you decide whether or not you want to be allowed to quit without saving. Enabling "quit without saving" means you can save and load however you want; however, disabling it means that you can't leave the game without forcing a save. Presumably this also limits you to a single save (I haven't tried it myself) otherwise there would still be earlier saves to load after quitting.

Thief (2014) gives you an options screen when starting the game that lets you massively configure specific settings, including the ability to save whenever you want. Back when this game was new, TotalBiscuit loved this so much he literally raved about it during his video review.

I agree with you (and I know you're not arguing. We must really be Canadians if we're politely going back and forth like this ). I'm a big proponent for manual saves. I'm just really playing devil's advocate for why they might have chosen not to implement them.

MusicallyInspired wrote: ↑Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:57 pm We must really be Canadians if we're politely going back and forth like this

Well... I'm American.

That said, having married a Canadian and living in Canada while surrounded by Canadians might've had an effect.

Hah my mistake. I'm sorry. (LOL)