Or my favorite activity, walking over a random mine that I can't see because it's on the other side of a bush. Well, there goes an hour of progress I won't get back!
Design decisions
- Thread starter Owain Taggart
- Start date
Or my favorite activity, walking over a random mine that I can't see because it's on the other side of a bush. Well, there goes an hour of progress I won't get back!
Ever play a Roguelike? The entire genre is harsher than that. You die once and your saved game is erased. It is also very easy to die.
I just played a rather interesting game that's an extreme example of what I've been talking about, but well worth mentioning. You Only Live Once is a flash platformer where you literally only get one life. If you die once you can never play again even if you delete your cookies or reinstall your browser. Yes, there's an easy way to get around the issue and delete the save file on your computer, but that's missing the point. You play the game once and if you die you can never play it again for the rest of your life. The fear of dying due to the consequences of never being able to see the rest of the game made it all the more exciting -- something that would be lost if the game gave you the freedom to play however you wanted and merely suggested that you stop playing if you die. Forcing the game to end when you die is what made the game so much fun.
No, I wouldn't want every game to be like that, but there's something to be said for "computer puzzle games". Games that are designed by the developer to be played a certain way and it's up to the player to utilize the tools and rules (arbitrary or not) to solve the puzzle. Maybe that means playing without continues and having to restart the entire game over if you run out of an arbitrary number of lives or having to take on all 8 robot masters again if you fail to kill Dr. Wily for no good reason. The developers have presented you with a challenge -- the game as designed by them -- and you can try to overcome it or fail trying. Maybe the rules are unfair, but that's how it goes. Maybe you'll fail with no chance to ever succeed (20 years of off and on playing and I still can't beat Battletoads), but the fun is in trying to overcome it. Sure, I'll do a self-imposed challenge to make the game more difficult for myself, but that's never as much fun. There's something to be said for testing your skills with an external challenge set by someone else.
No, I wouldn't want every game to be like that, but there's something to be said for "computer puzzle games". Games that are designed by the developer to be played a certain way and it's up to the player to utilize the tools and rules (arbitrary or not) to solve the puzzle. Maybe that means playing without continues and having to restart the entire game over if you run out of an arbitrary number of lives or having to take on all 8 robot masters again if you fail to kill Dr. Wily for no good reason. The developers have presented you with a challenge -- the game as designed by them -- and you can try to overcome it or fail trying. Maybe the rules are unfair, but that's how it goes. Maybe you'll fail with no chance to ever succeed (20 years of off and on playing and I still can't beat Battletoads), but the fun is in trying to overcome it. Sure, I'll do a self-imposed challenge to make the game more difficult for myself, but that's never as much fun. There's something to be said for testing your skills with an external challenge set by someone else.
There's a simple and obvious compromise to be had, here.
1) Implement save-anywhere functionality, for those who get frustrated by having to repeat so much of a level.
2) Set an achievement if you can complete the level without loading a save-game.
There. Both camps are happy.
1) Implement save-anywhere functionality, for those who get frustrated by having to repeat so much of a level.
2) Set an achievement if you can complete the level without loading a save-game.
There. Both camps are happy.
The problem with an open world game though is that it's much harder to direct people towards save points. But I do get what you're saying.
It would be rather neat, I admit. The game though would likely have to be designed from the ground up to have this kind of system implemented and be well designed for it, otherwise it would feel rather awkward. RPGs already have some elements of what you want, such as NPCs reacting to your actions, but I think you want something that incorporates a strict sense of success or failure and consequences to these actions which would determine the path you take in the game as quests would either open up or close depending on how the quest giver reacts to what you've done. Companions in this sense could either stick up for you or tell someone what really happened during a mission when a quest giver chews you out depending on their moral stances. It always kind of bugged me that you could lie to NPCs while your companions just stood there like idiots.
It brings the question to mind though, what would you do if the game glitched? There are often times when a game glitches for whatever reason, like falling through the game world or getting stuck in walls where you have to reload. If you don't have a recent save, you'd be screwed and it wouldn't be your fault. Even worse would be the game saving just after you encounter a glitch, and I've had that happen more times than I can count, and sometimes you don't even notice it until much later.
That game you mentioned. It's interesting that you mentioned it because I came across a game recently that was like that. It was all about the choices one makes in life. The concept was that you only had one shot at making the decisions. And when you were done, you were done. It prevented you from playing afterwards.
Oh, here it is. It is in fact called One Chance:
http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/12/one_chance.php
Well, as long as you actually remember to save and quit instead of just turning the game off. Every new Halo game that bites me in the ass.
i'm of mixed opinion. really, it comes down to what suits the design intent best.
checkpoints are good, too many checkpoints can trivialize content. but then most people don't finish games, so maybe trivializing content isn't such a bad thing. i guess you could try scaling checkpoints back based on difficulty to combat that problem, but then you run the risk of having taught players to expect checkpoints at certain locations, only to pull it from them and confuse them.
saving anywhere, anytime is awful. in an ideal world, it would be great. but games have bugs and players don't always play optimally. my wife hosed her game of RE because she reached a save point, saved, had next to no ammo, and had a boss fight as her very next encounter (with no amo pickups in the room). now that is design failing on a couple of levels. sure she could have played smarter, but good design would give her ways out of that situation.
saving anywhere, anytime just opens up a whole can of worms where players can hurt their own experience without even knowing it. but with experienced players, it allows greater flexibility. checkpoints allow for tighter control of the player experience.
it comes down to the game. if the checkpoints are well done, i'm fine with them. saving anywhere, i'm fine with, but i still save in safe locations (so it might as well be a checkpoint system).
one last, minor point. checkpoints could potentially help with keeping a player involved in a narrative. i know with games that are more or less save anywhere, if i take a long break from the game then come back, i am lost in terms of what is going on, and what i need to do. checkpoints generally alleviate that issue.
checkpoints are good, too many checkpoints can trivialize content. but then most people don't finish games, so maybe trivializing content isn't such a bad thing. i guess you could try scaling checkpoints back based on difficulty to combat that problem, but then you run the risk of having taught players to expect checkpoints at certain locations, only to pull it from them and confuse them.
saving anywhere, anytime is awful. in an ideal world, it would be great. but games have bugs and players don't always play optimally. my wife hosed her game of RE because she reached a save point, saved, had next to no ammo, and had a boss fight as her very next encounter (with no amo pickups in the room). now that is design failing on a couple of levels. sure she could have played smarter, but good design would give her ways out of that situation.
saving anywhere, anytime just opens up a whole can of worms where players can hurt their own experience without even knowing it. but with experienced players, it allows greater flexibility. checkpoints allow for tighter control of the player experience.
it comes down to the game. if the checkpoints are well done, i'm fine with them. saving anywhere, i'm fine with, but i still save in safe locations (so it might as well be a checkpoint system).
one last, minor point. checkpoints could potentially help with keeping a player involved in a narrative. i know with games that are more or less save anywhere, if i take a long break from the game then come back, i am lost in terms of what is going on, and what i need to do. checkpoints generally alleviate that issue.
Very good points on all accounts, darth. Your thoughts are pretty much in line with mine, especially on the thought of checkpoints and why I feel linear games work better with a checkpoint system. And you're right. Depending on the experience they're going for, different save systems will be more suited to the game. If a game is linear and you're running low on health, it should reasonably offer you some health somewhere in the area. In Open world games, one is less likely to suffer from that kind of problem as it rewards exploration and is in fact more exciting if one is put into a similar situation, making them explore to find health and ammo. So for the kind of problem your wife had, I'd attribute that to the game itself rather than being able to save anywhere. If the developers were smart, they'd have put some health and ammo nearby before the boss. In the end, I find open world games more rewarding.
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