Thursday, February 15, 2007
Ye Olde Save Game Debate
Some topics just never die.
Like the one about saved games. The problem, specifically, that unlimited saves allows people to "brute force" their way through a game. This takes away much of the challenge and can actually rob the game of its most fascinating elements, encouraging players to take the "path of least resistance." And there are some designers (particularly on the consoles) who really depend upon players repeating content over and over again to give the game some stamina. It's a terrible low-down nasty reason for limiting saves, but it's a reason.
Marty O'Hale takes a look at ways to dodge the saved game problem (specifically in CRPGS) in his new article in The Escapist, "Killjoy: How Inconsequential Death Took the Fun Out of Virtual Life."
Scorpia followed up with her own commentary on the subject, taking Marty to task on several issues, while agreeing in principle that it's a problem, in "Death and the CRPG."
As for me? Man, I hate it when games are designed around the principle of unlimited saves, and are then made all the nastier to compensate. What I hate worse than that is limited saves, where I'm expected to play through the game for as much forty-five minutes in-between saves. Yeah - maybe when I was a single student with no life, that would have been okay. Sure, I fit in an hour-long session (or more) here or there, but I kinda like that to be my choice, not the game's.
So anyway... the problem: The most vital game skill becomes remembering to hit the quicksave button every thirty seconds. There are no CONSEQUENCES for a player's actions. Hey, I'm on board, here. I have restored saved games even when I won combat encounters, because I'd expended too many resources on them (in action games as well as RPGs). Try again, and see if I can take out the dragon WITHOUT using up the last five charges of the wand of Lightning Bolts, or take out Yet Another Not-So-Surprising Ambush without losing all my armor and having my health dropped down to 25 points.
The saved game means there's zero incentives to try to make the dramatic comeback from a bad situation, unless you really feel like toughing it out.
However, on the flip side, the extra and easy save points also give you the freedom to try to make that dramatic comeback, too. Knowing that if worse comes to worst, you can always revert to that previous point before you made that costly decision and decided to roll with it. So out of past experience, I'm inclined to go with Scorpia here.
We've had plenty of restricted saves in the past. They frustrate. We've had disincentives to saving (including, in at least one obnoxious example I can think of, a game where you had to pay in-game currency to save your game).
I'm thinking carrot, rather than stick, here. Can game designers incentivise NOT restoring a saved game? How about some kind of bonus that accumulates the longer you go without restoring? Sure, this might unfairly penalize players like me who have real lives and have trouble playing a game for long stretches... but if it feels like a bonus and not an entitlement, it might work okay.
O'Hale makes a couple of suggestions that I agree with - that death and a forced restore should not be the penalty for every (or even most) failures, and that failure should create new opportunities, thus encouraging the player to let it right. This could be hard to implement, and even harder to telegraph to an audience which has been long accustomed to going to the "Load Menu" even before death is certain.
We keep talking about innovation, and innovation in the realm of screwing around with the players ability to save and load a game is not one that has ever proven welcome except for some of the most hardcore gamers and journalists. But maybe some enterprising developers can figure out some ways outside the ol' saved game box, where it makes sense.
UPDATE: Hmm, I wrote this last night, and discovered this morning that there's a new, somewhat related article up at GamaSutra entitled, "Losing For the Win: Defeat and Failure In Gaming." Worth checking out!
(Vaguely) related proof that 98% of everything is crud:
* Mistakes In Game Design
* Game Moments #4: Daggerfall
* What Kind of Gamer Are You?
* A Counter-Manifesto?
* More Bad Game Design Decisions
.
Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:48 AM (Permalink)
Comments:
Links to this post:
<< Home
I thought Escape Velocity got this one dead-on. When creating a new character, you had the option of playing in "Hardcore Mode". It would still save like normal (so you could resume the game from the last planet you landed on), but once you died it wiped out your pilot file and you had to start over.
Some seriously tense moments from that. Kind of bridges the gap between quicksave/quickload and Roguelikes.
Some seriously tense moments from that. Kind of bridges the gap between quicksave/quickload and Roguelikes.
Random comment: I remember being astonished while playing Leisure Suit Larry that at one point, the solution to a problem was to use the save/load to "cheat". I was absolutely stumped because you had to have a couple hundred bucks for some dumb puzzle in a casino. It got bad enough that I looked up a walkthrough (back in the BBS days when this was no easy task). The walkthrough solution was to save before pulling the slot lever and reloading if it didn't come up a win. Looked like a design decision to me. In fact, when you actually made enough for the puzzle, Larry made some sarcastic comment about "luck" and "cheating".
I forget where I saw this, but I seem to remember a game - or I'm just making this up and it's a decent idea - where there were set save points, but you could also earn 'save' packs that were an inventory item. Using the save pack saved your game anywhere, but it was always the question of, use this limited thing now cause I really have to leave the game, or can I wait until the save point and keep this for right before a combat or someplace where I really don't want to lose my stuff/stats.
I know as a reviewer I hate not being able to save my game, because I'm often grabbing quotes and screen shots as I go. Some of the best of these are towards the ends and the pause that it takes to get my shot can get me killed and then I have to replay the whole dang level over again and I get ticked off. So there definately should be some kind of middle ground.
~J
I know as a reviewer I hate not being able to save my game, because I'm often grabbing quotes and screen shots as I go. Some of the best of these are towards the ends and the pause that it takes to get my shot can get me killed and then I have to replay the whole dang level over again and I get ticked off. So there definately should be some kind of middle ground.
~J
Off hand, I can think of a bunch of different alternatives to party death in CRPGs. The party could be captured, and either be imprisoned, or sold into slavery (or shanghaied into a smuggler's gang... yo-ho-ho!) Or they might be offered their lives in return for accomplishing a suitable quest. They could be rescued at the last minute by the intervention of an NPC party, who they would then owe a favor.
If done right, there would be plot elements in the story that would *depend* on the players losing a battle once in a while. An NPC might be difficult to gain access to... unless you were "fellow prisoners" who escaped from the orc Warchief at one point. Finding the location of the Pirate Queen's island refuge might be a long, hard quest... unless you spend time as a shanghaied seaman on board one of her ships. Even being "rescued" at the last minute by NPCs could open up quests and expose plot elements that otherwise would be unavailable.
If done right, there would be plot elements in the story that would *depend* on the players losing a battle once in a while. An NPC might be difficult to gain access to... unless you were "fellow prisoners" who escaped from the orc Warchief at one point. Finding the location of the Pirate Queen's island refuge might be a long, hard quest... unless you spend time as a shanghaied seaman on board one of her ships. Even being "rescued" at the last minute by NPCs could open up quests and expose plot elements that otherwise would be unavailable.
# posted by 
: February 15, 2007 10:36 AM
: February 15, 2007 10:36 AM
The problem with opening up gameplay on a failure is that few players will explore this option.
This was tried in the original Wing Commander. Failure would take you to a different set of missions. There were several transition mission sequences that could allow you to cross over between the "victory" mission path and the "defeat" mission path. Right up until the end.
The problem? Nobody played the failure path. Well, okay, I did, but I was one of the few, and I did it deliberately. 99% of players just kept voluntarily repeating the mission until they succeeded.
That's why they did away with it in Wing Commander II (and the expansions). Why throw away development work on content nobody's going to allow themselves to see?
This was tried in the original Wing Commander. Failure would take you to a different set of missions. There were several transition mission sequences that could allow you to cross over between the "victory" mission path and the "defeat" mission path. Right up until the end.
The problem? Nobody played the failure path. Well, okay, I did, but I was one of the few, and I did it deliberately. 99% of players just kept voluntarily repeating the mission until they succeeded.
That's why they did away with it in Wing Commander II (and the expansions). Why throw away development work on content nobody's going to allow themselves to see?
As a game player and as a parent of game players, I hate games that don't let you save anywhere. The reason mainly is because "life happens". At some point each of us has to turn the game off (for various reasons), and I and my kids like to be able to pick up where we left off. If the save point points were 5 minutes apart, then that wouldn't be a big deal, but when they are 30 minutes or 45 minutes or more then it does get to be a big deal. My time is limited, and I don't want to repeat stuff I already did (usually). Also as a parent I get really annoyed at games that don't let you save anywhere also, as this conversation is typical.
"Okay son, it's time for bed. I need you to shut the game off now."
"But Dad, I'm not to the next save point yet"
"Are you close?"
"Yeah, I'm probably just a couple of minutes away."
"Okay, you can have 10 more minutes to get there, but once you're there, you need to shut it off."
...10 minutes later
"Did you get to the save point and save your game?"
"No, but I'm almost there, honest"
"That what you said 10 minutes ago. I really need you to shut it down now."
At this point it either gets into a power struggle and my son reluctently (resentfully) shuts down the game or he keeps pushing the line until I get fed up and forcefully turn the console off myself. Either way it never ends happily for both parties.
I think it ought to be left up to the player to decide where and when to save. I understand how it can be used to cheat or make a challenge less of a challenge, but these things are entertainment after all, and not a test at school. It's about "fun" not "fairness". If someone wants to cheat let them cheat; cheat codes are big on the internet, so it appears lots of people like to cheat in games nowdays. In fact I know some people feel cheat codes are even "needed" to get through a game that's really challenging to them.
"Okay son, it's time for bed. I need you to shut the game off now."
"But Dad, I'm not to the next save point yet"
"Are you close?"
"Yeah, I'm probably just a couple of minutes away."
"Okay, you can have 10 more minutes to get there, but once you're there, you need to shut it off."
...10 minutes later
"Did you get to the save point and save your game?"
"No, but I'm almost there, honest"
"That what you said 10 minutes ago. I really need you to shut it down now."
At this point it either gets into a power struggle and my son reluctently (resentfully) shuts down the game or he keeps pushing the line until I get fed up and forcefully turn the console off myself. Either way it never ends happily for both parties.
I think it ought to be left up to the player to decide where and when to save. I understand how it can be used to cheat or make a challenge less of a challenge, but these things are entertainment after all, and not a test at school. It's about "fun" not "fairness". If someone wants to cheat let them cheat; cheat codes are big on the internet, so it appears lots of people like to cheat in games nowdays. In fact I know some people feel cheat codes are even "needed" to get through a game that's really challenging to them.
At Christmas this year I bought a Nintendo DS and the first game I purchased was Final Fantasy III (I am currently playing FF6 and Lunar Knights right now). FF3 is the absolute worst final fantasy for lack of save points, I have yet to find a save spot inside of a dungeon (I have yet to read a walkthrough to see). However, there is a nifty little feature called quick save. Quick save is different than a regular save in that when you quick save, you quit the game. Coming back into the game you have an option to continue. Once you continue that quick save is destroyed and you play on. FF6 does this as well and I have a great appreciation for that feature.
You had mentioned giving an incentive in the game for not saving. I had several thoughts on that. One would be to raise by a percentage your experience gained up to a certain percentage(15-20%) and have it max out in about 20 minutes. When you save you start back at the 0 minute marker for the experience bonus.
The other thought was to make a stat that handles how alert you are. For instance, you have not saved the game in 10 minutes, all of a sudden there are little sparkles appearing every now and then revealing hidden secrets. With every 5 minute interval increase the alertness. This one would probably need to be a percentaged increase to an actual stat so that a good rogue can't be out classed.
You had mentioned giving an incentive in the game for not saving. I had several thoughts on that. One would be to raise by a percentage your experience gained up to a certain percentage(15-20%) and have it max out in about 20 minutes. When you save you start back at the 0 minute marker for the experience bonus.
The other thought was to make a stat that handles how alert you are. For instance, you have not saved the game in 10 minutes, all of a sudden there are little sparkles appearing every now and then revealing hidden secrets. With every 5 minute interval increase the alertness. This one would probably need to be a percentaged increase to an actual stat so that a good rogue can't be out classed.
I guess one of the questions that always comes up for me when people are having this debate is WHY does anyone care if another play brute forces his way through the game? I can see why in MMOs, particularly when PVP is an option. But how does the fact that I 'brute forced' my way through Road to Berlin make it less of an experience for someone else? To me it feels like asking what groceries I bought at the store and then griping that the store shouldn't let me buy those in that order, but only in this other order. I'm the one eating the food/playing the game. If I brute force it then I have no place to compain that I brute forced it and ran out of content. I think it gets into this round and round the mulberry discussion of possibilities and what 'should' be the 'right' way of doing it when it's a vocal minority that are shoving hard either direction.
Like Greg I have a life and I need to be able to shut the game down without having to redo the last 30 minutes of the level when I generally get playing in 30 minute incriments anyway. A game that keeps forcing me to stay on and on or face redos...tends to go into the great bin where games go to die.
Like Greg I have a life and I need to be able to shut the game down without having to redo the last 30 minutes of the level when I generally get playing in 30 minute incriments anyway. A game that keeps forcing me to stay on and on or face redos...tends to go into the great bin where games go to die.
I like the option of "modes", where you can choose to play the game with "normal" save capability, or with a hardcore, "no save until you quit the session" type of thing.
Wizardry VIII did this. If you selected the "hardcore" setting (I think it was actually called the "Ironman" setting), if one of your characters died or if your party was wiped out then that was it for that character / party. Of course eventually your priest could learn to resurrect, at which point it wasn't too bad (unless your priest was the one to die, of course).
So I think options are the way to reach the most number of players. I have a friend who literally threw away the first Hitman game because it didn't allow you to save... if you screwed up any part of the mission you'd have to start that mission over from the beginning. He absolutely hated that. But then again, he's the type of player who tends to save every 2 minutes.
Wizardry VIII did this. If you selected the "hardcore" setting (I think it was actually called the "Ironman" setting), if one of your characters died or if your party was wiped out then that was it for that character / party. Of course eventually your priest could learn to resurrect, at which point it wasn't too bad (unless your priest was the one to die, of course).
So I think options are the way to reach the most number of players. I have a friend who literally threw away the first Hitman game because it didn't allow you to save... if you screwed up any part of the mission you'd have to start that mission over from the beginning. He absolutely hated that. But then again, he's the type of player who tends to save every 2 minutes.
# posted by : February 16, 2007 9:02 AM
: February 16, 2007 9:02 AM
I guess one of the questions that always comes up for me when people are having this debate is WHY does anyone care if another play brute forces his way through the game? ... how does the fact that I 'brute forced' my way through Road to Berlin make it less of an experience for someone else?
Because the game designer has to design around the anticipated gamer actions. And nowadays, the step-save-step-save process is so firmly ingrained in PC gamer habits that the designers are compelled to create a game with the expectation that this is how the player will be approaching the game, and scoping his challenges appropriately.
This means if you aren't quicksaving after every firefight and "brute forcing" your way through the game, you are effectively "playing it wrong" and handicapping yourself.
That sucks as both a player and a game designer.
Again, Wing Commander I is a good example. It was designed around the "wrong" scenario - the idea that players would accept the mission results and see where it took them. A lovely branching storyline (kind of). All this effort into making about nine or so additional missions to help guide the player back to the winning track after suffering some setbacks - or to make defeat dramatic and exciting.
Almost nobody played them. It was wasted effort. None of the later games bothered, because it's money wasted. Better to stick those nine missions in a linear mission path so everyone could play them, and enjoy a bigger game for the buck.
That's unfortunate, because I thought the concept was cool. But we went down to the lower common denominator.
In order to keep the branching storyline with the more dramatic possibilities of failure and clawing your way back from a fully interactive setback (rather than the annoying forced cutscene-displayed setbacks common in modern games), they'd have to have either forced save game limitations on players (which SUCKS, no question about it), or figured out some way to encourage the player to accept the occasional botched mission.
Because the game designer has to design around the anticipated gamer actions. And nowadays, the step-save-step-save process is so firmly ingrained in PC gamer habits that the designers are compelled to create a game with the expectation that this is how the player will be approaching the game, and scoping his challenges appropriately.
This means if you aren't quicksaving after every firefight and "brute forcing" your way through the game, you are effectively "playing it wrong" and handicapping yourself.
That sucks as both a player and a game designer.
Again, Wing Commander I is a good example. It was designed around the "wrong" scenario - the idea that players would accept the mission results and see where it took them. A lovely branching storyline (kind of). All this effort into making about nine or so additional missions to help guide the player back to the winning track after suffering some setbacks - or to make defeat dramatic and exciting.
Almost nobody played them. It was wasted effort. None of the later games bothered, because it's money wasted. Better to stick those nine missions in a linear mission path so everyone could play them, and enjoy a bigger game for the buck.
That's unfortunate, because I thought the concept was cool. But we went down to the lower common denominator.
In order to keep the branching storyline with the more dramatic possibilities of failure and clawing your way back from a fully interactive setback (rather than the annoying forced cutscene-displayed setbacks common in modern games), they'd have to have either forced save game limitations on players (which SUCKS, no question about it), or figured out some way to encourage the player to accept the occasional botched mission.
Ok. I have to disagree about WC 1.
The "losing" path scenarios were all harder than the winning path ones. Given that most people lost Mission 13, they all hit the losing path there (and improved their medal count and killed an enemy ace to boot). After I figured out how to beat mission 13 two out of three times, I'd then eject on mission 12 in order to maximize total medal count ...
"WHY does anyone care if another play brute forces his way" -- most of the things wrong with Privateer 2 (what a travesty of a game name, no relationship to the real Privateer) and Freelancer had to do with the designers trying to force you to play the game the way they wanted it played. Lots of games that suck green rocks through a soda straw have the problem of the designer trying to force your play.
Most players are happy with a game that does not require brute force, but that also allows it.
So you design in a way that a player doesn't have to brute force it, but can if they want to.
And, I'd have to say that most people I know learned how to generate alternative start points in WC 1 so that they got into the alternative mission stream (so they could kill a Kilrathi capital ship with their light fighter early on).
Anyway, I think your use of the example is flawed. Had WC 1 routed you to easier missions if you did poorly (so that you had more flying time to learn how to do it right), rather than ramping the difficulty level up when you demonstrated you needed it easier, there would have been more play on the alternatives.
The "losing" path scenarios were all harder than the winning path ones. Given that most people lost Mission 13, they all hit the losing path there (and improved their medal count and killed an enemy ace to boot). After I figured out how to beat mission 13 two out of three times, I'd then eject on mission 12 in order to maximize total medal count ...
"WHY does anyone care if another play brute forces his way" -- most of the things wrong with Privateer 2 (what a travesty of a game name, no relationship to the real Privateer) and Freelancer had to do with the designers trying to force you to play the game the way they wanted it played. Lots of games that suck green rocks through a soda straw have the problem of the designer trying to force your play.
Most players are happy with a game that does not require brute force, but that also allows it.
So you design in a way that a player doesn't have to brute force it, but can if they want to.
And, I'd have to say that most people I know learned how to generate alternative start points in WC 1 so that they got into the alternative mission stream (so they could kill a Kilrathi capital ship with their light fighter early on).
Anyway, I think your use of the example is flawed. Had WC 1 routed you to easier missions if you did poorly (so that you had more flying time to learn how to do it right), rather than ramping the difficulty level up when you demonstrated you needed it easier, there would have been more play on the alternatives.
Stephen -
Maybe. It's been too many years, so I can't remember relative difficulty. I did find out that my first time through the campaign (I think I played through about four or five times) I had taken one loop through the losing branch, and then came back to win the game.
[i]
Most players are happy with a game that does not require brute force, but that also allows it.
So you design in a way that a player doesn't have to brute force it, but can if they want to.[/i]
The concern for me is that the presence of brute force [i]encourages[/i] it's usage. And therefore the designers end up balancing the game against a player who is going to be brute forcing it - thus making the game almost impossible for anyone who [i]doesn't[/i] want to brute force it. It's a catch 22.
But you are right - I don't like the idea of forcing the issue by restricting saves. "Sucking Green Rocks Through Soda Straws" is a phrase I'm gonna have to use in the future :) But yeah, that's where I'd rather see something where players who are choosing not to brute force it (however that gets identified - through a "mode" as people are mentioning, or just determined by frequesncy), they should get some other benefit to reward their risk.
Incidentally, I cheated like a maniac on Freelancer. If you didn't autopilot your way in through the nodes, you could do all kinds of really tricky, nast things with the spawn triggers. I loved the game, but it was annoyingly canned.
Maybe. It's been too many years, so I can't remember relative difficulty. I did find out that my first time through the campaign (I think I played through about four or five times) I had taken one loop through the losing branch, and then came back to win the game.
[i]
Most players are happy with a game that does not require brute force, but that also allows it.
So you design in a way that a player doesn't have to brute force it, but can if they want to.[/i]
The concern for me is that the presence of brute force [i]encourages[/i] it's usage. And therefore the designers end up balancing the game against a player who is going to be brute forcing it - thus making the game almost impossible for anyone who [i]doesn't[/i] want to brute force it. It's a catch 22.
But you are right - I don't like the idea of forcing the issue by restricting saves. "Sucking Green Rocks Through Soda Straws" is a phrase I'm gonna have to use in the future :) But yeah, that's where I'd rather see something where players who are choosing not to brute force it (however that gets identified - through a "mode" as people are mentioning, or just determined by frequesncy), they should get some other benefit to reward their risk.
Incidentally, I cheated like a maniac on Freelancer. If you didn't autopilot your way in through the nodes, you could do all kinds of really tricky, nast things with the spawn triggers. I loved the game, but it was annoyingly canned.
An interesting example of a game that addressed the issue was X-Com. It was extremely insistent that you accept failure, or at least partial failure, as part of the game experience but its method was quite subtle. It allowed you to brute force your way through the missions by allowing unlimited saving and loading, effectively allowing you to reload the game every time one of your team members died or was hurt in some way.
But if you did this, you ended up getting to a point in the game where you could go no further. Your team was composed of its original members, and there was a good chance that some of those members were weak minded, or tired easily, or couldn't throw very far, or whatever. So your team kept getting wiped out by that same, stupid guy who'd go berzerk and start shooting randomly at the first sign of aliens, or by his buddy who couldn't seem to get the hang of aiming his rocket launcher. These guys had been killed many times over the course of the game, but your team hadn't had the benefit of their loss and replacement because you had kept them alive with that Reload button.
So after a while you begin to realize that while you do what you can to prevent losses, part of the game is also accepting them when they happen because in the long run they're actually beneficial to your team as an organism.
Anyway, I found it interesting because there are no modes or dialogs or fancy options that enforce the style of play; it's just right there in the game mechanics.
And who knows, maybe the designers weren't even concerned about the question.
But if you did this, you ended up getting to a point in the game where you could go no further. Your team was composed of its original members, and there was a good chance that some of those members were weak minded, or tired easily, or couldn't throw very far, or whatever. So your team kept getting wiped out by that same, stupid guy who'd go berzerk and start shooting randomly at the first sign of aliens, or by his buddy who couldn't seem to get the hang of aiming his rocket launcher. These guys had been killed many times over the course of the game, but your team hadn't had the benefit of their loss and replacement because you had kept them alive with that Reload button.
So after a while you begin to realize that while you do what you can to prevent losses, part of the game is also accepting them when they happen because in the long run they're actually beneficial to your team as an organism.
Anyway, I found it interesting because there are no modes or dialogs or fancy options that enforce the style of play; it's just right there in the game mechanics.
And who knows, maybe the designers weren't even concerned about the question.
what about games that have autosaves in certain locations and an option to save that ends the game... thus allowing you to stop playing anywhere but have no quicksave.
Colin - I never really thought of it that way, but you are right in that there was something of a Darwinian improvement in your troops over time if you allowed them to die. Though more likely, what always happened to ME was that the up-and-coming super-soldier would get greased by his less-strong-willed teammate.
Those aliens were just nasty.
David - A single save-game slot for the game is always a possibility (and was used as recently as Diablo 2), but it also irritates people. It would also possibly stifle exploration - such as in my Daggerfall "Game Moment." The reason I felt free to explore the outcome of my misfortune was because I knew I had a previous saved game I could revert to if things got too hard to handle. If that had happened in Diablo 2, the game would have been shut down at the O.S. level so it wouldn't save, and restarted :)
Post a Comment
Those aliens were just nasty.
David - A single save-game slot for the game is always a possibility (and was used as recently as Diablo 2), but it also irritates people. It would also possibly stifle exploration - such as in my Daggerfall "Game Moment." The reason I felt free to explore the outcome of my misfortune was because I knew I had a previous saved game I could revert to if things got too hard to handle. If that had happened in Diablo 2, the game would have been shut down at the O.S. level so it wouldn't save, and restarted :)
Links to this post:
<< Home
