Let's talk about how bad save systems are

Was playing Far Cry Primal on Expert Survivor. 24hrs in. Got a legendary beast I tamed that died stupidly by falling down from a cliff. No biggie I tell myself, I'll just reload an earlier save. Nope. Game autosaved and there is NO WAY I can go back to an earlier.

It reminded me how utterly shitty many save systems are in modern games. Is it too much to ask for? A couple of different files to choose from, an auto-save and manual save feature. That's it. TES does it right, TW3 does it right but so many games fail at such a fucking basic thing.

Bioshock Infinite for example has only one save file and only features auto-save. No damn way to manually back up your save and no way to make multiple save files meaning only one guy can play at a time. It's easy to work around on PC but on console? Not so much.

Auto-save has become the single thing I hate the most. It essentially locks me out of things. What if I wanna revisit an earlier point in the game? What if I made a major screw up and wanna change it. Nope. We got it all figured out for you. We'll force our shitty save system on you so you can't fix anything you screw up.

Fallout 4 saves way too much, pretty sure that's like easily half my used cloud storage. Douches. Anyhow, I'm mostly fine, everything autosaves these days, people seem to hate that though like it makes games unchallenging. I think it just makes them less tedious.

Only game that gave me issue most recently was last year, playing MGS5 and in middle of mission tried taking out tank, failed. Game decided to autosaves me right next to the tank out in open field and there was no escaping it.

Beats forgetting to press F5 only to die and lose hours worth of gameplay. Or going back to a game a year later only to see 500 save files with hopes of starting at a specific point. I hate save points more because often I need to leave but can't because I have to find the next save point first. Or like in Omikron where you have to find save rings just so you can save.

Some where you have to watch a cut scene over and over are bad.

From my experience with 3 and Blood Dragon, can you not have a manual save point? Don't you save a new one every once in a while?

@pimphand_gamer: basically if you are too dumb to remember to save, manual saves are bad. Leave it to casuals to be overburdened by such a simple concept.

Uhm.... I'm 100% sure Bioshock Infinite had Multiple Save Files..... yes it Autosaves but any Autosave that occurs in a new chapter got its own Dedicated Save File...... I think you could load it up from the Main Menu...... I don't remember where though.... I only did it once.

If I remember correctly I think it was a Patch.... right around the time they allowed 99 Mode without needing to finish the game.

As for the Topic at hand.

How about them Dark Souls Bonfires and President Evil Type Writers ey ? :)

LoL.... really hated those.

At least we don't have to find type writer ribbons in order to save anymore

Dark souls is one of those where it actually fits the game

They have to appease the casuals man you know this already. The COD generation. Not like we're much better anyway it's a console thing

@lamprey263: If you are right beside the tank, just rush the tank and use your fulton parachute thing to get rid of it.

lol. That is such a non-issue.

@howmakewood:

No.... it fits the Story.... or theme.

Dark Souls has alot of those types of Design Decisions. For every mechanic they had they needed to ask themselves whether it would be good for the Gameplay or for the Narrative. I suspect they couldn't come up with a Contrivance for why The Chosen Undead would Respawn to a Convenient Location immediately right before the White Mist in a Checkpoint Style Fashion should they die...... so they won't for the next thing Predetermined Save Points..... I'm surprised they didn't make you pay a Fee (like humanity) just to save.

@a-new-guardian:

I don't know if thats what influenced Ubisoft's Decision...... after From what I understand Far Cry has been using Inconvenient Save Systems since Far Cry 2 to give more Permanence to your actions and choices or atleast to make you weigh how much progress you're willing to lose in order to.... well.... retry whatever is you wanted to try.

Its just something to Think about.

lol I'm playing RE Origins on PS4 at the moment, currently playing through Zero. It's actually not too bad you can just drop shit on the floor and see where it is on the map. Far from ideal of course, but both games rock hard, I love this shit.

Amen brother.

@blueinheaven: when you drop stuff on the floor, does it remain there persistently until you pick it back up, or does it disappear eventually?

@Juub1990: This, goddamn, this...1000x.

I can understand in the early days of gaming, when that shit was exclusively for kids who didn't have a damn thing to do to keep themselves occupied. But now that gaming has entered the mainstream and is a perfectly valid hobby for adults with jobs and families and actual lives outside of gaming, how the living **** are we still tolerating software that doesn't let us save our progress? Would anyone here be okay if their word processing software only autosaved after every 500 words, regardless of whether you wanted to save or not? Seriously, **** this shit.

To be fair, I usually don't find autosaves to be too problematic. But I am still under the notion that there should ALWAYS be an option to turn those autosaves off and replace it with manual saves at any point. I do NOT like my software deciding for me when is the right time to save. And this is ESPECIALLY true considering how buggy games can get now that developers have the option of releasing broken games and then just patching them later. Let me ****ing save my progress when I think is best, and for god's sake, have more than one ****ing save file. Player mistakes happen, glitches happen, data corruption happens. I wouldn't spend 30 hours typing an essay on ONE SAVE FILE, so why the **** would I want to invest 30 hours in a ****ing GAME that only allows one save file? For god's sake, at least allow me ONE manual save file in addition to the game's single auto-save file.

@pimphand_gamer: See, I'm actually okay with that, because at least then it was my fault. There's a sense of "I screwed up, so I'll try not to do that next time", as opposed to "the game screwed up, and there's nothing I can do to fix that." At least the former gives me some level of control and a means to fix the problem, whereas the latter requires me to be entirely subject to some developer who doesn't have the slightest ****ing idea what my individual circumstances are.

Now, granted, I'm not opposed to autosaves. I'm saying that they should be an OPTIONAL thing that players can choose to TURN OFF. And that there should be an OPTION for manual saving: if not for simple redundancy, for the possibility that the player just plain hates where the developer is deciding where progress saves should happen.

@_Matt_: It stays there. It means a bit of running back and forth but it's better than losing it altogether.

Manual save and autosave, multiple save slots, save anywhere. Games have been doing that for over 20 years, it's not so hard.

That said there are some games where a single save has meaning due to the nature of the games. Some examples are games in the vein of Diablo 2 and Dark Souls.

The dark souls save system is one of the main reasons i cant play it. And the lack of a pause button.

Oh how i hate it when the autosave kicks in the most useless times . Having to replay the easiest and most boring enemies to get to the difficult part of the game just to die and replay those tedious parts again is utterly stupid

I agree about TW3 letting you save everywhere outside battles is the best compromise and wish more games implemented this system ( it makes the game challenging by not letting you save during battle and it doesn't get annoying by relying on autosaves alone )

Crysis 1 used a quick-save system. You could save it anywhere, along with stealth checkpoints in case you fucked up your quick-save at a bad point.

Crysis 2 uses checkpoints only, most likely due to being built with consoles in mind.

Aside from checkpoints, it attempts to be more cinematic. What this results in is slow fade out of black screens, as soon as the game start up. Being forced to listen to the same gobbledygook over and over and being forced to relive the same scripted sequence over and over.

Very ill thought out.

"The way I love to play my games? I like permissive Save Systems. Who are you to tell me how I should and shouldn't save my game. But when we talked about Darkest Dungeon™ we realised that wouldn't work - it would rob the player of the experience that we intended them to have." - Tyler Sigman

Yeah.... you can take your "experience" and Go **** Yourself ! :(

So it seems like games these days Developers are Changing Certain well established Design Methodologies in order to give you some sort of experience..... you know... to increase Tension, add Permanence, Atmosphere, reinforce the plot, increase Difficulty, etc.

Save Systems shouldn't be one of those things..... it really doesn't matter what type of experience you're trying to force on the player or how well you actually succeed at pulling it off...... the bottom line is you're not respecting the player's time.

And seriously if you have to depend on such a cheap trick to pull it off then your game is garbage.

Ugh those are the worst! The worst one was BF: Hardline when you save after starting a chapter but not progressing far enough to trigger a save.

I didn't mind it in Until Dawn as it forced a permanent decision on me, which made it feel more real. But in games where I'm encouraged to explore I appreciate being able to save where I want.

Yeah, but at least Fallout 4 has a quick save on PC. Many console ports to PC don't have quick save, and I get it in some aspects, but mostly it's annoying.

@verbtex:

Thats not a Game though, so honestly they can just do whatever works.

I always prefer manual saves with many save files. If you forget to save it's your fault.

Most sensible games (pretty much all) with manual saves couple with them checkpoints in case you do mess up, or if you simply want to reply a section again.

Something else that's pretty poor about checkpoints only, they generally don't let you jump back to earlier sections.

I haven't played 4, but I actually liked how 3 saved. Yes it was saving constantly (each time you entered or left a building it saved) but that meant you could experiment endlessly if you wanted, and lose nothing off your main file if you didn't like how something went.

I instantly thought of Rise of the Tomb Raider- just finished it.

There's sections with cool set-pieces where the ground is basically crumbling beneath you or you're being chased, and you have to keep moving and react and time your jumps at the right times to not die. I found the game to be somewhat unfair at times during this, like jumps didn't perform how I thought they should have, or it didn't give you enough time to react.

The game saves before these parts, and usually during as well. So if you die you automatically respawn about right where you were, and makes it super lame and not tense because you know what's about to come up, and there's no penalty for dying.

I don't mind auto saves, as long as there is, at least, a quick save option as well. I completely detest check points, especially when there is absolutely no manual save option.

I play most games with 2 or 3 manual save files, that way they don't take up too much space and there are options if something has gone horribly wrong.

@drummerdave9099:

Isn't it Annoying when I third person Shooting Adventure Game starts grading your performance by your Ability to Cling onto Ice and occasionally tapping the Jump button? :(

Its the worst.