Hi
I wonder how is Elemental going to be designed in regards to Save / Load feature ? Current trend in games is Save/Load rather than Save/Continue. To clarify, Save/Continue allows player to save the game at any time (to continue later, to help against power failure etc), but only reload it once.
Roguelike games and Dominions 3 (turn-based strategy) are known for having permanent death. Once something dies, it stays dead. Some players accuse this approach of being unnecessarily harsh, but that's not the full story. Yes, you can lose your best commanders and army in a single Dominions3 battle. Or your prophet. Or pretender. But the game offers many ways to recover. You can appoint new prophets, and the impact of experience on units is fairly small so it's never a truly crippling event like it is in Heroes of Might and Magic games. Dominions 3 is built around permanent death. It has spells which help you recover. Your heroes can be brought back as mummies or wights, for example. Your pretender can be summoned back by priests (Think Spell of Returning in Master of Magic).
"Permanent death" games are unique in many ways. In these games, skills like stealth or scouting actually matter. (For comparison, Scouting - which increases sight range - is widely considered one of worst skills in Homm3). Detect Creatures is a very valuable spell in Crawl. So are various forms of scrying, scounts and spies in Dominions. Sadly, this is not the case in Save/Load games. If there's a dragon around the corner, you can simply reload the game and face no consequences. This is not as beneficial as you might think. Baldur's Gate and many other party-based RPG games have an option to resurrect fallen party members, but who actually uses it ? Why pay a high price in gold (or something else) if you can simply reload ? That's right - Save/Load removes a big chunk of potential gameplay mechanics from the game ! Players could be encouraged to invest in some scouting or spells like invisibility, Farsight, Visions etc.
Lack of proper 'save/load' feature is frustrating in some games - especially in those with campaigns, story, deterministic events (logic games, traditional FPS games etc). But in heavily randomised games it's perfectly ok to have Save/Continue instead ! Dominions 3 players like to write AAR's - After Action Reports, where they relate the tale and fate of their empires, often in a story-like fashion. Turn-by-turn, even in from single player games. This is possible because lack of 'load' makes each match feel quite epic. Heroes rise to fame and fall. Empires grow and crumble. A player in traditional save/load game would have a fairly bland match instead, he would simply be able to min/max every skill and unit, and only fight battles he can win.
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I think I know the answer, but I want to ask netherless. Will Elemental be a traditional Save/Load game ?
How about a separate difficulty setting, like Hardcore in Diablo games, which only offers Save/Continue and no 'load' ? Is this how player-controlled 'bots' are going to work, perhaps ? You mentioned that there will be option to connect to internet and play against AI-controlled opponents using an interface very similar to a typical multiplayer match. ("Are you a human ? Are you SURE ?"
I know the ultimate 'load game prevention mechanism' is multiplayer. And I like multiplayer, too. But multiplayer has some issues, including a very cutthroat environment. Sometimes I'm not in a mood for a cutthroat game and would like to play with some underdog races or units.
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To players wanting to say something along the lines "I prefer Save/Load because I have no time to waste on starting over or performing less than perfect and I only ever enjoy winning and never the process of playing a game LOLOLOLOOLOL!!!11" ... I have a question. How many Save/Continue games have you played ? Name some.
I don't care about your opinion I'm more concerned with facts which are scarce to say the least in everything you've said so far. Not that I really care because I don't think there is a snow ball's chance in hell that Stardock would go with the save/continue system given its shortcomings and the fact that save/load is capable of emulating save/continue. I am however surprised that you lack the ability to come up with any concrete opinion independent arguments for save/continue yet your devotion to it seems fanatical. Also, a long, wordy, and repetitive response does not make a good response.
Here's a thread "Save/load mania", concerning the free TBS Wesnoth. It supports my argument that adding save/load option has many downsides. Last time I played an early version of Wesnoth, I think it didn't have an option to save mid-game and I had to finish scenarios in one go.http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6321&st=0&sk=t&sd=aPeople talk about reloading whenever a veteran unit dies etc, how playing without load affects their behaviour by making them more cautious and prepared players... It's pretty clear save/continue has a strong psychological and gameplay effect. People disagreeing with this are either not perceptive enough, or in denial. Especially that the thread starts with a poll, with predictable results. It's funny, because many of them reach a conclusion not using save/load made the game more enjoyable, and taught them to play better.
I fail to see why you post a thread where the Poll indicates that most people prefer to be able to load in the middle of a mission than not. And where a lot of people admit to reload because they don't want to lose a single unit or they don't find fun when they get a streak of bad luck and their units die in a "unfair" way... It is like you are going against yourself...
Btw, in my oppinion, a much better design to get the feeling of "becoming/playing better" are achievements. Some people love getting them and some people just play the game and don't care.
Bandwagon fallacy, a.k.a Appeal to popularity. By your own logic, Elemental should be a FPS game because it would sell more copies that way.
Your own poll supports me
As far as I know Stardock makes games to earn money as all companies out there. And Save/Load seems to be normal choice in the mainstream TBS games (while Wesnoth and Dominions are nice, one is free and the other a cult hit at most). Adding a feature that appeals the masses is better than adding a feature that appeals a smaller subset of players.
And don't mix things together: TBS is a viable genre to make money as Stardock and other companies show. But as with any other genre, you need to do it well. There are plenty of FPS games that fail spectaculary or don't break even.
Do you have any argumentation behind your 'would be equally fun', or is it just 'because I say so' ? I can certainly see a lot of players reloading when a spell effect gives underwhelming result, whenever any truly bad random event happens, when you run into a strong enemy, when you lose your prophet or pretender in battle (lots of battle effects are chance-based so reloading would help against stray arrows etc).
This again: what's the problem reloading if they want to reload? Most times players play to have fun, so if they reload is probably because that's their way of getting more fun out of the game. Your whole speech seems to imply that there's something bad/wrong/un-fun reloading a game.
It's perfectly possible to make a game that follows a path less traveled with good results. Sometimes it's called innovation and many people like that. Fantasy General has no town or city building. Master of Magic has unit upkeep. HOMM doesn't have unit upkeep and it's one of reasons army sizes tend to be measured in weeks. Games use different approaches to many aspects, and often they're so different they're not comparable. It's impossible to say one is strictly better or worse.
And guess what? MoM and HoMM allow you to save games! (I don't remember FG, I played that game a looong time ago). Btw, FG doesn't "innove" much on my book, if you are a wargamer you know there have been very similar board games forever (and FG wasn't the first game from SSG either).
Save/load is the right thing to do in many strictly linear and deterministic games, because otherwise it forces replay and that's boring. Save/continue is a different approach. Neither is strictly better than the other, although I prefer save/continue for the reasons I listed. What's important is that they're both viable, and they're generally mutually exclusive - if you want a well designed game. Calling save/continue a subset of save/load is, for certain types of games, incorrect.
Some people think that not been able to reload to avoid some disaster, to test some crazy idea or just to show/remember later a "special moment" is boring. Also, in games with random chances, some people become frustrated when they think they have had too much bad luck and that the game has been "unfair".
Doing a Windows Service in C# that uses FileSystemWatcher to modify the saves games directory would be pretty easy. And it could install with a double click. Not much effort there for the person using the mod.
And about the beneficial gameplay effects: it has beneficial gameplay effects for you, for me it has many negative gameplay effects.
If you can think outside the box, you realize that save/continue is not any worse than save/load. Objecting to a game being designed with this approach would be like objecting to not having construction options in Fantasy General, or not having upkeep costs in HOMM games. It's a premise, it's the point of entry. Fundamental part of game design. You either like it, or don't like it and pick another game. Things like this shouldn't be viewed in a technical 'feature checkbox' way - unless someone does something horribly wrong, like forcing players to pass 10 missions without saving, or having lives' limit in a logic game.
I can think outside the box and for me it's worse, because it's an artificial restriction that doesn't achieve anything valuable.
Then reading sales numbers, Galactic Civilizations 2 did surprisingly well given that they are "nonexistan in mainstream". I suppose the same can be said about Civilizations, HoMM,... But what it's surprising is that you are pushing for a feature that is less popular in a genre that according to you is highly unpopular, that seems a recipe for financial disaster.
Finally we agree on something. Yes, Master of Magic is a very un-replayable game (in the first turns)! Seriously, first few dozen of turns are terribly boring and schematic. Most of the time it's "Set taxes to 1.5, explore with your starting units for a while, scout with magic spirit. Build +population buildings (granary, farmers' market) and then +production buildings like sawmill and foresters' guild. Bulding miners' guild next will probably be the best choice. Only then Master of Magic leaves it's terribly boring stage and things start getting colorful. Until then, it's "next turn, next turn, next turn, next turn". For me it was the most boring part of each game, and it heavily discouraged me from starting a new game. Having the same queue for units and buildings didn't help. As opposed to Dominions3, in which a combination of save/continue with immediate action meant things are colorful from the word 'go'.MOM was the only civ-like game I enjoyed, so I won't comment on Civ. I have no idea about MOO. I have only played Shadow Magic out of AoW games, and it suffers from the same design choices as MOM - initial construction phase is quite long and repetitive, discouraging from starting a new game. Having lenghty and schematic opening seriously harms replayability especially in a save/continue game, that's why making the beginning fun is even more important.
We must have played a different Dominions 3 because everything you said there applies to Dominions too. Build army, roll over neutral province, rinse and repeat with very similar armies and strategies until you find someone. In the meanwhile research or kill with your pretender (if it's not a sleeping pretender) and have "fun" accounting which mage has searched what type of site in each province... Yep, the same as the start of MoM, Civ and AoW.
If anything, it's an understantement. Many players reload when something less than optimal happens (such as only getting X from event Y). They may think they're having fun, but many discover they're boring themselves.
This is, for me, the failure of your whole argument: the majority are having fun for sure. For a lot of people Save/Continue limits the game in a way that becomes more un-fun than Save/Load. They don't want to think about the different 1000 combinations and what may happen 100 moves ahead and then lose because they didn't acknowledged posibility 1001, which, btw, was totally random and out of their control (becoming frustrated with the game in the process).
I disagree.
First of all, Dom3 was made to be a PBEM game (the developpers said so). Therefore it was designed to be a multiplayer game foremost (which explains why it's save/continue, as you can't do save/reload in MP). When you start dom3, the first turn will nto always be the same, depending on yoru nation and pretender. Most of the time, you'll do the same thing, but sometimes you'll do a blind attack with awake Wyrm for isntance. The second turn is different. Define Research priority, or not, decide where to attack. Third turn provides you with a choice in conquered province: Hire scout, or commander to ferry troops while building troops + mage in capital or something different. On fourth turn, you're likely to have found out an opponent, whcih in MP means diplomacy, and in SP means adapting your build and research priorities and your development plans according to this intelligence. This takes 4 turns, which is far less then the boring stages of MOM.
This effectively means Diablo II is save/reload: When you died you can reload. Hardocre you can't, so it's the same as a save/load to me.
We'll have to agree to disagree. It has, for me, so it has for some players, period.
Try to play NetHack and win without savescumming and you might understand.
To you. To some people it does. Some people turn save/continue games into save/load games because they prefer it that way. People have different preferences. That you don't understand the points don't mean they are'nt valid, it just means they don't apply to you personnally. The psychological argument is a good example: It is an argument and important for some people, but you deny that it may be an argument because it doesn't apply to you. Not everyone thinks like you.
It's a design choice, depending on the game. I think save/load is better for a single player TBS, but save/Continue is better for MP games or roguelikes.
Mmmmm.
I tend to notice that most communities of 4x games assume Ironman style play as standard even if the game allows you to save and reload wheneevr you want. Regulars tend to equate reloading with cheating. Personally I've always found this retarded. It holds an implication that players need it as a crutch to win on whatever they play, which is blatantly false. I don't lose when I play ironman style - just, there's a lot more tedium and repetition before my inevitable win, because the minor mistakes I make add up enough to slow me down, but not seriously threaten me.
If you're mentally inferior enough that you can not only be actually forced into a losing situation by having reloading taken away from you, but also enjoy that, fine, play that way. No skin off my nose. But don't try to drag your betters down by trying to enforce that style on them. It's a waste of our time, and nothing that adds meaningful challenge.
*facepalm* Look, design the game for save/continue gameplay, but give a save/load option, and give the hardcore ppl their "hardcore mode" checkbox that limits the option menu to "save and exit" (ie, "load" and "save" options are greyed out) and be done with it. This topic is utterly ridiculous. I personally agree with the save/load camp, but I don't see the problem of giving the hardcore people their psycological trigger.
I don't think so. Many players of 4X regularly use save/load, either to beat the bad dice rolls or to see what the map looks like. Some restart and go back in time to do things differently, but most reloaders do it to either know where the lands/opponents are and to avoid bad luck.
However, those who want to be competitive (multiplayer) have to avoid reloading, and those who want to brag about their wins make them look better because they didn't reload. They are probably more vocal, but certainly not as numerous as reloaders.
Having both options would be great. There are time when I play (watching the kids, busy with other stuff ect) that I want to be able to reload a silly move.
On the other hand when able to really go for it and set aside time for the game its great to have an ironman feature.
Still only the first ir really needed since you can simply not chose to reload a lost battle or bad move... you are that strong right?
Insanetitan sums it up.
Design the game for save/continue gameplay in mind, so there is only very rare cases where unlucky rolls will ruin your game. Design the game in a way that a very strong army will never lose to a weak one due to luck/bad rolls. Player don't want to push the load/save button out of frustation.
However, I definitely need save/load when I learn the game mechanics/balance, try things out initially. The Campaign should be in this mode, but the default for most other should be save/continue in most cases.
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