I wish all games would just let you save whenever you want to! Why is using checkpoints and auto saves so common?
At least add a quit and save option if you want to avoid save scumming.
These days I just want to be able to squeeze in some gaming whenever I can even if it’s just quick sessions. That’s annoyingly hard in games that won’t let you save.
I wonder what the reason for this is?
The thing I fucking hate is when the game doesn’t make it obvious when a checkpoint is activated. Then you go to quit the game: “Everything since the last checkpoint will be lost”. Well WHEN WAS THE LAST MOTHERFUCKING CHECKPOINT, ASSHOLE?
Yeah, it really can’t be that hard to show a saving indicator…
I hate that even when it is obvious. If I save and then immediately quit and it says “everything since the last save will be lost” I’m always paranoid that it means I didn’t actually save correctly.
“obvious” means, I think, that it says something like “last saved 5 seconds ago”
Implementation probably. Checkpoints are easy because you don’t have to save the entire game state, just the progression.
Yeah, good point and that’s a valid reason I suppose.
It’s still very nice when you have more flexibility.
Wish PC games could implement something like the xbox quick resume or something.
That’s already a thing on the steam deck and it works with almost any game.
Microsoft could implement it for Windows too, but people will want still use their computer when pausing a game so it’s a lot harder to do.
Wonder is Valve could implement that on windows as well?
Iirc they are working to integrate it into the Steam client on desktop wherever possible (and to try to allow for cloud syncing the game state between devices.) Not sure how it’s been going but iirc it was never going to be made available until after the UI update (which came out quite recently.)
That would be awesome, I hope they can do it!
I hate when folks ask for this and assholes say “people will just use this to save scum, don’t cheat.” As if working adults with children should be able to dedicate a whole hour totally uninterrupted.
Pretty much this. And if they’re worried about that just make it so you can only save and quit?
Also, who cares? It’s your game; play it however you like. I mean, isn’t the whole reason why people play video games is to have fun? If save scumming is your idea of fun, I say scum away.
The problem being that a lot of people don’t actually know what it is that will make them happy. Winning is good, right? Yeah, but not if it’s too easy. Being to save the game state at any point makes a lot of games much too easy to be any fun. And while you might argue “well just don’t save all the time,” people are also bad at creating their own handicaps to increase fun.
Yes, there are exceptions to every generalization (see: OSRS Ultimate Ironman) but by and large there’s a reason why the most popular kind of games are set up the way they are.
You ever play Monopoly Go? Straight-up not fun because it’s basically impossible to lose.
Winning is good, right? Yeah, but not if it’s too easy
That’s how you feel about it, though, not an objective thing everybody feels the same about. I absolutely cheat whenever I’m finding a game too difficult, and I assure you, I’m still enjoying the game. I don’t know what people get out of what I find to be the extremely infuriating act of repeatedly failing over and over until I finally get it right, but I have not ever felt the sense of accomplishment I’m told I should feel after finally beating something I struggled with. I feel angry and like I wasted a bunch of time when I could have been enjoying something more fun.
I’m just trying to have a good time, not compete with myself or prove that I can learn just the right way and right time to hit certain button combos or whatever.
I feel like the answer is twofold.
Either the developers hit technical limitations of their save system and couldn’t reliably restart everything. I feel like RDR2 did this because most of their missions were very specific scripted sequences that needed to be kept on track from the start. A lot of roguelikes are unable to save during a run or within a node of that run. For example Peglin and Void Bastards. It’s much easier to say what node or position the player is at than all the AI states, combat, etc. Additionally, automatic saving has always been difficult. Everyone knows the whole “the game auto-saved and now I die instantly over and over again” bug that happens in any game. The way to negate this is to use checkpoints with areas where you know the player isn’t going to get attacked. Another way is to try to detect when you are in combat or not but this can lead to the game never saving. Overall it’s much easier to just save a state that you know the player will be okay to start back up in.
Or the designers felt like it added something to the game like in Alien Isolation. Save points allow you to exit and designers are trying to focus on keeping players playing. So save points are also an exit point. When you allow the player to save, you allow the player to exit without feeling like they must continue going. Designers use this to try to keep their games more engaging. Super Meat Boy removed a few exit points from typical platformers in order to make the game faster. A lot of games try to be so easy to keep playing that they make it hard to stop. In some ways, this can be seen as a dark pattern in game design. Typically though, designers aren’t trying to be nefarious but instead trying to keep the game engaging.
Ugh… I wish more developers kept their customers engaged by making good games instead of creating some meta game to keep the hamster wheel running. That feels like a lot of MMO’s…
In some cases, yes, they are trying to keep the wheel running and make the player less likely to quit by using psychology. Valve is very famous for deploying psychology in their games. Specifically DOTA and CSGO. But a lot of the time the design intent is innocent. In Super Meat Boy the intent was clearly and well stated that they didn’t want the player to blame the game and to keep them trying again as quickly as possible. If you are going to make a tough platformer then it’s clearly a good design choice to allow players to keep trying as fast as possible. With Alien Isolation, again the design intent is innocent as they are just looking to add tension and give the player some sense of relief from that tension. Most media follows a flow of tension then drops to relief a bit, then tension. If you keep the reader/player/viewer/etc tense all the time then they become dull to it. Frankly, it’s why I haven’t gone back into Red Dead 2 for about a week. The game has just mounted tension over and over again without a break to just be a cowboy. Always something to do and something to prepare for.
Reason is “Game state is hard”.
If you want to save, you gotta be able to take the current state of everything and serialize it, then read what you’ve serialized and put it back. If you only do checkpoints, you can make assumptions about game state and serialize less.
Generally, it is much easier to develop AI and such when you never have to pull it’s state out and then restore it, because if that is done improperly you get bugs like the bandits in STALKER forgetting they were chasing you after a quicksave-quickload because their state machine is reset.
With checkpoints, you can usually say “right, enemies before here? Dead or dealt with. Enemies after here? they’re in their default state. Player is at this position in space. Just write down the stats and ignore the rest.”
And autosaves just make it one less menu to fiddle with.
Omg remember games that didn’t have saving but had a code you had to write down on physical paper to get back to where you were?
Very much so! For the longest time I had a xerox of some gaming magazine with all the save codes for Lemmings!
That was my only issue with the otherwise excellent Shovel Knight! It had very long levels and only saved once you beat them.
I’d never play that on PC. It would work on xbox though since quick resume just let’s ju pop out to the dashboard and resume whenever. It’s not foolproof but I’ve only had to restart from a checkpoint a few times.
Like someone else above said, on PC you can just use Cheat Engine to speed hack it to 0x speed, pausing the game!
One of my favorite things about the DS family was its pick up and play nature. Sure not every game would let you save and quit, but you could just shut the lid and come back later and everything will still be right where you left it.
Same, and now one of my favorite things about the Switch and Steam Deck 👍
emulators have this ability
True but that won’t help with many modern games.
I believe steam can also
Really? Any idea how?
I have to test it more but it was just resuming the game on steam
Or pause during cut scenes!
Or skip cutscenes.
Fucking death stranding
That’s a large part of why, with older games, I prefer to use emulators, even if they’re available to me in other ways. I love the “save state” option. It’s terribly exploitable, of course, but it sure is convenient to be able to save literally anywhere.
Dude, I remember people going OFF on Returnal not offering any saves and people having to keep their consoles in rest mode for days at an end because they wouldn’t want their runs to end. I kept arguing with people on rexxit that any respectable rogue-lite/-like has a save function - STS, Hades, Dead Cells - yet they still kept arguing that implenting saves would “ruin the vision of the game” and “make it too easy”.
Guess what Housemarque did: they added a save on exit option. You can now suspend your run and finish it whenever. Not having to potentially brick your console just because you can’t save mid-game sure is a boon lol. The game sure got a lot easier with this implemented. /s
STS does allow you to cheese the game with its save system, which is why most roguelikes also delete the save file after they load it, only saving the game when you need to put a bookmark in it to come back later.
