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?
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.