If quicksave is bad then I must just be terrible. I used to play a ton of games on ZSNES and I used the rewind function like a whore. Eventually I realized I had a problem and disabled all the quicksave and rewind/fast forward/slow motion keys just so I could try and play a game the normal way.


Personally the #1 thing I hate most about playing a video game has less to do with the game itself but more the players playing it with me.

I have a multitap for my PS2 so I can play certain games with 4 players. Me and my friends play a lot of games like Champions of Norrath, X men Legends, and a few others of that style.

The main problem I have with this is A) These games are riddled with cutscenes and load screens that slow the game down a bit. Especially champions.

B) The game runs increcibly slow. Every single time a person levels up, they insist on taking 3 hours to pick what abilities they're going to put their points in. I generally know what kind of character I run so I know how I'll use my levels before I get them, so while Im finishing each level in 15 seconds I have to wait for 3 other people to stop and look up ever ability and its progression by level over the course of half an hour each before deciding that they should just level up the same ability they got last time they took 4 hours to level up. This isn't just at level ups either. This is also at equipment selection. Taking a bit of time to think on their abilities is one thing. Making 3 other people wait for an hour so you can be an idiot is another.

Okay, I used ZNES quicksaves because I wanted to avoid farming for items.

I'm a whore.

It's not meaningless if you're immersed in the game, which to me is rather the point. I recall having a minor panic attack once when I drowned in Super Mario 64; it kicked ass. :)

Wow, it must have been a real harrowing experience when Mario washed up on the shore as a bloated corpse while the game shut itself off since the main character in the story was now dead.

I don't mean to belittle your experience, which sounds like everything I hope videogames could be, but the fact remains that 'death' in videogames is merely a delay in gameplay that forces the player to re-do what he just gone done with. The only reason I don't want to die in most games is so I won't have to slog through the areas I just did. Checkpoints and extra lives are just the pointless continuations of practices that originated inside the lack of hardware space. We have better machines now, and as such we deserve better.

EDIT: Ok, I just thought of an example that kind of shits on everything I've been arguing for: A while ago I read an interview where Hideo Kojima was talking about how one of his original ideas for MGS3 was that there would be no save points at all, forcing the player to play through all in one sitting. I think that's a ballsy way to create immersion.

Of course, the fact that MGS3 shipped with savepoints kind of negates the idea, but I'm going to throw it out there: Games should only be made with no save points at all, or the ability to save at any time. Anything else is bullshit.

I like the feature. I mean, in Half Life 1 it was fantastic - I used it lots. But I think what you've got a problem with are the people/a person who does this, 'cause.... well... I don't know anyone who is a quicksave whore and if they are, challenge them to multiplayer.

Yes.

If you dont use the quicksave like a whore-- youre doing it right. No problem there. It IS the person that chooses to ruin his own experience. However-- if thats the case, then you have no argument why its bad that you can't.

Not that I'm against your opinion in spirit, I've played some MUDs with perma-death and they can be really intense, but, doesn't this mean you have to play through the entire game in one shot, without ever turning the console/PC off? I mean some people just can't do that, and I think it's silly to exclude that, most likely, rather large demographic.

Maybe in a short action game like Army of Two or some such, I could see it. It'd still be hardcore, but doable. What about a game like Mass Effect, which I imagine takes at least 20 hours to beat if you're on a low difficulty and you skip a lot of the assignments?

Also, wouldn't the repetition that's bothersome (I agree it is, fist shake to GTAIV) just come up again in full force? I mean if you had to start the game over from scratch everytime you died, you'd inevitably just repeat the part you failed at, plus all the stuff before that. I can only hope a game like this would have a fair difficulty system where a less hardcore player could choose a Very Easy mode and have a low chance of dying.

It's a cool concept though, and a challenge. Let's design some!

Maybe instead of trying to think what kind of save feature is better we need to think of what would make player death meaningful in some way other than a timesink. How do we make the death mean anything to the person that can just load up a save from a minute before?

Fire Emblem has a decent system, I think. Your characters die and that's it for them. Of course, you can always choose to try again if you want to keep that certain character but nothing forces you to (short of losing all your characters). You aren't forced to endure repetitions of a level unless you want a better outcome.

Obviously, that doesn't work for single player games or games where you might have a limited party and all the characters matter to the story.

Do we make them lose items? Money? Skills or abilities? Maybe some kind of temporary debuff? Those all suck. It makes a situation that was likely too hard for you in the first place even harder by taking your stuff.

EDIT:

Ok, how about a game that has checkpoints and a quicksave function that gives you the ability to choose to load from either when you die, but when you choose your quicksave you have to fight through a randomly generated spirit level and if you lose there then you have to load from the checkpoint? Items could even drop in the spirit world but when you finish it you can't put those items in your inventory unless you exchange something of equal value. The whole spirit level might not even have to be implemented, and the game could just generate some random items that you're forced to exchange/buy with your inventory/money if you want to load from your quicksave.

My problem is I get frustrated easily and on any mildly difficult problem I will start to whore the quicksave. I like my game to force me not to use it.
I'm ok with normal saves where you have to go out to the menu and everything but I normally have to disable quicksave keys. What I quite liked was the old "Iron Man" option on Civ games which means you can only save on exit. Good times.