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"Manual save games were a mistake." - Josh Sawyer

Manual save games were a mistake.

  • True.

    Votes: 24 9.1%
  • False.

    Votes: 240 90.9%

  • Total voters
    264

CamHostage

Member
Tell that to my Mass Effect playthoughs.. I loved saving before a big choice and seeing the different outcomes
Yes but what does it take away from the player?

Consequence. Stakes. Intensity. Finality.

We all did it, for sure. And playing a gigantic time-vortex like Mass Effect multiple times over to see different paths is just punishment on your schedule.

But I do think it robs you of the value of playing a game for the immersion of playing it. If you think of a decision as a consequence, then what you decide matters and what you know before you make that decision makes all the difference. The rewards are yours if you get it right; if not, it was your choice.

...If you think of a decision in a game as a branching path of story trees in game code, however, then you're done playing the game as a hero trying to save the world; now the storytelling is over and you have become a text/attrib investigator looking to see what different forks the developers thought to include in their product. Which sounds like more fun, being a hero or a debugger?

I think of it like the old Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novels. The first read for a kid, wow, that's cool, this story can be different every time I read it and I am in control! But then you get a day older and you pull the book apart and you get that, of course, it's a regular book just with different versions of outcomes or story paths depending on what page you're told to flip to. You collect two or three, you flip to some of the wilder outcomes, you find out all the clever ways to die, and eventually you stop buying Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books because, it turns out, one good story is worth many, many more arbitrarily-arranged ones.

6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86db8c8970b-pi.png


Games are different, because they're meant to be played (hopefully people aren't suffering through all the branching paths of games they hate playing just to see what crappy story threads are in there....) but still, if a game's story is good and if the consequences of choices really are consequential, that's way more valuable than some 80-ending RPG that has no one good way to enjoy it beginning to end.

We'll see if AI will be able to change that. AI could conceivably remix and tell new stories on the fly as players play, and they may possibly get good enough to actually offer the true breadth of consequence that games like the Mass Effect trilogy tried to promise but struggled to deliver. (They tried to have it both ways, with a bunch of tiny story threads paid off in 3 that players accumulated in 1/2 but then one global ending that all players would bond together over experiencing... it didn't quite work that way.) I worry though that AI won't work out that way, that it'll instead either just get better at disguising story branches through smarter personalization, or worse, it will come up with infinitely more inconsequential story branches for players to hammer F5/F9 all the way through to see more and tiny variants of an ending. We'll keep narrowing down how many trees we can take a look at and never have a sense of the forest.

...But, I don't know, that might be fun to play that way too.
 
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I wouldn't play games like EU4 without them. Even if I still lose some time, there's only so many times I would be willing to lose weeks of a campaign because some stupid "RNG" or hidden mechanic or just general ignorance of the crazy learning curve screwed me over.
 

John Bilbo

Member
Giving the player the ability to reload based on non ideal outcomes.

Imagine Frodo reloading after he gets stabbed by the Nazgul. The story is more interesting dealing with negative consequences.
How do you know Frodo didn't originally get stabbed in the eye but Strider took a quick reload and Frodo getting stabbed in the gut was the best outcome of that situation?

--

But for real how would you have stakes but also a fail state? Designing such a game is exponentially taxing. Maybe AI is the answer to you question.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
But you can choose to not save anyway and keep going and don't care if you're getting the good ending or not.
If the developer knows the gamer will reload after a non ideal outcome, then they're not going to waste resources on creating compelling non ideal outcomes.

Lord of the Rings would be a very different story if 85% of readers were reloading checkpoint as soon as something bad happened to one of the heroes.
 
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CamHostage

Member
... re-release MEGATEN 5 was great because I could manually save and not feel like I have to set aside chunks of my time to make progress. Sure, even if it was just 30 minutes or a hour or two I finally finished it after 50 hours.

Persona 5 golden took me ages because I just felt like I always HAD to play for hours at a time.

But you hear yourself, right?

The way you describe gaming sounds like such an abominable chore. All these things you HAD to do.... you did at least have fun, I hope, because it doesn't sound like it?
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Imagine a movie character dying, but the scene keeps replaying until he survives.

Movies are not games and shouldn't follow the same logic.
I agree. It would be terrible. We obviously don't see it very often because it's unsatisfying.

Think this through though. A large percentage of games follow a linear, "movie like", story progression...and yet they do exactly what you describe in your first sentence.

I think we're conditioned to accept this because it's a vestige of when games just started being made and no one knew what they were doing. The audience got used to this model despite it harming the overall experience.
 

Laptop1991

Member
Disagree with Josh Sawyer, the more different saves the better, he should know, Fallout New Vegas did crash now and then or a lot, and that goes for any Bethesda made game as well.
 
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As someone who used to spam manual saves in the PC golden age I can say they definitely cheapen the experience maybe in a limited resident evil style would be only way
 

Puscifer

Member
But you hear yourself, right?

The way you describe gaming sounds like such an abominable chore. All these things you HAD to do.... you did at least have fun, I hope, because it doesn't sound like it?
I had a lot of fun, the main problem I have with many games as I get older is that I feel like I have to set aside big chunks of my time to make progress.


Here's a good example of what I was talking about. I LOVED Dead Rising. I don't want to set aside entire chunks of my day to play a game and make progress. Last week I did a gravel bike ride in the mountains, it was about 4 hours and that was great. I played MEGATEN 5 that night and finished it in the last couple hours on my time and it didn't feel frustrating.

If Persona 5 let me save during dungeon runs, especially when there's one that go on for a while before the next save point, I would've likely not taken 6 months to finish it. Royal was a lot better in that regard and I finished it within a month because they had items that made runs between story beats faster.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Its one of those where the underlying point -that they are abusable as a crutch by both players and devs- is not without merit, but when argued as an absolute "rule" I have to disagree.

Its just hyperbole. And I'd argue that if you (as a designer) cannot envisage a scenario where they add something, I'd say you're suffering from a chronic lack of imagination or are simply being obtuse.
 

Edgelord79

Gold Member
It’s a fine line between dumb and dumberer to post definitive statements like this on Twitter (X) even if it is just for “engagement” purposes.
 

bender

What time is it?
And playing a gigantic time-vortex like Mass Effect multiple times over to see different paths is just punishment on your schedule.

That's what was brilliant about the original Way of the Samurai. A run of that game could last a few minutes up to two hours at most with most runs clocking in at 30-45 minutes. And because the story wasn't dozens upon dozens of hours long, the choices you made in the game could wildly swing the narrative as there wasn't an overarching narrative with an end goal that the game was trying to tell.
 

Wildebeest

Member
That's what was brilliant about the original Way of the Samurai. A run of that game could last a few minutes up to two hours at most with most runs clocking in at 30-45 minutes. And because the story wasn't dozens upon dozens of hours long, the choices you made in the game could wildly swing the narrative as there wasn't an overarching narrative with an end goal that the game was trying to tell.
I enjoyed those games, but I never actually completed one. It's just such a fucking chore to do all the trial and error busy work to find out that you need to be in some place at 10am on day one, then some other place at 1pm on day 3 and so on.
 

bender

What time is it?
I enjoyed those games, but I never actually completed one. It's just such a fucking chore to do all the trial and error busy work to find out that you need to be in some place at 10am on day one, then some other place at 1pm on day 3 and so on.

I only played the original but every run was a completion, whether you died at the town gate in the first five minutes or if you defeated one of the gangs.
 

HogIsland

Member
Baldurs Gate 3 is one of the best games of all time, and it's very save scummy. I'm more impressed by well designed checkpoints, but there are too many counter-examples to say there's a rule here.
 

Gambit2483

Member
So people who need/want to stop playing and save because they have other life obligations to attend to should just be punished and lose all progress? 🤔

Not sure I understand this argument (and yes I understand save scumming, it's a choice not obligation).
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
I very rarely save scum. The real benefit is being able to save and deal with things outside of the game as needed. Devs need to respect the players' time and life.
 

Wildebeest

Member
I only played the original but every run was a completion, whether you died at the town gate in the first five minutes or if you defeated one of the gangs.
Nobody here is going to get a game over in the first scene of a game and think they have "beaten" it.
 

bender

What time is it?
Nobody here is going to get a game over in the first scene of a game and think they have "beaten" it.

But you have beaten the game as that's how the story ends which is the point of the structure of the game. Or do you need to see every narrative outcome to consider the game completed?
 

Wildebeest

Member
But you have beaten the game as that's how the story ends which is the point of the structure of the game. Or do you need to see every narrative outcome to consider the game completed?
I think there are several ways that a player can feel satisfied from what they are getting from a game, but just saying "you got this narrative outcome, accept it" doesn't cut it. The obvious selling point of way of the samurai is immersion. You go to the town and work out what is going on, all the ins and outs. The second selling point is completion. You check off all the different endings on your list.
 

reinking

Gold Member
Do people that want to remove manual saves not have self-control? It's really easy to stick with one save if that is the way you want to play. I do that for some games and some I save scum constantly. The best thing is, it is my choice to play the way I want to play it. Removing choices is not the answer.
 
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bender

What time is it?
I think there are several ways that a player can feel satisfied from what they are getting from a game, but just saying "you got this narrative outcome, accept it" doesn't cut it. The obvious selling point of way of the samurai is immersion. You go to the town and work out what is going on, all the ins and outs. The second selling point is completion. You check off all the different endings on your list.

It's not about saying "you got this narrative outcome, accept it", it's about inviting a the player to replay the game to find other narrative outcomes. Not every path is satisfying and because of the brief runtime of any given playthrough, it isn't a time sink which is the point of my original post.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Do people that want to remove manual saves not have self-control? It's really easy to stick with one save if that is the way you want to play. I do that for some games and some I save scum constantly. The best thing is, it is my choice to play the way I want to play it. Removing choices is not the answer.
It's not really about self control.

People keep bringing up Mass Effect to counter the Josh Sawyer tweet but they shouldn't.

Mass Effect was built with the developers knowing 99.99% of players were going to reload. They fundamentally designed the experience around that.

If they design Mass Effect knowing 0% of players have the reload function, it becomes a vastly different experience.
 

hinch7

Member
Nah manual saves me time. In massive games and RPG's with multiple paths and endings its a no brainer.

That and I love cheesing puzzles with finite resources.
 
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I don't save scum or reload to see different outcomes. I just commit because I'm not spending time going through the menu and reloading to see more stuff or not die. If I want to know additional outcomes, I usually just go to youtube. When I was a child that got maybe 2 new games a year, I would play multiple playthroughs. I like my manual saves so I can quit and do something else whenever I want
 
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nkarafo

Member
I like the choice.

If i like a game and i'm in the mood of testing my skills with it, i don't save scum.

If i don't care that much and i just want to see the graphics, i save scum.

I have too many games and much less patience compared to when i only had a SNES with 5 games to play.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Why you always makes everything seems harder? Its just a game, not all games have to be immersive
It's not really about difficulty, though I can see why you'd say that.

I assume a few people here loved Halo CE back in the day. One of the best moments in that game was this opening where you storm a beach with a dozen or so marines. That moment is so fun because, depending on your performance, you can take anywhere between 10 - 0 marines with you to the rest of the level. Games designed around manual saves often force you into a binary (pass or fail) and if you fail, you just have to try the same scenario again. Games built with auto save are more likely to create scenarios like the beach opening below. Was that opening hard? Not really. It certainly didn't need to be.

 
For something like BG3, it ruins flow of the game.

Though manual save can have its uses.

System Shock remake for example. Its an old school game and one can get absolutely wrecked if unlucky. So am making constant saves so as to not replay encounters.
 

ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
While we're being bold, here's mine: completion percentage was a mistake

Stop letting people even know if they've crossed off every item / path / quest on lists and achievements, it encourages people to turn games into some kind of content that you compulsively must finish, as if every bit of it is significant. It's okay not to see everything, we have too much entertainment in our lives already.
 
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I get his point. You cheat yourself a lot in gaming save scumming and it cheapens the stakes. That being said there is nothing like saving in fallout and blowing off someone’s head just to see what would happen. We’re human beings on borrowed time, you can’t see it all know it all suck it all but save scumming helps you see more in shorter time.
 

CamHostage

Member
Its one of those where the underlying point -that they are abusable as a crutch by both players and devs- is not without merit, but when argued as an absolute "rule" I have to disagree.

Well, it's just a thought experiment.

Sawyer is not saying save-anywhere in games should be abolished; that cat is well of the bag. (And the cat has made some lives better by being out and changing fates.) But as a designer, as somebody who thinks about why and how people play games, he's considering the downsides and wishing things could have gone differently.
 

Nickolaidas

Member
I think he means he wants an 'Ironman' mode on all games, not depriving you of the ability to save whenever you want.

Basically like Souls games - game saves every 10 seconds so that you do not lose your progress if your machine turns off due to a power outage or if you want to quickly quit the game because IRL reasons, but depriving you of the ability to save scum.

I say, he is wrong. Imagine playing a game like Baldur's Gate 3 where you have a single chance of recruiting an NPC based on an attack roll and you fudge the dice. Now you have to beat the game without that NPC, or you have to start over and play again for 50 hours until you reach that spot.

So, no. In games like the above, save scumming should most DEFINITELY be an option.
 

CamHostage

Member
I say, he is wrong. Imagine playing a game like Baldur's Gate 3 where you have a single chance of recruiting an NPC based on an attack roll and you fudge the dice. Now you have to beat the game without that NPC, or you have to start over and play again for 50 hours until you reach that spot.

...But if it's how you describe it, that sounds like flat-out bad game design. Or at least punishing-on-purpose game design. If a game is designed for rare events to be so special that they only happen at specific times that the player is expected to be prepared for or else, that's mean but that's the game; ideally they don't make you play the whole thing for 50 hours if you're shit out of luck without the perfect role at a critical time.

I assume though that BG3 is still playable without that specific NPC? How they balance rare and common attribs is part of what sets RPGs apart from one another. A good balance has pain as well as rewards. You saying though, "Fuck pain, I want all the stuff"... okay, have it, you can do whatever with your purchases, but if a game makes something special, it's supposed to feel special if you earn it, and it's also supposed to have a route outside of that specialness be fun all the same for those who didn't roll a rarity.

If you were playing a pen-and-paper D&D, like Baldur's Gate is a part of, a dungeonmaster would not give you a second chance to role and incredibly rare option; players are expected to roll with the punches. For some reason though we have been conditioned to play videogames without some of the "game" portions affecting us. We cheat, and nobody's telling us not to cheat or forcing us not to cheat. In good games, though, (and I don't have BG3 myself but all have said that it's a very good game,) the design will hopefully reward the experience of enjoying the complete game by its rules. And if it's that good by design, we could be cheating ourselves a bit by breaking those rules to roll our way every time.

Game-of-Dungeons-and-Dragons.jpg
 
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