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Classic Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Sin And Punishment In Games 103

Posted by simoniker from the saving-good-saving-more-better dept.
Thanks to NTSC-UK for their article discussing how games punish players for dying. The article starts: "Repetition has always been considered to be a pretty basic form of punishment and is still quite commonly used form even today. Fail a task, go back to the start of the level. Fail too many times and you go right back to the start of the game." It goes on to highlight save/restart points as changing this dynamic, saying that "...the most controversial aspect of the save point's growing role in videogames was the confusion between its two roles: acting as a marker which players are taken to when punished, and as a point where players could stop in order to resume play later on." Is there such a thing as being able to save too often?
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Sin And Punishment In Games More

Sin And Punishment In Games

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  • eh? i thought punishment was.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @01:58PM (#6839806) Homepage Journal
    an iron ball chained to your leg.

    there's various ways to get rid of it including burying it(dig a pit and push a boulder into it) eating it(polymorph into something that can eat metal), scroll of remove curse & etc.

    seriously though, there's no such game as nethack as far as punishment goes. you play unprepared for everything, you die and start again. and die again and start again. that's not the punishing thing, it's the addictiviness of it, just imagine playing a random rick dangerous game for 10 years and still liking it, there's just something that must be bad in that kind of thing.

    • With regards to the 'die and restart completely' Nethack is not alone, but is certainly in a minority. I play Angband myself (another game in the Roguelike genre, which is noted for its permanent deaths) and, although I used to scum (briefly) I found a permanent death more exciting.
      On the other hand, roguelike games usually have random dungeons, while most commercial games have fixed plots. Once you've been through it once, the second and third and ninth time are just boring and a waste of time...

  • Too much of a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by neostorm ( 462848 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @02:07PM (#6839846)
    "Is there such a thing as being able to save too often?"

    Oh yes! Quicksaves are really convenient, but they take all the challenge out of some games.

    - progress. save. progress. save. progress. die. reload. progress half as far. save. experiment. save. etc. etc.

    There are two drawbacks to quicksaves, or saving too often in general.
    - No risk experimentation.
    The player really isn't afraid to jump out that window or off that cliff. They can dive into a room full of armed thugs without any fear at all. The lack of risk and fear of losing your "life" takes both immersion and reward out of passing an obstacle or event.

    This is sort of a side-effect of having too many saves, but:
    - Spoiled gamers? Not really, but in a way its really difficult to go back to games that don't offer such lenient save functions. I was just playing a game the other day who's title completely slips my mind, but it was a FPS with no quicksave function. It drove me nuts. Forced me to complete whole stages without using my magic F5 key (Oh the horror!). It really made me think of the impact it has on a player to be given such powerful tools and abuse them without knowing it. And when a game imposes stricter saving rules on the player (me), I get really peeved about it.

    So in a lot of ways, saving too many times is more than just a placeholder so I can stop playing momentarily, or a punishment. It's a cheat.

    • Quicksave just isn't good enough for me. What happens when I quicksave and am already doomed? I'm STILL doomed, and now also screwed.

      I want my game to CONTINUOUSLY save its state. When I arrive at death, I want to press the REWIND button on the game until I come to a place from whence I choose to resume.

      Its just too hard to know in advance where that will be.

      Power to the Player!!
      </troll>
      • and if I rewind too far, I want to be able to fast forward back up to where I was.. I want to be able to pause and examine what went wrong and then try again.

    • I've seem [a few] games where there is a subtle choice to make in the middle, and making the wrong one causes you to loose much farther on. The idea is that you will be unable to manage hundreds of saves, and thus make the wrong choice and have to re-play to find the right one. This punishs those who save only for a way to get ahead. Some games limit how many games you can save. (Mostly really old APPLE// games where you could only save to the game disk)

      Then there are games that are unwinnable without

      • Then there are games that are unwinnable without your cheat. I've seen a few where the only way to make money was gambling, but unless you saved after each win, and restored after each loss you will lose the game.

        Why did I just have a flashback to "Leisure Suit Larry and the Land of the Lounge Lizards"?

    • There is NO SUCH THING as too many saves. You should be able to save as much as you want. Many of us have REAL lives that take priority over games, so being able to save when I want, as often as I wantis vital.

      Plus the fact, on PC's, games tend to crash without warning, even the most well coded ones, so not only would limited saving "punish you" for not doing well at the game, it punishes you for the piss poor design of the system it's running on.

      I've been a gamer for 23 years now. I consider myself above
      • Besides, witness what happened with other titles that limited saving. Outcry from the buyers, and usually saving anywhere is added in the first patch. This is exactly what killed gaming. This is why major games lack creativity and look like they were designed in Hollywood. Deviate slightly from the 'marketable' algo and your sales drop. I miss the inventiveness aspect of gaming... Remember when you used to be able to go to the $9.99 section of a software store and actually be able to purchase high-quality

    • Re:Too much of a good thing... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by atomicdragon ( 619181 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @06:32PM (#6841225)
      Having dedicated save places, or just saving at the end of a level, etc. is a real pain for someone who wants to stop playing. I remember when I was younger and would have my mother trying to get me to turn off a game while I was trying to find a save point. In similar games now days, it might take a long time to get to the next save point, and I will be tired the next day at work as a result. Being allowed to save at any point is the only solution I can see to this (unless someone more creative can come up with something). The system I liked best was where you were given a limited number of saves to be used anywhere like a quicksave. The only game I played like this was one of the Delta Force games. Although I thought they gave a few too many, the idea worked well. Times I might have quicksaved in other games I had to stop and think if it was worth using one of my remaining saves. This system allows me to leave when I want to (the missions were short enough that I don't use all of the save points up just to leave for something else) and I could use one if I wanted to experiment (there is always a point you wonder "What if I just shoot/blow up this?" but dont want to actually play the whole game with the results). I would like to see more games use this system, possibly with the number of allowed saves controlled by the difficulty level.
      • The Diablo/Nethack style "Save and Exit" option seems to be the solution you're looking for (Nethack has the superior implementation). The player can save and quit the game whenever he wants, eliminating the look-for-a-save-point dance, but the save file is deleted when he resumes his game later, preventing him from using the save as a "cheat". If it's a game where you can try again after dying, just have "continue points" scattered about, or let the player make a permanent save file at the end of each le
      • I agree with you. Mark of Kri for the ps2 also had this system. It was broken up into longer levels. You would find save scrolls scattered throughout the level. Sometimes they would even be hidden. When you got to a point where other games would "autosave" they would just throw a scroll in the middle of the path that you couldn't miss. This system worked great, because you can save at designated save points on the level, and you can save the game whenever if you have to run somewhere and shut the game off.

    • There are two drawbacks to quicksaves, or saving too often in general.

      - No risk experimentation.
      The player really isn't afraid to jump out that window or off that cliff. They can dive into a room full of armed thugs without any fear at all. The lack of risk and fear of losing your "life" takes both immersion and reward out of passing an obstacle or event.

      See I think I have to disagree here. I think that the riskless exploration is one of the great things about quicksaves. It is liberating becau

    • Saving too much can be a punishment in itself, mostly in association with no risk experimentation.

      Cases evolve when you have saved a number of times and you need to roll back to a certain save to redo everything again. The more saves you have the more often you repeat the same task back to the failing point. That is until you find the right save that allows you to continue forwards.

    • Simple. Don't use the quicksave. Let those of us who enjoy the convenience of not sitting down for a 5 hour marathon gaming session the ability to save when we want. It's not like you're forced to quicksave. :)

    • I find the opposite.

      If I can save whenever I want I tend to save after accomplishing big things, or when I am done for the day. Unless things are real obvious I don't save in anticipation. When there are save spots I save at every save spot which always is used to portent a boss fight.

      So I end up knowing exactly when to get at full strength and exactly when to save for best cheatlike effects.

      My favorite save system was Diablo II though, with it continually saving so that there was no escaping your stup

  • Death in gaming (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @02:08PM (#6839850) Journal
    Where death in games matter most is multi-player FPS titles. It is boring to wait for the next round once you have been killed. On the other hand, the game is pointless when there are immediate respawns. Counterstrike tries to solve this be letting you watch through the other player's eyes. RTCW tries to solve this by respawning in waves. The way I would like to see it done, is once you are killed in the 'real' game, you get transported to some secondary site with the other dead players. That way there is no down time when you get killed.

    • Re:Death in gaming (Score:5, Insightful)

      by qengho ( 54305 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @03:26PM (#6840240)


      Where death in games matter most is multi-player FPS titles....the game is pointless when there are immediate respawns

      That's one of the things I hate about them (aside from the fact that I suck). There's no rankings penalty for getting killed a lot, so players just go kamikaze and boost their kill count. The old Air Warrior game had a statistic called "kills-to-death ratio" that was universally respected. It rewarded self-preservation and was a true indicator of skill.

      • Statistics for Unreal Tournament have always tracked something called efficiency, which IIRC is calculated as (frags - suicides) / (frags + deaths), and there's always the announcements when you get a number of kills without being taken out yourself. I guess I don't know about other people, but it's usually the person who can pull off a Wicked Sick or something that impresses me more.


        • Statistics for Unreal Tournament have always tracked something called efficiency

          Right, but as I recall a player's rank was based on the sheer number of kills, not factoring in efficiency. The broadcast announcement for an unbroken kill streak was pretty cool. I somehow managed to runup a "Godlike" streak once. I'm pretty sure I was sniping on Facing Worlds ;)

    • There was a mod for Quake 2 (Jailbreak or something like that), where on dying you was transported into a prison at the enemy base. You could either escape (required a team effort to jump on each other) or wait for your free teammates to resque you.

    • Re:Death in gaming (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pommaq ( 527441 )
      Nah, the game doesn't become "pointless" with immediate respawns. The only FPS I play nowadays is The Specialists [specialistsmod.net]. When you die, you get a few seconds wait, you buy your weapons, then you go at it again. What you're trying to accomplish is either an unbroken kill streak (becoming THE SPECIALIST, and getting double frags for it) or just improving your kills/deaths ratio. No, you don't care *as much* about dying as you do in - for instance - Counter-strike, but you still want to keep your streak and you don't
    • That's the main reason why I stopped play CS and came back to Quake3Arena.

      Two seconds for a respawn is just not fast enough!
      (click-click-click-click-click.. waiting eternal two seconds)

      In Couter Strike the most important thing is not to die.
      In Quake, the most important thing is to kill. Your life has (almost) no value, killing is important. No matter if you die too.
    • While deaths in multi-player FPS games are matter to be taken heavily, I think deaths in MMO games is an even greater matter. In MMO games, you're basicly paying for time so you'll want the most gameplay with what little time you have (unless you have no job, family or school to attend to).

      Some MMO games fail to fix this problem, World War II Online suffered from extremely long distances to battles and few ways to get there quickly. Others suffer from imbalances of the use of easy respawning (my friend us

  • The old games. Remember Sonic the Hedghog on the Sega Genesis? Granted there was no real "save" feature, however haflway through the levels there was the blue progress marker which when you ran through turned red and kept you there if you died.

    Even the newest sonic games still have this marker, you don't have to go back all the way to the start, and its a small goal to reach for on your way to completing the whole level. However you can't just arbitrarily save every 30 seconds so that you have almost *no

  • Yes, there is such a thing as saving your game too often... Ever played games on an emulator? almost all of them have an instant save state key, that you can return to at any time. Using that feature, you can beat any game in about the minimum possible time, reach a hard part, save your state, die, restore the state and keep rying, no loss of life, verrly little repeat.

    (Memo to me, lookup those 2.6 kernel instructions, running multiple file hashes in the background while typing is soo amazingly sluggish th

    • Re:too often? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Sancho ( 17056 )
      But then you come across games with a very nearly impossible segment of the game...it's always nice to be able to get through just that portion with quicksaves, because spending those 3 hours to get to that point just for the slim chance of beating the level... well it sucks.
      One game that suffers from this (and doesn't allow saving, either) is Super Monkey Ball 2 on the Gamecube. There are many levels where whether or not you complete the level is based entirely on luck or cheese. For example, there's one
      • I agree about emulators...before back on the actual systems you had to time and make your saves count...now I lose the strategy of saving myself till the next sanctuary(savepoint) instead now I just run around aimlessly trying to complete the goal instead of focusing and having fun with the journey and challenge.
    • I beat Mortal Kombat 2 that way. I never found out how to use SubZero's ice blast, just punched and kicked my way through it.

      Admittedly, it was pretty easy, but the quicksaves took all the challenge out of it.

  • sin and punishment in games? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How about Sin & Punishment AS a game?

    http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_n guj/index.html [nintendo.co.jp]

  • Children, parents and games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by yurigoul ( 658468 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @03:14PM (#6840184) Homepage
    As a parent of two I know what a burdon a game with not enough save points can be especially when it is time for the other child to play (or time for homework or bed) Games without an easy save system are simply banned.
  • Personally, I think quicksaves are the absolute best solution to the problem. Agreeably they can be constantly used as you can save after every step you take in the game. However, it does allow people to save as much as they're comfortable with. If someone doesn't prefer to save as often, they don't have to. If someone's saves every two seconds then they have that option too. At least you're leaving it open for user choice.

  • As usual, two sides - no resolution for *all* game (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @03:43PM (#6840343) Journal
    "save where you like" can make stuff too easy and it is hard not be tempted to press f6 after every success. And I'm sure everyone must have pressed quick_save instead of quick_load and saved yourself dead or in some hopeless situation.

    In each new game I fear some mechanism that will lead me down a one way systems and my quicksave will be useless. Sadly, I've not found a game that does this, so all my file saving discipline is wasted.

    I end up playing in bazai mode, run into every new room and spray bullets after so many times creeping round corners into no danger.

    Seeing as games take like a zillion hours anyway anything that maximizes your chances you are going to take (well except invoke GOD mode, that's just *too* lame).

    So, quick save good and bad. Be strong, don't save.

    Remember this conversation (points for being either) :

    "Come on, we've got go now!"
    "Hang on, I've got to get Cloud back to the savepoint."

    Nowadays part of the skill of parenting has been the ability to asses the level of trauma proportional to the save point time expenditure. The boy used to try and hoodwink his mum by saying "I need to get to a savepoint" to get himself another 20 mins play-time. He didn't reckon on me knowing how to play video games.

  • If repetition is punishment ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lumpish Scholar ( 17107 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @03:44PM (#6840345) Homepage Journal
    ... what does that mean about playing Everquest?-)
  • I think they have to make games much harder, because people can save so often.

    There used to be a a sense of fear afraid you would die, now it seems you play to see how to avoiding dying.
    • I dunno about that... the original SMB was pretty hard... so was Contra...

      I think maybe we're just getting old. Well, you are. I find games as easy as ever (except for DDR Max - still can't beat that goddamn Gradius remix).

      I do agree that some games abuse saving though. Resident Evil limited the number of saves, but I found I still had many, many ribbons left over when I beat it for the Gamecube...

  • Mr. Surly strikes again! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Asprin ( 545477 ) <gsarnold@@@yahoo...com> on Sunday August 31, 2003 @03:58PM (#6840440) Homepage Journal

    Hrrrummph! As usual, everything in RL is backward from video games.

    Do you people even realize, if RL had savegame capability, how many times I would have blown away the idiot at Taco Bell who can't get my order right beause he's too busy IM-ing his girlfriend to be interrupted with customers?

    Save points as punishment, indeed! *NOT* having save points is the *REAL* punishment!

  • Other reasons for save points (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) * <johnwh AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday August 31, 2003 @03:59PM (#6840444) Homepage
    In some games that enforce save points, even having to go back isn't really that bad. Final Fantasy VI returned te player to the previous save point upon death, but let him keep all experience and cash earned. (It made him lose items, however, which makes sense.)

    But there is also a strong intuitive basis for save points, akin to not being able to rest just anywhere in a dungeon in a D&D adventure. A save point should be a "safe" location. Being able to put a bookmark in the middle of a series of tough battles breaks them up. If the player can just once get through all the hard parts of such a sequence without taking serious losses, then it's as if they don't exist! The player will then save at that point and not have to worry about going through it ever again. If those obstacles have a strong random (or not obviously deterministic) component, then this can break a level.

    Let's say someone's challenged you to a little game -- if you roll a six-sided die ten times and never get a one, he'll give you a lot of money. In a computer game, the player would save after each successful roll and practically ensure an eventual win. Taken as a sequence, such an obstacle is more troublesome than if the player can bookmark after each roll.

    Something in me kind of rebels against this question, actually, the assumption of "punishment." This question only makes sense if the listen intuitively accepts that all a "save" does is record the player's location and state, monster locations and states, which items are collected and the state of a few minor puzzles. In a more complex game (such as Black & White, where great portions of the game's environment is editable), you're saving and loading a lot more than just player location, and although B&W did have a quicksave feature, the idea of making a "bookmark" doesn't make as much sense. Although it is long, playing through the whole level each time makes a kind of sense.

    Of course, understand that I'm a Nethack fanatic, and games which feature permanent character death appeal to me, so I'm obviously deranged.

    • But there is also a strong intuitive basis for save points, akin to not being able to rest just anywhere in a dungeon in a D&D adventure.

      But I like being able to rest/save just anywhere in D&D. I'm much more interested in following the story and interacting (especially playing around with different character types and alignments in D&D's case). I don't think the designer should force anything on me.

      That aside I also like playing nethack, but that game's got *no* story happening and nothin

      • I was referring to pencil and paper (a.k.a. "real") D&D.

        Nethack, admittedly, has little story, and I actually like the old premise of "generic adventurer wants amulet for personal reasons" thing, the build-up given in the Guidebook, rather than all that annoying Moloch business on that page of intro text upon starting a new game.

        Here's a secret about Nethack: it's really not that hard once you know what you're doing. Not that's a *lot* to learn, but it's actually a very fair game for a sufficently cl

  • An interesting approach (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @04:06PM (#6840494) Homepage
    I really liked the approach that the earlier (dunno about newer) Wing Commander games took. Rather than worrying about making the game full of traps and difficulty that forces the player to save often, they used a rather extensive tree-based storyline -- it was possible to fail a mission and still complete the game. Heck, it was possible to fail every mission and still complete the game, you would just get a very lackluster ending where the Kilrathi rule the universe and the humans run away with their tail between their legs. :)

    While not a magic bullet, I think this approach has a lot to offer, but has very rarely been used since. Even Deus Ex, hailed for its exceptional storyline where what you did made a difference, it was still very linear. You could make small changes and maybe save a few people here and there, but it still didn't offer much incentive in the way of replayability.

    While in Wing Commander, it was still possible to 'cheat' the system by saving before every mission, and playing the mission until you 'won', it was not always clear which outcome was a win. And in any case, playing the game that way would clearly be a lot more frustrating than simply playing through and not caring whether you always win, and just do your best. In effect the players who try to 'cheat' the system in Wing Commander are actually punishing themselves with repetition of missions. The casual gamer never has to repeat anything.

    Food for thought. I'd like to see more games like this. Even Wing Commander's storyline was fairly primitive. Only two branches per mission. There were no partial wins.
    • Starlancer did it, but I think all that happened was your end of mission pat on the back got better or worse...Of course, the Wing Commander people MADE Starlancer, so that could explain it ^^;
    • As I recall, they dropped the tree-based storyline in later games (WC4?) because players did not like it... Well, I liked the idea, but they received all the feedback about WC, so I guess they had a good reason to abandon the approach.

      In Deux Ex there were different ways how to tackle a problem (you know, like Perl, there's more than one way to do it). The storyline did not really chance that much.

      Another good example I think is Baldurs Gate, where the main plot progressed, but the sideplots varied wi
      • Wing Commander 4 branched... but it tended to branch because of dialogue choices, more than mission performance. Even then, there was still a degree of mission based branching. They didn't do this because players didn't like the branching in WC3, though. Roberts just wanted to make a more movie-like game.

        Either way, there was quite a bit of branching based on your mission success in both Prophecy and Secret Ops.
    • i'm still greatefull i could go on without saving the damn Ralari.
  • Though I love the games, the Tomb-Raider games are a perfect example. You can save as often as you want.

    I think you should only be allowed to save at particularly difficult points in a level, where it wouldn't be uncommon to fail three or more times before succeeding.
  • If anyone's read Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," it offers a convenient future in which people can simply "back-up" their persona. Modern medicine isn't so focused on healing but rather on restoration. And so, you're only as safe as your latest backup.

    The save game feature is as convenient, but it lacks one real-life phenomenon that lie at the fault of a backup. You forget everything that's happened to you since your backup. You don't know how you died. Any actions or conversation

  • Autosave Agony (Score:3, Interesting)

    by quinkin ( 601839 ) on Sunday August 31, 2003 @07:23PM (#6841451)
    Now I am a bit of a fan of the quicksave concept (as other readers have noted, kids change your gaming criteria) but I have to register my objections to the autosave design.

    After playing 9/10 of the way through a particularly long and torturous Halo level, I ended up in a Warthog, sliding sideways of a cliff, exactly when the final monster was killed (triggering the autosave).

    This gave me the joy, delight and reward of a hundred or so attempts leaping from the falling warthog and just failing to make it to the top of the cliff.

    If developers insist upon disempowering the users, they should at least try to ensure the users are not completely sabotaged.

    Personally I have always found that over-use of a quicksave function makes it relatively easy for game designers to create "gotchas" that force users to restart a level (used all ammo, didn't flick the switch, whatever) - so I don't believe it is the game destroying function that other propose.

    Q.

  • A recent game I've finished: Hitman 2. This is a game where you get punished for walking too loud. There comes a point in time where this is no longer fun (for many people this is never fun). So many times I've cursed under my breath and mumbled "how did he see me?" Sometimes I'll complete a section just fine only to say "I could have done that better " and reloaded. Of course, the game designers try to discourage this sort of behaviour.. that's why you only get a limited number of saves. Yes, you rea
  • Some games (though I don't remember any off the top of my head) had a twofold saving system which I think usually did a good job at respecting the distinction between saving to get off and saving progress: save points, few and far enough between to present a good incentive to be careful, were the normal save/restore progress function, but you could also save at any point to get out- but doing so would exit the game, and you could only restore the 'save at any point' save the next time you got on the game- n
  • How about this: Make it beneficial to NOT save. Resident Evil and Chromium both have the right idea: In RE, each save used up an item (an otherwise useless Ink Ribbon), which in turn used up an inventory slot. In Chromium, If you bypass a proctective sheild, you get another life. I like a combitation of theese ideas. Perhaps saving the game should require the sacrifice of a particularly powerful item (that may just save your life). This way you are left with two choices: Try to advance with the benifit of
    • I like this idea, lets change one thing though. Make it a gamble, if you complete the area and make it to the next save point you get the item back. If you dont, then you have to beat some sort of "special" boss to get it back, or its just lost forever.
  • Some games I've played have a save counter, where it keeps track of the number of times you've saved, challenging you to keep this to a minimum.

    Other ideas I can think of would be to allow you to save anywhere but only once per dungeon or level or whatnot, maybe more on a very large map. This lets someone who needs to get up and go do so, while requiring the people who try to use savegames to replace skill or luck to wonder if they'll be needing that one save right after this part of the map. Or have mov
  • Interesting, how in this more modern era of instant saving we now have more games with progressive defeats than with instant deaths. Does it break the skill necessary to play Warcraft 3 if the player is allowed to save after every weapon swing? Of course not, because with each encounter comes guaranteed damage, and the tradeoffs between taking and doing damage is what leads to success. Even in FPS shooters, one has to ask "did I take too much damage to save? Is losing 10% of my health for that encounter
  • I hate all the games where you get punished, especially if it's from the computer, that's why I liked quake. You die, you hit the buttons and there you are playing again.

    Sure, strategic games and such should be hard to, but since I know I can die and be forced to replay the level I always saves every now and then or just simply don't play at all since I actually get bored (that is probably more true of games like WC3 there the single player missions was so boring). Can't say it would be better if the level

    • Consent is an issue. Emotional attachment is an issue. Wasted effort is an issue. None, however, are

      the issue. The issue is that people don't like losing. (Permanent death) amounts to a statement of total, that's-all-folks loss. There's no wheedling out of it; it's final. That's what people dislike about it.

      Designing Virtual Worlds, Richard R. Bartle, New Riders Press, p. 417

      The whole point of the article was that punishments had to be introduced into games to encourage players to approach problems dif

  • Death in games. Surely this is just making our children depressed because they can never do anything right and they're bound to turn out just like their father, lazy good-for-nothing piece of crap, never try to do anything because they might get killed any second. What we need more of is games where no matter what you do you win. This teaches our kids that they can do anything, and that they're special. I don't want someone, or something, else punishing my kid, it's my job to lock them in the closet for
    • You shouldn't be able to save every 2 seconds. This takes a lot of the fun out of the game.

      I see, removing features *increases* fun.. who knew?

      Saving is optional, if you want to go through the entire game without saving, go ahead. But to prevent people from saving because you think it makes it "more fun" is stupid.
  • I guess Save Points, and whether there are too many, or not enough, may depend on the player's skill level to begin with.

    I can't say I condone the act of saving, then dying and reloading back to the save (so you don't lose the life, etc), in my books that's "cheating" regardless of skill level, but I do see Save Points as a valuable "safety net" for less skilled gamers, and a useful tool even for skilled gamers.

    A very skilled and confident gamer is probably going to regard too many Save Points as "tak
  • i won't bother to buy or play a game that doesn't let me save my progress reasonably. i have a life in the *real world*. games are for entertainment value. if you blame save-games for letting you cheat to avoid a challenge than you're an undisciplined dimwit who probably drives SUVs up 14,000 foot mountains and wonders why hikers piss on your "car" when you get there.

  • Interesting thing about that. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @03:08AM (#6843205) Homepage
    The I-Ninja demo included in Soul Calibur 2 for the PS2 illustrates a great example of non-silly punishment. On one level you must roll a barrel of gunpowder to a set spot, then detonate it. It's rather like monkey ball, except you control the barrel/ninja rather than the level.

    If you fall off or the barrel explodes, it doesn't force you to back track or anything else. The barrel dropper drops another barrel, and I-Ninja hops onto the barrel -- ready for another attempt. It also has a lot of cool moves (ala Jet Set Radio Future). It's quick, neat, and unfrustrating. A pleasant switch from all the linear platformers that stick with the jumping-puzzle-frustraction-factor gameplay.
    • The I-Ninja demo included in Soul Calibur 2 for the PS2 illustrates a great example of non-silly punishment. On one level you must roll a barrel of gunpowder to a set spot, then detonate it. It's rather like monkey ball, except you control the barrel/ninja rather than the level.

      If you fall off or the barrel explodes, it doesn't force you to back track or anything else. The barrel dropper drops another barrel, and I-Ninja hops onto the barrel -- ready for another attempt.

      Looks like to me the "poo" leve

  • Its probably too late but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @03:32AM (#6843270) Homepage
    There's another solution to the problem. In addition to the "savepoint," there also exists a notion of a continue point. The idea is that if you need to stop playing for a moment, it is simple to save your gamestate, but it retains the element of risk, and avoids the introduction of more loadtimes into the game. Basically, the game allows you to save anywhere and removes your save when you resume. This has existed for a long while in many games. Some of the Dragon Warriors, the Mario sports titles for gameboy, and probably the oldest of titles, nethack.

    Of course this does result in some side effects. For starters, the lack of permenant "saves" means that if you die you'll be sent off to the beginning to try again. The Dragon Warrior and Mario games accomodate for this by mixing in save points at places like right before entering a cave, or starting a new tennis match.

    What designers need to focus on is what gives the game purpose. As much as I hate those academic cooks who talk about video game narrative, almost every game follows the same structure. Go from level to level, retrying until you find the end of the game. Failure in this situation has nearly zero meaning in this repitition model. I hear the Wing Commander games featured a system like this. Unfortunately, academics never get a warm welcome, in part because they have little experience, in part because they make little attempt to be accessible, and in part because they stray from the people's notion of a game.

  • Give a reason not to save! (Score:3)

    by Jellybob ( 597204 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @04:01AM (#6843340) Journal
    I present to the jury exhibit A: Neverwinter Nights by Bioware.

    You shall observe that upon death, the player is not forced to replay anything, or to restart the game. They are merely returned to the local temple, less a few XP and gold, ready to return to the fray if they so choose.

    In my personal experience, the only times I will save the game, is when I must leave to do something else, since death is handled in the game in a just manner.
    • You shall observe that upon death, the player is not forced to replay anything, or to restart the game. They are merely returned to the local temple, less a few XP and gold, ready to return to the fray if they so choose.

      It's more than just a little XP and gold. I don't remember exactly but the cost is like 10% of your XP plus 50*your level in gold. Even in NWN it is far cheaper to save your game before a big fight and reload if you die. It also doesn't hurt to assign the stone of recall to a quickslot

      • It's more than just a little XP and gold. I don't remember exactly but the cost is like 10% of your XP plus 50*your level in gold. Even in NWN it is far cheaper to save your game before a big fight and reload if you die. It also doesn't hurt to assign the stone of recall to a quickslot and be quick on the function key when your HP gets low :)

        I know that it would be cheaper to save, but I work on the basis that dying should be painful, or there's no point in not just using god mode - especially with the opt

  • The Killing Game Show on the Amiga (also released as "Fatal Rewind" on the Megadrive/Genesis) had a great feature that I haven't seen since.

    If you died on a level, it would take you back to the beginning, but show you a replay of what you had just been doing on the level. You could fast-forward the replay and then take over at any time just by moving the joystick.

    Simple, brilliant idea.

  • In LOZ:Majora's Mask the concept was this: the world was about to end in 3 days time, and you had to save it. THis was accomplished through a "groundhog's day"esque system by which at anytime, you could travel back in time and restart from the beggining of day one, but any events you had completed were undone. A lot of people loathed this game for this since if you were half way through a dungeon and time ran out, tough! you had to start over. Anyway, if you wanted to take a break from the game, you could c
  • Isn't quicksave really a way around designing reasonable checkpoints?

    I define checkpoints as predefined points where you will respawn in the same state as when you entered them when you die, but that will not actually save the game for you. Optionally a player may be allowed to save at any point and in another session load+start at that checkpoint but that is not part of the checkpoint definition.

    The reason for checkpoints is so that you can not quicksave in a dangerous location and so that any single gam
  • Like the article says, quicksaves/unlimited saves are a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allows players to leave at any time and come back to the game without losing too much progress (or having to go back to the last save point), but on the other hand players get complacent: save, try something, die, restart from save, try something else, until you've brute-forced your way through the whole game. Autosaving makes matters even worse by taking control from the player while still offering the same measur
  • The severely underrated Operation Flashpoint solved the need to save and quit before reaching a save point by including an "abort" function. If you quit the mission partway through, you could return to the point where you left off the next time you ran the program. But the save couldn't otherwise be accesed.
    • problem solved by alt-tabbing out of the game and deleting the save file in the user directory. i didn't use it all that often but i did use it. considering that enemies could see you through smoke and darkest night from a mile away if you triggered something and never lost track of you i don't even consider it cheating.
      heck it's my time and my fun and i find it boring replaying "search and destroy" 50 times because a tank spotted you in the thickest bush once you discharged a weapon.
      not to talk about "alam
  • The last FPS I really and truly adored single player was Alien Vs. Predator (the first one).

    Every one since has been a "Quick save, quick reload" fest, rather than focused on actual play.

    The game was ridiculously exciting, especially in the marine levels, because (at least before the save patch) no way to recover if you died, you had to start all over. This led to a style of play very akin the feel of the movie- Jerky glancing back and forth, staring at your motion detecter, firing wildly at any movement
  • I'd recently been playing the "Final Fantasy: Origins" (FF1 & FF2) re-release for the PS1 while I was unemployed, and found the game to be vastly easier with the introduction of the save-anywhere "Memo" save. Now this didn't actually save your progress if you turned the power off, so it was actually almost strictly a "cheater's" save.

    But, given that the mechanic of the game seemed to be that yo had to be lucky enough to not face off against the "killer" monster groups in each dungeon, it was very wel

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