Why no Save game Feature

Wyehl · #1 January 16th, 2007, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Gandalf Parker said:
They have given good reasons, just none that you accept.

Well, some people might think they are good but you can't presume that as fact. I think most of the reasons against it are purely for the sake of argument in the absence of actually having a good reason. In fact, to me, it appears that -some- of the arguments are so thin, that I am not even sure the people saying them actually believe them. Don't get me wrong, some of them are debatable but, imo, some of them are really 'stretching it'.

Quote:

Gandalf Parker said:
But basically one view given would be:
"Should we add a feature that might ruin the replayablity and long term enjoyment, even for those that think they wanted it, thereby hurting the sales of the next version?"

Interesting that you mention GalCiv as an example of a game that has save feature.

They also mentioned Civ4, which is an excellent game by most accounts. If I had to list some of my favorite old games, I think they all had it. Masters Of Magic, Masters Of Orion, X-Com, Alpha Centauri, Civ1, Civ4.

Best thing about those games, for me ? Replayability. Somehow they were all great games (with great replayability) despite the scourge of having a save game feature.

Gandalf Parker · #2 January 16th, 2007, 02:02 PM

Quote:

Wyehl said:
Well, some people might think they are good but you can't presume that as fact. I think most of the reasons against it are purely for the sake of argument in the absence of actually having a good reason. In fact, to me, it appears that -some- of the arguments are so thin, that I am not even sure the people saying them actually believe them. Don't get me wrong, some of them are debatable but, imo, some of them are really 'stretching it'.

Thank you very much for using phrases such as "some people" "cant presume that as fact" "I think" "to me it appears" and "imo". More of that would be a good thing for all threads here and keep them off of the moderators watch-lists.

Quote:

They also mentioned Civ4, which is an excellent game by most accounts. If I had to list some of my favorite old games, I think they all had it. Masters Of Magic, Masters Of Orion, X-Com, Alpha Centauri, Civ1, Civ4.

Best thing about those games, for me ? Replayability. Somehow they were all great games (with great replayability) despite the scourge of having a save game feature.

Of those, I dont remember if all of them had cheat-saves or not. I remember it with Master of Magic. You could save just before a fight or checking treasures, then restore if you didnt like the result. On the other hand, some games roll the randoms far in advance so that by the time you find something, its result is already decided so that saving didnt do you any good OR restoring from a save specifically made the result worse. Its a common topic in programmer forums on how to make saves available without ruining the game (in the developers view of the game of course).

HoneyBadger · #3 January 16th, 2007, 04:43 PM

I think there's some truth to the statement that what we're expressing here are both opinions and facts. I don't think that makes too much of a difference, even as far as to who's "right" and who's "wrong". It's a question of priorities. Do we ask the Devs to do something that we can do ourselves, and may or may not want, or do we make the decision ourselves.

It's kind of the same question you get with censorship: Do you require a company to make your decisions for you, as to what's appropriate or not for you, or do you choose to turn the channel when you find something offensive and allow others their freedom?

Gandalf Parker · #4 January 16th, 2007, 05:07 PM

Theres nothing against asking the devs for anything. But Id rather we didnt push them into having to defend a decision not to. As we can obviously see from threads like this, that can go down a road which can cut off all communications.

HoneyBadger · #5 January 16th, 2007, 05:18 PM

No I have nothing against asking the Devs for something someone wants in the game. I'm just suggesting that it not be demanded as a point-of-sale, when there are other options to persue.

It's all in how you say a thing, not in what you say.

alexti · #6 January 16th, 2007, 11:16 PM

Quote:

Wyehl said:
They also mentioned Civ4, which is an excellent game by most accounts.

Civ4 took rather interesting approach to save games. Reloading the game was so insanely slow that nobody would want to reload unless one absolutely must had to turn the computer off

I don't know whether it was an intentional decision or just a result of overall poor coding that plagued otherwise very good game

NTJedi · #7 January 16th, 2007, 11:19 PM

I wish I had the time to use all the modding features available within CIV_4.

Gandalf Parker · #8 January 17th, 2007, 12:16 AM

Quote:

alexti said:

Quote:

Wyehl said:
They also mentioned Civ4, which is an excellent game by most accounts.

Civ4 took rather interesting approach to save games. Reloading the game was so insanely slow that nobody would want to reload unless one absolutely must had to turn the computer off

I don't know whether it was an intentional decision or just a result of overall poor coding that plagued otherwise very good game

Actually that is one of the options that gets mentioned in programmer forums. A way to give it to them but not really give it to them. As if "well this was the best I was able to do".

Things like:
slow save

slow reload

save only when quitting the game

save only at special places in the game that are far apart

randomly generating as much as possible and including it in the save so reload cant cheat

not allowing naming of saves so that you only get one save at a time (keeps you from long-term backtracking)

Of course the people doing it those ways are given a hard time about giving in to players over the quality of the game. But no one gives them too hard a time for avoiding the flak by giving crappy saves. And before anyone says anything, no I dont think that happened here. What we have is standard Linux saves for a pbem game. Nothing else would have made much sense in Dom1 and only seems reasonable now because of the improved menus in Dom3.

Saxon · #9 January 17th, 2007, 02:36 AM

Sorry, that was a bit shrill. However, the point stands that different people have different priorities, wishes, dreams and fantasies about what might happen to the game and our reasons for those wishes are just as diverse.

As a point of reference, fear the new parent! Buy them coffee and return after 12 months�

NTJedi · #10 January 17th, 2007, 06:57 PM

I truly hope the score graphs are fixed soon.

The loss of functionality from Dominions_2 is quite noticeable.

First anytime an opponent is killed their entire graph history vanishes... thus making it impossible to review the overall history during middle, late and end of the game.

Second if a computer or human opponent wins the game from a victory condition then all human opponents are deleted from the graph history! Making it again impossible to review how you as a human were doing during the game.

It's actually quite sad the graphs provide LESS than what the Dominions_2 graphs provided.