Problem Saving Games

[Amos]

From a user perspective, the way it is handled in Dominions is just plain silly. Dominions 2 was not an "MP only" game and Dominions 3 is even less so. A considerable number of players play singleplayer only or primarily. Thus, not having save game functionality in-game because the game is multiplayer based is a poor choice, since having the ability avaible does not impact multiplayer adversely.

Yes, you can copy files manually by hand if you want to, but that takes considerably longer time than e.g. choosing save, enter filename, hit save button would do, [and given how Dominions 3 ****s up when alt-tabbing, you probably do have to leave the game to make that copy by hand] and as a result it is something you either write your own script to do automatically (requiring code literacy) or, for all practical purposes, don't do at all. Which leaves you in the cold when the game ****s up and corrupts a save file since this on the spot ends your game. It also presents the "irreversible-death" scenario to new players. YES, they learn by irreversible death, as I'm sure some of you will argue, but they learn much more if they after suffering defeat can retrace to an earlier save and retry their approach to see how they could have changed the outcome, than if they just have to say, tough cookies, let me start all over from the very beginning again.

As for the line of player groupthink that goes "the developers don't like people to cheat on random events/battles/whatever by not rolling with the punches"... as any good developer knows, as far as fun goes, the point of a game is for the players to have fun, not the developers (or even worse, the computer), and anybody not wanting to load an older savegame is free to not do so without any lessening of his gaming experience. (Though it is nice when the developers too have fun, even if it is vicious or satirical fun, it should never be the priority)

It is a baffling newbie-unfriendly design choice that is no doubt a legacy of the MP design of the game and which should have been reconsidered a long time ago. Players cannot be assumed to be Nethack-nerds used to that approach or assumed to be happy with an forced ironman-mode.

Hear Hear!

[PDF]

It'll be cool that some of the Net-nerds you're talking about (Huh hello Gandalf, did we call you ? ) make a simple java or whatever mini-app to manage savefiles...

[thejeff]

Note that when the developers are working on the game part-time around their real jobs, the developers having fun is a priority.
If they don't, they'll stop developing.

[dirtywick]

I agree that it is a little behind the times, but I think it's a conscious decision to add depth and strategy. In a weird way I think it's fun that an unlucky random event can knock off your unprepared pretender and you're forced to deal with it instead of reloading like the event never happened.

[thejeff]

I agree.
I think it does change the feel of the game. It's part of the game and shouldn't be changed lightly. While individuals could always ignore it, that being the accepted default would change both the game and the community around it.


The game does many things against the conventional wisdom. This is one of them. It's a niche game. It will always be by nature a niche game. It's also the largest pre-order Shrapnel's ever had. (Which will hopefully translate into the highest sales as well.) It must be doing something right.

[Ballbarian]

Sadly, I have no willpower. For example, Rome Total War has a save feature. I quit having fun because I became obsessed with saving & reloading between assassination attempts because I just couldn't bare the idea of losing my high level assassin. If a battle went poorly, I was immediately frustrated and would hit the reload button. For myself, the addition of a handy in-game save feature would be a bad thing.

Maybe a nice compromise would be a command line switch that would allow a user to enable/disable an in-game save feature... then if I could just resist the urge to enable it.