Why no Save game Feature

[Velusion]

HoneyBadger said:
Some things just intrinsically cause stress. They don't necessarily turn you into a crack-head, they just make life a little less enjoyable and a little more pathetic.

I'm sorry you can't handle the stress of being able to save and restore games. I do hope you work to decrease your stress levels in the future. However, many, many gamers do not stress out about saving and restoring games. To most people it's just a feature to use or to ignore. It seems a shame that because you have "intrinsic stress" which you can't deal with you would seek deny would be a very popular feature to alot of gamers.

If I was rude, say like one of the earlier posters here who felt the need to insult those who would like a save game feature, I might just tell you to "SACK UP".

[Gandalf Parker]

Try to discuss the subject and not each other or this thread will be removed completely.

[HoneyBadger]

No, you weren't rude. I'm kind of surprised that you seem to think you were. See, you don't actually know a lot about me, and I don't know a lot about you. You're just a line of script to me, so I don't take this...effort at sarcasm? whatever it was, personally. I just think it's a shame that we fail to see eye to eye, but then that's another of the disadvantages of being basically faceless.

Anyway, I still consider Dom3 to be better without a save-game feature, and I still think you should sack up. If you don't understand the reasons behind my feelings, then I really don't mind either way, since I guess you were making some effort to insult me and that probably means we won't be best-of-friends or getting into a hot-tub together any time soon.

[HoneyBadger]

See? you've gotten all personal and now we're in trouble.

[Newthought]

Wow, lots of posts.
Alot of great posts too. Few tards in the swimmingpool, you know you are and you know that I stink too.

And apparantly I'm "Burned" for an opposing opinion and I need to "Sack Up" because my view is irrelevent and again, opposing. Once again, coming to these forums, where you can say anything without consequence, I really didn't except much other then Fanboys. (And in a hypocritical twist, there is irrevency in this very Boo hoo hoo Rant!!! Maybe if your mature, you can ignore it and make any statement you want!!!!)

The typical responses against this are:

1. It ruins the game because it doesn't make it challenging.
A: FYI Challenge is RELATIVE! What's challenging for you is not challenging for me. I can bench well and it's fun for me. If, assuming that you don't go to the gym much, I gave my same weight to you and you got injured, would that be any fun now would it?

2. It corrupts the gamer
Honestly, I can feel for you in an aspect that were all just one giant community. However, define the word "Corrupt" and then find what it's "Corrupting from" and then you'll realize it's just an unintended way of saying "I don't feel comfortable that your playing the game this way", all valid, but comfort was never grounds for action.

3. You can't give Gamers all the features they want

Well under this circumstance, you should be sure to give as MANY features as the gamers want to ensure the maximum amount of people to enjoy it. Features SHOULD be judged depending on the feature in an individual case sceanario. Making D3 have saves is nothing compared to making D3 in 3D. If this feature was unable to be implemented, then leave it at that.

4. It betrays the developer vision
A: The *Publishing* developer Vision extends so far enough to meet the needs of the Consumer. Why do *Publishing* developers publish games? So they can charge money for it! What seperates a good developer vision from a bad one? Their total profit is equal to their expectation. EAnomics have proven this vision true

Note: Emphasis on the word Publish rather then make. A developer could make his own game and he would be the only person on the earth to enjoy it, then it is a sucess. Commercialization is a service toward the people, shine my shoes brown instead of black I'll get my money back, or in this case, sell it on Ebay FTW.

And what if the Gamer wants to ruin his own game? What if the Gamer wants to remove certain spells he doesn't like or what if the Gamer makes Spells more early or what if the Gamer decides that every Ulm Man Woman and Child should have str 30. Wouldn't that truly ruin the game. Yes. Would it be funny? No. It betrays the vision of the game

What if I want to give myself more starting points for my Pretender on a roleplaying aspect or what if I decide to make my game even more difficult by REMOVING Pretender points? Sure. Would it be smart. Ehh no. and it betrays the vision of the game.

What if I decided to create my own side or if I decided to take a Middle Age only side and pull them in the Later age. That surely betrays the vision of the game as well. And it does.

Notice that all three of these circumstances are completly acceptable.

Fourth Scenario:
What if I wanted to be able to Save Games in my own game to make sure that I never lose a battle and cry? What if I wanted to put a Time Constraint in my Multiplayer so people couldn't build up their forces? What if I wanted to be able to set rules that no one can create Oceanic Civilizations? What if I wanted to create new Terrain Pieces, such as Savannahs and Tundras?

Do they all betray the game? Yes. The Developer never put any of those features in (to my almost assurd Knowledge), hence it betrayed his vision.

This magically brings us down to my Save Game Feature. I want a Save Game feature so I can enjoy my game. All of those "complaints" do not constitute a specific reasonable reason.

IE: It ruins the game because it doesn't make it challenging (challenge is relative), It corrupts the gamer (Freedom of use...invalid in Russia) You can't give Gamers all the features they want (You cannot ignore their requests within your capability to accomplish.), and it betrays the Developer vision (When the hands of the game enter the Consumer, it's the consumer's "world". If the Consumer want's the Developer to make it the ability to save games, and if they can accomplish that, then both parties are quite satisified.)

PS: I honestly want this feature implemented because I honestly like the game but cannot devote enough time for it to be fun. (After the fifth time you just conquer your neighbors and lose your army, the repetition gets you done)

PSS: Sack this 1 up yours.

[Zarkon]

I actually kind of like having no savegame feature, with one small caveat...I occasionally hit "e" instead of "r" when recruiting units and the only way to go back and finish the turn is to kill the process. Ah well, I think it's worth it for the thematic effect.

[Maltrease]

Didn't someone write a tool that automatically saved each turn?

In the same way some might say "just don't use the save" others could say "just save your game manually".

In either case the discussion here is unlikely to make any difference in how the game evolves. The ability to add a save game feature is pretty trivial (since you can basically do it by simply copying and renaming a file) so it must have always been a conscience decision to not do this (nethack anyone?) vs. an oversite where someone forgot to do something.

As I said before I would completely abuse an easy to use save game option if it was available. Civ 1, cool a hut, bah who needs gold, barbians... nah, pottery... nice but, ahh awesome a group of settlers! Perfect. Hmm.. I don't want my militia to lose vs theres... cool I won. Did I mention I could beat Civ 1 every time on the hardest difficulty level! I was awesome in that game and everything always seemed to fall into place for me.

Not having a save makes Dominions a different game. Maybe a game other don't like as much... but personally I prefer it.

Again its not like you can't save your game now. Just play Dominions in a window with the game folder open next to it. Ctrl C, Ctrl V on game file. Thats it, it will automatically rename each one... you will only have to manually rename something when you want to "load" the game back.

[HoneyBadger]

Newthought, so what you're basically saying from my understanding is that you want to play football, but you want your side to be able to use steroids and be able to call "do-over!" every time you fumble the ball. Dom3 just doesn't happen to have a nice convenient save-game option. That's the reality of the game. Nobody stole your money, you put your money down and you bought a product that works as advertized, and perhaps unfortunately for you there's no do-over there as well, although if you're entirely unsatisfied, maybe you can talk the company you directly purchased the game from into taking it back and giving you your money back, but the reality of economics is that you might not even be able to do that. You might not even have legal recourse, that might also be the reality of the situation in your area of the world. And if you do, and it goes to trial, the verdict might come out against you, and again, that would be reality, however unfortunate it was for you. The whole point is that yes, you can redo a turn if you decide to, the method for doing so was explained by Gandalf above somewhere, and the next time you watch a game of football, you can choose to root for whichever team wins, after you've recorded the game on video tape. I'm certain if you think hard, there are all manner of things you can do any way you want to, regardless of how they're supposed to be done, you can follow your own personal vision of how the world works wherever it leads you, and I wish you luck and success in all your endeavors to buck the system, because it isn't an easy path.

And I really don't care if you're comfortable or not in a more than Buddhistic general compassion for all living things that I try to engender within myself, but it does tend to be aesthetically displeasing to me to hear someone whine in public about how a computer game, of all things, is too difficult.
I certainly don't mean this as an insult to your person. I'd react the same way to art I found displeasing to my eye.

None of that changes the fact that the game doesn't have a savegame feature, but I do know that you can mod in tundras and savannas, and easily create a random map with no ocean provinces. That's pretty easy, actually.

All in all, your points are as valid as is required, and certainly you have the freedom of speech and use, noone's denying you that. I think perhaps only that you've been unfortunate in your methods and managed to turn the greatest of authorities-public consensus-against you.

[Gandalf Parker]

Fourth Scenario:
What if I wanted to be able to Save Games in my own game to make sure that I never lose a battle and cry? What if I wanted to put a Time Constraint in my Multiplayer so people couldn't build up their forces? What if I wanted to be able to set rules that no one can create Oceanic Civilizations? What if I wanted to create new Terrain Pieces, such as Savannahs and Tundras?

Do they all betray the game? Yes. The Developer never put any of those features in (to my almost assurd Knowledge), hence it betrayed his vision.

Ummmmm actually, all of the things that you listed are in the game.
Save Game: in the game. They are .2h files
Time Contraint: in the game. There are switches for setting time constriants on MP games
no oceanic civ: in the game. there are switches for locking out nations in games
new terrain: in the game. it now accepts multi-terains so you can create provinces that are cold/wasteland or hot/plains for tundra and savannah

[paplan]

I've got to say............

Theres a lot of misinformation here.

The arguements against savegames here are extraordinarily flawed.

"A lot of strat games start out with no saves"

Simply not true. Civ series, Homm series, Warlords, SE3-5, Moo series, etc. Simply NOT TRUE.

Cant be added because adding "would require file cleanup options"
If a computer illiterate like me can do this by dragging the save game file to my desktop, I'm sure a real programmmer could institute a real save game utility. This isn't rocket science.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT DOM3 IS HARD. YOU'D LIKE TO TRY EXPERIMENTS (IE DIFFERENT OPTIONS) WITHOUT STARTING FROM SCRATCH EVERY TIME IT DOESN'T WORK. WTF IS THIS CONCEPT SO HARD FOR THE DEVS AND FANBOYS TO UNDERSTAND!!!!!!!

By the way............for those of you who think save and reloading is cheating in a single player game (me, its how I learn without starting over each time), there is a simple, trivial option. Don't use it!!