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Author Topic: Monday Design Update 4/12 - Save/Load Us  (Read 58183 times)
Brian
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« on: April 13, 2010, 01:10:42 am »

This week I’m throwing out a design question for a system that hasn’t received much design or thought on our end, but it’s one that can alter the intent of a lot of our design decisions, and that system is the save/load system. I’d mostly like to solicit feedback from the group on this one, but here are my thoughts on save/load:

-I don’t want people to save before/reload after every single time combat doesn’t go their way, so I’ve considered no saving in combat. BUT… I understand that sometimes people need to take a call, go to sleep, or make time for loved ones or their bridge club, so I don’t want to punish those people that need to stop playing the game that moment.

-One possibility would be to allow saves during combat with a quit to menu, then erase those files when loaded, like a lot of console strategy games do. BUT I worry about people not liking the ability to save/reload when they want and if it’s worth implementing special save functionality just for combat.

-One problem we have in the game is that for the game’s narrative to really feel like a zombie movie, the player should expect to lose allies – that they shouldn’t expect to keep all their companions alive BUT there are few games I can think of where losing a genuine asset isn’t an upsetting situation to be in as a player and I can’t think of any incentive to not reload except that it’s one less mouth to feed.

-The game can become much harder if the player has been managing resources and people poorly. Some people are going to want to go back to older saves and try again BUT that kind of kills the drive to create a lot of special dialogue and events written specifically for when things get especially bad and players get really creative. Note, I know 10% of you will always let your game play out until the end no matter what happen and yes, there will definitely be material to cover a lot of the normal negative events.

-For a hardcore mode, I would prefer the game auto-saves at the beginning of the day and that’s it. 

I think there were some other odds and ends to address, but I’m sure they will come up in the discussion. And with that, I have opened the floodgates on save/load opinions…
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Silellak
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« Reply #1 on: April 13, 2010, 02:22:13 am »

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about any special saving rules in the Normal mode. An X-Com-style save system should be perfectly adequate; some people will exploit the system and load anytime anything bad happens ever, but that's the nature of the beast and if they choose to cheapen the experience for themselves, so be it.  Unless you feel it'd absolutely vital to the experience that saving and loading have specific limitations, I would say player freedom should always come first. 

I would focus on the Hardcore mode when it comes to any special save/load rules. On that note, it might be worth considering more than just Normal and Hardcore - perhaps allow people to choose a subset of Hardcore rules to use in their otherwise Normal-mode game. That way people can remove the temptation to save and load constantly, but not necessarily have to deal with other aspects of Hardcore mode.

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Bjergtrold
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« Reply #2 on: April 13, 2010, 02:30:05 am »

Hardcore mode should be just that. Hardcore. There should be no option to load an older save. You have only the ONE save file, which is overwritten by a new save regularly by an autosave (perhaps every day) and when you "Save and Quit".
Result, you can't go back, and you can't cancel what happens.

Normal mode (also to be refered to as the wuss mode) should allow you to create and load save files, including the daily autosave.

The "Stick without a carrot" mode is probably the more original: You cannot create save files, but you have the possibility to reload the daily autosave, with a twist. Everytime you reload this autosave, an event is triggered as the first thing to happen that morning... "Rations go bad! You lose 25% of all your supplies (or 25 food units, whichever is highest)."
It will give the player the possiblity to reload if he REALLY wants to, but it comes at a price, and cannot be done casually.

I propose you include all three options, to be chosen as you start a new game.
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Oscar
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« Reply #3 on: April 13, 2010, 02:31:30 am »

Quote
On that note, it might be worth considering more than just Normal and Hardcore - perhaps allow people to choose a subset of Hardcore rules to use in their otherwise Normal-mode game. That way people can remove the temptation to save and load constantly, but not necessarily have to deal with other aspects of Hardcore mode.

I was thinking about the same thing. I really liked this approach in the upcoming Eschalon Book II.
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« Reply #4 on: April 13, 2010, 07:54:23 am »

What the above said. Give people as much freedom in normal mode to choose their own difficulty. Or even add a custom mode, where they can choose any feature from hardcore mode (if there are any more), getting anything between normal and hardcore.

I for instance, would like to save whenever, except when I'm in combat, and have multiple save slots + daily autosaves, because I'm sometimes oblivious to saving Tongue

So, in this case, especially when you're planning a hardcore mode with somewhat drastically different ruleset, I believe player should be able to customize their difficulty as much as possible.
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UbAh
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« Reply #5 on: April 13, 2010, 07:57:40 am »

I mentioned earlier that you could have some fluff from your old dead group.  This was when I thought we would be having a much longer timeline and procedurally generated NPC's.  I thought it would be neat to run into your old group as zombies or try to recover some things from your old shelter.  I'd love a sense of continuity in my next game to see how my last game mattered to the world, but I get the feeling from your scripted NPC events and dialog that this would be very difficult to do.  

Still if you lose your shelter, what about being able to come across that shelter in a different game as overrun or abandoned.  Even better you start a new game and you could receive a call for help from something like your old group from your old shelter, it doesn't have to be the exact timeline as you died off in, it could be at some earlier time when all the essential NPC are still alive.  That way you have extra content and a different way to introduce some NPC to your new games group.


As to having just a combat go bad but not lose the game entirely...

There are a few ways to play with that one but they rely on some assumptions that may not be valid here.
You could have a community board that only ranks for Hardcore, this assumes you have something quantitative like a score or time survived or people saved.
Encourage the community to pass around save games from difficult positions (nudge nudge) as a challenge to each other to see who can bring the group out of a bad deficit.
We could even have a record your game mode and a thread of look at how bad things could go wrong.

The common theme being community involvement.  Think of us players like inner city youth, if you don't get involved in the community and encourage us to do things the right way we will end up vandalizing your neighborhood and knocking up your daughter.
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Soulforged
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« Reply #6 on: April 13, 2010, 08:28:31 am »

-I don’t want people to save before/reload after every single time combat doesn’t go their way, so I’ve considered no saving in combat. BUT… I understand that sometimes people need to take a call, go to sleep, or make time for loved ones or their bridge club, so I don’t want to punish those people that need to stop playing the game that moment.
How much are they going to last? The battles I mean, if on average a battle lasts less than five minutes then I think that disallowing saving during combat makes perfect sense.
Quote
-One problem we have in the game is that for the game’s narrative to really feel like a zombie movie, the player should expect to lose allies – that they shouldn’t expect to keep all their companions alive BUT there are few games I can think of where losing a genuine asset isn’t an upsetting situation to be in as a player and I can’t think of any incentive to not reload except that it’s one less mouth to feed.

-The game can become much harder if the player has been managing resources and people poorly. Some people are going to want to go back to older saves and try again BUT that kind of kills the drive to create a lot of special dialogue and events written specifically for when things get especially bad and players get really creative. Note, I know 10% of you will always let your game play out until the end no matter what happen and yes, there will definitely be material to cover a lot of the normal negative events.

-For a hardcore mode, I would prefer the game auto-saves at the beginning of the day and that’s it. 
Well the target of this product is used to play hardcore games in general, they're used to keep moving forward even if something goes very wrong or if they didn't get the consequences they wanted so I wouldn't worry too much about this, if the hardcore mode creates such sparse save games (only at the beginning of the day) it will also demotivate the reload cycle, since much progress, whether to your liking or not, will be lost.

But I could also think of this:
The game could keep two separate variables and save them separately. Circumstantial variables, such as the condition of the inventory, the position of the character, resources, experience points and so on are saved on a regular save file. On the other hand, variables that keep track of the occurrence of relevant and defining events for the game world (a party member dies, you decide not to allow the poor wretches to enter your shelter, you decide not to upgrade your shelter with those precious watch towers, etc.) are saved on a separate file, which is unique, events recorded here can only be written, you cannot rewrite anything in the file. I can think of many conflicts with such implementation, and not the least of them is the following: What happens if the player decides to load a save before one of those defining events happens? Of course, the very same fact that you cannot rewrite variables into that special save file should be enough to guess that taking a different direction this time would not have any effect.
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« Reply #7 on: April 13, 2010, 09:22:20 am »

How much are they going to last? The battles I mean, if on average a battle lasts less than five minutes then I think that disallowing saving during combat makes perfect sense.


I was going to ask. I'd say even if battles often last 30 minutes it's fine to disallow saving, but I'm sure many many players would disagree, heh. I just found games like X-Com or Ja2 MUCH more exciting when I wouldn't save in between battles.
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UbAh
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« Reply #8 on: April 13, 2010, 09:25:17 am »


Still if you lose your shelter, what about being able to come across that shelter in a different game as overrun or abandoned.  Even better you start a new game and you could receive a call for help from something like your old group from your old shelter, it doesn't have to be the exact timeline as you died off in, it could be at some earlier time when all the essential NPC are still alive.  That way you have extra content and a different way to introduce some NPC to your new games group.

I just saw in the FAQ thread mention that there is only one shelter, so that limits something like this.  You could still have an "other" shelter that is used for this kind of event and even have it a scripted except changing the relevant NPC that are there to someone from the failed games group, there are bound to be more than one NPC that would be appropriate in this situation.  Also it could just be a failed shelter that you can loot but with something to show your old char, like your PC as a Zombie or his corpse laying there.
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Silellak
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« Reply #9 on: April 13, 2010, 09:37:21 am »

One other thing to consider - saved games get corrupted. It's just a fact of life. So, even in the Hardcore "autosave only" mode, you might want to consider having backup saves that are stored somewhere else and simply "hidden" from the player.  This isn't a bad idea in general, since many people these days rely on autosaves if hr game provides them. 
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Fosse
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« Reply #10 on: April 13, 2010, 09:58:14 am »

I'm in the "save any time" camp.  I want to get up and leave when I am done playing.  If a combat starts at 1:00 am and I decide that I'd rather play it the next day, why shouldn't I be able to?

I appreciate the desire to let things play out, and to try to guide the players to appreciating the game on those terms.  But seeking to end save/load "abuse" by restricting reasonable use of the game systems just increases frustration for everybody, "abusers" and normal users alike.

I like X-Com's restriction on loading in combat.  You could save at any time, but you'd have to exit to the Geoscape to load a game.  This doesn't stop the player from quitting whenever he wants, reloading after a mis-click fires a rocket into his own men, or reloading if he really wants to.  But it does make trivial reloading cost just a little bit more and.

I'm also a supporter of having separate Hardcore and Ironman settings.  Where "hardcore" only changes the rules of the game to make it tougher, and "ironman" only adjusts the save game functionality to always be save and quit, or similar.  I really don't want the two to be bundled together, as they are separate choices to me.

To your second question about content for players who are making a mess of things, losing comrades, and so on.  I can assure you that I would appreciate any and all content right up to the "totally lost cause."  If there's a chance I can dig out of the hole, I will keep playing and love the content.  Once things are truly lost I prefer a Game Over state. 

The best advice I could give is that if you really want to create that content and encourage players to experience it you tell them so, up front.  Not just on the forums, but at different points in the game itself.  Tell them in loading screen tips, in-game help, tutorial popups, the game manual, etc.  Let them know that setbacks and losses are a part of the intended experience, that the game provides fun gameplay when things are going down hill, and that playing a story out to a failed conclusion won't simply be a waste of time. 

You won't get everyone to set aside their innate munchkinism, and I think that's okay.  You are better off spending the resources incentivizing a particular play approach and telling people about it than you are forcing everyone to play the way you want them to, or watering down the gameplay to fit the way you fear some are going to play.
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Scott
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« Reply #11 on: April 13, 2010, 10:01:22 am »

-I don’t want people to save before/reload after every single time combat doesn’t go their way...
No one around here wants this, but there's not really much you can do about it.

Quote
-One possibility would be to allow saves during combat with a quit to menu...
No way.  Don't allow saves during combat.  After the first time sometime sits down and plays, they'll get that they have to finish.

Quote
-One problem we have in the game is that for the game’s narrative to really feel like a zombie movie, the player should expect to lose allies...
This is a real problem with player expectations in RPGs.  My first instinct was to say force the player to lose one ally in an early encounter, but I don't know if that would work.  It also might be too "gamey".  I really want to encourage players to continue after facing setbacks.  One way is to have the game occasionally go on after the main character is "killed" by having him awaken later in the hospital or insane asylum, or to have him be captured.  But providing an upside to losing an ally is harder, and making whatever it is visible to the player so he won't just restart the battle even more difficult.  But you've got the infection mechanic going for you, where you might not lose the ally until weeks later.  I think it would be a good idea to drop the chance of infection after exposure to 50%, so the player won't know for sure that a wounded ally has incurred a death sentence until much later.

Quote
-The game can become much harder if the player has been managing resources and people poorly. Some people are going to want to go back to older saves and try again BUT that kind of kills the drive to create a lot of special dialogue and events written specifically for when things get especially bad and players get really creative.
You can't prevent people from going back to old saves.  They might have different motivations for doing so anyway.  As for the "hardcore" content, put flags in place where the player gets some kind of break, even if it's very minor or only symbolic, when their numbers (statistics or mission-failures) get bad to encourage them.  Perhaps an interesting traveler or merchant could show up only under this circumstance, or a map to a secret location could fall into the player's hands.  The special event doesn't need to "rescue" the player, but will act as a signal that the developer has planned for this sort of thing and hasn't just allowed the player to run down a dead-end alley for 10 hours.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2010, 10:05:55 am by Scott » Logged

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« Reply #12 on: April 13, 2010, 10:38:36 am »

I'm in the "save any time" camp.  I want to get up and leave when I am done playing.  If a combat starts at 1:00 am and I decide that I'd rather play it the next day, why shouldn't I be able to?


Autosave at the start of every combat. Actually, all similar games should have this, in my opinion.
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Mnemon
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« Reply #13 on: April 13, 2010, 11:47:39 am »

I'll do that horrible "I didn't have time to read thread but reply anyway" thing here. Sorry if there is repetition.

I think you are addressing two different issues here. One is game difficulty. The other is about consequences for what happens within the game. Personally I would want to keep these two as separate as possible. Game difficulty is meta game. A combat going wrong/NPC death is part of gameplay.

I dislike game designers that make assumptions about how their audience wants to (or worse should) play their game. That is - I feel that in a single player game difficulty should be modular and just simply part of the general game settings. Different people enjoy different things. I am not that interested in tactical combat, but more in the actual role playing. I don't really like stuff that gets too "hardcore" and cheat my way through parts of a game that I, personally, think have gone "overboard" and thus consider a nuisance. Other people love the challenge of beating overwhelming odds. Mostly though - I don't think you can really fit your idea of what's difficult or what not on the person playing. Some people struggle with situations that are easy for others, and the other way round. One cannot foresee ones audience's thought processes, individual skills or reasoning. One can assume some of the things they might try, but it is impossible to ever know absolutely certain.

So ... if I were to design a (turn based) game, here's what I'd do:
  • Upon Game start - either before or after character creation - a "difficulty setting" screen comes up.
  • You can save at any time, on standard setting. You can elect to only be able to save when not in combat, or only to be able to save upon quitting the game. [On the point of save games ... I strongly feel that a game should save every so often, alternating between a few save game slots. NOTHING is more annoying than playing for a while, having forgotten to save, and the game crashing. Or if you do save, only to find that the save game has become corrupted.]
  • Optional "Hardcore" mode. Your character dies, the game ends. I strongly dislike games that force you to unlock that mode. Again - keep the meta decisions and the in-game sections separate. Forcing the player to jump through hoops here does not add anything valuable.
  • Allow for the difficulty "slider" - if there is one - to either be locked or not during game play, i.e. give people the choice whether they want to be able to make things a little easier or harder during gameplay - or not.
  • Implement a "Rewind mode". This would be activated as standard, but can be turned off. Most chess programs offer that option, and I think it is a nice thing to have. Anytime during a combat that is ongoing you can rewind (or fast-forward). Given that turnbased systems usually work on a tile based movement system it should be possible for the game to log movement and actions (and successes/failures) of each character involved in fighting. Use chess coordinate system for ease of implementation. I.e. character A moves from B2 to B4, shoots at character C, misses. Character C moves from A6 to B5, attacks character A with knife causing 15 point of damage. Obviously a system like this would only really work with turn-based approaches.

    See, I, personally, just don't find battles much fun, but I do see them as a part of gameplay. I am not all that happy if I have to redo them from scratch should things go wrong. If I can just go back a few steps and alter my approach, yay, thank you developer! A system like that would only be needed to offer this for the currently ongoing battle. Once all enemies are dead (or all your party) that's it.

Obviously E) requires the game mechanics to aim for that from the start, given that the system has to be constructed and coded with such a system in mind.

You already do include parts of a modular difficulty system by allowing for Hardcore mode and for allowing people to circumvent the standard setting of "player character can't be infected". Give people options and they'll play the game they want to play. It's extra work, but I think it's worthwhile in as much as indicating that you take your audience serious, right from the moment they start the game.

----

For the second issue - in game consequences of the player losing allies etc. I think the issue here is quite simply to "reward the player for failure". It's something very few games do - and that's what the save/reload thing with failure is all about really. There's no reward for failing, usually. In most games you just gimp yourself a little, lose out on a few quests and storyline.

I have the feeling you are already addressing that problem. Narration is the key. I am coming from a writer's background here(halfway through my MA in Writing). What does death/loss of options mean for the narrative? How do the group dynamics in the shelter change if this or that person dies? As each survivor likely also has very specific knowledge, it may be that - without this or that tidbit of information - the story has to change a little. If the only person that knew about a potential location for much needed petrol is dead ... I want narrative consequences. Not just less narration, but different narration [ideally different locations], based on what just happened. There are many many options for adding replay value here.

If that's the case it's really only about informing the player that the game does take these things into account. So stress it in the manual. Mention it in the tutorial, if there is any, remind the player in loading screen tips and tricks [loading screens are great. You can put info there that can be helpful without breaking the fourth wall ... the player is already "outside the game" during these]. Just - you know - encourage the player to go for it and tell them that your game is doing something quite different then what they are used to. Drive the point home.

(BTW: I really dig the way loading screen tips were used in Bloodlines. Bits of lore or information started to creep in that was going to be useful/important in the near future, rather than just randomly rotating through all the information.)
« Last Edit: April 13, 2010, 12:20:11 pm by Mnemon » Logged
JuJu
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« Reply #14 on: April 13, 2010, 12:41:27 pm »

As I am the kind of player who likes to beat challenges if you want me to accept losing party members instead of reloading until I get it right I'd suggest the following system:
  • Manual save only available at shelter.
  • Autosave every day.
  • Autosave on exit.

You could also make an easier mode for more casual players, that allows saving at any time(outside the combat), but I think it will lead to too many reloads and missing half of the fun.

As for hardcore mode where dying removes the savegame - Do you have enough randomized content to make it fun? I suspet that playing through the first half of game would get old fast, especially if all the characters and plot points are predefined.
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