“Save me!”
Saves in games can be a thorny issue. If implemented well, no-one notices them. If implemented badly or even (forbid!) incorrectly then the whole internet explodes in your face. And not in a pleasant way.
I'm not going to get into specific examples of games with bad save mechanisms or badly designed save mechanisms – just want to give a brief overview of the situation facing designers.
There is often a dilemma between using save points or allowing the user to save whenever they choose. Traditionally, console titles have either saved automatically when a level or mission/objective has been completed, or those titles with longer levels have used fixed save/autosave points strategically placed throughout the game. The “save anywhere” mechanism on the other hand has been mostly the preserve of PC games.
The use of these methods was primarily because console games tended to be shorter, with discreet levels while PC games were more complex with levels and missions taking longer to complete and/or having multiple objectives.
The issues facing designers now are:
1. Gaming demographic getting older – with less spare “gaming” time they demand the ability to save anywhere (or at least more frequent autosaving) as they have no time to play through whole sections of the game again.
2. Console games are getting larger – as processing power/storage space/know-how increases so does the physical size of the game levels. Small levels don't cut it any more. Larger levels need more content so they don't appear as vast empty open spaces. This often involves more combat travelling between locations, adding sub-quests etc. This directly relates to point 1.
3. PC games are becoming more console-like – more titles are being developed as multi-format and as such are often designed for the lowest common denominator (being the formats that will shift the most units). Often the save mechanism is retained cross-platform, so more PC games have autosaves or fixed save points only.
4. Console games are becoming more PC-like – conversely, with the increasing power of consoles there are more games which would originally have been PC-only titles that are now multi-format, so are more complex – Oblivion for example.
When people complain about “broken saving” in games, they tend to fall into two camps:
1. Avid PC gamers who discover their latest purchase doesn't allow them to save anywhere – “How dare the designer force me to save only when they deem me able to! I spit on them!”.
2. Gamers who discover their latest purchase suffers from such carelessly placed save points that they are either forced to replay whole 10 minute+ sections of the game to get back to where they died/failed or now have a “dead” save which loads them up with 3 health, 2 bullets and no possible way of defeating the salivating beasts ahead that just killed them.
Point 1. is completely a designer's call, whatever rabid PC fans may think. There may or may not be the opportunity in the PC version to add in quicksaving. And if there is it's totally up to the designer to choose whether they implement it or not. The vocal minority who literally vomit their vitriolic opinions from behind the safety of their own monitor and demand a patch to “fix the broken saving” shouldn't sway you. It's your game. If you can justify the use of saving points, can justify not having a quicksave mechanism and the placement doesn't frustrate the user, then go for it.
When the save placement does frustrate the user, then you've just fallen foul of point 2. SERIOUSLY think about where you are putting those save points. Get some fresh eyes to play through the game – note where they keep failing, keep replaying parts of the level and adjust game difficulty and save placement accordingly. If you get this right, then you've at least got some ammunition against those in point 1.
