Save Mechanics..... Needed

[jmraynor]

Hello All,

I just wanted to start this thread regarding save mechanics. I know that saving happens during sleep, but the game does not make this clear and as a new player I often just find myself starting a new character and playing until death a couple days later....

If I could just save when I wanted to and go eat diner and do whatever and come back to where I was, I think the game would have more replay value and be a lot more fun.

I hope it is not too much (or to newbie) to ask for a manual save button, this seems fundamental.

Best Regards,

Jeremy

[HavocFactory]

+1

Please just add a Save button to the menu, and a corner icon when the game is autosaving. Getting this right is easy, and will make the game far better immediately.

[Hesha]

The game saves whenever...

... you wake up from sleeping,

... you enter a new area (new map, new building, new section of builing - anything with a loading screen),

... you gain any affliction (by falling an spraining a joint, wolf attack, etc.)

Whenever the game saves, the is a little circular animation at the right hand edge of the screen, about here:

[Hesha]

+1

Please just add a Save button to the menu, and a corner icon when the game is autosaving. Getting this right is easy, and will make the game far better immediately.

Saving *whenever* would make the game far too easy. Before you go hunting, just leave your base, go back in to save and leave again. If your shot misses the wolf and he comes charging at you, just press ESC quick and quit the game, try again... just don't wait until the fight with the wolf is over, because then the game will have saved.

[Larkid]

Or just play the game as intended and accept that bad things will happen along with the good.

It seems like lots of people on these forums save-scum their way through everything - and then turn around and complain that things are too easy!

If you really need to step away from the game for a while and aren't near a place to save, just hit ESC and come back later.

[cowboymrh]

The problem with the save button is that too many use/abuse saves for getting out of bad situations,

which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole game.

If one really needs to save their game, because of RL situations..... you can always toss down a bedroll just about anywhere for 1 hour.

[Scyzara]

Would anyone mind to explain how a save button (or even better: an auto-save function whenever you quit the game) would enable exploits that are currently not possible anyway?

I for one rather find the current save system horribly exploitable. Whenever something goes wrong (you get lost somewhere while exploring, your sweater repair has failed, a shot has missed or whatever else) you can simply quit the game, load an old save and start anew. That's already the maximum of exploitability I can imagine.

If TLD simply auto-saved on every game quit (like most modern games do in fact) this kind of exploiting would be impossible. Because if you load your save later on you would still be lost/have to deal with an angry wolf/have an unrepaired sweater/whatever.

[ChillPlayer]

It would be easier to exploit. Take a wolf fight for example, right now you have to quit before the fight ends, with a save button you could first save, check how the fight ends and only if you die load again. And there's a psychological point to it too. If there's a save button I'm going to use it, alot, like whenever I'm about to go around a corner, step over the peak of a hill and so on. This takes a tremendous part of suspense away, in fact it totally erradicates it. The "manual" method though is tedious and needs you to quit the game when you make a mistake, some valid seconds to reflect on "why the heck do you need to cheat yourself?"

Autosaving every aspect of your situation when you quit would not be impossible but still quite some work. After all the engine would need to keep track of the state of everything in the game (or at least on the map) and that info needs to be saved too. It would be nice if the game would save every aspect of your situation when you quit but I can undertand why the devs opted for defined save points with a limited set of parameters they have to keep track there.

The "falling down" state seems to have been addressed though, quitting the game while you're falling down the damn in Carter's River prevented your death in earlier versions, when you load now you find yourself falling again.

The thing that bothers me most about the save mechanic is that you can copy back and old save at all, making LBs quite pointless. Or has this been fixed? Haven't tried it since v150 or so but neither did I read something about that in any patchnotes. I don't know how to prevent this 100% offline without an online server connection but I can think of many ways to at least make it much harder than just copy over some directory, like keeping track of the save file checksum in an encrypted binary file or something like that. Not impossible for an hexeditor-wiz to still manipulate it but it would take so much effort to - in the end - only fool yourself that most won't even bother and just begin a new game.

[akodo1]

I get the idea of trying to avoid save-scumming or whatever it's called, where if something bad happens you just go back to a save from 5 minutes ago.

However, when you aren't standing next to a building, and you've been away from one for quite some time, and you want to stop playing to do something else...it is inconvenient.

It took me a while to figure out the 'sleep 1 hour' feature to save the game.

[hekele]

It took me a while to figure out the 'sleep 1 hour' feature to save the game.

I had figured out the building saves, but I so rarely sleep outdoors that I only just read in this forum that that would save, too. So yes, something at least more clear would be great. I'm fine with the current auto-saves if they're more clear and explained somewhere. I just want to be able to go back to my last save upon death, or even if I had to go back the the start of that day, or the day before or something... just not losing hours and hours of gameplay on a few seconds of bad luck or struggle figuring out how the game controls work.

[TWM]

Autosaving every aspect of your situation when you quit would not be impossible but still quite some work. After all the engine would need to keep track of the state of everything in the game (or at least on the map) and that info needs to be saved too.

Whereas *as if by magic* none of these problems pose an issue when a player - at any given time - just spreads out his bed roll here or there and takes a nap for an hour, which autosaves the game as well.

What's the big difference, programming-wise? I'd love to know.

[Jooleeano]

This is how I see it: why are video games created for? Philosophical and profit purposes aside, they're created for people to have a good time, be it having fun while playing it, or getting a challenge out of it. The way it is, without a manual save option, I believe TLD is only fully covering the "get a challenge out of it" option.

I understand why some people don't want a manual save option. That''s fine. But would it be that much of a deal to add a game option (I mean settings option) to activate manual saving? Maybe not everyone is fine with losing their 30/60+ days character/crafts/loot/countless hours playing because he made a mistake or was victim of some lack of luck.

I love TLD, and yeah, I just lost my guy. But 2 minutes after that I was already playing again. Still, I can see how this could draw people away from the game. I don't think I myself will/would still be playing after too many unsatisfying experiences.

[akodo1]

I think it would be helpful if when you enter a building or wake up from sleep, the game literally said 'game saved' then everyone would know.

[chipinthedark]

Maybe not everyone is fine with losing their 30/60+ days character/crafts/loot/countless hours playing because he made a mistake or was victim of some lack of luck.

Fatal mistakes and bad luck are part of the game as I see it, a fundamental "no do-overs" rule, which I find both challenging and refreshing, even in Pilgrim mode, though not to the degree the others present. As such a save anytime option would seem out of place, a sop to the SOP gamers have come to depend on to save their skins (i.e., save-scumming).

[hekele]

To each their own. If you enjoy permadeath, then if there were an option, you could choose to stick with the current environment. Personally, I find it very demotivating, and now that my game is going on 20 days, which is a drop in the bucket compared to some, I'm likely to give up in frustration when I die. At least, it'll be days, weeks, perhaps months before I'll feel like diving into the time-waster again. They already have my money, so perhaps that doesn't matter, but the permadeath has prevented me from recommending the game to a few friends I know would react badly to it, and to very specifically mention it to the people I have told about the game. I don't need to save any place (I would prefer not to have it automatically save on quit), and I don't mind getting knocked back even a day or two on death, or losing a random amount of gear or something to make it very unpleasant and/or hard to recover from. I can see a time after getting to know the game where I would want to try permadeath challenges again, but dying 6 times in the first 36 hours of game play just trying to learn how to use things nearly made me give up, if my seventh game hadn't gone so well, I think it would have been my last.

[LordStarwalker]

I for one am fine with the current save mechanics in the game. Saving my game after sleeping is fine.

I seriously hope the Hinterland Studio does not cave to gamers in this thread that are requesting the game be dumbed down. If the current permanent death and save mechanics are removed (or dramatically altered), this is going to be less of a survival game.

Gamers, please think about what you are asking for. If Hinterland were to implement several of the changes requested in this thread... then TLD would start to become more like every other game out there. Do you really want them to water down this awesome sandbox, realistic, non-hand holding experience we are enjoying here?!?

[TWM]

I see two discussions getting intermingled here:

1. A discussion about saving on exiting the game (which seems sensible to me, and also would prohibit exploitation, like learning how to shoot without cost, or travelling back into time to undo a mistake).

2. A discussion about permadeath, meaning the player has to start from scratch if his character dies (which seems like a sandbox issue only, I doubt this'll be implemented in story mode; that would get very tedious after a few untimely deaths).

[FINDarkside]

Autosaving every aspect of your situation when you quit would not be impossible but still quite some work. After all the engine would need to keep track of the state of everything in the game (or at least on the map) and that info needs to be saved too. It would be nice if the game would save every aspect of your situation when you quit but I can undertand why the devs opted for defined save points with a limited set of parameters they have to keep track there.

Actually it would be just a one line of code. The saving mechanics are just a design choice. And obviously the game needs to keep track of "everything" even if it's not saved.

[Jolan]

I'd love to see milestone saves - you know you reach day 50 (or whatever) and the game makes a save. The that way you can decide to either start anew when you die your inevitable and hideous death or replay the last x number of days. For me it would be like the first Resident Evil - very limited number of saves - and most of the time I just started again. Except that one time....

[TWM]

I'd love to see milestone saves - you know you reach day 50 (or whatever) and the game makes a save. That way you can decide to either start anew when you die your inevitable and hideous death or replay the last x number of days.

Death in TLD is hardly inevitable, and usually the result of the player making a number of mistakes in response to a number of unfortunate circumstances.

For instance, instead of holing up in a cave with 7 hours of light, you decide to move on, you get lost, get jumped by a wolf feeding on a deer as dusk sets in, and on top of that, a blizzard strikes. You manage to find a tractor where you take some shelter... and then you slowly freeze to death at day 261.

Was that an inevitable death? Hardly. Does the inability to start restart ten days earlier add to the suspense and immersive feeling of dread when you find yourself wandering out in the cold? Hell yeah!

[cekivi]

My own two cents:

Permadeath is fine. In fact, I'd argue that it is part of the core Long Dark experience.

I agree the game should save slightly more often. I have played for several hours, traversed across an entire transition zone, forgot to sleep and then had to do everything over again. It felt like such a waste. At the very least, the game should save on entering a new map/transition zone. I don't think a quicksave button would improve the play experience though. That's already addressed by the bedroll.

[Dirmagnos]

Any save system is exploitable, question is merely "how comfortable saving system is" ? On that part TLD kinda suck.