Which game has the best save system?

[Tweed]

Some people get super big mad at the idea that someone out there is saving their game every second frame. So what are the best games that deal with letting the player save without turning the game into a tedious clusterfuck when death happens?

[Oyster Sauce]

Was playing a game today where I died and it put me right before a 20 second cutscene I had just seen. I was livid.
Rusty doesn't like savescumming being an option at all, but if you're going to have 1000 dialogue choices you're going misclick an option, or misinterpret one and it could be a serious fuck up. There should be some way to recover from that.

[wndrbr]

Games that have 1000 dialogue choices and long cutscenes aren't the ones that benefit from a tight saving system anyway.

[wndrbr]

The debate on which saving system is better is pointless, as every dev picks the system that fits the game better. if the game gives me free saving in order to prevent players from losing progress, then i'll be saving as often as i want because devs knew about it and designed their game around it (or decided that ultimately it doesn't matter). If the game limits saving, then i'll play using game's rules. I died and had to rewatch a lengthy cutscene? That's developer's fuckup, should've made cutscenes skippable or at least put an autosave right after a one.

Players who complain about limited saving in games designed around limited saving are the real problem. 'Noooo i can't save every second before every enemy encounter, nooo!', 'nooo i can't save before every story decision so i could see the outcome, nooo', 'nooo i can't save before attempting to disarm a trapped chest, nooo', or 'noooooo i can't save before identifying an item, nooo'. The game puts some kind of limitation on you? Suck it up and play by the rules.

[wndrbr]

Personally i like KCD system. It has autosaves before/after crucial plot moments, so the game works even during the linear cinematic segments. It autosaves you after you progress to certain quest stage (including side quests), so you won't be losing a ton of progress if you're questing. It lets you save by sleeping, which can be done at any time unless you're out in the woods. You can save at any moment and at any place if you have a consumable item which halfway through the game becomes easily obtainable. And there's also "save and quit" option. So the game basically gave you a ton of options to save, while at the same time keeping things tense.

The only problem here is that KCD was rather unstable and tended to crash, which is a pretty shitty thing to happen for a game with limited saving.

[KnightoftheWind]

The best save system is NO save system. Arcade gaming baby, yeah!.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

In rare exceptions, you should be able to save as often as possible.
The old final fantasy games, like FFV FF5, has a lot of "you opened a chest and encountered a rare monster that one shots your entire party! Now you have to redo the entire last 2 hours since your last save!". That felt awful on the SNES. You really need to playing on emulator and use save states. Spending an hour playing through a Thief mission only to die and then have to start the mission all over again is not fun, feels like a complete waste of my time.

I liked how Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2, Valkyria Chronicles, and the newer Fire Emblem games allow you to save during battle on your turn, since the missions can be over 45 minutes long.

I think games that prevent you from saving whenever in an effort to enact consequences on you only works in extremely gameplay focused games like Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma, where you're not preoccupied with getting to the next chapter of the story or missing out on seeing content.

[Tweed]

The debate on which saving system is better is pointless, as every dev picks the system that fits the game better. if the game gives me free saving in order to prevent players from losing progress, then i'll be saving as often as i want because devs knew about it and designed their game around it (or decided that ultimately it doesn't matter). If the game limits saving, then i'll play using game's rules. I died and had to rewatch a lengthy cutscene? That's developer's fuckup, should've made cutscenes skippable or at least put an autosave right after a one.

Players who complain about limited saving in games designed around limited saving are the real problem. 'Noooo i can't save every second before every enemy encounter, nooo!', 'nooo i can't save before every story decision so i could see the outcome, nooo', 'nooo i can't save before attempting to disarm a trapped chest, nooo', or 'noooooo i can't save before identifying an item, nooo'. The game puts some kind of limitation on you? Suck it up and play by the rules.

Some people get super big mad at the idea that someone out there is saving their game every second frame.

[Oldtimer]

Personally i like KCD system. It has autosaves before/after crucial plot moments, so the game works even during the linear cinematic segments. It autosaves you after you progress to certain quest stage (including side quests), so you won't be losing a ton of progress if you're questing. It lets you save by sleeping, which can be done at any time unless you're out in the woods. You can save at any moment and at any place if you have a consumable item which halfway through the game becomes easily obtainable. And there's also "save and quit" option. So the game basically gave you a ton of options to save, while at the same time keeping things tense.

The only problem here is that KCD was rather unstable and tended to crash, which is a pretty shitty thing to happen for a game with limited saving.

I agree, KCD had a great save system - and a mod to give you unlimited saves as well, so there was that too. Never experienced any crashes though, despite me having just a moderately good rig.

A couple of games with more brutal save systems are Darkest Dungeon and This War of Mine - only autosave, but for good reason: the games want the the player to live with his decisions (and in DD's case a string of shitty rolls).

[junior]

Tomb Raider on PSX

[WhiteShark]

Roguelikes have this perfected. They save every turn!

[Tweed]

Roguelikes have this perfected. They save every turn!

*Copies the save file to another directory*

Pssh, nothin' personel, kid.

[wndrbr]

do you really back your saves in a game designed around permadeath? What's even the point in playing it then?

[TKVNC]

M&B Warband probably.

Fallout 4 Survival had a pretty decent save system too. Save at beds only, kinda jazz. Should have been save only at Outposts, but still.

[Element]

Tomb Raider on PSX

I think it was different for every game.
Tomb Raider 1 had crystals in fixed spots which you could use to save, at the cost of destroying the crystal. This would mean you had to pace your own saves since the levels were long and dying from a fall was easy.
TR2 had unlimited saves.
TR3 (I think) went back to the crystals, but instead of having a fixed location you could collect them and use them wherever you wanted, but at the cost of them being destroyed once again.

I think TR3 is not far off from Resi, but without confining it to a save room.

[rusty_shackleford]

Discrete saves are a result of a technical limitation that no longer exists, therefore any game that has continuous 'saving' — your dork souls games, any modern MMO likely uses ORM and therefore doesn't require discrete database flushes, etc.,
Following this, games that restrict discrete saves to specific areas such as KCD, Fallout 4's survival mode, 'save crystals', etc., Being able to create a checkpoint save and quit should be considered mandatory here, as it should never inconvenience the player.

[TKVNC]

Discrete saves are a result of a technical limitation that no longer exists, therefore any game that has continuous 'saving' — your dork souls games, any modern MMO likely uses ORM and therefore doesn't require discrete database flushes, etc.,
Following this, games that restrict discrete saves to specific areas such as KCD, Fallout 4's survival mode, 'save crystals', etc., Being able to create a checkpoint save and quit should be considered mandatory here, as it should never inconvenience the player.

Fallout 4 was mostly a good system for immersion, rather than for the sake of being a 'good' saving system per se. It pretty much made emergent gameplay the standard fare, in a world of quick-save scumming it was a good change of pace.

[rusty_shackleford]

Rusty doesn't like savescumming being an option at all, but if you're going to have 1000 dialogue choices you're going misclick an option, or misinterpret one and it could be a serious fuck up. There should be some way to recover from that.

SWTOR is pretty much KOTOR: Online Edition, it dealt with this by allowing you to leave a dialogue any point before it finishes by hitting escape and it's as if the dialogue never happened.

[rusty_shackleford]

In rare exceptions, you should be able to save as often as possible.
The old final fantasy games, like FFV FF5, has a lot of "you opened a chest and encountered a rare monster that one shots your entire party! Now you have to redo the entire last 2 hours since your last save!". That felt awful on the SNES. You really need to playing on emulator and use save states. Spending an hour playing through a Thief mission only to die and then have to start the mission all over again is not fun, feels like a complete waste of my time.

I liked how Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2, Valkyria Chronicles, and the newer Fire Emblem games allow you to save during battle on your turn, since the missions can be over 45 minutes long.

I think games that prevent you from saving whenever in an effort to enact consequences on you only works in extremely gameplay focused games like Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma, where you're not preoccupied with getting to the next chapter of the story or missing out on seeing content.

The debate on which saving system is better is pointless, as every dev picks the system that fits the game better. if the game gives me free saving in order to prevent players from losing progress, then i'll be saving as often as i want because devs knew about it and designed their game around it (or decided that ultimately it doesn't matter). If the game limits saving, then i'll play using game's rules. I died and had to rewatch a lengthy cutscene? That's developer's fuckup, should've made cutscenes skippable or at least put an autosave right after a one.

Players who complain about limited saving in games designed around limited saving are the real problem. 'Noooo i can't save every second before every enemy encounter, nooo!', 'nooo i can't save before every story decision so i could see the outcome, nooo', 'nooo i can't save before attempting to disarm a trapped chest, nooo', or 'noooooo i can't save before identifying an item, nooo'. The game puts some kind of limitation on you? Suck it up and play by the rules.

Some people get super big mad at the idea that someone out there is saving their game every second frame.

Modern developers design their games around knowing the player will cheat via savescumming, it's why the design philosophy of dork souls-likes & rogueylikes is so different to most other video games.

[Nooneatall]

Being that most game devs are fags, trannies, or weirdos and also being that most of them don't know how to make a good game, we shouldn't assume that they are being intentional with their game systems.
You should be able to save wherever and whenever in a game because it's just a fun hobby and it shouldn't really feel like you are wasting your time engaging in it.

[rusty_shackleford]

because it's just a fun hobby and it shouldn't really feel like you are wasting your time engaging in it.

this is how you attract people who hate video games but want to watch an interactive story and therefore destroy your entire hobby

[Oyster Sauce]

I had to reload the Mayrina/hag quest in BG3 a dozen times because I couldn't figure out how to get a resolution that made sense for my paladin. The closest I could get was having my character taunt her with the wand before snapping it and grinning like an asshole as she cries. Eventually I decided to just leave the quest unfinished in my journal and not speak to her outside of the teahouse. The game would later kind of treat this as a valid choice in A3, but I just assumed the writers fucked up and I would be missing out on the consequences of that quest.
If I couldn't have reloaded this scenario repeatedly and wound up with some stupid out of character situation, I would have lost that connection to my guy and cared less about what he did in the future.

[Nooneatall]

because it's just a fun hobby and it shouldn't really feel like you are wasting your time engaging in it.

this is how you attract people who hate video games but want to watch an interactive story and therefore destroy your entire hobby

I didn't say anything like that though. I didn't say games should be movies. But they should be a fun hobby

[Anon]

because it's just a fun hobby and it shouldn't really feel like you are wasting your time engaging in it.

this is how you attract people who hate video games but want to watch an interactive story and therefore destroy your entire hobby

How does "save whenever you want" correlate into "watch an interactive story"?

[Tweed]

Might be the difference in playing a game like NuCom (or openXcom) on Iron Man vs saving whenever and in multiple slots. When you only have one save and only on exit (or incremental to counteract possible crashes) it adds tension that can't exist otherwise, some weirdos still like that kind of challenge in their games because it forces tactical decisions. Berlin Interpretation roguelikes inspire the same kind of tactical thinking and when shit hits the fan you can spend minutes thinking of the next possible move to make. Cogmind is loaded with that kind of gameplay.

For me CDDA is an example of a game that suffers from having roguelike saving because it takes way too long and a load of tedium to make a character that can survive so unless you're just going for some kind of challenge play then it's really no fun to have to sit and drinking ten thousand pots of coffee while reading an entire library from the comfort of your deathmobile.

[Xenich]

Some people get super big mad at the idea that someone out there is saving their game every second frame. So what are the best games that deal with letting the player save without turning the game into a tedious clusterfuck when death happens?

Depends on the game, its focus, if the save is designed honestly as a part of the play system, etc...

While console save points originally were a hardware design limitation, they integrated them into game play and so tended to make sense depending on the game. In some FPS games, this made sense as the objective was to make it to the next point without dying. In RPGs they don't usually make sense and are more of an individuals complaint about how someone else may play the game, or.. maybe it is an opinion that prefers save point systems and thinks all other systems are "cheats".

I personally am not a big fan of them (restricted saves) as I prefer the games difficulty in each encounter to be the obstacle, not the "difficulty by not dying for a period of time" style of play. While I do think this system worked well with original games like Resident Evil, it has its issues as well with check points causing a person to replay areas of the game over and over if they didn't have they are distracted in RL and the check points are too far between each other.

Ultimately, I think this is an easy solution in gaming as something that can be implemented with a simple flag at the beginning of a new games start. If one does not like such things, save systems can be turned on to restrict the number of and how often a save can be used. This way, it only effects the player as they choose.

I really hated the save scumming fix Larian put in on D:OS with the chests (though I hate RNG loot anyway). It wasn't uncommon to get really bad outcomes throughout the game with junk, unrelated items, etc... and it locked the player to a result that made the game less enjoyable at least to me. Being able to retry a couple of times to get a better outcome was more preferable, and I thought the reasoning for it being implemented was more of a caving to the whiners who used irrational logic to justify the need.

I prefer systems that allow save as you choose, but put a focus on encounters being extremely difficult. One solution balance to saving would be save anywhere, but restrict saving during encounters (mostly for RPGs), that way the player still has to accomplish beating the encounter, but can revert to before the fight, change their strategy of approach.

At the end of the day, people demanding other people not be allowed such seemed a bit narcissistic to me and reminds me of the alphabets throwing tantrums because someone played a game without all their preferred garbage.

One thing I have noticed with some proponents of save point check systems is that while some claim them to be the De Facto method of play, they also tend to scoff at the idea of the original arcade style systems where the entire point was mastering a 100 levels of game play perfectly or you had to start over. In those cases, it seems they wanted saves, but more in a manner that they "personally" felt was appropriate, which again brings us back to the narcissism in many cases (that is if they objected to others playing without them).

[Nooneatall]

If it's fun for you to just have one save, just have one save. Do what you think is fun in your game.

[Xenich]

because it's just a fun hobby and it shouldn't really feel like you are wasting your time engaging in it.

this is how you attract people who hate video games but want to watch an interactive story and therefore destroy your entire hobby

Well, game start toggles provide a means to tailor the experience. I mean, lets be honest, whatever system they implement can be cheated by the person on their machine, so I never saw the point in trying to force a restriction as this, especially if you create a game start option where the person can turn off saves, or limit them for their tastes.

If we are going to say allowing that is bad, then take all game difficulty settings away and design the game around a specific condition to win.

If it's fun for you to just have one save, just have one save. Do what you think is fun in your game.

As long as it is set initially and cant not be changed. See, I don't like the "just don't push that button if you want it harder" type of systems as it is too easy to get frustrated and use that option, but... if the game play rules are established at the start, it then provides a "no return" option which solves that issue.

While I understand the reasoning for allowing people to toggle difficulties back and forth during play, I dislike them. If you want to play on hard, then play on hard with the consequences of it, so learn to beat the encounter or play the game on easy. Save systems can easily be configured using the same logic.

[Nooneatall]

because it's just a fun hobby and it shouldn't really feel like you are wasting your time engaging in it.

this is how you attract people who hate video games but want to watch an interactive story and therefore destroy your entire hobby

Well, game start toggles provide a means to tailor the experience. I mean, lets be honest, whatever system they implement can be cheated by the person on their machine, so I never saw the point in trying to force a restriction as this, especially if you create a game start option where the person can turn off saves, or limit them for their tastes.

If we are going to say allowing that is bad, then take all game difficulty settings away and design the game around a specific condition to win.

If it's fun for you to just have one save, just have one save. Do what you think is fun in your game.

As long as it is set initially and cant not be changed. See, I don't like the "just don't push that button if you want it harder" type of systems as it is too easy to get frustrated and use that option, but... if the game play rules are established at the start, it then provides a "no return" option which solves that issue.

While I understand the reasoning for allowing people to toggle difficulties back and forth during play, I dislike them. If you want to play on hard, then play on hard with the consequences of it, so learn to beat the encounter or play the game on easy. Save systems can easily be configured using the same logic.

I have no argument against that. People should be able to make their game as easy or hard as they want. It's supposed to be a fun hobby at the end of the day. That's why we have mods

[rusty_shackleford]

because it's just a fun hobby and it shouldn't really feel like you are wasting your time engaging in it.

this is how you attract people who hate video games but want to watch an interactive story and therefore destroy your entire hobby

How does "save whenever you want" correlate into "watch an interactive story"?

Because being able to save and reload until you win is essentially a cheat?
The same reason save states trivialize most early console games.