NO SAVE MARATHON GAME. GOOD OR BAD IDEA?

So I just thought making my initial 10 hour project into a no save marathon game. Meaning that there are no save points. So each time you play you have to try to get as far as you can without dying even once.

This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard of. D-:
In a good game you should be able to save any time you want.

Deacon, are you blind to the survival games? There are many survival games out there were you don't have a chance at all to save. Dumb idea? To you, maybe. But it has made people rich.

Not sure if it has been said or not, but why not have an item that you can find, that is one time use and it invokes the option to save.
It's a one time shot, you have to find them, can't buy them, so you have to save them up and just don't make too many around.
But the option to save is there, just make it a bit more difficult and involve searching.
That's how I had it in my old zombie survival game, Infection, the original one anyways.

I thought it was a decent idea for a horror game where saving anywhere, anytime takes away from some of the fun imo, same thing applies to what you want to do in a different way.
Make them work for it.

author=PsychoFreaX
Okay okay I get it. How about this? You can save anytime you want. However every time you save, the game shuts off automatically and every time you load deletes that save file right after. I might even shorten the game down to 7 hours. Should I? What do you think?

This had been mentioned several times during this topic by a few different people. It's called "soft-saving" or "quick-saving". If you actually planned on making a long game without true saves, at least add quicksaves so people can make dinner or go to bed.

author=PsychoFreaX
By the way, would everyone be okay with the quick save idea in a fifty hour game where players will probably lose against half the bosses?

For an RPG? No.
1) Random Number Generation means an enemy critical hit can wipe a character or party instantly, and bam, no game.
2) For characters to know/learn/experiment on a boss fight, they have to fight the boss, meaning that there's a good chance they'll die before they have any idea what they are supposed to do. Not only that, but if the party needs special equipment equipped to beat the boss, well... too bad.
3) Honestly, most players who felt the need to beat the game would grind excessively to just survive, because it's the only solid, reliable strategy in a game like that. But not everyone likes grinding.

Action RPGs like Diablo II have pulled off optional hardcore modes that was essentially what you're talking about - you could create a character that was deleted on death. However, there were several differences:
1) Players have already beaten the game once (to unlock Hardcore mode)
1a) There are multiple ways to play the game (with several different classes) which makes replaying it fun instead of a complete bore
2) There were rewards for Hardcore mode - you were ranked in your own ladder (against other players) and it made you play more careful.

author=PsychoFreaX
By the way, would everyone be okay with the quick save idea in a fifty hour game where players will probably lose against half the bosses?

no, and do you come up with these ideas because you genuinely think they will be fun or do you just post the first ideas that come into your head

I don't think Parasite Eve (or other suspense games) would be as fun (or suspenseful) if you could save anywhere. Simply enough, if you die, there'll be no punishment, just the loading screen. (ie 1,5~ minutes of slowdown)
Suspense / terror games actually would feel... Retarded, with this.
I myself cheat a lot while playing with an emulator (Such as I actually save before casting a sleep spell to ensure it works on the enemies, but only on very dire situations. Yay for savestates)

Saying save everywhere is like saying that Azure Dreams is crap. And no, it is fun as hell, and if you die YES, YOU HAVE TO START OVER, and you the game erases your save once you get kicked out of the tower. It was fun and addicting, even though I'm not a fan of DC.
Basically, save everywhere and the game can simply become a joke. Or you can save somewhere you shouldn't, and, well, have to start all over. (Such as right before the trasher anmc in parasite eve. I saved right before her, with no HP, MP or items. And only my handgun. Then I deleted the save and never touched the game again til a month ago.)

I like the soft saving or whatever it is called. But maybe code an item to work a few times per item. So say you get 1 item, you can use it 3 times before it is used up, and on each level, or whatever, they have one hidden. So then you don't have to worry about finding the next in time, if you have 1 which can be used 3 times. Hell make it where you're given 1 automatically when starting for the first time.

Max McGee
One of my unreleased projects was going to do this. The maps wouldn't be randomly generated, but after the intro levels they would be randomly selected in a random order from a very large pool of maps. I was going to try and outsource some of the mapping to the community as a community project (all the maps are the exact same size and utilize the exact same, easy to use tileset) but the project never got that far.

My name is JosephineEdifice.