DISCOURAGING SAVE SCUMMING

author=Liberty

author=trentinxd
If you really want it to be played like this I would make it an option that can be turned on or off. And give score points when they spend a certain amount of time into the antiscumsaving mode and put a long cooldown to switch it off. And perhaps make a way to spend points on items or vanity items to encourage people to use your system and then at the end of the gave you get a average of the total points you earned and average ranking.

Why have it turned on or off? If you aren't going to use it (turn the option off) then you don't need to have an option, do you? You just don't do it.

Really, if someone has taken the time to download your game and play it, let them play it how they like. If they want to save scum, let them. It's not like it makes a difference to you, does it? You're not the one who's playing the game and benefits from it. I don't know, I didn't even know it was an issue until I read this thread.

Compared to things like battle balance and gameplay bugs it's such an unimportant thing.

just saying a reward system for not save scumming would be cool. Rewards are always fun. But yah its a complete waste of time when you could be doing other stuff.

Not everyone has the time to play your game straight, college is a bitch already, I prefer to save everywhere and have multiple save slots just in case I'm not sure where I left off.

I dunno about the issue (real or perceived) of save summing in general. Personally, I only "save scum" if I feel that I must. For example, during the very last map of Valkyria Chronicles, I used the mid-map save option after every successful action. Maybe I was doing something wrong with my tactics in general, but I found that even one "miss" put a more-than-sizable dent on any progress I could have had during the turn. Not having the option to save in the middle of that map might mean that I could still win, but seeing the boss recharge his health to beyond where he was last round would certainly be a point of frustration.

Right, but that can also happen with limited saves.

The first thing I do with any Rpg Maker 2k/3 game I download is to jack into the common events tab and add in a key bind for the save menu, likewise, every project I start includes the save anywhere option. I see it as an unspoken contract between creator and consumer. Why build in elements to punish people who are going to play your product?

Of course, this is a double edged sword. Without save anywhere, If I'm not having a great time with a game, but I'm curious as to what is going to happen, I might stick it out and keep playing for a while, just so I can save and not have to trudge through the opening the next time I want to attempt it. If something should happen in that interval that makes me really get into the game or fall in love with some newly uncovered gameplay mechanic, I know I'll be coming back to it. With universal saving, as soon as I decide I'm not enjoying a game, I throw down a save incase I feel compelled by a random masochistic inclination to return and just alt-f4 out of the program.

well there is another way, but it's better if you want a ovverhead action game instead of RPG, because here is the way:Use something as a checkpoint instead of saving yourself, you can only load theplaces you've been to, so if you want to fix something that you messed up on, you have to redo a whole section just to get back to it. Though it's still save scumming, do you think someone's going to want to bore themselves with repeating the same places OVER AND OVER? It will wear on their brain until thay don't even care and just keep going. If they get a gameover or a power outage occurs, they don't have to restart complete;y though, and it's easier than the idea you have. It's a win/win, Save scummers get to save scum, and we get them to reduce it. ^_^

author=Jude
I'm surprised you think ten hours is short enough to make your quicksave idea a good one.

lol

author=Lucidstillness
I too am a fan of 'save anywhere', but for certain games it isn't viable. The main reason game designers don't include the option to save anywhere is to avoid having players get caught in dead end traps. For example, if a player saves in a place where they are low on health and surrounded by monsters, or where they have trapped themselves while working on a puzzle, their only recourse would be to start a new game. Obviously that is undesirable. When one includes the option to save anywhere, one must be very careful to avoid the possibility of such traps.

That's why games always should keep the three last quicksaves and the three last autosaves. So that even if one goes to shit (or even gets corrupted, it can happen), there's always going to be two others that also were fairly recent.

author=Radnen
Why enforce a particular style of playing a game on somebody?

I've heard this a lot and I remain unconvinced. Your premise here (or at least the premise of a lot of people who hold this position) seems to be, as far as I can tell, that you know no more about game design or about what will make the game fun than the player. That's the only way I can imagine it being true, at least. I certainly hope that's not actually the case! The truth is that most players don't spend one second thinking hard about what would really make the game more fun, and will almost never complain about the actual problems. They just know what would make them win, and they instinctively want that because the goal of the game is winning. But no one would actually enjoy a game that makes you invincible at all times. Just because people want something in a game doesn't mean they would enjoy the game any more if you added it. Usually, in fact, they'd actually enjoy the game way less. There is a huge level of skill involved in game design, and your job as a game designer is to make the game as enjoyable as possible - not to give in to what the players think they want, but to add what they actually need.

If you make a game where paladins are a tanking and healing job, players will complain that paladins need to do more damage because they're the lowest damage class. They will think that increasing paladins' damage would fix it. This is, obviously, the easiest solution, but making every class identical removes a huge amount of fun from a game. The actual solution is bound to be much more complex and not actually involve increasing the damage of paladins at all - it might include adding a ton more bosses to the game where defense is more important than offense, or it might involve letting the player class change, or it might be as simple as giving the player clear descriptions of each class's strengths and weaknesses before he or she picks a class. Of course, all of these changes, even the last, will cause dozens of side-effects that you'll have to deal with.

Players don't see problems - they see symptoms. They want you to fix these symptoms, but solving the actual problems is way harder and requires a discerning eye. The game works a certain way for a reason - the way it works causes problems, but it also solves problems. You have to think hard about everything that will change as a side-effect if you change one thing in the game, even if "everyone" is asking for it, and even if it seems harmless, and even if the player can pick whether they want the feature or not. Sometimes something as simple as adding save-anywhere to a game will require you to alter every single aspect of your game's design to fit around it in order for the game to still be any good. Not that you can't still make the game good, but if you want it to be good you might end up with a completely different genre of game.

Somewhat relatedly, I also definitely recommend this article about interpreting player feedback.

author=Nightowl
Like kentona, I don't mind if players play the game differently than I intended as long they don't open the project in RPG Maker and give the main characters the best weapons and 999 stats.

Don't worry, they don't because if they do they ruin the game for themselves, and I would be surprised if they played very long!