AJRSome guy who wrestlesNorwichRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
Better yet; you can have the ability to save anywhere you want and a warning of some form that a boss is nearby. Checkpoints would probably be useful in those situations too.
Honestly, I'm not really sure why save points still exist. There's a bunch of RPGs I probably would have finished if they'd let me save whenever I wanted.
Better yet; you can have the ability to save anywhere you want and a warning of some form that a boss is nearby. Checkpoints would probably be useful in those situations too.
Honestly, I'm not really sure why save points still exist. There's a bunch of RPGs I probably would have finished if they'd let me save whenever I wanted.
Because I found having to save after every single battle in Dragon Age to be frustrating and mind-numbing.
The game that did this right was Kingdom Hearts 2. I never lost more than a few minutes from a death, yet I didn't have to save every minute.
Blue Dragon also did fairly well. It had fairly frequent savepoints and checkpoints before each boss. If you died against a boss you could try again or turn around and level some more.
This thread reminded me of theseentries from Stuff Geeks Love. The Boycott one isn't really applicable here (maybe in the case of some people bemoaning the FF series), but the hatred is definitely showing through.
Better yet; you can have the ability to save anywhere you want and a warning of some form that a boss is nearby. Checkpoints would probably be useful in those situations too.
Honestly, I'm not really sure why save points still exist. There's a bunch of RPGs I probably would have finished if they'd let me save whenever I wanted.
Because I found having to save after every single battle in Dragon Age to be frustrating and mind-numbing.
The game that did this right was Kingdom Hearts 2. I never lost more than a few minutes from a death, yet I didn't have to save every minute.
Blue Dragon also did fairly well. It had fairly frequent savepoints and checkpoints before each boss. If you died against a boss you could try again or turn around and level some more.
You don't _have_ to save after every battle. I haven't played Dragon Age so I'll fall back to ME for examples. If something significant just happened, consider saving. If suddenly your radar is jammed, back up and consider saving. If you're been playing for 4 hours and don't want to lose that, consider saving. You shouldn't need a glowing disc to remind you to save.
Or they could save a la Torchlight. No manual saves. Any time you enter a new area, save. Any time you gracefully quit, save. Any time you portal back to town (I think), save. Or, checkpoint after events. Recover a beacon? Save. Wipe out some geth? Save. Transition from ship to Mako? Save.
Agreed, the traditional 'save point only, lolololol' is stupid, but combining it with checkpoints makes it viable.
Auto-save + manual save mix is the best I think though. You get auto-saves for those who forget but manual saves for those cautious enough to avoid royally screwing up.
Better yet; you can have the ability to save anywhere you want and a warning of some form that a boss is nearby. Checkpoints would probably be useful in those situations too.
Honestly, I'm not really sure why save points still exist. There's a bunch of RPGs I probably would have finished if they'd let me save whenever I wanted.
Because I found having to save after every single battle in Dragon Age to be frustrating and mind-numbing.
The game that did this right was Kingdom Hearts 2. I never lost more than a few minutes from a death, yet I didn't have to save every minute.
Blue Dragon also did fairly well. It had fairly frequent savepoints and checkpoints before each boss. If you died against a boss you could try again or turn around and level some more.
You don't _have_ to save after every battle. I haven't played Dragon Age so I'll fall back to ME for examples. If something significant just happened, consider saving. If suddenly your radar is jammed, back up and consider saving. If you're been playing for 4 hours and don't want to lose that, consider saving. You shouldn't need a glowing disc to remind you to save.
Or they could save a la Torchlight. No manual saves. Any time you enter a new area, save. Any time you gracefully quit, save. Any time you portal back to town (I think), save. Or, checkpoint after events. Recover a beacon? Save. Wipe out some geth? Save. Transition from ship to Mako? Save.
Unfortunately, any individual battle in Dragon Age can and will kill you. The original Mass Effect was like that on the higher difficulties as well, thanks to snipers and rocket drones. So if you didn't save after every battle you frequently had to repeat battles.
I would be happy with a system like the one you describe for Torchlight for pretty much any game but a non-action RPG. The problem with that system is that it doesn't allow multiple save games. Every so often you might need one.
Real Examples:
Lost Odyssey:
There's two items in the room. You pick one up and get whisked off to a cutscene where you get captured. You reload your save to get that other item first.
Oblivion:
An NPC does something completely arbitrary and gets themselves killed. You reload your save to fix Bethesda's bugs.
Dragon Age:
A patch is released that breaks specializations. You reload an old save to reset them.
Better yet; you can have the ability to save anywhere you want and a warning of some form that a boss is nearby. Checkpoints would probably be useful in those situations too.
Honestly, I'm not really sure why save points still exist. There's a bunch of RPGs I probably would have finished if they'd let me save whenever I wanted.
Because I found having to save after every single battle in Dragon Age to be frustrating and mind-numbing.
The game that did this right was Kingdom Hearts 2. I never lost more than a few minutes from a death, yet I didn't have to save every minute.
Blue Dragon also did fairly well. It had fairly frequent savepoints and checkpoints before each boss. If you died against a boss you could try again or turn around and level some more.
You don't _have_ to save after every battle. I haven't played Dragon Age so I'll fall back to ME for examples. If something significant just happened, consider saving. If suddenly your radar is jammed, back up and consider saving. If you're been playing for 4 hours and don't want to lose that, consider saving. You shouldn't need a glowing disc to remind you to save.
Or they could save a la Torchlight. No manual saves. Any time you enter a new area, save. Any time you gracefully quit, save. Any time you portal back to town (I think), save. Or, checkpoint after events. Recover a beacon? Save. Wipe out some geth? Save. Transition from ship to Mako? Save.
Unfortunately, any individual battle in Dragon Age can and will kill you. The original Mass Effect was like that on the higher difficulties as well, thanks to snipers and rocket drones. So if you didn't save after every battle you frequently had to repeat battles.
I would be happy with a system like the one you describe for Torchlight for pretty much any game but a non-action RPG. The problem with that system is that it doesn't allow multiple save games. Every so often you might need one.
Real Examples:
Lost Odyssey:
There's two items in the room. You pick one up and get whisked off to a cutscene where you get captured. You reload your save to get that other item first.
Oblivion:
An NPC does something completely arbitrary and gets themselves killed. You reload your save to fix Bethesda's bugs.
Dragon Age:
A patch is released that breaks specializations. You reload an old save to reset them.
The second 2 make sense, but if I'm playing an RPG and there is a repercussion from my choice I take it as is. After all, a real DM wouldn't let me go "wait wait wait, go back, I wanted that other chest, too." I know I'm probably in the minority on this, but saves are meant to save my progress like a bookmark, not allow me to rewrite history like that silly goose who reads choose your own adventure books but writes down every choice and what the other page number would have been.
Also, on the terms of grinding I'm really fond of a game where the only solution to a boss defeating you isn't "grind moar" but "find a better strategy".
Dragon Quest 8 did this right at points (although you still had to grind for the Jester), and FFX did this right for most boss battles too.
Lunar was really good for this. Although the difficulty on it tended to be cranked up to 11 most times anyways.
Unfortunately, any individual battle in Dragon Age can and will kill you.
This sort of attitute is the reason why most RPG's have boring gameplay. Who the hell complains that its possible to lose a battle in a video game? Only RPG players.
Oblivion:
An NPC does something completely arbitrary and gets themselves killed. You reload your save to fix Bethesda's bugs.
Almost every quest NPC is immortal in Oblivion.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Unfortunately, any individual battle in Dragon Age can and will kill you.
This sort of attitute is the reason why most RPG's have boring gameplay. Who the hell complains that its possible to lose a battle in a video game? Only RPG players.
Unfortunately, any individual battle in Dragon Age can and will kill you.
This sort of attitute is the reason why most RPG's have boring gameplay. Who the hell complains that its possible to lose a battle in a video game? Only RPG players.
Really? We're discussing game design decisions not difficulty.
Dragon Age is balanced such that any fight can be fatal, yet autosaves can be as much as 20 minutes apart. Therefore, since you never know what's around the next corner, you have to save at every single opportunity. After every battle and every conversation.
This is the core problem with save anywhere systems. The game is balanced to assume that you save every time humanly possible, because that's what people do.
If the game expects you to save after every battle, it should save itself after every battle rather than making you do it yourself. It's lazy game design.
I wouldn't agree with this. Otherwise, no one would die if you any mages in your party at all. There is very little functional difference between Morgana and Wynne vs. a mage main character.
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deadlyrhetoric"We could be two straight linesin a crooked world."__BANNED USERSregular
If the game expects you to save after every battle, it should save itself after every battle rather than making you do it yourself. It's lazy game design.
No. This is something that maybe you do (I certainly do). However, I'm sure that there are some players who may save before going into a fight, scrape by, and who do not re-load because it didn't go the way they want and who go into their next battle and use a few more items they were planning on saving or use a little more magic than they had initially intended, etc.
I wouldn't agree with this. Otherwise, no one would die if you any mages in your party at all. There is very little functional difference between Morgana and Wynne vs. a mage main character.
And I'm sure he's assuming you have all three in your party.
And he's right, but that's a separate issue.
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
Nightmare is immortal. At least on the 360. You can knock him unconscious and load him up with items and use him as a mobile storage unit.
Now I think this sort of thing is ridiculous game design. It makes no sense whatsoever. Why not just have some saddlebags you can slap on your steed? I get why so many people love Oblivion, but it's stuff like this that makes me just look at the game sideways.
I wouldn't agree with this. Otherwise, no one would die if you any mages in your party at all. There is very little functional difference between Morgana and Wynne vs. a mage main character.
And I'm sure he's assuming you have all three in your party.
And he's right, but that's a separate issue.
I just see that as an 'easy mode' for twinks and munchkins to play with. They are part of the fanbase too (possibly the biggest part). Bioware knows this and gives you the option without forcing it on you.
Nightmare is immortal. At least on the 360. You can knock him unconscious and load him up with items and use him as a mobile storage unit.
Now I think this sort of thing is ridiculous game design. It makes no sense whatsoever. Why not just have some saddlebags you can slap on your steed? I get why so many people love Oblivion, but it's stuff like this that makes me just look at the game sideways.
It's a line between open-ended, sandbox realism, and a storyline on rails, really. I have hardly played the Oblivion main quest but I've completed all of the guilds quests, my character is almost level 16, and I've got like 70+ hours logged (the majority of which were spent breaking and entering, looting, then fencing or using for alchemy). I have no desire to further the actual plot. Oblivion is almost too loose. It's like a medieval-fantasy Grand Theft Auto. And I treat it as so. Especially when I'm running from the city guard archers with NWA's "Express Yourself" playing on my 360, because I've killed some vendor for no reason.
Give me a game like Xenogears, though, and I can't put that shit down...
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
I don't think I've ever beaten a Elder Scrolls. I just run around doing sidequests until I get bored and never play them again.
Though I usually have 80+ hours in them so I can't complain.
Fallout 3 is the only Bethsada game I have ever beat the main story for I believe.
Not like it matters, story/plot isn't one of Bethsada's strong points anyway.
I wouldn't agree with this. Otherwise, no one would die if you any mages in your party at all. There is very little functional difference between Morgana and Wynne vs. a mage main character.
And I'm sure he's assuming you have all three in your party.
And he's right, but that's a separate issue.
I just see that as an 'easy mode' for twinks and munchkins to play with. They are part of the fanbase too (possibly the biggest part). Bioware knows this and gives you the option without forcing it on you.
I don't know... I played through with my main character as an Archmage, and first 3/4 of the game I went Main, Alistair, +1 Warrior, +1 Rogue, and I died plenty of times, it was quite difficult, but at the end I required Wynne in there as a healer. Maybe because I played my spellcaster more as a warrior w/ spells if need be.
Anyway, RPG's always have and always will have the option to spec your party in such a way that they are uber. I see nothing wrong with this system.
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If the game expects you to save after every battle, it should save itself after every battle rather than making you do it yourself. It's lazy game design.
No. This is something that maybe you do (I certainly do). However, I'm sure that there are some players who may save before going into a fight, scrape by, and who do not re-load because it didn't go the way they want and who go into their next battle and use a few more items they were planning on saving or use a little more magic than they had initially intended, etc.
My autosave suggestion wouldn't allow you to do this. Your save would be overwritten after every battle. Even better, you would get an automatic save BEFORE each battle.
There's no challenge or fun in having to run around a dungeon for ten minutes collecting all the items again because you turned a corner and got ambushed. It's the same thing as unskippable cutscenes right after a checkpoint.
I think that the best way for an RPG (or any game for that matter) to be designed is to break it down into manageable chunks, that are individually a challenge, but not too long. You can then place save points, autosaves, or whatever between them.
My autosave suggestion wouldn't allow you to do this. Your save would be overwritten after every battle. Even better, you would get an automatic save BEFORE each battle.
There's no challenge or fun in having to run around a dungeon for ten minutes collecting all the items again because you turned a corner and got ambushed. It's the same thing as unskippable cutscenes right after a checkpoint.
What if I wanted to go back to before a previous save and try something different?
I'd like to keep save points/rest areas because they serve as good milestone measurements of progress and indicators that there is something in the next area that will eff you up royally if you're aren't prepared.
Maybe throw in a temporary "quicksave" that will get you back to where you are if you need to get away from the game and you're in between save points.
That's all you need. Solves the problem of surprise face melting and also solves the problem of interrupted playtime.
My autosave suggestion wouldn't allow you to do this. Your save would be overwritten after every battle. Even better, you would get an automatic save BEFORE each battle.
There's no challenge or fun in having to run around a dungeon for ten minutes collecting all the items again because you turned a corner and got ambushed. It's the same thing as unskippable cutscenes right after a checkpoint.
What if I wanted to go back to before a previous save and try something different?
I'd say checkpoints which you can load from the last one made and then manual save points either on the map or whenever you remember to save via menu.
I'd like to keep save points/rest areas because they serve as good milestone measurements of progress and indicators that there is something in the next area that will eff you up royally if you're aren't prepared.
Maybe throw in a temporary "quicksave" that will get you back to where you are if you need to get away from the game and you're in between save points.
That's all you need. Solves the problem of surprise face melting and also solves the problem of interrupted playtime.
Every game needs IronMan saves a la Shenmue.
Every. Single. One.
I wouldn't agree with this. Otherwise, no one would die if you any mages in your party at all. There is very little functional difference between Morgana and Wynne vs. a mage main character.
And I'm sure he's assuming you have all three in your party.
And he's right, but that's a separate issue.
I just see that as an 'easy mode' for twinks and munchkins to play with. They are part of the fanbase too (possibly the biggest part). Bioware knows this and gives you the option without forcing it on you.
I don't know... I played through with my main character as an Archmage, and first 3/4 of the game I went Main, Alistair, +1 Warrior, +1 Rogue, and I died plenty of times, it was quite difficult, but at the end I required Wynne in there as a healer. Maybe because I played my spellcaster more as a warrior w/ spells if need be.
Anyway, RPG's always have and always will have the option to spec your party in such a way that they are uber. I see nothing wrong with this system.
What's wrong with this system (and is not wrong with DA but I'll get to that) is that if you spec your chars right but the game is balanced for people who specced their party poorly then it's way too easy. Alternatively, you balance for the powerful specs and the other player can't progress.
Of course Dragon Age has difficulty levels so the problem is solved. I dislike using friendly fire as a difficulty mechanic but whatever. Every game of pretty much every genre should have difficulty levels because the audience is so diverse in what they want for a challenge.
edit: and you don't need to bring every mage. I played mostly me (mage) + Allistair, Leliana, and Morrigan. Even double mage is pretty crazy. The classes were not balanced well.
What's wrong with this system (and is not wrong with DA but I'll get to that) is that if you spec your chars right but the game is balanced for people who specced their party poorly then it's way too easy. Alternatively, you balance for the powerful specs and the other player can't progress.
Of course Dragon Age has difficulty levels so the problem is solved. I dislike using friendly fire as a difficulty mechanic but whatever. Every game of pretty much every genre should have difficulty levels because the audience is so diverse in what they want for a challenge.
edit: and you don't need to bring every mage. I played mostly me (mage) + Allistair, Leliana, and Morrigan. Even double mage is pretty crazy. The classes were not balanced well.
Tthere are some games that try to put more roleplaying in than other modern electronic RPGs.
The idea of game balance in single player games is one that we've imposed on electronic games because it makes sense: easy games aren't necessarily fun, and uber hard games also aren't fun. We want to accomplish something, but feel like it was worthwhile.
In dragon age, you can reasonably beat the game with pretty much ANY reasonable party makeup and spec. This could be viewed as a roleplaying benefit (ex: I'm roleplaying a city elf who swore off pants and bows) in that you're not forced to min max every decision to have fun playing through the game. The disadvantage is that if you do min max every decision to beat the game 'Extreme' or 'Hard' or 'To the Max Yo!' then it becomes easy -there's a strong consensus among the gaming community that a game should require you to min/max.
Dragon age IS good in that you can do the main quests in any order and it sets the 'difficulty' (the enemy level) depending upon what level you start that area as (this is exploitable to make the game even easier if you like). What it doesn't do is take into account imbalance between different classes and part makeups (this would be difficult to do, but possible). This is exacerbated by the limited intelligence demonstrated by enemies.
I make these statements on a 'normal' difficulty game, I've yet to set anything higher for DA. I will say, that I watched my wife waltz through the game as a mage while I was struggling with certain areas as a rogue. Haiving a healing spell from the get go is just very powerful.
edit: and you don't need to bring every mage. I played mostly me (mage) + Allistair, Leliana, and Morrigan. Even double mage is pretty crazy. The classes were not balanced well.
This is true. I found having the main character as a Mage made Nightmare easier than Hard with a Warrior.
They could have easily balanced the classes by giving the Rogue and Warrior decent crowd control and damage mitigation talents though.
And this is going way off topic.
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I might love PC games but I hate what the FPS revolution did to PC gamers and saves. Autosaves, savestates, and even checkpoint saves are clearly the works of the devil, promoting laziness.
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Forever Zefirocloaked in the midnight glory of an event horizonRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
I'm pretty sure the horse you guys are talking about is Shadowmere.
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More importantly, quicksave and/or save anywhere lets me stop playing when I need to without backtracking for a save point. You can have save anywhere without bullshit trial and error gameplay.
I was talking about those mentioned in the quote, the kind that delete themselves upon loading so it's just like leaving the game on only without wasting power and if you want to, say, stop playing some rpg on the PS3 so you can watch a blu-ray movie with your friends then you can do that and resume playing later and other such benefits
And you'd have to be an incredibly silly goose to think those types of quicksaves are a bad idea!
Also was a tvtropes link really needed I think everyone here knows what you would mean with the phrase "trial and error".
I was talking about those mentioned in the quote, the kind that delete themselves upon loading so it's just like leaving the game on only without wasting power and if you want to, say, stop playing some rpg on the PS3 so you can watch a blu-ray movie with your friends then you can do that and resume playing later and other such benefits
And you'd have to be an incredibly silly goose to think those types of quicksaves are a bad idea!
Also was a tvtropes link really needed I think everyone here knows what you would mean with the phrase "trial and error".
Oh, my mistake. Most people don't describe those as quicksaves. That term generally implies something else.
And the TV Tropes link is because I'm evil, and the warning is because I feel guilty about being evil.
Dragon Age is balanced such that any fight can be fatal, yet autosaves can be as much as 20 minutes apart. Therefore, since you never know what's around the next corner, you have to save at every single opportunity. After every battle and every conversation.
Or, the game does not allow you to save after every battle, but you can save every 5 - 12 mins by appropriate dungeon design.
As for the other stuff, I don't know what to tell you. If things can be adequately sped up (skipping talking etc.), this would be a very good design. You keep toughness, you can craft a challenge for the player, and it makes the game have more pacing.
I did this a lot when I played RPGs. But I don't mind dying a lot in action games (and in the games I play, a continue means you are back to the first stage). The reason I didn't like this in RPGs is because its so tedious and boring to do the stuff. Doesn't even require any thought the second time around.
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Honestly, I'm not really sure why save points still exist. There's a bunch of RPGs I probably would have finished if they'd let me save whenever I wanted.
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Because I found having to save after every single battle in Dragon Age to be frustrating and mind-numbing.
The game that did this right was Kingdom Hearts 2. I never lost more than a few minutes from a death, yet I didn't have to save every minute.
Blue Dragon also did fairly well. It had fairly frequent savepoints and checkpoints before each boss. If you died against a boss you could try again or turn around and level some more.
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You don't _have_ to save after every battle. I haven't played Dragon Age so I'll fall back to ME for examples. If something significant just happened, consider saving. If suddenly your radar is jammed, back up and consider saving. If you're been playing for 4 hours and don't want to lose that, consider saving. You shouldn't need a glowing disc to remind you to save.
Or they could save a la Torchlight. No manual saves. Any time you enter a new area, save. Any time you gracefully quit, save. Any time you portal back to town (I think), save. Or, checkpoint after events. Recover a beacon? Save. Wipe out some geth? Save. Transition from ship to Mako? Save.
Auto-save + manual save mix is the best I think though. You get auto-saves for those who forget but manual saves for those cautious enough to avoid royally screwing up.
Unfortunately, any individual battle in Dragon Age can and will kill you. The original Mass Effect was like that on the higher difficulties as well, thanks to snipers and rocket drones. So if you didn't save after every battle you frequently had to repeat battles.
I would be happy with a system like the one you describe for Torchlight for pretty much any game but a non-action RPG. The problem with that system is that it doesn't allow multiple save games. Every so often you might need one.
Real Examples:
Lost Odyssey:
There's two items in the room. You pick one up and get whisked off to a cutscene where you get captured. You reload your save to get that other item first.
Oblivion:
An NPC does something completely arbitrary and gets themselves killed. You reload your save to fix Bethesda's bugs.
Dragon Age:
A patch is released that breaks specializations. You reload an old save to reset them.
The second 2 make sense, but if I'm playing an RPG and there is a repercussion from my choice I take it as is. After all, a real DM wouldn't let me go "wait wait wait, go back, I wanted that other chest, too." I know I'm probably in the minority on this, but saves are meant to save my progress like a bookmark, not allow me to rewrite history like that silly goose who reads choose your own adventure books but writes down every choice and what the other page number would have been.
Dragon Quest 8 did this right at points (although you still had to grind for the Jester), and FFX did this right for most boss battles too.
Lunar was really good for this. Although the difficulty on it tended to be cranked up to 11 most times anyways.
Almost every quest NPC is immortal in Oblivion.
Dragon Age is balanced such that any fight can be fatal, yet autosaves can be as much as 20 minutes apart. Therefore, since you never know what's around the next corner, you have to save at every single opportunity. After every battle and every conversation.
This is the core problem with save anywhere systems. The game is balanced to assume that you save every time humanly possible, because that's what people do.
If the game expects you to save after every battle, it should save itself after every battle rather than making you do it yourself. It's lazy game design.
Two of the three main NPCs are not.
Vendors and trainers are not.
Your horse is not.
NPCs you have to escort who leap off cliffs are not.
unless you're a mage.
I wouldn't agree with this. Otherwise, no one would die if you any mages in your party at all. There is very little functional difference between Morgana and Wynne vs. a mage main character.
No. This is something that maybe you do (I certainly do). However, I'm sure that there are some players who may save before going into a fight, scrape by, and who do not re-load because it didn't go the way they want and who go into their next battle and use a few more items they were planning on saving or use a little more magic than they had initially intended, etc.
Nightmare is immortal. At least on the 360. You can knock him unconscious and load him up with items and use him as a mobile storage unit.
And I'm sure he's assuming you have all three in your party.
And he's right, but that's a separate issue.
Now I think this sort of thing is ridiculous game design. It makes no sense whatsoever. Why not just have some saddlebags you can slap on your steed? I get why so many people love Oblivion, but it's stuff like this that makes me just look at the game sideways.
I just see that as an 'easy mode' for twinks and munchkins to play with. They are part of the fanbase too (possibly the biggest part). Bioware knows this and gives you the option without forcing it on you.
It's a line between open-ended, sandbox realism, and a storyline on rails, really. I have hardly played the Oblivion main quest but I've completed all of the guilds quests, my character is almost level 16, and I've got like 70+ hours logged (the majority of which were spent breaking and entering, looting, then fencing or using for alchemy). I have no desire to further the actual plot. Oblivion is almost too loose. It's like a medieval-fantasy Grand Theft Auto. And I treat it as so. Especially when I'm running from the city guard archers with NWA's "Express Yourself" playing on my 360, because I've killed some vendor for no reason.
Give me a game like Xenogears, though, and I can't put that shit down...
Though I usually have 80+ hours in them so I can't complain.
Fallout 3 is the only Bethsada game I have ever beat the main story for I believe.
Not like it matters, story/plot isn't one of Bethsada's strong points anyway.
I don't know... I played through with my main character as an Archmage, and first 3/4 of the game I went Main, Alistair, +1 Warrior, +1 Rogue, and I died plenty of times, it was quite difficult, but at the end I required Wynne in there as a healer. Maybe because I played my spellcaster more as a warrior w/ spells if need be.
Anyway, RPG's always have and always will have the option to spec your party in such a way that they are uber. I see nothing wrong with this system.
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My autosave suggestion wouldn't allow you to do this. Your save would be overwritten after every battle. Even better, you would get an automatic save BEFORE each battle.
There's no challenge or fun in having to run around a dungeon for ten minutes collecting all the items again because you turned a corner and got ambushed. It's the same thing as unskippable cutscenes right after a checkpoint.
I think that the best way for an RPG (or any game for that matter) to be designed is to break it down into manageable chunks, that are individually a challenge, but not too long. You can then place save points, autosaves, or whatever between them.
Exception that proves the rule.
Edit: Changed a statement of fact to the opinion it technically is.
What if I wanted to go back to before a previous save and try something different?
Maybe throw in a temporary "quicksave" that will get you back to where you are if you need to get away from the game and you're in between save points.
That's all you need. Solves the problem of surprise face melting and also solves the problem of interrupted playtime.
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I'd say checkpoints which you can load from the last one made and then manual save points either on the map or whenever you remember to save via menu.
Shooters use this system, why not RPGs?
Every game needs IronMan saves a la Shenmue.
Every. Single. One.
What's wrong with this system (and is not wrong with DA but I'll get to that) is that if you spec your chars right but the game is balanced for people who specced their party poorly then it's way too easy. Alternatively, you balance for the powerful specs and the other player can't progress.
Of course Dragon Age has difficulty levels so the problem is solved. I dislike using friendly fire as a difficulty mechanic but whatever. Every game of pretty much every genre should have difficulty levels because the audience is so diverse in what they want for a challenge.
edit: and you don't need to bring every mage. I played mostly me (mage) + Allistair, Leliana, and Morrigan. Even double mage is pretty crazy. The classes were not balanced well.
The idea of game balance in single player games is one that we've imposed on electronic games because it makes sense: easy games aren't necessarily fun, and uber hard games also aren't fun. We want to accomplish something, but feel like it was worthwhile.
In dragon age, you can reasonably beat the game with pretty much ANY reasonable party makeup and spec. This could be viewed as a roleplaying benefit (ex: I'm roleplaying a city elf who swore off pants and bows) in that you're not forced to min max every decision to have fun playing through the game. The disadvantage is that if you do min max every decision to beat the game 'Extreme' or 'Hard' or 'To the Max Yo!' then it becomes easy -there's a strong consensus among the gaming community that a game should require you to min/max.
Dragon age IS good in that you can do the main quests in any order and it sets the 'difficulty' (the enemy level) depending upon what level you start that area as (this is exploitable to make the game even easier if you like). What it doesn't do is take into account imbalance between different classes and part makeups (this would be difficult to do, but possible). This is exacerbated by the limited intelligence demonstrated by enemies.
I make these statements on a 'normal' difficulty game, I've yet to set anything higher for DA. I will say, that I watched my wife waltz through the game as a mage while I was struggling with certain areas as a rogue. Haiving a healing spell from the get go is just very powerful.
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This is true. I found having the main character as a Mage made Nightmare easier than Hard with a Warrior.
Or be more powerful, at least. And since it was a single player game, does it even really matter?
GM: Rusty Chains (DH Ongoing)
And this is going way off topic.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Hard saves separate the game into distinct units. Soft saves are there for when you need them.
It's like if you are reading a book. Sure, I can just use a bookmark whenever, but I'd still like the book to be divided into chapters.
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Quick saves are the best and should really become a staple of the genre (and heck, most games in general).
To sum up my earlier complaints against quicksave, it lets designers get away with
WARNING TV TROPES LINK
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrialAndErrorGameplay
More importantly, quicksave and/or save anywhere lets me stop playing when I need to without backtracking for a save point. You can have save anywhere without bullshit trial and error gameplay.
You're thinking of the wrong sort of quicksave.
I was talking about those mentioned in the quote, the kind that delete themselves upon loading so it's just like leaving the game on only without wasting power and if you want to, say, stop playing some rpg on the PS3 so you can watch a blu-ray movie with your friends then you can do that and resume playing later and other such benefits
And you'd have to be an incredibly silly goose to think those types of quicksaves are a bad idea!
Also was a tvtropes link really needed I think everyone here knows what you would mean with the phrase "trial and error".
Nor do I mind truely evil saving systems like the one used in the early Fire Emblem games. Save after every move you do, no backsies.
Oh, my mistake. Most people don't describe those as quicksaves. That term generally implies something else.
And the TV Tropes link is because I'm evil, and the warning is because I feel guilty about being evil.
As for the other stuff, I don't know what to tell you. If things can be adequately sped up (skipping talking etc.), this would be a very good design. You keep toughness, you can craft a challenge for the player, and it makes the game have more pacing.
I did this a lot when I played RPGs. But I don't mind dying a lot in action games (and in the games I play, a continue means you are back to the first stage). The reason I didn't like this in RPGs is because its so tedious and boring to do the stuff. Doesn't even require any thought the second time around.