Checkpoints can suck and not having them is a legitimate design decision
Auto saves only exist to keep you from losing large amounts of time in a power outage or other fluke thing if you've happened to have been human and forgotten to manually save
Punishing the player for not taking the time to actively step out of the immersion and save your progress is bad design, straight up
Checkpoints can suck and not having them is a legitimate design decision
Auto saves only exist to keep you from losing large amounts of time in a power outage or other fluke thing if you've happened to have been human and forgotten to manually save
Punishing the player for not taking the time to actively step out of the immersion and save your progress is bad design, straight up
Well, I mean
It's the only way to save - if you save at all in the game, you save manually
I wouldn't call it bad design - probably an unfortunate confluence of circumstances, in your particular case, yeah, but not bad design. Manual saves are fine when you can do them literally anywhere and anytime.
I still think you should have an auto save feature. Manual saving anywhere still requires you to remember to do it, and is also a hard stop for whatever you happen to be doing at the time. If you've crafted a game where the player is enveloped in the world and not really thinking about anything else, then you should probably have an auto-save system. Manual save or no. It isn't like the two can't exist together.
I think the main problem is that the console automatically shut down without saving
and that is absolutely bad design, how can you say that is not a design failure
I still think you should have an auto save feature. Manual saving anywhere still requires you to remember to do it, and is also a hard stop for whatever you happen to be doing at the time. If you've crafted a game where the player is enveloped in the world and not really thinking about anything else, then you should probably have an auto-save system. Manual save or no. It isn't like the two can't exist together.
Autosaves can be a nice feature - though I wouldn't want the game to autosave after I make some bad calls at the auction house, for instance - but I don't htink it's necessary. Mario games let you save after beating a level/half a world, Zelda games let you save anywhere. It's just part of the flow of the game. I think calling it bad design is probably a stretch, if only becuase it functions exactly like it's supposed to.
I get what you're saying about not wanting to get pulled out of the game, but I've never thought of Zelda as being immersive in the specific way that's broken by saving. It's an experience that is still tied intrinsically to its status as a video game, you know? It is all about how the game feels as a game, and getting to a spot where things might be dangerous and then saving is a huge part of that feeling.
I understand if you don't like it, especially given what just happened
I still think you should have an auto save feature. Manual saving anywhere still requires you to remember to do it, and is also a hard stop for whatever you happen to be doing at the time. If you've crafted a game where the player is enveloped in the world and not really thinking about anything else, then you should probably have an auto-save system. Manual save or no. It isn't like the two can't exist together.
Autosaves can be a nice feature - though I wouldn't want the game to autosave after I make some bad calls at the auction house, for instance - but I don't htink it's necessary. Mario games let you save after beating a level/half a world, Zelda games let you save anywhere. It's just part of the flow of the game. I think calling it bad design is probably a stretch, if only becuase it functions exactly like it's supposed to.
I get what you're saying about not wanting to get pulled out of the game, but I've never thought of Zelda as being immersive in the specific way that's broken by saving. It's an experience that is still tied intrinsically to its status as a video game, you know? It is all about how the game feels as a game, and getting to a spot where things might be dangerous and then saving is a huge part of that feeling.
I understand if you don't like it, especially given what just happened
But I wouldn't call it bad design
I don't really understand how the first point has anything to do with auto save though
Manual saves and auto saves aren't mutually exclusive. You can have both. Plenty of games do.
and it is bad design that it doesn't save your progress when it powers off, either from the console's end by saving the game state or from the software end by having your progress autosaved anyway
Developers should absolutely protect players from their own error, within reason and to the standard of the gameplay they are trying to design
From Software doesn't need to protect players from dying over and over again
But they do protect them from loss of progress (and keeping you from changing the choices you make) with a very frequent auto save feature.
That's the way the gameplay is designed. It's a system that works in those confines and actually helps to improve it.
There is nothing in the Zelda gameplay design that wouldn't benefit from a failsafe auto-save feature. Nothing whatsoever. There is no positive to being punished for forgetting to manually save in a Zelda game.
and it is bad design that it doesn't save your progress when it powers off, either from the console's end by saving the game state or from the software end by having your progress autosaved anyway
Wind Waker does save your game if you quit playing. You just have to actually quit in a menu like pretty much all video games
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
0
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
if you don't save your game when you get up to go do something else, in a game that lets you save at basically any time, the lost progress is on you 100%
especially when you lost that progress to a console feature you also have full control over
I think that From's design is much more about preserving the consequences of your failures than protecting you from a loss of progress, but my perception on that is probably colored by how I play those games - of course, the wya their save feature works also ties into keeping you working properly in their always-online environment, at least when it comes to dark souls
And I promise I'm not being pedantic here, or I'm not trying to be and if I am being a pedant then it's accidental:
There are actually a couple of things in Zelda games that benefit from a lack of frequent autosave, especially in the 2D games and more especially in... we'll use Link Between Worlds as an example
The death counter is one example. @SilverWind has problems beating those games with a positive death counter and will always always always opt to quit out of the game and reboot from menu rather than accept that counter ticking up. I did the same thing to get a 000 death in my Hero Mode run.
Similarly, with the amount of tries it took for me to beat the Cucco Dodge minigame, I'm glad it didn't autosave after every failure - I could reset after every few to recover rupees (though I think it started feeding me rupees once I got past a certain point, so that's less of an issue)
It also lets you go back and re-select what items you want to buy or to hold permanently, since they're legit expensive and grinidng for the rupees to pick something else can take a while
The same thing applied more or less to Skyward Sword, as well, and that didn't even have save-anywhere: you had to save at a save statue. Now, granted, the save statue thing has its own advantages over save-anywhere because every time you see one you can't help going "Oh, that's the mechanic by which I save. Maybe I should." And then you do or don't
I guess what I'm saying is that I see why you specifically want autosave, but I don't see the need and I'm not going to knock it as a design choice.
0
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
edited April 2015
Losing progress to something that is your fault and then saying the game should have auto saves is absolutely trying to shift the blame for the lost progress to the game/console
Losing progress to something that is your fault and then saying the game should have auto saves is absolutely trying to shift the blame for the lost progress to the game/console
Negative
It's my own damn fault for not saving
There are ways to keep stuff like that from happening which exist in almost every other modern game.
These two ideas can exist independent of each other, and in fact do.
+2
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
Losing progress to something that is your fault and then saying the game should have auto saves is absolutely trying to shift the blame for the lost progress to the game/console
Negative
It's my own damn fault for not saving
There are ways to keep stuff like that from happening which exist in almost every other modern game.
These two ideas can exist independent of each other, and in fact do.
Right but the idea that it is bad design to not include auto saves is silly one when a) auto saves are not a perfect system anyway and b) the game already provides a way to not lose any progress (not to mention just leaving the console on forever)
I mean I like auto saves, but omitting a redundant system is not a failure of design
I think that From's design is much more about preserving the consequences of your failures than protecting you from a loss of progress, but my perception on that is probably colored by how I play those games - of course, the wya their save feature works also ties into keeping you working properly in their always-online environment, at least when it comes to dark souls
And I promise I'm not being pedantic here, or I'm not trying to be and if I am being a pedant then it's accidental:
There are actually a couple of things in Zelda games that benefit from a lack of frequent autosave, especially in the 2D games and more especially in... we'll use Link Between Worlds as an example
The death counter is one example. @SilverWind has problems beating those games with a positive death counter and will always always always opt to quit out of the game and reboot from menu rather than accept that counter ticking up. I did the same thing to get a 000 death in my Hero Mode run.
Similarly, with the amount of tries it took for me to beat the Cucco Dodge minigame, I'm glad it didn't autosave after every failure - I could reset after every few to recover rupees (though I think it started feeding me rupees once I got past a certain point, so that's less of an issue)
It also lets you go back and re-select what items you want to buy or to hold permanently, since they're legit expensive and grinidng for the rupees to pick something else can take a while
The same thing applied more or less to Skyward Sword, as well, and that didn't even have save-anywhere: you had to save at a save statue. Now, granted, the save statue thing has its own advantages over save-anywhere because every time you see one you can't help going "Oh, that's the mechanic by which I save. Maybe I should." And then you do or don't
I guess what I'm saying is that I see why you specifically want autosave, but I don't see the need and I'm not going to knock it as a design choice.
Stuff like that can be changed based on how you implement auto-save, though
It's wholly possible to allow save scumming and still avoid huge losses of progress to simple mistakes, it just depends on what criteria you have for the game to auto-save. It could be time based, it could be progress based, it could be a whole lot of different things.
I mean, if we want to get really technical, Zelda games do have an "auto-save" on death. You don't have to restart the entire dungeon when you die in it, though you'll still lose progress if the game turns off. There isn't really any reason you couldn't have something for the general overworld too.
It's just, in the year 2015, it should not be possible to lose hours of progress because you forgot to hit a button and it was storming outside. It's still your fault, of course, because the game has a method built in to avoid that happening, but that it can only happen with manually entry feels like a relic from the 90s. Developers have gotten better since then at general quality of life infrastructure design. Except, in some cases, Nintendo.
I'm now past the Volcano dungeon in Skyward Sword. I love the collection / upgrade aspects of the game! I hope they have something similar in Zelda Wii U.
Aw man
The next major area might be the coolest in the whole game (or the whole series, even)
I've only just started the Desert section, but I love the mechanic of the area so far.
I legit hate autosaves in most games. I want to control when and where my game saves my progress. Sometimes I like to intentionally screw around with a game and I want to be able to go back to a specific point in time if I screw it up. Somtimes I just don't like how a run of something is going and would rather start from the beginning and try to do the early part better. The specific reasons can vary from game to game, but rarely do I want the game deciding when and where my progress is permanently locked in. Do I sometimes lose progress because I forgot to save? Sure. But that's on me.
Hmm. Nintendo seems to move a bit slow when it comes to processing orders. Or maybe I'm just used to Amazon.
did you get the refurb thing? They are probably processing a million orders for those things since they were out of stock for months and months
Yes I did. Guess I'll wait a day or two more then call customer service to find out if that's what's causing the delay. Or according to Reddit I may find out it's already been shipped and Nintendo is just really bad at updating the status.
+1
turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
There's a bunch of hint coins you can use if you get stuck, though most of them aren't that bad (but if you find a puzzle that tells you to sort rats, don't even bother. It's total bullshit). There are
70
puzzles total, including optional ones, and over twice that many hint coins. You can also use the coins in trials if the logic gets too dumb for you.
Hmm. Nintendo seems to move a bit slow when it comes to processing orders. Or maybe I'm just used to Amazon.
did you get the refurb thing? They are probably processing a million orders for those things since they were out of stock for months and months
Yes I did. Guess I'll wait a day or two more then call customer service to find out if that's what's causing the delay. Or according to Reddit I may find out it's already been shipped and Nintendo is just really bad at updating the status.
I received my refurbished one 2 days before my order was updated with tracking info. It took about 10 days total before I got it. Almost 3 weeks for refurbished wii more plus. Never got a status update on that.
When I got my WIIU for deep discount at work I was scared because I got 3 games with it and a bonus $50 for just buying it that it was refurbished or something
No it was the exclusive to wal mart edition
I also used the bonus $50 card I got with and my black Friday discount to get hyrule Warriors for free!
The only thing I dislike about the Prof Layton games is if you can solve the puzzle in a faster different way the game will go NOPE everytime
0
PaperLuigi44My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered Userregular
I love the Layton series, but those sliding block puzzles are being solved by people in Hell as we speak. That freakin' scrape sound effect!
Posts
Checkpoints can suck and not having them is a legitimate design decision
Auto saves only exist to keep you from losing large amounts of time in a power outage or other fluke thing if you've happened to have been human and forgotten to manually save
Punishing the player for not taking the time to actively step out of the immersion and save your progress is bad design, straight up
Well, I mean
It's the only way to save - if you save at all in the game, you save manually
I wouldn't call it bad design - probably an unfortunate confluence of circumstances, in your particular case, yeah, but not bad design. Manual saves are fine when you can do them literally anywhere and anytime.
and that is absolutely bad design, how can you say that is not a design failure
Autosaves can be a nice feature - though I wouldn't want the game to autosave after I make some bad calls at the auction house, for instance - but I don't htink it's necessary. Mario games let you save after beating a level/half a world, Zelda games let you save anywhere. It's just part of the flow of the game. I think calling it bad design is probably a stretch, if only becuase it functions exactly like it's supposed to.
I get what you're saying about not wanting to get pulled out of the game, but I've never thought of Zelda as being immersive in the specific way that's broken by saving. It's an experience that is still tied intrinsically to its status as a video game, you know? It is all about how the game feels as a game, and getting to a spot where things might be dangerous and then saving is a huge part of that feeling.
I understand if you don't like it, especially given what just happened
But I wouldn't call it bad design
http://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1725/~/how-to-turn-auto-power-down-on-or-off
Switch: SW-7603-3284-4227
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I don't really understand how the first point has anything to do with auto save though
Manual saves and auto saves aren't mutually exclusive. You can have both. Plenty of games do.
But I don't think forgoing that is bad design. Different, sure, but not bad.
That's a feature of the Wii U hardware itself - a powersaving measure, I think, and it warns you about this pretty frequently
It's also something you can turn off:
the Wiiu tells you about this at least twice on it's first boot up and reminds you everytime you download something and you can turn it off.
I admit I don't think games need to protect the player from their own errors
From Software doesn't need to protect players from dying over and over again
But they do protect them from loss of progress (and keeping you from changing the choices you make) with a very frequent auto save feature.
That's the way the gameplay is designed. It's a system that works in those confines and actually helps to improve it.
There is nothing in the Zelda gameplay design that wouldn't benefit from a failsafe auto-save feature. Nothing whatsoever. There is no positive to being punished for forgetting to manually save in a Zelda game.
Wind Waker does save your game if you quit playing. You just have to actually quit in a menu like pretty much all video games
especially when you lost that progress to a console feature you also have full control over
And I promise I'm not being pedantic here, or I'm not trying to be and if I am being a pedant then it's accidental:
There are actually a couple of things in Zelda games that benefit from a lack of frequent autosave, especially in the 2D games and more especially in... we'll use Link Between Worlds as an example
The death counter is one example. @SilverWind has problems beating those games with a positive death counter and will always always always opt to quit out of the game and reboot from menu rather than accept that counter ticking up. I did the same thing to get a 000 death in my Hero Mode run.
Similarly, with the amount of tries it took for me to beat the Cucco Dodge minigame, I'm glad it didn't autosave after every failure - I could reset after every few to recover rupees (though I think it started feeding me rupees once I got past a certain point, so that's less of an issue)
It also lets you go back and re-select what items you want to buy or to hold permanently, since they're legit expensive and grinidng for the rupees to pick something else can take a while
The same thing applied more or less to Skyward Sword, as well, and that didn't even have save-anywhere: you had to save at a save statue. Now, granted, the save statue thing has its own advantages over save-anywhere because every time you see one you can't help going "Oh, that's the mechanic by which I save. Maybe I should." And then you do or don't
I guess what I'm saying is that I see why you specifically want autosave, but I don't see the need and I'm not going to knock it as a design choice.
Negative
It's my own damn fault for not saving
There are ways to keep stuff like that from happening which exist in almost every other modern game.
These two ideas can exist independent of each other, and in fact do.
Right but the idea that it is bad design to not include auto saves is silly one when a) auto saves are not a perfect system anyway and b) the game already provides a way to not lose any progress (not to mention just leaving the console on forever)
I mean I like auto saves, but omitting a redundant system is not a failure of design
Stuff like that can be changed based on how you implement auto-save, though
It's wholly possible to allow save scumming and still avoid huge losses of progress to simple mistakes, it just depends on what criteria you have for the game to auto-save. It could be time based, it could be progress based, it could be a whole lot of different things.
I mean, if we want to get really technical, Zelda games do have an "auto-save" on death. You don't have to restart the entire dungeon when you die in it, though you'll still lose progress if the game turns off. There isn't really any reason you couldn't have something for the general overworld too.
It's just, in the year 2015, it should not be possible to lose hours of progress because you forgot to hit a button and it was storming outside. It's still your fault, of course, because the game has a method built in to avoid that happening, but that it can only happen with manually entry feels like a relic from the 90s. Developers have gotten better since then at general quality of life infrastructure design. Except, in some cases, Nintendo.
adding a feature like manual saves to CRUSH the player who forgets to is great
who wants a copy of la-mulana it's my favorite
did you get the refurb thing? They are probably processing a million orders for those things since they were out of stock for months and months
I've only just started the Desert section, but I love the mechanic of the area so far.
It seems to me to be the ideal middle ground, and a far better design choice than no auto save at all.
Yes I did. Guess I'll wait a day or two more then call customer service to find out if that's what's causing the delay. Or according to Reddit I may find out it's already been shipped and Nintendo is just really bad at updating the status.
I'm about as far from the PC elitist guy that you can get.
But this is the way damn near every PC game handles saves and its inexcusable for other games to not do it this way.
Not having autosaves is absolutely bad design in my opinion.
La-mulana auto saves every time you touch a grail point. So at least every time you teleport.
Wherein there is supposedly magic and Phoenix is all
PFFT, LIKE MAGIC EXISTS
And Maya is beside him all hum hum hum yep nothing magical about me hum hum
And then
Switch: SW-7603-3284-4227
My ACNH Wishlists | My ACNH Catalog
I really want a game with more Maya, but actively dislike Layton style puzzles. It might be worth it anyway though and just faq all the answers.
I received my refurbished one 2 days before my order was updated with tracking info. It took about 10 days total before I got it. Almost 3 weeks for refurbished wii more plus. Never got a status update on that.
No it was the exclusive to wal mart edition
I also used the bonus $50 card I got with and my black Friday discount to get hyrule Warriors for free!
The only thing I dislike about the Prof Layton games is if you can solve the puzzle in a faster different way the game will go NOPE everytime