Change to Save Points

[WhiteDragon]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

So? It could be accomplished in 2 seconds as well. The point is that it's unnecessary.

I guess the part that needs to be explained here is 'unnecessary'.

Any obstacle in the game could be seen as, well, an obstacle: unnecessary and inconvenient.
But, the idea is that certain obstacles make the game more interesting, like, not being able to instantaneously heal, not being able to kill bosses just by slashing at them head-on, and not being able to just respawn where you died in the first place.

A delay on saving could be become one of these obstacles. "Should I waste time saving now or continue on the quest and risk dying and getting sent too far back?"


So my question is, what makes a delay on saving more annoying than any other obstacle to warrant its removal, and what are the general rules you're using to decide that?

[DustyPorViva]

Originally Posted by WhiteDragon

I guess the part that needs to be explained here is 'unnecessary'.

Anything obstacle in the game could be seen as, well, an obstacle: unnecessary and inconvenient.
But, the idea is that certain obstacles make the game more interesting, like, not being able to instantaneously heal, not being able to kill bosses just by slashing at them head-on, and not being able to just respawn where you died in the first place.

A delay on saving could be become one of these obstacles. "Should I waste time saving now or continue on the quest and risk dying and getting sent too far back?"


So my question is, what makes a delay on saving more annoying than any other obstacle to warrant its removal, and what are the general rules you're using to decide that?

Mainly because I consider checkpointing a feature to ease the frustration of a game, not some sort of major benefit. The only point of a save point is to save some time from repeating too many steps that they've already accomplished, or to save them time from walking from far place to another just because they died. Over and over.

However here it's being treated as though it's some powerful weapon that needs to be balanced and it doesn't. A quest is something that involves the player actively playing the game. You either have to walk around fetching stuff, or more complex quests like a dungeon in Zelda. However, either way you actually have to do something. Sitting in a bed just waiting is NOT fun. Do you think it'd be fun? Do you think it's okay to break the flow a player may be having just so they make sure when they die they don't have to do something redundant? I've recently played Braid and they have a secret star piece that you have to wait for TWO hours just to obtain. Doing nothing. Sitting there, waiting for a slow-ass cloud to move across the level. Now this isn't two hours of waiting but the point still remains that to force the player to do nothing is counter-productive to gaming.

All I'm saying is if I'm playing a game I want to keep active. If I'm questing and I need to change my save point I want to get into a bed and get out, because I have no interest in that bed other than making a save point and I see no reason to spend 15+ seconds there for no other reason when I could have made quite a bit of progress doing something constructive.

[MattKan]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

Mainly because I consider checkpointing a feature to ease the frustration of a game, not some sort of major benefit. The only point of a save point is to save some time from repeating too many steps that they've already accomplished, or to save them time from walking from far place to another just because they died. Over and over.

However here it's being treated as though it's some powerful weapon that needs to be balanced and it doesn't. A quest is something that involves the player actively playing the game. You either have to walk around fetching stuff, or more complex quests like a dungeon in Zelda. However, either way you actually have to do something. Sitting in a bed just waiting is NOT fun. Do you think it'd be fun? Do you think it's okay to break the flow a player may be having just so they make sure when they die they don't have to do something redundant? I've recently played Braid and they have a secret star piece that you have to wait for TWO hours just to obtain. Doing nothing. Sitting there, waiting for a slow-ass cloud to move across the level. Now this isn't two hours of waiting but the point still remains that to force the player to do nothing is counter-productive to gaming.

All I'm saying is if I'm playing a game I want to keep active. If I'm questing and I need to change my save point I want to get into a bed and get out, because I have no interest in that bed other than making a save point and I see no reason to spend 15+ seconds there for no other reason when I could have made quite a bit of progress doing something constructive.

Simple ways to solve this:
1) Add more save blocks and remove the beds
2) Lower the bed time to a maximum of 5 seconds