NOOOOO Its horrible to have save points if thatd happen many would probably get double barrels and march to Beth HQ

I like to save wherever I'm at.
I've played only one game that ahd saving spots and it was Oni.
good game, but man was the spots annoying.

Here is my take on Game Saving ...

There should be some kind of in-game sub-level "monitoring" system in place that allows the game to suspend saving operations in certain circumstances. I've been writing all over this board about different problems with saving and never thought to make it its own post, so thanks, because it's a serious problem. Just because we "should" do something doesn't mean we often do ... and as a result our level of enjoyment is shallowed out and made thin. It's hard to punish myself when I can just as easily reload and try again, as you mentioned. I almost never lose a single lockpick because I just reload and do it again until it works.

Thus, here is my proposal:

Game-Save Monitoring:
1. When you use a lockpick in your game and then only moments later reload your game, the Monitor after this suspends game re-loading for 2-3 minutes unless you die in combat during that time. You can either wait the time to try and save your lockpick, or you can just start using your lockpicks as you're supposed to (in the game) ....
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2. When you try to charm someone several times in the same moment by reloading, the Monitor suspends re-loading for several minutes as above.
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3. Some NPC's (Lords, Princes, special NPC's) could have guards attending to them and you aren't allowed to see the NPC unless you first announce your arrival and agree to meet with the NPC. As soon as you announce your meeting, the game SAVE feature is disabled, meaning you can't save your game during roleplay scenario, meaning you have to make real choices and live with them, and can only save your game after once you've made all the choices.

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Some people are just so afraid of failure, and living with consequences, they never do anything but reload after every failure. I'm one of them. Thus, I never expererienced any failure I wasn't prepared to reload to avoid a 2nd time. I've never seen half of the things that could happen as a result of that.

However, there is another way to look at this, too...

A REASON TO FAIL ...
But if the game has a REASON to undertake living with failure (such as surprise opportunities such as how if you go actually went to jail you could meet someone whose power and influence could help you solve some major problems on the outside). Perhaps in jail you could refine your cooking skill as a cook in the kitchen, or refine your crafting skill, or refine your metallurgy skills, or chop wood to increase your strength .... failure would, while frustrating for a short time, also lead to some form of advancement, then it wouldn't be counterproductive to accept the failure and see what might happen.
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4. I was talking about a place I'd like to see in a dungeon where souls are caught in the walls of an ancient ruins, their etherial light spilling out between the cracks to fill the tomb with ghostly light ... And how you can talk to the spirits to gain information about Skyrim, secrets, and such, but you can only talk to them once per day (real world day not game day). The "Monitor" can tell if you try to reload your game to talk them a 2nd time, and make them go silent in your reloaded game so that no more secrets can be revealed during this dungeon visit. Everything else about your game stays the same, just the spirits are turned off after you reload by the Monitor.
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5. In Arena battles, you can't save your game for 2 minutes before a battle. So if you lose the Arena battle, you'd have to wait the whole 2 over minutes again. Making each battle nerve-wracking and terrifying due to how the the waiting affects your psychology about losing. Also, sometimes the only way I could win Arena battles was by saving my game at every step of the way, because if I tried to kill my opponent from the beginning to the end, I would always die, but by striking 2-3 good times, saving, then when I got hammered, I would reload to the 2-3 good strikes I just got in, and try again a new way, get 2-3 more, SAVE ... and start the process over. Where winning became a mechanical process of inching along by degrees.

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Some of these are pretty extreme, but maybe you could choose whether you used the Monitor or not. But again, the Monitor should be set to turn on indefintely but if you turn it off for any reason, you can't turn it back on for 12 real hours. So there's something to think about if you decide you want to just turn it off and on whenever it suits you. The Monitor could maybe find a lot more uses as it went along, I'd be curious as to what those might end up being ....

the dreaded "DOUBLE POST" ... .argh, noooo-o-oooo-o!

I want to be able to save anywhere I want, whenever I want, we already have save points in the form of autosaves.

exactly plus if i reload wend i am aught stealing that my problem.

The save system is fine just the way it is.

This discussion is about the same as the "no fast travel" arguments were. People don't want something included in the game because they feel it breaks immersion. They know they have the option to not use it, but they claim that because the game offers it there is no way they could have the self control not to use it, so they want the game to not give them the option at all.

One of the best things about Elder scroll games are that they allow you to play so many different ways. If "cheating" the system by reloading saves when something goes wrong is your idea of fun then you should have the option to do that. If you don't want to reload a save then you don't have to. Its all very simple. The game shouldn't force you to play one certain way.

The system Demon's Souls used is quite interesting; though I'm not sure if honestly it would be appropriate for Skyrim as a game. In Demon's Souls, the game constantly saved; from second to second. The player did not, in fact, notice this was going on, but the result was that you always had to live with your actions. That, and the game's difficulty, made it a game where you had to be much more careful and deliberate than you would have to be in a TES game, and in that respect, more rewarding when you did succeed.

Mount and blade asked us at the start of a game, if w wanted to have a save and load option or a realistic option, and in realistic mode, you would not be able to do that, and on exit the game would save at the current situation.

A mental rest is for Jedi only.




And going back in time is for the Prince of Percia...

No it is not, the no fast travel argument is about how Bethesda designs the rest of the game based on the fact that they have fast travel. The fact that we did not get any transportation methods in Oblivion is undeniable proof of that, Bethesda felt that "Well we have fast travel so why bother..." and that is why we do not want fast travel, we want Bethesda to design the game so it feels fleshed out and good for those that skip using the fast travel feature.

One solution to the whole Save-Reload problem would be to create a system where repeated re-loading wasn't physically prevented but would ultimately be fruitless if you didn't also change your approach. I think this can be accomplished by greatly limiting randomly generated numbers used in skill checks, resistances and other situations. Where a large degree of sheer luck enters the equation the player is practically encouraged to reload if something goes wrong. Take pickpocketing for instance: It's common that players simply sneak up behind their target, quicksave and attempt to steal the item they wanted. When they fail they keep reloading until they succeed. The problem here isn't really the fact that they can load their game, but that the skill is so poorly implemented that they can actually bypass the requirement of having the skill to begin with by simply being patient and reloading repeatedly.

If the luck element was removed or greatly diminished and it became a simple matter of failing or succeeding depending on whether you reached the required skill thresholds, the player would need to modify his approach if he failed. He'd need to use magical buffs or potions, level up, or wear special equipment; alternatively he might choose to get the desired item through some other means. Repeatedly reloading to achieve success ceases to work however. You could still reload to escape the consequences of your failure, but simply reloading and executing the same actions would yield the very same results. So the player would need to behave as he does after being defeated in a difficult boss-fight: He'll need to re-evaluate his approach and change tactics.

Mount and Blade handles this well, at the startb of the game there is an option (the other being to load and save normally) that stops you from loading saves from in-game, it autosaves periodically and saves when you quit but you can't go back on actions that went wrong without crashing the game so that it doesn't save when you quit. It doesn't quite work as, in the TES games when you die you reload your last save but it's a good example of a solution to the problem in the OP

Realism in an elder scrolls game? Heh no way buddy.

Then that is an invalid argument, because the inclusion of fast travel does not dictate that the developers have to design the game around that, see Red Dead Redemption. Oblivion also isn't undeniable proof, because if bethesda just felt that "Well we have fast travel so why bother...", then why did they bother with horses? If all you do is fast travel, then horses are irrelevant, yet they are in the game.

I don't like the concept of save points in general, and most of my friends frown on the very idea of it. My *reason* for not wanting it though, is not related to allowing or disallowing cheating, but for simple stability reasons. Even now, my Oblivion and FONV crashes very frequently. Having save points would make it outright unplayable.

if you don't like it don't do it. Stop being a save addict

Hmm this actually made me realize the only time I actually went to jail in oblivion was for that quest in Bruma and every other time I just reloaded instead of accepting the consequences.

Great thread. I just saw a similar one. Love'em. Let's hope Bethesda or a great modder adds this option under a hardcoe mode. I always abuse save and can't control myself.

A simple motivational feature to help those that suffer self control issues is as follows:

The game keeps a counter for your character that increases every time you save, and a rating based on avg saves per character level is shown on the character stats screen.

e.g. less than 1 save per level it says "Fearless"
1-3 saves per level "Headstrong"
3-5 saves per level "Courageous"
5-10 saves per level "Cautious"
10-30 saves per level "Jumpy"
30+ saves per level "Paranoid"

Ok play with the numbers and words, but it's an alternative route to the "perfectly played character" than saving before every little risk just in case. And for those who don't care, well they don't care.

(It could be avg saves per hour played instead - with numbers adjusted)

I wanna quote this because it's an awesome idea

Just do it like in Far Cry 2. Save only possible in the own house.

So you rather pay some gold for a failed pickpoket instead of starting
at your House / Campside again.

But i doubt that they would chage the saving system... Maybe in a hardcoe mode..

I abuse the save feature... a lot.

I don't -want- them to change it. Then I would have to ALWAYS rely upon being that perfect thief, with the master skills. If I have to try and try and try again to get the one damn thing I'm hunting for... I like that there's a little bit of chance, and that I can reload when I botch the whole thing.

Why would I -want- to go to jail and lose my skills?

Now that just doesn't make any sense. If I have enough foresight to see it coming, and avoid it... I think that's my RIGHT as a player. It's yours, too!


We all do stupid things.

If the game tells us "You can't do stupid things now, haha! You can't save here!" then I'm going to be pretty annoyed. Doing stupid things is half the fun. I -know- I'm not going to succeed. I know I'm going to reload a thousand times. I just want to see if it's -possible-!

Changing the system to prevent stupidity from being undone is a very, very bad idea...

... people aren't going to start facing the consequences. They're going to start NEVER trying anything risky or challenging.

That's just how it usually goes.

I've had this problem with Dead Space 2. There is a "restart from last checkpoint" option, checkpoints are usually when entering a new room, i've re-re-re-restarted on higher difficulties to minimise the loss of ammo and health. Now Dead Space 2 has a hardcoe mode where saves are limited to 3 trougout the game, and checkpoints are disabled. The game otherwise being on the highest difficulty with no possibility to carry over stuff from previous playtroughs that requires constantly damn near perfect performance to get trough it.

As for Skyrim, assuming it has a hardcoe mode, ability to use only one save slot and/or being able to save only at certain intervals/places would give it an interesting challenge. So as a hardcoe feature, i agree.