Autosave...Please!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by spacefarmer, Jun 9, 2018.

  1. MidasGunhazard

    MidasGunhazard Captain

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    No, when you royally screw up, you're supposed to deal with the consequences and learn from it. None of it is a 'waste of time'. It's all part of playing the game. The consequences of failure give success it's value.
     
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  2. spacefarmer

    spacefarmer Captain

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    Here's where we are in the conversation.

    [​IMG]
     
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  3. MidasGunhazard

    MidasGunhazard Captain

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    It's the opinion of psychology and game design(which is largely informed by psychology), actually, and proven extensively in human and animal behavioral studies for decades.
     
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  4. spacefarmer

    spacefarmer Captain

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    Ok
     
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  5. Damocles

    Damocles Captain

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    Fact is: if there is an easy and convenient quicksave/quickload system, players WILL use it.
    And that changes the gameplay experience, as any substantially negative event will we resolved with a quick "quickload".

    The game will lack consequences of misinterpreting / misplanning for situations. The game will feel easier to play. In the end, the game would have to be balanced to be harder to compensate for it. And that would affect even players who dont use the quickload-option.

    The job of not having corrupted saves is rather a technical objective. Apart from having no unfair bugs, there are many ways to secure even a partially corrupted save to resolve the most important stats for the player, and having sufficient redundancy to repair the gamestate.
    In a way its a permanent autosave already.

    So you can demand: make the save system more robust in situations of abrupt crashes, and make the game not have gamebreaking bugs (player looses assets unfairly)
    Thats a different topic than wanting a quicksave/quickload options.
     
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  6. MidasGunhazard

    MidasGunhazard Captain

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    I think the save/load issue is better-solved by cloud saving anyhow. Fundemental changes to the core gameplay to solve such a remote issue makes no sense to me.
     
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  7. spacefarmer

    spacefarmer Captain

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    My point is that we already have the manual save option, along with console commands and godmode, so all these points about the game supposedly having final consequences to your actions are absolutely moot and invalid. I'm simply asking for an automation of the manual save system.
     
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  8. Damocles

    Damocles Captain

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    Console commands are a fallback and development tool. The game is still in active development and partially unstable. So any godmode action can be considered an action outside of the regular gameplay (its basically cheating).
    The save/load system is a fundamental part of the gameplay. Here lies the difference.
     
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  9. spacefarmer

    spacefarmer Captain

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    Still, the fundamental issue is that the feature I desire is there, it is just manual. I could have avoided both of my recent mistakes had I manually saved just a few minutes before I got killed (in fact the second time I thought I had, but apparently not). So again, all I'd like is an automation of what already exists.
     
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  10. MidasGunhazard

    MidasGunhazard Captain

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    No it's not, because there's far less encouragement to cheat when it's behind a console. It can't even be mistaken as an intended feature of gameplay. You seem to think that a console command/cheat code is the same as a game setting. It is not. One is intended to be part of the game and intended to still play into the game's overall experience. The other is is intended to circumvent parts of the experience, and the console is meant for debugging, not gameplay. We don't even know if the console will make it into final release without special admin privileges.

    The temptation to cheat or take shortcuts is always weighed against how accessible they are. The more barriers you put in the way of using them, the less likely they are to be used.
     
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  11. MidasGunhazard

    MidasGunhazard Captain

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    Except that's probably not intended either. That's why it automatically saves when you exit the game, and why there's no 'load' feature. If you were playing online, you'd have none of these options, and that's probably how the devs intend it to be played. If they were to make it all cloud-save only and remove any manual saving, then the game would basically play similar to online, where you can't backtrack on your mistakes.
     
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  12. spacefarmer

    spacefarmer Captain

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    You're just speculating on how things are "supposed to be". That's great, but that's not an actual argument. How things are is what I am going on, and I see no indication that they don't intend for the manual save system to function as it does. So unless you have evidence otherwise, you really have no point.
     
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  13. MidasGunhazard

    MidasGunhazard Captain

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    Well, 'how things are' is an alpha, and lots of other sandbox survival games do this too. And yes, that's not an argument, it wasn't intended to be one (that's why I said 'probably' at the start). If you honestly think that the saving system won't change at all, and you want to cover your eyes and plug your ears to how the many other similar games handle their saving, that's on you. It's entirely possible that Eleon won't change the saving system at all, but it also wouldn't surprise me if they aimed to make the saving structure tighter to both facilitate a better survival experience, and bring the single-player and multi-player expectations closer together.
     
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  14. MrFubar

    MrFubar Commander

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    I have to agree with others on the no for quick save, dying has consequences, there should be backups in case of a crash but thats it, this isnt the type of game where you save before every mission and just start over and go through every conversation until you get what you want. If you get shot down and die, build a new ship, or done get shot down.

    What I would like to see is the save keep several timestamps automaticly just in case of a crash or corruption or a game bug, especialy for servers and coop.

    If you are playing singleplayer why even with this autosave, just open the console and spawn another blueprint of your ship, or all the resources for it and build another, using the cheat commands is no different then loading before you die. Or turn on god mode or invisible before exploring.

    We have all lost ships but if there is no risk then why play if you want no risk turn on god mode and play like that you will never loose any time.
     
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  15. MrFubar

    MrFubar Commander

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    Getting shot down isn't something silly or a bug, its just like most console games these days, you die you go back to a check point and have to do some things over again, or in this case build a new ship. Actions have consequences as they should. If you can create backups from the menu already in single player then the saving in this game is already more generous than other similar games like ark or 7 days to die or conan they all use the same type of live save system
     
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  16. MrFubar

    MrFubar Commander

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    This is the only Valid reason I have heard for a "autosave" feature and the game probably should keep one previous version in case of corruption, the dedicated servers do.

    All the other reasons I have seen basically turn the game from a survival game into an old school rpg but without any real missions, even many of those dont allow multiple saves these days.

    Newbies are not tossed in the deep end, they added the Robinson protocol to guide people though the basics mechanics, it doesnt make the game easier, veterans still have to do the same actions they just do them without reading the tutorial text, its not like it gives you things you still have to build from scratch, but by the time you go looking for POI's you likely died once already and know how things work. you have gone to simple POI's from the tutorial that start you off with just 1 or 2 mobs.

    The bottom line is that having a save feature that lets you retry everytime you mess up is not consistent with the survival genre in general, and also not for multiplayer game. The single save is very common these days even more so with console than PC.
     
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  17. markiem32

    markiem32 Lieutenant

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    As a realative noob, I can say that the Robinson Protocol gets drastically more difficult at the point where you have to go to the radar station. I've had my cockpit one-shotted off my ship every time I've tried it.

    So, I've begun to backup my game prior to doing a POI I don't know well... or one that I find difficult . I don't enjoy hours of farming mats and building ships to lose it all as soon as I get within range of a POI's insta-death ray.

    And guess what? My cheesing the game mechanics is right there with the "backup" button. Has that backup feature ruined the experience for you folks that are arguing so vehemently against an auto-backup?

    If so... what keeps you coming back for more? If not... why does an auto-backup break the game for you? Do you need the game to tie your hands for you so that you don't actually use a backup that's there (one you could have made yourself)?

    I'm hearing that you don't feel that you have the self-control to not use a backup if it exists.

    In a single player environment, with difficulty settings (and all kinds of other settings... like how much ore, how hard are the drones, etc.), how I choose to play the game may be quite different than the way you choose to do it.

    Deep breath... it's ok that we don't want the same experience. I just don't appreciate someone telling me that the way I play is bad and will ruin everything for everybody. I call shenanigans on that idea.

    The only reason I can get behind for NOT auto saving is that it could negatively affect game permormance.
     
    #57
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  18. ml58103

    ml58103 Ensign

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    I don't really care how someone else plays the game but I suspect an autosave feature would hang the game every time it activated. Even a fraction of a second would quickly become irritating.

    Personally the manual backup is sufficient for creating save points as needed in my play throughs. If I just spent an hour grinding resources and I want to take out a POI, I save first. Most of the time, I just deal with the consequences if I die which are generally not that severe honestly. It may be that I have just played enough to know what risky things to avoid/prepare for but from my point of view the game doesn't really need autosave.

    That said, if it was implemented so it could be turned off , I don't care if they add it.
     
    #58
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  19. Starwing6

    Starwing6 Rear Admiral

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    It sounds like some people want what Todd Howard recently called "softcore survival." While EGS is not hardcore and has no permadeath, it's otherwise a survival game with elements intended to be challenging. The devs have clearly stated the game wouldn't stay so easy--it's likely to get harder still.

    Thankfully there are customizable difficulty settings, but all settings to "Easy" does not result in an easy game. There's no casual in survival mode--unless you go for the softcore kind of game (but even Fallout 76 is going to lack an autosave feature, I'm betting).

    A couple things to note though!

    You should always save blueprints of your builds. :) Point at the vessel or base and press Right Alt + O to save the blueprint. At least then if it gets destroyed, you can replace it with new resources, and don't need to build it again from scratch.

    The game should make it clear that the Default Random scenario is more challenging than the Akua-Omicron scenario.

    The Robinson Protocol should make it clear that you can easily switch to another mission and return to complete the Robinson Protocol mission when you're ready! I switch between missions a lot, but I don't think it's clear enough that you can do it without losing progress.

    I haven't played the new Robinson Protocol but have read about the difficulty spike. The mission should also make it very clear that moving forward is getting more and more dangerous.



    If you fail at surviving, you will learn from your mistakes! You either enjoy the game or you don't--and enjoying the survival mode means enjoying survival with all its risks and rewards, and no save points. You can back-up a game whenever necessary, but that's better thought of as a restore point in case of corruption. Failure is part of the fun, but if that's really not how you see it, then you might only enjoy creative mode.

    Not all games are fun for all players. Not all games are accessible to all players at all levels of skill and experience. Where Empyrion can improve best (in my opinion) is with information presented to the players, so they can make better decisions and preparations. :cool:
     
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  20. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    The devs wrote that some time ago and the game has already become a bit more "difficult" than it was at that time, but that doesn't mean the game has to be focused only on "survival" rather than "Exploration" or "Ego shooter". That's something they could have defined a bit better, because with the actual store "description" it looks like they try to get as many player styles as possible.

    The point is that whatever the game becomes, it will not prevent players from filling their hard disks with "backups" if they play for hours without leaving the game from time to time to delete some of these backups. Having a proper savegame function would allow players to just "overwrite" one (or several) savegame, instead of making hundreds.

    As for this "autosave" it's already there.

    If the game had absolutely no "grind" aspect players would not be afraid to loose hours/ days of mining/ farming, and surely not in a game that can kill players by a glitch. But grinding is tedious, although some may find it "fun" or even see it as "mandatory" or "expected" or whatever reason one can find to justify a "game" to become a "late day job", so in that respect I would love to be able to hit a key and save my progression on the same save each time, not generating hundreds.
     
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