I posted this in the suggestions forum, but apparently that forum is dead, so I'm posting it here. I know I'm far from the first person to experience this, because a search brings up at least half a dozen posts just like this. The game save system is EXTREMELY frustrating in certain situations. For example, last night I spawned my first SV blueprint in the 8.0 build and was just cruising around. I came upon the major zirax development, which was also in a radiated biome. I got a bit too close, and a rocket took out my cockpit. So I fall, break a leg, and am surrounded by every ungodly beast under the sun, as well as zirax troops and radiation. Basically not worth even trying at the level I am at. (Mind you, this is on easy settungs...really wasn't expecting such a challenge.) I go to try to reload at an earlier point, and my two options are either before all the work I just did to spawn in the ship, or after the ship got destroyed and I'm stuck in hell land. Nothing in between. An hour of my life wasted. I tried again, this time trying a different more reasonable seeming poi, and I even saved it at a certain midpoint that I could revert back to, but it seems that when you die, it overrides that last save. So again another hour or more of my life wasted. So please, how hard could it possibly be to have an autosave feature every 5-15 minutes? This would save many many hours of wasted gameplay, not to mention many frustrated players.
If anyone cares, I think I have a bug where it is not saving how it should. It says "backup failed". I ended up going into god mode and getting all my stuff back. Not really a great solution. Still think we need an autosave function.
I agree the way the game saves is very frustrating. What seems to help is if you make copies of saves/back ups and then load one, so that you will still have a save of that time signature not being overwritten. If that makes sense. It's the only way I can reliably reload after a disastrous death situation. There is also an issue with the names of saves being too long (always adding dates and timestamps on) and causing endless back up fails (at least that is what some posters are claiming is the problem). A way that seems to work in getting around the issue is renaming a copy of a save with something much shorter and loading that. Then you can start new back ups from there no problem. At least that worked for me for a while until I encountered it again. Others mentioned clearing the cache but I was nervous to try that. So if you are creating a back up prior to attacking a POI and it keeps failing, trying quitting. Then making a copy of the latest save. Then rename that copy with something short and reload it. Remember the old saves timestamp in case you have to go back to that point again. Once you've reloaded, try backing up a save again. Hopefully now you will have 2 safe saves to go back to, although one will get overwritten if you continue to back up or die horribly again.
The game save system is a live save system. This means if the game is running every single change is stored and saved (some can be lost in the event of a crash.) There is only one save per game. When you click on the backup button it creates a complete copy of the game at the moment you click the button. This is done as a second game. This backup will not ever be overwritten until you actually load the game save (at the moment you resume any game it will begin saving to it). For example I'm playing game save XYZ. I'm flying around and I come across a hostile POI that I want to go investigate so I hit the Esc button and click on backup. This makes a copy of the game at that moment in time and saves it under the same save name but with a bunch of numbers at the end, like XYZ 1234. This game backup is never touched by your current game, because it's a complete separate game. Lets say I then die and want to go back to the point in time when I first found the hostile POI. I exit the game XYZ and load the other game XYZ 1234. Now I am back at the exact moment that I clicked on backup. At this point it is now saving to game XYZ 1234. If you don't click on backup again and create a new backup, XYZ 1234 7890, then you can't go back to that moment in time again. Remember, it's a live save system, it is now saving to that game.
NO! for 'autosave', and it wont work in game like this with active live saving - but they can add classic 'quick save' option on one keyboard key (for example F9, it's unused). ... anyway it is not that hard to make a manual backup before some 'major' action in game, and then erase/rename them before next load up
A quickload / quicksave system is certainly possible (albeit slower than other games, as the whole state is permanently updated in the savegame files and must be duplicated to lock the state to a certain timestamp) But making backtracking easy would really change the gameplay experience. And not necessarily for the better. People would use the system to constantly "try-step/fail/reload" through any dangerous situation. Currently players have to commit to fails, and that makes the game more immersive. As long as the game is running bug free (no unfair events for players) I find a persistent world (without the option to revert to the past) the better solution. While there are still bugs that can set back the player, the game offers console cheats to at least recuperate. And there is the backup option included in the game anyway.
The current system of only saving upon a quit basically is a rudimentary stop against save-scumming. With an auto-save feature, people could just retry something over and over without risk. It's a survival game. There are supposed to be consequences.
If you want that risk, you are free to hold to a strict save policy and not go back to your previous save, just respawn, but for someone who just worked for an hour or more, and then something silly or stupid happens and they lose all that work, it really sucks. A quick save would be a great starting point, but an autosave every 15-30 minutes would be even better.
You're free to just have godmode on all the time if you never want to be threatened by even something that should definitely threaten you.
I'm fine with a challenge, but when I have the game on easy, it should be easy and not one shot kill me.
From the sound of it, you stumbled straight into one of the hardest POIs on the planet, and got disabled over an irradiated biome. That sounds like carelessness on your part, not a problem with the game. If that's not meant to kill you, what is? How badly do you have to screw up before it's justified that the game is allowed to ruin you?
That one was my fault. Full responsibility there. So after that I remade my ship and all the weapons and thought I'd try an easier POI, the unknown artifact floating POI. Little did I know there are rocket soldiers in there, which again, one shot you, after which your stuff falls into the hole where they are. So yea, that one was not exactly my fault. In any case, I really don't get what the big deal is to have this feature, for those who want to go back a bit to try something again. This isn't dual universe or star citizen. We have godmode for peat's sake, so immersion is already broken as it is. If you need full immersion, go for it, but for those who want the option I think an autosave would be useful.
It's a survival game. You're supposed to make an effort to survive. Enabling save-scumming runs contrary to that. If you want to cheat, you have godmode.
What difference does any of that make unless you're implying that it should be a temporary feature for alpha, which makes even less sense? If the imbalance bothers you that much then you have ample tools to solve it without asking for even more easy-mode features. Even if you don't want to use godmode, you can still just re-spawn your ship for free with the fbp console command, or get a boatload of materials to compensate you with the item menu. You're only asking for this to remove the consequences of failure, which is not only detrimental to a survival game, but it's not even necessary for alpha because you already have tools to do that.
My point is this. Will you quit the game because there is a save system that makes deaths have less of a consequence? Probably not. But who will quit is that person just starting out that spends hours trying to figure stuff out, only to get clobbered when they wander in over their head. That is extremely frustrating, and I don't blame anyone who has rage quit after such a situation, because it's honestly a waste of your time and effort to do all that just for nothing. Games are supposed to be fun. They are not real life, and if you want consequences, that's fine, but consequences can and should be implemented in a way that does not waste your time and effort. Again, this is mainly to ensure that newbies like me don't just walk away because they wasted their time due to a stupid mistake.
Actually I've rapidly lost interest in the game because it's too easy, so yes, solid difficulty and player retention are linked factors. Anyone who goes into a survival game expecting to not have to actually survive should probably play different games. It's like buying an FPS game and expecting it to just auto-aim everything for you because 'it's a game and it's supposed to be fun'. Some games are meant to be hard. Some genres are meant to be punishing. There's an endless sea of casual easy-mode games to play, if that's what people want. Not every game needs to hold your hand through every second of gameplay, coddle you through every challenge, and forgive you for every screw up. And the consequences ARE implemented to not waste your time and effort. What are you even talking about? If you had an auto-save 10 minutes ago and you die, those last 10 minutes are lost. If you die in a survival game your stuff is still there. Your SV (minus a cockpit and core) is still there. Your backpack is still there. You can recover all that stuff.
@MidasGunhazard Well said. In fact, I treat all my games as permadeath as it is. It's the only way to actually have some challenge as it stands.
As I illustrated above, you don't have to lose hours of work. If anyone does then it's their fault for not using the backup feature built into the game already. About to go from planet to space? Backup. About to go explore the planet? Backup. Have something go wrong and need to jump back to a backup? Make another backup of it from the resume game window before loading it. It simply works and is really the best option for a game like this.
If you can't understand the frustration of losing hours of your life, I really don't know what to tell you. If this feature would take away from the game for you, you don't have to use it, but for those who it would benefit, it would be extremely helpful.
