It was a fine art and a fun process figuring out how to not take damage at all during a fight* 

LOL I never knew you felt so strongly about quicksaving.

*backs away while Shambler carves out a hole in F6 where he can stick his cock*

Yeah so, getting back to talking about this reasonably, I'm just saying that we should consider the possibility that having the quicksave/autosave feature makes us obsessive about having enough health, or doing some kill over again in a more stylish manner, or trying unsuccessfully to jump on some ledge inside a chasm 200 times in a row.

With the feature enabled, things are less tense.

Example, I played metlslime's latest without quicksaving, and I died a few times at that outdoor battle before I realized what I had to do to be a super-bas-ass and wipe out all those baddies whilst maintaining my health.

It wouldn't have been nearly as intense if I quicksaved right before and just kept doing it over and over until I did it *flawlessly*

Those 30-45 seconds of nailgun wielding mayhem in the outdoor part of ant.bsp would definitely have been diminished if the threat of doing it all over again wasn't there.

Sure it's fun even if you quicksave, but you're just raising the stakes and making everything that much more meaningful in terms of the value of life and death in a game when it means doing it all over again. 

Restricting saves to arbitry points, or at the end of levels, is all well and good if the audience of the game is hardcore gamers and will put up with having to progress or reattempt.

But this ignores the point of save games, and what every other 'casual' gamer will be doing with them, saving the game so they can take a break and come back to it later. If the only thing designers can think of to create tension in their games is to space save points further apart or throw challenges before/after them, then it's likely the gameplay at fault, not the fact you can save whenever you wish.

Games have cheats and plenty of other things to 'ruin' the original gameplay/story/feel of the game, but it's up to the player to choose if they'd like to take advantage of them or not. The designer should just concern himself to do what he can to create a fun experiance.

Blitz, I don't feel offended if you use Quicksaves/Loads, or if you don't. That's your choice as a player. I don't in Quake, but if I was playing another game, I'd completely appriciate the option to save whenever I was ready to stop playing for the time being. 

if you want to make the game more difficult, simply don't save.

but leave the option for players who don't want to have to restart a spot because they had to go shopping or pick someone up.

i didn't feel the need to write up a huge novel with what could be contained in a few lines. :) 

I don't want to have to remember to save. Allied Assault's system of having auto-saves carefully spaced through the level, combined with the option to quicksave, means that you can just go on your merry way and if you die, you'll restart a reasonable distance back, but not lose 30 minutes of progress.

I think one pitfall of quicksaving is that it encourages designers to make levels that require quicksaving.

I do like the mario system, but it only works when the level takes 1-2 minutes to run through. If the level takes 45 minutes or whatever some EA executive decided was necessary to hit their "20 HOURS OF GAMEPLAY!!!!" requirement, then things have to be done differently. 

like in half life or allied assault, that was good. 

Would you like me to update your specsavers subscription because you've completely failed to notice the reasons I give against lack of saving and against Blitz's so called arguments against it??

Example, I played metlslime's latest without quicksaving, and I died a few times at that outdoor battle before I realized what I had to do to be a super-bas-ass and wipe out all those baddies whilst maintaining my health.

What you have to do? Not much really. Try entering that area with 8% health...

Mmmmm I bet it was SO MUCH FUN replaying 3/4 of the fucking map time after time to reach there again.... 

this seems to be legit:
http://johnromero.com/phpubb/viewtopic.php?p=85667#85667 

Properly designed games shouldn't need quicksaving - a checkpoint and/or autosave system should suffice. And on the whole, I think checkpoint save systems generate a more rewarding gameplay experience. 

Now that's a game save scheme! 

I can see quicksaves being left out as long as the level design supported it by not making you attempt dumb shit you could die attempting. They remove most sense of danger by acting as a safety net,

AvP had no quicksaves. It was finish the map or bust. It didn't have silly sequences with smashing walls or jumping on swinging crates hanging above pits full of killer crates or any of that nonsense, it was just a dark alien hive. It made you terrified of dying, as you should be, which intensified the game incredibly for me.

Not to say that with today's long-ass modern maps that at least one or two mid-level autosaves wouldn't go amiss. 

As the next post on that forum says: "Unfortunately John, that link caught the attention of many leechers, it does not work anymore". I have a legit Daikatana CD on my desk right now tho, so I have no need for it :) 

erm, if you are an ion storm lawyer, note that I mean that in a metaphorical, hypothetical, covering-my-assical way 

Scamp nailed it. Basically, there are no excuses for not giving your player the option to save where and when she chooses to. I have a life, I don't want to structure my life around the game. Let me save and get back later. It's a game design crutch. Let it go.

The same thing with unskippable cut-scenes by the way. Hey, Shakespeare, I don't care about your shit story. Especially not the second time I have to sit through the crap voice-work and "artistic camera angles." 

That title was wrong. should read just "saves". I blame the sauce. 

the real crutch is HAVING saves. Saves may be essential for players to play the game way they want (same with pausing), but if a designer uses saves to justify his badly-balanced impossible bottleneck sniper puzzle, that's unacceptable. I shouldn't NEED to save and reload to get past some stupid challenge. 

If you're going to talk about how the player shouldn't need to save and reload, then you're not really living in reality. Humans are inherently fallible; and likewise whenever they are introduced into a system, the system inherits their fallibility. So it's impossible to design a reasonably complex game where there isn't a need to save and reload. Proper design acknowledges the risk of flaws and accounts for them (e.g. save/loading).

And that's not even touching on the issue of the subjectivity of each challenge: what I find difficult you might find easy. Should I be punished just because you have an unnatural ability to aim at individual pixels?

So no, it's not a crutch; it's a well-designed solution to a common problem. The question that is often asked is "Is there a better solution?" 

I think the solution must be decided on a case-by-case basis. Games with small, randomly generated levels have little to no need for saving and loading. Games with large, linear, humanly designed levels have a greater need.

Also, who would want to play a non-linear 80 hour RPG without saving? That would be insane. 

i'm saying that quicksaves are necessitated by the needs of the players, but shouldn't be seen by designers as license to make challenges that practically require quicksaves/quickloads. 

... saves don't kill games, games kill games. 

Obviously being able to save is necessary, it's whether having the ability to do the level in 1 second sections is a good idea or not that is at issue (though lotsaquicksaves was the only way I finished sm103_starbuck).

I've been playing a spot of Marathon 2 again these last few days which only lets you save at predefined points, and it definitely adds some tension when you get a bit low on health but aren't sure where the next save terminal is. It also adds to the tedium when you get corwardly and scurry back to the last save term before you dare going into the next room.

As people have been saying, the level design needs to take the saving possibilities into account, and quicksaving frequently being all but mandatory means the level sucks. 

One of the best save systems I've come across was in Eternal Darkness. You can save anywhere during general exploration, but not when there are enemies in the room are just before/during certain set-piece sequences.

Worked very well. Trying to save and being told "The darkness is near, you cannot save." was a good tension builder.

For Quake, I find it essential. Practising a trick that takes two seconds to perform just wouldn't be worth it if you had to play for 5 minutes before hand every time. 

In quake I try to resist the temptation to quicksave in the middle of a battle - it trivialises the combat a bit imo. 

Well, I try not to save (or quicksave) too much when I play a map.. It essentially depends of the difficulty: the more a map is difficult (according to skill setting), the more I save game... it's obvious... At least I try to save between big fights, not during big fights... and when I'm too short in ammo/health as well (security saving here !)...
Well, maybe it's obvious, but it has to be said... 

I play a lot worse when I load a save and encounter the monsters the second time. I don't care to play so precisely anymore. Even when I know where they are and what will happen next, I always lose more health because of impatience and carelesness. I'm kinda bored then already, and the game goal is no more to survive and explore (which I think is mostly the goal on the first run) and but to just run as quickly as possible.