Caltrops - Might & Magic X: Legacy





	[quote name="Jerry Whorebach"]My ideal save system is one that's had as much consideration and testing put into it as every other aspect of the design, which is hopefully not a little. In general, I tend to think checkpoints work best for linear games and save stations for non-linear ones, and the better the game is - the more dependent it is on strategy and skill as opposed to trial and error or blind luck - the more it benefits from spacing those saves farther apart. A game with too-frequent saves can pose just as much of a challenge to the player as any other, but it's going to have to rely on challenging his reflexes and his patience and not much else - that's not really my idea of fun. But I try to be open minded when it comes to mechanics. About the only save mechanic I won't tolerate these days is unlimited save-anywhere, like an old fashioned word processor, which is pretty much the designers admitting they didn't even try to balance their game. If I happen to have a fun and challenging experience in their virtual world, it will either require designing one for myself or it will be a happy accident. I think they call that "emergent gameplay." (That being said, I don't see why any game which supports indefinite pausing - which should be all of them, all of the time, unless they have a very, very good reason not to - shouldn't also allow you to suspend your game, quit the application, and resume it whenever you're ready, since it's the same fucking thing.) Shovel Knight sounds like they're putting some design into their save mechanic. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I'm glad to hear they're making the effort! [quote name="<a href="http://www.usgamer.net/articles/game-dev-recipes-shovel-knight">Yacht Club</a>"]Our checkpoint system might not directly remind you of Dark Souls, but the iteration of its design started from a place of thinking about how we could place such an important emphasis on player death as Dark Souls did. In our game, you can recover your lost money when you die similar to Dark Souls, but imagine if when you returned to the campfire, if you had the option of putting out the fire for a giant heap of cash! That's basically the risk/reward system we have set up. Any time you reach a checkpoint, you will return to it if you die, but you also have the option to break it with your shovel and benefit from a ton of gold instead.[/quote] I haven't played BioShock Infinite yet. What was it about the checkpoint system that turned you off? I know the original suffered from save-anywhere syndrome, but it was somewhat mitigated by the fact that your enemies perpetually respawned while your health and ammo didn't - at least, they didn't if you were playing with the patch, which disabled vita chambers. Can you imagine how much better that game could've been if they'd used those chambers for conventional save stations instead of roach motels where fun goes to die? [quote name="Lurker 410942"]Is there a way to integrate the save system into the actual story/gameplay so that saving has consequences besides an A/B/C ranking?[/quote] I'm really not a fan of ranking or scoring systems in games that aren't built around them (e.g. Pong). If your core gameplay is strong enough, you shouldn't need to shovel a second level of gameplay on top of it, especially one that doesn't support (or worse, actively opposes) any story you might be trying to tell. Consider the difference between Burnout, Crazy Taxi, and any shmup with bullet scraping. Burnout rewards near misses with boost, which makes you go faster, which allows you to cross the finish line ahead of your opponents, thereby improving your ranking. Crazy Taxi rewards near misses with cash tips from your passengers, which is tallied up at the end of your session, and used to calculate your ranking. Most shmups reward near misses with points, which... are points; they don't really have anything to do with the story or the core gameplay, they're just for bragging rights. I think this is one of the reasons why Burnout is generally considered more accessible than Crazy Taxi, and both more so than any modern shmup. I still play and enjoy all of them, though, because I'm willing to engage a game on its own terms if I think it might be a fun experience :([/quote]