No saving in combat?

[Holy.Death]

I can agree that having auto-save during battle when exiting the game is something that would be helpful/useful.

[arcweldx]

Kalanar wrote:

You know what I’ve been doing lately? Playing a little Battle Brothers before I have to get ready for work. But if I’m about to get into a battle, and I know I don’t have 20mins (likely about the max amount of time a battle takes me)… I save and quit. Then later, I come back, when I have 20 mins, and fight the battle. If something comes up in the middle of the battle, that’s okay too, because the tactical combat is enjoyable enough to me, that having to fight the battle again isn’t so bad, after all, it’s only 20mins.

And why are we so quick to accuse a game indie developer of not respecting your time? That’s a little dramatic. I would hate to see how you behave in a line at Starbucks. It’s 20mins – you’re either exaggerating how little time you have (how long did take you to write your post? How many times did you save an come back?) or you are grossly overvaluing your time.

I don’t even care if there is a save option, but I certainly don’t think it is absolutely necessary or disrespectful if it isn’t included. That’s just silly.

If you think 20 min -or 10 min, or 5 min- of my time isn’t worth bothering about, then no, you DON’T have much respect for my time. Never mind the annoyance of playing through something I’ve already done. If you want to wait in line at Starbuck’s, that’s your choice. I wouldn’t do it. And I would never buy a game with limited saves, either, if I knew about it beforehand.

Seriously, what motivates the Save-Police? Would you like to lobby against pause buttons on DVD players so we have to suffer through a 3 hour movie without getting up for a pee, so we get the “intended artistic experience?” Maybe program by e-book reader so it only stops at the end of the chapter, meaning I have to set aside half an hour with guaranteed no interruptions, so I get the experience Tolstoy intended? There’s going to be an Ironman mode. Use it, and let the rest of us play exactly when we want to.

[Kalanar]

Oh I see. Then it is an overvaluation of your time.

But seriously, I do agree with you, I won’t sit in line at Starbucks either.

As far as the tactical battles – terrain changes when you re-load and fight it again. If I were annoyed at having to fight a battle over again, it would be more about a general annoyance with the tactical element of the game rather than having to fight the same party again. I don’t know about you, but the fun for me is the tactical fights of which the variation of terrain can effect the outcome. In the off chance that I have to step away during my limited amount of gaming time, it’s not a big loss on enjoyment, for me.

Also, if the doorbell rings, or if a family member needs something, I can leave the game running while I take care of whatever it is because I likely won’t be leaving the screen for more than an hour unexpectedly. Again we’re talking about a battle that tops out at about 20mins, with the easier ones taking between 3 – 10mins. If I know I have five minutes before I need to leave the computer for an extended period – it is not worth getting in a fight. Life hacking 5 minutes of battle time to come back and finish the remain 1-15mins is not worth it to me. I would probably just finish the battle and leave late. But that’s me, I’m not sure where the rest of the community stands.

Wait..

Are you a fireman? If so, thank you for your service and I suggest we get a “Fireman Mode” complete with battle saves for those who work in the profession, and can’t reliably track the next 5-20mins of their life due to alarms and fire-polls.

A save feature for battle? I guess so, I don’t really disagree with the points made about being able to play it the way you want, but I do disagree with the notion that time has anything significant do with that design decision, or that it is at all disrespectful. It would remove a danger element, that I don’t think is insignificant in terms of design.

In summary, I do not believe it is unreasonable or disrespectful to not include a save during battle.

[thenewromance]

Save on exit like in FTL is fine with me. Whoever wants to go to the lengths of copying files around to scum the save on exit feature may do so. Not being able to save on exit does in fact punish people who cannot always influence when real life strikes. No regular saving and reloading in battle, though, please.

[Sky]

arcweldx wrote:

If you think 20 min -or 10 min, or 5 min- of my time isn’t worth bothering about, then no, you DON’T have much respect for my time.

No I do not have respect for your time. Nor you. Respect has to be earned. Being so arrogant makes you already start below zero. Sorry.
You do know you can demand your money back, though you will have to come up with something better than the game does not respect 5 min of your time.

All this nonsense aside, an autosave upon quit is a nice feature that works fine in M&B. Don’t realy remember if it was saving during combat tho.

Tipps for new players
BB Wiki

[Kalanar]

M&B does not save during combat.

[Alesch]

GOD wrote:

If saving in combat is implemented they could make it save on exit, with an autosave before the fight. That way you don’t have the constant reloading problem and people can still take a break from playing without having to restart the battle.

GOD wrote:

you don’t have the constant reloading problem

GOD wrote:

constant reloading problem

GOD wrote:

reloading problem

GOD wrote:

problem

Who exactly is this a problem for? That is ridiculous. It’s absurd. Battle Brothers is a single player game, and as far as I can tell there are no plans to change that at all. Player A’s playthrough has no bearing whatsoever on Player B’s. So even if Player A prefers to reload his game after making a mistake, while Player B does not, there is still no reason for Player B to find Player A’s practice objectionable. The two will never meet. Their games will never interact. The players themselves will likely never interact. What possible business does Player B have in this case to so much as comment on Player A’s decision to save?

Is Player B offended by the fact that Player A is not “as skilled a player”? Again, their games never interact, nor do the players. That argument is ludicrous. If Player B’s concern is that the addition of a saving feature might somehow undercut his own play style, then it’s still baffling as to how that might be. Will the ability to save tempt Player B into setting aside his moral superiority by reloading after an in-game misstep? I am personally confused as to why that would be a problem at all, but even if it were then it would seem to me that the fault would lie in Player B him or herself, rather than with the game for offering the function.

Forgive me if I’m setting up a straw man here, but that honestly seems to be the main argument against implementing a save feature, and it’s nonsense.

Malthus wrote:

If there is a save mechanic inside of combat it will end like every not-ironman xcom game. It ends in uncounted reloads until every strike you do hits and your guys don´t get hurt. This is neither intended nor should it ever be possible in my opinion.
Though the save on exit seems like a very good idea and would deal with the no-time-issue.

First of all, I can personally attest to having never spammed the reload feature in a game of XCOM until “every strike do hits and [my] guys don’t get hurt”. I wasn’t even aware that this was possible in XCOM. It doesn’t need to be. Lots of games spawn a randomization seed at the beginning of each game that determines the outcome of actions, and a good many games save this seed as part of the save file. This means that save/load spamming would accomplish very little, because the outcome of an attack, let’s say, is predetermined. The only possible influence is that it might allow you to move a character to a different position to strike, or to know in advance that a strike will fail and so take a different action instead. Again though, it seems to me that the fault here (if indeed there is a fault at all, and no one has put forth any convincing arguments that there is) must lie with the player, and not with the software.

Again, my apologies if this isn’t what you meant to say, but it seems to be your argument. If it is, then it makes little sense, and I must disagree.

Personally, the idea of being able to save in battle seems like an obvious feature, and the OP had some legitimate reasons for it. Sometimes, things happen, and you need to step away from a game. Always, losing progress in a game is frustrating. Therefore, a feature that can accommodate the former while reducing the later seems like an obvious thing to have. Arguments about it compromising some perceived Ironman difficulty seem strange, as Ironman difficulty settings are generally set to be special challenges, rather than the norm in gaming. The arguments about save scumming so far have missed the point I’d say. Games like Nethack, ADOM, Angband, and what have you, where the term “save scum” originate from (I believe it began with NetHack, but I could be wrong) might have come up with a derogatory term for the practice, but what they were really experiencing were players subverting a feature (or making up for a lack of features perhaps) in order to better enjoy the game.

A major difference between, say, NetHack, and Battle Brothers is that Battle Brothers is a paid product. NetHack is free. They can take users, or leave them. If people want to undo game-ending mishaps by reloading a save game in NetHack, and it runs counter to the game’s design, then by all means call them names for it. If a player doesn’t enjoy NetHack, and tells their friends that the game is rubbish as a result, then the good folks making NetHack lose nothing. If the same happens to Battle Brothers, then our friends at Overhype Studios might potentially sell less games. Sure, bending over backwards to sell as many copies as possible might leave a bad taste in some peoples’ mouths, but Battle Brothers costs about as much as a mid-range pizza. Is denying people the ability to save in battle and maintaining the… I don’t know, the “purity of hardcore gaming” perhaps? Is that worth even a single pizza? No, no it is not. Pizza is delicious.

How saving in battle is implemented matters very little to me. At will, on exit, after spinning three times widdershins, who cares. The idea that a basic feature might be left out entirely to satisfy a small group of players that seem to be worried that the game might be easier for it somehow, is madness. Mount and Blade has been brought up before, and sure, it didn’t allow players to save in battle, but a battle in Mount and Blade is generally much, much shorter than a battle in Battle Brothers is. The argument that “the tactical battles are the fun part, why would you want to save and deny yourself the fun part of the game” is as absurd as anything else. Ideally, the entirety of the game should be “the fun part”, and in practice players will enjoy different aspects of a game more or less than others. Telling someone what they should enjoy is certainly far more arrogant than believing that one’s time is worth respecting.

Why anyone would be against being able to save the game at any point seems utterly alien to me, but I’d certainly love to hear a good argument against it. So far, there doesn’t seem to be any arguments that don’t boil down to “but I am a hardcore gamer, and if you let me save whenever I want then I might not be hardcore anymore!” Seriously guys, what the heck? Please tell me that I’m misunderstanding your arguments, because that is a sad attitude to have.

[Jago]

Sky wrote:

All this nonsense aside, an autosave upon quit is a nice feature that works fine in M&B. Don’t realy remember if it was saving during combat tho.

Good point. M&B did not save during the combat.

Seriously save’n’quit during combat is fine for a turn-based game like this.

Visit the Battle Brothers Wikia

[Sky]

Alesch wrote:

Please tell me that I’m misunderstanding your arguments, because that is a sad attitude to have.

Main argument was that it would interfere with game design, the expendables type mercenary group with the small roguelike element of losing men. Making players who abuse the save miss out on the core concept of the low fantasy dark and bloody world of medieval harsh reality and such. It sure is a considerable part of the game and things will be build upon it later on. The recruits must flow.

While it is true, the opportunity to save and not lose progress is valid aswell. For many and me the current autosave is enought, for others not. Again, everyone choses for themselves. The final word is after Overhype.

Tipps for new players
BB Wiki

[Jago]

Oh well. To be honest I didn’t quiet read everything. It’s a wall of ranting and your comparisons with pizza and games I’ve frankly never heard about (and I probably wouldn’t care about) is tiresome.

Giving the player the option to reload and redo every little action would give people the wrong impression of what this game actually tries to achieve: being a medieval XCOM.
People should not believe that save-scumming is encouraged, nor a normal part of the game.

Visit the Battle Brothers Wikia

[Xoatl]

Usually I’m all for more. But saving and quitting would be terrible. It would allow people to save scum sooo much, like in X-COM. Didn’t critical hit? Got critical hit? That’s okay, load up a save before you attacked and try again. I’m not in favour of saves during combat not because it takes away “artistic vision” or whatever that shit is, but it opens up people to resort to savescumming and that is the death throes of a game, when that starts you usually get disinterested faster. Save scumming is the true min-maxing menace you people need to worry about.

[Kalanar]

I would turn the argument back towards you, I haven’t heard a good argument that supports a battle save. The argument for it seems utterly alien to me. The “freedom of choice” argument I believe is valid, but not strong enough to influence a design decision in my opinion. It adds so little that it isn’t worth the trade off, which would be a reduction in the danger element that pairs nicely with the dark themes of the game. Having said – Would it ruin the game for me if a battle save was included? No.

I misspoke when I implied that I thought tactical battles were the only part I found fun. The campaign interactions are really fun too. I certainly did not mean imply that everyone should agree that battles are best part of the game. In fact, I made a point to express that it was just my opinion.

If I were annoyed at having to fight a battle over again, it would be more about a general annoyance with the tactical element of the game rather than having to fight the same party again. I don’t know about you, but the fun for me is the tactical fights of which the variation of terrain can effect the outcome.

The use of “I” and “I don’t know about you” is what I used to communicate that it was my opinion.
This is what I was getting at:

1. The battles will be different, even if you are fighting the same party over again due to the new generated terrain. That is my argument against:

Never mind the annoyance of playing through something I’ve already done.

Because in my view, meaning, not necessarily everyone’s – you actually aren’t playing through something you’ve already done. It’s different because the terrain changes. You are welcome to argue that the variation in the party you are facing off against is the more important variable – to which I will also disagree.

And more importantly:
2. How often do you actually need to step away from a tactical battle? They don’t last that long. As a 500+ hour M&B player, I can say that the time of battles is comparable and in some cases, longer than Battle Brothers(Like when the AI is in control and they take 10 mins just to circle their stinking armies around each other before they charge X-D).

I hope the devs don’t waste their time in implementing it.

[Jago]

Xoatl wrote:

Usually I’m all for more. But saving and quitting would be terrible.

Eh? Did I misunderstood something? I though save’n’quit means, you can save whenever you want, but only if you leave the game. Upon continuing you start where you stopped. And the save is ereased. Where is the save-scumming?

Visit the Battle Brothers Wikia

[Xoatl]

Jago wrote:

Xoatl wrote:

Usually I’m all for more. But saving and quitting would be terrible.

Eh? Did I misunderstood something? I though save’n’quit means, you can save whenever you want, but only if you leave the game. Upon continuing you start where you stopped. And the save is ereased. Where is the save-scumming?

I might have misunderstood the OP. If you can save during a battle, quit the game and come back later means you can save, fuck up then load up the save and try again. Besides you can always Alt+tab and close the game then load the save regardless of how you do it. I’ve done that a couple times especially due to the fact you have to retreat in order to load so it’s not as inconvenient.

[GOD]

It’s the idea of maintaining the weight of actions by removing the ability to undo them, in a game where consequences are a major source of tension and enjoyment for the player. Many things you can say about saving at will, you can say about being able to redo perks, or re-rolling levels, or undoing character death. It’s a single-player game, so who cares? The point is that once you start undermining these kind of fundamental design elements the player eventually stops caring about the game and stops having fun. It’s like how I can win any chess game by just smacking his king off the board, but that wouldn’t be according to the arbitrary rules we set and therefore be pretty boring. Another example is how in this game hitting in combat is satisfying because you can miss, it wouldn’t be exciting if you always hit.

Xoatl wrote:

I might have misunderstood the OP. If you can save during a battle, quit the game and come back later means you can save, fuck up then load up the save and try again. Besides you can always Alt+tab and close the game then load the save regardless of how you do it. I’ve done that a couple times especially due to the fact you have to retreat in order to load so it’s not as inconvenient.

Jago was referring to my suggestion on saving on exit. If you want to avoid the Alt+tab issue, you could have the game delete the save upon loading it.

[Author]

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