Topic: No saving in combat?

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  • #3508
    Avatar photoMalthus
    Participant

    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 <em class=”d4pbbc-italic”> 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.

    There is no need for an apology. I have to confess. I hate loosing my men, in Xcom, BB wherever and I am easily tempted to reload and save them if possible. Even without the second wave savescum feature introduced with xcom ew you could already save and reload and get totally different results in just changing the order of your attacks. In the end you may not loose men but damn much time. This is nothing I am proud of.

    The devs have a clear vision how the feeling of their game should be. I respect it and hope they stay true to what they have already, as I am less tempted to have to restart the whole battle in order to not loose someone than I would be if I simply had to restart one turn.

    We suggested a good solution for handling the need to leave the game. Saving on exiting the game. More would neither be neccesary nor good for the game.

    And sorry, but I never ate a pizza worth 20 or even 40 €. Must be a golden one I guess. I just want to say you are comparing two totally different things.

    And to our fireman. Respect has to be earned. This starts with respecting others. And your first post was disrespectul to say the least.

    "I am a Paladin!"
    >OMG, Malthus, there are no damn paladins in Battle Brothers...<
    "OK, OK! Then I´m a wrecked down minstrel drunkard pretending to be a paladin, singing so wrong in the midst of battle that even the undead run in fear... Better?!"

    #3515
    Avatar photoAlesch
    Participant

    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.

    Well, the word that I would take issue with there is “abuse”. Having the feature does not force anyone to make use of it; not putting it in at all because some players might somehow “misuse” it, and in so doing appreciate the game less somehow, seems like a very strange decision to make. I made the point my initial post that Player B (the fellow who doesn’t save) has no reasonable reason to be in any way annoyed by Player A (who does save), as the two will never interact. Most people here seem to agree that having some manner of “Save and Exit” option in battle is, at best, ideal, or, at worst, something to be indifferent about. I am personally in favor of having a “Save and Exit” option, and I don’t want people to think that I’m arguing against it in favor of saving all the time, or what have you.

    What I’m taking issue with is the reasons that people are putting forward for thinking that “Save and Exit” should be the only acceptable form of in-battle saving. The common argument (yours included) seems to be to maintain some strange sense of “purity”, and that baffles me. The ability to save does not inherently rob the game of any “grittiness” or even necessarily difficulty. I thought I explained in my initial post how many games get around the issue entirely by having a set RNG seed, which prevents a game from recalculating a result if the game is loaded later. A miss, for instance, would always be a miss given the same seed. I don’t know how Battle Brothers does its calculations, and implementing a similar system might be a significant workload, but without knowing that saving a seed (and I really wish I knew the accepted Computer Science term for what I’m trying to describe) within the save file would be unfeasible, I don’t think it’s fair to say that save-scumming is an issue at all.

    I really don’t think that the theme of the game is as threatened by an in-battle save as people seem to be worried it might be.

    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.

    I wouldn’t consider a thousand words to be all that long, and I did try to avoid ranting. The games that I mentioned are the basis for the word “save scumming”, and I did not compare the game to pizza, but rather used pizza to illustrate income. Think of it as an impromptu lesson in basic economics, as written for kindergartners.

    To summarize my point, as it relates to what you wrote in your post, no player, playing a single player game, has any reasonable right to declare the way that another player might play as being invalid, immoral, or even lesser in any way. The notion that save-scumming is somehow immoral or wrong is strange. It’s a reaction that players have to design decisions that they disagree with. It may be a subversion of the designer’s vision, but art is found in those who interact with it more than those who create it, just ask poor Ray Bradbury. Without getting to heavily into any kind of philosophical discussion, when people talk about the thematic ways that the game is threatened by the introduction of saving in-battle, I can only take that to mean in terms of “artistic purity”. That confuses me a bit, because art does not necessarily work that way. This, for instance, is one argument against that notion.

    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 thought I made some decent points beyond simply freedom of choice. I would argue that the implementation of an in-battle save would increase the game’s broader market appeal, but I couched it in an analogy that wasn’t worded as clearly as it should have been I suppose. Increased potential revenue should theoretically be attractive for any company, I should think. It wouldn’t even necessarily compromise the game’s appeal to “hardcore gamers”, since the implementation of an Iron Man mode (which seems pretty universally desired) would keep everyone happy with a single save, in battle or otherwise. Allowing people to save outside of battle can really only make the game accessible to more people, and thus provide Overhype with more potential customers (or pizza, in my analogy). I also seem to have, not a different opinion on whether or not games are art, but a different opinion about the nature of art from the majority of the forums (and to be fair, possibly from the majority of people in general).

    I’d also like to restate that I am, personally, in favor of a “Save on Exit” solution. I just don’t think that the arguments leveled against saving whenever you want are being made for the right reasons. I still can’t say that I am convinced, but I will admit that your opinion is valid. I think we are mostly disagreeing about the impact that in-battle saving will have on the strength of the game’s theme, or at least on the value of the feature when compared to the thematic reinforcement that’s lost.

    t’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.

    I think you’re missing the point about the single-player nature of the game, or at least the comparison with chess isn’t quite right. Chess, after all, requires two players. Player A knocking over Player B’s king and declaring him or herself the winner would certainly impact Player B’s enjoyment of the game there. I think I understand what you’re trying to get across though, but I would still disagree. While many of the arguments for saving whenever you want (which, again, isn’t necessarily the argument that I am making) can be made for “redoing perks, re-rolling levels, or undoing character death”, not all of them can. While missteps in those areas can be detrimental to a player, none of them punish a player for needing to set the game aside at any given moment. Stating that a player will eventually stop caring about the game because of any specific design choice is a bit presumptuous. I could, after all, say with equal validity that a player might, as a result of being unable to save their game, be forced to lose progress and as a result of that lose interest in the game and stop having fun.

    The discussion is not about redoing perks, re-rolling levels, undoing character deaths, or anything else that would strip the RNG of any authority, or the player of accountability. The argument, at least the one that I’m trying to make, is about the value of being able to save the game in battle. Saving the game at the beginning of each turn, and loading whenever things don’t go your way is not my intention, but at the same time I would say that a player who finds enjoyment in doing so should not be barred from doing so simply because you disagree with how the game should be enjoyed.

    I’d also have to wonder exactly how “fundamental” any of these decisions are. As best as I can tell, the only truly fundamental aspects of Battle Brothers, right now, are that Medieval Fantasy Men fight Other Medieval Fantasy Men and Monsters. Fundamental, after all, means something that “forms a base or necessary core”, and I’m not sure that the description applies to the inability to save in battle.

    If the weight of consequences is of such central and inalienable importance to the game as a whole, then I think the solution lies less with how and when you can save, but rather how and when you can load. While it might upset some people, loading from the main menu is enough of a delay to be inconvenient (and so slightly discourage repeat and rapid reloading) without entirely barring the possibility of resuming a game from mid battle.

    In the thread about character customization I suggested tying Steam achievements to an Iron Man mode. Whether or not that happens, I do think that an Iron Man mode might be the best chance to make the greatest number of people happy with Battle Brothers.

    #3517
    Avatar photoAlesch
    Participant

    Aaand since I can’t find the edit button, if there is one, I am double-posting. I feel so dirty.

    I must have really missed my mark with the pizza analogy. I meant to say that the amount of money that a customer pays for Battle Brothers (around 22$ Canadian, I’m not sure about elsewhere) is roughly enough to buy a large pizza. I’ve certainly paid that much for pizza before, at least. I wasn’t trying to compare the game itself to pizza, but rather use pizza to illustrate (roughly, as Valve takes its mysterious Valve Percentage) the value of a sale to the dev team.

    If we assume that one sale of Battle Brothers gives the devs one large pizza, and that one large pizza can feed the three gentlemen for one meal (I am not the slimmest man, perhaps our intrepid developers can subsist on less), then three copies of Battle Brothers can feed the devs for a day. More copies sold, means more days eating pizza (which is delicious, and thus desirable to eat). It’s… admittedly a clumsy analogy.

    I’m sorry for confusing everyone with it.

    #3518
    Avatar photoAnonymous
    Inactive

    To be fair, I defy you to find a game that lets you save mid combat. I really cannot think of many (some, but certainly not many).

    …I get the whole wasting my time argument… but hey, welcome to the world of gaming!?!?! F*** I don’t even wish to dwell upon the amount of minutes, hours, days and years I’ve wasted playing video games. But do I care? NO!

    From personal experience you can either have a life, or play video games, theres not much room for both ;)

    Jokes aside, I wouldn’t have a problem with saving during battles; so long as Ironman mode saved after each and every combat turn.

    #3525
    Avatar photoAlesch
    Participant

    To be fair, I defy you to find a game that lets you save mid combat. I really cannot think of many (some, but certainly not many).

    …I get the whole wasting my time argument… but hey, welcome to the world of gaming!?!?! F*** I don’t even wish to dwell upon the amount of minutes, hours, days and years I’ve wasted playing video games. But do I care? NO!

    From personal experience you can either have a life, or play video games, theres not much room for both 😉

    Jokes aside, I wouldn’t have a problem with saving during battles; so long as Ironman mode saved after each and every combat turn.

    In the TBS genre? It depends largely on how the battle systems work, but of the games that I know of and have separate battle/campaign portions the way Battle Brothers has I can think of a few. I may be wrong about a few, as some of these games I haven’t played in some time, so feel free to call me out on any that I mistakenly put up.

    Jagged Alliance I believe had in battle saves, but I don’t recall for certain.
    X-Com Had in battle saves, but not in battle loading.
    X-Com: Terror from the Deep In battle saves, no in battle loading.
    X-Com: Apocalypse I’m pretty sure had the same sort of set up as its precursors, but I am admittedly less certain.
    Jagged Alliance 2 This one I might be wrong about actually, but I’m sure that someone can correct me about it.
    Silent Storm
    XCOM: Enemy Unknown Although people around here seem to dislike it for some reason.

    You’re right in that the list isn’t large, but it is hardly unprecedented. It’s also a pretty short list of games that spend a substantial amount of time in both a battle map and a world map though, so it’s a short list all around. I don’t think that “Other games don’t allow saving mid battle” is the strongest argument to be made against it though :P.

    #3528
    Avatar photoMalthus
    Participant

    To be fair, I defy you to find a game that lets you save mid combat. I really cannot think of many (some, but certainly not many).

    …I get the whole wasting my time argument… but hey, welcome to the world of gaming!?!?! F*** I don’t even wish to dwell upon the amount of minutes, hours, days and years I’ve wasted playing video games. But do I care? NO!

    From personal experience you can either have a life, or play video games, theres not much room for both 😉

    Jokes aside, I wouldn’t have a problem with saving during battles; so long as Ironman mode saved after each and every combat turn.

    In the TBS genre? It depends largely on how the battle systems work, but of the games that I know of and have separate battle/campaign portions the way Battle Brothers has I can think of a few. I may be wrong about a few, as some of these games I haven’t played in some time, so feel free to call me out on any that I mistakenly put up.

    Jagged Alliance I believe had in battle saves, but I don’t recall for certain.
    X-Com Had in battle saves, but not in battle loading.
    X-Com: Terror from the Deep In battle saves, no in battle loading.
    X-Com: Apocalypse I’m pretty sure had the same sort of set up as its precursors, but I am admittedly less certain.
    Jagged Alliance 2 This one I might be wrong about actually, but I’m sure that someone can correct me about it.
    Silent Storm
    XCOM: Enemy Unknown Although people around here seem to dislike it for some reason.

    You’re right in that the list isn’t large, but it is hardly unprecedented. It’s also a pretty short list of games that spend a substantial amount of time in both a battle map and a world map though, so it’s a short list all around. I don’t think that “Other games don’t allow saving mid battle” is the strongest argument to be made against it though :P.

    Yes, JA2 and XCOM EU had that mechanic. I never played Silent Storm so this is the only one I cannot even say anything about. But the other games could be exploited like hell because of their free in-battle save and reload mechanic. Why do I know that? Because I did. It was not the way these games were meant to be played. And while I loved all these games – especially xcom and jagged alliance 2 – sooner or later playing a game in a way like this lets you loose interest in it. This is why I don´t want to be tempted to do this in the first place.

    You might see it from a different perspective, but I assume the devs DID indeed think a lot about when the player should and shouldn´t be able to save and load. And I also do hope they won´t just change their mind because of people who are whining about the dev´s “disrespectful” actions against “their” time…

    "I am a Paladin!"
    >OMG, Malthus, there are no damn paladins in Battle Brothers...<
    "OK, OK! Then I´m a wrecked down minstrel drunkard pretending to be a paladin, singing so wrong in the midst of battle that even the undead run in fear... Better?!"

    #3529
    Avatar photoHoly.Death
    Participant

    I didn’t see people asking for save and load in a traditional sense, just for a way to save when they have to go away from computer during battle. Auto-save on exit could work even in combat and solve the entire issue. I can’t see a way to cheat the system and it’d still be consistent with what developers had in mind.

    #3532
    Avatar photoMalthus
    Participant

    I didn’t see people asking for save and load in a traditional sense, just for a way to save when they have to go away from computer during battle. Auto-save on exit could work even in combat and solve the entire issue. I can’t see a way to cheat the system and it’d still be consistent with what developers had in mind.

    That is what was already suggested by GOD and many others. Then the whining about freedom began.

    "I am a Paladin!"
    >OMG, Malthus, there are no damn paladins in Battle Brothers...<
    "OK, OK! Then I´m a wrecked down minstrel drunkard pretending to be a paladin, singing so wrong in the midst of battle that even the undead run in fear... Better?!"

    #3533
    Avatar photoGOD
    Participant

    This isn’t about artistic purity. What we’re looking at is how certain design decisions affect how the game is experienced. Death of the author has nothing to do with it. It’s the difference between arguing about how a book should be read and how a book should be written. Right now, we’re arguing about how the book should be written in order to achieve its desired effect on the reader. That’s what I’m talking about when I keep mentioning design decisions.

    It’s also the point that I’m making by referring to re-picking your perks. I’m recommending the writer not to add a certain character, because that character doesn’t mesh with the story that they’ve made so far. He could be really interesting and some people might come to like him, but his presence dilutes the strength of the book as a whole. Now a book is different from a game, but the way you have to carefully pick features is not dissimilar to how you craft a story; they need to fit the kind of experience that you are trying to create. If you’re not careful, adding a certain character to a novel can break the unspoken agreement between writer and reader about the internal world of the book. Adding a wizard to a book that is intended to be a serious story about the pains of transitioning from woman to man, would be jarring and cause the reader to wonder why the wizard doesn’t just fix everything. You could make it work, but it would end up being a very different story compared to the original.

    The same applies here. Being able to casually re-pick your perks does not fit with a game that wants to have actions have consequences – the fundamental principle that I was referring to. It causes a contradiction between the feature and the rest of the game, that breaks the agreement of internal consistency between the player and the developer, resulting in the game being less enjoyable to play. This also what the smacking away the king was about. It’s not the point that you’re infringing on the enjoyment of the other player, but that your own enjoyment would only be related to screwing them over and not to the actual playing of the game. You wouldn’t be the winner, because there’s nothing to win anymore.

    #3534
    Avatar photoMalthus
    Participant

    ^ THIS

    Also if anyone might have gotten it wrong. I am not against saving on exit. I would even support that. But getting in more than this would be counterproductively.

    "I am a Paladin!"
    >OMG, Malthus, there are no damn paladins in Battle Brothers...<
    "OK, OK! Then I´m a wrecked down minstrel drunkard pretending to be a paladin, singing so wrong in the midst of battle that even the undead run in fear... Better?!"

    #3547
    Avatar photoSky
    Participant

    So… After reading all these post the summary is…

    As long as there is an ironman mode with only save on exit, the normal mode can have whatever save possibilities even if it might hurt the gameplay experience itself and allow save scumming or whatever other machinations the players want, it’s enterily on them.

    I personally do agree with the ironman (as it can only be made with save on exit, any other autosave would make it the normal mode as now), but have no problems with current system. See no problem with the save averywhere even if there will be only one game mode, for a simple reason… It is in my power to choise between save scumming and playing to reach the game full potential. And so does everyone else. I can understand to limit these by design as seen by the devs, it is their vision their game and in the end it should be like they imagined it. But limiting the freedom and convenience while forcing unneeded limitation is simply unreasonable.

    #3554
    Avatar photoGOD
    Participant

    I would have ironman mode only affect the saves outside of combat and have save on exit in combat for both modes. The battles are fairly short, so what does saving at will offer that save on exit does not? The only freedom it offers is save scumming, which is not worth creating contradictions for.

    #3557
    Avatar photoRap
    Keymaster

    Very interesting discussion going on in here. This is our stance: We will not add a saving feature to combat because a) it does not fit our design goals, and b) it would cost us a lot of time which we’d rather invest into more important things, and things which we want to have in the game in the first place. Adding a loading feature from combat, on the other hand, is something we’ll eventually do simply for convenience.

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    #3559
    Avatar photoGOD
    Participant

    Sounds logical. Saving is a pain to get right and the battles are short enough that having to quit is less of an issue. The longest battle I ever had was in the old demo, when I had to go chase after a cheeky necromancer, but Early Access battles have been 30 minutes at most and usually between 10 or 20 when I’m taking my time.

    #3560
    Avatar photoAnonymous
    Inactive

    Game already autosaves prior to entering a combat situation, so I see no gain in saving every turn, every move. Plus, as i see it, goes a bit against the shininess of the game – play with success and failure.

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