No saves is not fun.

General discussion about the game.
Icehawk78
Posts: 230
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:55 pm

Re: No saves is not fun.

Postby Icehawk78 » Wed Sep 19, 2012 5:13 pm

Autoclave wrote:Guys.. knock it off, this is not solitaire, nobody asked for FTL to be high failure low success gameplay. If I wanted something like this i would go and play Diablo 3 hardcore. If you think that this game can feel rewarding only when the victory is so difficult to achieve, you are wrong.

Nobody did?

I think you miiight be projecting here just a teensy bit.

However, if you want to have saves, there is a workaround, which I've used on a few other games with permadeath while still learning how they worked, though typically those games tended to last much longer, on the scale of 5-10 hours before I died, so the difficulty in getting back to the endgame to learn from your mistakes was much more costly than here, where you can get to Sector 8 after 30-45 minutes or so.

Depending on your host OS, you can just create a custom launcher that will create a backup of your save&quit save file (if one exists) or copy the existing backup of your save&quit save file (if one doesn't exist). On Windows, this is most easily done with a custom launcher.bat file, on Linux (and I assume Mac, but not certain) you can create a bash script to do it.

However, bear in mind that:
  1. If there ever is a public leaderboard, this practice (known amongst players who enjoy games with permadeath as "savescumming" or just "scumming") would be a flagrant abuse and should be avoided so as to not spoil the experience of others who choose not to do so (most easily, if you want to, by simply not submitting a score to the public leaderboard).
  2. At this point, you're quite literally playing a different game than those who choose not to do this, so opinions that you form of different strategies/balance/etc will inherently be "off", since you're playing distinctly as the game is not intended to be played.

Since this is a single player game, if it's more fun for you to play that way, I don't see any reason for you not to (any more than I'd tell someone who enjoys cheating/hacking not to do that, when it doesn't affect others' enjoyment).

liamdawe wrote:I would really like to be able to have multiple saves, but for say 1 slot per ship maybe.

Unrelated to the original post, I'd say, but I would definitely agree. However, given the current interface, one thing to bear in mind is that the "load game" screen would then need to be created, since currently it's just a single button, rather than a "select a saved game" screen, and while it seems simple, from a programming perspective, creating something new (especially UI-wise) is almost always significantly more effort to do than merely tweaking how something currently exists.
Amiths
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2012 2:22 am

Re: No saves is not fun.

Postby Amiths » Wed Sep 19, 2012 5:14 pm

This new "gamer generation" wants everthing easier... damn.
Tridus
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Sep 19, 2012 5:26 pm

Re: No saves is not fun.

Postby Tridus » Wed Sep 19, 2012 5:28 pm

Horrible idea. No saves are what give the game it's flavor of one ship on a quest where bad things can happen.

You know what inevitably happens in games that let people save and have random events (some of which are bad)? People get a bad event and just go reload the save until it turns out how they wanted it to. Then they complain that the game is too easy and they're bored after 2 hours.
StealthCl0wn
Posts: 78
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2012 6:55 pm

Re: No saves is not fun.

Postby StealthCl0wn » Wed Sep 19, 2012 5:31 pm

Well, you seem very, very entitled. If you don't like the save system, work around it or LEAVE.
omphaloskepsis
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2012 6:09 pm

Re: No saves is not fun.

Postby omphaloskepsis » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:00 pm

I agree that the roll/reward ratio needs to be tweaked, but I'm against changing the save system. As others have said, saves don't belong in rogue-like games. Part of the (quirky) charm of FTL is that you die horribly once in a while. Or frequently. ;) What's wrong with starting a new game?
BigD145
Posts: 40
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2012 4:13 pm

Re: No saves is not fun.

Postby BigD145 » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:36 pm

Autoclave wrote:Guys.. knock it off, this is not solitaire, nobody asked for FTL to be high failure low success gameplay. If I wanted something like this i would go and play Diablo 3 hardcore. If you think that this game can feel rewarding only when the victory is so difficult to achieve, you are wrong.


This is obviously not the game for you nor did you program it. Apparently you want to play Diablo more, so go do that.
BananaDealer
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Sep 14, 2012 11:36 am

Re: No saves is not fun.

Postby BananaDealer » Wed Sep 19, 2012 8:58 pm

BigD145 wrote:
Autoclave wrote:Guys.. knock it off, this is not solitaire, nobody asked for FTL to be high failure low success gameplay. If I wanted something like this i would go and play Diablo 3 hardcore. If you think that this game can feel rewarding only when the victory is so difficult to achieve, you are wrong.


This is obviously not the game for you nor did you program it. Apparently you want to play Diablo more, so go do that.



Attention: Solar Wave Imminent!

BUUUURN!
Kestral B
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2012 2:42 pm

Re: No saves is not fun.

Postby Kestral B » Wed Sep 19, 2012 9:07 pm

fall_ark wrote:Just backup the savefile yourself. You can find the save file location in the sticky.

There's your option of saving every step whenever you want.


+1
Allowing easy saves isn't in the spirit of the game, but you can still have them.

I will admit to backing up a save game just before jumping to sector 8. :) I reloaded it twice and learned something new about how the last sector works each time. After dying the 3rd time I collected my new achievements, put my hardcore pants back on, and went back to the hangar to pick out a new ship. I have no regrets.
Leonidas
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Sep 19, 2012 11:33 pm

Re: No saves is not fun.

Postby Leonidas » Wed Sep 19, 2012 11:43 pm

cletusvandamme wrote:I'm against saves in the main game.

However, one thing they could do would be a kind of "exploration" mode. Using any of your unlocked ships you can go out and play a game with save functionality. But your score defaults to zero (or is unscored) and you can't unlock new ships or any achievements including ship ones.

That's what I would go with. My only problem with not saving is that I worry that I'm playing too cautiously and missing big parts of the game. After losing two crew members to asteroids and giant spiders, I decided never to take a risk on a non-blue option. So now there are many lines of text in the game that I'll never, ever see. In a saveable game it might be fun to see all the horrible ways in which you could die.

But just to be clear, I'm talking about a saveable game with zero score and no accomplishments.
HelloLion
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2012 6:35 pm

Re: No saves is not fun.

Postby HelloLion » Thu Sep 20, 2012 1:37 am

For anyone saying the randomness, the no saves, or any of the other features that make this game hard "isn't what you signed up for" don't kid yourselves. If you knew anything about the game you should have known it would be hard. First clue: they used the term "roguelike" and any time a developer says that it's code for "randomness and permadeath and lots of FUN". Second clue: the devs said that average time spent playing was an hour, this does not mean people usually win the game in an hour, this means by an hour in you're probably dead. Third clue: if you watched the dev videos, even the game developers died a lot! If this didn't tell you that the game was going to be challenging then nothing could have.

In this modern era of game hand-holding most well-developed, highly polished games are incredibly easy when you get down to it, whereas a lot of the hardcore roguelikes and similarly difficult games are messy, bug-ridden and frequently never get truly finished. Long story short, getting a game that stands up to a high standard of quality and a very hard difficulty curve is a rarity in this day and age. For those of us who have been waiting for a game like this, FTL is a serious blessing; it's honestly one of the most fun and addictive gaming experiences I've had in years. I don't want to sound rude by saying this but, please, go play something else. There are so many games out there designed to cater to someone who prefers an experience like what you described in the first post, and so few that actually live up to something like FTL's unforgiving gameplay. Don't discourage these devs from making a game that reminds us that some videogames are meant to be a challenge above all else.