Why no Save game Feature

[Gandalf Parker]

Saxon said:
There is not a consensus on this, but there are some vocal people on either side. That may be all that this thread will establish...

Im all for that. It has generated discussion which is logged here for the devs to see. And shown support for it either direction.

By the way;
now that things are slowing down abit I will toss some gas on the fire that I was leary of posting. (I hope this doesnt piss off Johan) but people seem to try and motivate the devs the wrong way. From my personal experience, it seems that if you really want to get Johan to add something to the game, get it worked on by someone else. At least 3 major additions that we never expected to see seemed to get added as soon as a fairly decent 3rd party version seemed likely.

[Wyehl]

Gandalf Parker said:
They have given good reasons, just none that you accept.

Well, some people might think they are good but you can't presume that as fact. I think most of the reasons against it are purely for the sake of argument in the absence of actually having a good reason. In fact, to me, it appears that -some- of the arguments are so thin, that I am not even sure the people saying them actually believe them. Don't get me wrong, some of them are debatable but, imo, some of them are really 'stretching it'.

Gandalf Parker said:
But basically one view given would be:
"Should we add a feature that might ruin the replayablity and long term enjoyment, even for those that think they wanted it, thereby hurting the sales of the next version?"

Interesting that you mention GalCiv as an example of a game that has save feature.

They also mentioned Civ4, which is an excellent game by most accounts. If I had to list some of my favorite old games, I think they all had it. Masters Of Magic, Masters Of Orion, X-Com, Alpha Centauri, Civ1, Civ4.

Best thing about those games, for me ? Replayability. Somehow they were all great games (with great replayability) despite the scourge of having a save game feature.

[Gandalf Parker]

Wyehl said:
Well, some people might think they are good but you can't presume that as fact. I think most of the reasons against it are purely for the sake of argument in the absence of actually having a good reason. In fact, to me, it appears that -some- of the arguments are so thin, that I am not even sure the people saying them actually believe them. Don't get me wrong, some of them are debatable but, imo, some of them are really 'stretching it'.

Thank you very much for using phrases such as "some people" "cant presume that as fact" "I think" "to me it appears" and "imo". More of that would be a good thing for all threads here and keep them off of the moderators watch-lists.

They also mentioned Civ4, which is an excellent game by most accounts. If I had to list some of my favorite old games, I think they all had it. Masters Of Magic, Masters Of Orion, X-Com, Alpha Centauri, Civ1, Civ4.

Best thing about those games, for me ? Replayability. Somehow they were all great games (with great replayability) despite the scourge of having a save game feature.

Of those, I dont remember if all of them had cheat-saves or not. I remember it with Master of Magic. You could save just before a fight or checking treasures, then restore if you didnt like the result. On the other hand, some games roll the randoms far in advance so that by the time you find something, its result is already decided so that saving didnt do you any good OR restoring from a save specifically made the result worse. Its a common topic in programmer forums on how to make saves available without ruining the game (in the developers view of the game of course).

[HoneyBadger]

I think there's some truth to the statement that what we're expressing here are both opinions and facts. I don't think that makes too much of a difference, even as far as to who's "right" and who's "wrong". It's a question of priorities. Do we ask the Devs to do something that we can do ourselves, and may or may not want, or do we make the decision ourselves.

It's kind of the same question you get with censorship: Do you require a company to make your decisions for you, as to what's appropriate or not for you, or do you choose to turn the channel when you find something offensive and allow others their freedom?

[Gandalf Parker]

Theres nothing against asking the devs for anything. But Id rather we didnt push them into having to defend a decision not to. As we can obviously see from threads like this, that can go down a road which can cut off all communications.

[HoneyBadger]

No I have nothing against asking the Devs for something someone wants in the game. I'm just suggesting that it not be demanded as a point-of-sale, when there are other options to persue.

It's all in how you say a thing, not in what you say.

[NTJedi]

Saxon said:
And I say that we do want them spending time on the save game feature!

There is not a consensus on this, but there are some vocal people on either side. That may be all that this thread will establish...

Since a few known workarounds exist for the desired save game feature I seriously doubt the developers will take time away from fixing known bugs and developing new content.
Lets see... should the devs fix the known undead blessing bug which can effect any nation OR add a feature for those too lazy to use a known workaround. Not a difficult decision for most people.


Personally I would rather they also spend their time making sure each nation has at least 3 heroes instead of adding a save game feature which has a known workaround.

[Gandalf Parker]

Lets not be that harsh. It might not be laziness.
Some people really have no idea how to do things on their computer unless its on a menu. If they cant find the dominions files, dont know how to make a file there or a shortcut, then they are going to have a hard time with the answers that have been given.

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
Lets not be that harsh. It might not be laziness.
Some people really have no idea how to do things on their computer unless its on a menu. If they cant find the dominions files, dont know how to make a file there or a shortcut, then they are going to have a hard time with the answers that have been given.

That's true... yet it's only a percentage which lack the knowledge for moving/adding files within the windows directories. I feel sorry for these people because this means if someone develops a unique and very fun singleplayer map available for download... they won't be able to play the map.

[Wyehl]

NTJedi said:
Lets see... should the devs fix the known undead blessing bug which can effect any nation OR add a feature for those too lazy to use a known workaround. Not a difficult decision for most people.

A few people seem to assume that this argument is in the majority. All sarcasm and straw men and smiley winks aside, this view is maybe only in the majority among some of the 'local' crew, if that. The reason I got into this thread in the first place was my personal reaction to this very assumption and I wanted to make it clear that just because a group of the 'locals' think that, it doesn't mean everyone who plays (and buys) the game feels that way (no offense to the locals, I only mean that it seems to me that most of the people who are against a save game feature are regular posters in this forum while the people who are for it are a mix of regular posters and newbies like myself).

I don't disagree that priorities are worth considering but I don't think that there is an overwhelming majority, such that you can simply discredit arguments based on what you perceive as the popularity of your point of view. If it was so overwhelmingly popular, you would only have two or three people on the opposing side and that doesn't appear to be the case.

Note: By 'locals', I only mean people who have been active on the forum for a while and/or participate regularly.