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October 2025

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Uzz919 (29), FlowingEye (36), Karthus (35)
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Upcoming Birthdays: Uzz919 (29), FlowingEye (36), Karthus (35)

[Jebus]

I still think in the early days of TF2, it was one of the best balanced and fun games. Everyone had access to all the weapons and all the classes - each with a specific play style. Some classes were easy to play without any experience (e.g. sniper being the same mechanic as any other game) others harder, but all had good room for improvements in skill and game play. For instance spies had to know maps inside out in order to know distances to ammo in order to avoid uncloaking out in the open. Similarly pyros needed to know where to sit and ambush as were vulnerable if caught.

Within a server you would have a range of skilled players so that even new players would have people they could kill or ways to contribute to the team. Plus there were random crits for getting those freebie kills on anyone. There were also servers which had a reputation for being a higher level (e.g. HH) so you could go there a bit more of a challenge - so self organised gating.

Unfortunately I think it has now diluted itself too much and has too much of a focus on being fun and easy to play for new players (not surprising as these are the people who they need to convert to item buyers) - all the classes can do everything and the weapons have introduced to much randomness and promote solo play.

[Brahms]

TF2 is an interesting one w/r/t balance. Don't want to go deep into a TF2 discussion because I think this thread should be kept general, but one particular example I'd want to talk about is that over the life of TF2 spy has repeatedly been given real, actual buffs to keep him competitive as the playerbase has improved and arguably this has advanced into certain weapons (dead ringer comes to mind as an item that allows the spy to function even with extremely good spy checking)

I don't think there's anyone who would say that the original spy is still balanced, but presumably he was balanced at the time. Does this change in core playerbase skill matter in other games? I don't have specific examples but I feel sometimes things seem balanced in the first couple of weeks of play, but after a while the playerbase begins to understand certain weapons/tactics more and they "become" unbalanced.

[Mr Chug]

I'd cite the spy as the shining example of sidegrades (TF2 is generally head and shoulders above, but spy in particular). My favoured loadout is actually still vanilla spy because it best suits my playstyle, and I'm (arguably) still effective with it. Others prefer the DR and others still swear by the C&D, because they're well balanced while feeling completely different to play with.

TF2 is an interesting one with regard to unlocks because (assuming no money is spent) it's essentially random- you can't control what weapon drops you'll get and even crafting only narrows the range down. It becomes less of a 'I have to get to level X to get effective' and more 'I have to play for Xish minutes to unlock a new weapon to learn'.

[Brahms]

Playing mission improbable reminds me of how linear SP games can be done well. Something like COD or Homefront is generally annoying because the designers have no faith in their ability to lead you around a level and so they get you to just follow Capt Price. A well designed level can be completely linear, but because the designer understands humans, they can lead you around it without placing an annoying FOLLOW arrow on the map. It makes you feel like you're legit exploring a space, when in reality, there is nowhere else to go.

[hawt!]

Playing mission improbable reminds me of how linear SP games can be done well. Something like COD or Homefront is generally annoying because the designers have no faith in their ability to lead you around a level and so they get you to just follow Capt Price. A well designed level can be completely linear, but because the designer understands humans, they can lead you around it without placing an annoying FOLLOW arrow on the map. It makes you feel like you're legit exploring a space, when in reality, there is nowhere else to go.

Might just be me, but I will always examine every possible pathway that I know isn't the right way to go before I take the real one if you know what I mean, just so I don't miss anything.

[Brahms]

Think that quicksave discussion would be better placed here:

I think quicksaving does break immersion because it's a gamey action. Walking around using arrow keys, shooting etc is control of a character, pressing f5 isn't anything to the character, it's a reminder that you're playing a game and if you die you'll return to that point. As an example that doesn't prove anything, in horse life I was doing a little jumping puzz and I was worried I'd fail the jump. So I saved, then I dgaf anymore. That's not immersive at all in my opinion.

I'm not in fav of huge hour long checkpoints and replaying stuff for no reason either. I basically expect checkpoints to be put smartly enough into the game that I don't have to worry about QSing after every fight. Cept obvo you don't want to save after every fight, you want to save before every fight (to avoid doing non risk things when you rl, don't want to have to rl, then go pick up all the dropped loot, heal up etc etc), but how do you know when there's about to be a fight? I end up on some meta ting, trying to predict when there's going to be a fight so I can save, again that breaks immersion for me.

Resi4 had brilliant saves. You had the tension of trying to find typewriter (Remember how calm you'd feel hearing the typewriter music and seeing the blue flames?) but it also checkpointed in between many fights and actually during some larger fights. (Thinking of one bit in the castle where you were lowering and raising platforms in particular, I died ad thought "Oh no I'll have to start again" but it started me half way through instead)

So to summarise:

Quicksaves should be in games, but I should basically never have to think about them unless my immersion is already broken because I keep dying trying to retry a jumping puzz. Also, resi4.

[Karthus]

I think a reason thats keeping me back from continuing with Dark Souls is that when you die you have to replay a lot of stuff that youve already been through, and since you die a lot in that game, it makes you go through an area 10 or more times. Im sure the game is great, but its nothing for me, I dont enjoy replaying a part of a game over and over again.

This is also a reason why I dont really like GTA or Red Dead Redemption. Theyre great games, have a great atmosphere/story/gameplay and whatnot, but the save system in these games is annoying, if you fail a mission, it usually results in you backtracking a couple of minutes before you get to retry. It seems to be a problem in every Rockstargame, even Max Payne 3 this year -which I liked alot- suffered from bad checkpoints that in some cases have you rewatch an entire cutscene again.

Thinking of games with great savesystems, Limbo comes to mind. The checkpoints are very relaxed and the developer definitely had in mind at which points the players would fail so when you die it usually puts you right before that part again. Its forgiving, but its not making the game easy. Thats how a save system should feel like. SotC did that aswell from what I remember, when you fail at a bossfight, you had the option to restart that fight immediately and it didnt have you go all the way from the temple to the bossarea again.

But yeah about quicksaving, like I said in the other thread, I dont mind it, it doesnt break the immersion for me, but I rather have a game that has wellplaced checkpoints and doesnt give me the option to save whenever I want, it generally gives a more relaxed approach to critical and difficult scenarios in games where you rather think how to beat it instead of how to abuse the quicksavesystem so the fight gets easier for you.

[Berath]

Yes, this is a better place!

Quicksaving is probably only necessary when the game designers haven't put enough thought into the difficulty level of the game. Going back to my Call of Cthulhu example, one save point was after this incredibly long and involved chase scene involving moving timing moving furniture in front of doors, locking doors and leaping out of windows, all needing very accurate timing.

One small mistake and you'd have to do the entire thing all over again, they should have had a break point in the middle somewhere. I gave up when I encountered a long scene sneaking through a warehouse. Again the save point was at the end, I felt I just couldn't face repeating it again and again

[discordance]

making quick save an option in 2012 is the devs admitting their autosave checkpoints are terrible and no they arent going to fix it. Inexcusably lazy design really for a modern game. I hate quick-save. Did it all the time in HL1 and it really ruins flow. More than repeating a small section because you are having to manage what the auto-saves should be doing.

[Jebus]

Or... its game developers knowing that people like playing games in different ways so provide a framework that is flexible and allows choice. Save manually often or automatically rarely.

[Berath]

Or developers allowing you to change difficulty level as you're playing.

Start off easy and increase the difficulty as you go on or lower the difficulty for some Boss fights...which of course is what various MMOs have now done in Raids.

[DeadlyAvenger]

making quick save an option in 2012 is the devs admitting their autosave checkpoints are terrible and no they arent going to fix it. Inexcusably lazy design really for a modern game. I hate quick-save. Did it all the time in HL1 and it really ruins flow. More than repeating a small section because you are having to manage what the auto-saves should be doing.

I found myself doing that a LOT in Black Mesa as well.

One of the worst things about checkpointed saves for me is when the checkpoint save happens, you have no idea it's happened but then when you die you respawn with very little health and/or ammo because that's what you had when the autosave happened.

Happened to me in Black Mesa a couple of times (once I had like 30 health and a guy shooting at me when the game loaded). It also happened in Max Payne - the autosave was me with no ammo and a guy shooting at me - FFFFFFFFFFFF.

[terror]

I like games where there is an autosave at the start of chapters, roughly 1 hour of gameplay but you also get a finite number of saves/quicksaves (like max Payne on higher difficulties). This way there is a hardcap on how far you can gobback but at the same time you can choose to save between if you've either just done something hard or are worried there is something about to happen but without feeling completely safe due to saving after every fight and cloaking if you lose any health.

[Brahms]

I guess part of the problem is that it's a pretty complex issue with a lot of solutions, pretty much all of which require a lot of work, but you can't put it on the game box.

DEVASTATING NEW SAVE SYSTEM

THOUGHTFULLY PLACED CHECKPOINTS

BRUTAL QUICKSAVE ACTION

Two off the wall solutions to the whole thing: Re-e-winds, like PoP and Grid, and infinite respawns via an in game mechanism, like Prey.

[Berath]

Ditto Deadly

That happens in Alice: Madness Returns. You're on low health, you turn a corner, wham a checkpoint save and you're into the next combat.

Once of the reasons I'm glad the game allows you to change the difficulty level as you play.

One thing about quicksaves too...they're probably better for parents. Child starts demanding, Quicksave, attend to child needs. An advantage of turn-based games too.