I agree, the explanation on the Wiki could be clearer.
It also attempts to link to “ChoiceScript IDE” only to get a 404 error, file not found.
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You beat me to it. 
I think the link was to the old online version through Dropbox.
The explanation without looking at a code sample is hard to give - but basically it is a way to allow the reader to make several choices at the same time (dealing with different variables etc) that is presented in a convenient way, rather then presenting multiple single *choice bodies, one right after the other.
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That blew my mind. Thanks for that snippet of code.
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Here’s an example I just made, regarding multiple choice:
[b]Welcome to Ice Cream Citadel. May I take your order?[/b]
*choice Flavor Topping
#Vanilla
#Sprinkles
You add sprinkles to your Vanilla ice cream.
*goto next
#Gummi Bears
You add gummi bears to your Vanilla ice cream.
*goto next
#Nothing
You add nothing to your Vanilla ice cream.
*goto next
#Strawberry
#Sprinkles
You add sprinkles to your Strawberry ice cream.
*goto next
#Gummi Bears
You add gummi bears to your Strawberry ice cream.
*goto next
#Nothing
You add nothing to your Strawberry ice cream.
*goto next
#Chocolate
#Sprinkles
You add sprinkles to your Chocolate ice cream.
*goto next
#Gummi Bears
You add gummi bears to your Chocolate ice cream.
*goto next
#Nothing
You add nothing to your Chocolate ice cream.
*goto next
*label next
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They wrote about this in the FAQ six or so years ago. The function, once added, will be nearly impossible not to use. That doesn’t mean it’s an improvement to the gameplay experience. Many of their early playtesters found it the opposite.
Not all–you’re right that different people look for different things in these games. But the lack of a back button or save function is supported by player experience.
But improving the quality of those choices.
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play like your real life… 
if you accidentally click any wrong choice there is no chance of going back!! 
anyway save system/checkpoint will be great 
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This is not the same thing. Picking a choice by accident means that you were never gonna do that. You meant to do something else, but due to incorrect input you picked something that you didn’t intend to do.
It’s not the same thing as doing what you wanted, but wanting to go back to change the outcome of your choice.
My mouse for example has a problem that it clicks twice sometimes. When I select a choice and click “Next” it may click on the next of the following page as well. It is not what I wanted to do, so in this case I would want to go back on the previous save to correct it.
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I remember in Tin Star you can always start from the beginning of the chapter(Zombie Exodus has a similar die and restart halfway system).If there’s no saves,checkpoints like these can also be welcome
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yes I know… just kidding… basically I want this save system too…
Literally I was going to smash my phone after dying in Highlands,Deep waters at the end “TWO TIMES” 
I can recall in one particular game,a npc being rude to me about something.I chose feeling angry.And it turned out “I” felt angry about SOMETHING instead of the NPC.Things like this can be really frustrating
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I think it’s debatable whether the saving should be left up to the reader, but one thing’s for sure–CS needs an easy checkpoint system whose usage is upto the discretion of the author. Perhaps they want to save the progress of the player after every chapter? Perhaps they want to add saving just before a major branching, especially late into the game? Up to them, but the option should be there. Even more so for games with deaths (premature ones) and games that are really long.
Now, I don’t know the first thing about how hard the ability to provide checkpoint system to authors will be, but I believe they should do it. I don’t see any compelling arguments against it, either.
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That is a very shaky argument for denying the user a choice to save, you realise. The experience of so many players who speak in this thread backs the save button - so the choice not to include it is not, in fact, supported by player experience.
We don’t know the beta testers involved, or how large the group was, or whatever some wanted the feature and we can presume they were all selectively chosen and might not be representative.
Moreover, save button is one of the things consistently mentioned in reviews of the games themselves. I see it on steam, I’m sure such opinions can be seen in play store reviews.
It is important not to close your mind to feedback.
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But the lenght of the games have increased, a lot. This is no longer choice of dragons which I can get through in 15 to 20 minutes, if I so choose.
Now adays it takes me roughly 15 to 20 minutes to get through a chapter of most cogs. It is not longer the same kind of games as it was years ago. Games like Rebels and Tin star would be unplayable for me without the checkpoint system, no matter how good the choices were. Simply because the lenght of the games makes it unbearable to start over if I got and ending which was not satisfying.
Replayability means nothing if I am forced to replay. I have five or so characters from lost heir 2 which never got into lost heir 3 because it took me so many tries to get to a relatively good ending that by the time I suceeded I no longer found the game fun.
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I think the biggest point here is that both the games offered by CoG and the people who buy them the most have changed. The early playtesters who preferred to blitz through a game in a single run were dealing with things like AOTC, which had games so short you were capable of bundling them into a single title. As early as Sabers of Infinity, the difficulty curve and scope of the games in question has increased immensely, and many games live or die based off your stats. Considering we’ve got games that break the million word mark, going to the start of a narrative due to a certain choice being suboptimal because you weren’t able to discern which of five different stats it was supposed to key off due to vague hints is nothing short of punishing the player, even if the story in question is good.
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Sure it is. Plenty of players’ preferences differ–that’s what this thread makes clear. But your own
preference, however widely shared, is not the only one supported by player experience.
CoG ultimately have to weigh up what they’re hearing from all the players and decide whose preferences they support. I’m sure they’re giving the posts on this thread appropriate weight.
I couldn’t agree more.
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I think of them as like 80% book / 20% game…so our views are pretty similar. I’d say I look at them as “personalized novels” or “stories where you can influence what happens.”
I’ve been working on a side project with the idea of writing it as a regular novel, and now I wonder if there is space in Hosted Games for a story that is essentially stat-free and more like a CYOA where there is a set narrative and only a few choices, but with each choice branching the story in a significant way. So few choices, but each one is important, and many endings. Hopefully the plot would carry the workload.
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This is gravitating to the Virtual Novel genre territory and if released, such a work would be judged on the VN criteria (imo). I think if this does happen, constant illustration throughout the work and perhaps other hooks like sound effects would be key to incorporate.
Just to reiterate: I think there is a lot of room for such a work but it would mean evolving from the standards currently seen in the normal CS game.
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This one is the most infuriating of all, imho.
I think a save feature is better than the back button, because with the current plug-in I choose where to save, when to save and if I want to save at all, so I can force myself to do an “ironman” game by not using it.
With a back button I may still have to click back 500 times to get where I want to go.
Wha? I agree with @Taylor_Enean you’ve just released what is quite possibly the best game on this site to date.
I’d still prefer just integrating the current save plugin into most of the games.
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If I’m being honest, the whole argument against the save game model feels a lot like the “You’re not a real gamer if you play on easy/on console/on mobile.” This time it’s “You’re not a true fan of COGs if you don’t make permanent choices.”
The big argument here is that this improves the quality of the choice, but I don’t understand how. Mass Effect and other Bioware games offer saves, and the choices in those games still weigh heavily on the player. Granted, they have gameplay in the middle, but the current trend of heavy stats required for success and some games offering death scenes when you fail is increasing the level of game play.
Games that have death scenes normally --but I don’t believe always --feature autosaves, which I think is pretty awesome, although it is a slightly-less usable version of A Study in Steampunk’s checkpoint system, since as far as I know you lose the autosaves once you restart the game.
Would a good compromise be implementing the checkpoint/autosave feature at certain points in the story, and allowing players to select when they want to go back and use it?
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Same here, it’s better than nothing, as it is currently.
I still believe a *checkpoint command in choicescript would be invaluable for authors too.