You Can Finally Delete Your Saves

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Well, if all attempts to 'pretty up the apps" look like these little nightmares, maybe you are right.
But I do think it’s a little unfair to say “last time CoG tried to make changes people hated them, so that should never happened” without getting into how that looked and considering all angles of such move :wink: You know… it’s dismissive. There were pages-long arguments why portraits that can’t be turned off and that look like caricatures are spoiling many people’s enjoyment.

Moreover, nobody requested portraits. Saves have been a highly requested feature for years, and the topic keeps popping up. If anything, it’s the opposite situation.

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I respect your preference – I really do, I’m not just offering “due” respect as a rhetorical gesture. I know it’s every bit as sincere as my own desire for an easy-mode Dark Souls. And yet I also respect From’s commitment to sticking to their vision for their brand (and agree with @GreekWinter that it was commercially the right call). At the end of the day I’m going to design my own game for a particular kind of player experience, knowing it won’t satisfy everyone… including readers who like my game a little and would otherwise like it a lot.

Yep. And I get how incomprehensible that can feel for someone who just doesn’t like the agony of choice – for a non-Souls example, I struggle to understand how anyone enjoys playing Outlast for more than about 25 atmospheric minutes, before it devolves into constantly getting murdered. But absolutely, yes, that was a key part of what made the game satisfying and memorable for them.

Again, I’m all in favor of opening up the save system option to other authors – I just think we should start with HG, both because HG authors have no editorial steer toward making stat fails fun, and because unlike you I do think this is a meaningful commercial risk and that CoG ought to try it out piecemeal rather than rushing into it.

In my own experience as a fan, there’s a genuine difference between CoG and HG handling of stats. When I play a Kyle Marquis game like Pon Para or Tower Behind the Moon, I have fun all the way through even when I’m not stat-maxing. Maybe I can’t get the super-specialized achievements without more focused replays, but I can still get an ending that feels like a success. By HG contrast, while Lucid’s earlier games were like that, Lost Heir Book 1 was (for this reader!) not fun if you didn’t put a lot more work into stat-maxing than I was interested in doing. HG authors get to make design decisions like that, and I think it would be great to open up save systems so that authors can choose to back up their stat-heavy games with them.

Not a single person, anywhere, ever, argued that the inability to delete saves was a good thing. :slight_smile: The only holdup on that has been capacity and priority. CoG is a small company whose sole coder was holding down a day job elsewhere until recently. (Their small scale is also worth bearing in mind before spouting off any silliness about CoG “seeing [fans] rewarded” for making arguments you disagree with. They don’t have budget for a community manager; you think they’re paying people to post?)

That’s different from an issue that’s been in the FAQ since at least 2011, because people have had clashing perspectives on it since the very beginning of the company. If you’re unable to see how anyone else could conceive it as anything other than a “small quality of life change,” that’s fine…but try not to be too surprised when you keep getting pushback that doesn’t dissolve in the face of strawman arguments.

The people who blanketed reddit with hate memes would have been just as cross at you suggesting they’re a vocal minority as you are on this issue. They were as loud, persistent, and entitled about it as anyone on these save game threads has been. “It’s a text game! Adding graphics is a fundamental betrayal!”

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Not sure I remember that so I can’t really comment on it.

I’ll try and lay out my reasoning for the desire behind a save system or a back button just in a no-snark way.

When I really enjoy a game, I play through it usually several times to experience a lot of it. But the more I play through it, the more I’m skipping over what I’ve already read multiple times to get to the parts that are new to me that I haven’t experienced yet. As I get to more of those, it becomes harder to get to the remaining ones; I love the story and I want to see everything the author put in there for me to see, but I’m now doing 20 minutes of work clicking through to get to short flavor texts.

For myself at least, I’m not trying to subvert the author’s intentions when they wrote the story, or scum some stuff or run back and reroll a decision, I’m trying to experience everything they put work into to get in the game. Sure there are going to be some people who scum with it or use it in not great ways, but are they the ones who are going to sit there and go back through and replay it a bunch of times? I can’t say for sure but I think it’s unlikely.

I think, and again I can only speak for myself, the desire for a save system, or even a back button, is just to make it easier to access and enjoy all of the content that the author worked to put in the game. I’m sure there’s many of them out there that have content that barely anyone has ever seen. To some that might be a badge of honor but I think it’s a shame that some areas where effort went into go unexplored by most when the addition of this feature could fix that.

That’s the way I see it. I’ve seen, somewhere, not sure if it was here, the argument that they (COG) don’t want to implement this system because it might increase the chances of a refund on steam/play store but I’m not sure I buy that either because most single runs still take at least an hour unless you’re a speed reader.

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This is funny considering Elden Ring was where they were willing to compromise and added a bunch accessibility options. Not to mention a literal easy more where you can summon spirits to fight bosses for you. Which culminated in the biggest player count for any of their games and the GOTY award.

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This is completely valid.

That’s why im adding a new start option to Werewolves 3. It requires a code to unlock that you get for beating the game once, and then allows you to build your character any way you want and fast forward to a chapter. That way the first play is clean, and subsequent plays allow exploration for those who don’t code dive.

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Sounds like a good compromise frankly.

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I was about to suggest that a Ren’Py like “skip seen text” system might be an amenable compromise. But I think the technical complexity of implementing that would be rather too high.

But yes, I imagine authors could combine current checkpoint systems with the ability to skip chapters readily enough.

Anyway, great to finally see some of these older backlog items getting some love and attention now Dan has the time. We should all consider making a point of being gracious for what’s been given, rather than harping on too much about what’s yet to come (I’m not saying it’s not a discussion worth having, but is this the right time/forumthread?).

EDIT: Forum was a poor choice of word

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True, but the possibility remains you yourself are the vocal minority, not us.

I’m not entirely sure what “start with” means here. Like, implement it there first?

Oh, neither was I. I meant it.

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I’m fairly certain they mean to implement it first in Hosted Games titles instead of the Choice of Games titles as the Choice games are more restrictive in terms of certain things that need to be in the game whereas Hosted Games titles have no restrictions.

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You lay it out well, thanks. I’m sympathetic, despite wanting my own game experience to work differently… and I’ll be glad for your increased enjoyment if CoG does ultimately open up some of its games to incorporate save-at-will systems.

Random speculation, not unlike the “reward” one. :slight_smile:

Let’s see where the brand goes from here. :slight_smile: You’re right that Elden Ring is a piece of evidence in your favor. But From has built a brand and a genre (Souls-like/Soulsborne) that had already won it a fanatically devoted player base, and made the prospect of a slightly more accessible Soulslike game likely to take off. I doubt that would ever have happened if they’d watered down their earlier games; as far as I can see, that uncompromising difficulty was the only thing that distinguished the Souls series from contemporary RPGs that are now mostly forgotten.

Absolutely. :slight_smile: CoG has to make the call and live with the consequences either way.

Work a save-slot system like the CJW/Dashingdon one into CS, and start allowing HG authors to use it. See what effect it has on sales. Open it up to CoG if there’s no clear sign of it damaging the brand. Let authors decide.

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This is definitely a thing. I read a fair amount of reviews and discussion of games I haven’t played, and it’s pretty rare to see people mentioning whether checkpoints are in the game at all - it was only when I started investigating doing it myself that I realised how many games old and new that use them.

It seems like a bit of an invisible thing when it comes to individual games, which perhaps makes it harder for authors who aren’t in these conversations to gauge whether they should make the not-inconsiderable effort to learn and implement. And there is a sense of mystery and difficulty around it which I’m sure puts people off. I see non-authors and authors alike saying there’s no way to do it… when there are plenty of games to look at that do!

So having checkpoints as an easier to use feature would be great, along with more robust documentation and samples (which is just a perennial need in IF and all games/tech, heh).

This is a fun way of doing it! I imagine it’ll be especially helpful given it’s part of a series and people might want to tweak their build going in. I really like seeing different approaches and structures for this kind of thing.

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I don’t think there’s a person here who isn’t appreciative of the ability to delete saved games. Frankly though, you are correct.

I am thankful that that feature has been added.

But I think that when changes finally do get made or things get added, it really reminds people of what else hasn’t been, especially when its things that have been requested for a long time. Not saying that it’s fair but I do think that’s the way people tend to think. And I think a lot of people feel like they aren’t necessarily heard about wanting these other features so the feeling is that this is a good place to discuss it as you’d expect the announcement to be being watched by the people who could implement those features.

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You know you and @GreekWinter do make a good point. Given I have not played your individual titles, but I can’t say that I’ve always given feedback on things like that as I should have done. It’s easy to just be like “ah this is great” when it’s there and “aw man this stinks” when it’s not and it’s always easier to complain as well. I should be more diligent on providing positive feedback on good features or checkpoint/save systems where implemented in the future.

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Maybe it doesn’t matter who the minority is, or if there even is a clear minority. If you showed me that the majority of the community wants a back button it wouldn’t change my belief that the commitment to making choices meaningful, which includes preventing the reader from flipping back and forth frivolously, is part of what makes CoG’s particular brand of interactive fiction great. And if I showed some of the people here that the majority of the community agreed with me, it wouldn’t magically make them stop wishing for a back button.

Maybe we all need to appreciate that we all have valid reasons for feeling the way we do (no one is hoping for some kind of reward or being contrarian for its own sake) and accept that there is no perfect solution.

I do think it’s important to take into consideration that (as @Havenstone expressed so clearly) this isn’t the same kind of issue as deleting saves. That was a question of time and logistics. This is a question of design philosophy, and CoG has been firm on that philosophy from the beginning.

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Well, so far what they are basing their business decision appears to be their preferences for how they think the games should be experienced.

And of course forums and reddit are small demografics, but its what we have to work on as far as identifying the preferences of CoG costumers, making business decisions on a larger demografic that doesnt say what they want is, in my view, dumb.

I might be reading it wrong, but this paragraph implies that CoG sucess is related to their stance regarding save systems, and that is such a stretch that its reaching the moon.

Also, on microtransactions, out of the top of my head, Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven sells skill points, thats not DLC, and CoG gets their cut out of that. But I dont know of any other game that sells microtransactions.

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To be fair, I think a good solution would be to try and find out what the majority of the community would prefer. No, it’s not going to change anyone’s mind on the topic, but it would at least show what the people who pay for the games and keep the doors open want and that’s something I would think both sides of the argument could agree is an important view to consider going forward, at the very least.

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That must be rough, but, going back to my point, how many people complained to you about the save system? The addition of save systems isnt going to make anyones experience worse, should they choose to use it or not, what it would do is provide what many people have been asking for a long time.

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Regarding my games, personally? Maybe a half dozen since my first one came out 5 years ago.

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If you get to a point in life where you’re making strategic business decisions, remember: money talks, and the preferences of your customer base are better gauged by how they’re spending than by the voices of an activist minority.

I tried to be clear about that, maybe most clearly here:

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Don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole but I feel if money really talked there wouldn’t be so many restrictions on CoGs given the number of successful HGs we’ve seen as compared to the CoGs.

I also suspect, of course speculation on my part, that a lot of the people who are spending more money are probably at least aware of this community vs the ones who buy one or maybe two games, play briefly, and move on.

But this is why I’d like, if we were to seriously try to settle the matter or take it to a more serious discussion in regards to the saves, maybe some kind of poll at the end of the games or in the Omnibus app, somewhere where we could get the most people voting possible and try to encompass that group as well. Not sure how viable that would be of course.

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