That’s still a them ‘‘problem’’ though, and who are we to say that their experience is ‘‘ruined’’. Make it a toggle and give the ones who play without rollback/checkpoints an achievment for following CoG design philosophy
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As an aside, I don’t think any of us outside of CoG have the data to make that claim. I’ve seen people try to cobble together estimates of my XoR earnings based on download ranges shared by Google Play and Steam; those estimates are consistently way off. The sense that HGs sell more than CoGs seems to me to be more based on online buzz, leading to people being surprised by what’s on the actual top 20 sales lists and e.g. shock that a beloved, much-memed and discussed HG series like the Infinity Saga isn’t up there.
If the average HG (or even the average successful HG, clearing out the unprofitable outliers) was consistently earning more than the average CoG, I’m pretty sure CoG would tweak the guidance for writers accordingly. In the past, they’ve not hesitated to adjust it when Robots (and, on a much smaller scale, Rebels) showed new paths to sales success. My small window on the company doesn’t suggest that they’re unconcerned with profit; they put out their guidelines because they think those lead to more successful games than turkeys. And nothing I’ve seen from the outside suggests they’re way off on that judgment.
Of course I wish CoG shared their figures with us so we could all second-guess their business strategy more effectively. 
But for some reason I doubt that’s going to happen.
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All the games on that list are a bit dated at this point. Makes it hard to draw any conclusions one way or another. Always easy to speculate in the absence of good data I suppose; I’m open to getting more data but until then I guess there’s not really any compelling argument one can make either way that’s not some level of speculation.
It was just my assessment of the situation based on what I’d seen. As you say, I could be wrong.
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Objectively not a problem with the game. There’s no way that’s a common enough reason to drop the game to impact sales.
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I’m glad we can delete saves now, even though I don’t have many of those. The reason is… I hate not having a save-at-will feature like the one we have in the demos.
So I usually do a run when I buy a game and leave it to that. I don’t have the time or the patience to read the same thing over and over again just to pick some choice I was curious about while playing.
For example that’s what happened with my The Golden Rose playthrough - it’s such a good book, but it’s lengthy and I want to explore more some parts of it.
Yet I did just one run - I don’t want to start from the beginning and lose my first cannon run for the lack of a save at the end of the book right now.
So I have to wait for the second book to be almost finished, save at the end of book 1 being implemented and then I can finally have another go. Well, I think my enthusiasm to play again will be long gone by then.
To be fair the checkpoint system some of the authors include in their games is better than nothing, but it’s not as good as a save slot where I can decide when to save. I almost abused the last checkpoint in Fallen Hero:Retribution to see all of the possible outcomes from the choices I’ve made in the previous chapters.
Again, because of the lack of the ability to save at the end I have to wait to explore even more…
So what I would really like to is the save at the end of the book to return if only for the most popular series and to be able to save at will like we can in the demos.
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I wish COG atleast put a reply about saves as a courtesy after all this discussion. It always seems like never wanna get involved in this discussion and wait till it dies down, only for it to start again in a new thread after 6 months. Like this cycle has been going on for the past 2-3 years and COG has never given a repsonse that indicates they are working on any kind of save system. Almost makes it seem pointless to discuss about it in first place
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I was going to write a longer post, but I don’t want to reheat arguments, and this conversation has been had so many times before.
Instead, I’ll shamelessly plug in Softly, my save system generator. You can check it out here. I know it has already helped a few authors.
Edit: Sorry, @DreamingGames, I didn’t mean to reply to you. 
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And yet, more and more authors are migrating to Twine.
What tension? I don’t feel it. I only feel immeasurable frustration at the lack of a save system. And, frankly, for me a game without saves is not playable. The anxiety over each damn choice sucks all the enjoyment out of it, even if I would normally love it.
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That it became succesful does not make the formula perfect.
There is a reason why authors are switching over to twine or implementing their own save points in books.
I would much rather read a twine project than a CoG book at this point, simply for the fact that twine has saves. When I write my own IF, it will also be on twine for that reason. I have dropped CoG demo’s because I made the wrong choice and could not be bothered to restart and try again, I genuinely think the lack of saves is hurting more than it is helping (if it helps at all).
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They have a save system in Dashingdon, it just appears that they do not care to implement that in normal games due to a weirdly puritanical view on save scumming.
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The FAQ does make it look like that. Its a vision that no longer makes sense considering the current way of the company.
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I wouldn’t be playing these games if I didn’t have a work-around for the lack of a save system. It would be a dealbreaker.
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Which successful CoG authors have moved to Twine? I keep seeing people say this, but they never give actual examples.
Hundreds of thousands of readers seem to disagree with your playability issue. It’s unfortunate that you’re not enjoying it, but not everyone is going to enjoy something. As I said earlier, I’m happy to add chapter rollbacks, but a back button isn’t something I’m interested in as an author or player.
CoG doesn’t run Dashingdon.
From the Dashingdon homepage: “DashingDon is not associated or affiliated with Choice of Games LLC or Hosted Games LLC”
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I like this compromise, actually. And it should be easier to implement than a “save at will” feature. Let the author choose the points where a save is allowed, usually before major decisions that can affect the outcome of the game. Not only does this give the player a safety net, so to speak, it also allows them to go back and experience the different outcomes from that decision in the story without being forced to replay from the beginning or code dive. Honestly, with something like this, I wouldn’t bother code diving most times. It would save me more time to have this than to constantly be referencing the code to see what comes of a decision.
For every person who feels this way, there are people who have stopped playing games once they realize they’ve screwed up their character or game and have no way to fix it without playing from the beginning. Most times, it’s not worth bothering to do that for me when I know it’ll take three freaking hours to get through the whole thing and there’s no guarantee I’ll have a more enjoyable experience.
It’s why I’ve just resorted to code-diving for almost every game I play. There are a few exceptions–if the demo is solid enough and choices are clear enough, I’ll play without doing that–but, for most games, I don’t trust the author enough to not code dive. Hell, sometimes I end up reading the code and not playing the game, because I realize the story just isn’t my cup of tea. Or I edit the chapters to adjust scenes so they suit me and play locally so I can have the game I want. Most won’t resort to that level of OCD, however, and will just quit playing and not go back to it.
I hate to admit it, but I did, too. And I don’t typically like seeing different outcomes for the same character. But the checkpoints were just too awesome to have, and FH is too complex to quickly figure out where certain choices lead without combing every subsequent chapter first. I also trust Malin enough to play without checking constantly. But the checkpoints made the experience better.
Agree with this as well. For series where they’re going to be lengthy and we’re already two books in, we need end of book saves from day 1 (or maybe after bug fixing is done). And save at will would be awesome. I have no problem with author-placed saves, either, where they give it right before major decisions to give us a better safety net.
Sometimes, I wonder if that’s the point of not having it.
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I’m sorry, but hundred of thousands of readers? May I ask from which source are you drawing these conclusion? Just because there is a lack of reviews and feedbacks doesn’t mean the criticisms isn’t there.
Edit: To clarify this point further, you can’t say that because there’s no reviews saying bad thing about having no save system, it doesn’t equal to people accepting that save system is unnecessary. A point in case can be seen with the implementation of the ability to delete old saves between book. There has been little talk of the this ability to do so before, but you can see that people welcomed this change when it is finally implemented, so how can you say for sure that reader don’t enjoy save system, without giving us source of people praising CoG for not using save system?
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My sales numbers and aggregate reviews. 
Plus knowledge of several other authors’ sales numbers.
I never said any of that.
I said that it’s clearly not a deal breaker.
Andarax_Kode (the person I was replying to) said: “for me a game without saves is not playable.”
I merely pointed out that that’s clearly not the case in many, many examples.
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Arcadia Second Born had jumped ship, and it has 230 reviews with a 95% of Very Positive ratings on Steam, for a self published this was surely sucessfull don’t you think? In fact the author is even doing a sequel.
A non twine example would be Price of Freedom: Innocence Lost where the site it was hosted has it in the “Top 5 ranking” of most rated no less, If i recall correctly the owner of the site was okay with publishing in HG too.
Not to mention some quality wips that are still being worked on, Exile, When Twilight Strikes, and Speaker all come to my mind.
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Well unfortunately I already anticipated this kind of answer from you and already made an edit to my post, so you can refer back to my post to read it further. And like I said, no tangible source equal to anecdotal claim, which is dubious at best.
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Although I’d love to be able to do this, it would be tricky in practice unfortunately. My experience with making games with carrying-over variables was that once I was making Royal Affairs, I had to go back to Crème de la Crème and add variables in that I didn’t realise I’d needed (specifically, some stuff about what Karson was doing at the end). When I was making Crème, I didn’t know I would need to track that - so if Day 1 or even Day 30 saves had been introduced for a Creme playthrough, those saves would be bugged if someone tried to import it into Royal Affairs. I imagine it would be even harder for people making sequels with the same MCs, because sometimes there are just things that you realise would be amazing to call back to and didn’t think of at the time!
Edit: totally agreed on the usefulness of an easier checkpoint method though! I realise I am becoming a broken record on that now
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