How should this game handle ingame deaths?

[Chyron8472]

How should this KQ game approach dying? Specifically, should it have a "Restore/Restart/Quit" popup with only manual saves, should it have a "Try Again" popup with autosaves set right before encountering unavoidable death, or should it have less frequent autosaves and still require you to manually restore?

Do you have any different ideas?

[Lambonius]

Personally, I would prefer manual saving ONLY, to preserve the integrity of the golden age Sierra experience. However, I think varying the amount of autosave/retry options based on a chosen difficulty setting is a brilliant way to handle it.

[SHODANFreeman]

Mandatory manual saving is a pointless waste of time. Spending hours looking at a save game screen does nothing to enhance the game experience.

[Irishmile]

I agree with my fellow Wisconsonaut

[Rather Dashing]

Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me like a save/reload system should be one of the easier things to provide a "choice" to. Wouldn't it make sense for a save feature called "Classic Sierra" or something along those lines, which has only manual saves and quicksaves? Even if you hate the idea, think it's the stupidest thing to ever happen, etc, if everyone gets a chance to opt in or out...why should you care if someone else might have been forced to opt out of something they may have enjoyed, for whatever reason they may have for that?

[Irishmile]

I also agree with my fellow Dashingnaut

[SHODANFreeman]

Also, I voted for more options, because options are good. Unfortunately, Telltale's stance on options typically tends to be "Our customers are too stupid to make any decisions so we can't have complicated options or they'll get confused."

[techie775]

I picked choose in the beginning cause everyone will prefer there own way. I don't know if that's difficult to do but it'll seem to please the most people. I actually didn't mind the KQ7/SQ6 restore method cause it got me right back where I left off if i didn't know I was in danger and died.

[Scnew]

I definitely vote for the option of having a choice between old school and new school. But really, I don't care that much as long as there a ton of interesting and sometimes pointless ways to die with humorous pun-filled explanations. It's funny, but I really love how Sierra games could kill you for no real reason... such as just walking too close to the river at the beginning of KQ5.

[MusicallyInspired]

I'd really love a choice. I'd love to play without autosaves or retries. It ups the challenge. Having a choice is a brilliant way to approach it.

[chucklas]

Originally Posted by SHODANFreeman

Mandatory manual saving is a pointless waste of time. Spending hours looking at a save game screen does nothing to enhance the game experience.

except for giving the game a classic feel and increasing difficulty (which many people actually want.)

I went with provide a choice. It would be simple to do and would make more people happy.

[SHODANFreeman]

Originally Posted by chucklas

except for giving the game a classic feel and increasing difficulty (which many people actually want.)

It doesn't "increase difficulty". It increases the annoyance of having to constantly mash the save key every few minutes or lose some progress when you inevitably die in some strange way. Nothing about the game itself becomes harder, it just becomes more annoying.

But either way, I already said let there be choice.

[MusicallyInspired]

For you. There's a feigned sense of actual real danger to your playing experience if you haven't saved and you die. That's challenging. You're a lot more timid and nervous about things (which immerses you more into the experience) if you know you could die at any moment (as much as in real life) if you do something silly or make a mistake. If you die without a save it's like you actually died and you have to start over. It's very similar to any arcade game. If you're smart enough to save, however, you get to continue.

The way I see it, if there's going to be a retry or autosave function then why have deaths at all? That sense of danger is completely gone and it turns into a simple puzzle game.

So, make it a choice.

[SHODANFreeman]

Originally Posted by MusicallyInspired

For you. There's a feigned sense of actual real danger to your playing experience if you haven't saved and you die. That's challenging. You're a lot more timid and nervous about things (which immerses you more into the experience) if you know you could die at any moment (as much as in real life) if you do something silly or make a mistake. If you die without a save it's like you actually died and you have to start over. It's very similar to any arcade game. If you're smart enough to save, however, you get to continue.

The way I see it, if there's going to be a retry or autosave function then why have deaths at all? That sense of danger is completely gone and it turns into a simple puzzle game.

It's less a sense of danger for me and more a sense of "God, I am sick of hitting save after every other step I take." The way deaths worked in 302 was perfect for me.

[thesporkman]

You don't need to save after every step you take. Just save after you've done something important, i.e. after you've done something that increases your score, or before attempting something that might be risky. If the only progress you've lost is walking around and looking at things, then you haven't actually lost any progress at all. And if you do lose significant progress, it isn't actually that bad to replay it. It goes much faster after you've already figured out what to do.

[SHODANFreeman]

Originally Posted by thesporkman

You don't need to save after every step you take. Just save after you've done something important, i.e. after you've done something that increases your score, or before attempting something that might be risky. If the only progress you've lost is walking around and looking at things, then you haven't actually lost any progress at all. And if you do lose significant progress, it isn't actually that bad to replay it. It goes much faster after you've already figured out what to do.

It's still a mostly unnecessary annoyance. The only tangible difference between auto-saving after you solve a puzzle and manual save is that you have to poke around on a save menu constantly with manual saves.

[thesporkman]

Originally Posted by SHODANFreeman

It's still a mostly unnecessary annoyance. The only tangible difference between auto-saving after you solve a puzzle and manual save is that you have to poke around on a save menu constantly with manual saves.

I kind of agree, actually. An experienced adventure gamer will automatically save as a sort of mechanical Pavlovian reaction anyway. It's not really a matter of skill or strategy. It's like periodically saving a text document you're working on in case something screws up; it's just kind of a good idea, and a prudent person knows to do so. If the games were really meant to be cruel and difficult, they wouldn't let you save at all, like their arcade and action game contemporaries that would send you all the way back to the beginning if you died. Most other game genres have check points and autosaves now, and those seem like a reasonable thing to include in adventure games too. Since King's Quest is a nostalgic franchise, and fans expect nostalgic gameplay from it, though, I think Telltale should definitely give the player a choice.

[MusicallyInspired]

I wouldn't mind autosaves as long as they didn't kick in RIGHT before you die. That's basically a "retry" which makes deaths minor annoyances and pointless. I wouldn't mind if it autosaved once you reached a new area (not a new screen, a new area) or maybe after you receive a point or find an important item or something.

[wilco64256]

Originally Posted by MusicallyInspired

I wouldn't mind autosaves as long as they didn't kick in RIGHT before you die. That's basically a "retry" which makes deaths minor annoyances and pointless. I wouldn't mind if it autosaved once you reached a new area (not a new screen, a new area) or maybe after you receive a point or find an important item or something.

Which is why I absolutely HATED the newer Tomb Raider games and the Uncharted Games. If I screw up and the game only backs me up like ten seconds then it takes all the pressure off me to play properly.

As opposed to something like Demon's Souls where if you screw up you could potentially lose hours of hard work.

[Radogol]

Originally Posted by wilco64256

Which is why I absolutely HATED the newer Tomb Raider games and the Uncharted Games. If I screw up and the game only backs me up like ten seconds then it takes all the pressure off me to play properly.

There's still plenty incentive to play properly. Anybody can finish an Uncharted game, but it still takes a lot of skill and effort to complete it on a high difficulty level and with decent "score". That, to me, is the best of both worlds.