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Foodles

Is Saving Good?

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When I play Doom I save a lot, like every time I clear a room out I save and sometimes, like when I was playing Sunder, I save in the middle of a battle.

However since the release of the cacowards I decided to give UAC Ultra a go but I thought to make it more interesting I would only save when I wanted to quit and I've found that it makes the gameplay much more tense and exciting and also requires a lot more skill.

I find that I'm enjoying the challenge, knowing that If I make a mistake then I will pay for it by restarting the level with no weapons and ammo makes me play more carefully and forces me to think and react to situations faster.

Obviously on some harder wads then this style of gameplay is not reasonable but I've come to the conclusion that saving often is a bad thing and takes the fear and excitement out of the game. What are your opinions?

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Really depends on the wad. The original IWADs and most of the easier wads out there, saving isn't completely needed (though can be convenient).

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I find autosave.wad to be one of the greatest 'add on' features for zdoom. I use it all the time and it is a great way to not fall into the pattern of scum-saving which is what I do if I don't use it. And it beats having to start the level from scratch. Cause, yeah, generally speaking, saving is bad.

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I save often, kinda like a habit, which has come from games/programs crashing often.. it's just so annoying if things are going good and then suddenly it crashes and I hadn't saved for a long time or at all.

And it's also nice if I just happen to accidently shoot a rocket at a wall next to me, or if I try to make some difficult jump move, then I don't have to go all the way back up if I didn't succeed.

Sometimes I save even if my health has gone really low, instead of loading an earlier save and try the previous situation again, but I want to find a way to survive with the low health, and if I succeed then it feels fun (especially if I didn't die).

Also I like to keep two saves, in case one save gets corrupted or something.

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Really depends on the map. For example, the first few maps in Epic 2? No need to save during them. The last few maps (MAP30 excluded) from the same? Saves. Definitely saves. Yeah, after clearing a teleport ambush with 200 revenants and 50 arch-viles, I am going to save because I'm in no hurry to go through this again anytime soon. :p And for the more obvious reason that it took me nearly three hours spread over several days to finish MAP28.

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I don't save if I'm diggin' the gameplay. On a roll.

Make myself quit on the first death.

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I rarely ever save, and if I do it's most likely because I'm quitting and I intend to return later on. But even if it's a horrendously difficult map (nochance; Sunder) I'll avoid saving. I'm not a masochist or anything, it's just that I take that 'must-stay-alive' sensation to the next level, and don't mind venting my anger every now and then if I fall at the last hurdle towards the exit.

But I also don't save in these situations because it's a good way of limiting my playing time. I still find it difficult to pull myself away from the computer despite the fact that my work calls for sitting down, and if I die after 20 minutes of difficult, possibly arduous play I'll quite happily leave the game and come back to it later on with renewed interest.

Hub, adventure or story driven wads such as Unloved or Junko however are the kind I will consider saving my game in.

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I only save if I'm playing a map that I know I can't beat without saving(most of DV2 and Sunder are perfect examples). If I'm playing a Zdoom hub however I often save a lot.

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When I first started playing I would save frequently, but now I don't. Saving takes away all of a maps challenge and excitement, and even though it may be frustrating having to restart a map after playing it for a long time, it is extremely satisfying beating a difficult map that you've spent countless hours on.

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Saving is bad... mmmkay.
Unless of course you're playing what I call "suicide wads" like HR2 and post-map20 levels in AV and Scythe II

Doom64's lack of ability to save the game at any moment really made it challenging. Saving in between maps is good enough if you're a Bishop.

Although I develloped a little patch wad for Zdoom that autosaves the game everytime I pick up a key. Pretty usefull on harder wads.

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Xeros612 said:

The save function was coded into the game for a reason, and it wasn't to say it's "bad" to use it.


Of course. Everyone is just expressng their personal preference. If they say "It's bad" that means they don't like it, and don't have to do so if they don't want to. And that's what rulz about it =)

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It's hard to come up with a good reason why saving is "bad," but there's no reason to call it "good" either. It's agreed that saving frequently makes a game less tense, but whether that's preferable depends more on a player's tastes than anything objective. Personally, I feel that saving is something I've grown out of, so I also can't help but feel that those who save excessively are playing in an immature way.

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I save on maps that are hard. Sometimes I load up a really hard wad and see how far I can get without saving. If it's a megawad that's new to me I save a lot too. In that new wad by Jimi, Doom deja vu, I saved a lot. I would consider that map on the top end of what I can deal with even with saving.

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Hellbent said:

I find autosave.wad to be one of the greatest 'add on' features for zdoom. I use it all the time and it is a great way to not fall into the pattern of scum-saving which is what I do if I don't use it. And it beats having to start the level from scratch. Cause, yeah, generally speaking, saving is bad.

Cool, never heard of that.

I've been playing AV and I need to save throughout the last quarter. I get tired of playing a map multiple times.

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Claiming that saving is bad is like claiming that cheat-codes are bad. Yeah, you're a dick if you cheat online but, who cares if I want to give myself extra super powers??? Huh?!

They can both be abused, make the game more fun, make the game boring, and so on

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I personally have grown attached to using the saving button purely for when I can't play Doom anymore and need to come back to it later. I've grown accustomed to the punishment of losing all your weapons by dying, but rewarded with the knowledge of what perils lie ahead in the areas you already cleared once.

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Yeah it really depends on the wad... I'm on map 28 of Epic 2 and saving has become essential. When I'm playing a really hard wad I try to only save after getting keys but after fighting the same thousand revenants a hundred times saving looks pretty good.

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I agree that sometimes a save is necessary, for example theres a bit in UAC Ultra where you have to jump from platform to platform except that the platforms also have crushers on as well, since I'm hopeless at these kind of puzzles and I was quite near the end of the level I felt a save was necessary. I don't mean that saving is bad, but what some people call "scum-saving" is bad and thats what I'm trying to cut down on.

I kinda wish that Doom hadn't give you the option to save whenever you want but instead had some linedef function that autosaved for you, providing checkpoints througout the level or maybe a pickup item that saved when you picked it up, that way the number could change depending on difficulties.

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Foodles said:

I kinda wish that Doom hadn't give you the option to save whenever you want but instead had some linedef function that autosaved for you, providing checkpoints througout the level or maybe a pickup item that saved when you picked it up, that way the number could change depending on difficulties.



I hated Dark Forces for that.

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I like saving my game on DooM, because I hate go back the last checkpoint or start all over of level because I accidentally die or doing something stupid... :\

But I can accept savepoint/checkpoint saving system......except they made those checkpoint locations suck ass... :p

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If I am inexperienced with a WAD I save a lot, before and after many an encounter. When I've become seasoned enough at it I will either only save when obtaining keys or go through the whole thing without dying once. Depends on what kind of challenge you dig, as I felt a while back saving after every single little thing you do seemed to rob the effort of playing the game. This is why we have checkpoints today, even though some games tend to exploit that to make a game longer than it should be.


Nothing's worse though than saving in the heat of battle just to fuck things up and you suffer the horror of reloading your death over and over again.

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Wait, people are supporting the idea of a checkpoint system? That's one of the things that make console games bad, and is just something that artificially "increases" difficulty.

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