Autosaving Makes Gaming a Little Too Stressful

GeekParty writes: "I remember a time when games made you do all of your own saving. Of course, that was after saving became a thing in the first place. Then bits multiplied, polygons were formed, and this crazy new thing called “autosaving” came into existence."

[Neonridr]

The worst part about autosaving is sometimes you missed something and with manual saving you could always reload and go through the missed part. Now with autosaving, you might have to restart an entire chapter or worse still - the entire game.

It can definitely be painful, especially if you are doing a collectibles run or something like that.

[donthate]

Depending on how far you progressed, you can reload the last checkpoint.

Doesn't entirely solve the problem though, but I find the opposite far more likely.

Ooops, wish I saved! :D

[Volkama]

There are advantages too though. Any game that plays on tough choices is better for forcing auto-saves. Actions can't really have meaningful consequences if you can just rewind and try again.

Also, I remember games that had no save file at all, and instead you had to jot down a code to enter next time you played. There was an F1 game on a console that had something like 5 lines of code if you wanted to resume your career. That was definitely worse than autosave.

[Neonridr]

that was a lot of NES games back in the day. Before they came out with Battery based save slots on cartridges..

[Palitera]

I agree with this. What's the point of having 11% of chance to lockpick or steal something on Skyrim if, in case of miss, the player could simply reload he game saved before the try? It was nothing more than a meter about how many the player would waste on the try/reload cycle.
On Dishonored I had to stop saving the game to save the experience. Suddenly I realized that I always had full ammo, health and mana packs etc. since I was doing only perfect runs.
I am really pro auto-save and punishment for failure to make the player care about their actions. Manual save = infinite tries, no matter what.

[harrisk954]

Should have the option to either auto save or manual save. But, some games don't give that option.

[Scarfy]

Autosaving does make games less forgiving, that's for sure.

One thing it does fix, however, is the whole, "oops, I took too much damage/used too many items/used up too much ammo in that last bit, better reload and try again".

Dark Souls is a real sod for that kind of thing. When I finished the game, I had barely used any of my consumables, due to the fear of "this might come in handy later on".

[Palitera]

Demon's and Dark Souls made me change the way I play exactly for this.

First I used a very important item (Dragon God soul...) on a bad and weak spell (fire machine gun). When I realized it, I stopped using every ore to avoid missing it later. This became a compulsion and, as you, I only realized and corrected the course when I finished Dark Souls with tons of ore and no valuable upgrades. Smh...

Now I'm a big spender. I just save stuff when I know what they're for. Might miss it later, yes, but I have faith the designer won't screw me so much. Except for From's ones...

[Scarfy]

I went through the whole of DS2 without using the boss souls. I stored them in my item box, for use later. A later that didn't come :)

[mydyingparadiselost]

My worst auto save moment happened in Mass Effect 2 on PS3. I was about to finish Jacks personal mission and the game froze during the auto save. Not only did it ruin my ME save but it corrupted my entire HD. That one moment cost me two weeks of PS3 less time and at least a thousand hours of game saves. I'm still butt hurt about it X(