Well yes video games casualized over the years and jRPGs were the first to do it

>>11064781
I hate any limitation put on my ability to put a game down and resume where I left off. Yesterday I was in a time sensitive situation suddenly an hour into a game and no save point in sight.

>>11064902
What was preventing you from pausing and putting the controller down?

Just use the save system from classic roguelikes. You can save anytime, but that save is deleted when you reload it. You keep the immersion of being inside a dangerous dungeon and the convenience of being able to quit a session anytime.

>>11064908
it would shut off if idled too long, which is bad for an unsaved progress

>>11064781
>>11064902
I agree with you both

>>11064781
>I don't like thing, thing must have ruined rpgs forever.
It's optional, save in the dungeon or don't.

>>11064908
see this is the problem with sensitive tardos like you and OP: you attach yourself to a design flaw/limitation of a game, have a conniption fit when developers fix it in future games, and then repeat meaningless platitudes like "you didn't beat the game" when other use what the devs implemented. did i use pause on NES/genesis games when younger so i could play them the next day? of course. but i also welcomed when the ability to save in future generations.

if you want to pause in your games to pick up where you left off, you can still do that. just don't have a tantrum because other people don't want to and want to leverage features the devs put in.

>>11064902
I get your point, i recall myself just grinding on the overworld or near save points when i wanted to play but knew i was short on time.

>>11065001
You complain about sensitivity and then whine like a cunt for >100 words.

>>11064783
Meanwhile SaGa has consistently let you save everywhere and the series is known for being difficult and a massive >filter

>>11064781
Yeah. I'm not a big fan of checkpoints in general. It's not one continuous dungeon or level, if you're only having to play it one section at a time and can just forget about previous parts the moment you reach the next segment. The way inns function as save rooms immerses you into the experience a lot since an actual adventuring party would also have to use a town/inn as a home base.
t. 20 year old zoomer

>>11065160
whining about whiners effectively cancels it out and makes me right and (You) wrong

>>11065001
>design flaw
its not a design flaw. In Phantasy Star I from 1987 you could save anywhere even in Dungeons. I would have 5 rotating save files when I played basically acting like save states and when id fall in a hole or run into a monster that did too much damage to me id just reload a save I made a minute ago. The experience was very easy. Meanwhile in Phantasy star II you could only save in town. Dungeons are now much harder and when your health and mana gets low you have to decide if you are going to keep pushing in the dungeon or leave now to not risk your level progress. Its a more engaging experience.

>>11065191
to be fair, SaGa dungeons aren't hard at all and the difficulty just comes from figuring out how to survive the boss's turn 1 full-party instakill

>>11064781
You’re old enough to know that this was a genre standard for decades.
The industry just called for changes as more and more of the genre was being put onto portable devices, which being on the go conceptually clashes with the general game design and flow of jrpgs. Allowing players to save anywhere removed a lot of the committal and danger of the genre, but it was a necessary sacrifice for a massive increase in QoL for the end user. QoL and accessibility will always trump whatever your opinion on jrpg game design theory, because they’re selling a product and need to appeal to many different walks of life and personalities.

It’s the same reason auto-battle, fast forward, and no-encounter toggle also started to become more regular inclusions within the genre. People just do not have the attention span to handle antiquated and punishing time-wasters like most old jarpigs.

Sorry grandpa, jrpgs guys are all casual gaming transsexual girls now in 2024. And we like how things are.

>>11064976
You'd think the concept of suspend-saves would be obvious, but then you look at this thread and there are still people posting like the only two choices are progress lock-in saves or no saves at all.
Reminds me of the people who seem to have never learned that rechargeable AA batteries exist.

>>11065001
This was already completely covered by >>11064976 before you started complaining though. Yes, being able to quit whenever is very good. No, it doesn't have to make the game easier. Developers just either didn't care what save systems were doing to their games' difficulty, or actively desired to increase accessibility to casual players. The latter might have been a good strategy for maximizing sales, as >>11065295 suggests. But there is still plenty of room in the market for relatively difficult games that significantly punish failure, even if they might end up being a minority of games. Roguelike-style save systems are severely underused. They should be the default in everyone's mind and should only be replaced with gentler systems in cases where developers have consciously decided to make their games easier for one reason or another.

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>>11064781
Based OP. The lack of saving gave Dungeons in FF1 a certain gravity. FF1 is a post-apocalyptic hellscape and I feel like the punishing dungeons enhanced that feeling.

>>11064976
Based

>>11064781
I agree.
I can accept healing points and even save points in front of bosses, for games that want to make the boss fight a separate part of the game from the dungeon exploring. But even that I wouldn't want to see in every game, because bosses being part of the dungeon rather than isolated from it is fun too.

>>11065274
Also yeah, the "you don't have to use the feature that makes the game trivially easy, so the game isn't trivially easy" argument is heavily OVERused. If a game is trivially easy because of some rule that's in it (such as the rule that you can use infinite continues in a linear action game, for example) then it's trivially easy, period. Yes, a person can pretend the rule isn't there and do a no-continues challenge run (or a no-quicksaves run through Doom, etc.) but simple, mechanical changes to game rules are a computer's job, not a human's job, and if the player must make and mentally maintain such changes in order to make the game fun, then the game is flawed. Yes, many games are still good even though they're flawed in this way, but this simplistic "you can ignore the harmful feature so it's not at all a flaw" argument goes too far. Careful game design can meet everybody's needs (for example, with multiple difficulty settings including a "hardcore" one that limits continues/saving/whatever, and clear communication at the start of the game about what kind of player ought to choose what setting) and the lack of it is a flaw, albeit usually not at all a fatal one.

I like dungeons where you tackle it in parts/wings and periodically make the decision to return to town to rest up. Gives you the feeling of the party gradually getting tired and needing to decide when to retreat. But it seems like that style fell out of favor in the 90s next to "do it all in one go" design where you battle from one restore point to the next within the dungeon.

>>11065348
>But it seems like that style fell out of favor in the 90s next to "do it all in one go" design where you battle from one restore point to the next within the dungeon.
Even Dragon Quest has succumbed to this mindset. No more having to plan out the dungeon and gamble on whether you'll last to the end, just get a level-up and you get all your HP and MP back.

>>11064781
sounds terrible. id imagine the number of people that want that is very small. also you can just ignore them and your problem is solved. like 80s/90s rpgs but not because of "difficulty".

>>11065295
>because they’re selling a product and need to appeal to many different walks of life and personalities.
>People just do not have the attention span to handle antiquated and punishing time-wasters like most old jarpigs.
Yeah appealing to new audiences. The same people, but older!

Real RPGs consist of nothing but dungeons anyway

>>11065368
You use save states when you emulate.

>>11065274
My immersion of PS1 was ruined not because of multiple saves, but because of two spells: one to bring you back to the dungeon entrance and another to take you from anywhere on the world map to a town. You could be lost several floors deep in a dungeon, but cast those two spells and you're back to safety. I keep imagining how terrifying the dungeons would be without them and no savescumming.

My question is, does PS2 has similar spells to the ones mentioned?

>>11065417
>My question is, does PS2 has similar spells to the ones mentioned?
yes and you get them fairly early

>>11065191
tedious grinding =/= difficulty

>>11065001
There arw easy compromises to achieve both though. A temporary save option that forces you to go back to the menu and then gets deleted when you load it. Or the Dark Souls approach, constantly overwrite saves without the players permission so when you die you can't undo it.

>>11065259
ironically true

>>11065131
yeah, and I just don't see how that helps with difficulty in other people's minds. it's just a nuisance.

>>11065674
ironically ALT+F4 or turn the console off

>>11065912
That only works with the Dark Souls approach. It wouldn't work with the first option I mentioned.

And honestly if you're at that point, you're cheating and you know you are.

>>11065426
Grinding makes SaGa games harder, you ignorant swine.

fair enough. But I think the audience for FF is more casual

>>11064781
I agree. Also modern dungeons are too linear. FFs 1-3 had great maze-like dungeons with lots of dead end rooms that forced you to make trips back to town to restock when your resources got low. It felt like you were on a real expedition and had to gear up right, making a little more progress each time. Now dungeons just can be beaten in 20 minutes your first try and you're on to the next town. No sense of adventure anymore.

>>11064781
I remember playing FF3j back in like 2000 on Nesticle, and IIRC I hadn't figured out how to use save states or anything, so I played through the game as intended. The lack of save points within dungeons was definitely unfamiliar, having only played the FFs after it, but like you state, there was a certain thrill to it, and it made item and spell management all the more crucial.

The Crystal Tower + World of Darkness double whammy at the end may have taken it a bit too far, though. I still got through it all, but holy shit. I really was hurting for a save point there.

>>11064781
>>11064902
savepoints +Temp saves the delete themself after you load are the best save system

i'd say it mostly just boils down to FF choosing to place its difficulty elsewhere, entirely a directorial design choice. i'd say the shift would be somewhere between FF3 and FF4 when they decided bosses should be throwing curveballs constantly as opposed to bosses being too close to normal encounters in 1/2. FF3 had its share of deadly gimmick bosses but also had its hardcore dungeons, while FF4 simply chose to focus entirely on the former at the expense of the latter and FF5 solidifying the deal by being effectively a massive boss extravaganza

i dont think a single FF afterwards ever had "hard dungeons" ever after that point but definitely had way harder bosses. even their modern games are like this, which is why i'm not sure why FF13 got singled out for being a hallway simulator when that's most of the franchise unfortunately. even FF14 and FF16 abandoned complex dungeons entirely in favor of linear experiences and those games never got shit for that, though that's probably because zoomers + yoship cult worship

>>11064781
I agree, dungeons in RPGs lost a lot of challenge when you could save and refresh your party in the middle of them. It completely changed the game design from something where the challenge was cumulative between every encounter you faced from the time you entered a dungeon to the time you left to needing every fight to be life or death in each battle. You can't just wear someone down over time, suddenly every fight is in a vacuum and is either trifling in difficulty or has to be a monstrous threat akin to a boss battle or a dull sort of puzzle to solve.

I'm a fan of newer dungeon crawlers for that reason, at least most of those understand that limiting saves to town only makes for a more exciting adventure.

>>11064902
Well that's too fucking bad and you should have prepared in advance? The game shouldn't have to compromise its creative vision or immersion because you're a retarded faggot who can't budget their time properly.

It's like bitching that all films should be under an hour and easily viewable in 10 minute chunks on TikTok.

>>11066636
Almost like these games got duller and duller the further they stripped away the Wizardry philosophy...

>>11064781
I agree.

>>11064781
Although I do agree with you, I think the real problem is a save point before the dungeons boss battle. If you aren't fighting the boss covered in cuts and bruises while holding on to the very thread of life then there is no tension.

>>11067492
At some point designers forgot how to create a compelling dungeon. The ordeal is pitted against survival.

>>11064781
>Nowadays dungeons are about as dangerous as towns since you can just save every 30 seconds.
then don't save? skip the save point entirely.
are you retarded?

>>11067919
NTA but doing that is a different feeling. When its a self imposed challenge, there's inherently less tension because you're the one making it harder for yourself.

When you're trying to hold on for just a bit longer for that next save point, not knowing when its going to appear, that's where the tension comes from. That's what makes random encounters interesting too. Because each battle between the save points matters more when the save points are further apart.

Besides, you shouldn't have to purposefully handicap yourself for a game to be fun.

>>11064781
what's stopping you to just limit yourself to not saving mid-dungeon? people already did "hardcore" jrpgs where they delete the save when they lost, it's basically the same idea.

>>11068576
>>11068537
>how does game design work
what a bunch of retards. the game has to be designed around the limitation.

>>11064781
Yeah I mostly agree. I really love FF1 for that, now I love FF4 for the overall experience, it's probably still my favorite "emotionally" so to speak, but I really love FF1 the most as a game. I like how you have to really carefully plan each outing. Maybe not so much once you're a pro at RPGs, but the feel is there. Limited spellcasts, semi-limited consumables. Battles have consequences, but they also don't take too long visually. "High quality" animations and UI fuckery killed RPG combat systems, FUCK the 3d FF remakes, seriously fuck them.

I really wish I could just play more mutations of games like FF1 over and over. FF2 ain't it- maybe FF3, I'm not too deep into that one, I'll have to give it another shot sometime. But past that most RPGs just do too much stuff I hate and not enough I like. Couldn't stand Golden Sun, hate the obnoxiously long dialogue and anime emotes. Lufia's alright but that "roguelike" system ruins it and it never quite feels as complex as other games. Tales series.. meh. I might try to make another stab at getting into SaGa but there's something there too that doesn't quite taste right. And on the CRPG front, the Ultima series was my childhood and I liked some of the other older niche titles like the Magic Candle and Demon's Winter, but they're really pretty brutal to play as an adult, and Phantasie... nostalgic, but fuuck that.

>>11068537
This poster is right. I was basically going to type the exact same thing so I don't have much unique to add to that. Meaning becomes inherent through limitation. It always deflates the tension knowing you COULD have a safety net if you chose.