KainDrake wrote...
Capeo wrote...
Wait, please don't tell me you guys were only playing with one save? I hear that all the time and it blows my mind. RPGs, guys, 10 save minimum.
On the other hand, if all your saves got corrupted then that is just nuts. I ended my session last night with a freeze. Hopefully I'll have no issues when I go home to play tonight.
This is something I don't understand. Why have more than one save on an RPG? I don't see how it makes sense.
There's a multitude of reasons.
1.) Disk failure: There's a reason people tell you to make backups of essential data on your computer, in case of memory and disk failure. When a hard disk is no longer operable, recovering data from it is a very long, arduous, and paiful process. And there's absolutely no gaurantee that the data
can be recovered. Over time, a hard disk become more and more suceptible to failure, for a variety of reasons. Head crashing into the disk platter is one of the most prolific causes of hard disk damage. Damage caused by impact is another leading factor. Parts inside of the hard disk can also break down, like the air filters that normalize internal pressure and keep particulate matter from landing on the disk platter.
2.) Power surges/blackouts/power loss: One can never know when a power outage can occur in their building. There's a reason that the game tells you not to turn the power off of your console while it saves the game. If the memory at that particular address is not fully written, it isn't recognized as a valid save file, and the system refers to it as corrupted. This is even more problematic when it comes to Mass Effect 2, because they decided it would be a good idea to keep all the saves in one protected file for each career. Meaning, if your game freezes like many people on the board have reported, there's a good chance you'll be losing all your saves, because of the way they're saved on the console.
3.) Game glitches/bugs/unfavorable conditions: This one is less common, but there's bound to be a few bugs in a game after it's released, as evidenced by the recent Fallout: New Vegas, and of course, Mass Effect 2. Nothing sucks more than investing 40+ hours into a game, only to come to something like an invisble wall, or a nulled out character dialogue option. And since you didn't have any prior saves to this point, guess what? You're going to have to start all over again from the beginning. Now the other part of this, is that some people have multiple saves because of gameplay choices. In quite a few RPGs released during this modern age, the game offers a multitude of ways to tackle a situation, the prime candiate being, once again, Mass Effect 2. During the course of the game, you'll get choices that can either make an area easier, or difficult, depending on your playstyle. Perhaps you come across a group of mercs who are unsure of whether they should be attacking you? If you Charm/Intimidate them, there's a good chance that you'll make them leave peacefully, without needing to engage in pointless conflict and spend heatsinks on something you could've avoided. In other games, multiple saves can be useful in case the game doesn't allow a New Game+, or an ability to continue missions/quests after you've defeated the big bad. If you have a save right before the final fight, you can go and comlete anything you missed before you beat it again.
So yeah, those are only a small glimpse of what the benefits of multiple saves bring you. Now, do I think it should be necessary to back-up/make multiple saves in a game in order to ensure you don't lose progress? Absolutely not. In this case, more testing should've occured in order to ensure that save games were being properly written, and of course, they should've eliminated the entire "encrypted file which contains all the saves for that career."
Retour en haut
