Remember when we had "Save Items" in old games?
Where you could save only because of said item?

I remember Tomb Raider 1 2 3 and Resident Evil {?} being like this. Hahah, the suffering. But, man, it was fun anyways.

You also have the option of just reloading your save, keeping your money but losing all progress since the last game. (I hate it when games don't give this option.) Also, there's often a bank where you can store your excess money (so that you don't lose any of it if you die).

The one part where the loss of half your gold felt was unfair happened in Dragon Quest 8. For whatever reason, DQ8 doesn't give you access to a bank for a long time (whereas other games in the series would give it to you early), and when you do reach the island with the bank, it's possible that an enemy could use the Dance of Death and wipe out your entire party, causing you to lose your position and half your gold (or reload, which is probably a good idea in this instance) just before you would have been able to deposit it.

I would argue otherwise. In fact, I could see such a game being quite fun, especially since this would mean the developers don't need to be as cautious to make sure the player doesn't die too easily.

After all, video game randomizers have the same sort of randomization you see in roguelikes, but you might run into areas you can't progress until later, or an enemy that kills you easily. You die, and you can either keep trying, go somewhere else (assuming you have the items needed to do so), or just abandon the seed entirely.

That's one of the reasons I decided to not get Breath of Fire 5: Dragon Quarter. (Other reasons were the D-Counter mechanic (which is really not the sort of thing I was looking for in an RPG at the time) and the copy-protected save file (which is a form of DRM, albeit applied to the save file rather than the game itself).)

Yeah, I think I still have a copy of that, but the saving mechanic was too weird and offputting for me. I never got far. Shame, BoFIV is an all time favorite of mine. Maybe the system works if you get in to it, but it was too much for me.

Death and failure in a videogame should be punishing but not like in the old times. The Game Over screen in a RPG for example does not have sense for a fluid modern times gameplay. And does not have sense in aa practic way of things. It is Redundant

The game over in an era with save systems is easily solved by reloading. But looking deeper it has no sense.
If someone failed and had to reload, obviously he will reload the game in its newest state. That's the absud system.
It is punishing me, forcing me to reload a previous state. It is punishing me "out of the game". Just time spent to load and reload.
Would not be better to base the death and failure system in punishing factors (depending difficulty) into the game? The game would be benefited with the old school systems and it woud be a fluid system, as a lot of new generations of players demand.

I mean. In a RPG half of more of your exp lost by death, or all your money lost by death... Something like that.
There are a good bunch of games with this system, but it is not the rule. And I consider it the best for immersion.

Must have been the console versions. On the PC, you can save freely (Tomb Raider). In Tomb Raider 3, they actually forgot to remove the console save crystals from the PC version. But luckily, there is a mod that removes them. Having them in the PC version made it way too easy, because the crystals still full healed you for free.

But yeah, save items are not optimal either. It makes you hoard them out of fear of some difficult part in the future. Nothing like replaying a large section just because you failed a random jump for example.

Yup. Im talking about the old console versions of these.
I remember struggling playing with my father in Tomb Raider 3 because of these crystals. That forest level with quicksand was scary! haha

From a fun standpoint, I don't like this. Basically, if the player is having trouble, this penalty makes the player have even *more* trouble.

A game should either help a player who's having trouble (with the option of refusing said help), or at least be neutral in this regard. Don't punish poor playing (or simply bad luck) by making the game even harder.

Or it forces the player play for longer than they'd like in a single session just to avoid using them up.

(Also, it punishes a player who has to attend to real life events like going to work/school or an emergency, so there's an accessibility issue here.)

My point of view is that those save items are a way old consoles limitation. A different thing is that some people like them for culture, but it is a "paleolimit" in how a player could save into a game.
If you need to get out or close your session between item savestates you need to lost all the things you did..
To make repetitive work constantly, try and fail (lke in resident evil 1), much better the real life and with more interesting zombies.

Don't worry, the poor player will restore a previous game and it will continue.
What I am considering is that there is fun in failing in a game meanwhile it does not get out you from the game by artificial/external reasons.
And a good system would be punish you in different levels depending yor difficulty. Obviously it would fit better in some games than in others. But it would be convenient for all. :)

If the penalty for dying can be changed, it should be changeable independently of other difficulty related settings.

Sometimes, I want to be challenged, but I don't want to be harshly punished if I fail. To put it another way, I want to be allowed to fail, and in games that punish failure harshly, it feels like failure is not permitted.

What would be your system to punish the player in a game in a fair way?.

See, that's what I mean by "patronizing". I know when I'm learning. I will know that I have learned when I pass the challenge. The death counter doesn't mean shit.

I've never played Celeste (too creepy), but I played the White Palace in Hollow Knight and won it. Each challenge presented a specific maneuver that I needed to practise and eventually get right, and I did.

But it also has an extra section which starts with a trick jump, and I could never clear that jump. I don't know how to do it. It just doesn't work. I was at it for hours and learned nothing whatsoever, and then went and took away a star. (I will buy Silksong.) But if it actually dared to encourage me, I'd be posting everywhere how the game ran over my wife and raped my dog (like I do with Risk of Rain).

When I saw the first lantern in the tutorial in The Messenger and only got it on like the tenth try and thought, holy shit is the whole game going to be like that? And then I scaled the wall of fires (uses the same skill) in the bonus challenge in the fire cloud temple, and I knew that I had in fact learned.

I like souls-like deaths because death is explicitly path of the normal gameplay there, and also because I can grind (sometimes) and pick my battles and skulk around for upgrades. Also, good souls-like games have save points near or fast travel to bosses.

In Hollow Knight for example, the Mantis Lords are regarded as the first difficult boss, but they can't touch me at all. I can go there with no upgrades whatsoever and do them in. Even the fly is harder than that.

In Blasphemous, some bosses are a very random pain, but others (including the final boss) are jokes. Like, come on, do your worst. It's because I can start with the easier ones in a section (10, Esdras, Quirce, Crisanta) and collect some of the upgrades in every available zone that I can kill the more annoying ones (3, the ugly mug, the blinged out skeleton, and the asshole baby).

How is that game too creepy (particularly when it seems Hollow Knight *isn't* creepy for you, even with all the bugs in it)?

Also, that postcard doesn't come until after the first level, and there's definitely learning going on in the first level (the way dashes work, and the way your momentum is affected by moving platforms).

To me, it feels like death is something to be avoided at all costs in those games, rather than something that can be part of the strategy (like in Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark with Rapturous Chant, or even Ultima 4 (and even Ultima 3 has a trick that lets you avoid being RPG screwed but requires a character death).

Also, the Mantis Lords are an example of a boss that is *not* near a save point.

Edit: OK, maybe Chapters 2, 3, and 5 of Celeste may be creepy, but that's less than half the game, whereas Hollow Knight is creepy and bug-filled throughout.