The save system in this game has got to be the worst in a very long time. I watched the quick look and saw Brad mention that the game is stingy with auto-saves, that's a bit of an understatement because I've never seen it auto-save. There is a load last checkpoint save when you die but who knows where these checkpoints are because I always get loaded back to my last save.

I don't want the obsessive auto-save that some games have but honestly, not even a save after I've spent 30 minutes fighting my way through the spongiest of bullet sponge enemies and completed the mission task. Twice I've gone to an area, fought my way there, got my mission item and on my way back I've been fucked over by this fucking game. Re-loading after emptying an entire magazine into someone's face only to get melee'd to death and I get sent all the way back to the beginning.

Who cares if the end of the game sucks, I'll never see it.

You can save manually anywhere...

Why not save halfway through missions?

I didn't have too much trouble with this, but I've learned my lessons in the past. Beat like three levels in Tribes Vengeance only to die and have to start over at the beginning.

@TheInsider said:

You can save manually anywhere...

F5. That's all.

during the very first mission the game clearly states with a pop up window, that the wasteland is a dangerous place and you should save often. yes the check points are limited but the save system works great i never lost more then a couple minutes when if i died.

@TheInsider said:

You can save manually anywhere...

@csl316 said:

@Captain_Insano said:

@TheInsider said:

You can save manually anywhere...

This. Also, this is another feature that kind of winks back at their previous games. You started a mission and once you died you had to start all over from the beginning of the level unless you saved at some point in the level. If your just too lazy to save yourself, that's your fault. :P

@TheInsider said:

You can save manually anywhere...

And if you on pc you just hit F5 very quickly, the save system is perfectly fine.

When I heard about this, I cringed, but in practice, it's been no big deal at all. F5.

I don't know why you're acting like the way the autosave works is some mystery. It saves every time you move from one "cell" of the game world to another. It's a traditional autosaving system, particularly for open world games, but you're judging it under the terms of a traditional checkpointing system for some reason. There is no checkpointing, which means the game pretty much expects you to manually save periodically to avoid losing progress.

The wasteland is a dangerous place be sure to save often. Says it 5 mins into the game its fine.

Dude... You can save whenever you want.

Completely missing the manual save system must suck.

@TheInsider said:

You can save manually anywhere...

F5 works really well, and so far I  haven't needed to reload since the defibrillator is more than enough for most situations. So far, at leas on normal, Rage doesn't seem all that hard.  

I can see how the save system would be extremely inconvenient for console players. For a console-leading game, Rage has a number of design choices that feel much more at home on the PC, the save system foremost among them. The speed of the enemies and gunplay is also significantly faster than most ordinary console shooters--or at least my impression of them--which seems like it could be a problem too.

@Evilsbane said:

The wasteland is a dangerous place be sure to save often. Says it 5 mins into the game its fine.

Exactly.

/thread

Gotta say watching the quick look definitely saved me on the save system.

Never heard of quick save? Let's just complain about how bad a game is and never read the instructions....

Having to quick save or manually save is still kind of annoying, given that so many shooters have moved beyond the no checkpoint system. There's a lot of questionable decisions that were made during Rage's development (such as the no real checkpoints, no map). Ignoring the launch problems with the textures, it's a nice game. Fairly good shooter (although I don't particularly like the mutants - they're too stupid and not very fun to fight), but some of these issues should be addressed and possibly added via a patch.

Yes, I know you can manually save anywhere and yes I know you can quick save with F5 but when was the last game that didn't include any kind of auto-save? Modern games have made me leave behind my obsessive compulsive F5'ing after every fight but auto saving at specific points, say when you pick up a quest item.

I can't see the point of not including it apart from to be annoying.

F5 is your friend.

But yeah its kinda insane they didn't include modern checkpoint based auto-save.

you never saw auto save? every fucking game has auto save feature. I think you are wrong. anyway, Rage has worst because if you die, you should start all over again from first part of mission.

Consoles... ^_^

Out of all the things to complain about with Rage, this is one of the daftest.

@MetalMoog said:

@Evilsbane said:

The wasteland is a dangerous place be sure to save often. Says it 5 mins into the game its fine.

Exactly.

/thread

Seriously. Not that hard to figure out bro. I learned quickly to obsessively manually save.

Save whenever you want to.

And even if you don't save, you've got the defibrillator.

I don't see what the problem is. How inept a player do you intend on being?

I haven't even played the game yet and I already made the rule to myself to save every time I go down once and have to revive myself.

One thing that makes the save system frustrating is how long it takes. Going through the game before I gave up from sheer boredom, the act of manually saving in the middle of missions, (which don't feel like RPG dungeons or anything, they feel like short, linear FPS missions that usually have a decent auto save system) was something I tried to remember to do, but on PS3 saving the game took nearly a minute. It broke any immersion I had so much that you don't look forward to waiting for that long save time.

Hearing Carmack speak of the engine adapting the rendered horisontal resolution if the workload steps above a certain threshold. Combine that with the fact that in most games nowadays, you can notice a certain stutter when it auto-saves. I'd be as bold to guess (without any real technical knowledge about how troublesome this would be to implement) that a auto-save would make the workload spike and the engine adapt itself, eventhough not much is going on onscreen, making the lower resolution very noticable compared to an action-packed screen.

Maybe they made a technical design-choice in having the user going back to the menu screen, where no real action is happening on screen, save there and not notice any change in fidelity. People might've judge that as really off-putting/buggy.

Quick save does not make up for the lack of auto save. It's so easy to forget to quick save, because every other game released this generation has auto saving.

F5. That's all.