How do you save the game?

[elQueFaltaba]

After going through some of the missions, Honeypot, localhost and some training ones, I wanted to stop playing but couldn't for the love of me find how to save the current game. It's easier to quite vim than saving the game here!!

Q: How do you save your progress?

[LuGus Studios]

The game saves automatically each time you make a decision, exit a network etc.

[elQueFaltaba]

Ok, thanks. Since there is no visual indication for the user/player that this is the case, and we don't know it's being saved, I would suggest you change the text of the prompt when you press ESC key, as it would appear you are losing the progress completely.

[LuGus Studios]

A white triangle in the bottom right corner blinks for a second each time the game saves.

[elQueFaltaba]

Great. Not the best of UX, is it?

[LuGus Studios]

Originally posted by elQueFaltaba:

Great. Not the best of UX, is it?

Thank you for your feedback!

Many modern story-driven games don't want players to have to think about immersion breaking things like "saving" and "loading" when they are teling a story and offering choice.
I personally consider automatically saving (instead of forcing players to do it manually) a good UX experience, not a bad one. Midnight Protocol doesn't show you an in-your-face save graphic because it does it constantly, and its not important for the experience that the player is constantly reminded of it.

Midnight Protocol tries to be an immersive narrative driven game where choices and actions matter on the exact moment that they happen, not afterwards. That's why the game saves when it does, in the moment. Again, this is not unique to Midnight Protocol.

So far no one has taken issue with this, but it would be bad practise to dismiss this concern, each piece of feedback is important to us. To better understand the confusion, maybe you could tell us why you were looking for a save option initially, why you feel it's important that the game shows you it's saving and how you feel the current implementation diminishes your experience? Last but not least: how would you prefer to see it instead? Thanks!

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by LuGus Studios:

So far no one has taken issue with this, but it would be bad practise to dismiss this concern, each piece of feedback is important to us. To better understand the confusion, maybe you could tell us why you were looking for a save option initially, why you feel it's important that the game shows you it's saving and how you feel the current implementation diminishes your experience? Last but not least: how would you prefer to see it instead? Thanks!

While I don't think that it's a huge problem, I have to agree with elQueFaltaba's take on this matter. I can describe my own user experience to you, it may help you understand.

I started the game. I saw the screen that informed me about the game having an autosave feature - good. I then read through the manual, which did not have any information about autosaves. I then played and completed the first mission, and wanted to exit the game afterward. I pressed Esc, saw the "Do you want to exit the game?" prompt, and saw the warning that "Any unsaved progress will be lost".

At that point I realized that I had not noticed the autosave symbol at any time, so I was unsure as to whether exiting the game would keep all my progress or not. To solve this issue, I looked for a manual save function, but found none. At this point I had only three options left:

a) Quitting the game while being unsure if my progress would be kept - this insecurity is definitely not a good experience even though the game ultimately did keep all progress.

b) Starting the next mission and watching for the autosave icon - not a good experience either since I did not have the time to play on, and I had no information as to how long it would take until the game saves.

c) Search the game's forum for further information, like this thread. This helps, but having to search the net for information that the game could provide by itself (as lots of other games do) is not a great experience either.

I think that the current implementation of the autosave is suboptimal. You (understandably!) do not want to disrupt the player's immersion, so you want to keep the autosave icon subtle. However, you rely on the player _noticing_ the autosave icon to find out that the game saves after every action. You see how these two goals impede each other.

There is, however, an easy solution to this, and it's the one that elQueFaltaba already mentioned: Add a line like "The game saves automatically every time you take an action." to the "Do you want to leave the game?" prompt, as lots of games do.

I have read your replies, but I honestly do not see how adding this line would interfere with any of the goals you stated. That line would not affect immersion at all, because when the player presses the Esc key and sees the "Do you want to leave the game" prompt, immersion has _already_ been broken. The player is already (necessarily) taken out of the story and the gameplay experience. So at this point, adding the line "The game saves automatically every time you take an action." can't break immersion anymore. All the line does, is prevent the uncomfortable anxiousness of users who wonder if they might lose progress by exiting.

I do not see any disadvantage to such a line. If you do, then I would be interested in the reasoning behind that.

[LuGus Studios]

Thanks you, that example helped me to better understand the issue.

[matheod]

I agree with psyringe. I wanted to quit the game and wasn't sure about when the game saved. I choose to still quit the game and luckily discovered nothing was lost. Adding the line as suggested seems a really good things.