Patch? Skip cut scene?

[Jr.Peterson]

Can they be a patch sso you can skip this if you already know it? Thanks!

[Pete_Bottomley]

That's an interesting point - which cut scene(s) had you already seen Adelie which repeated when you re-loaded the game?

[edersam]

Please add a patch to skip all conversations. In my case, I can read very fast and the conversations are very slowly. Let the user choose.
I asked for a refund for this reason, and will buy again if I have the option to skip conversations.

[RC48]

+1 to skippable text and cutscenes, basic quality of life,

speaking of. is proper manual saving anytime (within reason, not during a cutscene obviously) gonna be patched in at some point? reviews say it's only checkpoints and not too frequently, which is an absolute dealbreaker. seems like the game is out to waste people's time in multiple ways.

[Pete_Bottomley]

Hey both - in regards to skipable cutscenes, we may consider this one if player's have previously seen the cutscene but if you want to skip them out of the gate, then it's likely not a game you'd enjoy playing.

In regards to saving, the game should save quite frequently so you don't miss much gameplay at all. We've noticed a possible save point after solving part of some evidence which we'll likely include an additional save for but we'll be sure to monitor how player's are interacting and add more where needed.

[RC48]

why would anyone want to skip cutscenes for the first time in a story-based game? it still should be an option though, the game shouldn't dictate how players interact with it (again, within reason, and unskippable cutscenes are always unreasonable).

looks like it's a no on proper saving, which is a shame, 'quite frequently' and 'much gameplay' are very subjective and apparently your quite isn't quite enough and much is too much in some cases.

and you didn't address the skippable dialog question.

[edersam]

I meant to be able to skip conversations, not having to wait for the character to speak the entire sentence to go to the next one. I have this problem of reading too fast (the subtitles), and having to wait to finish saying the sentence is too bad for me.

[Pete_Bottomley]

The skippable dialogue during a question is an interesting point that we'll look into exploring as it makes sense when there's a fast reading speed.

I'll be sure to update this thread when we've looked into the scope of doing this.

[boobooboo51]

Saving is not quite frequest, i have just finish the Mckee and when later i continue playing the load screen starts from the beginning of the scene and i had to do all the scene with Mckee again!!!

[Pete_Bottomley]

Hello boobooboo51 - just to clarify, you finished The McKee conversation with Annabelle & Theo, got to your evidence review, quit the game and it restarted from before the conversation?

[RC48]

why not save after every meaningful action? end of dialog, save. entered another location, save. picked up an item, save. no idea why it's so hard for devs these days to add a proper save system, multiple save slots and all (not to mention other quality of life), like it's been happening for decades. it's as if they've never played a video game before, including their own. always done lazily, lots of lost progress (and money saved because why would I pay even 3 euros, let alone 30, for something designed and developed badly).

[Weston]

Originally posted by Pete_Bottomley:

Hey both - in regards to skipable cutscenes, we may consider this one if player's have previously seen the cutscene but if you want to skip them out of the gate, then it's likely not a game you'd enjoy playing.

In regards to saving, the game should save quite frequently so you don't miss much gameplay at all. We've noticed a possible save point after solving part of some evidence which we'll likely include an additional save for but we'll be sure to monitor how player's are interacting and add more where needed.

Hey Peter. Loving the game so far. The one annoyance I have is having to sit through a cutscene I've already watched when starting up the game.

After playing through the McKee section I watched the cutscene that follows and then quit the game once I had control of Conway again. When I came back to start playing again I had to rewatch the same cutscene. This also happened when I quit after watching the opening cutscene and had to quit shortly after getting control of Conway.

Nearly every other game I've played, the game saves after a cutscene finishes and you have control over the character again. I think you could remove a lot of annoyance by saving after these cutscenes so when people come back to the game to play more they aren't being forced to rewatch a scene over again. It starts off every new play session on a sour note.

Anyway, those are just my two cents. Love the game otherwise. Keep it up.

P.S. the last update wrecked the file structure so the game won't launch. A lot of people are having this issue. I think you may need to update it so the game data isn't inside the windowsnoeditorfolder.

[Pete_Bottomley]

Thanks for the detailed response there Weston - we'll be sure to take a look at those two save points.

Further, I'll check the file structure with our programmers so that people are able to access the game properly - thanks for the heads up!

[RC48]

wow, saving only before an unskippable cutscene. like I said, as if you've never played a video game before, including your own. it's not those 2 save points you need to look into but the entire (non-)saving process for the whole game. this is your third game and you still have no idea about basic functionality and quality of life. another developer on the ignore list.

[Weston]

Originally posted by Pete_Bottomley:

Thanks for the detailed response there Weston - we'll be sure to take a look at those two save points.

Further, I'll check the file structure with our programmers so that people are able to access the game properly - thanks for the heads up!

Thanks for being in the comments and wading through some of the toxicity. I just wanted to clarify that its more than those two instances. Its every time there is a cutscene before a level. You basically have to watch a minutes long cutscene, then play through an entire portion of the game until the next cutscene to have it save. If I quit any time during that segment I have to not only play the whole chunk again, but watch minutes worth of a cutscene as well. I don't mind having to play through the segment again, but having to just sit there and stare at my phone while I wait for it to finish is a bit much.

Imagine if you watched a movie and you had to shut it off and come back later. The movie doesn't pick up where you left off, it goes back to the beginning of the scene you started. So now you have to watch four minutes of the movie to get to where you were. Now imagine you had to do this four times during the movie. It would probably ruin the experience.

I've bought all of your games. I loved Ether One. I wanted to love The Occupation but found the save system to be an annoyance. The game received some harsh reviews due to bugs and QoL issues. Conway seems to be much better in the bug department. Overall it seems like you've found your niche and improved a lot. But the QoL still seems to be quite lacking in the save department. I hope your team can really take on this criticism and do even better on your next effort.

[Pete_Bottomley]

Thanks for the follow-up there, Weston! Save frequency will definitely be on the top of the meeting on Monday so we'll be sure to save post-scripted events as yes, we definitely don't want player's having to sit through these instances and it seems achievable.

We ensured a lot of save/load testing was done pre-launch but when you're so close to a game - I think the QA side of things didn't pick up on this issue but rest assured we'll be jumping on this in the next update so that future players don't have to repeat scripted sections of the game.

Thanks!