Saving and Loading Games

[MKSchmidt]

Can a player save, load, and reload in this game? Or, is it one of those Day Z / War Z survival types where you have to start from scratch each time you die? Just curious, because I don't have time for another one of those...

[bldarkman]

The game autosaves. You do not have to restart everytime you go to play it.

[PranKzTa]

Autosave is triggered by dozens of things - including but not limited to skill increases, rescuing a new survivor, achievements, setting up a base or an outpost, completing a mission.

[MKSchmidt]

Okay, thanks!

[libramonkey_reveal]

All the buzz I have heard is that it saves whenever something of consequence happens like starting or finishing missions or someone dying or getting hurt, etc. They have done everything possible to keep you from "cheating" by loading a previous save state after you make a mistake. They say that this is one of the greatest features of the game and from what I can tell most people who take the time to post agree with that assesment. I do not. I like learning from my mistakes and it annoys me that I have to completely restart the game in order to correct them. I must believe that others feel the same way so I am forced to ask the question, why limit the games consumer appeal by forcing people to play one way. I respect the gamers that want to have the "real life" experience but no one is forcing them to backup their saved games. It seems that the real issue is that despite the proclamations of support for this policy, if given the choice to load a previously saved game most people would or else why would they have to remove the option. I for one intend to keep exploring ways to "cheat" the system becuase it is a great game but as it is now I find it unplayable.

[xikkub]

^-- 1000x this. It's terribly annoying. All games are eventually exploited, so the ability to restore saves will inevitably appear sometime down the road regardless of who implements it. The least the developers can do is provide the OPTION to allow or disallow the restoring of saves or the very irksome "real-time" feature. This is especially true since there is a limited number of resources in game. However, there does exist an XML file in the game directory with the attribute "LastPlayed" which I presume is used to simulate real-time activity in game (in Unix time format). It may also be helpful for manually restoring save data.

[MKSchmidt]

I totally agree. Although I can understand the appeal of the more hard-core game types, and the idea of 'save points' can be a pretty creative thing, as an adult, I prefer the to have all options available. Sometimes you just have other things to do, you know?

[Forsakend]

Here is a quote taken from the Multiplayer/Persistent World sticky up top:

Originally posted by Undead Sanya:

[Adding this by community recommendation]

(Persistent World) is not going to change. There will not be a developer-created option to turn it off. To do so would suck out a large part of what gives this game its impetus. Even if we were willing from a design point of view... because the persistent world aspect is the core of the game, "just adding the option" would be a tremendously time consuming thing. Let's put it this way. The amount of time it would take is equivalent to what it would take to add multiplayer, so even IF we had the time, we wouldn't spend it on gutting the game - we'd spend it on the thing we dreamed about doing.

We have, however, designed it so you do not need to play every day. We started with the assumption that our players were adults, like us, and WE don't have time to play every day. Many of us do our personal gaming on a weekly basis, if we're lucky.

The difference between "gone for two days" and "gone for a week" is minor, and the difference between "gone for a week" and "gone for a year" is barely visible to the human eye.

No one can die when you're offline unless that survivor was suicidal and you ignored multiple warnings.

No one will go missing when you're offline unless you left an infestation so near your base that it scared people.

Here is the FAQ: http://forums.undeadlabs.com/showthread.php?541-Faq

I totally understand and respect that this game (one we never expected to go mass market, between the permadeath, the persistent world, and the nature of the experience) is not for everyone. I appreciate the time everyone spends reading about it and trying it, and if you decide it's not your thing, I hope we'll see you on a future game.

Here is the reason why simply having the option would ruin the game's intended design:

Originally posted by Undead Sanya:

I suppose I should have said, yes, you can "turn off" the actual thing that advances time. What you cannot do easily is address the literally thousands of things in the game that depend on that thing. It fundamentally alters the game in such a way as to totally change the experience in mostly negative ways - repair, facility construction, health, resources, fate, and more.

[To turn it "off" in a functional way], you'd need to redesign the game from the ground up... kind of like the way we designed the entire game with the assumption of persistence.

Yes, many may not like the persistent world and feel like they have to play every day... but this is far from the truth. You don't need to and your survivors will still be there alive and kicking (unless you left them in danger (rescue mission/missing) or ignored depressed/suicidal mood events while logging off... they CANNOT die.

[MKSchmidt]

Wait... there are games in which you can die while NOT playing?

[Forsakend]

Originally posted by Chaaaaaaaalie:

Wait... there are games in which you can die while NOT playing?

Was possible at 360 launch, but not anymore.
You cannot lose any characters at all while offline unless you have been ignoring warning signs such as: Anger/fighting within members, depression, suicidal tendencies.

Ignoring help requests/pleas:
Survivor missing and possible search location, help clearing infestation/kill zombie, need help returning from run/escort.

[EddieTireBiter]

Love the game, HATE permadeath. Have restarted 7 times now because I can't stand for a high level charactor to die. Sorry I like the game alot and the world turning while the game is shut down is cool, but permadeath should be an option not standard equipment. Game saving will be the first mod I add. Have had a charactor suffer a serious injury while I was away, took her two days to be playable agian. I suspect she needed saving, but the problem is the game dosn't tell you who needs saving and someone always needs saving.

[priorityinversion]

The problem with State of Decay is it is too buggy for a rogue-like default permadeath. As of this posting, the combat bugs that lead to losing characters are just horrible.

If the devlopers won't fix the myriad of problems, they need to enable Hardcore as an option; not as default. I really liked this game until I had to restart twice due to bugs killing characters off. The worst one is the inability to attack zombies who are killing you through a wall. Nor am I gonna to research and remember EVERY bug in the game as I try to avoid losing characters over it; much less worry when I will lose all my built up hours in a save because I discover a NEW bug.

This is clearly one of those games where your payment for the game is a donation to the developer to teach him how to code.

The developer going out of their way to prevent a manual file swap to get around "Hardcore" is the final straw for me on this one. If I can't find a workaround fast, I'll probably research the details of the studio in order to ensure I never buy from them (or their affiliates/derived new studio/etc..) again.

[BanOphobia My Struggle]

I lost a character as the dumbass wouldn't follow me up a tower and died. I killed the game via task manager as I was not sure where the game would save. Restarted the game and the dumbass dude was alive yay. This game is as glitchy as hell glad got it on a sale.

[Gamer Mickey]

As Whoopsy said, if your character is low on health and about to die, kill the game in task manager and reload. Yes, it's technically cheating but if you're quite far into the game and don't want to start again from the beginning, it's the only option.

[Gamer Mickey]

Oh, and pause the game first, otherwise your character will die, while you're switching from the game to task manager.

[Kinder Bueno]

Originally posted by Acurisur:

Oh, and pause the game first, otherwise your character will die, while you're switching from the game to task manager.

Thanks, if I knew the trick I wouldn't have killed all my team in rage, just because I lost my main character due to a buggy teammate.