Decouple saving from difficulty?

[pdog]

Loving the game so far, but my main gripe is the ability to save anywhere is limited to the easiest difficulty.

Some balance would be good, maybe even an OPTIONAL ability to have ONE quicksave that has a cooldown. Like you can’t quicksave within 10 minutes of saving/loading.

Sometimes life just hits you with stuff you gotta get up and do straight away, and when you’re an adult with responsibilities you might not get back to it for a day or more 🤷‍♂️

For now I’ll just play on easy so it’s not a problem (nothing makes me drop a game faster than unavoidably losing a bunch of progress) and also I get it if the dev doesn’t want to. I do think devs should stick to their guns if they feel strongly about a game mechanic.

[Fyshtako]

Oh wow, definitely not buying the game if that's the case. Artificial difficulty via making anything but easy have save restrictions is not good for an imsim imho. manual saving is a big part of how imsims avoid being utterly annoying when things go wrong (constantly on high difficulty)

[Dundo]

Originally posted by Fyshtako:

Oh wow, definitely not buying the game if that's the case. Artificial difficulty via making anything but easy have save restrictions is not good for an imsim imho. manual saving is a big part of how imsims avoid being utterly annoying when things go wrong (constantly on high difficulty)

Gloomwood did it and it's been fine. If things are constantly going wrong for you in 'immersive sims' you're doing something wrong.

It's not artificial difficulty, it's actual difficulty. Sure enough the developer should decouple it from the difficulties as it is now but comments such as these just scream of 'i don't want to be held accountable for my lack of foresight/understanding the game, i'd rather save scum'. And at that point, why not just stick to easy? Is there any point to higher difficulties if you're save scumming your way back each time something goes wrong? Sounds like an ego stroking thing.

In reality, emergent gameplay happens at the very moments when everything goes south and you figure out how to weasel your way out of it without hitting F5.

There's a funny trend of people calling any semblance of actual difficulty as 'artificial difficulty' because they don't like the way something works.

[raphael.bossniak2]

I'll probably decouple it next update or the one after - it's better to have more options regarding accessibility for players.

The limited save system is designed to invoke tension and make the game more scary. I still encourage to play with it, most of the time you should find enough save discs to save every 5 minutes.

[beefpoweredcars]

40 year old dad of two who only has time for quick Steam Deck sessions- I agree 100% with OP. I’ll wait for those updates to decouple saves from difficulty setting or start over on easy if I get tired of waiting. I get the decision to do it this way and I appreciate experimentation in game design but ultimately I agree that more options for accessibility as a player is more important to me lately.

[pdog]

Originally posted by Fyshtako:

Oh wow, definitely not buying the game if that's the case. Artificial difficulty via making anything but easy have save restrictions is not good for an imsim imho. manual saving is a big part of how imsims avoid being utterly annoying when things go wrong (constantly on high difficulty)

IIRC System Shock 1, arguably the OG imsim which Sonar Shock is very obviously inspired by, had save points. But I was very young when I played System Shock and never had to stop gaming to go make dinner and iron a short and make lunch for work tomorrow etc. And it looks like dev has added a save anywhere feature already judging by the hotfix I just downloaded!

Originally posted by raphael.bossniak2:

I'll probably decouple it next update or the one after - it's better to have more options regarding accessibility for players.

The limited save system is designed to invoke tension and make the game more scary. I still encourage to play with it, most of the time you should find enough save discs to save every 5 minutes.

Thank you! I definitely get what you mean about the limited saves building tension, and I respect what you're doing with a lot of the design staying true to the classics. I didn't realise there were save discs every ~5 minutes - maybe I was a little too quick to complain (started the game this weekend and lost some progress a couple times due to IRL stuff) but thank you for adding the feature, I think a lot of people will appreciate it and personally I don't plan to abuse it to make the game too easy, just when I have to.

[Fyshtako]

Yeah I'd like to clarify too, I get the choice and it's cool as an option, maybe call it ironman mode? or something like that.. but yeah, a lot of people playing these games are alienated by no manual saving on higher difficulties. Sorry if I was a bit rude.

[Joe Cool]

Originally posted by pdog:

IIRC System Shock 1, arguably the OG imsim which Sonar Shock is very obviously inspired by, had save points.

No, System Shock 1 and 2 had manual saves and quicksave and quickload. You could even savescum randomized loot by quicksaving before picking it up. On a 1994 PC the load times were the only thing discouraging this.

[Henke]

Originally posted by raphael.bossniak2:

The limited save system is designed to invoke tension and make the game more scary. I still encourage to play with it, most of the time you should find enough save discs to save every 5 minutes.

I'm 90 minutes into the game, just got to level 2, playing on the hardest difficulty. Have found 3 save discs so far, have saved 3 times. So in my case it's been every 30 minutes.

Yeah, decoupling saves from difficulty is a good idea imo.

edit: welp, in the next 30 min session I found FIVE more save discs. So ok, maybe they're just unevenly spaced out.

[Cahalith]

For anyone reading this at this point in time:

I believe the system for unlimited saves is already in the game at this point. You should be able to activate unlimited saving from the options menu.

[raphael.bossniak2]

Originally posted by Cahalith:

For anyone reading this at this point in time:

I believe the system for unlimited saves is already in the game at this point. You should be able to activate unlimited saving from the options menu.

Yes it should be accessible in the Gameplay options.

[Henke]

Much appreciated! :)

[Hobo Bolsón]

Originally posted by beefpoweredcars:

40 year old dad of two who only has time for quick Steam Deck sessions- I agree 100% with OP. I’ll wait for those updates to decouple saves from difficulty setting or start over on easy if I get tired of waiting. I get the decision to do it this way and I appreciate experimentation in game design but ultimately I agree that more options for accessibility as a player is more important to me lately.

Game still hard on easy thou