Issue around activating the laser aimed at Earth

[Dirty Wizard]

Not a bug per se but sometimes the game doesn't autosave regularly enough. Pressing that button to activate SHODAN's laser on the 2nd level, and getting the game over screen, will destroy all your time in that area (at least an hour) and reload your save in the elevator when you're swarmed with zombies.

For most players they'll just press a glowing switch without even thinking about it because it's what we've been conditioned to do in games. It's cool that the remake has retained that fail state from the original, it's subversive and unexpected etc, but I don't think we should be severely punished for it by losing more than an hour of game time, forcing us to repeat that entire floor finding all the keys again, all the logs, etc. It felt unfair and like it was an overlooked mistake in design.

Maybe the game could autosave when we enter that room? That way people can still mindlessly push the switch, recieve the game over screen, and then just reload a save in the doorway of that room.

[Arc]

Feel free to use F5, it's readily available to everybody.

[Dirty Wizard]

Originally posted by Arc:

Feel free to use F5, it's readily available to everybody.

Way to miss the point. It's not the player's fault that an arbitrary switch will unexpectedly end the game. This is an overlooked design problem and needs to be addressed.

[Jack Trader]

It IS the player's fault that they didn't pay attention and press glowing switch without even thinking about it. In the same room with that button there is an audiolog that says not to risk firing the laser.

[colours (⌐■_■)]

I fired the laser the first time I entered the room, then I accepted my fate.

It's an idiot test, we both failed miserably my dude.

[Dirty Wizard]

It's poor game design to wipe out an hour or more of the player's progress just by them accidentally flipping the wrong switch, when every single other switch is for a door or something similar. The switch itself even looks exactly the same as a door switch.

The game never indicates that there are catastrophic game over states connected to switches. It's fine to have this in the game, and it's definitely fine to punish the player for being careless, but the player either needs to be warned that this kind of thing is in the game by a previous switch that causes heavy damage to you or something, or just not such a sparse autosave system.

Forcing you to repeat an entire 1hour+ level because you flipped a switch and triggered an arbitrary game over is not respecting the player's time. There's no good reason for it and I can guarantee that it wasn't a deliberate decision by the devs, it's just been accidentally overlooked.

[baronmike1000]

It's a deliberate design decision. It was the same in the 1994 original. It's a pity you lost your progress. F5 is quicksave which is handy before pressing buttons that have "Laser Charging" written next to them. You can also open the menu and manually save anytime during the game (except for Cyberspace I think).

[Dirty Wizard]

Originally posted by baronmike1000:

It's a deliberate design decision. It was the same in the 1994 original. It's a pity you lost your progress.

The player losing their progress is not a deliberate design decision. It would be a great feature if it didn't force you to replay a giant chunk of the game.

[hunne]

What part of "save often, save early" didn´t you get?
You effed up. Don´t blaim the game for it. There´s no "replenish health" out of nowhere in this game nor is there any hand preventing your hand from throwing a switch, of which you´d know not to throw it, if you paid attention to the logs.
Yes, it is a deliberate design choice.
YOU and only YOU forced yourself to replay that entire level by not saving even once on your own.
Also, the game does autosave here and there, so I highly doubt you even had that entire level cleared, if you end up in the elevator again...

[Dirty Wizard]

Originally posted by hunne:

There´s no "replenish health" out of nowhere in this game

There's literally a mechanic that lets you respawn for free without having to load a save. I hadn't died once before the game over laser. lol this is NOT a difficult game by any measure and most of the time you don't even need the save system unless you quit. So to be hit with a progress-destroying game over screen for flipping a switch that looks like every single other door switch is a clear overlooked design flaw. This isn't an issue of "get gud" so stop acting like it is.

Why are the steam forums so full of pedant nerds who will argue till they're blue in the face how a clear oversight isn't really an oversight and it's totally the player's fault? You could report a bug about falling through the floor and you'd get 4 people saying "it's your fault for not avoiding that patch of floor how dare you point out a problem in this game we like".

Originally posted by hunne:

Also, the game does autosave here and there, so I highly doubt you even had that entire level cleared, if you end up in the elevator again...

lol that's the entire reason I'm posting the topic, Sherlock. Why would I be posting this here if it hadn't wiped more than an hour of my progress? The sole purpose of this post is to draw the devs' attention to the fact that sometimes the game doesn't autosave regularly enough which results in massive loss of progress. It's not fun to have to replay an entire level over again just because you trusted the game to have a modern autosave feature.