“I will tell you something strange that happens though, and has never happened for me before anywhere in the genre; whenever I enter a tough room I always reach up to quicksave. That’s weird, right? The game is filed mentally as “single player,” despite all the evidence to the contrary.
That’s quite a trick.”
— Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade on Star Wars: The Old Republic
There’s not much that I can add, except that I’ve also done exactly the same thing several times in Star Wars: The Old Republic. And found myself somewhat sad each time that I couldn’t save.
I had put it down to playing Skyrim non-stop for weeks (that’s game time) beforehand, an RPG where one generally has at least one finger surgically connected to the quick save key (preferably a second for backup in case you need to save while the first save is still going through) and fast save-reloads have evolved beyond simple muscle memory into something programmed into the player’s genetic code.
But now that someone else has put voice to the curiosity, I’m no longer so sure of the Skyrim connection. It’s an interesting phenomenon nevertheless, and it’s never happened to me in an MMO before, as far as I can recall; I wonder how many other players have experienced this effect in SWTOR.
I looked for quicksaves at the start, until I realized my actions seemed to have little consequence on how the game played out.
Now, maybe they actually did have consequence but like rl don’t reverberate until generations later. In which case bravo Bioware, I look forward to seeing 6.2.
Can’t say I’ve done this, but then I’m notoriously bad at remembering to save in single player games anyway. I can’t count the number of times I’ve died a gruesome death, only to pull my hair out discovering my last save was 2 hours previously.
Wait, can I be notoriously bad at something if I’m the only one that knows? Except now I’ve posted it on a popular blog . . . so did I just make myself notoriously bad at saving? :P
Yep, me too.
It’s the radial dialog/chat selection and presentation of the cut scenes, really. It is Mass Effect in that way, and in Mass Effect I quick saved constantly. Though I quick saved more in Skyrim (and I definitely quick loaded more in Skyrim too).
Yeah, I’ve been trying to quicksave too. I’ve even made a choice or two that afterwards, I wished I could go back and do the opposite.
As a consequence, I turned off the darkside/lightside indicators because I realized they were making me make choices based on Max Points instead of what I thought was a good idea. Much more fun this way.
I said much the same to some of my guildies over the past week. I am forever thinking “Okay, big door, about to open it, let’s Quicksa…aww dammit” :D
I did the same thing a few times in the beginning, particularly when I saw the light/dark points options, as moonmonster commented.
You’re right that it probably from lessons learned (the hard way) in Skyrim, or Dragon Age, or earlier single-player games.
For those who might not know this yet: you can reset any conversation by pressing escape, allowing you to remake any lightside/darkside/affection choices.
There is no game in recent memory that is as guilty of the quicksave addiction as Skyrim. Deus Ex comes close, but not quite.
Word: clart. Is that like a clenched fart?
Too true… I do think though that one of the main reasons that MMOs are more fun than single player games is precisely that you can’t press the save game key, so you have to accept the consequences of your decisions…
Skyrim would be a whole lot better in my opinion if had been implemented online with no save game option – perhaps we could have a new genre: massively single player online role playing games – sort of like Guild Wars 1, but more so.
@Roq:
No save on Skyrim? Sheesh, is Dark Souls your game?
I would’ve unsubbed at the 1st troll.