I'm against changing Majora's Mask save system. It might not be ideal, but it is very much at the heart of what makes the game so interesting. The only reason I've seen for people wanting to change the save system is because of the Anju/Kafei quest line. I think the game actually punishing you in such a way for failure is what makes it so great. You got into Sakon's Hideout but failed the quest at the last step? Cool, reset time, do it again, and get better. Having a checkpoint system would cripple the experience for me. You might as well have enemies give you hearts when they attack you because you can't handle avoiding their attacks.

Keep the Owl Statues, maybe put in more, but don't give people resets at any time they want. That just cheapens the world for me.

@missypissy

Agreed.

@GameDadGrant
I agree with your agreement.

PogueSquadron said:

The thing is though, even without hard saves, Majora's Mask is a very difficult game. There's plenty of challenge already in figuring out just where to go or what to do next.

Also, they did add save features to old Mario games in Mario All Stars and other releases. I'm sure you could argue that adding a save feature breaks the challenge of Mario 3, but they did add it in All Stars and Advance.

No, they added saves in between levels. There was no mid-level saves, which is what people seem to want.

The VC versions add those Mid-level saves in the form of save states, and yes, those break the game as far as I'm concerned.

The current 'hard' saves of Majora's Mask are already the equivalent of Mario's 'between level' saves. That's why you don't have to restart the entire game from scratch every time you turn your console on- Certain progress is saved. 'Hard' saving mid-timeline is the equivalent of a save state. It absolutely breaks what the game is meant to be.

@r_hjort

Thirded. Err wait. Fourthed?

The point isn't that you could then abuse a new save system it's that you don't have this weird divide between types of saves. This is about making the game better and addressing the questionable save system does that. If it could be exploited then oh well, don't use it like that. This is from a company after all who will give you basically a free win in the form of a white tanooki suit. Beyond that, I think some of you guys need to think about what makes a game challenging. The Anju Kafei quest isn't challenging. You follow the notebook and trigger the events. Sending you back a couple hours because you made a mistake isn't challenge. It would be like if you were in Mario and fail level 5-3 once and have to go back to world 1-1. That speaks nothing to the actual challenge of the content and just to how punishing the game is for failure.

No-one says the Anju/Kafei quest is hard, though it is hilarious that you narrow it down to "follow the notebook and trigger the events"...it's time consuming. Spans multiple parts, some pretty tight deadlines, and goes right up near the end of the 3-days. People hang their hats on it being a huge negative for the save system because they always reach the Hideout and run out of time before having to reset.

Hardsaving to any time is easily exploitable in a game that revolves around a 3-day cycle. There's a massive difference in world building when you are forced to reset to Day 1 because you didn't reach Sakon's hideout in time, and loading up a save file at Day 2 at 18:00. You essentially start on Mission 5 of a 10 Mission game.

This is nothing like Mario, either. Not sure what the white suit dig was for, but for a game built around fearing, managing, and overcoming time allowing players the ability to save at any moment is a pretty large deal. The temp save system works just fine as is. You should be punished for failing to manage time based on a game revolving around time.

I'm no fan of remakes, but I'm curious how they'll change up this one. There's a good game somewhere in here, it's just hidden behind some truly awful design choices.

That said, they should probably keep in a "traditional" mode which is the game structure in its original form. Having the option for that will keep longtime fans happen whilst also serving to make the game more accessible for new players or people who didn't want to put up with the game's flaws.

@missypissy

How is it any different? If Majora's Mask is a game about time then Mario is a game about platforming. Failure to platform adequately should be grounds for failure. But it isn't any more. Not if you don't want it to be.

I maintain there's nothing difficult about Anju/Kafei. You literally just be at the right place at the right time and if you aren't you fail and start over. That's not an execution of skill, it is minimal planning with trial and error.

Again though, that's not really my concern and if there were such an exploit I wouldn't feel the need to use it. I just want a decent save system.

@Stephen

Your analogy is utterly incorrect.

Stephen said:

It would be like if you were in Mario and fail level 5-3 once and have to go back to world 1-1.

No. Because if that was the case, then you'd also lose all temple progress, all masks, all weapons and items...basically a complete reset of the game. That's what 'returning to 1-1' is. A complete and total reset.


In Majora's Mask, if you fail in any one timeline, you go back to the start of the timeline and try again. If you fail in 5-3 in Mario, you go back to the start of 5-3 and you try again. You don't regenerate two seconds before your last failed jump. That's what a 'hard save anywhere' feature in Majora's Mask will give you, and yes it breaks the game.


And the whole 'If you don't like it, don't use it' argument is just silly. Even with the 'free win' option in Mario, it requires you to repeatedly and utterly fail on the same level over and over again and then hit the magic box of mercy that appears.It's not a 'free win' box. It's an "I give up" box. It's not there as part and parcel of the game to be triggered at will at any time. It's something that's eventually offered to you because the game has taken pity on you.


Turn this whole thing around. Is there anyone on this site who would seriously argue that the old Mario games need the invincible tanooki suit to be included because old school Mario is 'too hard' or 'flawed'?

Because that's the argument that's being made here for Majora's Mask.

PS: The Anju-Kafei sidequest that apparently causes such grief? If you know what you're doing 'following the notebook and triggering events', it takes slightly over 20 minutes of real time (let's be generous and round it up to an even half hour). That's it. And most of that is just waiting for the events to roll around. If you're losing MORE time than that, odds are you were doing other stuff during that time, so you're not exactly wasting effort.

@Stephen
How is Majora's Mask not about time? The game ends if you don't manage it. That's a pretty simply concept.

@Shadowlink

Right so clearly it's not an issue of difficulty in doing it, it's just an archaic form of punishing the player which is what I said. It's like what egoraptor said in his Sequelitis video about Ocarina, wasting the player's time gives an illusion of difficulty.

'If you don't like don't use it' was the argument floated around for the white tanooki suit and it applies here. When I was a kid I never even bothered with the owl statues and would just do a hard reset every time. That's not for everyone though. Nintendo realized that when they introduced the soft save functionality with the NA release. Single player games shouldn't be about forcing people to play it only one way. There are more tools than ever before to allow users to get the kind of experience they want out of a title.

@missypissy

And Mario is supposed to end if you aren't good enough to make it through a level. Doesn't work that way any more though.

Why do you want to prevent people from enjoying the game? If people feel the game is too punishing then that is something Nintendo will (and probably should) look in to. The only caveat is that they need to preserve the challenge for people who want it. It's in that area Zelda games have been lacking in recent years.

@Stephen

Why bother punishing people in any game then?

Let's make everyone invincible and superpowered in every game ever. All challenge does is waste peoples time when they're forced to redo stuff.

EDIT: If Nintendo *does* put something silly like a completely unnecessary 'hard save anytime' function in, I hope they do what they did for the Mario games- If you use it, it automatically stops you from getting 100% completion. In Mario it just stopped you from getting shiny stars.

In Majora's Mask? Lock off the Fierce Deity's mask. You gotta earn that, not savescum your way to it.

@Stephen

See above re: Fierce Deity mask.

@Stephen
You are just picking a fight to pick a fight, so I really don't give a shit what you get enjoyment out of. You haven't explained anything except a bunch of weird posts about Mario.

Stephen said:

Why do you want to prevent people from enjoying the game? If people feel the game is too punishing then that is something Nintendo will (and probably should) look in to. The only caveat is that they need to preserve the challenge for people who want it.

Seriously. It's not like we're guessing here, it's well known that after one of the most widely loved games ever in OoT, many people just didn't bother with MM because of its baffling and unforgiving mechanics. And video games in general have become much more accessible and user friendly since then, so even less people will put up with that.

I think Nintendo knows this and will adjust accordingly but it makes me suspicious that MM fans seem to want to preserve the game as their "special club" rather than making changes (which they don't have to use) to make the game more appealing and allow more people to experience the game's dungeons, story, etc. which any OoT fan can certainly enjoy.

@missypissy

What do you want me to explain?

I made a post talking about what I wanted to see fixed and people argued about fixing the save system. That's not picking a fight.

@Shadowlink
Gotta punish those people for playing their single player games how they like I suppose. Personally I'd let them do whatever. It doesn't hurt anyone. Also, I'm not sure unlocking the FD mask is what I'd call difficult. Time consuming sure, difficult no.

@Jargon
#NotAllMMFans

Choice is a huge part of Majora's Mask. Being able to go back do things differently is the game. I don't think there's a single person on Earth who hasn't wished they could do that. But having no consequences for your actions makes that power completely meaningless. If none of your choices have consequences, then why redo anything? Majora's Mask wants to make you feel bad when things don't go right.

The argument that games should be made easier so that more people can enjoy them is completely misguided to me when challenge is inherent to a particular game's design. Like, screw it, throw in custom soundtrack functionality while we're at it so I can listen to Taylor Swift's new album instead of the game's original score. And let's replace all the slang in A Clockwork Orange with English so that it's more accessible too.

@Jargon
People don't want it changed because it affects the very core of the game. It's not difficult. The time mechanic and save mechanic go hand in hand. No-one, that I see, is against making changes to help players into the game. They should clean up pacing problems, like the beginning of the game, to make it easier and quicker for players to get into the world. They should clean up the dialogue and explains things more clearly, so that the ground rules are laid out and new players understand. They could make any number of tweaks to any other part of the game and it would likely be fine.

But the save system is one that should stay. It's not frustrating because it's not Ocarina of Time. It's frustrating because it's the entire premise the game is built off of. You relive the same 3 days over and over and over again. You are not supposed to win in one 3 day cycle. You can't accomplish everything everyone asks of you in one 3 day cycle. The entire game is built around needing to do things over and over again in order to advance. Allowing people to make a fixed save on any day completely destroys that illusion. "Don't use it" is the same as me saying "Get better". It does nothing. You have a hard save that resets you to Day 1 06:00 and you get a soft save at whatever time/day that gets erased once you pick back up.

It'd be like taking Ocarina of Time's time warp mechanic and tying it to a button instead of needing to go back to the Temple of Time. You save some time, "everyone" who hated going back enjoys it...but it completely flies in the face of the games logic.

@missypissy

The fact that you can't accomplish everything everyone asks of you in one 3 day cycle is exactly why this type of change wouldn't ruin the game. You still will have to go back in time and start over. In fact, almost assuredly many of the hard saves will make it impossible to complete tasks because you were too slow up until that point. But for the times when everything is going according to plan and you fuck one thing up, you don't have to redo something that you already did perfectly. In that way, it's the same as not having to play Mario levels that you've already mastered over and over because of one jump that keeps killing you.

I'll freely admit that there's lots of other things they can do to make the game more accessible. It's within the realm of possibility that they can fix enough other things that this particular mechanic can begrudgingly stay and the game will still be much more fun for most people. But I don't see the save system as some sacred cow that can't possibly be changed.