Stephen said:

I made a post talking about what I wanted to see fixed and people argued about fixing the save system.

'Fixed' implies that it's broken in some way. It really isn't. Unless you count those rare times that I mentioned where losing power or your game glitching could theoretically erase all progress in any given timeline.

So like I said- Implement an autosave. That fixes that. Your suggestion isn't a 'fix'. You know how I know this? Because you said it yourself-

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.

What situation does your' hard save anywhere' suggestion actually 'fix'? Give me a situation in the game that you personally feel needs a fix, that doesn't count as an exploit, because remember, you're telling me you wouldn't feel the need to use such an exploit.

FYI: Just to be clear, something like screwing up the Sakon puzzle at the end of the Kafei-Anju quest, and then skipping back to a save just prior to the start of the puzzle? That's an exploit.


@Shadowlink

Gotta punish those people for playing their single player games how they like I suppose.

Oh yeah. Damn all those games that lock off endings and other content behind hard mode completions. They should let everyone play on the easiest mode possible and unlock everything.

Actuall screw that. Playing a game takes effort. Everything should be unlocked right from the start. In fact, why don't we just condense the game into one big movie, we can break out the popcorn, sit down and watch the game play itself.

You see how absurd it becomes when we take your arguments and run with them?


@Jargon

You act as if the game is unplayable garbage, locking off huge chunks of content from all but the most dedicated players. Isn't anywhere near as bad as that.


What you guys don’t seem to get is that a lot of the things that you seem to have issues with, are things that make the game the experience that it is. Again, do you really think that Nintendo *needed* to add in the invincible tanooki suit to make Mario platformers accessible?

Is the argument that because all of the later levels were ‘locked off’ to people who actually had the platforming skill required to beat the earlier levels, that Mario is ‘broken’ and badly designed? Did the Tanooki suit ‘fix’ the game? Does charging through the game with unlimited invincibility and flight really count as ‘experiencing’ a Mario game?

The difference between fixing something that is actually broken and just changing a gameplay element you don’t happen to like are two entirely different things.

@Shadowlink

Well, I was about as hyped as I've ever been for a game coming off OoT and I didn't beat it until something like 7 years later on Gamecube. My wife's favorite game is OoT by far, she plays it at least once a year from beginning to end and she played Majora's Mask about twice when I got it for her on VC before being completely turned off. Being an active member of the video game community and real life, I can tell you that our experiences are far from unique. It's not unplayable but it actively deters people from having fun with the game, in almost the opposite way that most Zelda games invite you to explore their world.

I'm incredibly pro-Invincible Tanooki suit. Why should ways for people of all levels of skill and dedication to enjoy a game be confined to things like Game Genie and emulators? So yes, I think it was pretty necessary to carry out Nintendo's mission of reaching as many people as possible.

But, regardless, those Mario games are already a million times more accessible than Majora's Mask even without the Tanooki suit. You play a level, you die, you try again. There's no worrying about time, or what repercussions your death might have the second time through.

I haven't taken the time to consider how Nintendo might change the save system but preserve what you guys like about the game. But I certainly think that Nintendo is capable of it. Video games have come a long way in 15 years, particularly in terms of accessibility and mitigating frustration. And Nintendo is the master of this stuff. I hope they focus their energy in that area instead of just slapping together a port to sell copies.

I don't mind if they add some cheat thing to get around the time mechanic.

But they should make you feel bad for being such a cheater. Like uh... what game was it where if you kept dying you could choose to play on an easier difficulty level, but then the game insults you? Ninja Gaiden Black I think?

You should have to endure like a full minute of the Happy Mask Man just pointing and laughing at you.

Shadowlink said:

'Fixed' implies that it's broken in some way. It really isn't. Unless you count those rare times that I mentioned where losing power or your game glitching could theoretically erase all progress in any given timeline.

So like I said- Implement an autosave. That fixes that. Your suggestion isn't a 'fix'. You know how I know this? Because you said it yourself-

What situation does your' hard save anywhere' suggestion actually 'fix'? Give me a situation in the game that you personally feel needs a fix, that doesn't count as an exploit, because remember, you're telling me you wouldn't feel the need to use such an exploit.

FYI: Just to be clear, something like screwing up the Sakon puzzle at the end of the Kafei-Anju quest, and then skipping back to a save just prior to the start of the puzzle? That's an exploit.

Oh yeah. Damn all those games that lock off endings and other content behind hard mode completions. They should let everyone play on the easiest mode possible and unlock everything.

Actuall screw that. Playing a game takes effort. Everything should be unlocked right from the start. In fact, why don't we just condense the game into one big movie, we can break out the popcorn, sit down and watch the game play itself.

You see how absurd it becomes when we take your arguments and run with them?

An autosave would work fine sure. I was just thinking about letting people save whenever they wanted a la Ocarina of Time. What does that fix? Well a couple things. First, it makes it so you don't have to seek out what are essentially save points which are pretty archaic these days. Second, it gets rid of the whole temporary save rules that plagued the owl statues. I've heard of people who lost a lot of progress because some series of events caused their progress to wipe because they didn't realize the owl statues were temporary. Other games don't really do that. Usually if somethings saved it is saved. It's not that it is needed at a specific part or whatever.

That being said, if someone wants to create a save point before say the Romani defense mission because they don't want to have to reset time, buy powder keg, blow up the boulder, wait around for night, stop the aliens abducting the cows, all to get another shot to defend the wagon I don't feel like that's such a terrible thing. It certainly doesn't impact my enjoyment of the game if they do it like that.

People do watch games played start to finish. I don't personally understand it but Let's Play channels are a big thing now. If you can reasonably argue why other people shouldn't be allowed to enjoy a game when it doesn't impact others then I'm open to hearing that argument.

Adding incentives to harder difficulties is fine. It doesn't prevent people from completing the game. And in general if someone wants to make a tough as nails games with no easy way out they can do that too. But people will dislike it for being too unforgiving, and people will probably not play it because of that. The question is is that what Nintendo is trying to do with Majora's Mask and I think the answer there is a very obvious no.

What if they gave us the option, a la Fire Emblem Awakening's "Casual" Mode? Simply let you hard-save at any time, call it Casual Mode, and lock off some minor cosmetic thing (like the best ending, or a star by your file) if you pick it.

I can see the argument that giving MM hard saves at any time decreases part of the challenge and appeal, but it's certainly preferable to people not playing the game at all, right?

Yeah, options are a wonderful thing in games. Lets people play how they want to play.

I'll understand outrage if they force such changes on advanced players, but if not? Then what's it matter if somebody else chooses to play more casually than you? I'd personally never play with the hint system on in a Metroid Prime game and was passed when Corruption still gave out hints with it turned off, but I get that doing all that backtracking and not knowing where to go is a dealbreaker for some others. Options!

Stephen said:

[quote=Shadowlink]An autosave would work fine sure. I was just thinking about letting people save whenever they wanted a la Ocarina of Time. What does that fix? Well a couple things. First, it makes it so you don't have to seek out what are essentially save points which are pretty archaic these days. Second, it gets rid of the whole temporary save rules that plagued the owl statues. I've heard of people who lost a lot of progress because some series of events caused their progress to wipe because they didn't realize the owl statues were temporary. Other games don't really do that. Usually if somethings saved it is saved. It's not that it is needed at a specific part or whatever.

I could totally live with a constant hard autosave that the player doesn't have control over... not sure if that's technically possible. The only game I know of that did anything like that is Game & Watch Gallery 4, where you could turn your Gameboy off mid-game without even pausing or anything and it would remember exactly where you're at. Probably wouldn't be as simple in Majora's Mask, but it's a fair idea.

Jargon said:

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.

That's life dude.

@Secret_Tunnel

That may be life but these are video games which are endearing to people specifically because they aren't real life.

@Stephen

It all depends on what the experience is though. I mean, go check out Papers, Please, or better yet, Cart Life... sometimes games intend to bring out negative emotions in you. Majora's Mask is supposed to be stressful and frustrating--that wasn't an accident. I can totally understand if someone isn't into that--I'll never have any desire to play Cart Life again after I tried it out for half an hour--but altering an already great experience to suit those people isn't making the game better for anyone. It's like drowning a world-class steak in ketchup. That's your prerogative, I don't even like steak, but just go eat a hotdog instead.

Plus the difference in my analogy is that implementing a mechanic in a game that makes the game easier tempts the player to use it, whether that's better for the intended experience or not, whereas if you put ketchup on your steak I won't be tempted to put it on mine. Letting players hard-save changes the game for everyone, not just the players who want it. I can live with Triforcebun's idea of having to choose a mode at the beginning of the game and then sticking with that mode throughout the whole game.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that people who want Majora's Mask to remain the same already have that game available to them. It's readily available on N64, Gamecube and Wii Virtual Console. If the remake changes the game in ways they don't like, they can stick to the original version.

@Secret_Tunnel

No it's not. If you fuck up in real life you move on, this isn't Groundhogs Day.

@Jargon

Groundhog Day would have been a lot less interesting if Bill Murray could've just skipped back an hour whenever he wanted.

@Secret_Tunnel

Groundhog Day would have been a lot more boring if they showed you the entirety of each day he lived.

I've always wondered if there's days that they didn't show where Phil does some seriously dark shit.

@Jargon

Not that I think Nintendo would actually force this choice, but if you're telling me that if I want a shiny uprezzed portable version of the game with any potential extra bells and whistles (Master Quest or whatever), that I have to accept a handholdy 'casualised' version of the game in payment...

Then I have to tell you, that no, that's not really acceptable.

The last thing I want to do is drag Tropes stuff in here, but isn't one of the arguments made against in that whole debacle, that no-one is trying to force changes to the games currently clung to by recalcitrant male gamers? That no-one is taking away the games that they’re currently playing, they just want to see the market expand with games that break free of the standard fare of male power fantasies?

Apply that concept here. Should you be demanding a challenging game be changed and made easier so a certain subset of people to enjoy it? Or should they instead be looking elsewhere for games that they do enjoy? (Or in the absence of such games, campaigning to have those games created?)

Like I said, I don't think Nintendo would actually do that. If anything, I would suspect you'd see something like T-Bun suggested, where you get an 'easy mode', selectable from the start.

@Shadowlink

Don't buy it then.

If Nintendo does make the changes I suggest it will be because they (correctly, in my opinion) view the sales potential of catering to a broader audience as outweighing that of catering to diehard Majora's Mask fans.

@Jargon

Back 'atcha .

Don't like Majora's Mask as it is? Off you go then, don't buy it.

@Jargon

Oh well, if it's a broad audience and sales we're after, we've got much further to go. Adding in a game-breaking save system is the least of our worries.

First step- Link needs to be updated. Put in the Adult Link model, not Young Link. Then make him ripped and badass, like that dude from God of War. Then maybe give him a gun. Gamers like guns.

Now we need stuff to shoot. Hey there's Zombies over in Ikana Canyon. Remove the characters from the rest of the game and replace them all with Zombies. There's no sidequest that can't be solved by shooting zombies.

What about extra masks. Can we put some of those in? You can either slay 10,000 zombies to get a token that you can exchange for a random mask, or you can pay 4.99 to unlock it right away.


Man so much stuff that needs changing. Not to worry though, we gonna sell millions! It'll be great!

Damn. Now I'm going to have to play it.

@kriswright

One of us, one of usssssss.

I don't have too much to comment on this game.. other then I want to finish it one day. The only way I was going to buy WW HD if it had several changes made to make it better - and the same can be said for this one in my opinion.

Playing hours in a game and not 'hard saving' was frustrating - .. a soft save being deleted by a reset/power surge/bug/death or whatever wipes your progress and I could not be bothered to start again.

Changes:
Keep that damn fairy piece in the same place at the beginning of the game (Shadowlink touched on this already). That was painful.
Slow the default days/nights down to what it's like when you find the song that slows time. Make the song slow it down even more.
Save anywhere the hell you want. Seriously. Make each save count as a hard save. Keep the owls as warp points. Keep the banker that keeps all your rupees. Keep all the 'rules' that are involved with the rupees etc you lose when going back in time.
Pacing: I really don't know how to change this..but I felt like I wasted so much time doing sidequests.. it was a lot of trial and error because if you discover something and you realize you don't have enough time to explore your 'guess' you have to deposit your rupees,warp back in time and try again. Oh but what if you need to wait till nightfall? Shit now I have to wait all day (figuratively)... I believe there is a song that fast fwd'sd the day to night but not till much later..
Direction: I don't want the game to to hold my hand..but it's the only Zelda game I've played where I've become stuck several times over on many different quests....And I'm one of the people who figured out the water temple in Ocarina with no issues... like at all.

I'm curious as to what Nintendo comes up with