Dragon Age: Origins for example. There you have a clear definition of being in combat. And with most games having segmented combat these days, it is not so hard to do.

Only allowing saving in combat would be nonsensical (not sure why you put that statement in parentheses).

I see no reason why platforming sections should have disabled saving.

So I can just finish fights with 1 HP, go kill myself, be healed to full and thus remove any point of looking for resources in the first place? Sounds good.

Yes, provided you reach the next checkpoint first. (You would still have to repeat the current segment if you die before reaching the next.)

(Perhaps having the checkpoint heal you, like in some Metroidvania games, would also work.)

Other things I don't miss (RPG focused):
* Having healing magic be so weak that it gets tedious healing your characters after battle (early Wizardry (until MADI), AD&D based games (particularly Pool of Radiance, as it's likely the worst offender), Final Fantasy 1)
* In FInal Fantasy 1, having to buy 99 healing potions, one at a time (no option to buy them in bulk), just to survive the dungeons (at least until the Heal Staff/Helmet appear)
* In Final Fantasy 1, being limited to 3 spells per level, with no option to remove a spell to make room for a different one, in a game where some spells are useless or don't even work properly
* Having non-discardable quest items taking up a large portion of your limited inventory (Final Fantasy 2 is an offender here)
* The combination of limited places to save with enemies that can, if they choose, wipe out your whole party and you can't do anything about it (FF1, Dragon Quest 2)
* Encounters where your entire party is put to sleep/paralyzed, allowing enemies to keep attacking you without you getting to do anything before your whole party gets wiped out (I believe this has happened to me in FF1, though it's quite possible in DQ2 as well)
* Enemies not having MP limits when you do

If you don't miss the jump at 3) and reach the next checkpoint the problem doesn't even appear in the first place.

Let me put it more detailed since it seems it's not as obvious as I had first thought:
1) Finish a fight at 10HP - CHECKPOINT HAPPENS
2) Spend 10 minutes scrounging the level for health, armor, ammo and secrets
3) Miss a jump right before the next checkpoint
4) You are back at 1), everything you did since 2) until 3) never happened and you can do it all again
5) Have fun repeating 2)

If we apply what you said, then I can just off myself immediately after 1), have full health and ammo given to me for free and just ignore 2) entirely.

It feels like you have different games in mind than me. Because I see zero scenarios where what you wrote would be valid in any FPS for example. It completely negates resource management of any kind and just allows you to not care about resources at all.

Agreed. That's why I've grown to appreciate the rest modes of the PS4 and Xbone (although those don't allow you to switch games). Then again, I mostly use it in case of games that use archaic manual save systems (for instance Yakuza 0 which I've been playing lately, and Jak 2).

Ok, good. I find myself having to apologize a lot when talking about that one. I swear to the Almighty even with all of the man's other shortcomings he is absolutely the dumbest human being I have ever seen in public life and swear that he must be dumber than a bag of hammers.

And then just feel awful about what I just said about a bag of hammers.

It doesn't negate resource management; rather, it changes things so that you only have to worry about resource management over one segment at a time. If the game is balanced with this in mind, you can't fire your ultimate weapon constantly, but you can still use it on the occasional strong enemy; the trick is to figure out *which* enemy is the strong one that you want to use it on.

(The balance, of course, depends on the power of the weapon in question, the amount of ammo you're given, and the length of each segment between check points.)

Pretty sure I've never read any articles like that in the magazines here. It also always depends on what time period one is talking about. If anything, earlier games had to be in a playable state since patches weren't a thing yet (not talking about complete garbage games here). As time moved on, patches slowly became a thing as games became more complex and developers/publishers relied on CDs to fix any issues...as well as the web as time moved on. Nowadays, with internet being pretty much everywhere, they don't care anymore. They release their games in a broken/incomplete state and later just patch it up. At the same time, they don't care about keeping the filesizes small anymore. Huges patches aren't exactly uncommon.

Good points, but I was thinking specifically of FPS. At some point, maybe Call of Duty 4, the trend went from first aid pickups to health regen.

Point 2 also applies to many FPS games. Ever heard of "rocket jumping"?

Incidentally, I believe RPGs (and RPG-like games) went through a similar transition when it comes to magical resources. Originally, to recover your magic, you would have to go back to town and rest there, but in later games, your MP (or whatever the stat is called) would regenerate on its own.

Of course, many RPGs had MP restoring items, but the earliest ones did not (Wizardry 1-5 don't have any non-rare MP restoring items, neither did Bard's Tale 1 and 2 (but note 3's Harmonic Gems), and the Might and Magic series (which has rest anywhere) doesn't either; neither did DQ1 or FF1, for that matter, and FF3 has no buyable ones).

(Notable counter-example: Ultima games from 3 onward (except 5, for some reason) also have regenerating MP, though starting in 4 you also need reagents to cast spells.)

This right here. Buying a new game and taking it home only to gird yourself for a potentially lengthy and suspenseful campaign just to get the thing installed properly. I've seen people say they like to stick to consoles because PC games aren't plug-and-play, but they have no idea how much easier PC games are now compared to the 80s and 90s. This and the loading times and disk-swapping are what I don't miss at all.

But not every game has formal combat states, does it? (as dtgreene incidentally addressed in his post)

That said, the Halo series actually combines checking the combat state with automatic checkpoints. Already the first game very accurately recognised safe situations (even during very brief pauses, better than a player ever could) and would save automatically then. There were also other factors at play like how long it's been since the last save and whatnot. It's a pretty brilliant solution that keeps the challenges real while taking the responsibility of save management off the player.

Not true at all. It's the games' designers who are responsible for making sure that people at least tend to play a game "right". If, say, 50% of people play your game in a manner that you haven't intended and that's notably less enjoyable than the "right" one, you've seriously messed up. And it is a massive problem if your game's reception gets bad mainly because you even allow people to play a game wrong (we're talking "people losing their jobs" dimensions of problems here). If you've carefully designed a combat system and levels and whatnot so each encounter is one well-balanced intense experience that's supposed to convey some sense of gravity and danger but people kill that experience with constant saving and loading, thereby eliminating everything you've been working for, you've seriously messed up by even giving them the option.

And players tend to optimise their performance, they are supposed to and generally will use every "legitimate" tool at their disposal. If you give them a tool that allows them to perform better but makes the game less fun they will also use that one. Whether it's an overpowered gun, too much bullet time or free saving - it's the designer's fault. Some players will openly blame the designer, others will just not enjoy the game as much without necessarily knowing why. Either way, it's the designer's fault. That some players have fun regardless or are willing to force themselves to have a bigger challenge doesn't prove the others wrong.

Very wrong. Free saving literally allows people to mismanage their saves and create gamebreaking scenarios. It hasn't happened that often to me but it's been a few times that I've accidentally overwritten my last quicksave with a situation where death was literally inevitable, e.g. because I saved just as a rocket was about to explode in my face and then I had to reload the last manual save that I had made, possibly an hour ago or something. And I am a savvy player. I can't count the number of times more casual gamer friends of mine have broken their games and given up due to mismanaged saving.

Keep in mind that checkpoints are also legitimate points for resetting or adjusting the game state. Games usually replenish health when loading a checkpoint, sometimes also other resources, in some cases games even track how well you're doing and may ease a scenario after reloading a checkpoint upon death (Resident Evil 4 did this quite magnificently). They are excellent tools to avoid exactly the kinds of scenarios you're talking about.

How many modern games even allow you or need you to backtrack for resources, though? Most games these days are designed around small sequences with isolated resource pools and tend to have some means of replenishing your resources (whether it's health or ammo) when you reach a new section. I love exploration and resource management as much as the next guy but come on, is it really good design when in the context of a plot where you're on some urgent mission to save the world or something you keep going back to already visited rooms where there's not even any challenges left because you've already killed everyone and solved all environmental puzzles there? What kind of gameplay or fantasy is that? E.g. Star Wars' Deathstar section would suck pretty bad if Luke and Han Solo would constantly kill all Stormtroopers and then calmly walk back to an earlier room to get more ammo, and not meet any more Stormtroopers until they've reached a new room.

I'm pretty much as experienced with oldschool shooters as it gets, I've been playing them since I was a kid and play them to this day. My navigation skills in these games are pretty great, I think, even Wolfenstein 3D with its samey mazes is barely giving me a hard time anymore. But being able to memorise maps doesn't help in spotting obscure items, spots or dependencies and the maze-like structure of these old games tends to escalate the consequences of missing something of importance. And when I say "escalate" I mean having to spend 20 or 30 or 40 minutes scouring the entire level for a small detail and eventually giving up. Incidentally I think that that's a much bigger risk than the doomsday scenario of running out of resources before a checkpoint that you described above.

Modern games often have tons of variety, just not the "go back and check each corner for a key or healthpack while not facing any danger" kind. And let's get real: variety isn't really one of the strong suits of the likes of Doom or Quake.

As a reminder, I'm a she, not a he. (Did you forget to read my forum title?)

Sorry, didn't know that and yeah, I didn't read the title. Will try to remember.

I mean, in FPS, it's pretty clear. Same for RPGs. Of course there will always be exceptions and genres where this doesn't apply.

And why are you so bent on "taking the responsibility" from the player? Should the player not be trusted with anything? A dev's idea of an optimal save system will never click with 100% of the people. All I'm asking for is options. Checkpoints and auto saves are a nice supplement to manual saves/quick saves but on their own range from not optimal to outright annoying if executed badly.
Unless the game is built around dying, respawning, re-playing and checkpoints in general (Dark Souls, roguelikes etc.) manual saves should always be an option.
A player can change their gaming behavior but not something that is hard-coded into the game and not to his liking. If a particular save system is better or worse depends on the game in question.

Players tend to optimize their performance but there are tons people who would never use bugs/exploits that reduce fun to gain an unintended advantage. And assuming manual saves/quick saves make the game less fun is a good joke. I have found exactly the opposite to be true. I can try all those "what if" situations. "Can I make that jump?". "Or is there a secret in that seemingly inescapable pit?". With checkpoints, I would not bother. Not to mention that checkpoints are much more prone to bugs. In case a normal save bugs out, just load the previous one. Bugged checkpoint means restarting the level at best, whole game at worst.
If you are inexperienced with manual saves (and I bet a lot of people are these days) then that is possible but it's, again, only your fault for saving in a stupid situation and just keeping one save slot with no fallbacks. It is a decision the player made without thinking and now he pays for it. I also saved many time just a moment before a Cyberdemon rocket splattered me all over the place. All I had to do was just load a previous save. Problem solved. You can keep multiple saves and load each of them freely while with checkpoints, you just have the "resume from last checkpoint" option. What if I want to just jump into the middle of a level to replay some fun part?

Auto adjusting difficulty is the next worst thing that could happen. I want to find a way to overcome the challenge, not have the game suddenly get easy just because it thinks I might get annoyed. I chose the difficulty at the game start, I either make it through or restart at a lower difficulty/reduce the difficulty of my OWN volition, not because the game/dev thinks it is appropriate. Just catering to casual gamers. If that feature can be turned off, no problems-do whatever you want but if you force it on me, then I would probably stop playing right there.
*Doom and Wolfenstein flashbacks intensify*.....

If there is something urgent or the plot needs to move, you are usually prevented from backtracking, there are no pickups in these segments and you are railroaded through them. That is not really a problem at all. And I'd much rather actually find the resources rather than have them magically appear in my inventory for some unknown reason.
Unless you are talking about pixel hunting in adventures and the like, then I simply disagree.

And the doomsday scenario is losing progress and having to replay the same thing you just did just because you are not allowed to save freely, not running out of resources.
This is probably a question of personal taste so not worth debating.