Rewarding higher difficulties might make sense, but the game should not reward the player limiting their saves in any way. One should not muck with the save system in the name of "difficulty", except perhaps to keep dungeon-scale resource management an important factor. (In other words, perhaps it makes sense to limit where the player can save (to a degree; those points shouldn't be too far apart, and there should always be at least one such point accessible, except maybe in short timed sequences with a warning beforehand (whether such timed sequences belong in the game is another question), but don't limit the number of times the player can save, and don't reward the player for not using every opportunity to save.)

Also, not all players use he/him pronouns, so you shouldn't use them when describing a generic player.

Worth noting that these rewards are for accomplishing extra tasks, not for save restrictions.

I don´t care, really. What I would want is the save folder to be inside the game folder like before the bullshit we started to suffer since WinXP. I´m sick of having to search for save folders in C:\users\rubbish\shit\somethingsomething\somewheresomewhere\

There's a good technical reason for this: It keeps the read-only parts of a game (which are only changed when the game gets updated) and the read-write parts (which are changed through normal play, like when the player saves the game) separate.

On some systems, software is installed system-wide (so ordinary users should not be allowed to modify it), but users need to save their own data, so it makes sense to store them in the user's home directory.

With that said, it would help if there were some sensible standard for the location of save games.

(Also, the save game code should be tested and debugged. There's one game that, after I replaced the save file with an empty subdirectory, the game would claim that saving was successful rather than reporting the "is a directory" error.)

No kidding! My OS partition is for the OS, games have their own, and each game should be contained in its own directory, I shouldn't have to start hunting for the save (or config) files who knows where, AND shouldn't need to worry about losing them if I lose/wipe/restore the OS partition.

Yes, I get that. But a game is a game. It´s not something that should be used on computers accessed by several users. Schools and busineses come to my mind. There are always exceptions, of course.

And there are better ways in which this could be managed, like having the option to decide where to place the saves folder. And it is not as if games, in general, asked to create profiles.

Yes! We want justice! And we want it now!

Holy smokes, this is the truth right here. I sometimes can't tell where my save files are because it's located throughout 3 different directories (C:\Users\..., Documents, Program Files). Games should be opening in read-write mode / admin access to allow save files in the program files. Tons of VNs already do this, so I don't understand why it'd be difficult for an AAA or indie developer to implement this either.

Giving a game admin access is dangerous, as a bug in the game could render your system unbootable.

Sorry for the offtopic.

I can understand why a game needing admin privileges would scare away paranoid users. I think if the game has been curated and tested beforehand like GOG, the risks would be significantly lowered. Also, if a game screws up your OS, then farewell to that devteam's career.

If program files is completely unsalvagaeable, I don't see why they can't all agree to standardize it and put it on one central place like Documents\My Saved Games or something. Definitely not someplace difficult to get into like AppData or Roaming, but still accessible for backups.

There's not even the need to have admin right to just write files and folder in the main installation directory, there is a ton of software that has done a "portable mode" for years, with basic user access rights

It's just a matter of using custom installation paths (X:\Games\Something) instead of defaulting to \Program Files, and even then, it's very easy to implement a check at startup and, IF AND ONLY IF the current folder cannot be written, redirect all saves and settings to \AppData or whatever user profile folder

Indeed. I'd say that installing games in Program Files is bad practice, but the game should check whether it can write to its installation folder, and if it can then use it for everything, and only if it can't switch to a standard other folder, "%userprofile%\Saved Games" makes sense, and it's what the included Windows games use.

Where should the savegame folder location be stored? It has to be saved somewhere (or else the user will need to type it in every time they want to load a save game, which for casual players of modern game is nearly every time the user starts up the game. (Speedrunners don't tend to load save games, and some really old games are short enough to not need a save feature.)

You can't just put the save location in the save game itself, because then how will the game know where to look for it?

Quicksaves with a single keypress (usually F5?) at any point, anywhere. Has multiple, and does not overwrite (or overwrites after some large number like 10).
Manual saves by going into the menu and being able to name it.
Autosaves after a fixed period of time, and specific key points in game. Has multiple, and does not overwrite (or overwrites after some large number like 10).

I'm very much against restrictive saving- initially created due to technical limitations (and imported to PC from consoels, the source of so many of PC gamings problems), and now only used to artificially pad the game. If your game needs a checkpoint system for "balance", then you're just being a lazy designer who has chosen the option that bypasses a problem you should actually be solving.

People can't imagine simple solutions, sometimes.. O_o

The savegame directory path would obviously have a default value (chosen by devs as it is now), but it would be set in the game's config file or registry key, instead of inside the code.
Advanced users could simply edit it to point it to a different location. It would be useful to avoid the current mess with savegames everywhere (even with symlinks).

The game, then, would check for permissions when started and output an error in case of problems "Savegames folder error, please check permissions or select a different location".

This could be applied to profiles too, with simply a global config file inside the game's folder (or registry entry).
And ideally, all this could be customizable directly during installation.