This...

I play games to have fun. My schedule is rough and I don't have a ton of free time. I would rather have a modest challenge that allows me to actually get through a game than a punitive system that makes me have to replay an area 10 times over at 15 minutes per attempt.

Others want to have that challenge. It is possible that I just suck at playing games, but they are still fun for me and I would like them to stay that way.

That instantly made me think of Zelda.

I cut my teeth on old adventure games and had it drilled into my head (through forgetting many time) "Save early, save often, use multiple saves", It annoys me when a game doesn't let me do it that way. Checkpoints, and autosaves are great but I like the freedom to save whenever.

The other type of game I played as a kid was RPGs on the SNES and I was constantly telling my mom "Wait, I need to get to a save point first". Games really should have progressed enough that when my kids are old enough they don't have to say the same to me.

Only sort of, when a system like that exists the designers give far less effort towards balancing stuff like that. You can run into cazadors very early in New Vegas, well before you can handle them, but with time invested in the direction you've been going (due to quest or whatever) you just keep pushing.

So I don't believe it's as simple as you make it out to be. The save system will change the nature and balance of the game.

Sure thing, if you don't like achievements then you probably don't know their typical format. Some are like "play through on hard" or "do X without dying" or even "do X with getting hit", allowing a quicksave every 5 steps makes a lot of those achievements lose their difficulty.

For instance in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Act 3 boss there are 3 different phases. He's largely considered the hardest boss in the game (part of that is due to encountering him well before you have a lot of upgrades). One game achievement is to fight him without using Light Magic (the healing mechanic in the game), since he does insane damage this largely means not getting hit more than about 3 times on the easiest levels and only 1 time on the harder levels. The achievement doesn't care if you do it on Easy Mode, just that you do it without activating your healing. It's a very long fight, there's checkpoints between phases but that's it.

Now one might complain about this, it is just one way to design a game. On the other hand, sometimes the reason you hit a wall in a room or during a battle is the game designers have been trying to teach you how to play their game: "Hey, we've taught you the basics, the game just gets harder later on, you need to understand this by now, here's a wall of difficulty carefully designed to force you to use our game mechanics." Now the player may fail on the wall due to bad game design, testing, poor teaching of the mechanics, or just due to needing practice.

Later on players tend to come back to score achievements, by then they have the game mastered and are hunting for a badge of perfection (this isn't as lame as it sounds, at least not always, the Castlevania achievement I described was really fun to get). This all is easier to design and balance with a fixed save system.
I still get the willies from one Darksiders room with two waves of normal enemies, it was small and I died so many times, brutal game in places. It was fun as hell though.

Damn checkpoits were the only thing that stopped me from finishing Far Cry in the first place. I hate them.

I honestly do not understand this point of view. If the developers design the combat to be challenging without pausing after every sword swing, they've done their job. If people decide to save 64 times during a battle and they don't find it a challenge because of that... so what? The option to save should still be there for players that want it. If it kills combat for you, then don't do it. It's the same as using cheats. Many games have a developer console available with a ton of cheat codes that can be used in the game. If a player uses those, the game becomes a cakewalk. So what? If you don't want the game to be too easy don't use them. Same with saving in combat or anywhere else. Since choice to save is entirely up to the player, there's no reason to worry about it 'lessening' the challenge.

Now, OrcishGamer gave an achievement related reason for not being able to save any time you want, and I can at least see the reasoning there (although in that case, I say why not make a system where you can enable the achievements, but that disables the 'save when you wan' option), but not the 'it makes the game less challenging' reason.

Some people like the challenge of going through the multiple waves of baddies without the ability to save, but are too tempted to save in tiny increments b/c they can. So some developers think that games are more enjoyable for those people with difficulty added to it through checkpoints.

That said, sometimes things are too tough. Sometimes, people don't want a checkpoint.

My favorite game-save idea was with Mount and Blade. You could select a hardcore mode that only allowed you to save on exit. And you could select the easier mode that allowed you to save whenever you wanted. What's wrong with giving people a few options?

People like choices. And the more choices a game gives a player, the better its chance of success.

The problem is that so many misjudge the right moment to incorporate checkpoints. To cut a long story short, the checkpoint should be right before the point at which you're most likely to need it. Having to do a load of trivial shit again and again because of poor design is a major turn off.

Yeah and I've been playing it on Nightmare difficulty (first playthrough) with mouse/keyboard. Some places are so fucking hard. SO. FUCKING. HARD. The worst boss was Tiamat (the flying one) - took me six months to clock but when I did, oh boy, I felt SO GOOD. Pumped my fist and everything and I"m not normally an emotional player.

Thank god I've finally unlocked the War God inside myself plus JUST gotten Ruin. Man I'm in love with that horse already. Trying to kill that stupid sandworm but it's pretty hard to shoot as well as run away with the m/kb combo. :3

I think there's a lock on with that gun, it tracks the worm pretty well. He's actually one of the easier bosses, like you said Tiamat was fairly brutal, especially as you are underpowered while fighting her. Once you get the gauntlet and learn the ground pound move you can wipe out entire waves of enemies at once. Bosses are still rough, though.

Ok,

I guess I am not the casual player, therefore I may have different opionions. In my view if a game is to hard for you, then you should not be able to beat it. What is the point of cheatsaving oneself to a game. I honestly do not see this as interesting at all. But again I am not a casual player and I do not see the Baldurs Gate-league of games as casual. The same holds for UFO: Alien Invasion... yes that game should punish you for failures. This just makes wins more exhilarating.

In my opinion this is also ok from a developers point of view. It is his product and he can target it at his audience.
This may lose him sales, granted, and he should be aware of that.
However I do not think anyway that these games appeal to casual players very much with or without a save feature. They are (at least in my opinion) to be played for a few hours at least in one go.

If I want to go casual, I play Super Mario Bros on my Wii.

Depends on what your definition of 'casual' is, I guess. I'm not a 'casual' player in the sense that I want easy games with I WIN buttons. I prefer games like Baldur's Gate and the like that require some strategy/tactics. I usually play my games in hard mode for the challenge as well.

However, I am a casual player in the sense that I only have limited time to play and want to be able to save my game when and where I want, since I don't always have the time to reach the next checkpoint, may have to leave my computer at the drop of a hat, and don't see the appeal in playing through sections I've already played just because I had to shut the game down with no possibility of saving.

To be clear, I don't particularly mind not being able to save in battle. But I see no harm in that being an option, and there have been times where, for one reason or another, I've had to shut my game down in the middle of a big battle and it would have been really nice to be able to pick up where I left off as opposed to starting over again. Especially since the reason i had to stop wasn't because my character died or things weren't developing in my favor.

If a singleplayer game doesn't have quicksave I quit the game most times.

It's bizarre to me that players could get behind the idea of giving either themselves or others fewer options.