Posted January 29, 2021
SOURCE
Official Statement
Sticky for new purchasers perhaps...
SAVE SYSTEM - EXPLAINED
The save system of Stoneshard has long been not just a point of contention, but also a subject of misrepresentation. Does the game even have a save system? Do you somehow lose hours of progress when you play it? At this point it’s only fair to our community that we make a final, conclusive statement, preventing further confusion and bringing closure to this entire discussion.
To begin with, yes, the game most definitely has a save system. Right now saving is performed by sleeping in designated locations such as taverns, bandit camps, and certain other points of interest which can be found all over the map.
No, it doesn’t take hours to reach them, this is an utter over-exaggeration. Accessing these save points doesn’t take more than a few minutes, and it mostly happens naturally over the course of gameplay (when you return to town after completing a contract, for instance). The only situation where you might lose any significant amount of progress is when you die during a dungeon run (30 min or so if you die to a boss or on your way back), as dungeons are supposed to be completed in a single go.
Quicksaves were never in the spirit of the game - they would simply trivialize survival aspects and ruin any sense of tension. The same thing can be said about teleportation scrolls, not to mention the havoc they in particular would bring on the game’s story and lore. Preparation and risk management are essential to Stoneshard’s gameplay, which means that planning for a return journey is just as important as planning for the journey itself.
Saving on exit, however, is a different thing. Placing a restriction on it isn’t a part of Stoneshard’s gameplay philosophy, but rather a consequence of how the game was built.The decision to go with the existing save system (and forego saving on exit) was dictated by the necessity of optimizing save and load times, since each global tile has thousands of variables associated with it. The game doesn’t save the state of the world per se, instead regenerating it from a seed each time you load a save file. For this very reason, saving can’t be performed inside dungeons and can only be done within static locations such as taverns etc.
To amend this particular inconvenience there’s already a plan in works to add even more save points on top of the aforementioned ones and increase their variety. Additionally, we plan to add a caravan, which will not only serve as a mobile base for saving your progress, but will also shave down the amount of time players spend on traversing terrain. Perhaps by the time you read this, the caravan will already be implemented, making the gameplay more fluid and accessible.
To sum it up, the existing save system is tightly woven into the majority of Stoneshard’s systems, both technical and gameplay ones. At this point in development it’s pretty much impossible to change anything about it even if we wanted to (as it’s the case with adding saves on exit) without tearing the entire game apart and starting from scratch. Let’s just say it’s not something we can do to that part of our fan base which enjoys the game for what it is and would rather prefer us to improve on the existing mechanics instead of postponing the development indefinitely. For better or worse, Stoneshard is simply not the kind of game which can be played for 5-10 minutes at a time, just as it’s the case with many other titles.
Hopefully this answers most if not all questions concerning the save system.
Last edited by Beholder; 7 Nov, 2020 @ 2:27pm
Official Statement
Sticky for new purchasers perhaps...
SAVE SYSTEM - EXPLAINED
The save system of Stoneshard has long been not just a point of contention, but also a subject of misrepresentation. Does the game even have a save system? Do you somehow lose hours of progress when you play it? At this point it’s only fair to our community that we make a final, conclusive statement, preventing further confusion and bringing closure to this entire discussion.
To begin with, yes, the game most definitely has a save system. Right now saving is performed by sleeping in designated locations such as taverns, bandit camps, and certain other points of interest which can be found all over the map.
No, it doesn’t take hours to reach them, this is an utter over-exaggeration. Accessing these save points doesn’t take more than a few minutes, and it mostly happens naturally over the course of gameplay (when you return to town after completing a contract, for instance). The only situation where you might lose any significant amount of progress is when you die during a dungeon run (30 min or so if you die to a boss or on your way back), as dungeons are supposed to be completed in a single go.
Quicksaves were never in the spirit of the game - they would simply trivialize survival aspects and ruin any sense of tension. The same thing can be said about teleportation scrolls, not to mention the havoc they in particular would bring on the game’s story and lore. Preparation and risk management are essential to Stoneshard’s gameplay, which means that planning for a return journey is just as important as planning for the journey itself.
Saving on exit, however, is a different thing. Placing a restriction on it isn’t a part of Stoneshard’s gameplay philosophy, but rather a consequence of how the game was built.The decision to go with the existing save system (and forego saving on exit) was dictated by the necessity of optimizing save and load times, since each global tile has thousands of variables associated with it. The game doesn’t save the state of the world per se, instead regenerating it from a seed each time you load a save file. For this very reason, saving can’t be performed inside dungeons and can only be done within static locations such as taverns etc.
To amend this particular inconvenience there’s already a plan in works to add even more save points on top of the aforementioned ones and increase their variety. Additionally, we plan to add a caravan, which will not only serve as a mobile base for saving your progress, but will also shave down the amount of time players spend on traversing terrain. Perhaps by the time you read this, the caravan will already be implemented, making the gameplay more fluid and accessible.
To sum it up, the existing save system is tightly woven into the majority of Stoneshard’s systems, both technical and gameplay ones. At this point in development it’s pretty much impossible to change anything about it even if we wanted to (as it’s the case with adding saves on exit) without tearing the entire game apart and starting from scratch. Let’s just say it’s not something we can do to that part of our fan base which enjoys the game for what it is and would rather prefer us to improve on the existing mechanics instead of postponing the development indefinitely. For better or worse, Stoneshard is simply not the kind of game which can be played for 5-10 minutes at a time, just as it’s the case with many other titles.
Hopefully this answers most if not all questions concerning the save system.
Last edited by Beholder; 7 Nov, 2020 @ 2:27pm
Post edited January 29, 2021 by codywg
