Japanese had 3.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Okay, someone explain to me why Majora's Mask's save system works the way it does
- Thread starter Oblivion
- Start date
The 3rd save slot is used for the suspend save in the west. We still have multiple save slots.
This. MM is a great game but it save system is fucking terrible.
Mango The Magician
Banned
Why exactly? People don't want a permanent save because they think it'd allow people to redo certain parts of the game, something that isn't a big deal but that's besides the point, all this would do is basically save your game right at the dawn of the first day.
CaptainSlow
Member
I agree with everything you said. I loved Ocarina of Time as a kid and was so looking forward to MM. I got it day one and hated it because of the saving system. I tried to go back multiple times since then to try it again but I always get frustrated and quit. A thing like saving your game shouldn't ever be used as a gameplay mechanic. I should be able to save anywhere, anytime and not be punished for it. If saving your game revolves around the games story, it's time to change the story. OoT had a great compromise and never felt punishing. I could save at any time but just restart at a specific spot.
The Mango Sentinel
Member
Strongly disagree. It would've taken away a lot of what made the game so special. It's not flawed at all.
Quite a few, really. For example, some of the Final Fantasy remakes, particularly the portable ones, added a quicksave option that can be done anywhere, but only serves as a temporary suspend-save. Quite a few portable RPGs have something similar.
There are also very common in strategy games designed to be hard, such as the Fire Emblem series. Suspend-saves allow the player to take a break, but prevent the player from save-scumming to get around their mistakes.
Chainsawkitten
Member
I agree it would be great if you could suspend save at any time, but saving at any time? Nope. (And none of the Zelda games have had that.)
How? You save by playing the song of time. What's so terrible about the game giving you 2.5-3 hours to make some sort of progress before it kicks you back to the beginning?
And for the record, you can warp forward by 2 hour intervals using anju's grandmother, or warp to the next morning using her, or warp to the next dawn/evening using the song of double time It shouldn't take logn at all to get back to a certain time.
I'd just like to say you're putting your opinion as the only thing that matters. To you, it seems a flaw. The people that disagreed see it as a neat feature. Your opinion isn't fact and just because you see it as a flaw doesn't mean it is. You're free to not like a feature of a game, but you're trying to push your opinion on others. It's designed to be inconvenient like that, so I don't think you can call it a flaw; you just don't like the mechanic.
The Mango Sentinel
Member
There's lots of features I don't like in games but I don't consider them flaws. If the developers feature works as intended, then it's not a flaw.
And why not just go to an owl statue and save then? From what you're saying, that would solve your problems. Stuff is deleted when you resume, then go to another owl statue. Hell go right back to the same one.
Mango The Magician
Banned
I'm not trying to push my opinion onto people, though if I come off that way I'm sorry. It's just that I don't see why making the Owl Statue a permanent save would suddenly end the world. I mean they're scattered around quite unsparingly, so it's not like there's twelve of them every two steps.
The thing is though, if I want to save my game I need to quit. You know how annoying that is? I mean what If I've only played the Song of Time once, and I've gotten half way through Great Bay when suddenly my power goes out, am I suppose to just smirk it off because it's a quirky feature of the game? Or be pissed that this obtuse game wouldn't allow me to just save whilst also continue playing?
I don't have an issue with it.
toythatkills
Member
The OP lost a temporary save because he didn't read the instructions. You're suggesting that a player's permanent save get deleted because of an arbitrary loss condition. Which one of those, honestly, do you feel is going to annoy a greater number of players?
You can't tell a player their save is permanent and then delete it. Bad form.
I strongly disagree. Saving is like any other game mechanic: something that exists to serve the goals of the game. For example, adding save states to something like a Mega Man Zero game dramatically changes the game's difficulty. Without save-states, if you want to get an S-rank, you need to be able to do the entire stage perfectly in one single go. If you use save states, you can do stuff like make it part-way through the stage, make a save-state, then not have to worry about re-doing that part. That dramatically changes the game experience.
In any case, my favorite RPG of all time, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, is a work of art that could not have done what it did without using its extremely restrictive save system. So I have nothing against games that don't let you save everywhere. I don't think there is anything wrong with a game being a little demanding of a player.
any average gamer should not have problems finishing Majoras Mask, there's plenty of time to do everything.
if you just got to a dungeon and it's the last day, just go to the bank, deposit your rupees and play the song of time, go to the dungeon and finish it, NO DUNGEON takes 3 FULL days to finish, not even if you're collecting the fairies, if you do, feel frustrated, then you just suck at this game, leave it alone and move on.
if you just got to a dungeon and it's the last day, just go to the bank, deposit your rupees and play the song of time, go to the dungeon and finish it, NO DUNGEON takes 3 FULL days to finish, not even if you're collecting the fairies, if you do, feel frustrated, then you just suck at this game, leave it alone and move on.
Davey Cakes
Member
Owl Saving wasn't so bad in theory but my full playthrough of Majora's Mask was the Gamecube version and it was a NIGHTMARE when the game decided to freeze. If the game froze and you were on an owl save, you were fucked.
Th eonly time it was ever an "inconvenience" for me at least was when I fucked up Sakkon's hideout in ikana valley and had to do the whole kafei/anju sidequest all over again. Most other sidequests involve no more than 2, 3 events, tops.
And as far as dungeons go, you have about 2 hours, 45 minutes with the song of inverted time to go through a dungeon. But really, all you have to do is reach roughly the halfway point of the dungeon, where you get the new key item for your inventory. That automatically opens up various shortcuts and remainder portions of the dungeon, so even if you fail to beat the entire dungeon in one 3 hour session, all you have to do is beat maybe 1/3rd or half of it in the next session, as long as you succeeded in getting the key item.
The point is that you have 3 days to save the world. But thanks to having the song of time, you have the luxury of fucking up and starting over again from the beginning. That's the point.
leatherhat
Member
MM is one of my favorite games of all time and I've beaten it countless times and I don't think I ever once used an owl statue.
ChuyMasta
Member
Thats how I see it too.
That the problem, I dont want to go back the 3 days when I mess up or miss a event.
Chainsawkitten
Member
You know about the song to skip time, right?
It's no different than fucking up in, say, Mario Bros 2 and starting over from the start of the world
You can skip time, as I said. In 2 hour chunks if need be. Have an event at 9:30 PM on the first day you need to reach? Restart cycle, song of double time to 6 pm, talk to anju's granny to 8PM (should be around 8:30 afterwards, including travel time), go to event.
Hot Coldman
Banned
Just prioritise your time to the best of your ability. Oh, and use the Inverted Song of Time to give yourself twice as long; nice safety net if you're playing for the first time (in a while) and you're not exactly sure what to do/where to go.
The save system (both of them) is fairly restrictive, but it's already a game that doesn't really offer Termina as your oyster, to play with as you wish. You need to get done what you need to get done. Find the owl statues, find the dungeon songs. If you're a newbie, use the song of time once you find the dungeon Owl Statue and the corresponding song. That gives you 3 days to beat the dungeon, and if the save system still bites you in the arse, well, you're rubbish, frankly.
I'm not apologising for it: the save system is annoying on the surface, it does force you to repeat what you already accomplished for reasons that initially feel out of your control, and generally it's inaccessible in less appreciable ways. If they don't make Owl Saves permanent in Majora's Mask 3D, I think that's a mistake. But as it is, I believe it doesn't make the game worse: it just makes it a fucking bitch off the bat.
The save system (both of them) is fairly restrictive, but it's already a game that doesn't really offer Termina as your oyster, to play with as you wish. You need to get done what you need to get done. Find the owl statues, find the dungeon songs. If you're a newbie, use the song of time once you find the dungeon Owl Statue and the corresponding song. That gives you 3 days to beat the dungeon, and if the save system still bites you in the arse, well, you're rubbish, frankly.
I'm not apologising for it: the save system is annoying on the surface, it does force you to repeat what you already accomplished for reasons that initially feel out of your control, and generally it's inaccessible in less appreciable ways. If they don't make Owl Saves permanent in Majora's Mask 3D, I think that's a mistake. But as it is, I believe it doesn't make the game worse: it just makes it a fucking bitch off the bat.
OR! OR, Don't assume people will blindly praise a game for no reason and actually read what people are saying about it. I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy that part of the game, that's unfortunate, but it was part of what made the game so special to me, so I don't perceive it as a flaw. So did other people. The way the owl statues work doesn't take anything away from the game unless you don't understand them or want to "cheat" the system (Or your game crashes for whatever reason.)
There's a reason Mario games don't work like Mario 2 anymore.
Actually, the entire game can be done in a single 3-day period, if I'm not mistaken.
Mango The Magician
Banned
Ok then how about one of these two:
1) Inform people that while their save is permanent, it will be overwritten come the end of the third day. Not a huge deal as I don't actually know anyone who's actually been bad enough to be game overed by the moon, and it's honestly already what it does, I mean if you're playing the game whatever owl save you had is gone, and the Song of Time does save your progress so...
2) Just say fuck it and allow the owl statues to function as actual save points, so people don't actually lose any data if their game freezes, or the power goes out, or whatever.
I'll admit, my comment is kinda rude. It's not an excuse but I getting sick of the praise I've seen for MM around the net, anyways sorry about that. I still don't think the save system is good but I shouldn't just assume things about people.
yeah, I know about it but it still dosent solve the problem
Does Super Mario bro 2 gives you points that you can save from?
Temp states on VC release, yeah.
otherwise, no, but Majora's Mask does. So what's your point?
The excuses I hear about people saying that there has to be temporary saves otherwise people will "cheat" the system reminds me a lot about how people complain about how the cape in Super Mario World lets you "cheat" the game by allowing you to bypass the entire levels. Yes, you can do that, but if you do so, you'd wind up missing the point of platforming in a Mario game.
I see a more forgiving save system as something that helps ease frustration more than anything else.
What if the game allowed you to save at any point like you can in OoT? Would people still have a problem with that? By doing so, you wouldn't be able to theoretically cheat like you "might" with the owl set up.
I see a more forgiving save system as something that helps ease frustration more than anything else.
What if the game allowed you to save at any point like you can in OoT? Would people still have a problem with that? By doing so, you wouldn't be able to theoretically cheat like you "might" with the owl set up.
My point is that the owls statues should be hard save points not temporary.
Hot Coldman
Banned
Majora's Mask has more exploration than most 3D Zelda's, though. You're just exploring people's lives instead of the world around you. It's taking that core Zelda idea, of a secret on every screen, and transposing it onto a narrative framework rather than an environmental one.
And that just wouldn't work if you didn't have that time limit.
OoT's save system is complete ass, though. Why does it consistently kick me back to the Temple of Time whenever I'm not in a dungeon?
Chainsawkitten
Member
Oh my, I have to go, I guess I'll just pause the game first. Oops it wasn't actually paused and now I lost all my progress and have to restart entirely from the beginning with nothing saved.
Edit: Wait, I may have misunderstood that.
Rest
All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
I remember it was explained when I played, that's why I never used them, because it was clear it was just a waste of time. I had one of the later cartridges though, so it could be they added the explanation.
I got the game on launch. The explanation was always there.
Why not just save at a statue every time you get ready to turn off the game?
That sounds nice, but I personally can't stand being rushed in a game. I like to play at my own pace, which is usually really slow so I can stop and look at everything I come across and explore for secret areas and stuff. MM's design runs totally counter to my preferred play style. That doesn't make it a bad game, but it does make it one I don't ever intend to go back to.
OoT's save system is complete ass, though. Why does it consistently kick me back to the Temple of Time whenever I'm not in a dungeon?
Huh...good point.
Song of soaring. talk to owl statue. Save. Was that so hard?
If I haven't played the game in awhile (and I haven't since early 2004!!!) I usually just plan on taking one full cycle unlocking the dungeon and doing any little sidequests in the area. The third and fourth temples in particular take time to get to. If I need to interrupt I do an owl save but for the most part I block out at least two hours of free time to play the game.
Mango The Magician
Banned
You wouldn't be starting from the beginning with nothing, all the major quest items you got before the end of the three days would transfer over. Regardless, my option isn't the only option, all I'm saying that it needs to be fixed. You shouldn't have to worry about having to repeat two to three dungeons because the game glitches out, or you lose power, or you cat steps on the reset button.
I'm that way too.
You have three hours to explore each new area to your heart's content and to get SOMETHING done.. So before entering a new dungeon, you know what I do? I save and reset the cycle. So I can explore to my heart's content.
I'm a save whore anyway so even fi the cycle weren't there I'd save before entering a new dungeon.
Hot Coldman
Banned
That's fine. I see that a lot. I'm pretty impatient, so Majora's Mask fits my style nicely
Chainsawkitten
Member
You do multiple dungeons in one go? That's asking for trouble.
toythatkills
Member
I still don't think you're improving the game. Majora's Mask is all about actions and consequences, and by allowing the player to save whenever they want you're just removing the consequences. I think it's a worse game as a result.
Obviously it will suit the kind of player who just wants to rush through the game and doesn't really give a shit about how the game is telling its story through its gameplay, but it's a MASSIVE loss to everyone who can appreciate it for what it's trying to achieve.