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[ClayKavalier]

I lost a couple hours of playing Tokyo Mirage Sessions today. First time I've ever died in the game, which isn't hard by any means. I got into a fight with a "Savage" enemy, which are stronger than usual. Tried to run away with my first action, failed, got wiped out with the enemies first attack.

I've save more from now often, but man, it's so frustrating. I'd like to ask the devs how the opportunity to lose a ton of progress improves the game. Yes, it's a situation that was easily preventable, but when auto-saving is the norm I really don't see any good reason there are still games being made where it's possible to let saving slip your mind and then lose a play session.

Especially if you have a mechanic like the Savage enemies. Normally fights don't pose much of a threat at all, like all SMT games you do have to be on your toes but there's no way I'm in any danger of being wiped by a regular enemy. That coupled with a lack of auto-save just seems moronic, all it accomplishes it incentivizing people to constantly be saving.

Who spoke up during a meeting and said "People aren't interrupting the game often enough to update their save file, we need to fix that"? Why didn't anyone stand up to them?

 

[dity]

To make that savage/hard enemy mean something and be an actual threat with consequences. If there were no consequences, there'd be no reason for that sort of enemy. Hard enemies in Persona 4 were inconsequencial in how it just spawned you at the start of the floor again, which is basically the same as an auto-save. I prefer how it is with Persona 3 and TMS. I feel more accomplished when I can finally beat an enemy clearly labelled as hard as compared to "oh well I died oops".

 

[Ridley327]

Maybe it's just a different mindset from generation to generation, but if a game touts itself as being able to be saved anywhere, I make sure to save whenever I can; usually whenever there's a floor or scene change. It's just a different way of handling progress.

 

[Yasumi]

Some developers want to have actual consequences to player death, and saving is part of the strategy to the game itself. Heck, there are some games where saving is a consumable item. Auto save is easy modo.

 

[ClayKavalier]

To make that savage/hard enemy mean something and be an actual threat with consequences. If there were no consequences, there'd be no reason for that sort of enemy. Hard enemies in Persona 4 were inconsequencial in how it just spawned you at the start of the floor again, which is basically the same as an auto-save.

It's a really bizarre design decision when there's so much variation in the punishment. Someone who saves constantly is effected even less than your P4 example since they can load into a save immediately prior to the fight. Someone like me who forgets to save constantly since almost no games require you to these days lose hours of progress for failing the same fight.

I'm fine with risk/ reward in games, but the time I've spent with the game shouldn't be on the table. Take my money, experience, whatever, or better yet incentivize those fights with awesome items or something. Making me replay a bunch of simple battles because RNG screwed me on the one hard one is bad design. It's the absolute laziest way to make failure "mean something."

Maybe it's just a different mindset from generation to generation, but if a game touts itself as being able to be saved anywhere, I make sure to save whenever I can; usually whenever there's a floor or scene change. It's just a different way of handling progress.

I've been playing games since SNES and I hate having to save myself. If there's clear points like the beginning of a level or floor where players will obviously want a save, why am I wasting time doing it manually?

Some developers want to have actual consequences to player death, and saving is part of the strategy to the game itself. Heck, there are some games where saving is a consumable item. Auto save is easy modo.

The last game I played without autosaving was RE HD on PS4. I can't even remember the last game I played before that that didn't auto-save.

I don't get how auto save is easy mode. Is going through menu hard? Automating tedious part of the experience doesn't make the actual gameplay any easier or harder.

At least in games with a limited number of saves it's clear that the devs put some thought into saving as a mechanic. If you can save at literally any time but there's no autosave, that's more of an oversight than a design decision.

 

[HawthorneKitty]

Just buy smokes and you never have to worry about failing a run...

I am glad auto save wasn't in since I've expended some items and reset because it wasn't worth it.

 

[Ridley327]

I've been playing games since SNES and I hate having to save myself. If there's clear points like the beginning of a level or floor where players will obviously want a save, why am I wasting time doing it manually?

Is taking all of five seconds to save really that laborious? It's just second nature for me, so I don't even think about it.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

You can buy the instant escape items incredibly cheaply at any time, so savage enemy encounters should never be a deal breaker.

I learned my lesson when I lost an hour or so of progress.

 

[Griss]

I much prefer the absence of auto-save in games like that. Difficult encounters should have tension and consequence. If you only lose 5 seconds of progress that's not there.

If you can't get by something and get frustrated the option to lower the difficulty should be there.

 

[ClayKavalier]

Is taking all of five seconds to save really that laborious? It's just second nature for me, so I don't even think about it.

Is it fun? Is it necessary? I hope game developers aren't using "Is or is it not laborious?" to determine whether mechanics make it into a game.

You can buy the instant escape items incredibly cheaply at any time, so savage enemy encounters should never be a deal breaker.

I learned my lesson when I lost an hour or so of progress.

I'll have to do to that, never had any reason to use them before. Doubt I'll touch it for awhile at this point. When I was younger I'd lose time in an RPG and go right back to it since I had nothing else to play. Now that time is the limiting factor to what I play it's not appealing at all to replay two hours of game.

 

[JeremyEtcetera]

To make that savage/hard enemy mean something and be an actual threat with consequences. If there were no consequences, there'd be no reason for that sort of enemy. Hard enemies in Persona 4 were inconsequencial in how it just spawned you at the start of the floor again, which is basically the same as an auto-save. I prefer how it is with Persona 3 and TMS. I feel more accomplished when I can finally beat an enemy clearly labelled as hard as compared to "oh well I died oops".

Persona 3 and other SMT games on PS2 were horrible with this. Whenever you died to a tough enemy you'd lose a huge chunk of time spent, especially with some saves being hours apart. I hate to use this example(because everyone will use it) but something close to the Dark Souls way of saving progress is a great way. The checkpoints in that game never felt too far or too close from each other.

One of my biggest pet peeves, to add on to what the OP is saying, is when a checkpoint happens right before a long, unskippable cutscene.

 

[Memory]

Maybe its because i'm used to manual saves due to years of PC gaming and console rpgs but i hate games that treat failure/death as a quick hick up. A game over screen is my cue to step my game up, endlessly respawning does not have that effect on me.

Anyone gaming since the SNES days should be well accustomed to autosaves being corrupted and lost, or having an autosave overwrite a previous save at a pivotal moment. Having multiple manual save files should be a reflex action by now .

 

[ChrisD]

Is taking all of five seconds to save really that laborious? It's just second nature for me, so I don't even think about it.

Five seconds multiplied by hundreds is a fair bit of time (or in the case of people like me who save way too often, thousands, that's a personal problem though). Even if you "only" spent ten minutes saving in an 80+ game, it's still a fair point to make.


I'm on the side of it being okay to not have auto-save - so long as consumables/skills/whathaveyou exists to prevent stuff like OP mentions (which TMS does, I presume from Hawthorne's post), because nobody likes losing to some super enemy that randomly spawns. If given the options to prevent such an encounter from going awry, then yeah, it's on the player. Even still, saving has always been a bit of a momentum stopper. It's like a loading screen.

 

[jackdoe]

With the gamepad available, the devs could have, and should have, instituted a quick save feature (button).

 

[rekameohs]

I've always been partial to Save Rooms over autosave, to be honest, but I'm probably in the minority. There's something about that relief you feel when you find one.

 

[Ridley327]

Is it fun? Is it necessary? I hope game developers aren't using "Is or is it not laborious?" to determine whether mechanics make it into a game.

Different strokes, I guess. It's practically an automatic function for me, so it never once crosses my mind.

 

[IncognitoPanda]

Really depends on the game, but I agree that not many enough games seem to put enough thought into their choice.

You can design a game to alwayd be afraid of dying since you'll lose your progress (as a feature almost), or you can spawn you right befote the start, since simply beating the enemy is accomplishment enough.

I feel many games don't evaluate their choice that much.

I see the argument for having to save manually, but it should be clear from the very start what type of game you're playing. I hate having the "What, I'm starting this far back?!" reaction in games.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Sometimes, games are better when they don't give wimps a safety net. Creates tension. Stress. Relief.

 

[deadscreensky]

Is taking all of five seconds to save really that laborious? It's just second nature for me, so I don't even think about it.

It's not difficult -- though sometimes it can take a lot longer than it should -- but with rare exceptions it's busywork that a player shouldn't have to bother with at all. Saving is a repetitive task ideally suited to a computer, and since we're playing the games on a damn computer in the first place it should do it for us.

There's the rare games where saving is somehow integrated into the game mechanics (e.g. typewriter ribbons in Resident Evil) and I get why that's different, but literally every other game in existence should constantly be auto-saving my progress. If I kill the power in 99% of videogames they should be able to start me off with only a couple minutes of lost progress, or whenever the last checkpoint moment was. (Obviously things were different back when hardware itself made saving really slow, but it's been more than a decade since that was a real issue.)

I've heard some people suggest that it's a cultural thing in Japan, that somehow auto-saving is considered rude to the player, and we mostly see this problem in Japanese games. But I'm not sure I buy that excuse.

 

[The Spoony Hou]

I am glad auto save wasn't in since I've expended some items and reset because it wasn't worth it.

This here is the reason. Save it or own it.

 

[Thud]

I've always been partial to Save Rooms over autosave, to be honest, but I'm probably in the minority. There's something about that relief you feel when you find one.

It's great in metroid

Definitely lost progress with Dragon's Dogma. Get caught up in the adventure.

 

[Septimus Prime]

I'm personally not down with auto-saves, since it takes away control from the player regarding when to save by requiring dumb steps to initiate auto-save. Plus, sometimes I want to go back to an earlier point in my file--especially if there are missables.

 

[Suzushiiro]

With some games it's a deliberate design decision- if you lose a lot of progress for dying, it makes you think twice about taking risks. Persona 3 is a solid example of this- half the reason why you want to be careful is because you can get a lot of progress wiped out for dying, and the way Tartarus progression works you can't save often enough to feel safe in taking risks all the time (since you lose your floor progression if you go back to the lobby on non-boss floors.) It's a game that would have its balance broken pretty hard by the existence of the ability to save anywhere. Not that there aren't ways they could have made it more "fair" in that regard, of course, but I don't think the ability to save after every battle would have been the best way to do that.

 

[ClayKavalier]

Different strokes, I guess. It's practically an automatic function for me, so it never once crosses my mind.

If it's practically automatic, why not make it literally automatic? What's the difference to you as a player at that point, aside from removing some tedium, as unobtrusive as it may be?

Really depends on the game, but I agree that not many enough games seem to put enough thought into their choice.

You can design a game to alwayd be afraid of dying since you'll lose your progress (as a feature almost), or you can spawn you right befote the start, since simply beating the enemy is accomplishment enough.

I feel many games don't evaluate their choice that much.

I see the argument for having to save manually, but it should be clear from the very start what type of game you're playing. I hate having the "What, I'm starting this far back?!" reaction in games.

Yeah, like I said early I'm not opposed to risk/ reward, or punitive mechanics. I'm not even opposed to losing progress as a blanket statement, but it's annoying when there's no thought put into it.

If there was as a rule like "If you wipe you lose the last fifteen minutes" or "If you wipe you lose all the experience as much experience as you would have gained from winning" or something like that it'd be fine. When it's "If you wipe you start at the last time you saved, whether that's five seconds or five hours ago" it just seems lazy.

And usually I don't like "lazy devs" comments, but can anyone think of a less thoughtful way to add "tension" into a game?

Spoiler

I guess kicking you back to the very beginning of the game is technically lazier since it removes the need to even create a save system, but that feels like a nitpick.

With some games it's a deliberate design decision- if you lose a lot of progress for dying, it makes you think twice about taking risks. Persona 3 is a solid example of this- half the reason why you want to be careful is because you can get a lot of progress wiped out for dying, and the way Tartarus progression works you can't save often enough to feel safe in taking risks all the time (since you lose your floor progression if you go back to the lobby on non-boss floors.) It's a game that would have its balance broken pretty hard by the existence of the ability to save anywhere. Not that there aren't ways they could have made it more "fair" in that regard, of course, but I don't think the ability to save after every battle would have been the best way to do that.

I actually agree with this, but Persona 3 is a very different game than Tokyo Mirage Sessions, where you don't have to worry about maximizing dungeon time since you're balancing time in the tower with time spent on Social Links. The Persona games have a really interesting design where you're constantly balancing the relative benefits of different decisions, so the save system makes more sense there. I'd argue it's still not perfect since losing time spent playing sucks and kicking you out of the tower would still be a punishment while avoiding making people waste their lives repeating content, but it does fit better in Persona.

 

[Ridley327]

I'm not trying to put down anyone that prefers auto-save functions, but for me, a game would have to have obscenely long save times for me to even care about how I was saving it in the first place. If a game tells me "save anywhere from the menu," I'm just going to use the menu. If a game tells me "find a save point," I'll swing by a save point every so often. If a game does the whole checkpoint thing, I'll just wait for the icon to disappear before quitting. It's all potayto/potahto to me.

Truthfully, the last time I actually went out of my way to think about a save system was the Bed of Chaos fight in Dark Souls.

 

[dity]

It's a really bizarre design decision when there's so much variation in the punishment. Someone who saves constantly is effected even less than your P4 example since they can load into a save immediately prior to the fight. Someone like me who forgets to save constantly since almost no games require you to these days lose hours of progress for failing the same fight.

But it's a staple of the genre though. Even WRPGs let you manual save since auto-saving isn't the most reliable thing thanks to RNG. Getting into a battle, using a bunch of items, then inevitably dying while also losing all those important resources because it auto-saved is a nightmare.

Persona 3 and other SMT games on PS2 were horrible with this. Whenever you died to a tough enemy you'd lose a huge chunk of time spent, especially with some saves being hours apart. I hate to use this example(because everyone will use it) but something close to the Dark Souls way of saving progress is a great way. The checkpoints in that game never felt too far or too close from each other.

One of my biggest pet peeves, to add on to what the OP is saying, is when a checkpoint happens right before a long, unskippable cutscene.

But in Persona 3 the tiredness system and a warp to the bottom floor of Tartarus on every level (with being able to send party members on a search to find said warp) is there to mitigate having hours between saves. Heck, by the you get to the point where you can feasibly spend hours in Tartarus you can just warp back to the bottom floor at any time. Sure you can lose floor progress, but you don't lose experience, items, or new Persona.

And hell, the Persona games have a skip button that speeds up cutscenes. Just like TMS.

 

[ClayKavalier]

I'm not trying to put down anyone that prefers auto-save functions, but for me, a game would have to have obscenely long save times for me to even care about how I was saving it in the first place. If a game tells me "save anywhere from the menu," I'm just going to use the menu. If a game tells me "find a save point," I'll swing by a save point every so often. If a game does the whole checkpoint thing, I'll just wait for the icon to disappear before quitting. It's all potayto/potahto to me.

Truthfully, the last time I actually went out of my way to think about a save system was the Bed of Chaos fight in Dark Souls.

I can get that, but when a majority (I don't have facts to back this up but I feel like a pretty large majority) of modern games auto-save I don't see any reason to hold on to the antiquated manual mode. I can see how you wouldn't care if saving is that ingrained in your gaming habits, but when the last 30-odd games I've played do auto-save it sucks getting burnt by the one that doesn't.

But it's a staple of the genre though. Even WRPGs let you manual save since auto-saving isn't the most reliable thing thanks to RNG. Getting into a battle, using a bunch of items, then inevitably dying while also losing all those important resources because it auto-saved is a nightmare.

So do what WRPGs do and have an auto-updating auto slot as well as the option to manual save. As far as being a staple, unless there's a valid reason for using a system that most games have moved on from preserving the status quo isn't a very compelling reason to keep anything around.

 

[pete_clarf]

We are so spoiled now!

I was playing Resident Evil 0 earlier today and a god damn Lurker jumped out and tongued me! I lost 10 WHOLE MINUTES of progress and was pissed. If I would have lost two hours like you, I probably would have just quit for good.

 

[deadscreensky]

So do what WRPGs do and have an auto-updating auto slot as well as the option to manual save. As far as being a staple, unless there's a valid reason for using a system that most games have moved on from preserving the status quo isn't a very compelling reason to keep anything around.

Yeah, there's plenty of ways to do auto-saves which are forgiving of mistakes. A lot of turn-based strategy games create lots of auto-saves so you can go back in time literally hours earlier if that's what you feel is needed, while still allowing manual saves too. This isn't some difficult developer magic, this is basic player expectations stretching back to the 90s.

 

[Outrun]

The OP clearly does not believe in the no-win scenario.

He does not like to lose.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

I turn off auto-save in most games (given the option) because I'm neurotic about them creating superfluous save files. I just need the ones I make.

 

[dity]

So do what WRPGs do and have an auto-updating auto slot as well as the option to manual save. As far as being a staple, unless there's a valid reason for using a system that most games have moved on from preserving the status quo isn't a very compelling reason to keep anything around.

If you get comfortable with the auto-save feature in a game with random encounters or non-descript enemy sprites in the dungeon that spawn battles then you will be scorned by the system after you lose all that stuff you used and have no way to undo that and properly try again. You still won't have manually saved. At least in standard WRPGs the auto-saving occurs between area transitions so if you get into an awful situation you can just turn around after loading. The same can't be said for JRPGs - especially rouge-likes.

 

[skLaFarebear]

They're doing you a favor. They're teaching you to always save all the time as often as you can!

 

[supernormal]

I'm playing through Ori again, since I just got the DE edition, and the tension created by the save system is pretty neat. There's no auto-save and death takes you back to your last save point, to top it all off in order to save you have to spend the same energy resource you use for your attacks. It creates some brilliant moments where your heart is racing as you try to scramble out of a situation alive.

 

[chrominance]

I'm kind of torn myself. With Tokyo Mirage Sessions specifically, the process of saving isn't just hitting a button to quick save; it's navigating the menus to pick the save option and waiting for the flashy UI to do its animations and whatnot. It's definitely a roadblock, albeit a small one.

On the other hand, I feel like the fact you can save pretty much anywhere you want in TMS is worthy of praise, given how many JRPGs don't let you do this. Instead of complaining about losing time due to one bad encounter, we should be using that save-anywhere feature for all its worth.

On the third hand, what happens in practice is I become more cautious every time I die and didn't remember to save. That means I now save after every. Single. Encounter. If the major difficulty in your game can be overcome simply by using a tedious method of always making your own save, that's not really a "git gud" thing.

Also, games with save-anywhere capabilities also have autosaves. Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Fallout 3/4/New Vegas come to mind. I feel like the best compromise here is a really loose auto save, one that at least protects you if you transition to another level in a dungeon our maybe even just leaving a dungeon or even even just before sub bosses. The worst instance of me losing time in TMS wasn't a savage encounter (which you can escape if you immediately use a smoke machine) but a request boss that turned out to be above my level but not obviously so, and wiped my whole team in one round. That's the kind of shit that makes people save every minute just because no one likes losing because they got too lost in the game and forgot to save.

 

[predalien27]

I lost 2 hours today on Mt Gagazet in FFX. I was a few steps away from a save point.

I was pissed. I take checkpoints for granted sometimes, but it did feel like a bit of an accomplishment when I decided to jump back in and actually try to beat it again. That's missing from some games now.

Ideally, games these days should give you multiple difficultly options that range from letting me expirience the story without a hassle to a no check point hardcore run.

 

[dity]

I'm kind of torn myself. With Tokyo Mirage Sessions specifically, the process of saving isn't just hitting a button to quick save; it's navigating the menus to pick the save option and waiting for the flashy UI to do its animations and whatnot. It's definitely a roadblock, albeit a small one.

On the other hand, I feel like the fact you can save pretty much anywhere you want in TMS is worthy of praise, given how many JRPGs don't let you do this. Instead of complaining about losing time due to one bad encounter, we should be using that save-anywhere feature for all its worth.

On the third hand, what happens in practice is I become more cautious every time I die and didn't remember to save. That means I now save after every. Single. Encounter. If the major difficulty in your game can be overcome simply by using a tedious method of always making your own save, that's not really a "git gud" thing.

Also, games with save-anywhere capabilities also have autosaves. Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Fallout 3/4/New Vegas come to mind. I feel like the best compromise here is a really loose auto save, one that at least protects you if you transition to another level in a dungeon our maybe even just leaving a dungeon or even even just before sub bosses. The worst instance of me losing time in TMS wasn't a savage encounter (which you can escape if you immediately use a smoke machine) but a request boss that turned out to be above my level but not obviously so, and wiped my whole team in one round. That's the kind of shit that makes people save every minute just because no one likes losing because they got too lost in the game and forgot to save.

Why do you save after every encounter when games like SMT and TMS mark harder enemies in the dungeon? Unless you haven't encountered the normal enemies yet because it's a new dungeon... but not saving in that kind of situation (getting to a new makor place like a dungeon) seems kind of silly.

And as for that loose auto-save, that's how I remember the Fallout games working. Auto-saving when you go into a building with its own map, auto-saving when travelling to another part of the map, and auto-saving after major events. I like that kind of auto-saving better game over auto-saves or in-between levels of a dungeon. Because at least when you die you can nope out of that place if you need to.

 

[Skrams]

If you can save at any time in TMS then I don't see a point of not having it autosave after battles or just having a restart function like FF13. If this was a game where it was deliberately paced so you were supposed to go through a dungeon and be depleted of resources along the way with no saving anywhere then of course that makes sense not to have an autosave. When you're allowed to do it all the time though I don't see a point of not just implementing an autosave at floors/battles/whatever. Even the problem of autosaves overwriting a regular save is not an issue because most good games with an autosave and manual save feature separate the two. If you buy something and it autosaves then you should still have your manual save to go back to if you were unhappy with the purchase.

It just feels like a carry over because a lot of RPGs are built on the idea of always saving all the time as to not lose progress.

 

[Zambatoh]

Manual-saving is about choosing when to save on your own. You have the freedom to choose at which points you really want to save crucial progress.

Auto-saving however completely removes that freedom. Though I do not mean this in a bad way. It's just that certain genres benefit better from one over the other.

 

[tuffymon]

Whining over a game that let's you save anywhere is while unfortunate, your fault.

Try playing Legend of Legacy where you run around and touch objects that usually yield money... I got ambushed by a giant griffon while touching an egg that wouldn't even allow me to flee, I struggled for a few rounds before it just did a 1 shot aoe to my party, boom lost over a hour of gameplay. I learned to definitely not touch eggs again anytime soon (For those wondering, you can only save in town btw). For anyone not aware of this 3ds game, Legend of Legacy plays like Saga Frontier so I can't just do a simple grind like other rpgs, you gain skills from random use and stats randomly... all poof for me /shrug live and learn.

 

[Maddrical]

I thought Ori's save mechanic was one of the cooler save mechanics I've used. I didn't like it at first because I kept forgetting to use it and would die and go back 10 mins of progress, but eventually it became second nature and just really solid.

 

[Lesmith88]

I don't like auto-save. But I do like the ability to save whenever and wherever I want.

 

[daninthemix]

Um...to all the people above who want "consequences" when they die in a game, for the low, low price of $1000 per day, I will offer to stand behind you as you play, and beat you with a paddle every time you die. Form an orderly queue.

 

[Drillary Clinton]

I'm looking at you Star Ocean 5

 

[D.Lo]

Many here are misunderstanding the OP.

This is not talking about games with limited saves as part of their design, eg classic resident evil, or Metroid with save rooms.

It's talking about games that allow saving anywhere, but do not create good checkpoints/auto saves. So they reward people for obsessively saving, wasting time in menus, and punish people who just 'forget' to save.

I'm with you OP. If you can save anywhere it should have reasonable checkpoints to return to after you die.

That way you can pick up without losing lots of progress, but still keep control of when you do 'hard' saves.

 

[dity]

Many here are misunderstanding the OP.

This is not talking about games with limited saves as part of their design, eg classic resident evil, or Metroid with save rooms.

It's talking about games that allow saving anywhere, but do not create good checkpoints/auto saves. So they reward people for obsessively saving, wasting time in menus, and punish people who just 'forget' to save.

I'm with you OP. If you can save anywhere it should also auto-save or have reasonable checkpoints to return to after you die.

If you can't even remember to save once within a few hours after your last save AND the game lets you save anywhere, that's not the game's fault.

 

[D.Lo]

If you can't even remember to save once within a few hours after your last save AND the game lets you save anywhere, that's not the game's fault.

I want to play games, not set an alarm to go to a menu and select save manually every 20 minutes.

I prefer to 'hard' save only when I am ending my gaming session, the game should not make me lose hours of progress just because I forgot to set my alarm. That's annoying, and incentivises obsessively saving manually which is game playing time wasted.

 

[Mohasus]

Save before a boss door or whenever you see a savage enemy, it isn't hard. I'm saving every 10-15 minutes. If I lose progress, it won't be much (it hasn't happened yet).

Also, as others mentioned, buy smokes.

I want to play games, not set an alarm to go to a menu and select save manually every 20 minutes.

Then don't play TMS, there are tons of games that auto-saves nowadays.

 

[RainblowDash]

Believe it or not there are still some games that do not hold your hand.

 

[dity]

I want to play games, not set an alarm to go to a menu and select save manually every 20 minutes.

I prefer to 'hard' save only when I am ending my gaming session, the game should not make me lose hours of progress just because I forgot to set my alarm. That's annoying, and incentivises obsessively saving manually which is game playing time wasted.

Set an alarm to save the game, seriously? All I do is save whenever I do something significant that I don't want to lose. Things like making new equipment, completing a difficult request, beating a boss.