Half-Life 2 save game system stinks!

W

whatever321

Guest
The save game system in Half-Life 2 is the worst I've seen in years. I have brothers that play the game as well and there's no way to individually keep track of where each person is, plus my progress got overwritten automatically when my brother played today. I can't believe there's no profiles or specific slots to save to. Given Valve had so much time to perfect the game, the save system is a huge disappointment.

Also, as many people would agree, it is very annoying to have to open Steam to play the game, this is a first and hopefully a last!
 
Eh, I think it's great. I just keep playing and never save. If I die, I go back to the last checkpoint. =] Simple and I don't have to keep track of my saves. I can see how it might mess you up though, with the save overwriting when 2 people play the game.
 
your Steam license is only for you.

and Steam is here to stay (thankfully)
 
If you exit and savegame it won't be overwriten, I've found it to be the best savegame system I've seen.... I usually forget to save... like always... and i die and i'm like shit i didn't save, but the autosaves are always never too far behind and I never have to refight a large battle.
 
Whatever's complaint was that it doesnt give spaces for multiple users.

But of course you're not supposed to be letting other people use your steam account, and if they had their own steam account, they would have their own save space.

Looking back, it was a great save system; I never even had to think about saving. Later in the game I used quicksave a few times, but for the most part I was able to rely on the autosaves for when I died, or even to get me out of a couple bugs.
 
Just make a proper save (like when you are prompted on quit) and it will never be overwritten. There's a limited number of quick and autosaves
 
whatever321 said:
The save game system in Half-Life 2 is the worst I've seen in years. I have brothers that play the game as well and there's no way to individually keep track of where each person is, plus my progress got overwritten automatically when my brother played today. I can't believe there's no profiles or specific slots to save to. Given Valve had so much time to perfect the game, the save system is a huge disappointment.

Also, as many people would agree, it is very annoying to have to open Steam to play the game, this is a first and hopefully a last!
Click to expand...

Wow, you registered on an unoffical HL2 website just to bitch about the games save system? pffft, hahahhaa
:rolling:
 
f|uke said:
But of course you're not supposed to be letting other people use your steam account
Click to expand...

You've got to be kidding me? Are you saying that nobody else can legally play my copy of HL2 on my PC, even offline? I understand EULA's saying that you can't install stuff on >1 PC, but saying only 1 person is able to use a piece of software is crazy. Where have the days gone where you could put a cartridge into your NES, play for a while, and pass the controller to someone else without breaking a law? (Or even lend the game)

I much as I love Valve's games, their efforts to ensure they get paid for their masterpieces are excessive. Particularly if what you say about licensing is true. Create an amazing game like hl2 and it will be a financial winner, whether or not it's got piracy-thwarting measures in it.
 
I think the first Pokemon had the worst save system. But anyway that sucks that you and your brothers can't keep track of where you are. :(
 
Yes the license agreement says that the software is licensed to YOU for YOUR use only. I agree that it is a bit unreasonable but that is the agreement you accepted when the game was installed.
 
disruptioN_ said:
I think the first Pokemon had the worst save system. But anyway that sucks that you and your brothers can't keep track of where you are. :(
Click to expand...

Hahaha, not that you played Pokemon, cause thats cool, but that was just random... Yeah, im tired. Just played a helluva lot of HL2 trying to stay ahead of my friend in the game.
 
Profile saves is old school stuff, I disagree with EULA if it says it's for my use only but I will abide by it. The save system is similar to HL, two autosaves. For one player it's fairly suitable.
 
yeh, it sucks.

a perosn who is staying @ my house, decided to play and now my savegames are gone .. this is awesome!
 
do you let people use your credit card too? your steam account is your property and is made for one person. unless you trust that the person wont screw anything up, its your own fault.

and valve will probably never change this, because they want everyone to have their own copy.
 
What drugs are you people taking!

The save system of this game sucks and you all know it. Those that defend it simply haven’t been f*cked by it. (yet)

Not having profiles is bullsh*t, and whoever said that my copy of HL2 can only be legally played by the individual that registered it must be mildly retarded. That’s like saying, only *my* XP login is legal and that I owe Microsoft another $79.99 x2 for the ones I created for my kids. (not even Billy has balls that size)
Oh, and what documentation did I overlook where it says that non-quicksaves are the "golden" saves and will not be overwritten. Yes, I know someone will produce some piece of minutia that mentions it, nevertheless its bunk.

Why are so many people so afraid to state the obvious…
[] HL2 is arguably the best game on the planet. (all platforms and genres)
[] Steam (which I blame for causing HL2 to have a bad save system) is a piece of crap invented by bean counters in an attempt to maximize their bottom-lines at the expense of our gaming experience.

And BTW…
yes, poseyjmac I *do* let people use my credit card, she’s called a wife/girlfriend. Look into it.
 
Steam is a pain in the arse to say the least... When i buy a game, i expect to be able to install and play it as soon as i get home and not have to spend 3 hours messing about, having to input my cd key 20 or so times, to be able to play it, because steam servers are overloaded!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! on £50/hour... that's £150 Steam ows me!!!!!


I first thought that the save game system was good for me as a single player, untill after about 16 hours playing and i'm now at a level with a bug that means I can't jump. I'm told that the way to fix the bug, is to reload the previous level, but as the save system only keeps 4 saves and has saved all 4 in the same level, i'm pretty much stuck and looking like i'll have to start again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
poseyjmac said:
do you let people use your credit card too? your steam account is your property and is made for one person. unless you trust that the person wont screw anything up, its your own fault.

and valve will probably never change this, because they want everyone to have their own copy.
Click to expand...

I cant beleive you are defending valve on this!
So I have to purchase 3 copies of HL2 so me and my 2 kids can play the game. Surely this is breaking fair trade laws. So by your reckoning when i buy a new CD I would have to stick cotton wool in the rest of my familys ears in case they hear it too.
 
Darkn3ss said:
The save system of this game sucks and you all know it. Those that defend it simply haven’t been f*cked by it. (yet)
Click to expand...
Save system is for the most part the exact same as in HL1 and I havn't heard anyone complain about that one. Also don't be stupid and constantly insult other people just because they disagree with you.

Darkn3ss said:
Not having profiles is bullsh*t, and whoever said that my copy of HL2 can only be legally played by the individual that registered it must be mildly retarded.
Click to expand...
Well lets see why they would make it that way. You play the game through your Steam account, thats how they know you have paid for it. If you let someone else play through your account, like someone using another computer at another house then they are essentially able to play the game from beggining to end completely for free on their own computers. That is essentially what warez is.

Why are so many people so afraid to state the obvious…
[] Steam (which I blame for causing HL2 to have a bad save system) is a piece of crap invented by bean counters in an attempt to maximize their bottom-lines at the expense of our gaming experience.
Click to expand...
Ya thats just so obvious, I am extremelly sorry but my opinion up until now must be completely false since you said that. I now see the light...
By the way that was sarcasm. :rolleyes:

And BTW…
yes, poseyjmac I *do* let people use my credit card, she’s called a wife/girlfriend. Look into it.
Click to expand...
Don't be so nasty to other people.

Nickram said:
I cant beleive you are defending valve on this!
So I have to purchase 3 copies of HL2 so me and my 2 kids can play the game. Surely this is breaking fair trade laws. So by your reckoning when i buy a new CD I would have to stick cotton wool in the rest of my familys ears in case they hear it too.
Click to expand...
Of course they will let you and your kids play using the same account. Thats no different than buying one copy of any other game and letting other people in your house play it. The problem comes when you realize that you can essentially use your steam account to login and play HL2 on any computer in the world so long as it has the HL2 preload files (which are free to distribute) and your account has already paid for HL2, that means you could simply give your login info to a friend in another city and he could simply install and play HL2 on his own computer whenever he wants. Thats no different from warez.
 
Mullin's right (about the save game system, I'm not going to go into the rest...). It's exactly the same as HL1 and if you 'save' properly there's no problem. Okay so it doesn't tell you that (or does it? Anyone checked the readme? Bet it's written down somewhere). Me and my bro are playing in two-hour shifts with no problems.

A word on Steam: I'm on 56k, as are many other people. Valve, you utter bastards. 30 minutes to update Steam, 1 hour to unlock the game, another hour to download an 'update' and another half hour screwing around trying to get the thing to work. Of course it works perfectly now and I've had no problems since, but of course the fundamental problem with Steam is that if one thing goes wrong, it all goes wrong, and there's no way to close your account. I'm sure some people have been forced to buy HL1 again.
 
Of course they will let you and your kids play using the same account. Thats no different than buying one copy of any other game and letting other people in your house play it. The problem comes when you realize that you can essentially use your steam account to login and play HL2 on any computer in the world so long as it has the HL2 preload files (which are free to distribute) and your account has already paid for HL2, that means you could simply give your login info to a friend in another city and he could simply install and play HL2 on his own computer whenever he wants. Thats no different from warez.[/QUOTE]

This a self made problem because of the way they distributed the game. I bought the game on DVD from a shop as I have all my other games. I am being penalised by there system unfairly.
However I forgot to add before that HL2 is the greatest game I have ever played and the save game system is a small problem.
Just my opinion, not being nasty ;)
 
The Mullinator said:
Save system is for the most part the exact same as in HL1 and I havn't heard anyone complain about that one.
Click to expand...

Oh, well in that case lets bring back HL1's graphics engine. Perhaps no one will complain

The Mullinator said:
Also don't be stupid and constantly insult other people just because they disagree with you
Click to expand...

Mom? Is that you?
 
The Mullinator said:
Well lets see why they would make it that way. You play the game through your Steam account, thats how they know you have paid for it. If you let someone else play through your account, like someone using another computer at another house then they are essentially able to play the game from beggining to end completely for free on their own computers. That is essentially what warez is.
Click to expand...
Really!? I can do that!? Hold on. brb...
Crap, it didnt work! :rolling:

I meant on a single PC
 
first of all, for those who are still complaining about the few hours you had to get the game to work, you should stop. i mean, that was days ago, you aren't going to get those hours back. and it's really starting to get annoying when people call valve 'bastards' for loosing some precious time that you could have been using, i dunno, for doing laundry or something. heck, you could have walked away from your computer while it was authenticating and done something productive with this 'wasted time' too.

anyways, back on topic. the save system is pretty convenient in most regards, in my opinion, but it does have it's flaws. like *everything*, it's not going to be perfect. now that you know of its flaws, you know how to avoid them. phew. problem solved.

what really is starting to get to me is this worldwide trend of a growing 'victim class'. something isn't working for ME the way I want it to, and so i should complain until i am individually catered to. 'I'M the victim here.' the save system doesn't rub absolutely everyone the right way. *sigh*, thats rough. there are worse things fellas.

i don't mean to be rude, but i just had to get that out :/
 
The Mullinator said:
Of course they will let you and your kids play using the same account. Thats no different than buying one copy of any other game and letting other people in your house play it. The problem comes when you realize that you can essentially use your steam account to login and play HL2 on any computer in the world so long as it has the HL2 preload files (which are free to distribute) and your account has already paid for HL2, that means you could simply give your login info to a friend in another city and he could simply install and play HL2 on his own computer whenever he wants. Thats no different from warez.
Click to expand...
So then why does Steam exist?
So far it rates an F in game delivery, an F in not being too busy to authenticate, an F in not corrupting its own cache files, and if what you say is true, and F in security. WTF!?
 
phuket101 said:
first of all, for those who are still complaining about the few hours you had to get the game to work, you should stop. i mean, that was days ago, you aren't going to get those hours back. and it's really starting to get annoying when people call valve 'bastards' for loosing some precious time that you could have been using, i dunno, for doing laundry or something. heck, you could have walked away from your computer while it was authenticating and done something productive with this 'wasted time' too./
Click to expand...
You must an extremely forgiving person. So willing to let by bygones be bygones after personally having gone threw the hellish install of busy servers and file prep and 50% done and 80% done and finally got to 100% done, then it jumps back to 75% done and starts again. And seeing the smiles on the faces of your kids turn to frowns as this process can take up to an hour but no one told you about this. Not even the PCGamer mag that rated it so high (not that the game didn't deserve it, I'm bitching about Steam here) And then after a couple days of successful gaming (being thankful of course because you were reading in this and other forums that some people who bought the game at the same time you did, still haven't been able to play) you were forced, not asked, forced to go trough it again to fix a cache bug that you didn't have.
You are a better man than I.
 
phuket101 said:
what really is starting to get to me is this worldwide trend of a growing 'victim class'. something isn't working for ME the way I want it to, and so i should complain until i am individually catered to. 'I'M the victim here.' the save system doesn't rub absolutely everyone the right way. *sigh*, thats rough. there are worse things fellas.

i don't mean to be rude, but i just had to get that out :/
Click to expand...
Now your just not making sense.
If there is a 'worldwide' trend of people say this piece of sh*t doent work for 'me'
I'm thinking that the product isn't delivering as advertised and NOT, "look at those ten thousand individual and mutually exclusive wieners."
And I poop on your 'victim class' comment.

i don't mean to be rude, but i just had to get that out :/
 
I think it kicked arse - would be cool to have a tab for diffrent users though on it.
 
Sulkdodds said:
Mullin's right (about the save game system, I'm not going to go into the rest...). It's exactly the same as HL1 and if you 'save' properly there's no problem. Okay so it doesn't tell you that (or does it? Anyone checked the readme? Bet it's written down somewhere). Me and my bro are playing in two-hour shifts with no problems.
Click to expand...
Ok, so tell me again how this works.
[]You play for awhile, then quit and save. This is a 'hard' save and will not be overwritten.
[] Then your bro plays and when he's done he does the same and is able to pickup from where he left off regardless of anything you might have saved in the mean time.
Right?
 
Sulkdodds said:
A word on Steam: I'm on 56k, as are many other people. Valve, you utter bastards. 30 minutes to update Steam, 1 hour to unlock the game, another hour to download an 'update' and another half hour screwing around trying to get the thing to work. Of course it works perfectly now and I've had no problems since, but of course the fundamental problem with Steam is that if one thing goes wrong, it all goes wrong, and there's no way to close your account. I'm sure some people have been forced to buy HL1 again.
Click to expand...
F*CK DUDE!!
I would have mailed Valve fresh monkey sh*t for putting me through THAT!

Man! I was pissed at Steam before, now I'm about to pop a blood vessel.
 
f|uke said:
your Steam license is only for you.

and Steam is here to stay (thankfully)
Click to expand...

OH GOD SHUT UP.

I had the same problem... I wonder what caused it.
 
Here's my beef with Steam and Half Life 2:

Initial install & registration: This was by far the worst experience, aside from Final Fantasy XI, I've ever had trying to get a game up and ready to go. I'm on dialup, so it took me over 4 hours to complete the online process of the installation.

Save Game system: I like it-and don't like it. I like the auto-save feature. I don't like the fact that savegames can be erased without you knowing about it. On the issue about friends should not play your game because it hurts sales--I've had several friends play some of my games and then buy the game themselves. So that doesn't make any sense.

Steamed over Steam: I had to download another update today. I did so. Now, whenver I try to start Steam when offline, the update screen comes up again! Obviously, it hangs so I have to cancel and go online. It works fine when online, so I start up Steam when online, then go offline. Half-Life 2 won't start! Now I have to tie up our phone line whenever I want to play Half Life 2. (note--I just figured out, in all of my genius, that I can just unplug the phone line after I'm ingame. Still, it's a pain to have to connect to the internet so that the damn update screen won't show up. Any ideas on how to fix this?)

It's HIGHLY frustrating to have to go through a poorly implemented program every time you want to play the greatest game on Earth. This is a great game, I have much more praises than beefs. This Steam thing is just annoying.
 
The guy has a point, me and my bro bought the game together and we got problems with save games 2, i'd like to see a different profile system.
Games like NFSU2, GR2 got it why not halflife2.
 
I don't understand why all the flaming, the guy had a good reason to not like the savingsystem, letting your brother play with your games its normal, a lot people do it, anyone of you would do it, I mean would you rather pay for 2 copies of the same game or buy 2 games, if I had a brother I know for sure we would play on the same account and that is especially true if you have only one computer and only one can be on it at a time, I'm sure this is just a mistake on valve's side, I think they just never took this in to account thats all, for the rest it's absolutely great, simply the best save system I have ever encounterd, really smartly made exept for the non-profiles thing.
 
I agree with a lot of the people on this thread; my thing is this: I'm all for Valve protecting its copyright, however, when & if it becomes a big hassle for the end user, it's gone too far, IMO. Have you tried getting this f*in game to work in a complex network for a LAN game? It doesn't. Not because it technically can't be done, but because they choose not to allow it with certain network configurations.

So we got 6 guys, with 6 "silver" licenses, who can't play on our LAN. It's irritating.

The amount of problems a lot of us have experienced is inexcusable for a game that has been in development for this long. Even adding a description to the save game would help quite a bit, for this situation at least.
 
Varsity said:
Just make a proper save (like when you are prompted on quit) and it will never be overwritten. There's a limited number of quick and autosaves
Click to expand...

Seriously? I dont think the quick/auto-saves are limited.
 
My complaint about the save system is not at all about profiles, etc.. it's that there are so few save slots and a set amount.

No one else uses my HL2, steam, anything. But saves in cool places I make later on for going back to to have fun with console commands I lost due to overwriting. I do appreciate the chapter start thing they made to halfway compensate for it, though, but it still can get a tiny bit annoying.


///edit: Oh wow, just read that regular saves aren't overwritten.

I feel foolish. Ignore my entire post.. I can now go make some great saves and funny console battles (Tons of Striders with sons of resistence forces is the best :] )
 
i think the HL2 save system is excellent. Never bothered to save anymore compared to some other games where my quick-save button often became weared out :D
 
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