Saving our Saves, Do you save your saves? Options

[Renee]

I was reading an old forum post Acadian made in the old Beth forums and was rather surprised to learn that Acadian deleted all his old "Acadian" paladin saves once Buffy was created. What a shocker (for me)! Acadian, I was going to message you directly about this, but then I wondered about the entire community.

Who saves their saves? If you delete them, why?

I know Lopov also used to delete all his character saves once his latest character stories were told. Over time I've Persuaded him to keep them around. PhonAntiPhon also once said he used to get rid of everything once a character story was done: saves, photos, tear the game's mods down, everything!

Because for me, if I got rid of all those old saves it would be almost akin to throwing away old photo books full of snapshots we all used to take with real cameras. I'd feel like something was missing. Even if I never return to those characters again. I like having all my old character saves, organized and structured into a variety of folders.

Maybe in the olden days when computers barely had any storage space it might be a good idea to toss those saves. Otherwise, for those who get rid of them, why do you do this?

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

I was reading an old forum post Acadian made in the old Beth forums and was rather surprised to learn that Acadian deleted all his old "Acadian" paladin saves once Buffy was created. What a shocker (for me)! Acadian, I was going to message you directly about this, but then I wondered about the entire community.

Who saves their saves? If you delete them, why?

I know Lopov also used to delete all his character saves once his latest character stories were told. Over time I've Persuaded him to keep them around. PhonAntiPhon also once said he used to get rid of everything once a character story was done: saves, photos, tear the game's mods down, everything!

Because for me, if I got rid of all those old saves it would be almost akin to throwing away old photo books full of snapshots we all used to take with real cameras. I'd feel like something was missing. Even if I never return to those characters again. I like having all my old character saves, organized and structured into a variety of folders.

Maybe in the olden days when computers barely had any storage space it might be a good idea to toss those saves. Otherwise, for those who get rid of them, why do you do this?

I delete my saves, for the most part. I probably still had Morrowind saves on my old original XBox, but I gave that and all the games I had for it to a friend. I haven’t actually completed a play through or any Bethesda game for quite a while now, so any saves I made weren’t very meaningful.

[Lena Wolf]

I don't keep my saves either. Not even of the current game! I have may be 50 saves, if that, which I rotate - they are there for technical reasons, in case there's a corrupt save and I have to go back. I kind of treat it as life: you can't turn back time, what's done is done, you've got to go with it.

[Acadian]

I only play one game at a time - for years at a time - and currently that is ESO - where 'saves' are not relevant.

Regarding older games, if I were to someday return to an older game (which is doubtful), I would absolutely restart Buffy anew since years would have passed and any old saves would seem. . . foreign. She is quite adept at 'restarting'. We did so in both Oblivion and Skyrim many times. Even in ESO, she exists as a handful of differing classes that are all as identical as practical other than class.

[mirocu]

Yay! Another Renee-ish topic!


When I started gaming seriously with Deus Ex, I started a practice I still use which is to make saves in certain locations. Since each save comes with a screenshot, I wanted to make a photo album of the load list that documents my progress through the game. While this practice is irrelevant when it comes to neverending games such as Oblivion, I still do it. Old habits John McClain.
I also keep all saves on the harddrive and on three different flashdrives which I update in irregular intervals. I have with both Oblivion and Fallout 3 removed the early saves and keep those on the flashdrives. I also sometimes delete saves that have been long forgotten and focus on keeping the latest ones available.

Btw I could have sworn that I started Fallout 3 in 2013, but no! I started it in Feb 2012!

This post has been edited by mirocu: Nov 11 2021, 05:41 PM

[SubRosa]

I save almost all of my old saves. The only time I delete them is when I decide to restart a character because I got something wrong. I did that with my current run of January in Morrowind. After a few days I found that I was leveling up way too fast. I had forgotten that with the older Beth games you have to play games with your Major (and in Morrowind's case Minor) skills to control your leveling. So I started completely over, and deleted my old saves of her.

But otherwise, I keep everything. I still have my first save from Oblivion. To keep the in game menus from becoming overloaded, I create subfolders in each game's save folder, and copy all but the final save of every character there. That way I can pick up their game any time I want. Or just go back and sightsee for a little bit, and see things what their level was, what gear they had, etc...

I do this even though like Acadian, I rarely pick up and start playing from an old save. I usually just start a new game, since like he said, I cannot remember everything they did. But like Renee intimated, to me those savegames are like old family pictures. Even if I do not look at them often, I like knowing I have them there in the dusty attic of my hard drives.

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

A big part of my problem is restartitis. Whenever I start a new playthrough, it’s inevitable that I don’t like something (usually some small detail) about my character, or I get an idea for a different character, and I just have to go back to chargen. So, as you can see, I don’t really have a chance to get too involved with a character, so I just delete the saves as they aren’t meaningful to me.

[Renee]

Interesting. I am glad I asked the community this.

I also forgot about the consoles. Indeed, the older consoles hold a limited number of saves sometimes, and even if they don't, it's recommended not to keep piling New Saves into the cache. I read this somewhere, probably on Gamefaqs. So back when I originally gamed Oblivion on PS3, I would only keep maybe 8 saves, overwriting them all occasionally (although like Rosa I'd always keep a character's first save in the Prison).

I ignored this advice for Skyrim though. In Haaf-Mersey's game, which has been extant since 2013, I kept adding those saves into the Xbox. Eventually there were hundreds of saves! And then finally last year, his gameworld started having all sorts of problems with stuttering and freezes. I did some research and decided to try Moving most of his saves onto a flash drive. I thought: no way will this make a difference.

But it did! His game went back to being relatively problem-free somehow. Which makes no sense to me. Why would saves cause a game to mess up even when the game is not actively saving? Maybe they get considered by my 360's meager RAM? No idea.

[Lena Wolf]

Until very recently I only played on consoles, and there you can't keep too many saves. Plus, in some games you don't have a choice. There may be only a few save slots available, so you have to overwrite your previous saves anyway. In other games like Dragon's Dogma for example, there is no save history - you always overwrite your previous save. I got used to that, and I'm fine with it. I never had any screenshots either.

[macole]

Save the saves, yes I do sort of. I have on an archive HDD the initial save (after chargen) of every TES character I’ve made. Currently my Oblivion game has I have over 3200 saves on file. I’ve thought of pruning the file by keeping only the level-up saves or getting rid of saves of little value. After a couple of times when I wanted to go back to review a location and finding it gone I’ve stopped that practice. Now I only delete corrupt saves.

Now where ddid I put that archived HDD?

[Decrepit]

For me, it's a mixed bag. With some games I back up saves. Even when it makes little to no sense. My Oblivion second play-through saves are all on DVD, though due to mod changes only the most recent are usable. With Daggerfall, on the other hand, I'm content to stick with the game's default save system, overwrite saves as the game progresses, and make no backups. I made periodic backups of my active Minecraft save, all still usable. Rather, I think they are. I can no longer successfully launch my active Minecraft play-through, sad to say. Transport Fever saves got periodic backups, though like Oblivion only the most recent saves are usable. Train Simulator and Trainz don't really count, except for route/scenario creation, which I don't yet do. I didn't back up Kingdom Come Deliverance saves, though on at least one occasion I wish I had.

[Kane]

It all goes once a player arc wraps up. I tend to tweak mods in between characters, so it'd be a moot point anyway.


Only game I ever kept a save around for was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on my PS2. I had one long running save that I goofed around on all the time.

[macole]

The mention of Daggerfall reminds me that out of all the DF characters I've created I have permanently archived only one save file.

For RP purposes I always take nymph as a language skill. A waste some would say. Well one time I opened a closet door and there stood a nymph.
"Excuse me, I didn't know the room was in use," I said and backed out before she could love me to death.

I saved at that point thinking that this may be the only time a language skill had or will ever have any impact in a DF game. Now whenever I want to see a nymph I load that file, open the door and there she is. Sometimes she lets me back out other times she attacks with her tenderizing mystical energy.

This post has been edited by macole: Nov 19 2021, 11:08 PM

[Lopov]

I keep saves of some characters, mostly from Fallout 3 and Skyrim, although I'm fairly certain that I'm not returning to either of them, it's been more than 2 years and returning would feel foreign as Acadian well said, besides I don't really have any interest more to play with them again. The only exception to this is Blondie from FNV, I regularly return to her game but in her version of New Vegas most stuff that can be completed, has been completed, so I can either take her on a new adventure or do some random roaming around.

In the past I used to delete all saves immediately but when actively playing with some character, I usually keep all of them from the very first on, in case something would go wrong or if I'd want to check if some stuff (for instance before I applied some mod) still worked on an older save, where the mod wasn't yet active.

[Arcry]

I like the analogy to an old photo album, through I always described it as a library of stories. I keep all my character saves no matter the game unless there is a catastrophe. Like here recently I lost the morrowind save to my Argonian Commoner Lacertia Brightscale. All because of a fried harddrive. But even outside of the scope of Elder Scrolls I'll keep character saves. I have a save for every class and origin in DA:O and for every class going forward to DA2 and Inquisition. I just can't really bare to delete the saves, screenshots, and notes I've made for my characters.

[Renee]

I keep all my character saves no matter the game unless there is a catastrophe.

I think I've probably deleted some saves whose lineage became problematic. Case in point, I can remember in Renee Gade III's game (Oblivion) there was a point where it was CTD-on-launch no matter what I tried. Disabling mods to find the culprit did nothing... it was always CTD-on-launch, even with just the base Oblivion.esm, Shivering Isles, Knights and the Unofficial Patches installed. The solution was to go all the way back, literal Earth months, to an earlier save. In that case, I probably deleted the saves which split off from the "good" ones.

This made me upset for a few minutes, probably. But the thing about me is, I am like a 3-year old when it comes to gaming, sometimes. Plop me in front of a TV with my Xbox controller and the promise of adventure ahead, and I'll soon forget about any gaming calamities which occurred not long ago.

This post has been edited by Renee: Nov 29 2021, 02:22 PM

[Adella]

Hmmm, well, for console gamers the saves are generally not transferable. When you update your platform, or it gives up the ghost, you lose everything.

Even if you do have the computing acumen to pull a save off a console, well it will only be loadable on another console of the same type and in a copy of the same game. So, it is not practicable…unless one simply wants a warm fuzzy feeling knowing an archived flash drive has an unusable old save of a cherished character. A bit like keeping Grandfathers ashes in an urn over the fireplace.

As for me…We keep a progenitor save of my likeness in the Keep where Ralof cuts my binds. Even this gets periodically updated to account for changes in Load Order, and of course if I choose to indulge in a little makeover!

A.

[Lena Wolf]

As for me…We keep a progenitor save of my likeness in the Keep where Ralof cuts my binds.

Aha! So Ralof is into bonding bondage. That definitely explains a few things...

This post has been edited by Lena Wolf: Dec 2 2021, 04:39 PM

[Renee]

Hmmm, well, for console gamers the saves are generally not transferable. When you update your platform, or it gives up the ghost, you lose everything.

They are transferrable!, well at least for most of the games I enjoy I've done it several times, moving about a half-dozen OB, FO, and Sky characters, but only from Xbox to PC. I can teach you (or anyone) how this is done; you just need a special program called Modio.

We can't transfer Playstation games to PC, though. I'm not even sure they can be stored on a PC without some weird formatting issues happening. They can be stored on thumb drives, though, and moved later on to another PS3. I know because I've done this in the past, when my original Playstation croaked.

This post has been edited by Renee: Dec 4 2021, 08:40 PM