Turn-back button in games with a choice

[SifaPlays]

It's an interesting topic for me as a developer of twine games.

Should I let the player use Step-back button to change his choice? I think the game will be less immersive in this case. Because if you have the possibility to change something you will most likely do it.

From another side, player can just save the game before the choice and load it to try another passage. So maybe when I turn off step-back button I just make the game less user friendly? Maybe turn-back just a "quality of life" addition.

What do you think?

For example, a simple choice from my game. You can wear Tank Top or you can just walk away. But just after you picked Tank Top up, the door locks and you need to wear the briefs. So I don't want the player to change his choice easily.

 

[Rafster]

Players don't like save scumming, so yeah, you'll get complaints for disabling the back button. Especially in sandbox games.

If you have events that depends on RNG, back button becomes a need. I thought long and hard but I decided to keep the back button. But within a limit, let's say 7 passages. Maybe you can limit it to 2 prior passages if you want to be strict.

 

[woody554]

people say they absolutely hate disabling rollback, yet at the same time they insist they want meaningful choices.

the choices won't matter if you can just undo any risk. if there's no risk, there's no suspense. if there's no suspense there's no payoff. at the very least there should be some legwork to undo choices, enough to make you not want to choose wrong.


example: card games are incredibly, stupendously, mindnumbinly boring. what makes them interesting is betting on it. creating a real risk of a painful loss. the uncertainly of losing your house. that's what makes you sweat, that's what makes you enjoy. - without the betting it's just waste of time.

 

[Doorknob22]

In my game, I try to almost never add choices which lead to dramatically different content, i.e. "the redhead or the blonde" or "you die or you win". I think choices should lead to similar content with the difference between the choices be "role" or "morality" based.

 

[tanstaafl]

We live in a world where the games we like have choices such as Grab Ass resulting in +1 lust and Grab Boobs results+1 romance. The arbitrary nature of these games almost requires the ability to step back, even if only to reevaluate what is going on. And if you are thinking "But my choices will make much more sense." I'll just say now that no, no they won't.

 

[HarveyD]

people say they absolutely hate disabling rollback, yet at the same time they insist they want meaningful choices.

the choices won't matter if you can just undo any risk. if there's no risk, there's no suspense. if there's no suspense there's no payoff. at the very least there should be some legwork to undo choices, enough to make you not want to choose wrong.

That is not at all what people mean when they say they want meaningful choices.

Choices are often done so poorly in these games that rollback is a must.

 

[mukiwara]

I think the best way to go around such issue, you just have to let the user to have more than one save state, so if they really want to go back, they will have that choice in a different save state.
So people who really want to see or roll back, will do it and people who are just immerse in the game won't even think about it.

 

[Meaning Less]

It really depends on the kind of game you are going for, undo for sure can be used for cheating.

Imagine playing chess and having the ability to take back every move as much as you want, it completely breaks the game and few people aren't going to keep taking back moves if they have that option enabled.

That's why many games disable saving/rollback during dungeons and specific matches.

So you should question yourself, is that a core part of your gameplay? If so then you should disable saving and rollback for certain sections, that way if someone wants to load then they have to restart the entire section and not just their last move, this will make people less likely to take back every small mistake.

 

[LewdLewy]

I want to see where the different paths lead and then pick my main one. I honestly can't understand why a developer would want to make the experience more difficult for people to explore their game by removing rollback. Players dictate their own level of difficulty that they are willing to deal with. Some want to play on easy mode, others want something more balanced, and then their are the masochists looking to be punished with settings like iron man mode (deletes the save if you die). Punishing all players by reducing ease of use isn't a good approach because they all have different play styles.

Ultimately, exploration is part of the fun, don't limit it.

 

[Hagatagar]

In Twine sandbox games it is absolutly helpfull to have a Step-back button, because especially in the early stages of the game development and after updates it's not uncommon that bugs causes continue buttons to disappear or to be displayed with an error and this normal bug turns in a game breaking bug.

 

[Jsmie45]

You should have it a choice whether or not to have a rollback button, its a single player game so let people play how they want