I’m more than a little confused by the new save system. To quote the patch notes:
"New save system
You will now be presented with 5 save-game slots (each of which can be used for any game mode). Your existing saves will be mapped into these slots. Selecting an empty slot will start a new game, allowing you to then pick which game mode to play from the mode select menu.
There are now two sub-slots for each save-game - one for auto saves, one for manual saves.
Starting a new game with no existing saves will take you directly to mode select."
To begin with, what is a manual save? As far as I know, NMS has never had a manual save function, and still doesn’t. Does this refer to the save points you have to build?
As far as I can see, the change means that our saves per game have been reduced from three to two. And the second of those two is only created when you build a save point, which requires you to:
- Have the materials to hand;
- Be in a place where it can be built (i.e on the ground, on a planet), and;
- The biggie - Actually remember to build it. Then remember to update it regularly. Because if you don’t, you could lose possibly hundreds of hours of play.
So effectively, for most of us, the change has reduced the number of saves per game from three to one. And if you’ve just flown / teleported into an impossible situation, a glitch, or a bug, loading your single save will just put you straight back into the same impossible situation. If you haven’t remembered to create and update your manual save point, the only answer is to lose everything, and start again.
No Man’s Sky is a very fine game, but it’s not without flaws. In my opinion, one of those flaws is that there have always been too few saves, and they’ve been too hard to use and control. It is beyond me how anyone could consider that reducing the saves even more, and making them even harder to use, could be some kind of improvement.
But perhaps I’ve got it wrong. If so, I’d be pleased if someone would explain it to me.