New Save System

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:

  1. Have the materials to hand;
  2. Be in a place where it can be built (i.e on the ground, on a planet), and;
  3. 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.

2 Likes

I feel the new saving option would bring it more in line with traditional games.

Currently:

Three autosaves which constantly overwrite each other every time you get out your ship.

New:

One autosave slot which overwrites itself only, one Hard Save slot for those manual saves.

How many times have you thought to yourself, “I’ll warp to a random new system and see what ships/blueprints/travellers are there, if I don’t like any I’ll simply reload and warp somewhere else.” Only to then have to be careful what you do or risk losing your save-slot dropping off the list?

Now, you can Manual Save it on your base, jump in your ship, warp to a new system, jump out your ship, have a look round, jump back in your ship, visit a planet for a bit, pop back to the station safe in the knowledge that your Hard Save is exactly where you left it instead of making the decision to reload now or having to stay where you are.

I’m sure the game will load the most recent by default be it the Auto or Manual if you forget to Manual save at the end of a four hour session.

2 Likes

Firstly; Since ship summoning, I haven’t bothered building a save point…I just jump in and out of my ship. Quick and easy. I do it after most farming or wandering about sessions and just before turning off the PS4. That is my version of a ‘manual save’. Works fine and I’m used to it.

Secondly; On the occasion I’ve had an issue requiring a reload, I’ve always used the ‘previous’ save to avoid the current hiccup… (such as falling through graphics glitches when exiting a ship). That suggests to me that a bare minimum of 2 auto saves are needed, which are now apparently going to be reduced to 1, which is very concerning.
Like @Polyphemus suggests; What happens if I land on a dodgey graphic fault and I repeatedly fall through upon reload? Game breaker.

@Oshoryu I agree that the new save system will bring the game more in line with how other game interfaces work but I actually like it the way it is.
I rarely do reloads during gameplay other than for problems as for me it interupts the flow of the sim.
I’m guessing there is a problem with the size of the save file for each save so they are attempting to reduce this…maybe a tech savvy ETARCian can confirm?
As dedicated NMS players, we’ve come to rely on the multiple saves to get us out of trouble so reducing this isn’t going to be popular.

We will now need to make a conscience effort to make manual saves at known safe points and run the risk of losing tons of game time if it fails at an auto save point. I hope this won’t mean needing to build a save point device each time and will just be a menu interaction.

I guess we’ll just have to see what transpires.

3 Likes

I hope, I will not find my self underground, together with my manual save point.
When atlas rises update was out - several beacons became unreachable beneath planet’s surface.
Luckily I used my freighter to make last save points.
HG please give us an opportunity to make manual save points on freighters.

More places to Manual save would be handy, if they had one located on the freighter and at Space-Stations this would make it significantly easier too.

Thank you for making that clearer, I can now see how the old system had more advantages! Not sure how I missed it on my first read!

Apologies!

No need to apologise - well, not to me, anyway. Your points are largely valid, and, as I’ve said, I’m a bit confused myself.

I just don’t think that the change has been properly thought through. The idea of a hard save, that doesn’t get overwritten, is a good one. But why create that at the expense of the autosaves? And why make it so complicated? The whole purpose of a backup save is to rescue your game if you get into trouble. Making the save function difficult or inconvenient to use defeats the purpose.

It’s not as if the save files were particularly large, or complex. Compared to games like Fallout 4 or Witcher 3, NMS save files are tiny. Yet Fallout and Witcher allow you almost unlimited save files (hundreds, anyway).

If HG think a hard save is necessary (and I agree, it would be handy), why not just put a “save” button in the menu? And then leave the autosaves just as they were. It can’t be anything to do with location - autosaves will work anywhere. Hard saves should, too.

But, as I said in my first post, perhaps I’ve misunderstood the reasons for the change, or the way it works.

2 Likes

@Oshoryu
No apologies required!!!

Totally agree.

2 Likes

Does any save that you enact yourself considered a manual save? If that is the case, then all buildings, depots, debris, and shelters on planets will also offer a place to manually save (and get paid if you upload).

Having a 2nd autosave has saved me from game-killing glitches (falling through the world or a mission not showing up) on a couple of occasions. I agree that we should have at least 2. However, I also back up my saves by USB weekly in anticipation of possible complications with updates or my console dying.

(A practice I recommend to all :grinning:)

3 Likes

Same. After having my first save file corrupted permanently, I don’t take chances anymore. I backup after every play session or every other.

1 Like

I think they have big problem with this new save system. I just went down to the planets surface and clicked on one of those discover area flagpoles and it set both saves to the same point. :slight_smile:

Manual Saves should only be Beacons and the Save Device we can place down. They should be a backup save where the game should save only to the first slot every time we exit ship / click on one of those area Discovery markers. There should never be a device or action that causes both save points to be saved to, It destroys the function of multiple Saves :slight_smile:

Just My Two Cents :slight_smile:

PS: Easy Fix Just have the Save Device be the only one that saves to both Save Points and all other beacons, and structures act just like exiting your ship :slight_smile:

3 Likes

I totally agree with some of the points made about the new save system and I feel this has not been well thought out.

  • Increased risk with a failing auto-save, having only one.
    Forces us to regularly create a manual save to prevent rolling back a ‘large’ amount of time in case of an (immediate) issue.
  • Limited in creating a manual save.
    Can only been done planet side, unless I am missing something.
  • Unclear how to create a manual save.
    This should in my opinion be made visually clear in-game to distinguish from an auto-save.
  • Forced interaction should not overwrite our manual save.
    This is the case when ‘discovering’ a location where it is creating a manual save.

Apart from the above mentioned, it has not addressed any of the issues present with the Steam Cloud (PC). It has in fact only made it worse in my opinion. I am already forced to clear out my ‘cache’ folder from location discovery images (.dds) on a regular basis, just to stay within the Steam Cloud storage limit. Mind you, I am mostly playing my single normal mode game and was already forced to remove my creative mode save.

Most of the times I will not even be able to upload my base to the Steam Workshop due to this same Cloud Storage limitation. Even if able to upload, because I just went through the trouble of clearing out, it has so far not worked as intended, but that’s another issue that requires attention.

The ability to now have 5 games saved regardless of game-mode is a welcome change. Sure enough it ‘saves’ some storage space for each as now only 2 saves per game are used, but I am already having trouble with just the one, so what good does it do?

Another thing I noticed is how not all discoveries remain present in our saved data. There appears to be a limit in what is actually kept within the saves. One of the planets in my very first system I discovered, magically disappeared from the list. This is actually my home system, where I have a base on one of the other planets. Once a certain limit is reached, early discoveries/data will start to disappear. In itself, I can somewhat understand limitations being required and it makes sense to start with removal of certain data, starting at the oldest data present, to be replaced with brand new data. See it as some sort of ‘loop’ for data stored once a max/limit is reached. However, I strongly believe there is an issue present with how this is done after extensive research on my own saves. This appears to cause a variety of new issues and in my case actually corrupted my save, in combination with a partly broken core mechanic for repair/charge.

Anyways, this may sound like a rant, but is certainly not meant to be. I love playing the game, I can deal with issues and I am well aware that implementation of new content and required changes, often comes with unforeseen issues. I am totally fine with this, I understand. I love code myself and am actually intrigued by bugs/issues. This often results in me diving deep into the game source files, trying to figure out what actually causes them, reporting as well I can to hopefully see it fixed at some point. In a weird way, I actually enjoy it :wink:

When it comes to the ‘new’ save system, I would have probably chosen for keeping 2 auto-saves and 1 manual save. In the game menu I would have added the option the convert one of the auto-saves to a manual save if wished for. I am sure we’re all being heard and for now I can only hope this is only a first implementation, with further improvements and fixes planned for future updates.

3 Likes

Another thing I noticed is how not all discoveries remain present in our saved data. There appears to be a limit in what is actually kept within the saves. One of the planets in my very first system I discovered, magically disappeared from the list. This is actually my home system, where I have a base on one of the other planets. Once a certain limit is reached, early discoveries/data will start to disappear. - DevilinPixy

Is this a save that has been around since before the 1.1 update?

No, I started with a fresh new save when Atlas Rises (1.3) was released.

So no one really knows how the new save system works?

After having been in experimental on Steam and now released for PC, we know what has changed and how it works, unless you are asking about the inner workings, which has basically not really changed with this update.

DevilinPixy,

As for the Disappearing discoveries I am not sure about why that is happening. If you notice any other older discoveries vanishing from the list it could be as you say and only a certain amount can be viewed. Try this:

  • Go back to your first system.
  • Make sure you are on the planet that is missing from the list.
  • See if that planet is now displayed as well as any nearby discoveries.

If they are missing then you might be right about the size of the list being limited. If they are there then it might depend on where you are when you view the Discovery List.

Good Luck :slight_smile:

Where does the game now save the save files?
I do not see it under user.
I do not see it under steam.

I need to know if anyone knows.
I am running into a problem and need to back up the save files.

Thanks

1 Like

Before the Foundation update (1.1), if you discovered too much, it just stopped recording new discoveries. Every time I saved all my new discoveries in my list were gone, even though the planet I was on said I had discovered it.

I reported this bug in email to HG at the time, and actually got a non-bot reply back from their support staff (no one on Reddit believed me though, since HG was radio silent for the most part, but their support staff did respond at times, like in this case). They said they would report it to “the team”.

So they fixed it in the Foundation update. Now when we run out of space in our discovery file storage, it bumps off the oldest discoveries, not the newest ones.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE that just because the discovery disappears from your personal list, this does not mean the discovery no longer exists. The discoveries are still stored on the HG server you uploaded it to (this is why you can still find stars discovered in August 2016 on the outer edge of Euclid Galaxy).

2 Likes

On my computer (Win 7, 64 bit) the save files are in:

C:\Users\ (My Name)\Appdata\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS\

(Where, of course, (My Name) is the name of my computer. Yours will be different.

Hope this helps.

ya, true, but Hello games does not exist.

i’ve searched the drive, looked even in the registry

have no idea where they are