Why do games still use ugly system UI overlays to save the game? It’s immersion breaking, slow and annoying.

[mogster7777]

Like most games still do this and it not only takes longer with more prompts to get through but this ugly window appears on top of the game when you save. You normally have to confirm 2-3 times when you overwrite the file.

it's one of those things thats so obvious to not do in game design 101 but it's like this about 90% of the time still ...at least on ps4.

There are some games however where saving is quick and and the game uses its own minimalistic menu to save. Normally this looks much nicer and suited to the game. It also tends to save quicker like this with less prompts and windows opening.

Judgment for example saves using a quick selection from the games frontend. It's simple and doesn't ask you 59 times or whatever to confirm and press yes with the PS4's ugly overlay that would normally appear.

others just auto save in the backgroubd frequently giving you the option to save manually too.

Control is always auto saving frequently which is nice and way better than the prompts that appear normally. You can't save it manually but that's fine.

 

[Stalwart]

Not that serious dude lol.

 

[RocketDarkness]

Because Sony built the save system and it's easier and more straightforward to interface with it than build your own.

 

[Bedameister]

It's pretty annoying in the Yakuza games imo

 

[Exist 2 Inspire]

I honestly never thought about this ever, seems like a non-issue.

 

[Nanashrew]

It's pretty annoying in the Yakuza games imo

Click to shrink...

I was about to bring this up. Why does Yakuza 0 need to save twice?! It's so annoying.

Also yeah, system UI saving is slow. I can save a game on Switch and it takes only about a second, but I gotta sit through several system UI elements on the PS4.

 

[Indelible]

Not a big deal to me

 

[Dwayne]

It passes TRCs everytime.

 

[Deleted member 49535]

I hate it tbh. Especially in AAA games with ridiculous budgets. How hard is it to make an ingame UI to save the game?

 

[Mur2thetaugh]

Immersion breaking? Guys we lost em...

 

[RoboPlato]

Drives me nuts on PS4. Always feels like it's backing out of the game or something. I miss old save menus

 

[Deleted member 179]

I remember as a teen when I switched from 360 to PS3, one of my biggest disappointments was going from in-game cool save menus to the XMB's.

 

[Ayirek]

I've never considered immersion when saving my game.

 

[Trigonometrize]

A lot of games saves are so slow, I actually have to debate in my head whether the time it takes to save is worth the comfort of knowing my progresses is caught up to that moment. You know it's not a defensible save system if the player is doing that. And the integrated systems are always that. Plus they look shitty.

 

[TubaZef]

Because Sony built the save system and it's easier and more straightforward to interface with it than build your own.

Click to shrink...

This. people really underestimate how hard it is to make those things

 

[KtSlime]

Game saving is immersion breaking. One play through one life no pauses is how we should play.

 

[DaciaJC]

As a mainly PC player, I'm really at a loss as to what this thread is discussing. Can someone post an example of this system UI? I don't remember any such thing when playing Bloodborne, for example.

 

[Terandle]

I 100% agree with you OP. This wouldn't be as big of a deal if the PS4 save UI wasn't god awful. Hopefully they clean that up in our SSD PS5 future.

 

[WackoWambo]

Alot of people will say that it is just how it is on console, but honestly no.

Microsoft offers cloud saves just like Sony, but Xbox One is seamless compared to the system level UI popup on PS4.

I mainly play on Xbox with PS4 being for the exclusives, and this always sticks out as a sore spot in an otherwise great system UI/UX experience.

 

[Nanashrew]

Really, it's just Sony as the odd one out. Switch and Xbox One don't use system UI for game saving.

 

[Spiderman]

Weekend era baby. Gotta love it.

 

[Worldshaker]

Drives me nuts on PS4. Always feels like it's backing out of the game or something. I miss old save menus

Click to shrink...

Yeah I really miss the 16/32 bit era of save menus. It's not a big deal, but it just felt good and flowed really well.

 

[jotun?]

As a mainly PC player, I'm really at a loss as to what this thread is discussing. Can someone post an example of this system UI? I don't remember any such thing when playing Bloodborne, for example.

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Imagine going to save in a game, and the Steam overlay pops up over the game

 

[Lobster Roll]

This is probably the smallest issue I've ever read and we're on an enthusiast forum. Even worse, there's not even a photo from OP as an example.

 

[ZeroDS]

New week new mogster thread lol

 

[Oneself]

Hopefully next gen will bring immersive save systems with real time ray tracing memory.

 

[Bjones]

I was just thinking to myself how most games just save at every little thing you do now day's automatically.

 

[Why would you do that?]

Honestly, it did bum me out a little bit when I played Tales of Graces on the Wii and I saw it had a really nice looking, robust, good looking save UI that was stripped out of the PS3 version. But it was less of an "immersion" thing and more of a "I wish they preserved the more unique elements of this game" thing.

Also reminds me of the Space Channel 5 1&2 ports on the PS2 which removed the cute loading messages like "Now moloarding" or "Now roboading" with the Molorians and robots, from the Dreamcast originals. The PS2 versions just say "Now loading". I wonder if it was some Sony mandated thing that they pushed on the developers.

 

[Deleted member 679]

It only bothers me when it's slow, like in Yakuza 0. The UI itself is fine, I don't really mind.

Last gen I even preferred it, because a game using the OS save menu was more likely to display my hours played.

Imagine seeking immersion to save a videogame.

 

[DPB]

As a mainly PC player, I'm really at a loss as to what this thread is discussing. Can someone post an example of this system UI? I don't remember any such thing when playing Bloodborne, for example.

Click to shrink...

That's because Bloodborne doesn't have manual saving. It looks like this in most games:

In some of the Yakuza games saving is a laborious process of endless prompts and confirmations.

 

[Faenix1]

Why waste time making one, when one is there. I've never had an issue with it.

 

[Zen Hero]

This surprised me so much when I first got a PS4. I was very confused why I wasn't saving in the game itself.

Overall I agree it lacks aesthetic but it's not a really big deal. It would be cool if Sony made a quicker, lighter version of it though.

 

[Deleted member 49535]

For the people saying OP didn't post a video of what they mean. Imagine this but for saving (go to 0:50):




System UI that pulls you out of the game (turning off all sound), that can sometimes take a second or more to load. It's just annoying.

This. people really underestimate how hard it is to make those things

Click to shrink...

Almost every indie game is able to use the ingame UI to save your game, there's no reason for AAA games not doing it.

 

[Nanashrew]

That's because Bloodborne doesn't have manual saving. It looks like this in most games:

In some of the Yakuza games saving is a laborious process of endless prompts and confirmations.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I absolutely cannot stand it in Yakuza 0 right now. Yakuza's just the worst of it in general though.

Screen 1: A short please wait loading screen
Screen 2: Choose file
Screen 3: Do you want to overwrite this saved data? >Yes No
Screen 4: Saving
Screen 5: Saved Successfuly
Screen 6: Saving
Screen 7: Saved Successfuly


Too many screens. Even starting up Yakuza 0 It's gotta load the save data twice.

It's such a pain.

 

[BoxManLocke]

Weekend era baby. Gotta love it.

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Weekend Era as in people belittling OP when they simply pointed out something that indeed takes longer and looks significantly uglier on PS4 than it does on other consoles, therefore making it a relevant topic of discussion ?

Then yeah, weekend Era

 

[Astral]

It's only annoying in Yakuza and it's because it saves twice.

 

[Terandle]

My favorite part is how the "Are you sure you want to overwrite this file? Yes/No" prompt defaults to No so you can't just mash X through it, you have to carefully time a left press in between all of the freaking zooming animations.

 

[Deleted member 1003]

Does it break your immersion when you cough, scratch your face, adjust how you sit, drink or eat something?

 

[Deleted member 38050]

Yeah this bothers me too. The Switch and Xbone versions of FF12: The Zodiac Age have a lovely re-creation of the original PS2 save screen, which shows all kinds of party info and stuff

But then the PS4 version uses this... Loads of info is stripped out, and it's so much uglier, slower and clunkier. I hate it.

I realize this is a stupid thing to complain about, but it does bother me. I wouldn't say it's "immersion breaking", but given how much slower and uglier it is, it's a bit of a bummer.

 

[Deleted member 42484]

This was what saving used to mean to me....

 

[Traxus]

I feel you, OP. Death Stranding auto saves when you hold O to rest so I usually use that instead of menu diving. It's a nice option and more immersive.

 

[Sorel]

Yeah this bothers me too. The Switch and Xbone versions of FF12: The Zodiac Age have a lovely re-creation of the original PS2 save screen, which shows all kinds of party info and stuff

But then the PS4 version uses this... Loads of info is stripped out, and it's so much uglier, slower and clunkier. I hate it.

I realize this is a stupid thing to complain about, but it does bother me. I wouldn't say it's "immersion breaking", but given how much slower and uglier it is, it's a bit of a bummer.

Click to shrink...

God that's awful !

 

[mikehaggar]

My favorite part is how the "Are you sure you want to overwrite this file? Yes/No" prompt defaults to No so you can't just mash X through it, you have to carefully time a left press in between all of the freaking zooming animations.

Click to shrink...

Defaulting to "No" is considered good design practice. I understand your point, but the flipside is people accidentally confirm overwriting when they didn't want to. The way it is prevents that.

 

[False]

Love that people are just dismissing it as a non issue and even belittling the OP.

Here's a better framework to look at it: everyone complains about loading times wasting their precious seconds in life and is super excited about the new consoles and their SSDs, right? Well the PS4 has a crap built in save system that honestly wastes the players time every time they want to save with pop ups and loading screens and it is fair to point it out. There have been several times in JRPGs (seemingly the worst offender personally) that I had to debate whether I really felt like saving or pressing on in the game because I knew I had to menu through several screens just to get it done. It feels archaic.

Immersion breaking and ugly? Up for debate and an opinion, but it definitely wastes the players time.

 

[Terandle]

Defaulting to "No" is considered good design practice. I understand your point, but the flipside is people accidentally confirm overwriting when they didn't want to. The way it is prevents that.

Click to shrink...

I mean it is already popping up a confirmation box, and the PS4 already has a dedicated face button that means cancel O - X means confirm. And I would love to see some statistics on what % of times people mean to choose Yes, it's gotta be over 99% of the time. I'm just a compulsive saver so I see these dialog box A LOT and it starts to get on my nerves. Not the end of the world of course, just a pet peeve.

 

[nded]

When you think about it, saves in general are inherently immersion breaking. For maximum immersion, play through your game in one go without breaks.

 

[Dphex]

When you think about it, saves in general are inherently immersion breaking. For maximum immersion, play through your game in one go without breaks.

Click to shrink...

 

[SayWord]

What's next? Complaining it takes to long to press a button? Haha people wasting their energy on ridiculous things.

 

[chrominance]

How is this a Sony problem again? Unless Sony mandates the use of its system save UI, which is pretty clearly not the case given how many games don't use it, it's on the developers to create their own save screens for the PS4. I don't know if the Xbox One or Switch OSes include system UI for this, but if they don't that would be an obvious reason why those versions have custom save UI.

If the goal here is to get Sony to stop putting their own save interface in so that developers are forced to build their own stuff, then okay I guess, but that seems like a bizarre takeaway.

 

[Papercuts]

I really dislike this too. It stood out to me a lot in Tales games, I remember in Symphonia just hitting a save circle and getting healed + saving instantly on a menu that fit the theme of the game. Then I play Xillia on PS3 and each save circle slowly loads the UI, fills a bar, and generally just bogged down a simple but satisfying process.