(Idea thanks to SonicSilicon). There has been some discussion of late as to how much power the player has in returning to the past. I know that playing some games, when I die I just reload an old game. If I wanted to get some non-random information from an old TBS (Turn Based Strategy) game, I would save the game, get the information, reload the game and have saved a lot of money on the information. This is blatant cheating at its worst. Knowing this, I would really want to remove these kinds of activities from games. For one game that is very popular at the moment, I use a special spell that returns damage upon the attacker. Using this, I die many an occasion and eventually remove the bosses. How do we go about preventing this kind of obvious cheating? It was suggested that if your character had all of his or her actions saved (like pen and paper RPG) then you would end up with an uncheatable save system, but this does not bode well for beginners. So there needs to be a balance that can be struck to allow fun for beginners and a challenge for advanced players.
One method of saving that was suggested was a power symbol. This requires the player to engrave a symbol of power into a certain place in the game, it allows for a specific location to be saved, and also for a kind of password required to load games. This would work well in a fantasy RPG because I think that it would utilise the use of magic perfectly.
To add to the challenge for harder players, a hardcore mode should be available. This is already available in some games out now, and I think that it will become more popular as time goes on. I think one main aspect to link with this is the difficulty of the game. The game should not be so hard as to make it impossible for the character to live. This is a problem that is facing most games with this feature, but I still think that this mode is required for future RPGs.
The other definition of the Save-Spot is where you actually have to go to a specific area to save the game. This is similar to a waypoint from Diablo II, but may be handled differently. You may need to actually go into a temple to save your character, and then you would be here for when you return.
There could also be advancement in save methods for characters. For example, in easy difficulty, the player can just reload their character as a free save. For those characters with a little more advanced ability, the player is required to use the save spot or a symbol save. For advanced characters, the character is in hardcore mode, and is dead if ever killed. This would have to suit the style of game, but I think that forcing the different methods onto the player would definitely be an improvement for the games of which I am referring to.
"Learning through death sucks…" the advent of the save game
Save games were created for FPSs to allow the player to return to a previous point in time and avoid making mistakes again. Before this, RPG's were quite happy just storing the character's current position and statistics. RPG's then took up the save game idea to allow the player to approach dangerous situations more carefully than the first time. Even Turn Based Strategy (TBS) games have save games. I recall playing a TBS where you had the option of paying a person in the bar 3 specified amounts of gold, and the more you paid him the more likely his information would be correct. To make sure I didn't waste my money and to get free information, I would save before I asked, ask the person offering the largest amount, reload and go and find the gems (that were located somewhere on the map). This certainly ended up detracting from the game, although I never really bored of that game, I just grew out of it. RPG's get the same way, before you try something that could be dangerous, you save to make sure you don't lose any items, attributes or skills that you may have gained.