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Why are there so few save slots?


Mjolnir
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I know that older school FEs had very few save slots (the last one I played was 776 which had two), but IIRC some newer ones had more. My memory is terrible when it comes to stuff like this so I could very well be wrong. Precedent notwithstanding, there's no technical reason to limit the player to 5 slots is there? So why do so?

I find this very limiting since I like to keep many saves for various reasons. Thankfully you can save your endgame data over the old ones and the playthroughs still stack, but it would be nicer to have at least 10 if not 20 slots.

Is it theoretically possible that the number of slots could be increased in a future update?

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The most save slots we've ever had was Fates' 9 slots. But in order to get that many you had to own all three routes. You start with three, and buying a route gets you three more, up to 9.

But I think the reason why the developers thought "yeah five is good", is because of the Switch's profile system which we didn't have on previous nintendo systems except the Wii U which had no Fire Emblem game of its own. Each person that shares the Switch has their own profile and save slots. With this in mind, it's much more free than two people in a home having to share the two save slots of FE4 or the five slots of FE9. I think it's definitely possible to get more save slots in a future update, but they probably see no need to. Especially since a lot of what you experience is saved through the movie, event, and support viewers in Extras.

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Probably simple inertia. A lot of what Nintendo (and particularly the FE franchise) does seems to be because of a "that's how we've always done it" attitude.

God, I remember playing early Microprose games like Civilization and Railroad Tycoon and they only had four save slots on the hard drive. Buuuuut, it also had a drive selector so you could use any number of floppy disks and save four games to each of them. Maybe one day Nintendo will discover the wondrous benefits of this type of technology.

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40 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

God, I remember playing early Microprose games like Civilization and Railroad Tycoon and they only had four save slots on the hard drive. Buuuuut, it also had a drive selector so you could use any number of floppy disks and save four games to each of them. Maybe one day Nintendo will discover the wondrous benefits of this type of technology.

I don't think you understand the switch's profile system. The amount of save slots Fire Emblem Three Houses has is functionally infinite. The only issue is that you've got five slots to one profile. And you can't copy them between profiles as far as I know. But it's still better than having to buy multiple memory cards or DLC in order to expand your save slots.

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1 minute ago, Glennstavos said:

I don't think you understand the switch's profile system. The amount of save slots Fire Emblem Three Houses has is functionally infinite. The only issue is that you've got five slots to one profile. And you can't copy them between profiles as far as I know. But it's still better than having to buy multiple memory cards or DLC in order to expand your save slots.

Oh, I know, I'm just mocking the very idea of save slots, some thirty years after they should have been put out to pasture.

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2 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Probably simple inertia. A lot of what Nintendo (and particularly the FE franchise) does seems to be because of a "that's how we've always done it" attitude.

God, I remember playing early Microprose games like Civilization and Railroad Tycoon and they only had four save slots on the hard drive. Buuuuut, it also had a drive selector so you could use any number of floppy disks and save four games to each of them. Maybe one day Nintendo will discover the wondrous benefits of this type of technology.

Look at the Paper Mario series. Went from 4 save files in the old games to... 1 in Color Splash. Ugh.

Nintendo is being way too stubborn with this kind of stuff. With the exception of GameCube and Wii (and even so, not all games), they don't even allow save data backup to offline media.

4 hours ago, Mjolnir said:

I know that older school FEs had very few save slots (the last one I played was 776 which had two), but IIRC some newer ones had more. My memory is terrible when it comes to stuff like this so I could very well be wrong. Precedent notwithstanding, there's no technical reason to limit the player to 5 slots is there? So why do so?

I find this very limiting since I like to keep many saves for various reasons. Thankfully you can save your endgame data over the old ones and the playthroughs still stack, but it would be nicer to have at least 10 if not 20 slots.

Is it theoretically possible that the number of slots could be increased in a future update?

From what I believe, yes. On Nintendo Switch, version information is saved to the save data, preventing players from loading save data from a newer version of the game.

A lot of games offer a large number of save data slots. The Atelier series and Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE come to mind. It's weird to see only 5 slots in Three Houses, especially since Fire Emblem Fates provided 3 slots per route. Following this logic, shouldn't Three Houses give 12?

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This has always really bugged me about Nintendo.  I like plenty of save slots and the ability to make back-ups of them, which they make nigh-impossible for you to do.

There are 4 routes in this game, and New Game Plua data takes up a slot.  I have erasing old save data, but if I want to go back and say, replay Blue Lions route on Maddening Difficulty, I"m not going to have any open save slots.  Hopefully DLC will give us a few extra slots.

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This really griped me yeah. Thanks to the few save slots I messed up with Blue Lions and made an Endgame savepoint at the wrong moment. Most of the time I create backup files in case I miss out something. Which is kind of a habit after playing many RPG,s with a lot of missable things... In Fire Emblem I can manage with unperfect savefiles. And I feel like getting focused to much on it may be also not too healthy. But its still nice to have the possibility to have some backups. Instead of being forced to play through again from Zero. 

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Interesting insight everyone! Hm, seeing as so many of us want more and there's the thought that the developers think that fans will  NOT want more, is it possible to contact someone involved in this project and let them know that a bunch of us do want more? I know it's only a few right now, but if several do end up getting in touch maybe they'd think about adding more slots in a future update? I have no idea who to contact about this kind of thing though.

 

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I like how every one here completelly ignores the profiles which means technically we have more than 5 slots... even if it was already mentioned. We have 5 slots per player/profil. In Fates we had 9 safe slots for everyone who uses the cartridge. So if you have a sibling or wife/husband everyone will only have 4,5 safe slots. If you have two other people everyone will only have three slots.

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because dev are lazy.

I mean look at pokémon, they never did more than 1 save slot

But there was a reason. in the NES era, games data was little as like 1MB or less (mario was 40KB IIRC?) and it was costy to get more data.

FE2 had 2 save slots IIRC, FE3 had 3, FE4 had 4, FE5 is 3 until path of radiance 5, Radiant dawn 6, THEN on DS 3...Fates is 9 max (3 per route?). Then TH brings back 5 + autosave

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2 hours ago, Hauke said:

I like how every one here completelly ignores the profiles which means technically we have more than 5 slots... even if it was already mentioned. We have 5 slots per player/profil. In Fates we had 9 safe slots for everyone who uses the cartridge. So if you have a sibling or wife/husband everyone will only have 4,5 safe slots. If you have two other people everyone will only have three slots.

Not really ignoring it, but rather this isn't useful as far as I am concerned, since I use save files to jump to different playthroughs rather than as a means to share the game with other people. Saves aren't transferrable between users, nor do different users' saves affect the Extras menu like support conversation viewer and the event viewer.

Also, the extra save slots in Fates are saved to the 3DS's SD card, not the game card itself. I don't know what would happen if I try to start Fates in a different 3DS system.

17 minutes ago, link16hit said:

because dev are lazy.

I mean look at pokémon, they never did more than 1 save slot

But there was a reason. in the NES era, games data was little as like 1MB or less (mario was 40KB IIRC?) and it was costy to get more data.

FE2 had 2 save slots IIRC, FE3 had 3, FE4 had 4, FE5 is 3 until path of radiance 5, Radiant dawn 6, THEN on DS 3...Fates is 9 max (3 per route?). Then TH brings back 5 + autosave

I think FE1 had 2 slots too?

I think 3 saves is just enough for single-timeline games (which is most of them), but for games with branches (Sacred Stones, Fates, Three Houses), they really should have gone the route of 3 saves per route. And only Fates did so.

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53 minutes ago, link16hit said:

because dev are lazy.

I mean look at pokémon, they never did more than 1 save slot

Okay this is a misconception I need to abolish immediately. Game freak is not Lazy for not implementing multiple save slots. The more likely reason for Pokémon games not having multiple save slots actually has to do with a core aspect of the series, Trading. It’s the exact same reason the virtual console rereleases of R/B/Y and G/S/C do not allow for save states.

 

If Pokémon games had multiple save slots, then there would be a completely legal and easy way to infinitely clone your Pokémon as all you would have to do is save before you trade in one slot then afterwards save in another slot then reload the original save And trade your Pokémon back. With only one save slot you cannot do that

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15 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

I don't think you understand the switch's profile system. The amount of save slots Fire Emblem Three Houses has is functionally infinite. The only issue is that you've got five slots to one profile. And you can't copy them between profiles as far as I know. But it's still better than having to buy multiple memory cards or DLC in order to expand your save slots.

That's a pretty big issue though. You can't keep more than five copies of different stages of the same playthrough for one thing, because you can't copy files across profiles. And they won't share a support log or anything if you split your playthroughs across profiles.

Edited by Alastor15243
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I never really viewed 5 slots as "too few". Take the base of 3 save slots (seen in GBAFE, Awakening, Fates*, and Echoes IIRC), and add in two more to account for their being "three houses". Arguably there should've been a sixth, considering the Church/Empire split, but I just haven't seen a need for more saves than what's provided. Maybe I will as I complete more routes, though, IDK.

EDIT: *Fates has 3 saves at base, 6 if you buy another route, and 9 if you buy all three routes.

Edited by Shanty Pete's 1st Mate
Forgot something
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7 hours ago, nocturnal YL said:

 Also, the extra save slots in Fates are saved to the 3DS's SD card, not the game card itself. I don't know what would happen if I try to start Fates in a different 3DS system.

I have two, so in case you were wondering, it works as you would expect: if I use a different 3DS, it will show the saves that are on that system's SD card.

Edited by baticeer
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14 hours ago, Hauke said:

I like how every one here completelly ignores the profiles which means technically we have more than 5 slots... even if it was already mentioned.

Using different accounts is not a solution for a single player since the Global save data (Support Log) and saves in general (multiple save points, NG+, etc.) can't be transferred between profiles.

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