Want Players to Finish the Game? Let Them Quit!
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* Save anywhere. Or save automatically on exit. This is historically why I haven't been much of a console gamer. when I have to quit, they won't let me quit without penalizing me.
* Short quests, or quests that have short stages that can be completed in a few minutes.
* I love deep, tactical, turn-based combat, but either allow me to save in mid-combat (best), or keep the fights relatively quick (<5 minutes).
* Keep a nice log of quests and story information so I can remember where I was and what I was doing when I come back to the game after a hiatus of a few days (or a few weeks).
* Being able to review past interactions / dialogs / story expositions can be extremely handy! While the latter isn't too uncommon in many games, the ability to find information easily through good indexing or navigation is a little more rare.
* A quick summary of the story up to that point would really help maybe showing a summary of the currently (active) quest when you first load the game.
* This one is going to take some explanation: Don't unduly penalize me for forgetting how the controls work. I play a *lot* of games: I treat my gaming library as a giant arcade sometimes, where I just kinda (graze) a bunch of games. One of my problems with action-RPGs except the very simple ones (Diablo-style) is that they demand control skills that may have gotten rusty during a hiatus, or confused with control schemes of other games I've played in the interim. It's very frustrating to jump back into a game after a three-week hiatus and find myself hitting a wall because I've lost my button-combo-mashing edge. And yes, this is one of my primary issues with the (consolization) of modern RPGs. And while I am not unhappy with the trend towards purely auto-saving, the old school approach of restoring from multiple saved games does help you (take a mulligan) after your first combat or two after a hiatus, when you are remembering how to play and likely to make some serious mistakes.
