A way to work in weapons with pacifism: two different paths to take
sayerulz
oregon Join Date: 2015-04-15 Member: 203493Members
oregon Join Date: 2015-04-15 Member: 203493Members
There has been a lot of back and forth on this issue, and I think that I have a way to make weapons work in the game. Give players two different sort of playstyles that the game is built around: working with the environment, and making the environment suit you. If one chooses to work with the environment, then they would have different things to do that would be good for that. They might use the DNA extractor and related items a lot for example, altering themselves to better suit this planet. They might deal with obstacles differently. Say that there is some cyclops-munching deathfish that lives in an area you need to go. A player that has chosen to adapt might study another creature that lives with it to discover how it defends itself, while a player who chooses to make the world around them adapt might build some form of weapon to drive off the creature. There could be a middle ground as well, for instance creating a more heavily armored sub. No one way would be better or worse, but they would all offer unique challenges that might suit different players. And any player who wants total pacifism can do that in their own world, while another person might choose to blast their way through things in their way.
Comments
I think projectile weapons as a whole are kind of pointless, given the environment. I mean, even weapons designed for an aquatic environment are extremely limited in range because, you know, physics, so I figure directed energy is the way to go. Stasis implies a quantum lock field, right? Why not something that scrambles atoms, or even affects a target at the subatomic level? Leave projectiles for the DNA transfuser, remote darts and such to gather or deliver genetic material, but any proper weapons ought to be energy-based. Which has the added bonus of balancing them out, by the by, because any truly powerful energy weapon would need a hefty power source, more than the charge fins could reasonably provide.
Heck, if we stick to the quantum theme, why not use quantum entanglement as a potential non-lethal tool? Tag a Reaper or whatever, and utilize quantum entanglement to monitor its exact position and condition in real time. I'm hardly any sort of physicist so I don't know how realistic that is, but what I do understand about the phenomenon implies it makes sci-fi amounts of sense.
Sonic weapons would be extremely effective in water though. The two energy weapons that currently show the most promise, I believe, are laser and plasma weapons. Lasers blooming issues would be far worse underwater, and plasma would lose energy extremely quickly.
Yep, not to mention that's just for pure water, this is salt water, and what do we know about salt, it crystallizes, and what do we know about lasers and light passing through crystalline prisms? Also, plasma wouldn't be a 'doable' thing, Plasma, aka the fourth state of mater, is more or less a super ionised pure element. You know what else is a super ionised element and is plasma, Lightning, and the Sun. As it stands I also don't like the heat blade for the reason I wouldn't support plasma weapons, you'd boil yourself using them.
The stasis rifle also has it's own issues, like the fact that it only pops the projectile field when it collides with something harder than creep vine leaves, meaning, it was primarily designed for use on land as opposed to the water.
Instead of this kind of 'weaponry' why not more...unique things. Why not bioengineered Crash Pod that is mounted on a plate kinda thing and a trigger system that forces the crash out by confusing it to identify any entity your pointing the pod at as a 'hostile' creature that it must explode on to protect it's pod (which is a very odd evolutionary trait mind you)
What about a deployable device that stuns entities facing you while deployed but also consumes energy the entire time, similarly to the Mesmer's things.
Instead of making weapons and just killing things like some savage (which also defeats the point of colonizing a world with new, unknown creatures in the first place), why shouldn't we research them, learn their secrets and how they do, and then use our knowledge and scientific prowess to do like they do.
Sonic weapons would be effective, but, they'd also affect you as well and....I doubt any one wants a pod of rampaging reef backs from a derped sonic weapon, am I right?
All these ideas are very flashy, smart and maybe possible but we are meant to explore not kill everything in sight.
You will turn this game into a murder simulator if they so much as give you something that is meant to kill and there will be hundreds of videos of players killing everything, which is far from the scope they have for the game.
Think BIGGER. SMARTER. SAFER.
An electric tool to paralize or scare off predators.
An acid/gas bomb that would clear an area of predators.
A sonar that plays with predators instincts and makes them avoid a zone.
A pheromone that makes predators ignore you.
A small robot designed to distract a predator and lure them away from you.
A cloak to explore without being seen but it only works in well-lit places. (pitch black zones should be danger zones)
A "hoop" that would inmobilize a predator by activating a buoyancy.
And even better for the sake of science and development all of these should have upgrades that we can apply to them by improving their designs to further enhance their reliability, duration and power with whatever tech we find and by learning from this planet!
No. You are not getting a gattling gun. You are all grounded.
Have you literally not read a single word of any of these posts? Show me the one where some one says "give us a super-kill-o-matic minigun laser and lets kill everything we see". And your "we are a scientist not a solider" argument makes no sense. You seem to think that scientist=pacifist, will allow reapers to murder them because they don't want to hurt another living thing that could be studied, and solider=dalek, will kill anything that moves.
And lets look at other games. We can start with survival games. Minecraft, ARK, and Don't Starve seem like good ones too look at. If you ask some one what the goal of those games are, they would likely say that Mincraft is about building, ARK about taming creatures and using them to help you survive and progress, and that Don't Starve, is of course about avoiding starvation and the many other horrible fates that may befall one in that game. No one will say that these games are a "murder simulator". And yet all these games have numerous lethal weapons. Yes, there are some trigger-happy players in all of those games that kill everything they can, but these are a minority. Most players will kill things when they are endangered by them or when they need something from them, but few will kill them simply because they can. And in the case of Subnautica, since it is an entirely singlplayer game, if someone decides to solve the problem of a predator by killing it, then that is there problem. you can happily use some means to sneak around that creature in your own world. So really, if there is a lethal and a pacifist solution to every problem, you really should not concern yourself with the lethal one if it does not appeal to you. It is as simple as that.
It was a pretty rash move of mine to not read most of the posts in here but the topic is getting overbearing. You are not listening either, as far as we know and have been told the game is not including any lethal gameplay features for us. We are smart or we are prey, instead of kill or be killed. "you really should not concern yourself with the lethal one if it does not appeal to you" no it is not "as simple as that" because we are going to depend on it at some point wether we like it or not because lets be honest killing what gives you problems is not in our nature but heck it does take stress off our backs.
Your idea is good. These ideas are good. But the devs don't want to implement too much stuff that makes us take an offensive stance against the world they are creating.
Think about this too, what you are talking about is only an idea you have but to the Unknown Worlds that idea means more money, time and complexity to a game they already have a pretty solid idea of what it should look like. Your "if you don't like it then don't do it" approach to this is not wrong but its overdone so try something else.
Citing the games you are using as examples, you're not wrong but in the hundreds of hours that I've spent playing Minecraft in solo and multiplayer there was often the case that I had to kill because there was no other way given the tools I had. I haven't got a clue about ARK or Don't Starve but my friend does play Don't Starve often and tells me something about having to fight scary spiders and monsters too much for her liking (she doesn't like violence).
You misunderstand my argument. A scientist is a person that acquires knowledge toward a more comprehensive understanding of the world and following the lore of Subnautica, we are here to discover and terraform this planet, nothing brought by the Aurora gives us any indication that the original plan included lethal force. With all due respect a soldier is not a murder machine, far from it, but their presence rarely ever means anything good.
The big picture, from what I see, is that Subnautica is on its way to give us a unique experience on a world we can explore and enjoy without having to give us a gun. Call it a plasma beam, anti-matter rifle or atom divider, it will be still be a gun and that's a big loud NO.
In the end killing everything dangerous will still BE the best choice and everyone will see themselves taking that path because it would make things easier.
P.S.: The game is not entirely going to be singleplayer but it does seem the devs are thinking on not including anything like that, not even Co-Op due to mixed opinions and the challange it would be.
Just remember guys, it's a game
I know this thread so far has been relatively tame but, it has inevitably been getting more heated
Anyways...
The thing about your idea is that it requires a vast amount of work, which I don't think UWE CAN realistically do before release... Then again I'm no dev so I could just be completely wrong.
Shame really :P
Weapons would be cool (like a tranq gun or something)
but any other sort of lethal weaponry is just unnecessary, it doesn't add anything to the game besides choice for the sake of choice
We should get a playable female model, yes or yes.
Also yes you are paying attention, implementing something like that would need it to be tested, calibrated and fixed to hell which would put the final version even farther and stress the devs even more.
Last thing the devs said about a female model was that it was something they wanted to do but might not be in the game at release-- don't quote me on it though (again, usual disclaimer I'm not a dev :P )
@sayerulz
Well, naturally, killing something is far easier a playstyle than temporarily removing it. It's just logical: kill something removes the threat permanently, not doing so leaves you still at risk
That being said, yes, something could be balanced so that the weapons are costly... but then you have the issue of spending a lot of resources where you could just go in, grab what you need using a tranq gun which should be cheaper, and leaving again
But see... that sort of proves my point: it's playing right into the hands of mother nature to kill 1 predator... you'll only make another predator species more powerful :P See how it's really just choice for the sake of choice?
This is 100% accurate and very interesting if it was added into the game but it does seem like a heavy thing to add but that kind of things generates an outcome that doesn't just harm us, this could be used in favor or just prove as an inconvinience.
Reaper Leviathans are an exception, they are the wasps of the ocean and since they seem to be bloodthristy monsters that kill everything maybe eradicating them should be part of the game. But that's just an opinion because we all hate reapers.
Thank you.
This is a correct way to think about this thing not just making a long argument about why you think something you want should be in the game without thinking about what the game already has first.
As you are right in some cases, DarkIntent, there is SOME problem, what if this... 'Atom scrambler' (As I would think that'd be cool) melted the water around it? Of course, there may be some restrictions, but would it imply a energy/'Atom scrambling' field with X, Y, and Z dimensions? Or would it allow anything to be hurt, and how would it work? Just melt the material/rip out a gut of the creature and stuff it somewhere else where it isn't supposed to be? Or would it use small Cubic Units and melt things based on the size of the creature in cubes oriented to dissolve the creature, and if so, how effective would it be on the bigger creatures?
I was thinking more of... If there are birds/aviation, we would have a net gun, or as such, that floating dart that kills stuff from Guardians Of The Galaxy, something along those lines,
However, being underwater, you'd need something with propulsion, something like a Torpedo would work, one with... Maybe some sort of explosive devise, and underwater propulsion device, like a... like a fan!
And about that 'Quantum entanglement'...
It would work, maybe tag an area, and make some sort of a silo and then once that area is tagged, it'd send a powerful torpedo, as I stated earlier towards it? Or maybe some sort of missile based on the creatures size using a scanner in that 'Quantum entanglement device'
Honestly, the name sounds more like a laser-stun-net, than a global position-er,
Thanks for reading, by the way!
Actually, when you think about the size and sheer aggression of the Reaper...it could be the Reef Back's natural predator, they just went to the Aurora mistakenly and got weirded up by radiation/dead bodies that floated around and they ate (aka easy food) so they stayed around it instead of going back to prey on their normal food source
I don't think that the reapers are the reefbacks natural predator simply because I don't think they are big enough. While the grabby-bits around their mouth are about the right size to capture a seamoth, they are not large enough to grab a reefback in the same way. I also feel that, given their lack of natural defenses that I have noted, other than their sheer size, I suspect that they may not have any natural predators. Honestly, I don't like the design of the reapers since they seem to be specifically tailored to attack the seamoth.
Yes but look at the underside of the reef back, there are numerous places that are round, and roughly sea moth sized, and those pointed claw like 'pinchers' may also be able to puncture into the reef back, you are right however, that is purely speculation, but, there is another creature that's roughly sea moth sized, the Gasopod, and the ability to grab and move one of those ugly poison farters would be beneficial to the thing that eats it, making it less likely to get exposed to whatever that yellow hazy stuff is ( I really hope it's not something like the TF2 Sniper would do....)
Note that i also mentioned how Gasopods are roughly the same size as the Sea Moth as well
for those that are more exploration maybe mount a storage device or a stasis rifle. It would of course slow it down a bit and likely even require more energy but would also allow you more change in what you want to do.
On the other hand i think that role may be taken up by the exosuit so meh.
Oh look, it's a strawman thread-hijack by someone who refuses to acknowledge a decision already long made about the game.