A grand idea for greatly improving the game (Please read!)
apocacist
Austin, TX Join Date: 2015-09-26 Member: 208171Members
Austin, TX Join Date: 2015-09-26 Member: 208171Members
What I am about to say is incredibly important to the overall success of Subnautica so I truly hope you take it to heart. I think what you've accomplished thus far is amazing and has a lot of potential. There is, however, one very critical thing that this game is missing.
What Subnautica is missing is a gated, progression based, technology tree. I will describe exactly what I mean by this and also provide suggestions, but first I'd like to explain the consequences of NOT doing this: when you finally make it to a new area that you were previously unable to get to, you have nothing to do. To be fair, you can find a fragment that leads to some technology and perhaps build a base and collect quartz. But basically, you are done with new areas within minutes of finding them. Think about the new blood kelp zone. When it was released, I went there in my Seamoth and grabbed an inventory full of blood oil and was done with that area, never needing to go back.
Consider something like the following:
Upon beginning the game, you can freely and safely travel around the safe shallows. Every other biome is "gated" in some way. That is, you are prevented from exploring them until you have the necessary prerequisite technology. It is upon exploring a newly accessible biome that you gain the ability to enter into or explore the next biome. There should also be other "gates" within the biomes themselves. Perhaps there are certain caves that you cannot explore upon first discovering them, but that you can come back to later on in the game. It is in this manner that the game progresses and requires the earnest explorer to continually return to areas already explored. This not only makes the game more fun, but it gives a real purpose to each biome.
Subnautica has all the framework already in place to do something like this. Areas can be gated by depth, visibility (darkness and/or murkiness), temperature, predatory life forms, radiation, ability to acquire enough oxygen (in the case of caves that are too narrow for the seamoth to enter), or even the not so subtle technological key needed to unlock a gate of some kind.
This is something I feel very strongly about and I truly hope the devs actually take what I've said here into consideration. Subnautica is one of the best games I've ever played, but without something like what I've described here, it gets old and boring very quickly.
What Subnautica is missing is a gated, progression based, technology tree. I will describe exactly what I mean by this and also provide suggestions, but first I'd like to explain the consequences of NOT doing this: when you finally make it to a new area that you were previously unable to get to, you have nothing to do. To be fair, you can find a fragment that leads to some technology and perhaps build a base and collect quartz. But basically, you are done with new areas within minutes of finding them. Think about the new blood kelp zone. When it was released, I went there in my Seamoth and grabbed an inventory full of blood oil and was done with that area, never needing to go back.
Consider something like the following:
Upon beginning the game, you can freely and safely travel around the safe shallows. Every other biome is "gated" in some way. That is, you are prevented from exploring them until you have the necessary prerequisite technology. It is upon exploring a newly accessible biome that you gain the ability to enter into or explore the next biome. There should also be other "gates" within the biomes themselves. Perhaps there are certain caves that you cannot explore upon first discovering them, but that you can come back to later on in the game. It is in this manner that the game progresses and requires the earnest explorer to continually return to areas already explored. This not only makes the game more fun, but it gives a real purpose to each biome.
Subnautica has all the framework already in place to do something like this. Areas can be gated by depth, visibility (darkness and/or murkiness), temperature, predatory life forms, radiation, ability to acquire enough oxygen (in the case of caves that are too narrow for the seamoth to enter), or even the not so subtle technological key needed to unlock a gate of some kind.
This is something I feel very strongly about and I truly hope the devs actually take what I've said here into consideration. Subnautica is one of the best games I've ever played, but without something like what I've described here, it gets old and boring very quickly.
Comments
Sorry, but I don't like the idea of restricted movement at all. It's an open ocean. I don't mind having areas where the local fauna are too dangerous until you can obtain a certain type of sub or suit or something like that. But 'gated'/barred areas? No!
Kidding aside, the game already has gates. For example, some areas are too deep to travel to until you have the requisite technology. The Aurora is gated: you need a radiation suit to get near it. I threw out several examples that the devs could use to effectively gate areas or even entire biomes, one of them being an actual physical locked gate, which I mentioned sort of tongue-in-cheek. But there really could be actual physical gates or doors that wouldn't take away from the game's atmosphere at all. For example, what if there was a locked vault on the Aurora that you cannot open until you find the key hidden in some piece of wreckage somewhere on the planet?
The devs could also use Leviathans to gate off areas, perhaps until some biological technology is discovered, such as a synthetic pheromone that causes Leviathans to not be aggressive towards you.
All I'm suggesting is that they "gate" the world in a more methodical way; one that encourages exploration and re-exploration. The game in its current state is far too easy to progress though unhindered and some of the areas and technologies are simply pointless. For example, the ability to build bases means there is no point in ever building a cyclops. But what if the technology to build bases was unavailable to the player until they found some piece of wreckage that could only be retrieved using the Cyclops? This is just one example of the many ways the devs could improve the game.
Another point that I was trying to make, although maybe not stressed enough, is that the majority of what I'm suggesting could be implemented using things that already exist in the game. So, even though it seems like I'm suggesting a major overhaul, it could be accomplished relatively quickly. And in my humble opinion, it would greatly improve the gameplay.
Edit: And Myrm, I think you actually agree with me: In the event that the agree/disagree counter actually means anything to the devs, I would appreciate it if you marked this post accordingly.
also MAKING THIS A LEVEL GAME WILL RUIN THE GAME!!!
of course this is just my opinion.
As far as i can tell the game already works that way ... just without your game saying you so. You (as a person with a functioning brain) have to decide wether you're ready to dive in unknown waters or not. Try exploring a cave without air tank and lamp. Try exploring the grand reef without depth upgrade for the moth and/or rebreather. Try exploring the Aurora without radiation suit... hfgl.
The game already has certain tech tiers, they're just not that strictly cathegorized as well as the biomes aren't. There is no right or wrong order in which the biomes are to explore, just logic and guts.
Also, from what i understand the amount of content that is in the game right now not even scratches the surface of wath the full game will hold. Have you ever explored the soon to be magma biome? The cave they reserved for it goes down to 1400 and deeper ... if you ask me there definetely is a need for certain tech here.
I strongly agree it is not a good idea to make this game levelbased. But what we definitly need (and have) are... lets say "direction". It is not possible to go near the spaceship without a radio suit. We cant go deeper before we havent developed our helmet or the sea moth. These are mild restrictions and they are good, because they dont restrict me too much and I still have a big bunch of other choices and directions to go. In the future I am sure we will still have more of these mechaincs (maybe ice cold water where we need another swimsuit). I think the answer is somewhere between. Having "mild" restrictions without going levelbased. This balance we have now and we will have in the future. So its everything fine. And a tech tree is too restrictive
Think about an open world RPG. Could I go everywhere? Yes. "Can" I go everywhere without getting a beating? Err...