A lengthy and overly verbose ideas regarding base building and immersion factors
Karel2501
Prague Join Date: 2016-01-21 Member: 211750Members
Prague Join Date: 2016-01-21 Member: 211750Members
I'm not even sure if I'm posting this in the right place, or giving feedback in the right way. But here it goes:
So - I've been playing Subnautica in basically all the spare time I had over the last few days. Let me get the positive things out of the way real quick: I absolutely adore the game. Underwater environments are a long-term fascination of mine, and the explorative, survival model that Subnautica features seems to me like a perfect fit - all made better by the wonderful technical execution, where water feels wet and fish seem alive. I've already gotten more than a fair share of fun with the game, and found myself hooked like I haven't been in years - checking trello and update statuses almost obsessively, just to get a glimpse of what the future of the game holds. So, thank you for all of that, Unknown Worlds.
With that in mind, there have been things that have been bugging me, ideas and impressions that I've been collecting, and I've thought of sharing some of them. Most of these are related to factors influencing and enhancing the sense of immersion, atmosphere and sense of presence in the game. What will follow may sound as complaints, but they are more of musings - and I'm well aware of the difficulties and challenges game development presents. The game as it is, is great deal of fun. Take the next lines as possibly misguided musings of a person who has been dreaming about an underwater exploration game for good portion of his life.
The text is going to be long. I do apologize, but there is a lot on my mind. I'll start with ideas related to base-building aspect of the game, as I think they contain more tangible mechanical propositions.
Bases: Machines
When I was first playing the earlier builds of Subnautica, I've always found out the whole base-building aspect of the game very anemic. I've always attributed it to lack of furniture options. Only when the water filtration machines were introduced, it struck me:
What the base-building lacks is not furniture, but machinery. Air-filtration machines and life support, plumbing, consoles that monitor pressure, humidity, oxygen saturation, generators: all things accompanied by a considerable amount of humming, buzzing and other sometimes creepy noises: what the base-building in its current form lacks are devices that would clearly communicate to the player how much technology and effort is necessary to run and maintain a comfortable habitat deep under water.
Living under water should feel like an achievement, coming at the expense of a great amount of effort, energy and machine power.
In practical terms, I can envision several possible steps.
A) adding purely cosmetic features to existing room and hallway models - aircondition-like air filters and pipes beneath the celling connected by wiring to consoles that monitor life-support, non-descript machinery attached to the walls etc. None of it needs to be interactive, though obviously, a console or a machine actually displaying proper air temperature and O2 saturation would be cool - if possibly a bit of a waste of development time. Adding additional sound reflecting the workings of the system could go a long way.
B ) placeable life-support devices (I've noticed an O2 generators being planned for later date update, and I wholeheartedly support that idea).
C) option to build certain power-generators (nuclear and bio-energy reactors in particular) inside the base. Entire rooms dedicated to power generators would again make the bases feel that much more like a scientific miracle, as well as a technical wonder that the player has co-created to master survival on an inhospitable planet.
D) larger manufacturing facilities, specialized cooking facilities, incubators for eggs, tanks used to breed algae, physical water pumps, any kind of machinery that could be placed around the base will make the place feel better, more lived in and belivable.
All of this would also make larger-base-building more important, as these devices would require additional rooms to construct - justifying greater time and resource investment into base building. And all of this would further benefit from:
Bases: Power-management
In addition to filling the base with more machinery, more complex power-management could go a long way in making the bases feel more integral to the gameplay, and more complex system to master. I've noticed the plan to add power-down effect to objects and possibly rooms. Shift from full room lighting to dim, emergency lighting when the base power reaches zero is certainly a much needed feature. Adjusting the sound effects - from hum of the machinery to dead silence and distant water bubbling could also greatly benefit the sense of immersion. Which leads me to another idea:
Adding energy requirement for each individual additional room.
Simply keeping up the bright lights should feel like an achievement that does not come automatically - to keep your rooms brightly lit should cost energy.
This would obviously require re-balancing the current energy production models.
To further balance this, an option to shut down power to individual room and/or corridor to save power would add a great deal of immersion as well as some additional gameplay possibilities. A simple energy control switch as part of each prefab room/hallway model that, when turned on, would activate main lights as well as start supplying power to all devices within the room could do the trick. A player would be able to shut down energy to non-essential parts of the base together with all their internal machinery and manage power distribution this way. On purely aesthetical level, entering a newly build base and turning on the power switches for the first time - to see the lights flicker and finally turn on with a signature buzz of electricity and hum of air filtration could add hugely to the atmosphere, while the necessity to decide which parts of the base are essential, and which can be temporarily powered down would add complexity to the mechanics.
As a small note: powering a room down when it's flooded and emergency lights or some form of alarm kicking in during a hull breach would be neat little details, though I imagine one that would be very low on priority list.
Bases: Farming
This is going to be a short one: Maybe you had considered this option, maybe not: I think farming of surface plants should require fresh water and energy. Technically, I imagine this as the necessity to add a sweet water bottle per each seed planted into the planter, otherwise the growth won't trigger. With consideration to the idea of powering down entire rooms: plants should only grow if they are placed in a room that is powered up (though obviously, planters themselves should not consume energy). Whenever you will keep your main farming room powered up (and eat through your energy reserves) through night or not (and thus effecting the speed at which harvest comes) could again add a bit of strategic decision making to the game.
Really, REALLY non-essential Base-related stuff:
This is a long shot, and possibly would demand far more effort than it's worth, but being able to track base integrity by its individual parts could add much to the base building gameplay. As it stands, you can have your entire base made of glass as long as one room contains several reinforcements. Dividing the base into segments, perhaps by the use of bulkheads, and tracking the integrity of each one individually would add additional challenge to base-building. But I can imagine this being a bit of a technical nightmare to implement.
Now to open sea gameplay:
Diving: Visibility
This is a smaller and perhaps less important musing, but one of the things I kinda miss in Subnautica is a greater degree of visibility play. Ocean water rarely stays perfectly clear, especially near the bottom of the sea. I'm talking specifically about the ability to do things like stirring sediments to create clouds which decrease visibility dramatically if you aren't careful.
General increase in "thickness" of water and gradual decrease of visibility near sedimentary layers (sand, fine "mud" etc...) at the bottom of the sea by movement could be an interesting mechanical addition to the game - and would, by the way, give greater justification to the already existing in game sonar tools. "Simply" (I'm well aware this is far from simple) creating zones near the bottom of the sea where all player movement (or just presence) gradually decreases visibility would add a lot to the game. Certain predator species intentionally decreasing the visibility to confuse prey could be a good expansion on the already existing Sandshark mechanic.
Diving: Caves
This might be an unnecessarily obvious one, but caves REALLY need each their unique loot that cannot be obtained elsewhere. Cave diving is easily the most stressful and demanding activity in the game, and I can only imagine it getting even worse once the O2 limitation to Seamoth kicks in (another planned feature that I wholeheartedly support). Which is fine - great, in fact. Cave diving should be the most dangerous activity in the game. As it is though, caves don't really offer anything that could not be obtained elsewhere, making the tremendous risks of exploring them entirely pointless.
Caves should yield the highest reward loot - unique to each system of caves to make their exploration ever-rewarding - in the game.
Diving: Sense of depth
The thing that I miss from the actual diving and open sea aspect of the game most is a greater sense of depth. The game does a fantastic work of creating distinct and interesting biomes, and the light and other visual cues help, but I can't help myself leaving it thinking that it lacks more distinct sense of depth beyond the pure visual cues. I think I have narrowed down where my problem lies: it's the lack of proper vertical distribution of the wildlife. This stems from three sub-problems, actually:
1) Lack of depth-defined biomes for many of the existing species of fishes. Player routinely comes across the same boomerangs and hoopfish schools in safe shallows, and at the bottom of a red-grass region two hundred meters deeper. Even the distribution of the predators seems to be more governed by geographical parameters than depth parameter. Same goes for many species of plant life, going as far as having corral happily thriving in Koosh regions, in depths that no corral should actually be able to survive. This feeds to the second problem I have:
2) Lack of more prominent visible evolutionary adaptations to greater depths. The deeper the player goes, the more should be adaptations to higher pressure and lack of light show on the native species. While I generally really enjoy Subnautica's vivid, colorful art and creature design, I think desaturating colors, increasing transparency of skin and stockier bodies of deeper-living species could again go a long way of making the player feel more vividly that he is entering deep region. The major "appeal" of the deep sea in real world is the increasingly alien-feeling life with increasing depth - much of it stemming from the sickly white or grey colors, transparent skin, enlarged white pupil-less eyes etc... Subnautica seems to keep its vibrant and colorful scheme regardless of the actual depths that player explores, and it seems to me that using greater visual contrast between the colorful shallow water and the sickly pale-ish depth could benefit the game.
3) The third issue I've been wondering about is the lack of fish that don't live around the bottom of the sea. It's understandable that the bottom is where the concentration of life will be the highest, but still: when I'm floating above say, Red Grass region, the ocean between surface and the 200 meter mark is practically devoid of life, save for occasional Reefback family. It would be again great if the higher levels had at least a few fish in it, the common species similar to those who live in safe shallows living in the 0-50 meters interval, while the deeper the player goes, the number of fish who live off basic plankton decreases, while the amount of carrion feeders and similar types of life increases.
All of these things could increase the sense of vertical scale of the game - making actual depth more of a factor and more of an experience too. Ideally, a perceptive player should be able to judge his current depth by mere glance over the creatures that live around him.
Final thought:
Modding.
As I've said, for me Subnautica is a part of dream game come true, and a title with potentially infinite potential. But that is the problem: the potential of Subnautica I think extends far over what any single studio - no matter how talented - can fully utilize. I much respect the design philosophy of focused, hand-crafted world, more emphasis of story progression and more tightly designed and controlled design philosophy in general: I think it's the best possible approach Unknown Worlds could have taken. But it will mean (inevitably) less content. Better content, but less of it. And mods could be the one thing that could help with this issue. I'm well aware that many of the things I've proposed above might be very expensive (in terms of development time and money) to implement - many of them probably not being really worth the investment to the studio, considering they rarely qualify as "essential" to the experience. They are perhaps the kind of stuff that would warrant mods, rather than core development studio investments.
The world of Subnautica could always do with more diversity in the wild life. More species of fish, plants, more biomes, more complex behavior of creatures, more furniture, more base building elements, more caves and chasms and islands and just land to explore. It's an open world game - entirely about exploring a beautiful alien world: there is never going to be too much stuff to explore. And this is why I believe modding support being integral to the development is something that this game could insanely benefit from.
The development design as far as I could tell so far seems to be: less in quantity, more in quality. And I think that was entirely the right decision to make: it's this commitment to quality, rather than quantity that aside from the theme attracted me to this game. But combining this attitude with extended modding opportunities: I think that could make for a near-perfect game. And it could allow the developers to focus on core mechanics, while an army of people like me could spend their days and weeks making more variants of fishes, or absurdly complicated base management mods for the thin crowd of enthusiasts.
Now: I think that is all from me - for now. Again: I do apologize for the massive wall of text. I'm happy with Subnautica the way it is. None of what I wrote above is meant as a demand. I'm grateful for the fact that the game even exists. If any of the members of the dev team does take the time to read through this: first of all, I'm grateful that you even took the time of your day. Second of all: I'll be even more grateful for any kind of feedback. It's quite possible that the suggestions I made might be too vague, unclear or anything - if you find any of them in any way interesting though, I'll gladly expand, clarify, or do anything else to help.
Of course, this extends to anyone else from the community who might have taken interest in this wall of text.
Best of regards.
So - I've been playing Subnautica in basically all the spare time I had over the last few days. Let me get the positive things out of the way real quick: I absolutely adore the game. Underwater environments are a long-term fascination of mine, and the explorative, survival model that Subnautica features seems to me like a perfect fit - all made better by the wonderful technical execution, where water feels wet and fish seem alive. I've already gotten more than a fair share of fun with the game, and found myself hooked like I haven't been in years - checking trello and update statuses almost obsessively, just to get a glimpse of what the future of the game holds. So, thank you for all of that, Unknown Worlds.
With that in mind, there have been things that have been bugging me, ideas and impressions that I've been collecting, and I've thought of sharing some of them. Most of these are related to factors influencing and enhancing the sense of immersion, atmosphere and sense of presence in the game. What will follow may sound as complaints, but they are more of musings - and I'm well aware of the difficulties and challenges game development presents. The game as it is, is great deal of fun. Take the next lines as possibly misguided musings of a person who has been dreaming about an underwater exploration game for good portion of his life.
The text is going to be long. I do apologize, but there is a lot on my mind. I'll start with ideas related to base-building aspect of the game, as I think they contain more tangible mechanical propositions.
Bases: Machines
When I was first playing the earlier builds of Subnautica, I've always found out the whole base-building aspect of the game very anemic. I've always attributed it to lack of furniture options. Only when the water filtration machines were introduced, it struck me:
What the base-building lacks is not furniture, but machinery. Air-filtration machines and life support, plumbing, consoles that monitor pressure, humidity, oxygen saturation, generators: all things accompanied by a considerable amount of humming, buzzing and other sometimes creepy noises: what the base-building in its current form lacks are devices that would clearly communicate to the player how much technology and effort is necessary to run and maintain a comfortable habitat deep under water.
Living under water should feel like an achievement, coming at the expense of a great amount of effort, energy and machine power.
In practical terms, I can envision several possible steps.
A) adding purely cosmetic features to existing room and hallway models - aircondition-like air filters and pipes beneath the celling connected by wiring to consoles that monitor life-support, non-descript machinery attached to the walls etc. None of it needs to be interactive, though obviously, a console or a machine actually displaying proper air temperature and O2 saturation would be cool - if possibly a bit of a waste of development time. Adding additional sound reflecting the workings of the system could go a long way.
B ) placeable life-support devices (I've noticed an O2 generators being planned for later date update, and I wholeheartedly support that idea).
C) option to build certain power-generators (nuclear and bio-energy reactors in particular) inside the base. Entire rooms dedicated to power generators would again make the bases feel that much more like a scientific miracle, as well as a technical wonder that the player has co-created to master survival on an inhospitable planet.
D) larger manufacturing facilities, specialized cooking facilities, incubators for eggs, tanks used to breed algae, physical water pumps, any kind of machinery that could be placed around the base will make the place feel better, more lived in and belivable.
All of this would also make larger-base-building more important, as these devices would require additional rooms to construct - justifying greater time and resource investment into base building. And all of this would further benefit from:
Bases: Power-management
In addition to filling the base with more machinery, more complex power-management could go a long way in making the bases feel more integral to the gameplay, and more complex system to master. I've noticed the plan to add power-down effect to objects and possibly rooms. Shift from full room lighting to dim, emergency lighting when the base power reaches zero is certainly a much needed feature. Adjusting the sound effects - from hum of the machinery to dead silence and distant water bubbling could also greatly benefit the sense of immersion. Which leads me to another idea:
Adding energy requirement for each individual additional room.
Simply keeping up the bright lights should feel like an achievement that does not come automatically - to keep your rooms brightly lit should cost energy.
This would obviously require re-balancing the current energy production models.
To further balance this, an option to shut down power to individual room and/or corridor to save power would add a great deal of immersion as well as some additional gameplay possibilities. A simple energy control switch as part of each prefab room/hallway model that, when turned on, would activate main lights as well as start supplying power to all devices within the room could do the trick. A player would be able to shut down energy to non-essential parts of the base together with all their internal machinery and manage power distribution this way. On purely aesthetical level, entering a newly build base and turning on the power switches for the first time - to see the lights flicker and finally turn on with a signature buzz of electricity and hum of air filtration could add hugely to the atmosphere, while the necessity to decide which parts of the base are essential, and which can be temporarily powered down would add complexity to the mechanics.
As a small note: powering a room down when it's flooded and emergency lights or some form of alarm kicking in during a hull breach would be neat little details, though I imagine one that would be very low on priority list.
Bases: Farming
This is going to be a short one: Maybe you had considered this option, maybe not: I think farming of surface plants should require fresh water and energy. Technically, I imagine this as the necessity to add a sweet water bottle per each seed planted into the planter, otherwise the growth won't trigger. With consideration to the idea of powering down entire rooms: plants should only grow if they are placed in a room that is powered up (though obviously, planters themselves should not consume energy). Whenever you will keep your main farming room powered up (and eat through your energy reserves) through night or not (and thus effecting the speed at which harvest comes) could again add a bit of strategic decision making to the game.
Really, REALLY non-essential Base-related stuff:
This is a long shot, and possibly would demand far more effort than it's worth, but being able to track base integrity by its individual parts could add much to the base building gameplay. As it stands, you can have your entire base made of glass as long as one room contains several reinforcements. Dividing the base into segments, perhaps by the use of bulkheads, and tracking the integrity of each one individually would add additional challenge to base-building. But I can imagine this being a bit of a technical nightmare to implement.
Now to open sea gameplay:
Diving: Visibility
This is a smaller and perhaps less important musing, but one of the things I kinda miss in Subnautica is a greater degree of visibility play. Ocean water rarely stays perfectly clear, especially near the bottom of the sea. I'm talking specifically about the ability to do things like stirring sediments to create clouds which decrease visibility dramatically if you aren't careful.
General increase in "thickness" of water and gradual decrease of visibility near sedimentary layers (sand, fine "mud" etc...) at the bottom of the sea by movement could be an interesting mechanical addition to the game - and would, by the way, give greater justification to the already existing in game sonar tools. "Simply" (I'm well aware this is far from simple) creating zones near the bottom of the sea where all player movement (or just presence) gradually decreases visibility would add a lot to the game. Certain predator species intentionally decreasing the visibility to confuse prey could be a good expansion on the already existing Sandshark mechanic.
Diving: Caves
This might be an unnecessarily obvious one, but caves REALLY need each their unique loot that cannot be obtained elsewhere. Cave diving is easily the most stressful and demanding activity in the game, and I can only imagine it getting even worse once the O2 limitation to Seamoth kicks in (another planned feature that I wholeheartedly support). Which is fine - great, in fact. Cave diving should be the most dangerous activity in the game. As it is though, caves don't really offer anything that could not be obtained elsewhere, making the tremendous risks of exploring them entirely pointless.
Caves should yield the highest reward loot - unique to each system of caves to make their exploration ever-rewarding - in the game.
Diving: Sense of depth
The thing that I miss from the actual diving and open sea aspect of the game most is a greater sense of depth. The game does a fantastic work of creating distinct and interesting biomes, and the light and other visual cues help, but I can't help myself leaving it thinking that it lacks more distinct sense of depth beyond the pure visual cues. I think I have narrowed down where my problem lies: it's the lack of proper vertical distribution of the wildlife. This stems from three sub-problems, actually:
1) Lack of depth-defined biomes for many of the existing species of fishes. Player routinely comes across the same boomerangs and hoopfish schools in safe shallows, and at the bottom of a red-grass region two hundred meters deeper. Even the distribution of the predators seems to be more governed by geographical parameters than depth parameter. Same goes for many species of plant life, going as far as having corral happily thriving in Koosh regions, in depths that no corral should actually be able to survive. This feeds to the second problem I have:
2) Lack of more prominent visible evolutionary adaptations to greater depths. The deeper the player goes, the more should be adaptations to higher pressure and lack of light show on the native species. While I generally really enjoy Subnautica's vivid, colorful art and creature design, I think desaturating colors, increasing transparency of skin and stockier bodies of deeper-living species could again go a long way of making the player feel more vividly that he is entering deep region. The major "appeal" of the deep sea in real world is the increasingly alien-feeling life with increasing depth - much of it stemming from the sickly white or grey colors, transparent skin, enlarged white pupil-less eyes etc... Subnautica seems to keep its vibrant and colorful scheme regardless of the actual depths that player explores, and it seems to me that using greater visual contrast between the colorful shallow water and the sickly pale-ish depth could benefit the game.
3) The third issue I've been wondering about is the lack of fish that don't live around the bottom of the sea. It's understandable that the bottom is where the concentration of life will be the highest, but still: when I'm floating above say, Red Grass region, the ocean between surface and the 200 meter mark is practically devoid of life, save for occasional Reefback family. It would be again great if the higher levels had at least a few fish in it, the common species similar to those who live in safe shallows living in the 0-50 meters interval, while the deeper the player goes, the number of fish who live off basic plankton decreases, while the amount of carrion feeders and similar types of life increases.
All of these things could increase the sense of vertical scale of the game - making actual depth more of a factor and more of an experience too. Ideally, a perceptive player should be able to judge his current depth by mere glance over the creatures that live around him.
Final thought:
Modding.
As I've said, for me Subnautica is a part of dream game come true, and a title with potentially infinite potential. But that is the problem: the potential of Subnautica I think extends far over what any single studio - no matter how talented - can fully utilize. I much respect the design philosophy of focused, hand-crafted world, more emphasis of story progression and more tightly designed and controlled design philosophy in general: I think it's the best possible approach Unknown Worlds could have taken. But it will mean (inevitably) less content. Better content, but less of it. And mods could be the one thing that could help with this issue. I'm well aware that many of the things I've proposed above might be very expensive (in terms of development time and money) to implement - many of them probably not being really worth the investment to the studio, considering they rarely qualify as "essential" to the experience. They are perhaps the kind of stuff that would warrant mods, rather than core development studio investments.
The world of Subnautica could always do with more diversity in the wild life. More species of fish, plants, more biomes, more complex behavior of creatures, more furniture, more base building elements, more caves and chasms and islands and just land to explore. It's an open world game - entirely about exploring a beautiful alien world: there is never going to be too much stuff to explore. And this is why I believe modding support being integral to the development is something that this game could insanely benefit from.
The development design as far as I could tell so far seems to be: less in quantity, more in quality. And I think that was entirely the right decision to make: it's this commitment to quality, rather than quantity that aside from the theme attracted me to this game. But combining this attitude with extended modding opportunities: I think that could make for a near-perfect game. And it could allow the developers to focus on core mechanics, while an army of people like me could spend their days and weeks making more variants of fishes, or absurdly complicated base management mods for the thin crowd of enthusiasts.
Now: I think that is all from me - for now. Again: I do apologize for the massive wall of text. I'm happy with Subnautica the way it is. None of what I wrote above is meant as a demand. I'm grateful for the fact that the game even exists. If any of the members of the dev team does take the time to read through this: first of all, I'm grateful that you even took the time of your day. Second of all: I'll be even more grateful for any kind of feedback. It's quite possible that the suggestions I made might be too vague, unclear or anything - if you find any of them in any way interesting though, I'll gladly expand, clarify, or do anything else to help.
Of course, this extends to anyone else from the community who might have taken interest in this wall of text.
Best of regards.
Comments
I could not have said it better, since the first minute ive been playing this game ive be fascinated by it. Skyrim is the only game ive spent over 400 hours on and Subnautica will definitely be in that category in the long run. That being said its a fact that to shift from a good game to an awesome game, itll need some love and polishing before release date. After sinking in countless hours in this game it is in my comprehension that Subnautica revolves around 2 core aspects: Exploration of the world and building Seabases as well as surviving our way around.
As far as Seabases, it does need alot of polishing. Furniture needs to be added for the customization of the several rooms a player might add to his/her base. As of now easily 75 to 85% of all the rooms i create are simply for reinforcement hulls purposes. Also:
As of now the layouts of seabases is good, it just needs to be expanded alot to become truely believable. The whole O2 concept thats soon to come is a very welcomed addition as well as putting the Bio/Nuclear reactors inside the base, but it needs way more than just that. We definitely need control rooms/panels to give us details about the base as well as control over everything in it.
All in all, the whole Seabase concept needs more Personallity