What if we didn't start with certain blueprints?
Lonnehart
Guam Join Date: 2016-06-20 Member: 218816Members
Guam Join Date: 2016-06-20 Member: 218816Members
Suppose those all important blueprints (Scanner, Oxygen Tanks, Survival Knife, Rad Suit, batteries and Fins) were missing thanks to the damage your lifepod sustained during the crash? And in order to obtain the scanner your tablet computer directs you to a damaged (but working) scanner among some wreckage? Except this scanner can only scan ANOTHER scanner as well as a damaged battery which you're supposed to find in other wreckage piles around the Safe Shallows, giving you the blueprint to a fully working scanner which you can use to find the other blueprints? Would this just annoy players by adding to the grind?
Just curious, that's all. Not really a suggestion (Personally I would be slightly annoyed, but wouldn't complain).
Just curious, that's all. Not really a suggestion (Personally I would be slightly annoyed, but wouldn't complain).
Comments
After your first play through you are extremely familiar with what you need and where to get it. You can have a fully self sustaining base built in about an hour, less if you push for the island immediately. I've never felt the same wonder/puzzlement/fear as I did that first time.
The early game must be extended and made harder, the player must be forced to take more risk.
The comms array could be working right away, and directs you to maybe 3-5 different escape pods. They should be in quite far off places, even in Reaper territory, whatever. So you have to be extremely careful getting to them just to unlock the basic tools and equipment to continue.
What tool you find in each pod could be randomised, so each play through has an unknown aspect.
I approve.
If you want to extend the development curve for a player, do it in the mid game, not the early game.
Exactly.
(and the end game too).
I'm just feeling a little bit disheartened that I do so well early, I suppose. I need more challenge, I don't even remember the last time I died any more.
I really like the idea though. Maybe have that as a veteran gamemode along with new fragment/wreckage locations etc?
If we get adequate modding support I bet that will be immediately done by the community anyway.
the floating islands wreck is empty!
I do agree, this game needs replayability in some way. This is mostly because everything has a fixed location I feel, though. (I mean.. the map can be, but why can't all abandoned stuff and wrecks be placed randomly afterward?), it would merely be some co-ordinates. Maybe have a bunch of fixed spots of which clipping in the ground will not happen, and then just fill in those spots randomly.
Same with item collecting imo.
This would already add a huge variety, aswell as not just diving for the fragments instantly, scanning your stuff and quickly being in the endgame immediately.
While i understand you want the game to be harder, I thought at it's core it was an exploration game. I couldn't start doing the cool exploring till long in the game.
As a newbie without information, you'll see the game in a whole different way. You see a huge ship and the only idea is "I must go back there!".
I tried finding a way to get there without any items whatsoever (I mean.. what do I know about the game?) Died a bunch of times before realising that wasnt even the intention of the ship/game at the start.
I feel like the early game should be made longer (but easier, more explanatory), in a newbie friendly way. and the midgame should have more challenges/become harder, preferably optional even, so one can explore tons or do tons if they so want to, but don't need it if they really want to make cool bases.
I hope they will reduce it by 1, maybe 1 or 2 more. I'd love to have an example blue print that shows players how the scanner works and unlocks something basic. Maybe a bit more non forced tutorials will speed up blind playing a lot (not being stuck on just vague game mechanics)
I like the 'scan fish for food' aspect of this idea. Instead of the way it works now (you grab a fish and poof it tells you that you have discovered recipes etc) you should have to scan everything you want to eat with the Scanner tool before the recipes unlock, which means you eat it raw until you scan it (and then can cook it for better nutrition).
Don't forget, the Devs have already said they plan to remove the Habitat Builder Tool from the starting blueprints - you will have to find *those* blueprints before you can make the HabTool (and thus, any kind of base).
Most likely you're character is an engineer working on the life-pods since he is so close to one hes the only (known) survivor and the panel gets lose so easily suggesting it was closed in a hurry and knowing to use all tools so some idea on how to make simple and repairing things should feel natural.
So starting without anything wouldn't be that far fetched.
How ever he should have a welding tool (not the blueprint) so he can repair the pod and the transmitter so he can pickup automated distress signals from the other pods adding them to the hud like the ones you now equip to show an location
Being an engineer he can just program a basic knife in to the fabricator as for the rest he could pickup a couple of broken scanners from the pods repair them with the fabricator so its scanned and the first one has a free battery.
There should be floating corpses around anyway so scanning a couple of spacesuits for air tanks and rad suits from core workers wouldn't be that weird to get a print for those.
one could even use a combat suit for the water recyclingsystem for the suit.
Would be a interesting side mission to recover all the bodies.
Not much left to do other than building a memorial.
Anything not bolted down would have been sucked out during the crash partly in space and on the way down, it should be raining parts for years depending the gravity of the planet considering hazard suits like combat, space and radiation suits most likely are made to to handle a little thing as heat and would keep body's together. even a ww2 flight suit would keep a body together falling at 321MPH and hitting water or land.
Pod contains a new item: Computer.
Scanner itself has limited RAM. You have to go back to the Computer and dump everything into it periodically.
Eventually the computer gets full, and needs a hard drive upgrades of it's own to hold more blueprints. For the sake of not-breaking-the-game make sure that this upgrade does not, in itself, need to be scanned. It's ROM on the computer to start with. Every blueprints takes X number of memory units (MU). Each upgrade adds X number of MU to computer, infinitely expandable.
I tried survival once and after that I went straight for hardcore mode and never went back to survival again. I died really rarely in fact I delete the save and go again if I get really bored. So maybe more items could be locked in hardcore mode ex. oxygen tank, radioactive suit ect...
There could be a slight warning at the start of the game as there is that you only have one life. This way you make the game a bit longer and harder with the possibility of still going easy-survival mode for begginers.
For me it feels like there's potential but currently it's just wasted. Though I'm not sure how they can make Hardcore different than survival. Maybe even more damage taken, smarter Al and stuff like that.
I think that warrants its own thread, actually. off I go to make one.
Maybe it's the point of Hardcore - make the game harder to play this way. You build smth? Build the pipes! And wiring! No wiring - no energy, bit**! And no oxygen too! Oh you build all of that? ALARM! reactor is broken! RADIATION LEVELS CRITICAL! Repair it now!!! After that - build radiation shields! You have no blueprint??? MELT DOWN, PATHETIC HUMAN!!! [*sarcastic robo-laughing*]
My suggestion - make it harder to achieve blueprints. Make more blueprints for one entity, make ecosystems of machinery. Make it unstable.
By now, bases is big box for titanium, lithium and grocery. And some rubber. And battaries... And so on.
My opinion, Hardcore means HARD to do anything, not permadeath.
Think I must make a standalone post about that ideas about damging and blueprints...