Wow. I've never got to exploring these places, as my games never progressed that far. Only the most recent one has me with fully tricked out Seamoth and PRAWN. Never been down the LR or the ILZ. And it appears a lot of it was cut off and made linear for story purposes.
I thought things like the beacons drove the story along enough. And now I'm worried that my Cyclops will be too fragile come the next update.
Wow. I've never got to exploring these places, as my games never progressed that far. Only the most recent one has me with fully tricked out Seamoth and PRAWN. Never been down the LR or the ILZ. And it appears a lot of it was cut off and made linear for story purposes.
I thought things like the beacons drove the story along enough. And now I'm worried that my Cyclops will be too fragile come the next update.
I'm not sure if story's the driving reason, and even if it was they could find ways to accommodate it - like the beacons and signals currently do. Then there's the question about how this affects people who aren't playing Subnautica for the story. What about people playing Creative? Or people who've already cleared the game a few times or are just exploring to see the world? Limiting and actively removing content "because story" is potentially harming the game for them. You can't entirely forsake the story, but limiting the world - which promised exploration and discovery - because of it isn't right either. A balance must be found, and right now there isn't much balance when it comes to the endgame.
I can fully understand the Active Lava Zone only having one entrance. But such a massive complex of caverns like the ILZ is - or was - shouldn't be limited to just one or even two. When the game had several, one in the south, one in the northwest, and one hidden in the east, that was perfect. The south you'd snake through the Lost River to find. The NW you'd brave the Dunes then go through a brief Corridor that eventually links up with the Lost River. The Eastern Gallery? You'd need to brave a reaper AND have the boundless curiosity to actually dive down to the bottom and see what's down there.
Like I did. In Creative way, way back when... I was exploring the world. And as I was browsing around the Koosh Zone I saw the Aurora there and thought "What's down there?". I went down expecting nothing. I instead found a massive corridor that I knew I wanted to see fully fleshed out. I was amazed by it, like Markiplier was amazed by the Western Corridor that the Dunes opened up into. It'd make an excellent secret back door, a reward for a curious explorer who, like the game suggests - desired to explore the deepest reaches of the ocean and found something grand. Or maybe it'd be an exit, after mapping the ILZ you find a huge tunnel winding its way slowly back to the surface, and then you reach a familiar location... You never knew it was there, and you're surprised.
That's one thing I loved about Subnautica, was its complex biomes and world, the freedom it allowed you. I guess, that freedom and exploration only really applies to the early-midgame and ends once you acquire the Cyclops and Exosuit. After that it's just following a trail of precursor breadcrumbs along a straight path to the ending. There's no more choice in the matter in how you approach it. There should be. As someone said earlier in this thread, the cave systems should be complex, they should have multiple entry points, they should snake and wind over each other and intersect with each other, it SHOULD be a large and massive place.
Little update, I made a post on Markiplier's latest video on this and it actually got about 60 upvotes, and a handful of people surprised about it. I think that's good and hope he sees it as well, though it is kind of drowned out under the several posts about people laughing at him for ramming his base then wondering why it's flooding *shrugs*
One of my friends says he got into contact with one of the devs and passed these concerns along to them, all he got in response was "We'll be thinking on it" or something. So that's a plus I suppose, especially if they see this thread - a lot of people here seem to feel that continuously shrinking these opportunities is a bad thing, and if you think about it it really is.
When I joined SA for the first time, there were three ways into the ILZ. The whole place was empty, lacking even its own lighting. They were: Northwest Corridor - aka the Dunes Sinkhole. This was the entrance Markiplier first found, and anyone remember how thoroughly excited he was about that? "When they finish this, we'll have twice the map area to explore". Well, we won't anymore since the Corridors are all being removed!
This would have connected to the Lost River had it not been replaced by a Precursor Cache. A cache that mind you, you'll only ever visit once. It's too small to build in, and the data downloads and ion crystals are single-use. You'll never have need to return to this place ever again - UNLIKE a cave entrance, which is forever. And I used to love building "research" bases on the cusp of that sinkhole.
Southern Corridor - aka the Deep Grand entrance. I can understand part of why this one was removed. It made getting into the ILZ far too easy, as there was zero danger on the way to or within the Grand Reef, and even with the Crabquids and Warpers the Deep Grand was easy to navigate as well, even with a Seaglide or Seamoth. The Dunes and Crash Zone corridors both had reapers patroling directly above them, and are - or were... - large enough to house Sea Dragons within. There was talk about the Twisty Bridges being relocated to this spot to serve as a transition, but I guess that's been axed too as a result of the corridor's closure.
Eastern Corridor - The Crash Zone entrance. This was actually the first one I found. When I was first playing Subnautica, i was doing so on Creative. I was exploring every inch of the world, taking in its wonders. I was excited when I found the Jellyshroom Caves, and triply so when I found the Blood Kelp Trench. I immediately regretted not buying this game sooner, and leaving it on my wishlist for months. As I was passing by the Aurora, I wondered... I wondered what was down that cliffside under the exploded portion. There was a reaper there, it had to be guarding something, something had to be down there. Since I had already seen so many beautiful things, surely something had to be hidden down there too. There was. Keyword "Was". Past-tense. At the very bottom of that abyss was an immense opening into the bowels of the planet, a huge twisting corridor that winded through several biomes until reaching the central chamber. I was absolutely amazed, and looked forward to seeing it completed. I wanted to see it mapped too, and after seeing it done so (Img posted earlier in the thread) I was just... Absolutely amazed. It was huge! Out of the three, this one had the most potential. It could have been a grand and terrifying gallery, having a sea dragon lurking within and reaper skeletons strewn about, massive fissures blowing molten rock into the waters.... It was large enough for a dragon to easily swim trhough, it had its favorite food (Second only to the player and their subs) right nearby, it wound underneath the "volcanically active" Koosh Zone. It made perfect sense to have this corridor. It'd make a great REWARD for those who took the time to EXPLORE the world to its fullest, or serve as just another great place to explore.
As of right now, the only way into the ILZ is through the Lost River, and there's no longer any real great corridor to pass through - at least not compared to the former Dunes and Crash Zone corridors. There was something magical about finding an entrance into the planet's depths at the seafloor of an abyssal zone, it gave a feeling far greater than merely "finding a cave within a cave". Don't get me wrong, the Lost River is amazing - but it being the ONLY way in is not just underwhelming, it's just wrong. This game is labeled as an Exploration and Open World survival game. You SHOULD have more options in how you want to approach things, you SHOULD have the freedom to explore more places, the cavernous biomes SHOULD be expansive and complex. While you had plenty of choice in how you wanted to approach things before, you have almost no choice in the last half other than "Do I want to enter the LR through the north or the south...?". You could decide between the Dunes, Grand Reef, and Crash Zone for the ILZ before - the first and last being the most dangerous and had potential to be even more dangerous once the Sea Dragon was created - but now you have no choice at all.
I want the eastern corridor to be saved. I really want the Crash Zone abyss to be its entrance, since it was like a reward for following the curiosity that exploration games usually love players having. There was a great feeling about having something so sinister and dangerous being so close to your starting area. Like the Water Dragon's Lair in 'Runes of Magic' being literally right beside one of the starter-zone towns. It even was lore-friendly in that it'd give Sea Dragons easy access to Reapers, and it passed under the Koosh Zone which your AI says there's a lot of volcanic activity present. It was not an easy and friendly entrance either, so "it'd make getting in too easy" was not a problem.
If it has to be relocated, I'd suggest the Northeastern Mountains or the Koosh Zone somewhere, but I really really want to see the Crash Zone be its entrance.
Like how the Rock Puncher and Ghost Leviathan were important to many others, these Corridors are very important to me. They added a lot to the late game, and gave the player so much freedom in how they wanted to approach it which is a major point for these sorts of games. They had potential, and could even make for story points - main plot or extended universe additions - or could be optional lategame/postgame content. Seeing them gutted like this, for little to no good reason (yet plenty of poor to bad ones) is more than just disappointing, its painful. It's even made it difficult for me to play the game at times, as there's a constant reminder that something that had such potential was being axed - and it's not like the former two creatures which were at the time mere concepts - it was something that was ALREADY in the game.
I'm truly desperate, to see these corridors stay. There's so many good reasons why they should stay, why they'd be beneficial for the (currently somewhat lacking) endgame portion of Subnautica, how much they'd add to the world...
The following is a response meant to address the comments of Cory Strader, regarding replies made on the Discord. Said replies are detailed in the below image.
The following is my reply to those comments. If anybody knows how to get this to Cory Strader, or can forward it to the discord for me (I don't have an account there), that would be great. If not... than instead, I'll leave this here simply as my hat in the pot on why I disagree with what he said on the Discord about the ILZ corridor not being an important concern. Cheers!
Dear Cory Strader
I’m a very big fan of the game. Bought the early-access version of the game, have not regretted it. Not a big fan of the Silent Running update’s health bar on the Cyclops, but that’s something I’m confident can either be balanced out by the devs or that I'' adapt to on my own time.
However, that being said… I saw your reply to Sylxeria on the Discord in regards to the Crash Zone corridor accessing the Inactive Lava Zone. And, to put it simply… I disagree with what you said there in every way.
Just to clarify, I have no personal issue with you. I have great respect for what you and the team at Unknown Worlds are doing. I know I myself would likely not be able to make a game even if I had 20 years to do so. But again, that being said, Subnautica is an early-access game - and one of the whole purposes of early-access is for the devs to be aware of feedback from the community and players in regards to how the game develops. This, in short, means that the community is allowed a voice in how the game develops - what is taken from that voice is up to the developers, but that in and of itself does not change that we have a right to speak on what we believe. Hence this open letter.
Now, I can understand you feeling that the Inactive Lava Zone, being endgame content, should not be immediately accessible. I understand concerns about players just rushing through to the end and missing out on all the amazing things the game has to offer.
But when it comes to thinking that the corridor’s existence means that players will bypass the Lost River… there are two major flaws I find with that line of thinking.
The first is that, to put it simply, skipping the Lost River isn’t possible to do in the first place, regardless of if the Aurora corridor is sealed or not. Not only does the Precursor Array point you directly toward the LR base and direct you to it as a starting point, and not only do you need to visit the LR base to get the Thermal Plant’s coordinates (and by extension the location for the Prison Facility's Key), but you need to go to the Lost River to get the nickel needed for the Cyclops’ MK-II pressure compensator - without which you can’t get to even the ILZ in the first place, let alone the ALZ. As it stands, what you call "one of the biggest concerns” is pretty much non-existant - you’ve put so much plot-relevant stuff in the Lost River already and detailed the biome so much as it is that there’s no reason for people to not go there. There is quite literally no reason to have it so that progressing to and/or through it is the only possible option gameplay-wise, because you've already made it that way story-wise/narrative wise.
Secondly… I feel this statement contradicts your own game’s established lore. According to your Trello page, you put Reaper Leviathan skeletons down in the LZ to illustrate that the Sea Dragons come up to hunt them. But if you’re closing off all the LZ entrances, how precisely are they supposed to get up to sea level to hunt in the first place? Now, I understood removing the entrance from the Deep Grand Reef since the atmosphere of that place and it's native fauna (especially the Crabsquids) tied in more with the LR and thus felt like it made more sense for those two to be connected. But by contrast, the entrances in the Dunes and the Crash Zone made sense to have because those were both in Reaper territory - it made sense lore-wise why there would be passageways leading to the LZ zone, not just for the Sea Dragons to come up from but to drag the Reapers back down through. Sea Dragons are adapted to high-heat environments - are you going to tell me that going through the deep-freezing waters of the Lost River would be natural for them to do over following a nice warm lava corridor out to the surface? Especially if said corridor leads directly into their prey’s territory? Given how they evolved, I would be more inclined to think something used to magmatic temperatures would go into shock and die if it suddenly entered waters that deep-freezing - heck, it wouldn't have surprised me to learn the Sea Dragons carved those passages out themselves purely to have convenient access to their favored prey, or at least that's what I'd have believed in regards to one of them (the Dunes), since saying Aurora's crash opened the other one up would have also worked. And yes, I know about the Sea Dragon skeleton that's down there, but that's almost a thousand years old - for all we know, the waters of the LR weren't that cold back than, or heck, maybe the Sea Dragon mother was too angry about her eggs being stolen to care by that point.
On the issues of detailing out that whole route… nobody said you had to detail the whole thing. All you had to do was liven it up a bit so as to not be so dull - heck, as much or more work has arguably been put into just creating all the Precursor Caches dotting the game, or coding the teleporters to link with each-other, or even in just creating the Crag Fields. Compared to all that, you really wouldn’t need to do all that much to make it a functioning area.
And now… I’ll address the comments that I really, really took issue with in your statements.
To start… “Options and freedom doesn’t necessarily = better”? I’m sorry - I truly am … but I believe you are, with all due respect, completely wrong on this count. My reason for saying that can be summed up in one thing; “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.” A game that was given many recommendations and degrees of praise for it's lack of restriction on player choice, options and freedom - something that just about anyone who even so much as kept an ear to the gaming world would know, given the feedback on that game. Feed back that, for me, makes statements like the one you made feel like the complete and utter antithesis for the concept of an open-world game.
- https://engadget.com/2017/04/04/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-open-world-games/
Quote: "There are two key hallmarks of the open-world genre: There is a big map to freely traverse, and there's a lot of stuff to do on that map. It's a formula that's been refined over the past few iterations of Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, Elder Scrolls and Far Cry, among others of that ilk.” http://www.gamesradar.com/finally-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-fixes-open-worlds-by-not-telling-you-anything/
Quote: "Because The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild doesn't explicitly tell me where everything is, I'm more preoccupied with the act of discovery instead of accumulation or completion, these things being an organic result of simply moving through the world. The feeling I get from playing Breath of the Wild, then, isn't "Oh good, I finally grabbed all the damn Korok seeds in this region", but is instead "Oh, wow, I can't believe I found that there. What else is this game hiding?”
If you were making a story-driven survival game like what Resident EVII was, I would have been more inclined to have agreed with you. But that’s not what Subnautica was marketed as. You marketed it as an open-world game - so to somehow say that “options and freedom doesn’t necessarily = better” when Breath of the Wild quite definitively proved otherwise with overwhelming praise comes across as, in my opinion, somewhat tone-deaf as to what the concept of an open-world game is supposed to be. To say “proper game progression comes out of restrictions” is, in my honest opinion, quite arguably both one of the biggest misnomers out there and one of the biggest mistakes to make in an open-world game - because in an open-world game, the restrictions do not come from railroading the player to go to one area and only one area at a time. Rather, they come from not having everything be obvious and having the player be restricted in regards to knowledge and awareness, allowing them to learn and uncover the world for themselves - heck, wasn’t one of the biggest things your lead developer, Charlie Cleveland, talked about the fact that he didn’t want the player to ever feel restricted to one single "correct" path?
Read the above reviews - look at how they exposit on how the open-world is made more alive by the feeling of not being cordoned off unnaturally through forced area/level progression and more by needing the right tools and experience to go somewhere rather than being arbitrarily railroaded through one lever after another. Proper game progression isn’t something that has a universal standard to all games - it’s definition changes depending on the type of game you’re trying to make. What you’re advocating is closer to what a purely story-driven game would have, but it does not mesh with how an open-world game should be. A true open-world game is not simply about the discovery of the lore or the story, but rather it is about the thrill of discovery period - it is about finding things in and/or about the world itself simply from how it is designed and interconnected in such a way as to feel alive. Be it a nook or crevice or crater that you can hypothesize and imagine a story or reason for, or a secret path or corridor that not only subtly ties into the lore (as the Crash Zone corridor does with Sea Dragons hunting Reapers) but makes you feel like you just solved a mystery or that there was a secret/reward to be found in the things you scan and discover, in that what you learn can have consequences on how you play and vice-versa. Things like that excite, entice and inspire players with the atmosphere of discovery, which is one of the fundamental elements of what is so appealing about exploration - and in turn, one of the backbone elements of an open-world game, survival-setting or otherwise.
In line with the above, to say “everyone has their own opinion about which thing should be added to the game” honestly feels like either an excuse in my personal opinion or that it confuses the issue rather than addresses it. With the issue on guns, that’s something that was decided on a developer-level not to add as a matter of principle. This, on the other hand, is nothing like that - it’s about something that quite honestly clashes with what the game’s actual open-world and free exploration themes were marketed as. This, quite simply, is not the same; it's not about that choice of what kind of tools to approach the game with - it is about the wrong standard of restrictions being used for this kind of game in regards to how you move through the world. If you want a game to truly be an open-world experience, than you want as few restrictions on what areas a person can or can’t progress to outside of necessary tools/equipment. Your example with guns in the game only goes as far as arguing what kind of tools should or should not be in the game, not about how restricted one’s actual pathways through the game itself should be.
Also, in response to your comment of “don’t tell me that one additional route to ILZ is the make or break for being able to call this an Open World game"… again, with all due respect, I personally feel that line of thinking would likewise justify someone saying “please don’t tell me that accessing the Lost River is or should be the make or break for being able to go through the game at all, story or gameplay wise.” Because by the logic of your comment, removing any one biome - including the Lost River or parts of it - wouldn’t in any way limit the game because everything there could just be shunted somewhere else. According to your statement, removing any one biome, or at least a piece of said biome, will not cripple the experience of an open-world - so by that standard, any biome could be removed and it would not alter things so long as the story-necessary elements remained intact and accessible. It’s, in my opinion, a self-defeating statement that anyone who’s had experience in making a true open-world game would never say. Likewise, part of me feels like you’re at least partly guilty of the same thing you said Sylxeria was - I myself get that story progression is important to you, Cory, but I must in turn ask that you don’t get so fixated on that as to completely forget that, when it comes to creating and/or marketing an open-world game, you cannot and should not ever assume that there has to or needs to be “a limit there” when that goes against the whole concept of an open world. Moreover, the contexts between them are two separate things - deciding if or when to stop adding more biomes is one thing, but actively shrinking what’s already there is something different altogether.
The difference between an open-world and a story-driven map is that the former has no such restrictions on where the player can go and when - only on whether or not they have the tools to do so without dying. As it stands, you’ve already balanced the game to the point where they will need to go to the Lost River either way and could not survive the trip through the Crash Zone corridor without at least a Cyclops, a Prawn suit and the max-pressure compensators for both. To say “we could add new biomes and new creatures for the next 10 years if we wanted” feels yet another excuse in that regard, because this isn’t about adding more biomes - this is about not limiting, reducing or shrinking the biomes that exist. The Inactive Lava Zone as it is lost over a third or even half of it’s original size when the other two pathways were sealed off - one of which (the Dunes sinkhole) was lore-justifiable due to the presence of Reapers (the Sea Dragon’s prey). It comes across as you saying that biomes should be removed or otherwise restricted because you think one particular biome is so important that all routes to any other story-related biomes can, should and/or must be closed off to force progression that way - that because you do not trust the player to explore the areas you want them to explore, you must leave them zero other alternative but to go there. Something that I feel, again, not only contradicts what your own head director Charlie Cleveland had said to want from the game, but goes against the entire purpose of an open-world game in the first place.
So, in closing, these are my honest feelings. And those, in effect, boil down to my feeling that it would be best to either remove the “open-world” tag on Subnautica and market it as a *story-driven* survival experience like Resident EVII was, or to stop axing out biomes and instead try to develop them into parts of another world as they realistically would be since a true, living world should not be so liner as to force the player to only ever go through one single “correct” path to reach the endgame. Cutting out areas (in ways that contradict your own lore, no less) and limiting players to one set pathway and creating an actual, true open-world experience are not one in the same, and it is my hope that this can be actually addressed in some way that does not serve to detriment the core of what Subnautica was originally meant to be; an open-world survival experience.
@Flayra@Squeal_Like_A_Pig Lots of thought went into the preceding post ▲ , and I think it sums up what most of us are thinking. I know we can't always have everything, but if it is possible, I know for me personally, and for many others, coming out one of the alternate entrances after entering another way for the first time... the feeling is actually quite amazing.
Like, what else am I missing? How huge and interconnected is this world?? It was one of those moments where you just sit there trying to pick up your jaw from the floor. (To a lesser extent, I also felt the same thing realizing the JellyShroom caves were so huge and had so many entrances right under my nose!)
I know you guys have your reasons, but if you guys could, please take a moment together to consider if there's a feasible way to work around the problem, or at least soften the blow somehow. We aren't merely asking this out of self-interest (although, not going to lie, we obviously like the sprawling underground cave systems the way they were). We are asking to preserve the sense of awe for other new players (although there will be plenty of that from other sources, Subnautica is an awesome game!
Thanks kindly for all the work you've done so far!
@The08MetroidMan
Thank you for for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and respectful letter to the developers. I feel the same way as you about Cory's comments on this issue and the potentially troubling implications to game's development, and fully stand behind what you've said in this open letter.
I can kind of see the developers point in forcing the player past the Lost River. I understand that not everyone is interested in the story, but those who are need to hit the right path in that final bit of the game to avoid to much backtracking for keys. The thermal generator in paticular is hard to find unless you have the coordinates from the Virus contianment.
Maybe the solution would be to make the Lost River more labyrinthine. Multiple paths, twisting and turning through the place with a few centralized larger rooms, like the skeleton room. Expand it to fill a much greater area under the ocean floor with many new entrances. A more labyrinthine area could also add a legitimate challenge in terms of avoiding getting lost. Maybe even add a few Leviathans, either Reaper or the new Ghost, swimming through larger, main tunnels, making those dangerous to use, but keep a bunch of side tunnels the player can head around through.
Then when you enter the place, your on board computer mentions that it is picking up an alien distress signal or similar, but is unable to properly get a bead on where it is coming from due to the tight space. Traveling around the place then eventually lets it triangulate the position of the Alien Virus Facility if you have not found it yourself, thus pointing the player towards it, but requiring a bit of work down in the Lost River before you get the exact location.
Then at the Virus Facility we can already pick up a marker for the Thermal Generator facility, which naturally points you to the Lava zones and the Thermal Generator points you towards the final facility.
But now that it is easier for the player to get the marker for the Thermal Generator, one could add multiple paths out of the Lost River into the Lava Zones, because with the Thermal Generator marker there the player has something to go for, making it less of a threat that they backtrack out of another entrance to the area by accident.
It would still be somewhat limiting in terms of the fact that you need to get to the Lost River to get to the Lava Zones, but there are more entrances into a more sprawling Lost River and by extension more entrances that go further from Lost River into the Lava Zones.
I can kind of see the developers point in forcing the player past the Lost River. I understand that not everyone is interested in the story, but those who are need to hit the right path in that final bit of the game to avoid to much backtracking for keys. The thermal generator in paticular is hard to find unless you have the coordinates from the Virus contianment.
Maybe the solution would be to make the Lost River more labyrinthine. Multiple paths, twisting and turning through the place with a few centralized larger rooms, like the skeleton room. Expand it to fill a much greater area under the ocean floor with many new entrances. A more labyrinthine area could also add a legitimate challenge in terms of avoiding getting lost. Maybe even add a few Leviathans, either Reaper or the new Ghost, swimming through larger, main tunnels, making those dangerous to use, but keep a bunch of side tunnels the player can head around through.
Then when you enter the place, your on board computer mentions that it is picking up an alien distress signal or similar, but is unable to properly get a bead on where it is coming from due to the tight space. Traveling around the place then eventually lets it triangulate the position of the Alien Virus Facility if you have not found it yourself, thus pointing the player towards it, but requiring a bit of work down in the Lost River before you get the exact location.
Then at the Virus Facility we can already pick up a marker for the Thermal Generator facility, which naturally points you to the Lava zones and the Thermal Generator points you towards the final facility.
But now that it is easier for the player to get the marker for the Thermal Generator, one could add multiple paths out of the Lost River into the Lava Zones, because with the Thermal Generator marker there the player has something to go for, making it less of a threat that they backtrack out of another entrance to the area by accident.
It would still be somewhat limiting in terms of the fact that you need to get to the Lost River to get to the Lava Zones, but there are more entrances into a more sprawling Lost River and by extension more entrances that go further from Lost River into the Lava Zones.
I don't think that'd really fix the main problem, though, which is damage to the Lava Zone itself. In fact... I don't mean to sound rude, but I think debate on expanding any biomes with further areas and advocating not cutting away any of the biomes that currently exist are separate debates entirely ^_^;
My point was that, between the Precursor Array pointing you to it, the necessity of going there to get the Thermal Plant/Prison Key's location and the fact you need nickel from it to make the MK-II pressure-compensator for the Cyclops, I personally feel there's already plenty of reason to go the LR as it is, without needing to cut away more from the ILZ - let alone make it totally inaccessible by any other means but the LR. In fact, narrative-wise, it's arguably impossible to avoid going there at some point - making it impossible to avoid gameplay-wise by sealing the Aurora corridor just feels like it takes away from player freedom/agency, degrades the Lava Zone even further to what's basically a one-off zone that cannot be reached through natural progression as opposed to forced progression. It harkens back to what I felt was an issue already; the idea that one biome (the LR) is so important that we apparently will not be given any choice gameplay-wise but to go there, despite the narrative having already ensured we'll visit it at some point.
Plus, as previously mentioned by myself and others, it even clashes with the lore about the sea dragon's feeding habits of dragging reapers down to the LZ - they're lava-adapted creatures and the LR is freezing; you'd expect something like that to die of shock from the sharp temperature change if they entered the LR... so how are they getting out and then back in with a reaper in tow? Them wading through the LR makes little sense, but there'd be no other path between the LZ and the surface.
Don't get me wrong, I don't object to the expansion of biomes, and a more interconnected world is precisely the kind of thing I'd always vote for... but aside from that being an entirely separate topic to this one, I don't think further expansion of the LR would really fix or even address any of the issues mentioned above if the Crash Zone's corridor were closed; it would still feel closer to a railroaded narrative by forcing one through the LR as opposed to one actually wanting to discover and explore it. That might work for a purely story-driven game, but that is not what Subnautica was originally marketed as.
@The08MetroidMan
Thank you for for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and respectful letter to the developers. I feel the same way as you about Cory's comments on this issue and the potentially troubling implications to game's development, and fully stand behind what you've said in this open letter.
Lots of thought went into the [ @The08MetroidMan's ] post ▲ , and I think it sums up what most of us are thinking. I know we can't always have everything, but if it is possible, I know for me personally, and for many others, coming out one of the alternate entrances after entering another way for the first time... the feeling is actually quite amazing. How huge and interconnected is this world?? It was one of those moments where you just sit there trying to pick up your jaw from the floor. (To a lesser extent, I also felt the same thing realizing the JellyShroom caves were so huge and had so many entrances right under my nose!)
This weekend, I took my Seamoth with a Pressure Compensator MK3 into the Jelly Shroom Caves looking for mats. Spend a lot of time down there on 3 trips. Went back and forth and got a bit lost, including revisiting the Abandonned Base. To go back up the central shaft I had to maneuver so my Base Beacon and the Cyclops ping marker were just over head.
But one time I was far away but my inventory was full, so I found another shaft up. I thought it was to the east but it was to the west. I got that sense of coming out another way than what I went down and got that feeling of amazement and interconnection.
Comments
I thought things like the beacons drove the story along enough. And now I'm worried that my Cyclops will be too fragile come the next update.
I'm not sure if story's the driving reason, and even if it was they could find ways to accommodate it - like the beacons and signals currently do. Then there's the question about how this affects people who aren't playing Subnautica for the story. What about people playing Creative? Or people who've already cleared the game a few times or are just exploring to see the world? Limiting and actively removing content "because story" is potentially harming the game for them. You can't entirely forsake the story, but limiting the world - which promised exploration and discovery - because of it isn't right either. A balance must be found, and right now there isn't much balance when it comes to the endgame.
I can fully understand the Active Lava Zone only having one entrance. But such a massive complex of caverns like the ILZ is - or was - shouldn't be limited to just one or even two. When the game had several, one in the south, one in the northwest, and one hidden in the east, that was perfect. The south you'd snake through the Lost River to find. The NW you'd brave the Dunes then go through a brief Corridor that eventually links up with the Lost River. The Eastern Gallery? You'd need to brave a reaper AND have the boundless curiosity to actually dive down to the bottom and see what's down there.
Like I did. In Creative way, way back when... I was exploring the world. And as I was browsing around the Koosh Zone I saw the Aurora there and thought "What's down there?". I went down expecting nothing. I instead found a massive corridor that I knew I wanted to see fully fleshed out. I was amazed by it, like Markiplier was amazed by the Western Corridor that the Dunes opened up into. It'd make an excellent secret back door, a reward for a curious explorer who, like the game suggests - desired to explore the deepest reaches of the ocean and found something grand. Or maybe it'd be an exit, after mapping the ILZ you find a huge tunnel winding its way slowly back to the surface, and then you reach a familiar location... You never knew it was there, and you're surprised.
That's one thing I loved about Subnautica, was its complex biomes and world, the freedom it allowed you. I guess, that freedom and exploration only really applies to the early-midgame and ends once you acquire the Cyclops and Exosuit. After that it's just following a trail of precursor breadcrumbs along a straight path to the ending. There's no more choice in the matter in how you approach it. There should be. As someone said earlier in this thread, the cave systems should be complex, they should have multiple entry points, they should snake and wind over each other and intersect with each other, it SHOULD be a large and massive place.
One of my friends says he got into contact with one of the devs and passed these concerns along to them, all he got in response was "We'll be thinking on it" or something. So that's a plus I suppose, especially if they see this thread - a lot of people here seem to feel that continuously shrinking these opportunities is a bad thing, and if you think about it it really is.
When I joined SA for the first time, there were three ways into the ILZ. The whole place was empty, lacking even its own lighting. They were:
Northwest Corridor - aka the Dunes Sinkhole. This was the entrance Markiplier first found, and anyone remember how thoroughly excited he was about that? "When they finish this, we'll have twice the map area to explore". Well, we won't anymore since the Corridors are all being removed!
This would have connected to the Lost River had it not been replaced by a Precursor Cache. A cache that mind you, you'll only ever visit once. It's too small to build in, and the data downloads and ion crystals are single-use. You'll never have need to return to this place ever again - UNLIKE a cave entrance, which is forever. And I used to love building "research" bases on the cusp of that sinkhole.
Southern Corridor - aka the Deep Grand entrance. I can understand part of why this one was removed. It made getting into the ILZ far too easy, as there was zero danger on the way to or within the Grand Reef, and even with the Crabquids and Warpers the Deep Grand was easy to navigate as well, even with a Seaglide or Seamoth. The Dunes and Crash Zone corridors both had reapers patroling directly above them, and are - or were... - large enough to house Sea Dragons within. There was talk about the Twisty Bridges being relocated to this spot to serve as a transition, but I guess that's been axed too as a result of the corridor's closure.
Eastern Corridor - The Crash Zone entrance. This was actually the first one I found. When I was first playing Subnautica, i was doing so on Creative. I was exploring every inch of the world, taking in its wonders. I was excited when I found the Jellyshroom Caves, and triply so when I found the Blood Kelp Trench. I immediately regretted not buying this game sooner, and leaving it on my wishlist for months. As I was passing by the Aurora, I wondered... I wondered what was down that cliffside under the exploded portion. There was a reaper there, it had to be guarding something, something had to be down there. Since I had already seen so many beautiful things, surely something had to be hidden down there too. There was. Keyword "Was". Past-tense. At the very bottom of that abyss was an immense opening into the bowels of the planet, a huge twisting corridor that winded through several biomes until reaching the central chamber. I was absolutely amazed, and looked forward to seeing it completed. I wanted to see it mapped too, and after seeing it done so (Img posted earlier in the thread) I was just... Absolutely amazed. It was huge! Out of the three, this one had the most potential. It could have been a grand and terrifying gallery, having a sea dragon lurking within and reaper skeletons strewn about, massive fissures blowing molten rock into the waters.... It was large enough for a dragon to easily swim trhough, it had its favorite food (Second only to the player and their subs) right nearby, it wound underneath the "volcanically active" Koosh Zone. It made perfect sense to have this corridor. It'd make a great REWARD for those who took the time to EXPLORE the world to its fullest, or serve as just another great place to explore.
As of right now, the only way into the ILZ is through the Lost River, and there's no longer any real great corridor to pass through - at least not compared to the former Dunes and Crash Zone corridors. There was something magical about finding an entrance into the planet's depths at the seafloor of an abyssal zone, it gave a feeling far greater than merely "finding a cave within a cave". Don't get me wrong, the Lost River is amazing - but it being the ONLY way in is not just underwhelming, it's just wrong. This game is labeled as an Exploration and Open World survival game. You SHOULD have more options in how you want to approach things, you SHOULD have the freedom to explore more places, the cavernous biomes SHOULD be expansive and complex. While you had plenty of choice in how you wanted to approach things before, you have almost no choice in the last half other than "Do I want to enter the LR through the north or the south...?". You could decide between the Dunes, Grand Reef, and Crash Zone for the ILZ before - the first and last being the most dangerous and had potential to be even more dangerous once the Sea Dragon was created - but now you have no choice at all.
I want the eastern corridor to be saved. I really want the Crash Zone abyss to be its entrance, since it was like a reward for following the curiosity that exploration games usually love players having. There was a great feeling about having something so sinister and dangerous being so close to your starting area. Like the Water Dragon's Lair in 'Runes of Magic' being literally right beside one of the starter-zone towns. It even was lore-friendly in that it'd give Sea Dragons easy access to Reapers, and it passed under the Koosh Zone which your AI says there's a lot of volcanic activity present. It was not an easy and friendly entrance either, so "it'd make getting in too easy" was not a problem.
If it has to be relocated, I'd suggest the Northeastern Mountains or the Koosh Zone somewhere, but I really really want to see the Crash Zone be its entrance.
Like how the Rock Puncher and Ghost Leviathan were important to many others, these Corridors are very important to me. They added a lot to the late game, and gave the player so much freedom in how they wanted to approach it which is a major point for these sorts of games. They had potential, and could even make for story points - main plot or extended universe additions - or could be optional lategame/postgame content. Seeing them gutted like this, for little to no good reason (yet plenty of poor to bad ones) is more than just disappointing, its painful. It's even made it difficult for me to play the game at times, as there's a constant reminder that something that had such potential was being axed - and it's not like the former two creatures which were at the time mere concepts - it was something that was ALREADY in the game.
I'm truly desperate, to see these corridors stay. There's so many good reasons why they should stay, why they'd be beneficial for the (currently somewhat lacking) endgame portion of Subnautica, how much they'd add to the world...
The following is my reply to those comments. If anybody knows how to get this to Cory Strader, or can forward it to the discord for me (I don't have an account there), that would be great. If not... than instead, I'll leave this here simply as my hat in the pot on why I disagree with what he said on the Discord about the ILZ corridor not being an important concern. Cheers!
Dear Cory Strader
I’m a very big fan of the game. Bought the early-access version of the game, have not regretted it. Not a big fan of the Silent Running update’s health bar on the Cyclops, but that’s something I’m confident can either be balanced out by the devs or that I'' adapt to on my own time.
However, that being said… I saw your reply to Sylxeria on the Discord in regards to the Crash Zone corridor accessing the Inactive Lava Zone. And, to put it simply… I disagree with what you said there in every way.
Just to clarify, I have no personal issue with you. I have great respect for what you and the team at Unknown Worlds are doing. I know I myself would likely not be able to make a game even if I had 20 years to do so. But again, that being said, Subnautica is an early-access game - and one of the whole purposes of early-access is for the devs to be aware of feedback from the community and players in regards to how the game develops. This, in short, means that the community is allowed a voice in how the game develops - what is taken from that voice is up to the developers, but that in and of itself does not change that we have a right to speak on what we believe. Hence this open letter.
Now, I can understand you feeling that the Inactive Lava Zone, being endgame content, should not be immediately accessible. I understand concerns about players just rushing through to the end and missing out on all the amazing things the game has to offer.
But when it comes to thinking that the corridor’s existence means that players will bypass the Lost River… there are two major flaws I find with that line of thinking.
The first is that, to put it simply, skipping the Lost River isn’t possible to do in the first place, regardless of if the Aurora corridor is sealed or not. Not only does the Precursor Array point you directly toward the LR base and direct you to it as a starting point, and not only do you need to visit the LR base to get the Thermal Plant’s coordinates (and by extension the location for the Prison Facility's Key), but you need to go to the Lost River to get the nickel needed for the Cyclops’ MK-II pressure compensator - without which you can’t get to even the ILZ in the first place, let alone the ALZ. As it stands, what you call "one of the biggest concerns” is pretty much non-existant - you’ve put so much plot-relevant stuff in the Lost River already and detailed the biome so much as it is that there’s no reason for people to not go there. There is quite literally no reason to have it so that progressing to and/or through it is the only possible option gameplay-wise, because you've already made it that way story-wise/narrative wise.
Secondly… I feel this statement contradicts your own game’s established lore. According to your Trello page, you put Reaper Leviathan skeletons down in the LZ to illustrate that the Sea Dragons come up to hunt them. But if you’re closing off all the LZ entrances, how precisely are they supposed to get up to sea level to hunt in the first place? Now, I understood removing the entrance from the Deep Grand Reef since the atmosphere of that place and it's native fauna (especially the Crabsquids) tied in more with the LR and thus felt like it made more sense for those two to be connected. But by contrast, the entrances in the Dunes and the Crash Zone made sense to have because those were both in Reaper territory - it made sense lore-wise why there would be passageways leading to the LZ zone, not just for the Sea Dragons to come up from but to drag the Reapers back down through. Sea Dragons are adapted to high-heat environments - are you going to tell me that going through the deep-freezing waters of the Lost River would be natural for them to do over following a nice warm lava corridor out to the surface? Especially if said corridor leads directly into their prey’s territory? Given how they evolved, I would be more inclined to think something used to magmatic temperatures would go into shock and die if it suddenly entered waters that deep-freezing - heck, it wouldn't have surprised me to learn the Sea Dragons carved those passages out themselves purely to have convenient access to their favored prey, or at least that's what I'd have believed in regards to one of them (the Dunes), since saying Aurora's crash opened the other one up would have also worked. And yes, I know about the Sea Dragon skeleton that's down there, but that's almost a thousand years old - for all we know, the waters of the LR weren't that cold back than, or heck, maybe the Sea Dragon mother was too angry about her eggs being stolen to care by that point.
On the issues of detailing out that whole route… nobody said you had to detail the whole thing. All you had to do was liven it up a bit so as to not be so dull - heck, as much or more work has arguably been put into just creating all the Precursor Caches dotting the game, or coding the teleporters to link with each-other, or even in just creating the Crag Fields. Compared to all that, you really wouldn’t need to do all that much to make it a functioning area.
And now… I’ll address the comments that I really, really took issue with in your statements.
To start… “Options and freedom doesn’t necessarily = better”? I’m sorry - I truly am … but I believe you are, with all due respect, completely wrong on this count. My reason for saying that can be summed up in one thing; “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.” A game that was given many recommendations and degrees of praise for it's lack of restriction on player choice, options and freedom - something that just about anyone who even so much as kept an ear to the gaming world would know, given the feedback on that game. Feed back that, for me, makes statements like the one you made feel like the complete and utter antithesis for the concept of an open-world game.
- https://engadget.com/2017/04/04/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-open-world-games/
Quote: "There are two key hallmarks of the open-world genre: There is a big map to freely traverse, and there's a lot of stuff to do on that map. It's a formula that's been refined over the past few iterations of Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, Elder Scrolls and Far Cry, among others of that ilk.”
http://www.gamesradar.com/finally-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-fixes-open-worlds-by-not-telling-you-anything/
Quote: "Because The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild doesn't explicitly tell me where everything is, I'm more preoccupied with the act of discovery instead of accumulation or completion, these things being an organic result of simply moving through the world. The feeling I get from playing Breath of the Wild, then, isn't "Oh good, I finally grabbed all the damn Korok seeds in this region", but is instead "Oh, wow, I can't believe I found that there. What else is this game hiding?”
If you were making a story-driven survival game like what Resident EVII was, I would have been more inclined to have agreed with you. But that’s not what Subnautica was marketed as. You marketed it as an open-world game - so to somehow say that “options and freedom doesn’t necessarily = better” when Breath of the Wild quite definitively proved otherwise with overwhelming praise comes across as, in my opinion, somewhat tone-deaf as to what the concept of an open-world game is supposed to be. To say “proper game progression comes out of restrictions” is, in my honest opinion, quite arguably both one of the biggest misnomers out there and one of the biggest mistakes to make in an open-world game - because in an open-world game, the restrictions do not come from railroading the player to go to one area and only one area at a time. Rather, they come from not having everything be obvious and having the player be restricted in regards to knowledge and awareness, allowing them to learn and uncover the world for themselves - heck, wasn’t one of the biggest things your lead developer, Charlie Cleveland, talked about the fact that he didn’t want the player to ever feel restricted to one single "correct" path?
Read the above reviews - look at how they exposit on how the open-world is made more alive by the feeling of not being cordoned off unnaturally through forced area/level progression and more by needing the right tools and experience to go somewhere rather than being arbitrarily railroaded through one lever after another. Proper game progression isn’t something that has a universal standard to all games - it’s definition changes depending on the type of game you’re trying to make. What you’re advocating is closer to what a purely story-driven game would have, but it does not mesh with how an open-world game should be. A true open-world game is not simply about the discovery of the lore or the story, but rather it is about the thrill of discovery period - it is about finding things in and/or about the world itself simply from how it is designed and interconnected in such a way as to feel alive. Be it a nook or crevice or crater that you can hypothesize and imagine a story or reason for, or a secret path or corridor that not only subtly ties into the lore (as the Crash Zone corridor does with Sea Dragons hunting Reapers) but makes you feel like you just solved a mystery or that there was a secret/reward to be found in the things you scan and discover, in that what you learn can have consequences on how you play and vice-versa. Things like that excite, entice and inspire players with the atmosphere of discovery, which is one of the fundamental elements of what is so appealing about exploration - and in turn, one of the backbone elements of an open-world game, survival-setting or otherwise.
In line with the above, to say “everyone has their own opinion about which thing should be added to the game” honestly feels like either an excuse in my personal opinion or that it confuses the issue rather than addresses it. With the issue on guns, that’s something that was decided on a developer-level not to add as a matter of principle. This, on the other hand, is nothing like that - it’s about something that quite honestly clashes with what the game’s actual open-world and free exploration themes were marketed as. This, quite simply, is not the same; it's not about that choice of what kind of tools to approach the game with - it is about the wrong standard of restrictions being used for this kind of game in regards to how you move through the world. If you want a game to truly be an open-world experience, than you want as few restrictions on what areas a person can or can’t progress to outside of necessary tools/equipment. Your example with guns in the game only goes as far as arguing what kind of tools should or should not be in the game, not about how restricted one’s actual pathways through the game itself should be.
Also, in response to your comment of “don’t tell me that one additional route to ILZ is the make or break for being able to call this an Open World game"… again, with all due respect, I personally feel that line of thinking would likewise justify someone saying “please don’t tell me that accessing the Lost River is or should be the make or break for being able to go through the game at all, story or gameplay wise.” Because by the logic of your comment, removing any one biome - including the Lost River or parts of it - wouldn’t in any way limit the game because everything there could just be shunted somewhere else. According to your statement, removing any one biome, or at least a piece of said biome, will not cripple the experience of an open-world - so by that standard, any biome could be removed and it would not alter things so long as the story-necessary elements remained intact and accessible. It’s, in my opinion, a self-defeating statement that anyone who’s had experience in making a true open-world game would never say. Likewise, part of me feels like you’re at least partly guilty of the same thing you said Sylxeria was - I myself get that story progression is important to you, Cory, but I must in turn ask that you don’t get so fixated on that as to completely forget that, when it comes to creating and/or marketing an open-world game, you cannot and should not ever assume that there has to or needs to be “a limit there” when that goes against the whole concept of an open world. Moreover, the contexts between them are two separate things - deciding if or when to stop adding more biomes is one thing, but actively shrinking what’s already there is something different altogether.
The difference between an open-world and a story-driven map is that the former has no such restrictions on where the player can go and when - only on whether or not they have the tools to do so without dying. As it stands, you’ve already balanced the game to the point where they will need to go to the Lost River either way and could not survive the trip through the Crash Zone corridor without at least a Cyclops, a Prawn suit and the max-pressure compensators for both. To say “we could add new biomes and new creatures for the next 10 years if we wanted” feels yet another excuse in that regard, because this isn’t about adding more biomes - this is about not limiting, reducing or shrinking the biomes that exist. The Inactive Lava Zone as it is lost over a third or even half of it’s original size when the other two pathways were sealed off - one of which (the Dunes sinkhole) was lore-justifiable due to the presence of Reapers (the Sea Dragon’s prey). It comes across as you saying that biomes should be removed or otherwise restricted because you think one particular biome is so important that all routes to any other story-related biomes can, should and/or must be closed off to force progression that way - that because you do not trust the player to explore the areas you want them to explore, you must leave them zero other alternative but to go there. Something that I feel, again, not only contradicts what your own head director Charlie Cleveland had said to want from the game, but goes against the entire purpose of an open-world game in the first place.
So, in closing, these are my honest feelings. And those, in effect, boil down to my feeling that it would be best to either remove the “open-world” tag on Subnautica and market it as a *story-driven* survival experience like Resident EVII was, or to stop axing out biomes and instead try to develop them into parts of another world as they realistically would be since a true, living world should not be so liner as to force the player to only ever go through one single “correct” path to reach the endgame. Cutting out areas (in ways that contradict your own lore, no less) and limiting players to one set pathway and creating an actual, true open-world experience are not one in the same, and it is my hope that this can be actually addressed in some way that does not serve to detriment the core of what Subnautica was originally meant to be; an open-world survival experience.
Thank you
Like, what else am I missing? How huge and interconnected is this world?? It was one of those moments where you just sit there trying to pick up your jaw
I know you guys have your reasons, but if you guys could, please take a moment together to consider if there's a feasible way to work around the problem, or at least soften the blow somehow. We aren't merely asking this out of self-interest (although, not going to lie, we obviously like the sprawling underground cave systems the way they were). We are asking to preserve the sense of awe for other new players (although there will be plenty of that from other sources, Subnautica is an awesome game!
Thanks kindly for all the work you've done so far!
Thank you for for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and respectful letter to the developers. I feel the same way as you about Cory's comments on this issue and the potentially troubling implications to game's development, and fully stand behind what you've said in this open letter.
Maybe the solution would be to make the Lost River more labyrinthine. Multiple paths, twisting and turning through the place with a few centralized larger rooms, like the skeleton room. Expand it to fill a much greater area under the ocean floor with many new entrances. A more labyrinthine area could also add a legitimate challenge in terms of avoiding getting lost. Maybe even add a few Leviathans, either Reaper or the new Ghost, swimming through larger, main tunnels, making those dangerous to use, but keep a bunch of side tunnels the player can head around through.
Then when you enter the place, your on board computer mentions that it is picking up an alien distress signal or similar, but is unable to properly get a bead on where it is coming from due to the tight space. Traveling around the place then eventually lets it triangulate the position of the Alien Virus Facility if you have not found it yourself, thus pointing the player towards it, but requiring a bit of work down in the Lost River before you get the exact location.
Then at the Virus Facility we can already pick up a marker for the Thermal Generator facility, which naturally points you to the Lava zones and the Thermal Generator points you towards the final facility.
But now that it is easier for the player to get the marker for the Thermal Generator, one could add multiple paths out of the Lost River into the Lava Zones, because with the Thermal Generator marker there the player has something to go for, making it less of a threat that they backtrack out of another entrance to the area by accident.
It would still be somewhat limiting in terms of the fact that you need to get to the Lost River to get to the Lava Zones, but there are more entrances into a more sprawling Lost River and by extension more entrances that go further from Lost River into the Lava Zones.
I don't think that'd really fix the main problem, though, which is damage to the Lava Zone itself. In fact... I don't mean to sound rude, but I think debate on expanding any biomes with further areas and advocating not cutting away any of the biomes that currently exist are separate debates entirely ^_^;
My point was that, between the Precursor Array pointing you to it, the necessity of going there to get the Thermal Plant/Prison Key's location and the fact you need nickel from it to make the MK-II pressure-compensator for the Cyclops, I personally feel there's already plenty of reason to go the LR as it is, without needing to cut away more from the ILZ - let alone make it totally inaccessible by any other means but the LR. In fact, narrative-wise, it's arguably impossible to avoid going there at some point - making it impossible to avoid gameplay-wise by sealing the Aurora corridor just feels like it takes away from player freedom/agency, degrades the Lava Zone even further to what's basically a one-off zone that cannot be reached through natural progression as opposed to forced progression. It harkens back to what I felt was an issue already; the idea that one biome (the LR) is so important that we apparently will not be given any choice gameplay-wise but to go there, despite the narrative having already ensured we'll visit it at some point.
Plus, as previously mentioned by myself and others, it even clashes with the lore about the sea dragon's feeding habits of dragging reapers down to the LZ - they're lava-adapted creatures and the LR is freezing; you'd expect something like that to die of shock from the sharp temperature change if they entered the LR... so how are they getting out and then back in with a reaper in tow? Them wading through the LR makes little sense, but there'd be no other path between the LZ and the surface.
Don't get me wrong, I don't object to the expansion of biomes, and a more interconnected world is precisely the kind of thing I'd always vote for... but aside from that being an entirely separate topic to this one, I don't think further expansion of the LR would really fix or even address any of the issues mentioned above if the Crash Zone's corridor were closed; it would still feel closer to a railroaded narrative by forcing one through the LR as opposed to one actually wanting to discover and explore it. That might work for a purely story-driven game, but that is not what Subnautica was originally marketed as.
This weekend, I took my Seamoth with a Pressure Compensator MK3 into the Jelly Shroom Caves looking for mats. Spend a lot of time down there on 3 trips. Went back and forth and got a bit lost, including revisiting the Abandonned Base. To go back up the central shaft I had to maneuver so my Base Beacon and the Cyclops ping marker were just over head.
But one time I was far away but my inventory was full, so I found another shaft up. I thought it was to the east but it was to the west. I got that sense of coming out another way than what I went down and got that feeling of amazement and interconnection.