Totally agree with the timescale in the game being off. Right now we have to deal with two timescales: the day/night cycle and survival needs timescale, and the player movement/world interaction timescale. For gameplay purposes #1 generally needs to be accelerated, and #2 can't really be changed.
The problem right now as I see it is that the disparity between these is too great. Doing even basic tasks takes inordinate amounts of time in #1 with how short the days and nights are, and the player is constantly having to consume food/drink to avoid dying to the point that it become a tedious nuisance.
I'm not sure exactly what the ideal timescale for #1 would be, but IMHO it should be half as fast as it is now, maybe even slower. A proper sleep system would also subtlety encourage players to use beds to pass time so they're not stuck with excessively long nights (or days for players who prefer to explore at night).
Back to the topic that started the timescale discussion, I agree that the Cyclops Flank Speed and Silent Running modes still don't feel quite right. The concept of flank speed causing overheating and eventually damage is a solid concept, but 20s of flank speed really isn't long enough given how it's not much faster than ahead standard. Either the flank speed needs to be greatly increased so that it's a short, intense burst of speed, or the duration needs to be significantly increased, or even a bit of both.
Silent running is just silly how it works. The new implementation is basically a cloaking device, but silent running is a real-life submarine concept of driving slowly and shutting off unnecessary systems to minimize noise. Either the feature needs to be renamed and made into a separate upgrade with high energy usage (we already have an energy shield for the sub, a cloaking device would be believable in the game world) or Silent Running needs to be reverted to what I perceived as the intended behavior of the previous implementation where it would drastically reduce aggro/detection range, but require the use of decoys and shields to escape once detected instead of magically dropping aggro once activated.
Kyman, I would initially make an exception for the Cyclop since it can't dock (yet?)
But I would like you to consider the following:
- Proper planning is part of the game, I didn't say it had to be HARDCORE LIMIT like "20 minutes top".
- It is similar to running out of power.
- Can lead to many buff.
- I suspect the devs WANT you to loose a Cyclop eventually (and bail out in another vehicle), so you can see it explode and then loot it.
Also, I made a thread explaining what you would gain from it (sorry it take long to get to it).
Everybody is already bothered by how little O² the diving-tank carry, if you make (even just) the Seamoth a bigger pool, you can have the best of two worlds.
You can even finally have a big difference between the "light & fast tank" and the "high capacity" one.
Did I mention you could use the "Floaters" to refloat an empty subs in most part of the game?
The problem right now as I see it is that the disparity between these is too great. Doing even basic tasks takes inordinate amounts of time in #1 with how short the days and nights are, and the player is constantly having to consume food/drink to avoid dying to the point that it become a tedious nuisance.
I think part of the problem with the Hunger and Thirst meters is, well, to be frank? They don't add anything because the resources are almost never scarce. Like, from the start, there's fish EVERYWHERE. You get plants later, thus giving you a source of food. But no matter WHERE you go, you can find fish easily. Transport them back to a fabricator, eat them, or find some salt and cure them to take them with you.
There's never much MANAGEMENT involved, because of the aforementioned abundance. You're never in any real danger of dying of hunger or thirst unless you forget, because say you're having too much fun exploring, and then realize you need to trudge back to your base. Or, if you're far enough, hop on your Cyclops and prep the food in your Cyclop's fabricator.
(Can you still put a general fabricator in your Cyclops? I was under the impression that the Silent Running Cyclops fabricator was only for Cyclops Upgrades)
(Can you still put a general fabricator in your Cyclops? I was under the impression that the Silent Running Cyclops fabricator was only for Cyclops Upgrades)
Yes you can install an added Fabricator with the Habitat Builder.
There's never much MANAGEMENT involved, because of the aforementioned abundance. You're never in any real danger of dying of hunger or thirst unless you forget, because say you're having too much fun exploring, and then realize you need to trudge back to your base. Or, if you're far enough, hop on your Cyclops and prep the food in your Cyclop's fabricator.
It is a kind of tedious background task. And part of the game progression is setting up sources of water and food to minimize the tedium.
However, the shear fun of swimming through the water after fish and seeing the world in day and especially night is one of the things that really made me love Subnautica.
And satisfying thirst and hunger by locating sources of safe water and food is a key element of survival. It would be odd not to include them in the game.
Perhaps if the rates of thirst and hunger could be reduced?
I really dislike the way this game is going to. As of the latest version of the game, a lot of stuffs are really tedious and laborious.
Recent bug with power management in experimental made me to realize that it is not just Cyclops being tedious and useless. At this point this is getting harder to be called exploration game, rather typical action without guns. It's literally resource management game, except the problem is that resource management is the weakest part of the game. There is no easy way to sort and search lockers and storage.
Besides better and more colors i wished also there would be:
1. a possibility to create groups/categories of beacons. So i can simply enable/disable all wreck beacons as example. Or can group all Precursor locations beacons... etc. etc.
2. the possibility to directly rename beacons in the ping manager.
Besides better and more colors i wished also there would be:
1. a possibility to create groups/categories of beacons. So i can simply enable/disable all wreck beacons as example. Or can group all Precursor locations beacons... etc. etc.
2. the possibility to directly rename beacons in the ping manager.
+1
also, if bases would get their own signal (or maybe simply the radio at the base), then I don't need an extra beacon floating near a base or build a scanner room as a signal landmark.
Which is the next thing:
The scanner room shouldn't include 2 cams by default as you can build them and not much of them need replacement. And if you build a scanner room in the air on top of an island, the cams are a bit nonsense there if they can't fly ...
Mmm I really think the rates of thirst and hunger should be reduced. I remember when I played I just decimated the local population of bladderfish and then salt with my excessive thirst. Then I ate all of the fish in the locality. It is a shame they don't grow back as my base then became quite empty of sealife.
Its a mobile base, I just use it to move the prawn about and I use it to get the Prawn to the Lava zone. Yes it is fragile but its great for
1. charging prawn
2. having a fabricator on stand by
3. a place to store stuff
4. a place to generate food
I do agree its a bit fragile and could use more storage space and mods space but it isnt really bad its a home away from home and its perfect for going on long mining trips with the Prawn. Also it can go much deeper than the Moth.
Edit: The Cyclops wiki page states the following: "Piloting the sub in Flank speed for more than 20 seconds will cause the engine to overheat, at this point there is a chance for a fire to start every 2 seconds." So It's actually worse than I thought.
I'm fine with the idea of the mechanic - over-clocking the cyclops engine to increase speed, but risk engine overheating and fires - but right now it's ridiculous. 20 seconds is absurdly short. 1 1/2 - 2 minutes seems much more reasonable to me. But that probably still isn't addressing the cyclops's more core issues.
Once again this all rolls back to the accelerated time the game seems to thrive on. The PDA tracks messages received on "Day X" so each day/night passage is a "day". But then there's the fact when you hit 30 seconds of oxygen remaining, the PDA states "30 seconds". So we can only stay underwater for 45-135 seconds, but a full day lasts 10 minutes? Or is the accelerated time taking being taken into account, and 20 seconds of Flank Speed supposed to be like "5 minutes" of gametime?
I've been voicing discontent with the timetable of Planet 4546B for a while now - dusk and dawn last but mere seconds, and nighttime is barely an inconvenience. Heck, a lunar eclipse takes all of 20 seconds real-time to pass; even in the game's converted timespan it lasts less than an hour.
I really wish they would slow down the passage of time to be more realistic to be believable. And before you say "it's an alien planet bruh!" our own planet Jupiter has the shortest day in our solar system at just 9 hours and 55 minutes. The days pass too fast to be productive, and the nights are too short to be fearful. And we can be stranded for weeks on end between the Sunbeam coming for rescue to the time they are "more than halfway there" - they must be travelling at impulse speds, lol. It just really breaks the immersion with the days just speeding by.
I mean... I don't know. I don't feel like they're really taking into account the rate of day and night when considering speed setting for cyclops, and what would be realistically achievable in the games day. More likely than not it's just them trying to figure out what feels good and is still balanced.
On the topic of day and night being short - it is really weird, but It's never really bothered me I suppose? Mostly because the only difference between day and nighttime in game is light level. I've never had a reason to fear the night in this game. In other games all the bad guys come out at night, whether it be zombies spawning or getting faster or different mobs spawning. But in subnautica? Nothing changes. No special enemies come out at night. I'm not sure they should either. This game is about fearing what lurks in the darkest depths of the ocean. Not night-time like almost all other survival games. And I like that. It's different. Besides, if it was significantly longer I still wouldn't be afraid of it because it doesn't make a difference. It would just be annoying for me if night was longer.
Can my base not break instantly when I accidentally hit it with my knife? It's just dumb and unrealistic that a single slash would do the damage that it does.
Are.. are they going to add more things for the data boxes to give us? I don't know, it felt like a cool thing until I realized how many duplicates there are of each one. More often than not you just end up getting nothing from a box you found, which feels really crap honestly. I've also seen players think they're getting something from the duplicates but not understanding where it's going, when in actuality they are actually getting nothing. Maybe if you find duplicate data boxes it could give you a couple bits of titanium (or something more creative hopefully?) just so people know that it was a duplicate, and it'll feel marginally less crap when you get nothing, AGAIN, from one of these supposedly valuable data boxes.
Are.. are they going to add more things for the data boxes to give us? I don't know, it felt like a cool thing until I realized how many duplicates there are of each one. More often than not you just end up getting nothing from a box you found, which feels really crap honestly. I've also seen players think they're getting something from the duplicates but not understanding where it's going, when in actuality they are actually getting nothing. Maybe if you find duplicate data boxes it could give you a couple bits of titanium (or something more creative hopefully?) just so people know that it was a duplicate, and it'll feel marginally less crap when you get nothing, AGAIN, from one of these supposedly valuable data boxes.
There's a trello card to make data boxes containing prints you've already found open, so disappointment from a duplicate box should no longer happen in the furue. I do hope there'll be more recipes eventually, though.
I love this game but, the story is too short. You can complete it in less than 4 hours following just the messages.
I don't think a new player would beat it 4 hours in. They'd have to be pretty fearless and confident in what and how to do things. But people who have played through the game a multitude of times will be able to rush through to those key story locations and bypass progression gates swiftly and efficiently.
And I'm not sure at the end of the day that's a story-line issue. Feels like a replay-ability issue to me.
I've not seen many people voice this complaint, so it may be just me, but I worry a lot about what will happen when the game gets it's 1.0 release and the story-line is finished. There isn't really any challenge in surviving, and once you've explored all the world they built has to offer I mean... what else is there to do? I love the game, but I find myself only really coming back to experience the progression of the story. I can't help but feel it just won't get played and collect digital dust in the labyrinth of my steam library. And I really don't want that to happen because the game I love. one that has potential to be much more, and do a lot more.
The story is great, don't get me wrong, but I almost wish there was a little less focus on it. At some point subnautica became less of a survival game or a sandbox game, but a story game with sandbox elements thrown in. and like I said, maybe it's just my personal preference but I thought it was a survival game when I bought it (and was pleasantly surprised with an unexpected story), and kind of still want something to feed that desire. I want to be able to sit down and do more complex things instead of simply finishing the story, and then rarely, if ever, returning to the game because that's all it is: A story game (A Great one at that, but still).
The actual survival-sandbox elements of the game are actually kind of lacking. If the story wasn't there, the only things you could do would be to build bases. Like, that's actually it. Yeah you can explore but we need incentive to. There are some areas of the game (The Bulb zone in particular comes to find, every ) that you don't ever really have a significant reason to go to besides to search for wrecks which probably just have containers with batteries and blueprints you already have or don't want. Maybe we just aren't full up on content yet but I still feel it's important to voice this. Maybe the devs and other players have a different vision of the game than I do, but I truly hope that the aspect of replay-ability doesn't get lost in a tunnel-visioned drive to finish the story-line so they can fully release subnautica.
I guess the main point here is I want to be able to do something other than the story line once I've completed it.
on a completely unrelated note: Did anybody else think they needed to create 5 of the item at the end to do that endgame thing? (trying to avoid spoilers, but I just mean the absolute last item you build to progress the storyline in the non-experimental version) Because there were 5 things... So I made 5 of the item because logic. Only to realize I only needed one. I realized that as a possibility the second I made the fifth one, but was a bit too late as you can imagine.
@Who_needs_Armor I agree, although I don't know about doing all the story in 4 hours. Just to get the blueprints and resources I feel I need pushes things to well over 3 days (72 hours) of play time. And that's not even going into the Lost River and below. I think even cutting things down to the minimum would take more than 24 hours.
I hope besides getting the game as is right for release, UWE is thinking about how to use what they have beyond this. It's a very interesting game that could easily use a bigger sandbox; the current map isn't that big. Going for more might be difficult without a lot of changes.
Well, when we think about what you actually need to do to finish the game currently, it comes down to crafting the endgame item, and getting to the final area to use it. There are ways the game directs you, but ultimately you have to do very few of those things. The lifepods give you lore and a data chip, only a select few are necessary, heck, if any are. They're just kind of content fillers to give you random things to do to waste your time in all honesty. Four hours would probably be too little time, but I don't think by much. And I suppose I was more thinking along the lines of getting to the end of the current story content as opposed to experiencing all of it - as in, not going to every lifepod and picking up every PDA for lore and scanning a ton of creatures randomly.
I know I've completed the game in less than 30 hours. and that was with absolutely no rush. Just me dawdling and scanning chairs, building my base slowly, making sure the wall lockers are symmetrical for darn sake. Even with me going into new areas and me figuring out how to get past the sea dragon for lords sake. If I were to play quicker and try to just get to the end, I can't imagine the game would take me more than 10 hours, maximum. I guess I'm thinking more of a speedrun than anything, but going from mission to mission given right away, you'd still get done with the game content pretty quick if you knew where to go and what to do there.
And with all the talk of it, I might actually attempt a mediocre speed run. I suppose it would breathe some more life into the game for me in the meantime. Need to think about how I'd go about it though.
I do agree with both Who_need_Armor and Jacke above.
I expected more survival in Subnautica (at least in the "keep your base working" domain, only way to flood your seabase is to do it yourself)
But I also think it can be improved by a few balance change and making use of what is already in the game, not that I would mind new biomes, new dingy-boat, sunk submarine to bring to the surface and other.
Few game can boast of having such a literal "sandbox" available, it would be sad to have a piano and only play a single tune.
And Thinking about it more, I realize that subnautica isn't meant to be a true "survival" game like don't starve, or 7 Days to die, or Osiris, ect. But I don't want it to be that either. At the end of the day I just want to be able to do something more in the game than the storyline.
and as for curiosity for speedruns sake, In an earlier version somebody made a PRAWN in under 2 hours in a new game. Taking that knowledge, you could actually speedrun the game in probably 3-4 hours, give or take a bit. But not many people have started to do speedruns and such since the game is unfinished after all.
You CAN use Ion power cells once you unlock that blueprint. People seem to forget this. They hold 5x as much power as regular power cells (Regular => 200 each, Ion =>1000 each)
The Cyclops isn't suppose to be super strong power-wise until you get these. But once you do, it'll probably have MORE than enough to sustain the power needs of the upgrades.
And about using it as a base:
I don't like investing that much into it with it being destructable. if I put lockers in it and filled them with resources, build a fabricator and chargers and all that... and then lose it? That would feel terrible, and just not worth the risk. Losing not only the resources used to build it, but lockers full of supplies from metal, foods... I guess that's the price you pay for having a mobile base but eh... with the map being the small size it is, like i said before it's just not necessary.
Which is the next thing:
The scanner room shouldn't include 2 cams by default as you can build them and not much of them need replacement. And if you build a scanner room in the air on top of an island, the cams are a bit nonsense there if they can't fly ...
Hmm. I was gonna point out that if you can stand next to your land-bound Scanner Room, you can pick up the drones in your inventory and drop them in the water. Of course, you have to go into the scanner room to use them... and you can't recharge them until you pick them back up and put them in their cradles. so, yeah. Limited utility, but not NO utility.
I love this game but, the story is too short. You can complete it in less than 4 hours following just the messages.
This !!!
With the implemented "you'll get an auto-beacon for everywhat" the devs shorten the story extremely and destroying much of the exploring character of the game.
E.g.: You get a beacon for the thermal plant inside the Lava Castle. Everyone will go straight to it instead of exploring and fear the great designed biome.
Absolute immersion killer in my opinion and to much help for the player. Same for the research facility.
Also one part of the endgame its not really good. Why we can use the fabricator for "a very important recipe" instead to use the aquarium to produce it?
Also a great immersion killer for the otherwise fantastic sequence.
I mentioned this in my Epic Trello Thread, but I'll say it again: I wish the Devs would restore the original PDA voice intro, though, "In the late 22nd Century, humanity was beginning to colonize space..." and then run the Lifepod Crash Sequence, as that bit of intro speech gives you the context; the "why" of why you're here.
(The original concept of Subnautica was to survive and build a Colony for other survivors, but the Devs dropped that, I think; now, instead we have Precursors / Sea Emperor / Leave planet. Also... did anyone realize that the (very) early builds of Subnautica had weather, or a weather effect?!
I love this game but, the story is too short. You can complete it in less than 4 hours following just the messages.
This !!!
With the implemented "you'll get an auto-beacon for everywhat" the devs shorten the story extremely and destroying much of the exploring character of the game.
E.g.: You get a beacon for the thermal plant inside the Lava Castle. Everyone will go straight to it instead of exploring and fear the great designed biome.
Absolute immersion killer in my opinion and to much help for the player. Same for the research facility.
Also one part of the endgame its not really good. Why we can use the fabricator for "a very important recipe" instead to use the aquarium to produce it?
Also a great immersion killer for the otherwise fantastic sequence.
Greets After_Midnight
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I had a brief discussion with a dev on the Steam forums and he as much as said that after the Sunbeam event they want to just give hints and pointers like "somwhere a kilometer down and to the southwest", that sort of thing. I seriously doubt there will ever be actual beacons to the deep precursor story facilities, unless the player puts them there themselves.
I love this game but, the story is too short. You can complete it in less than 4 hours following just the messages.
This !!!
With the implemented "you'll get an auto-beacon for everywhat" the devs shorten the story extremely and destroying much of the exploring character of the game.
E.g.: You get a beacon for the thermal plant inside the Lava Castle. Everyone will go straight to it instead of exploring and fear the great designed biome.
Absolute immersion killer in my opinion and to much help for the player. Same for the research facility.
Also one part of the endgame its not really good. Why we can use the fabricator for "a very important recipe" instead to use the aquarium to produce it?
Also a great immersion killer for the otherwise fantastic sequence.
Greets After_Midnight
I seriously doubt there will ever be actual beacons to the deep precursor story facilities, unless the player puts them there themselves.
You... You know there already are right? For literally EVERY deep facility. The data you find in each one gives you a ping for the next one's EXACT LOCATION. The way you worded this implies there aren't and never were. Surely you must have meant after 1.0, right?
Comments
The problem right now as I see it is that the disparity between these is too great. Doing even basic tasks takes inordinate amounts of time in #1 with how short the days and nights are, and the player is constantly having to consume food/drink to avoid dying to the point that it become a tedious nuisance.
I'm not sure exactly what the ideal timescale for #1 would be, but IMHO it should be half as fast as it is now, maybe even slower. A proper sleep system would also subtlety encourage players to use beds to pass time so they're not stuck with excessively long nights (or days for players who prefer to explore at night).
Back to the topic that started the timescale discussion, I agree that the Cyclops Flank Speed and Silent Running modes still don't feel quite right. The concept of flank speed causing overheating and eventually damage is a solid concept, but 20s of flank speed really isn't long enough given how it's not much faster than ahead standard. Either the flank speed needs to be greatly increased so that it's a short, intense burst of speed, or the duration needs to be significantly increased, or even a bit of both.
Silent running is just silly how it works. The new implementation is basically a cloaking device, but silent running is a real-life submarine concept of driving slowly and shutting off unnecessary systems to minimize noise. Either the feature needs to be renamed and made into a separate upgrade with high energy usage (we already have an energy shield for the sub, a cloaking device would be believable in the game world) or Silent Running needs to be reverted to what I perceived as the intended behavior of the previous implementation where it would drastically reduce aggro/detection range, but require the use of decoys and shields to escape once detected instead of magically dropping aggro once activated.
But I would like you to consider the following:
- Proper planning is part of the game, I didn't say it had to be HARDCORE LIMIT like "20 minutes top".
- It is similar to running out of power.
- Can lead to many buff.
- I suspect the devs WANT you to loose a Cyclop eventually (and bail out in another vehicle), so you can see it explode and then loot it.
Also, I made a thread explaining what you would gain from it (sorry it take long to get to it).
Everybody is already bothered by how little O² the diving-tank carry, if you make (even just) the Seamoth a bigger pool, you can have the best of two worlds.
You can even finally have a big difference between the "light & fast tank" and the "high capacity" one.
Did I mention you could use the "Floaters" to refloat an empty subs in most part of the game?
I think part of the problem with the Hunger and Thirst meters is, well, to be frank? They don't add anything because the resources are almost never scarce. Like, from the start, there's fish EVERYWHERE. You get plants later, thus giving you a source of food. But no matter WHERE you go, you can find fish easily. Transport them back to a fabricator, eat them, or find some salt and cure them to take them with you.
There's never much MANAGEMENT involved, because of the aforementioned abundance. You're never in any real danger of dying of hunger or thirst unless you forget, because say you're having too much fun exploring, and then realize you need to trudge back to your base. Or, if you're far enough, hop on your Cyclops and prep the food in your Cyclop's fabricator.
(Can you still put a general fabricator in your Cyclops? I was under the impression that the Silent Running Cyclops fabricator was only for Cyclops Upgrades)
It is a kind of tedious background task. And part of the game progression is setting up sources of water and food to minimize the tedium.
However, the shear fun of swimming through the water after fish and seeing the world in day and especially night is one of the things that really made me love Subnautica.
And satisfying thirst and hunger by locating sources of safe water and food is a key element of survival. It would be odd not to include them in the game.
Perhaps if the rates of thirst and hunger could be reduced?
Recent bug with power management in experimental made me to realize that it is not just Cyclops being tedious and useless. At this point this is getting harder to be called exploration game, rather typical action without guns. It's literally resource management game, except the problem is that resource management is the weakest part of the game. There is no easy way to sort and search lockers and storage.
1. a possibility to create groups/categories of beacons. So i can simply enable/disable all wreck beacons as example. Or can group all Precursor locations beacons... etc. etc.
2. the possibility to directly rename beacons in the ping manager.
+1
also, if bases would get their own signal (or maybe simply the radio at the base), then I don't need an extra beacon floating near a base or build a scanner room as a signal landmark.
Which is the next thing:
The scanner room shouldn't include 2 cams by default as you can build them and not much of them need replacement. And if you build a scanner room in the air on top of an island, the cams are a bit nonsense there if they can't fly ...
1. charging prawn
2. having a fabricator on stand by
3. a place to store stuff
4. a place to generate food
I do agree its a bit fragile and could use more storage space and mods space but it isnt really bad its a home away from home and its perfect for going on long mining trips with the Prawn. Also it can go much deeper than the Moth.
I mean... I don't know. I don't feel like they're really taking into account the rate of day and night when considering speed setting for cyclops, and what would be realistically achievable in the games day. More likely than not it's just them trying to figure out what feels good and is still balanced.
On the topic of day and night being short - it is really weird, but It's never really bothered me I suppose? Mostly because the only difference between day and nighttime in game is light level. I've never had a reason to fear the night in this game. In other games all the bad guys come out at night, whether it be zombies spawning or getting faster or different mobs spawning. But in subnautica? Nothing changes. No special enemies come out at night. I'm not sure they should either. This game is about fearing what lurks in the darkest depths of the ocean. Not night-time like almost all other survival games. And I like that. It's different. Besides, if it was significantly longer I still wouldn't be afraid of it because it doesn't make a difference. It would just be annoying for me if night was longer.
Can my base not break instantly when I accidentally hit it with my knife? It's just dumb and unrealistic that a single slash would do the damage that it does.
Are.. are they going to add more things for the data boxes to give us? I don't know, it felt like a cool thing until I realized how many duplicates there are of each one. More often than not you just end up getting nothing from a box you found, which feels really crap honestly. I've also seen players think they're getting something from the duplicates but not understanding where it's going, when in actuality they are actually getting nothing. Maybe if you find duplicate data boxes it could give you a couple bits of titanium (or something more creative hopefully?) just so people know that it was a duplicate, and it'll feel marginally less crap when you get nothing, AGAIN, from one of these supposedly valuable data boxes.
There's a trello card to make data boxes containing prints you've already found open, so disappointment from a duplicate box should no longer happen in the furue. I do hope there'll be more recipes eventually, though.
I don't think a new player would beat it 4 hours in. They'd have to be pretty fearless and confident in what and how to do things. But people who have played through the game a multitude of times will be able to rush through to those key story locations and bypass progression gates swiftly and efficiently.
And I'm not sure at the end of the day that's a story-line issue. Feels like a replay-ability issue to me.
I've not seen many people voice this complaint, so it may be just me, but I worry a lot about what will happen when the game gets it's 1.0 release and the story-line is finished. There isn't really any challenge in surviving, and once you've explored all the world they built has to offer I mean... what else is there to do? I love the game, but I find myself only really coming back to experience the progression of the story. I can't help but feel it just won't get played and collect digital dust in the labyrinth of my steam library. And I really don't want that to happen because the game I love. one that has potential to be much more, and do a lot more.
The story is great, don't get me wrong, but I almost wish there was a little less focus on it. At some point subnautica became less of a survival game or a sandbox game, but a story game with sandbox elements thrown in. and like I said, maybe it's just my personal preference but I thought it was a survival game when I bought it (and was pleasantly surprised with an unexpected story), and kind of still want something to feed that desire. I want to be able to sit down and do more complex things instead of simply finishing the story, and then rarely, if ever, returning to the game because that's all it is: A story game (A Great one at that, but still).
The actual survival-sandbox elements of the game are actually kind of lacking. If the story wasn't there, the only things you could do would be to build bases. Like, that's actually it. Yeah you can explore but we need incentive to. There are some areas of the game (The Bulb zone in particular comes to find, every ) that you don't ever really have a significant reason to go to besides to search for wrecks which probably just have containers with batteries and blueprints you already have or don't want. Maybe we just aren't full up on content yet but I still feel it's important to voice this. Maybe the devs and other players have a different vision of the game than I do, but I truly hope that the aspect of replay-ability doesn't get lost in a tunnel-visioned drive to finish the story-line so they can fully release subnautica.
I guess the main point here is I want to be able to do something other than the story line once I've completed it.
on a completely unrelated note: Did anybody else think they needed to create 5 of the item at the end to do that endgame thing? (trying to avoid spoilers, but I just mean the absolute last item you build to progress the storyline in the non-experimental version) Because there were 5 things... So I made 5 of the item because logic. Only to realize I only needed one. I realized that as a possibility the second I made the fifth one, but was a bit too late as you can imagine.
I hope besides getting the game as is right for release, UWE is thinking about how to use what they have beyond this. It's a very interesting game that could easily use a bigger sandbox; the current map isn't that big. Going for more might be difficult without a lot of changes.
I know I've completed the game in less than 30 hours. and that was with absolutely no rush. Just me dawdling and scanning chairs, building my base slowly, making sure the wall lockers are symmetrical for darn sake. Even with me going into new areas and me figuring out how to get past the sea dragon for lords sake. If I were to play quicker and try to just get to the end, I can't imagine the game would take me more than 10 hours, maximum. I guess I'm thinking more of a speedrun than anything, but going from mission to mission given right away, you'd still get done with the game content pretty quick if you knew where to go and what to do there.
And with all the talk of it, I might actually attempt a mediocre speed run. I suppose it would breathe some more life into the game for me in the meantime. Need to think about how I'd go about it though.
I expected more survival in Subnautica (at least in the "keep your base working" domain, only way to flood your seabase is to do it yourself)
But I also think it can be improved by a few balance change and making use of what is already in the game, not that I would mind new biomes, new dingy-boat, sunk submarine to bring to the surface and other.
Few game can boast of having such a literal "sandbox" available, it would be sad to have a piano and only play a single tune.
Of course, with the size of the beasties, you're going to need a bigger boat.
and as for curiosity for speedruns sake, In an earlier version somebody made a PRAWN in under 2 hours in a new game. Taking that knowledge, you could actually speedrun the game in probably 3-4 hours, give or take a bit. But not many people have started to do speedruns and such since the game is unfinished after all.
Can't figure out who they are.
in my head:
LEFT
Hackett with curly hair
RIGHT
Lin - manuel - miranda after getting beat up.
WHAT!!!
These characters my dear fellow are Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega, on their way to "teach some punks a bit of English"...
Or in other words, go look up Pulp Fiction and the "say what again" scene right naw. Better yet, go watch the movie
Also I just realized... I've gone done posted this in the wrong thread xD
https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/152198/voice-of-the-deep-shouldnt-speak-english#latest
No no, see the genius of my idea: the dingy boat would allow you to navigate INSIDE the beasties!
(and then Sam Starfall was put in a white room with soft wall, pretending to be a dingy boat)
You CAN use Ion power cells once you unlock that blueprint. People seem to forget this. They hold 5x as much power as regular power cells (Regular => 200 each, Ion =>1000 each)
The Cyclops isn't suppose to be super strong power-wise until you get these. But once you do, it'll probably have MORE than enough to sustain the power needs of the upgrades.
And about using it as a base:
I don't like investing that much into it with it being destructable. if I put lockers in it and filled them with resources, build a fabricator and chargers and all that... and then lose it? That would feel terrible, and just not worth the risk. Losing not only the resources used to build it, but lockers full of supplies from metal, foods... I guess that's the price you pay for having a mobile base but eh... with the map being the small size it is, like i said before it's just not necessary.
Hmm. I was gonna point out that if you can stand next to your land-bound Scanner Room, you can pick up the drones in your inventory and drop them in the water. Of course, you have to go into the scanner room to use them... and you can't recharge them until you pick them back up and put them in their cradles. so, yeah. Limited utility, but not NO utility.
With the implemented "you'll get an auto-beacon for everywhat" the devs shorten the story extremely and destroying much of the exploring character of the game.
E.g.: You get a beacon for the thermal plant inside the Lava Castle. Everyone will go straight to it instead of exploring and fear the great designed biome.
Absolute immersion killer in my opinion and to much help for the player. Same for the research facility.
Also one part of the endgame its not really good. Why we can use the fabricator for "a very important recipe" instead to use the aquarium to produce it?
Also a great immersion killer for the otherwise fantastic sequence.
Greets After_Midnight
(The original concept of Subnautica was to survive and build a Colony for other survivors, but the Devs dropped that, I think; now, instead we have Precursors / Sea Emperor / Leave planet. Also... did anyone realize that the (very) early builds of Subnautica had weather, or a weather effect?!
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I had a brief discussion with a dev on the Steam forums and he as much as said that after the Sunbeam event they want to just give hints and pointers like "somwhere a kilometer down and to the southwest", that sort of thing. I seriously doubt there will ever be actual beacons to the deep precursor story facilities, unless the player puts them there themselves.
You... You know there already are right? For literally EVERY deep facility. The data you find in each one gives you a ping for the next one's EXACT LOCATION. The way you worded this implies there aren't and never were. Surely you must have meant after 1.0, right?
The way it is now, it's annoying as Hell to have to scroll through the whole thing to find one particular blueprint.
I liked it better when it was set up with tabs at the top.
I like all the new Icons, I just hate the way it's set up now.