Should they keep the Dive Reel?
Morph_Guy
Join Date: 2016-04-21 Member: 216034Members
Join Date: 2016-04-21 Member: 216034Members
Earlier in the discord chat, Cory(developer) asked if anyone was using the Dive Reel and said that they might just end up removing it due to how buggy it is.
What do you think about the possibility of the Dive Reel getting removed? Do you use it? Do you think it should be removed?
Comments
And, really, all the thing needs a little re-purposing. Currently, the PRAWN grappling arm requires two advanced wiring kits and titanium piece. But the actual rope/reel kind of just appears with it without any explanation.
Now, all it needs is to add the Dive Reel to its recipe, and the Dive Reel becomes necessary to complete the game.
The Dive Reel gets used again, and we get a more realistic PRAWN recipe. Win-win, wouldn't you think?
I'd say remove it, and make an easier-to-implement replacement item for complex cave-system navigation. Maybe a HUD-chip or something, that will trace your movements for an adjustable period of time.
So I vote remove. I'd be interested to see it updated and reimplemented post-V1.0 if for such is time, but as is I doubt many will miss it.
(BTW, I don't work on subnautica, I work on another UWE project, so that's what the yellow badge is for...)
Some of the physics is already there.
And the idea of a dive reel is great for deep cave exploring.
It just needs a few fixes, and I think it would be a great thing to keep in game.
The real problem is that it isn't useful with the current states of other mechanics. So little that I suspect (and now we know) the devs simply didn't had the time.
Even if it worked perfectly at keeping track of your path,
- there's nothing in the tortuous tunnels worth using it for (ideally a resources you regularly have to go back to, but not often enough to remember the place).
- all other places are recognizable enough that you won't need one after a few dive.
- when you need it the most you never have the oxygen autonomy to allow yourself to get lost, not until you carry several UHC tanks.
- at which point the seamoth give you infinite O² and FIT INSIDE MANY TUNNELS
I had brought up that problem when I suggested reworking infinite submarine O² into an EASIER more fulfilling gameplay
I feel like making narrow tunnel caves would actually be a good thing for the devs to do.
Too narrow for the Seamoth to fit into.
Many under sea cave openings are very small and easy to miss.
I feel that making a few of these that lead to alien structures would be a pretty good idea.
The alien structure would give the player a bigger reason to worry about the cave.
As if it were just ore in the cave, it's not worth looking in to.
And making the caves a little maze like would make the dive reel a lot more useful.
Pre-seamoth cave diving is one of the scariest aspects of the game. It is SO easy to get yourself turned around, and with the short early game oxygen time limit, you wind up pushing yourself to the time limit to try and explore wrecks or caves. So then you're like, "i really wish there were an item that I could use to find my way out of the cave in case I get turned around." And then you discover the dive reel, and you're like, "hooray, this is perfect". (And then you try it out and discover it's broken...)
Anyway, I think it's a great concept and a great way to feel progression in the early game. I also feel like there are a couple ways it could be made usable without being too crazy a coding task - for example, what if it is extended by placing posts on the cave wall? (I'm thinking of the tethers from Astroneer). That way collision between the rope and the wall only has to be checked once when the post is placed - the glitches in the current dive reel seem to happen because you can pull on the rope and move it.
That said, a dive reel is exactly the sort of thing you would want in the early game for cave exploration and is a logical piece of equipment to have, so it's disappointing to see it actually go.
But the thing is, with this suggestion, the dive reel doesn't actually get used. Yeah, they force players to 'use' it as a part in a recipe, but It won't be used AS A DIVE REEL.
If the best way to have people build the dive reel is forcing it in as an ingredient, as opposed to making the item itself (the dive reel's) functionally useful (and less buggy), then it just shouldn't be in the game. Add the 5 creep vine sample to the recipe for the grapple arm, but not the dive reel.
And for my overall opinion, the thing just isn't that useful and wouldn't be if it did work. Getting in and out of the shallows caves frankly isn't that hard. The caves aren't that deep, and the paths are fairly linear. If you're dying in one of them it's more often than not because you stayed too long and overextended as opposed to getting lost on the way out. And dying in those places teaches you an important lesson anyways. Giving yourself enough time to get out of unknown territory - like these shallows caves - is something any subnautica player has to learn.
Not to mention the thing becomes ENTIRELY obsolete once you get the sea moth, which doesn't take that long even for newer players. The item's usefulness would be minimal, and restricted to your first few hours of gameplay.
If a Subnautica world had many small caves which the seamoth couldn't fit in, and whose paths were twisting and confusing - as opposed to the fairly linear and shallow small caves that exist in the game - the dive reel would be great to have. But That's just not the case. Sorry Dive reel. It feels like something that would be nice for a modder to pick up and fix, but I'd prefer the developers to not spend their limited time and resources making a fairly useless item slightly less so.
No loss as far as I'm concerned.
< shrug >
being without a map in a world so large and with so few distinct landmarks is very intimidating and I can see a lot of newer players giving up just because they can't navigate. Beacons are expensive, copper is pretty rare in the early game from what I've seen. Creepvine is plentiful and easy to collect, if maybe hard to transport given it's 2x2 size, but it makes Dive Reels extremely easy to build compared to Beacons.
I think the bottom line is this: If the Dive Reel worked as intended people would use it and it would help a lot in small enclosed areas where everything looks the same, but it currently doesn't work as intended and is mostly useless. If you can get it working in a reasonable amount of time I believe it would be worth it, but if it's going to be a huge hassle then cut it.
It's not even that expensive to build so if it worked properly I would probably even make a bunch of them and then leave them anchored in areas I frequent so I could follow a path without having to set it up each time.
If you can get it working I'd suggest changing the color of the string to something vibrant and/or make it glow in the dark though, or even allow the player to change the string's color before being deployed. The string that's on the thing now is kinda dull and hard to follow quickly, and if we could recolor the string we could use them to mark out different areas and help keep us oriented since there's no map
dive reels in real life you can follow by touch, in the game we need to follow them by eye so we need to be able to see it easily
Jelly Shroom Caves? Easy.
Safe Shallows caves? No worries.
Caves in the Mountains, the Kelp Forest, and the Koosh Zone? Easy.
Just look for distinctive landmarks and follow them back.
1.) I don't get it that the devs don't use gamplay statistics on the use of the players items. I always thought they already had their statistics and could see what item is used and what not. How else could they see if a certain item is never used at all and when to cut it? Or find out that most players like a certain item and then spend more development on creating more things like it.
2.) Limited air/O2 use quickly got a negative impact on the game and the devs never tried to limit vehicle air. Which never made sense since it would add into the concept of vehicles needing to dock at motherships like the Cyclops or an underwater habitat base the player had to build. It would not even be too stressful, as only a few strategic base placements in the deep would be enough for the entire game map.
My own experiences with the dive reel were always negative: unusable when you would need it (in tight cave or wreck labyrinths) and only usable when you don't need it (in not so tight and more straight tunnels). With unlimited vehicle air it got absolutely useless.
Even if the devs could get it to work now, the unlimted vehicle air and now big UHC air tank would never allow it to be of much use then. So it would be best to cut it out of the game.
On the other side the dive reel could still be reprogrammed to attach to living predators (if it doesn't already as I dropped using the dive reel long ago) and thus allow players to get a free ride if they dare to dance with the predators. So more work like the Prawn grappling hook, but before you get the Prawn and just for the diver.