PSG's Subnautica Quality of Life Megathread
Patrick Swayze's Ghost
Join Date: 2010-07-24 Member: 72742Members
Join Date: 2010-07-24 Member: 72742Members
Kind of my catch phrase for Subnautica has been that it's a 9/10 game trapped inside a 5/10 game. There are innumerable frustrating, badly designed, badly implemented, or badly conceived things about the game. There are technical challenges like pop in and clipping issues, but these don't ruin enjoyment of the game, they just make the scenery a little less sweet. In this ongoing thread, I will suggest QoL changes that would make the game better. Make your suggestions too and I will integrate the best ones.
====INVENTORY, CONTAINERS, AND PDA=====
-Hovering over items currently causes the "tooltip" information to appear over the mouse cursor, obstructing other items in view. Tooltip information should be moved to a vacant portion of the screen, like the bottom or top of the PDA. The PDA would probably have to be slightly reconfigured for this, but it needs a lot of work anyway.
-You cannot exchange items between two full containers. A button needs to be added in the PDA to select an item and then move it around, reconfiguring the inventory around it. This button could be used to move items to and from containers, even when full. This would also be used to add items to the hotbar (see below)
-When playing with a controller, you cannot assign items to quickbar slots manually. You just add items to your quickbar and the last item gets pushed out. This leads to constant pointless juggling of quickbar items. After an item gets pushed out, if you still need it, you then have to readd it, potentially pushing out the next item. This compounds several previously mentioned issues. When you're readding items like this, you might be in danger, you have no backgrounds to help you find your tools and as you move over them the tooltip text overlaps the adjacent items, making them difficult to make out. Using the "item drag" control that I detailed above, you would be able to manually move items into quickbar slots instead.
-Item background colors are not used effectively. Though a rare few items have them, almost no items do. Background colors should be used to separate items into basic groups: Materials, tools, eggs/fish, parts, and so forth.
-Increase quickbar slots to 8. There is absolutely no reason not to do this. Standing in the way of ease of control and pointlessly adding frustration is bad game design, period.
-Items cannot be dropped on ground inside. Although this is an innately technical shortcoming, its effect on QoL combined with the other inventory problems is disasterous.
-All containers, including the player's inventory, are too small. Move current container sizes to hardcore difficulty setting and increase significantly for the base game.
-Helmet with a light should be available as an option with no rebreather.
=====BASE BUILDING=====
Bases should double as beacons. It's head-scratching to have to construct a separate beacon outside after I just made a powered habitat out of thin air.
=====CONTROLS=====
As I am playing with a controller, most issues here will be controller-centric.
-When using the habitat builder, you use RT to bring up its menu, A to select an object, and then hold A again to build. If you press RT again, the object outline disappears and you're back to square one. Pressing down on the D-Pad deconstructs objects. This is just all wrong and violates a lot of things you try not to do with game controls. You want to use the same button to "proceed" and the same button to "back out" as much as possible. When using the builder, RT should open the menu, then RT should select the plan you want. RT should then build the plan. At any point, pressing B goes backwards one step, and B also disassembles objects. Pressing down on the controller now always puts away your equipped item. You almost never use this control-- Why is a frequently used control on Down and a rarely used control on B?
More to come in the near future and will be recording things like this on a notepad as I play in the future...
====INVENTORY, CONTAINERS, AND PDA=====
-Hovering over items currently causes the "tooltip" information to appear over the mouse cursor, obstructing other items in view. Tooltip information should be moved to a vacant portion of the screen, like the bottom or top of the PDA. The PDA would probably have to be slightly reconfigured for this, but it needs a lot of work anyway.
-You cannot exchange items between two full containers. A button needs to be added in the PDA to select an item and then move it around, reconfiguring the inventory around it. This button could be used to move items to and from containers, even when full. This would also be used to add items to the hotbar (see below)
-When playing with a controller, you cannot assign items to quickbar slots manually. You just add items to your quickbar and the last item gets pushed out. This leads to constant pointless juggling of quickbar items. After an item gets pushed out, if you still need it, you then have to readd it, potentially pushing out the next item. This compounds several previously mentioned issues. When you're readding items like this, you might be in danger, you have no backgrounds to help you find your tools and as you move over them the tooltip text overlaps the adjacent items, making them difficult to make out. Using the "item drag" control that I detailed above, you would be able to manually move items into quickbar slots instead.
-Item background colors are not used effectively. Though a rare few items have them, almost no items do. Background colors should be used to separate items into basic groups: Materials, tools, eggs/fish, parts, and so forth.
-Increase quickbar slots to 8. There is absolutely no reason not to do this. Standing in the way of ease of control and pointlessly adding frustration is bad game design, period.
-Items cannot be dropped on ground inside. Although this is an innately technical shortcoming, its effect on QoL combined with the other inventory problems is disasterous.
-All containers, including the player's inventory, are too small. Move current container sizes to hardcore difficulty setting and increase significantly for the base game.
-Helmet with a light should be available as an option with no rebreather.
=====BASE BUILDING=====
Bases should double as beacons. It's head-scratching to have to construct a separate beacon outside after I just made a powered habitat out of thin air.
=====CONTROLS=====
As I am playing with a controller, most issues here will be controller-centric.
-When using the habitat builder, you use RT to bring up its menu, A to select an object, and then hold A again to build. If you press RT again, the object outline disappears and you're back to square one. Pressing down on the D-Pad deconstructs objects. This is just all wrong and violates a lot of things you try not to do with game controls. You want to use the same button to "proceed" and the same button to "back out" as much as possible. When using the builder, RT should open the menu, then RT should select the plan you want. RT should then build the plan. At any point, pressing B goes backwards one step, and B also disassembles objects. Pressing down on the controller now always puts away your equipped item. You almost never use this control-- Why is a frequently used control on Down and a rarely used control on B?
More to come in the near future and will be recording things like this on a notepad as I play in the future...
Comments
The funnier thing is, after watching my own Let's Play, seeing me encounter all kinds of QOL interface and inventory annoyances. Makes this thread even more relevant, for me at least
Well done!
I'd add a few more:
Also, either fix or remove the 30 seconds Oxygen indicator so it's either consistent or not giving you that feeling you can rely on it, having it randomly breaking, wtf is that even
And definitely have it adjust to Oxygen efficiency at deeper depths... DON'T YOU DARE tell me I still have 30 seconds left, when in fact I have quite a bit less than 30 seconds left. First time diving that deep, catching me completely off guard by telling me THE LIES OF 30 SECONDS!
LIES!!!
OK?
OK...!
I agree that more quickslots would be nice.
I thought Fragments, Databoxes and Wrecks were already serviced by the scanner room?
On the PC you can exchange items in full containers by drag and dropping.
The helmet with a light would seem to just have extremely limited applications, iirc you can still pick things up with a glowstick in hand and you def can with the flashlight. If you are deep enough that you need light constantly then you probably need the rebreather.
True QoL improvements do nothing to make the game easier or simpler other then manage how you interact with the game.
Lets pick the lists apart.
* Tooltip hover. I disagree about the suggestion but it counts as a QoL suggestion. I just dont mind the tooltip giving me info over the thing I hover on.
* Exchange items between 2 full containers is a QoL suggestion also. No harm here.
* Controller quick bar, sure.. QoL.
* Item backgrounds, again fine. Thats QoL.
* Increase quickbar.. depends on your view. But I would put it down as QoL also as the game pace allows for swapping items with the PDA anyway.
* Dropping items on ground.. Technical issues asside, sure.. We can drop stuff in water so I see no real reason why this isnt QoL.
* Base icons I can sort of see as a QoL thing. Beacons are cheap and everything else makes beacons so yeh.
* More inventory space: This is NOT QoL. This is a difficulty setting. The whole point of exploration and survival is that stuff is finite including inventory space. And I would argue SN is already plenty forgiving, given that the player is lugging huge titanium slabs around. Changing this will potentially have very big implications. No more getting a cyclops to haul stuff or making multiple trips for resources. Its a difficulty setting, and one making the game very easy with it.
* Helmet with a light is not a QoL thing either. The game has specific options for creating light sources. You can argue it needs another such item, but it does not count as QoL as it strongly affects the balance and playstyle of the game.
* Better categories on Blueprints. Yup, counts as QoL. you have them, its just looking them up. YOU would order your blueprints right?
* Vanity items are not QoL, damnit Kouji. /slap :P
* Better beacon management? Sure, working with information provided in a more optimum way is QoL.
* Im a bit confused about drag and drop as clicking the battery is faster than dragging. But sure, interface usage is usually QoL.
* Search options in PDA and autoselecting the build tool all sound fine for QoL.
The air thing is a bug Kouji, and you know damn well that doesnt count as QoL. :P
About the Drag and Drop, it's inconsistent as in some case you can do this and in some cases like recharging your Seaglide, you can't and have to step outside the interface into some kind of pseudo-interface, using the first person model and R... Which is just strange
Oh, I was counting a couch as a vanity item.. Perhaps poor wording on my part.
It does not provide any game mechanic benefit hence vanity.
A crouch underwater makes absolute 0 sense. As swimming flat makes you even smaller.
I'm playing it both on the PC and on the Xbox and it's two different games. On the PC, as soon as I get fins I'm off to the races. Even the first few days, I spend at least half the time exploring.
On the Xbox it is soooooo hard to catch peepers, and nothing else that I know of will really substitute for them as a subsistence food. I had to catch peepers for a solid week of game time, with the occasional bladderfish - even those are not a walk in the park to catch, but at least they're not excruciatingly difficult like the peepers. Eventually I figured out their behavior well enough that catching a peeper I was tracking became more of a 10% proposition instead of a 1% proposition... Now I can spend half a day exploring every two or three days, but I had to be really, really persistent to get this far. My wife was not. She gave it a good, game go but after an hour of real time to catch 2 peepers, she gave up.
Too bad, because this is the perfect game for the fancy xbox and big new flat screen we got for Christmas. So beautiful on the Xbox ... but verging on unplayable.
I'm going to cross-post this in the Xbox forum, because it seems appropriate in both places and I think it's an important point. Mods, if you don't like cross-posting, feel free to delete one of them, but please get the word to the developers: this is crucial for Xbox sales: not sure about other controller gamers.
Use LTrigger, people.
On my outdated PC, lag can sometimes make it really hard to catch peepers. Use terrain to help, or you can time their jump in the air and get them when they fall back in the water.
Reginald fish
Fish generally will make a beeline and then bank hard 90' up, down, left or right. Surefire time to grab em IF you chase.
Another place that needs fixing is the databank. After they added audio to some entries, navigation with a joystick became extra clumsy, borderline bugged.
I play on a pc with joysticks for over a year now. Never had any issues in catching fish. I understand how that can be frustrating to people not used to fps games, which does not seem to be your case. Console players usually have a hard time with aiming "properly" because almost every game has aim assist by default, which I always turn off if possible.
Implementing an aim assist wouldn't hurt. I stand against it, but I'm on the losing team.
I'm old school and to me precision is a must in most games.
I always suggest to those who have a hard time fishing to rush a grav trap.
I am badly out of shape and have no practice at this at all, and I can hold my breath longer than the air the very best oxygen tank in the game provides.
It you have an oxygen tank, the O2 needs to last WAY LONGER. Like, 45 minutes.
The trade-off should be this: You need an Oxygen Tank Charger to refill it, just like batteries and power cells. Surfacing or going inside shouldn’t recharge it. So you can still get screwed by running out of air, just in a different way.
narfblat - thanks for the info. I know that area, but have not investigated the fish much. I am usually too busy grabbing gold, silver and fragments in that area.
24 hours in Subnautica = 20 mins IRL, at least, according to the Sunbeam event. So, 72x time compression if my math is right. So 45 seconds = 54 minutes, no tank. You were saying?
Which means that the player and all the wildlife in Subnautica are all actually moving in slow motion compared to what we would perceive as normal, but plants are on high gear and grow from seed in just a few days, and the nuclear reactors are incredibly inefficient and burn through 4 rods in 16 days (20000 energy per rod, reactor generates 250 energy per second, reactor runs for 320 real life minutes which is 16 days of game time).
In other words, timescales in games often make zero real-life sense (which is a pet peeve of mine). I would have preferred to not have quite such a ridiculous disconnect between the movement/world interaction timescale (pretty much 1 to 1) and the survival needs and day/night cycle (the 72 to 1 as described above). Maybe 2 real-life hours for each day and improved sleep mechanics to skip to a desired time?
Would be nice to have a realism slider that went from "fun" (what we have now) to "realistic" (pretty much 1:1) and "ultra realistic" (hello, decompression stops & chambers).
I would also love to see the "Deploy Decoy" button moved, inside the cyclops HUD. Atm its simply to easy to hit it by mistake, when switching through cameras and handling silent running mode. Maybe made a seperate round icon, somewhere below the current buttons, to make it stand out more.
On the QoL end of things, I really wish it was possible to disable audio oxygen alerts -- at least on hardcore, which still advertises that they're disabled, even though we've been forced to listen to them for something like a year now.
Like: I know I'm low on O2! That's why I'm already heading back to the sub (or base, or surface)!
Stop nagging me, Betty!
lol, I'm not quite sure about "best" -- as you've noted, shes tends to get the time wrong if you're below 100m without a rebreather.
That certainly doesn't stop her from trying, though.
I hear you about the controller part, at first i played the game with a controller, but with no aim assist, you're really just making the game a lot harder for yourself. So i switched to mouse/keyboard, a world of difference.
The container sizes and quickbar are fine to start with. However once you get a mod station you should be able to mod ANY suit to add more storage, and quickbar slots. Similar situation for the Seamoth... it should have default storage like the Prawn, and adding a storage module should double the storage. Ditto for the light situation. You should be able to mod any headgear (well maybe except a baseball cap) to add light functionality, hotbar the helmet to activate/deactivate.
I also think all of the lights are too short range / drop off too quickly. This is especially noticeable in the Cyclops where I rarely use them. As an alternative, I'd just make the portable fast draining model drain at half the rate. Sonar also drains too quickly, I pulled it to free up module space.
But really at this point I'm thinking about avoiding the expansion entirely. Disappointed in them for recent actions. I'm a bit torn because Subnautica was a good game. Oh well... arrivederci.