Engagement
JimmyLander
Bulgaria Join Date: 2016-06-15 Member: 218623Members
Bulgaria Join Date: 2016-06-15 Member: 218623Members
I feel like the game would greatly benefit from making enemies more attention grabbing (similar to the Reaper or Crabsquid). To elaborate - something that will make you focus on those enemies. In the case of the Reaper its the submarine snatch and the Crabsquid has the EMP.
It’d be cool if enemies like stalkers had a bunch of animations or effects on the player when they bite them rather than simply damaging them. For example, when the player gets bitten, the camera would turn towards the shark (and optionally from there play a “kite”/“juke” animation where the player backs off as the shark performs a few “miss” strikes at them, effectively showing off some jaw action). Or the player could be bitten on the leg and dragged by the shark, in a fashion similar to the reaper dragging the submarine, where the shark would eventually lett go or utilize a mechanic similar to the bleeder where the player has to fight back to escape. This will make most sharks both more interesting as ai and more impactful on gameplay experience.
The Crabsnake seems to be half way there, in the sense that it does grab you, but that’s just it. It could have for example pushed the player a few meters away on disattachment in order to add a little randomness to the encounter.
Of course, I don’t mean for this to make enemies overly annoying, but maybe those engagement events could only trigger ocassionally to just boost realism and variety. Maybe bites from sharks could simply make the player turn quickly towards the attacker(simulating how in real life you don’t ignore getting bit by a shark). I just think having enemies simply deal damage via biting is too “bare bones” of a way to approach designing hostile fauna.
I realize this is an unnecessary thing I am suggesting, but I still think it would be fun to have enemies force you to engage with them from time to time or violently/loudly interrupt your resource run by disorienting you via dragging you by the leg or pushing you away from your initial path.
I’d like to hear different opinions on this. Do you think it’d be a good fit for the game or is there anything you’d change about it?
It’d be cool if enemies like stalkers had a bunch of animations or effects on the player when they bite them rather than simply damaging them. For example, when the player gets bitten, the camera would turn towards the shark (and optionally from there play a “kite”/“juke” animation where the player backs off as the shark performs a few “miss” strikes at them, effectively showing off some jaw action). Or the player could be bitten on the leg and dragged by the shark, in a fashion similar to the reaper dragging the submarine, where the shark would eventually lett go or utilize a mechanic similar to the bleeder where the player has to fight back to escape. This will make most sharks both more interesting as ai and more impactful on gameplay experience.
The Crabsnake seems to be half way there, in the sense that it does grab you, but that’s just it. It could have for example pushed the player a few meters away on disattachment in order to add a little randomness to the encounter.
Of course, I don’t mean for this to make enemies overly annoying, but maybe those engagement events could only trigger ocassionally to just boost realism and variety. Maybe bites from sharks could simply make the player turn quickly towards the attacker(simulating how in real life you don’t ignore getting bit by a shark). I just think having enemies simply deal damage via biting is too “bare bones” of a way to approach designing hostile fauna.
I realize this is an unnecessary thing I am suggesting, but I still think it would be fun to have enemies force you to engage with them from time to time or violently/loudly interrupt your resource run by disorienting you via dragging you by the leg or pushing you away from your initial path.
I’d like to hear different opinions on this. Do you think it’d be a good fit for the game or is there anything you’d change about it?
Comments
I would also like to add some damage to the oxygen supply (or increased consumption for a while), since diving time is related to how relaxed someone is.
I love it.
Either a mod of this or a full blown update would be amazing. It would make the world feel more alive, and each creature would feel less like a copy-paste of each-other.
Yeah, the stalker, sand shark and bone shark look differently but gameplay wise they’re pretty much the same thing, only being different in terms of statistics (like the bone shark for example would chase you longer than the stalker and will deal more damage). I do appreciate all the animations and sound design, but it bums me that their entire ai functions the exact same way - swim to player, bite, go on cooldown.
I agree, it would be nice to have a “panic” mechanic or something similar where once you get bitten you’d start to lose oxygen faster for a short duration before returning to normal or until you repell the attcker/swim away. Or something as simple as losing a few more bubbles during the bite itself.
I think such changes will make common enemies more notable, rather than a generic obstacle.
I'd like to some some engagment between creatures and player-built structures. Leviathan architectural critics, of course, and maybe some swarming behaviour by territorial cave crawlers. This all implies perimeter defence components - maybe in the expansion!
Maybe have Leviathans try to bite of chuncks of the base (notably glass ones so the player could see it happening) similar to how the megalodon in the recent movie “The Meg” bites the glass coridor (you can see that exact scene in the trailer). And possibly by scanning the Leviathan you’d gain a blueprint to a repulsion device you can construct at your base that would emit sound waves that effectively keep the Leviathan away. (The device would drain energy and will stop working if base runs out of power, meaning you’d need to have unlocked some sort of reactor or have a massive amount of resources to build enough solar pannels at that point). This will make building bases in dangerous areas only possible in mid/late game scenarios.