Hard Mode and subsequent playthroughs
nuker1
Join Date: 2020-03-17 Member: 258842Members
Join Date: 2020-03-17 Member: 258842Members
The first time I played Subnautica I was like most players -- disorientated, a bit confused, a little worried. I swam around a bit, got the hang of that. Then started getting close to various critters and plants and noticed some of them were useful. Started using the fabricator to slowly make the basic stuff etc.
A lot of the difficulty in both games comes from not knowing something. Where do I get magnetite, rubies, diamonds? Like everyone I had no idea but that was fine. One of the main points of the game is to explore. So you do explore and eventually run into some of those things. You get nudged in the right direction by your PDA or even the presence of those resources you've been looking for. "Oh look! There's nickel!" is a good sign you're headed in the right direction.
All of that is fine and great, but a second run through the game loses all of that. I remember where most of the fragments, resources, and important points in the game are. I can't simply forget that.
That's why a hard mode should be in the game. Maybe name it something different to avoid confusing it with hardcore mode. Anyways, hard mode would be a checkbox at the beginning of the game and it would add another layer beyond the creative/normal/survival/hardcore difficulties. It could do several things, but two things it should do are increasing the number of fragments needed for a new blueprint and increase the amount of resources per blueprint.
Both of these can really push the player to explore during subsequent playthroughs. As it stands now, in Subnautica vanilla, there's no reason to explore the mountains or dunes biome. These two changes maybe don't force the player to explore those biomes -- they're still avoidable, but it can make more sense to go there instead of somewhere else. This is important because these are the most dangerous biomes as far as leviathans are concerned.
Of course, you could add other things to "hard mode" as well. Take more damage from critters, add a real nitrogen mode, disable regeneration, add injured limbs, require sleep to save your game, take damage slowly from radiation even with the radiation suit ... there's tons of stuff you could do.
But my two suggestions I think would be essential for subsequent playthroughs simply because they extend the duration of a game. I've never watched a speed run of the game, but I'd imagine you could probably beat the game in less than an hour simply because you have all the information. I don't find speedrunning enjoyable, but I do think that a 30-40 hour first run getting reduced to 5-10 hours is a good sign that this information gap should be "patched". And, as I said before, it makes you really explore the map to the point where you'll almost certainly visit places in much greater detail than you did the first time.
Lastly, yes, I know there are mods that do this and I use them and they are REALLY good ideas. They're such good ideas that they should be in the official versions of the game. I've noticed that some of the smaller mods that are really good ideas have been put into Subnautica BZ or even patched into Subnautica vanilla. I think some of the great bigger ideas should get included as well.
What do you think? Is this a good way to spend time on the dev side? Are there other ideas, big and small, that could make subsequent playthroughs more interesting/longer?
A lot of the difficulty in both games comes from not knowing something. Where do I get magnetite, rubies, diamonds? Like everyone I had no idea but that was fine. One of the main points of the game is to explore. So you do explore and eventually run into some of those things. You get nudged in the right direction by your PDA or even the presence of those resources you've been looking for. "Oh look! There's nickel!" is a good sign you're headed in the right direction.
All of that is fine and great, but a second run through the game loses all of that. I remember where most of the fragments, resources, and important points in the game are. I can't simply forget that.
That's why a hard mode should be in the game. Maybe name it something different to avoid confusing it with hardcore mode. Anyways, hard mode would be a checkbox at the beginning of the game and it would add another layer beyond the creative/normal/survival/hardcore difficulties. It could do several things, but two things it should do are increasing the number of fragments needed for a new blueprint and increase the amount of resources per blueprint.
Both of these can really push the player to explore during subsequent playthroughs. As it stands now, in Subnautica vanilla, there's no reason to explore the mountains or dunes biome. These two changes maybe don't force the player to explore those biomes -- they're still avoidable, but it can make more sense to go there instead of somewhere else. This is important because these are the most dangerous biomes as far as leviathans are concerned.
Of course, you could add other things to "hard mode" as well. Take more damage from critters, add a real nitrogen mode, disable regeneration, add injured limbs, require sleep to save your game, take damage slowly from radiation even with the radiation suit ... there's tons of stuff you could do.
But my two suggestions I think would be essential for subsequent playthroughs simply because they extend the duration of a game. I've never watched a speed run of the game, but I'd imagine you could probably beat the game in less than an hour simply because you have all the information. I don't find speedrunning enjoyable, but I do think that a 30-40 hour first run getting reduced to 5-10 hours is a good sign that this information gap should be "patched". And, as I said before, it makes you really explore the map to the point where you'll almost certainly visit places in much greater detail than you did the first time.
Lastly, yes, I know there are mods that do this and I use them and they are REALLY good ideas. They're such good ideas that they should be in the official versions of the game. I've noticed that some of the smaller mods that are really good ideas have been put into Subnautica BZ or even patched into Subnautica vanilla. I think some of the great bigger ideas should get included as well.
What do you think? Is this a good way to spend time on the dev side? Are there other ideas, big and small, that could make subsequent playthroughs more interesting/longer?