Survival mode ?
UncleCrunch
Mayonnaise land Join Date: 2005-02-16 Member: 41365Members, Reinforced - Onos
Mayonnaise land Join Date: 2005-02-16 Member: 41365Members, Reinforced - Onos
Hi,
If the game tends to have a survival side. Which it likely to happen with what i see.
We will need several things
-Storage : Difficulty will also be to go find the right material far, far away. Getting there will probably need some tools / supplies. So inventory is a key element. Having a storage to put things inside can make room in the personal inventory. It can be something to build with the constructor. Enhanced version would store delicate materials (cold as a fridge or pressure tank etc.).
-A map : And some tool to explore the surroundings. More than beacons.
-Interface : Definitely something to rework. This one is already showing signs of "it's not gonna fit in the screen".
-Different quality of materials: Ex One plant will procure better silicon so you can create better fins. And recipes in the PDA or something with a learning curve.
-And a story behind it.
For fun
-Bots to sentry the base and do some basic tasks (mule).
Other than that
It shouldn't be possible to dig into rock solid material unless we have the proper tools for that.
Little bug
-The game shows some performance issue. Things appear out of the blue sometimes like if the game hanged.
-Keybindings : It says to use with 'E' even if you redefined 'use' to another key.
-If a group of fishes (i believe one entity) get into a tunnel the fishes ignore the size of it. Sometimes it looks like these fishes are coming out of the ground and go back to it. Maybe assign a radius to the whole animation (i believe the animation is a bunch of dot (position) that moves).
If the game tends to have a survival side. Which it likely to happen with what i see.
We will need several things
-Storage : Difficulty will also be to go find the right material far, far away. Getting there will probably need some tools / supplies. So inventory is a key element. Having a storage to put things inside can make room in the personal inventory. It can be something to build with the constructor. Enhanced version would store delicate materials (cold as a fridge or pressure tank etc.).
-A map : And some tool to explore the surroundings. More than beacons.
-Interface : Definitely something to rework. This one is already showing signs of "it's not gonna fit in the screen".
-Different quality of materials: Ex One plant will procure better silicon so you can create better fins. And recipes in the PDA or something with a learning curve.
-And a story behind it.
For fun
-Bots to sentry the base and do some basic tasks (mule).
Other than that
It shouldn't be possible to dig into rock solid material unless we have the proper tools for that.
Little bug
-The game shows some performance issue. Things appear out of the blue sometimes like if the game hanged.
-Keybindings : It says to use with 'E' even if you redefined 'use' to another key.
-If a group of fishes (i believe one entity) get into a tunnel the fishes ignore the size of it. Sometimes it looks like these fishes are coming out of the ground and go back to it. Maybe assign a radius to the whole animation (i believe the animation is a bunch of dot (position) that moves).
Comments
The game is declared as exploration/construction rather than survival, but i wouldn't be surprised to see some survival elements. Wouldn't mind if it's not there either though. From the top of my head i can name dozen construction games, and about half a dozen survival ones (only 2 good ones though
The game is stated as without combat or weapons so not sure about sentry... possibly sonic, chemical or electric "fences" to keep animals out. Bot/robots seems already be on the board, at least listed in the Features Vote.
There are SO many survival games out there that I really wanted to avoid it. But I have to admit that when we had hunger in there, it really helped drive the pace. And I think it would dovetail beautifully into the late-game goals: building a huge food/water store for your colonists before the arrive. It's simply a bigger version of the game you have to start, but to accomplish it would require altogether different player strategies.
Personally I fond the hunger in the prototype to be a pain in the backside so I turned it off - it was completely unrealistic as it was way too fast. If you are going to include hunger as a personal need, that is fine, but it shouldnt be something the player has to do every 10 minutes - more like every hour, and the consequences for it shouldnt be, oh you didnt eat on time, you die - they should be a growing gradual impairment. Have you played Euro Truck Simulator 2 and gone too long without sleeping? Your character starts yawning, and then eventually their eyes start closing for a second so your screen blanks out then wakes up again, getting more and more frequent until you either rest, or.... errmmm... stop the "other" way.
I think this is a great angle - players should have to balance not only their own air supply, but if they craft a diving suit, its battery power. Have you checked out power generation in Space Engineers? You can craft a power reactor that you have to fill with uranium (that you mine and refine), and then that reactor powers the base/ship - so you arent having to micromanage the batteries of every single item, but you do have to be mindful of overall supplies. Players can recharge their spacesuit simply by plugging into any computer terminal. You could have some great mechanics around this if you could lay underwater power cables to connect outlying devices and the cables might get damaged or need maintenance or they start becoming inefficient (or stop working alltogether). There was quite a good underwater demo (I cant remember the name at the moment EDIT: Found it, Farsky http://www.farskygame.com/) that had an idea of little mining stations that you placed on mineral deposits and they would extract the resource over time - you could do something like this but it needs a power conduit back to a reactor that you might have to go fix if it got damaged by some curious underwater citizen.
That is how to do it.
oxygen (works, but subs like seamoth should have its own o2-supply)
energy like batteries (partial, construction costs nothing, missing energy reloads and you should need more than quartzes)
light (how deep will the game go?)
Missing, but would like to see:
pressure - diving limit with normal equip, limit for changing pressure environment
food - tied to stamina, diving or activities eats calories/stamina, seeding plants or fish for farming food or hunting drones
mapping - harvesting resources, predator terrain, deadly currents
Probably out of scope:
spawning dangers - underwater whirl, surface gas erruptions, predator swarms
epidemies to research - extinction of eatable fish leading to hunger, population overgrowth of dangerous lifeforms
Is this necessary?:
drinking - just filtering out salt, water is everywhere
sleeping - how essential is a day/night cycle underwater?
EDIT:
of course, forgot the most wanted aside from pressure - thermal aspects:
currents leading to fast temperature drops if you dive with a suit
it won't be a problem for subs, unless you have to exit the sub to do some research with your suit
(harvesting rare quartzes in hot thermal caves where the sub won't fit)
Some survival element examples that we already have, plan on having, or are thinking about having (obviously all of this is subject to change at this early stage in the game development, so please take it all with a grain of salt)
Oxygen
Hunger - we tried this system out before, but it was not fully implemented and tested, so we removed it until we could refine it further and then test it out again
Pressure - This will be a factor in the game, just has not been added yet
Temperature - Both hot and cold areas
Health - You likely will not be autohealing in the actual game - or at least not nearly at the rate that you do now - that is a temporary mechanic
Sleep - Possibly. This has been talked about in relation to the overall goal of a limited time frame in which you have to make the planet ready for colonization
Energy and equipment management
Weather - Surface storms, with lightning strikes
Day / night cycle - nightime is harder to see, obviously, and maybe there are more dangerous predators active at nightime
Darkness - At certain depth levels, areas, and in some caves.
More dangerous creatures
Environmental Hazards - We have a large brainstorm list that we've come up with, and hope to add a least some of the things from the list. A few examples: Falling rocks, whirlpools, lava eruptions, dangerous plant life, sand that can obscure your vision and make it hard to find your way out of a cave, earthquakes, and many many more.
So, those are some elements which I can think of off the top of my head, which can be considered survival game features. Our main stance is that we don't want the game to become a tedious grind from the pressure of constantly just trying to stay alive - the game is about so much more then that. We don't want the survival elements to overly impede your ability to explore. We want you to be able interact with the environment in a peaceful manner, and just generally be able to play around and experiment with stuff, without just always having to worry about food, thirst, oxygen, warmth, etc. So, likely a lot of those kinds of survival elements will be front loaded in the early part of the game, with the ability to craft tech, or use creature DNA, to overcome a lot of the more basic ones. '
The main takeaway here is that the game is far from done. We try to say it as often as possible, but try not to make too many assumptions about what the game will be, just based on what it is today. A month from now could be a completely different story. So continuing to give us feedback on what you like, dislike and would like to see in the game is always helpful, just don't assume the game direction is locked in at this early stage, just because some of these features are not being implemented right away.
Personally, for me, this would be taking it too far in subnautica. It is one of the things about Dead Island that was a good idea, but in fact meant I spent more time just picking up loot, rather than exploring and playing the game.
My point being, when you build equipment, you have built it. It should be able to take damage and be destroyed, and repaired, but having to maintain it would be a step into the more hardcore survival arena, and I feel that would be a step too far for the currently hinted at direction of subnautica.
example framework: i want a track with a chilled out emotional quality some glitch elements and a simple melody. i then let the details work themselves out. after i lay down some deliberate basics elements, ill try to listen to what the track wants, not what i want the track to have. many times the best music makes its self, it comes out of the process.. i just facilitate and nudge it in certain ways.
and i think this is the same for game design as a whole.. especially with SN because we are exploring new ground, we have this frame work of non combat, underwater exploration, and a narrative of a crashed ship and a few other things... and now we are at the stage of listening to what these elements are telling us they want. this is why it is easier at this stage for us to tell you what subnautica will not be rather than what it will. but ive seen the creative process first hand enough times to trust in the process and to trust in the abilities of our team to make a very compelling experience.
So you should not be forced to put too much time into survival, but forced to adapt to situations. Probably each survival aspect should be able to get turned off in options (with a survival options category).
I would like there to be some late-game subs that are sort of small but have high maneuverability and speed. Would be great to explore new areas or get get away from certain creatures.
Well, energy maintenance will probably unavoidable somehow, otherwise subs wouldn't need power. Once big energy units are built its only a matter of recharging and farming energy. Oxygen maintenance is even more simple.
Repair mainenance on the other side can get a pain if you base it on different resources needed for repair. In Subnautica construction seems to be done by replication tools based on resources. So the danger is you run around harvesting resources with limited carrying capacity only to support the needed supplies for repair maintenance. Leaving you no time or fun for exploring unless you have a resource management facility where all gathered resources are just dumped and autosorted to be fetched easily for repair. Or the resource facility can create repair nanites or repair drones if the resources are enough.
My favourite repair job would be the failure of a sub engine event. Than I'd run diagnostics around the ship to trace down the problem and finally fix it. Or the sub colliding with rocks creating a hull breach. I'd have to quickly seal the breach section, go out of the sub and repair it from the outside while dangerous predators swim around.
Brings me to another idea - sub exploration multiplayer teams with dangerous terrains that needs a team handling things parallel. If you go outside, some people defend against predators, while some work on harvesting or repair.
Hunger - I'm all for the implementation of hunger as long as it isn't imposing. A lot of games make it so it's pretty much the first thing you have to do. Either hunt or set up a farm, if you don't you're seriously impeded. Really don't want that in Subnautica. Start us off with plenty of rations in the escape pod, some kind of amazing space food. Highly nutritious caloric dense pellets or paste. It's slowly digested over a couple days releasing enough calories/nutrients to keep you going for two days or so because y'know future space food. Something like that, so we don't have to eat 10 Peeper fillets or toxic Gasopod bladders every 5 minutes. Also the negative effects of not eating shouldn't be immediately in full effect, let it ramp up over a few in game days. If times get really desperate, being able to chow down on raw kelp bulbs (as they seem the most terrestrial) for the price of very little nutritional value and a bit of nausea, can't hurt much. Being able to make some kind of machine to feed organic materials into and create said super food. This machine would extract and compile all the nutrients needed for human survival and seperate whatever toxins may be within the raw organic materials. Could even have it create by-products to be used as fertiliser, toxins to create antidotes, antivenin and healing serums depending on the raw organic materials used. So there's two peepers with one stone, food and medicine. Said amazing space food, could be a way around a lot of the problems games seem to have with grindy feeling perpetual munchies.
Temperature - All for this, as long as it's only really problematic in extreme environments like the arctic, lava zones and extreme depths. Being able to use the transfuser to obtain antifreeze proteins from the arctic creatures, allowing longer or indefinite periods of exposure to the cold waters would be good. So upon returning in the future it won't seem as restrictive.
Health - Punish us for not paying attention, getting too close to the dangerous things or being violent towards more docile things! Really glad to hear the auto-healing probably won't be a thing. Maybe leave it in as an option for freedom mode. Varying degrees of specific injuries are something that could be interesting. Most injuries sustained could be mild and dealt with using healing serums, pain relief or antivenin. Every now and then though something would really get you good. Scare the shit out of you and throw you into a panic. Such an event, as rare as it could be, potentially opens up some scary, interesting situations and gameplay. Just imagine swimming through murky/dark waters, flashlight out. Things are eerily quiet, you brush aside some kelp and see some crystals on the wall, excellent! Things are pretty good.. Then suddenly yelp! Something has your leg in its mouth and begins thrashing you around. It's a shame you weren't paying attention because maybe it could have been scared away by your light, while it was just curious. Either way, it's too late now. In the rush of the situation you manage to drop the flashlight and pull out your knife, getting a good stab in this creatures side. It releases its grip temporarily, knife still sticking out of it. It flees a short distance, only to begin circling. This thing is even more pissed off, you're bleeding heavily from the leg, swimming at only a fraction of your usual speed and don't even have a knife anymore. Time to make use of that vision obscuring seaglide to get away! No amount of healing serum or pain relief will fix you up before bleeding to death. Time to go back to the sub/base and use the med bay. You limp on board and lay down on the operating table in the med bay, seeing a couple robotic arms spring to life and do their healing sciencey magic. That was a close one, your vision even started to darken. It could be worth upgrading that wetsuit with self repairing nanofibers that tighten around wounds, slowing bleeding and minimizing/preventing blood trails. Giving you more time to reach the med bay. Maybe next time you return for those crystals there's a super aggressive creature with a knife still sticking out of it, that won't let go so easily this time.
Sleep - Can't really see sleep as adding anything to the overall experience. With oxygen, power and hunger in mind. Having another bar ticking down could be in a pain in the arse, especially one as boring as sleep. Besides a good chunk of people will just end up skipping through the night. Maybe have it as an option for the freedom mode only, if people really want to wuss out.
Hunger makes sense in exploration games with an evironment abundant of life like arctic planets. The sea offers far too much to be a problem. It might be useful in case of an epidemy killing most eatable lifeforms, otherwise quite useless. Most games or survival mods overexaggerate the hunger level. In real life you could easily hunger for days only weakening but not killing you. Thirst is much faster, but again no problem when salt water can get turned into sweet water and available everywhere.
In the real world people who jump from a sinking ship into water will probably first get killed by cold in minutes or hours. Otherwise they will die of thirst in a few days. With a good neoprene or other equip you can hold out longer. In a sub or exosuit temperature won't be much issue if not extreme. But if you have to repair your sub from outside temperature matters again. So I'd say temperature in Subnautica is useful. Other aspects of temperature include currents produced and sonar changes through different temperature water layers.
In shooters most is focused on simple health and an easy way to repair wounds, mainly because all is about killing and get killed. Subnauticas exploration focus doesn't really need auto-health, because of the low frequency of fights. Others things could be improved. Bleeding to death or blood attracting predators specialized in blood tracing. Breaking bones or limbs decreasing swimming speed. Sonar pulse causing your inner ear and orientation go mad. Infections causing diseases or a dna parasite system transforming the body. Lots of options.
Sleep needs a reason too. In RPGs you can sleep to advance the black night or wait until a shop opens. So with a Day/Night cycle it has a little use. You could punish the player with negative effects like a blurry vision after a day without sleep or research times taking twice as long, etc. But I've seen a lot of sleep survival enforcements not really work much, so it would have to be sensible. The overall use of sleep as survival won't be much adding to the game I think.
I feel like hunger and thirst do not really work with subnautica. For one, there is too much food everywhere and given current technology that the player has at his disposal it can be argued that your diving suit has some apparatus that keeps you hydrated.
Air
Currently, oxygen feels like a unique survival mechanic to Subnautica and it can in some ways be more stressful than both hunger and thirst combined.
Sleep - Exhaustion
Since we do have day and night cycles in the game already it can make sense to have sleep in the game. Sleep also compliments mechanics where one needs to build shelter. Sleep can also have a tendency to conflict with exploration. Though, I am not sure if this would really be a problem.
Power
I like that we create batteries and all of our equipment uses them. This is our variation of durability from what I can tell but i personally feel that it can become a lot more than that. In this environment our equipment is essentially our ability to survive. A sub with no power is a coffin.
Temperature
I am not sure if this counts as survival but rather gating. It either works as a system redundant to oxygen where you have set amount of time before you boil or freeze to death or you have to upgrade your equipment to simply enter the area you would otherwise be instantly killed. For some reason this reminds me of Super Metriod.
Depth
I feel somewhat the same as temperature. It feels more like a gating system than survival. For me survival mechanics are omnipresent interactive time limits or meters.
Health - Bleeding
I like health a lot as a core system as it gives us a way to punish the player for making bad choices in a visible manor. Bleeding is a status effect and typically causes health to go down. I like health as it can be the final point where all of your survival mechanics can meet. You lose health when you run out of air, you lose health when you are too hot or too cold, you lose health for going too deep with the wrong equipment, you lose health if you are bleeding. Health is fantastic for this kind of system.
So with that said, survival games tend to have fairly shallow power growth for the player. (If you find an M4 with some ammo you are kind of set for awhile.) This is a side effect of a harsh death penalty. I learned that it can be really tough to have both a very complex power growth combined with survival mechanics. Most of my experience with this point is with heavily moded versions of Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim, all of which are games with steep power growth. The result I have found in these cases is that your audience is more focused on getting stronger than trying to stay alive. When this happens you get a lot of people who feel that these mechanics are just getting in the way. Which results in nerfing survival mechanics to a point where they feel less obtrusive. (In turn, it kind of defeats the point of going hardcore with survival mechanics in the first place.) My personal preference is that I prefer survival to be agonizing where you feel like you are hanging from a thread the entire time.
Subnautica has a lot of growth in terms of equipment and vehicles as the crafting system allows for a lot. So what are your thoughts for the appropriate amount of survival mechanics in Subnautica?
#1: Easy = Roam Mode, no perma-death some good old exploration with crafting/building. Great for children to learn the basics without it affecting all the beauty, and wonder this game offers. (Be able to save the game whenever, and where ever).
#2: Normal = The way the Game is mean't to be played. This mode would be keeping to the dream of how the devs wish you to play the game (not sure what the devs would be doing for saving the game).
#3: Hardcore = Has the realism, and work your butt off for what you need to do. This mode would not only have perma-death but include all the goodies such as weight restrictions, eating, sleeping, drinking, affects of being cold, diseases, and all of the great, and wonderful problems while being under water which would really test your ability to survive in a beautiful but a very hostile environment... and with only one save option (once you enter your Sub, the game will save) Personally this would be the mode I would prefer to play.
For the Hardcore mode, the skys the limit.
I would not opt for survival modes, but rather for a complete set of survival options that any player can change from the standart behaviour. These options are bundled under the topic survival in the options menu. Oxygen depletion (yes/no), pressure (none, simple, real), energy (auto-refill,harvest), health (god, auto-heal, normal), death (reset, wake up after x time at med bay, permanent). Options like sleep and temperature additional to be turned on.
EDIT:
I'd like to see bleeding attracting predators and diseases from infection you have to research with biolab and studying dna as a race against time.