Pressure rather than oxygen.
NorthOfEarth
Chicago, IL Join Date: 2014-01-04 Member: 192197Members
Chicago, IL Join Date: 2014-01-04 Member: 192197Members
Right now the main progression hurdle is finding a way to breathe underwater longer - upgrading tanks, then larger and larger subs. The base oxygen tank only lasts half a minute, which seems like an artificial limit. Meanwhile, at a depth of two kilometers I can happily swim about in the crushing waters with no ill effects for the same length of time.
Using pressure as a limit is much more interesting. It provides a physical barrier to progression without the player having to surface and dive repeatedly, and it makes damage to submersibles a matter of death rather than a matter of losing resources.
Forcing the player to swim for only thirty seconds per tank stifles the joy of exploration and clogs the inventory. In reality, oxygen tanks can last nearly an hour at shallow depths. Below a certain depth, the player should be unable to leave the vehicle. It adds to the sense of claustrophobia and requires more delicate and clever ways of interacting with creatures and the environment - maybe some kind of sub with pincer arms?
Example progression:
Nothing - 20 meters
Dive mask - 50 meters
Better wet suit - 100 meters
Hard diving suit - 200 meters
Small sub - 500 meters
Large sub - 1000 meters
Deep-sea explorer - 2000 meters
Using pressure as a limit is much more interesting. It provides a physical barrier to progression without the player having to surface and dive repeatedly, and it makes damage to submersibles a matter of death rather than a matter of losing resources.
Forcing the player to swim for only thirty seconds per tank stifles the joy of exploration and clogs the inventory. In reality, oxygen tanks can last nearly an hour at shallow depths. Below a certain depth, the player should be unable to leave the vehicle. It adds to the sense of claustrophobia and requires more delicate and clever ways of interacting with creatures and the environment - maybe some kind of sub with pincer arms?
Example progression:
Nothing - 20 meters
Dive mask - 50 meters
Better wet suit - 100 meters
Hard diving suit - 200 meters
Small sub - 500 meters
Large sub - 1000 meters
Deep-sea explorer - 2000 meters
Comments
Agreed. The very start of the game you should have no equipment, and have a limited diving depth and oxygen supply since you're holding your breath. The game should have an opening tutorial to have the player build a wet suit from basic materials (silicone + glass) and an oxygen tank. This introduces new players to the resource gathering system and how to play the game. Later on you can upgrade your diving suit to go deeper, and eventually, build an exosuit for really deep depths.
Oxygen should last a long time at shallow depths once you get your wet suit + oxygen tank. As you go deeper you breathe heavier and use oxygen faster, requiring another oxygen tank, and maybe a player upgrade from DNA research from that air sack fish will helps your lungs retain oxygen longer. I think its a bit silly to have to carry around 3+ oxygen tanks, so if that stays in, they should be 1x2 size in the inventory.
Also, the player begins in some kind of rather strong clothing , so unless its for making a fashion statement I think 20 meters is frankly absurd in a game about exploring
Btw if we're talking realistic, 'strong clothing' is irrelevant to snorkelling depth, just as a better wetsuit is irrelevant to scuba depth (except if we're talking about for thermal insulation purposes, perhaps). Most trained divers snorkelling down to 20m, or 66 ft, (with weights & fins) would need to head back up for air before they really had time to do any useful work or exploring. Some of the fitter ones might accomplish a bit... but would still need a breather between trips. My point is without proper scuba gear 20m is a very realistic (perhaps even generous) limit for getting anything at all done. As for pressure, that does play a limiting factor in scuba diving - by increasing the rate at which you breathe your air/gas supply (time constraint) and limiting how deep you can go without suffering adverse effects of the partial pressure of the gasses you're breathing (narcosis, causticity & decompression issues - this has nothing to do with being physically crushed: take away the gas issues and the human body can withstand quite a lot of pressure.)
Now to the point - how much diving realism will the devs decide to put in? If the sci-fi adventure aspect of the game is what takes priority, then only what diving realism they can without impacting the fun factor in terms of the sci-fi adventure game.
And then it broke on me and froze up. I'm too deep, bb.
How am I alive at 3000M depth? LOL
I have to admit, I was super confused after I built my first seamoth and went deep in a cave to find gold. I couldn't tell if I should be able to pick it up in my sub, and I didn't think I could survive outside of it. I did end up chancing it and was glad I could survive, but it did seem out of place(although appreciated, I really wanted that gold!).
I do also kind of expect or would hope that we could someday either build oxygen tanks that last longer for the same inventory space, or be able to upgrade existing tanks to increase how much air they can hold. Or even just the genetic splicing to increase effectiveness.
I don't mind the trade-off of needing to decide what kind of gear I will need for an outing, and deciding if I want to load up super heavy on oxygen tanks or leave more room to grab more phat l3wtz should be a part of the game, I think, but I do want a way to increase my bang for my buck(at least a little) as I progress. I would also settle for increased inventory space, but if that gets too big I worry that it might deter from the mothership-ness importance of bases and subs like the Cyclops. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like knowing that I am far from home increases my sense of isolation and fear. I like that.
In short I trust UWE to make the right decisions, and imagine that both oxygen and pressure will be important factors as our options to deal with them increase (anybody else notice that exosuit blueprint in experimental? Couldn't build it, but I saw it!) And I like the idea of having a couple different suits available.
Also, keep in mind that depth hasn't really been implemented as a feature I don't think?
As for adding some realistic elements, that would be awesome, I just think that what was specifically suggested was much too restrictive
We do all agree that we want a sense of meaningful progression in the game. Oxygen, food, and water are a start. Of course we also want to use pressure as a gameplay mechanism. We also want lots of other things. Right now we feel like the ability to build underwater bases is more important than annoying the player with pressure warnings. We need to make sure to get pressure base gameplay right. Otherwise it will feel like food, water, and oxygen feel right now: annoying.
We understand that the game doesn't feel like a balanced game yet. A lot of things are out of order in terms of meaningful progression. That is because we have not balanced the game yet. But from a production perspective it is too early to think about all those things that will make the game feel balanced because we don't even have all the stuff in the game you as a player can do yet.
We could balance the game right now and it would make for a much better Early Access experience. We could spend a lot of time implementing, fixing, and tweaking all the gameplay mechanics revolving around food, water, oxygen, and pressure. But it would reduce our ability to add content and it would likely need to be reworked completely eventually. It might be worthwhile doing anyway because we have a lot of Early Access gamers and we are giving them a very unpolished experience.
As for the bends, well, I would hope hundreds of years into the future we would figure out a way to do something about that :P