Restricting game play discussion
iviajoi2n
United States Join Date: 2015-02-16 Member: 201393Members
United States Join Date: 2015-02-16 Member: 201393Members
In reference to: https://trello.com/c/RtlgI8IV/3720-slow-game-start-down
I'm curious what other people's opinions are on the forums. I have to agree with Matt there are tons of sandbox-crafting-survivor games out there and creating to much of a gated/tiered system would really hurt Subnautica's unique gameplay. I enjoy the exploration, i honestly spent the first two hours of gameplay just admiring the world design, by that point most people probably would've been able to craft a Seamoth but i only had flippers. Subnautica allows for that kind of exploration gameplay, not that i hate the other things or anything. I just think the "this is how the game is meant to be played" style should be discouraged as much as possible.
Anyhow, thought i'd throw this up on the forums since the design team seems to be actively discussing solutions right now, its a good time to voice opinions.
I'm curious what other people's opinions are on the forums. I have to agree with Matt there are tons of sandbox-crafting-survivor games out there and creating to much of a gated/tiered system would really hurt Subnautica's unique gameplay. I enjoy the exploration, i honestly spent the first two hours of gameplay just admiring the world design, by that point most people probably would've been able to craft a Seamoth but i only had flippers. Subnautica allows for that kind of exploration gameplay, not that i hate the other things or anything. I just think the "this is how the game is meant to be played" style should be discouraged as much as possible.
Anyhow, thought i'd throw this up on the forums since the design team seems to be actively discussing solutions right now, its a good time to voice opinions.
Comments
If you take Minecraft for example you can get the top tier item in 30 minutes (diamonds) but the reason it's so successful is the freedom to create anything you want.
I think subnautica is on the right track with base building, power generation, flooding...etc but also has a story aspect that could be a little gem for extended gameplay.
Now you could have a machine that might take 1 hour realtime to analyse something for story progression for example and that gives you a clue for the next part, you then use the cyclops and go hunting.
This machine or Laboratory could have a high power demand, you might need a seaweed farm to power your generators.
I can think of a 100 things to bulk the game out but I don't think taking 1 hour to craft a knife is the right direction.
Give people the freedom in your fantastic world to do what they want build, explore, story.
Cosmic.
Otherwise there will be no real diversity in the game
I'd like the Sand Sharks to be a little more inconspicuous, the nature of their sand digging is confusing because i'm not sure if they're doing it just as a place to rest or if its meant to be a predatory behavior, like a Stargazer or Flounder fish. If its a Predatory Behavior the fact they keeping kicking up sand over and over makes them a piss poor predator because they're never a surprise. I'd be fine if they just sat on the seabed and were nearly invisible and they lunged at you when you're in attack distance. You could use bait to bring them out of hiding or something. As it stands i don't see much behavioral differences between any of the predators right now with the exception of the Mesmer fish. But i'm sure the guys have some AI improvements in plan for the predators.
The whole thing about diving, (with limited oxygen), is a HUGE ready-made progression monitor, which I think they need to seriously focus on. I think it could be a really bad decision to include things like the air pipes in this game on release because it will allow players to skip the exploration progression in certain areas and I am concerned it will lead to a lot of players not getting as much of a complete experience as they should do, and therefore getting prematurely bored. (for example, a player can make a big pipe network to get 100's of metres deep before even making a sea glide, sea moth, or even any air tanks. This is not good imo.)
Reason to explore / Depth progression:
There also needs to be a REASON for us to explore (exploring just for the sake of it doesn't keep people interested long-term in a game like this - once you think you've seen everything there is to see, the player won't be so interested anymore - even if there is more hidden stuff they don't know about). I see it like there needs to be a depth level where the player will fit into with their current gear, and in that level they will find new items that allow them to craft new tech to go to the next depth level, and so on.
For example, at the moment we have the following (numbers are an example only):
- player starts new, can dive around 20m before needing to come up for air. Can find items at this depth to craft fins and air tanks.
- player can now dive around 40m before needing to come up for air. Can find new items at this depth to craft the Seaglide.
- Seaglide allows them to dive around 80m due to increased swimming speed so they can now collect more materials before needing to re-surface.
- Player crafts Sea Moth, can now dive forever (I know this is changed on the experimental branch now, which is great)
- Player crafts Cyclops and has free roam of everything in the ocean.
I really hope that there are plans to continue with these progression stages and enhance them even more so. In the current build I can feel some level of chaos with regards to this and it doesn't feel as though things quite fit in yet, such as I can skip entirely building more air tanks and a seaglide and just build a Sea Moth almost instantly - this is really bad from a user experience perspective because I've just missed out a whole level of content I could unlock with just the seaglide, and might even have missed some caves or areas I'd have gone to if I had one before going straight to SeaMoth and going 500m down. I would like to see things like the Cyclops requiring materials to craft which are only obtainable at say 250-300m depth, so requiring the player to have crafted a Sea Moth, and maybe 3-4 air tanks before venturing to get it. However there also needs to be some explanation to the player that this is WHERE the items are found. There's nothing worse than having to wiki an item name from a recipe just to find out where/how to get it! This is the single biggest flaw in a lot of games like this imo.
Where do I find these items? / Research possiblity:
It would be great if we had to do some sort of research into items needed for this advanced crafting and the game would give us a rough idea of depth level to find it, and perhaps at a more advanced research, even the biome it's in. The player would already know the depth level they could handle and so could weigh up risk vs. reward to decide if they think they can handle going to that biome and depth to explore and search for the required materials.
i.e. I could pick up a Cyclops fragment and take it back to the life-raft. At this point I need to stick it in the fragment analyser, which currently unlocks the recipe for use and tells me the ingredients needed to craft. Great. Where do I get this stuff? (answer: wiki page. Not good.)
So perhaps the fragment analyser can be used again but this time I can pick some type of material I don't know about yet from the recipe, and after some time, I get an analysis back (perhaps it used some database from the crashed ship, or performed some underwater scans etc.) and it can tell me roughly, I need to go to caves around 100m depth to find gold.
Great! I now have some idea wtf to do but decide that it's too deep for me now. So I craft 4 air tanks and take my Seaglide with me. At this point, it's a stretch, but I dive to explore the caves and find what I need without spending hours fumbling around thinking where the hell the devs have hidden the gold.
I'm sure stuff like this is all in the planning work but I wanted to express my keenness to keep some progression and exploration closely linked. IMO it's going to be bad if players can instantly build air pipes, or an underwater base hundreds of metres down without much effort, thus skipping the fun of progressing gradually deeper and deeper.
Please lock this stuff behind research or depth 'walls' and reward a player for taking risks to find items they need. Don't allow players to get to 400m before they even craft a seaglide (for example by building pipes all the way down forever) because even though people say they want a totally free rein of what to do, it will only lead to people skipping loads of the content of the game, which will be very detrimental in all ways imaginable.