Suggestions to make Subnautica a 100h+ worth game
jdanilov
Join Date: 2015-08-25 Member: 207459Members
Join Date: 2015-08-25 Member: 207459Members
Hej, I posted this on Steam forums as well but thought it might be of interest.
Team excellent progress for the past 6 months! Truly deep exploration-like experience. Suggestions to make it a 100h+ worth game (sorted by priority):
1. WORLD SIZE.
Too small. Biomes are small and too densely packed. If you can cross the map in ~7-10 minutes it doesn't feel like the true ocean. Suggestion is to add huge biomes on outskirts of the map even if it means less content per hour of play. Decrease Aurora size. Drive player to explore them by putting new points of interests, blueprints and vents (see below) there.
2. HUNGER AND THIRST.
Tedious to manage and not rewarding. Switched to Freedom mode because of that. Needs a way to automate by building farms and water distillers. Add bonuses for eating certain food (rare fish?), different food, etc. Add cooking recipies. Add flora to recipies.
3. CHALLENGE.
More challenging and frightening situations. Whirlpools. Poisonous fish. Hostile biomes. Some sea life damages cyclops and sea bases, requires passive defences (energy shields / e-shock). An intelligent deepsea mob that lures in the dark, leaves marks of it's presence, seeks player's cyclops and attacks at night (similar to the Alien in behaviour).
4. ECONOMICS OVERHAUL.
Replace scattered resources by vents & extractors system. Add means of both manual and automatic extraction, transportation, processing and storage of resources.
Make vents rare. Force player to build multiple bases in different biomes to get these resources. Add grand goals (constructing something massive) to aim for.
5. WEATHER.
Boring weather system (absence of). Add rain, fog, cloudy days, big waves, storms, thunder, tornadoes etc.
6. SEABASES.
Add more content and decorum, recource storage and processing modules (see above). Add a navigation e-map to draw in-game (initially blank).
7. GAME GOAL.
Add optional grand goals to work towards. E.g. building an space signal transmitter to call for help. Increase difficulty as player progresses towards the goal (transmitter attracts sealife).
8. MULTIPLAYER.
Don't do it (for now). Focus on single-play mode, you're going the right direction.
Thank you
Team excellent progress for the past 6 months! Truly deep exploration-like experience. Suggestions to make it a 100h+ worth game (sorted by priority):
1. WORLD SIZE.
Too small. Biomes are small and too densely packed. If you can cross the map in ~7-10 minutes it doesn't feel like the true ocean. Suggestion is to add huge biomes on outskirts of the map even if it means less content per hour of play. Decrease Aurora size. Drive player to explore them by putting new points of interests, blueprints and vents (see below) there.
2. HUNGER AND THIRST.
Tedious to manage and not rewarding. Switched to Freedom mode because of that. Needs a way to automate by building farms and water distillers. Add bonuses for eating certain food (rare fish?), different food, etc. Add cooking recipies. Add flora to recipies.
3. CHALLENGE.
More challenging and frightening situations. Whirlpools. Poisonous fish. Hostile biomes. Some sea life damages cyclops and sea bases, requires passive defences (energy shields / e-shock). An intelligent deepsea mob that lures in the dark, leaves marks of it's presence, seeks player's cyclops and attacks at night (similar to the Alien in behaviour).
4. ECONOMICS OVERHAUL.
Replace scattered resources by vents & extractors system. Add means of both manual and automatic extraction, transportation, processing and storage of resources.
- auto-extrators: ore, minerals and oil extractors (for fuel), water distiller, seafood farms, coral farms, energy extractors (smokers, floating solar plants), salt extractors etc. Most built on specific places only (such as ore vents) forcing player to explore biomes. All require energy to operate delivered to them manually or via drones.
- transportation: resource transportation drones. Automatically transport resources from extractors to base storages. Requires energy to operate. Assigned to custom routes between bases or waypoints.
- processing: process ores to ingots (includes titanium, silver, etc) which takes time.
Make vents rare. Force player to build multiple bases in different biomes to get these resources. Add grand goals (constructing something massive) to aim for.
5. WEATHER.
Boring weather system (absence of). Add rain, fog, cloudy days, big waves, storms, thunder, tornadoes etc.
6. SEABASES.
Add more content and decorum, recource storage and processing modules (see above). Add a navigation e-map to draw in-game (initially blank).
7. GAME GOAL.
Add optional grand goals to work towards. E.g. building an space signal transmitter to call for help. Increase difficulty as player progresses towards the goal (transmitter attracts sealife).
8. MULTIPLAYER.
Don't do it (for now). Focus on single-play mode, you're going the right direction.
Thank you
Comments
A game goal conflicts with the topic title of a 100+ hour game - unless you really think the goal should take 100 hours of playing to get there. Most big budget games with overarching goals or final missions have no more than 15-20 hours of play time.
UWE has already spoken to the issues of multiplayer, so leaving that where it is.
Yeah, those titles shoot for the money. Subnautica on other hand is an open world sandbox / exploration game. 20-30h is it's limit now - all biomes explored, all blueprints found, everything built in that time.
There should be few optional game goals, each taking a lot of effort, challenge / risks and a sense of achievement when reached.
Skyrim is 100h+, Subnatica could be something on that scale but more exploration focused.
Build an Interstellar Signal Transmitter to call for rescue.
IST is an enormous modular construction which consists of support, signal emitter, signal receiver and control unit modules.
First, blueprints for these components need to be located with a help of another expensive device: Blueprints Scanner. BS is a four-piece deployable module that uses triangulation to pinpoint blueprints locations (i.e. the target blueprint location is triangulated down by placing scanner pieces).
When all blueprints located, player may proceed to gathering resources. IST is an expensive construction and requires some very rare materials also found only deep at sea where only an upgraded cyclops can go.
Once resources gathered it's necessary to supply enough energy to the IST by building a nuclear power plant.
Finally you send a signal to your homeplanet for rescue which takes a lightweek to go there and come back. Answer tells you that a rescue shuttle will arrive to the planet orbit to get you out but won't come close for safety measures to avoid the Aurora's fate. So you have to build a carrier-rocket and launching shaft to get to the orbit. But only after you find out whatever caused the Aurora to go down and deal with the reason... to be continued...
Also if you read a recent best-selling book "The Martian" by Andy Weir it could be the similar type of scenario and struggles that happen along the way, only on an oceanic planet, not on Mars.
Yeah, logically so. This should be done along the story line. Maybe a cyclops would be attacked during the long 'rescue pod rescue' phase or it's electronics shut down deep down in a cave with a lurking sea monster thus player will have to improvise to survive with what he's got, maybe diving between air-pockets looking for a cave exit etc. or building a seabase on a spot. With depressurization this would be a possible scenario.
The story itself and all it's details are completely up to developers to come up with and implement. My point and one of the reasons I wrote this post was to bring to the team's attention not every player wants a pure exploration sandbox experience. I hope they'd appreciate some need a challenging mission to live through. Even if it's optional.
Also, by adding a set of grand goals / scenarios you bring 20-30h+ of content. Substantially extending a world size is another 20h. Changing economics system to semi-automated resources production and deposits exploration would give extra 20h. With initial exploration and infrastructure set up time this would turn game into a grand adventure of something about 100h experience.
This is my hope for the game and I'd like to with best luck to unknownworlds in whatever their vision is for the final product.
Strategy games have their battles, crafting games their endless building, exploration games a giant worldsize with mods and repetitive missions, like hunting or gathering resources.
The first thing that would work with Subnautica is crafting the base with tons of different modules. The next would be hunting and collecting fish and even predators to gather them in giant fish tanks or underwater domes. Each fish would have a different hunting strategy to find out. Then training fish to become pets or companions underwater.
The game world itself might not get big enough for repetitive exploration unless random floating islands in the deep are generated with different resources and methods of getting to them. Crossing the islands through the deep ocean should be a dangerous job even with the cyclops.
First. The world exploration. It's hard to properly generate world's in automatic way from programming standpoint. Manual design gives much better results. However if you first design the HUGE map as a combination of typical / common biomes (grassy plateau, kelp forest, dunes, etc) then you could programmatically and semi-randomly fit in a dozen custom-designed big 'points of interest' areas (craters, smokers areas, floating islands areas, cave systems, abysmal trenches, shroom forests etc). POI won't overlap, their positioning will be different every game, you can create more of them easily and they will fit the seabed well. That'd drastically improve replayability and enhancing the exploration experience.
Base crafting would only be replayable if team implements a number of very basic construction archetypes (wall block, windows of different forms, electric cables, lightning, hatch, decompressor, switches, etc) and then add a module designer. Player would then first define blueprints for modules he'd like to build and then build those modules combining into a base. You get an explosion of possibilities. Not seabases can be built that way but also resource extractors (see the note on economics above).
Finally. Hunting and fauna / flora collecting. DNA experiments is a key. Sequencing new genomes should result in drastically changing sea creatures properties and appearance. Most experiments would fail with unsustainable life forms, some would give impressive results having for instance high food yield species, intelligence for being used as companions and guardians. Some injected genomes would make companions luminescent, swim quickly, grow their teeth etc.
For hunting to work fish must have different abilities, behaviour and strategies. Some fish are fast, some turn quickly, others compensate their slow speed by using a protective symbiosis with other dangerous lifeforms, some are poisenous, etc. Some swim away as fast as they can while others seek shelter. Some fish rely on swarm protection. Predators don't just eat fish, but use strategies. The sand shark lures and only strikes when the prey is near. So much possibilities ...
Unfortunately the game hasn't much in this early state. Most fish just swim away and small predators attack even the seamoth. The sandshark doesn't wait for prey and reveals itself. The other predator hunts metal and eats fish if they get close. No predator is able to wander around much right now. Sonar sound that reveals a certain fish type isn't much in use. Fish AI right now isn't there or at a raw minimum.
Without a good behaviour programming there are no hunting games more than "catch the fish and don't get caught yourself". If to many small fish just swim away than hunting is always the same and either too easy or too difficult. I hope they can find a programmer that can bring the fish alive.
I agree the world size of the map does need to be bigger in width as it is getting bigger with depth.
You are right that hunger and thirst should be getting easier to manage by building a water stiller and aquatic farms for food.
I also agree that bigger aquatic life should be able to damage the base and vehicles. I also would like to see an alien merpeople emerge that can be nice leaving you alone or can be hostile depending on the mood of those people and the events taking place.
I don't think the Aurora should decrease in size. Instead I believe that the Aurora since it was built for exploration and research. That you should be able to make a mother sub out of it to help get into the deeper parts of the world and be an actual mobile base in order to explore the world thoroughly. I also believe that there should be more debris and modules spread out from that point of impact. Self charging batteries should be a major upgrade that all things can eventually run on.
But by having a civilization on the planet already. That would create more points of interest as where are they housed, what defenses they have and what is there relationship to the aquatic life. Then where do you as the player fit.
I do agree there has to be more goals. Since by the story we know our own people are following us to that planet. A colony and a space ship dock should be a major goal and a beacon to bring them to that place. If the merpeople have a defensive weapon that doesn't allow them to land or come in range of the planet. That is another goal for the player to defuse in order for that to take place. To obtain rare, common and unique aquatic life should also be another goal. Every part of the progression should also be a goal for the player to accomplish. Even to gather so much of a certain resource, upgrade so many times for this or that. Length of survival can even be a goal but it must also be progressive and keep interest through that progression.
Weather is a must, rain, fog, tidal waves, water spouts, whirlpools, strong underwater currents should all be factors in the game.
We need some mining equipment like drills that can automatically drill down in areas and give and store resources.
It would be cool to have a 3D holomap being made while you explore so that way you can see the width as well as the depth of your exploration. It could also make note of what resources you find where so that it would make it easier for you to extract them. Also giving note of what aquatic life you might find in those areas.
I'm sure more content is being made for seabases. I would like to see outside lights that can be drop and placed either on the sea floor or on the base.
Not that interested in multiplayer but co-op might be okay once the map is enlarged by depth and width. Hope the Exosuit looks better once they are done with it.
Though I admit this is easier said than done, some mulling about the topic will definitely produce some good ideas. One thing I've always personal wanted in Subnautica (that I know I'll never get) would be a creature creation station similar to that of Spore, with players being able to create their own custom creature via the DNA of found creatures (basically, a simple slap-on parts creature).
*sigh* I can dream, can't I?
Now THAT is an awesome idea! Of course, for the starters it can be simpler than Spore, more automated, but still, this one comment made me make an account here just to say that I LOVE this idea, the freedom of possibilities, making our own fauna that the game would adopt afterwards. Also the intelligence of the new creatures also would vary regarding of the combinations of DNA.
Of course, before that happens, more general things are needed as already pointed out, like farms, greater variety of items/furniture for base, or more cooking options. Different weather would be nice, but alien civilization forms can definitely wait, for that would be a major project to make it happen, and should be done when more easier things, but as essential, have been done.
To have the rescue mission would definitely make things more fun/interesting and a goal is definitely needed, but regarding more new/rare resources, well there are already quite a few of them not being used, like mercury or aluminium oxide
So what can be done is that you can make new materials from what you already have, but it takes great amounts of it, for it has to be refined to perfection. For example, gold, to get one 24k piece you need like 10-15 pieces of gold, and then to get an advanced and rare material it must be combined with 2-3 other materials that has been refined the same way, like refined uranium, or acid extract from a certain plant. A big bonus for this idea is that no new materials has to be made up in the world itself, and would be much easier and faster to add to the gaming world.
Beacon or probe could be send pictures on Cyclop or/and base Screen ... to observe creature/ressources respawn
More Science (like in KerbalSpaceProgram) .... example ... make scientifics observation in several biomes to discover some new things ...
More Specific room and machine ... to devellop a more nice and useful SubaquaBase ... communcation room, laboratory, small factory, warehouse .... maybe a network system to send ressources automatically to a base or a sub
and maybe be add DNA experiments ... to clone player himself and create a new cicilisation on the planet
Its juste some ideas but i love this game and i'm sure that some nice things can be made
(sorry for my bas english)
BullV
because my idea to make it a 100h game would give it a storytelling mission for our character to explore or try to colonize the 10 strangest planets in space (these are actually real-life planets)
link: http://thoughty2.com/p/3/10-strangest-planets-in-space/
with this being the 9th planet on the list(in the video)
but as introduced he crashed so trying to find/rescue the crew and repair his ship afterwards with the crew and then colonise the planet then goes on towards the other 9 planets.
And thats why these planetmaps would be perfectly big enough since u got 10 in total to explore wich make it alot of content.
Also the core elements are already there: they are colonizing, have a workbench to adjust different equipments and our aqua planet is also an actually real-life 100% aqua planet also in the list of these 10 so the first one they're already building on.
And it would give the game a lot of interesting and somewhat learnable content.
and you will have your wish of a 100h+ game perhaps more if u consider the big size of this first planet already is and do that x10 :P
Grtz Oxraider