[Suggestion] Day / Night improvements
SpacedInvader
Join Date: 2016-01-08 Member: 211083Members
Join Date: 2016-01-08 Member: 211083Members
So far I've found the day / night cycle to be more of an annoyance rather than a real change to environmental conditions. They both pass just too quickly. The days are short enough that you can't really do much exploring in the light before it passes, and the nights aren't long enough or dangerous enough to force a player weigh the odds of continuing to work at night against the delay incurred by waiting for the next day cycle.
My suggestion to improve the situation breaks into two parts:
1: Double the length of the day / night cycle and make the night even a little darker than it is now
2: Tweak the games predators to become even more active and more willing to cross biome boundaries at night
I feel that the net result of these changes would be to make days more useful, while at the same time making nights a real issue to contend with. A player would have to ask themselves if they should wait until dawn, or risk going out into the darkness and running into something really nasty.
My suggestion to improve the situation breaks into two parts:
1: Double the length of the day / night cycle and make the night even a little darker than it is now
2: Tweak the games predators to become even more active and more willing to cross biome boundaries at night
I feel that the net result of these changes would be to make days more useful, while at the same time making nights a real issue to contend with. A player would have to ask themselves if they should wait until dawn, or risk going out into the darkness and running into something really nasty.
Comments
As far as the length of the cycle, it does seem like they compressed it in the current experimental build compared to stable. Definitely needs some lengthening. As far as lighting, it feels fine to me. When you're down deeper, or in a cave, there's true darkness.
Never done a night dive. The question to ask is what serves the gameplay best. Between the amount of bioluminescent critters, and the need to see somewhat, the current state feels fine. If we were going realistic, even during the day, it would get a lot darker, a lot shallower, than it does here. As it stands it's only above 100 metres that you can really see at all at night (and we do have that enormous glowing planet throwing light down).
Found some interesting effects, though. If you switch off the dive torch and allow your eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, try waving your hands around in the water. Bio-luminescent plankton. There's a species of tiny amphipod known as a 'caprellid' that puts on a fairly spectacular show. Like conjuring blue fire before your eyes.
After a while, you might notice other life forms adding their own lights to the show. It's pretty cool.
That sounds like it would be pretty cool... now, if we could only replicate that experience to some extent at night in the game...
I agree with Bugzapper. It's pitch black when diving at night (excluding bioluminescent plankton when you wave your hands around) even at shallow depths. It can be pretty tense, you don't want to lose sight of your buddy. Also an interesting aspect of night diving is sometimes not being able to know which ways is up -- it's all black. So you if you ever lose orientation you should follow your bubbles as they always go up
I agree on the skybox... plus that moon (or are we the moon?) panning around the horizon seems a little odd. Yes, there is a conceivable orbit that could lead to a view like that (north pole pointing toward the planet and we are at a reasonably high latitude), but I'm not sure it would be stable over the long term (i.e. long enough for the amount of life on this planet to develop). Instead, they really need to separate the moon from the rest of the sky and have it revolving at an angle so it rises and sets just like the sun, though maybe in a different plane.
On topic though, you might try opening the console and entering "DAYNIGHTSPEED 0.5" which should give you ~20min days and nights rather than the current ~10min ones. It makes a big difference in the feel for both.
Edit: Another side effect of longer cycles would be longer periods of nutrition. Not that bad imo.
EDIT: Maybe instead of giving a great benefit, sleep could be a net cost. Instead of pausing / reducing food and water, it could consume them at double rate while also healing you completely (or maybe at least 50% of the bar). This would mean you'd have to have a decent supply of food an water to be able to effectively use the bed, which isn't hard to accomplish, I know, but it would mean early game use would be difficult, while late game use, which would be less of an issue anyway, would be easier.
Well, you cannot force a player to 'face the night' if he doesn't want to. What was gained if you deny the possibility to sleep when someone decides to stay at home until the morning anyways? That's not rational. Besides, there are some good reasons to go out at night. I think this should be up to the player, what btw really makes sense in view of an open world game.
This, for sure. If a player isn't going to work outside at night, then refusing them the option of fast forwarding through it isn't going to make them change that position. I personally have a rule against it and as a result, I plop down on a bench, alt-tab (there is a way to do it that keeps time running), and then work on another screen until morning. This is mostly for role playing reasons as night is currently only slightly dangerous compared to day, but if its made much more dangerous by upping predator activity at night, then there would be a real reason to stay in through the dark hours. On the other hand, if you're out and about when night falls, that can (and should) present you with some real challenges to stay safe and alive, which is where night time would really shine as being a core gameplay component.
going out at night does not equal death, and if you dare to, you can spend the night time for traveling in the cyclops, planting beacons, building etc. and therefore get more done in a smaller time span... "those players" who are too afraid of the dark, and want a "skip" button implemented, will basically force every other player to use this tool as well, because NOT using it, would mean you're basically handicapping yourself, like in an MMORPG with a certain feature everyone uses, but is very unpopular amongst the playerbase, yet forces everyone to use it, because not doing so would mean you're gimping yourself... a prime example of this type of shit is WoW's "Garrison".. sure you can "not" use it if you don't want to, but by not using it, you will suffer extreme resource insufficiency compared to everyone else who DOES use it.
catch my drift?
a "skip night" button is, and will remain a terrible idea, and i wholeheartedly hope they won't implement one, ever.. even derivivties of the idea are going to be bad, period.
It's like Bethesda had decided to say: Well, if the player is stupid enough to arrive in the middle of the night, it's his own fault. So let these s*ckers wait until 8 in the morning to trade their stuff.
That's idle. It's an open world game and the 'when and why' should be up to the player.
You talk about this game as if its going to be a competitive multiplayer game, but must have missed the multiple statements by the Devs that multiplayer is not on the table for the current release, and may never exist. As a single player game, there is no reason to play any other way than that of your own choosing. Don't want to skip nights? Then don't. Want to work all day and all night? Go for it. Want to have the option to skip through the night? Sure thing. Any and all of these choices only affect your experience and have absolutely no bearing on anyone else's gameplay. If you work day and night to complete your gaming goals, all that will mean is that you reach them sooner than someone who chose to wait out the nights, but it will be a lonely celebration because, at best, you'll only get to share it through second hand media (videos, screenshots, etc).
I also think that the survival aspects of the game leave a lot to be desired, and that is part of the reason I stay inside at night. I want there to be real danger in poking around after dark... The kind of danger that would have every player huddling in their escape pod for the first 10 days before they've managed to find the blueprints for base parts and make a small living space (eventually we'll have to find even basic blueprints like these). Even with that in mind, I still think a sleep mechanism would be a good addition to the game... After all, if the day / night cycle is increased significantly and the nighttime danger along with it, that would mean that a player would be forced to sit and wait in their base for half of their gaming experience, sometimes spanning days or more of actual game time, which just wouldn't be fun.
This game is much closer to minecraft than to WoW.
What if I don't want to have the option to skip through the night? Let me demonstrate why it's up to the game to make this decision. Hardcore mode. Why is it even there if we can simply choose to delete the game after dying? Because we have an inherent, evolutionary drive towards laziness. All inventions are made to make problems solve themselves. If I can sleep the night, then I will, it's as simple as that. A game provides restrictions upon how lazy we can get, that's why it's a game and not a movie. I prefer to have my mettle tested, which is the general idea behind survival games. Put it another way, say I have an unlimited supply of first aid and can use it at any time with no restrictions by pressing 'h'. Everyone is going to use it when they're about to die. It completely takes the adrenaline rush out of the game and will make you numb to the whole concept of danger. Then there's the topic of synthetic happiness. Have a watch of this: https://ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy
What is the point of forcing the player to travel back to their base as night approaches, only to get in, click on the bed, get out and go back to their business? This is what happens in minecraft (except the fact that you can go mining instead which breaks up the tedium), and it's what you and everyone else will do in subnautica as well.
The only way I can see this working is if sleeping simply speeds time up by a factor, and you still drain the hunger and thirst bars; otherwise it's just going to ruin the experience for half the community. If this were implemented I'd also recommend one additional thing: Sleeping stops speeding up time when dawn breaks. This gives the player an opportunity to take a couple minutes break and get a drink or something, without having to worry about taking too long. And for those who wish to wait the night out, they'll have a couple minutes to plan ahead. Perhaps make reading the data bank on the PDA an option, so they can do some reading during this period.
Right. The player should do what ever he likes and can. If someone's happy with a smart ingame suicide, well why not, he is able to do so. So please .... let those sleep who like to.
PS: It doesn't mean that nights aren't useful as well. Want to go for quartz in the shallows? Damn, wait for the night. And if some other nighttime improvements would be introduced, the question of sleep wasn't any tiresome subject.
Sleep is one of the hardest things to simulate in a game. In real life it doesn't flash by in a moment, for a character like this sleep is going to be rough every single night. Now I'm not saying forced insomnia, I'm just saying it can't be a skip action, that won't work.
On the contrary, if night-time is much worse than daytime and is so easy to skip, they basically are forcing you to. It's player psychology. You don't dive into a pool of sh*t if there's a bridge across it, no matter what frame of mind you're in.
"The only way I can see this working is if sleeping simply speeds time up by a factor, and you still drain the hunger and thirst bars."
Your thoughts on the above? If you can come up with another way of doing it, I'm all ears.
I'm not sure if I get you right. You mean sleep is harder to simulate than hunger or thirst? Well, I think we're just used to this acceptable break from reality that a character simply dies at a certain level and doesn't become weak before. To clarify that, I may use your own words: In real life it doesn't flash by in a moment. So where's the difference?
But I see your point. Skipping nights together with their challenges isn't very sporty ... but no subject at all if there would be more benefits during nighttime and in further consequence some damn good reasons to sleep until the evening. Free time management in a free game, why not?
Interact with bed, screen fades to black over 2-3 seconds.
Timer comes up in the middle of the screen counting down 30 seconds, while a "screensaver" like window fades in of fish swimming about in the water. (A dream)
Hunger and thirst deplete fairly rapidly but not as fast as the equivalent of being awake and health regenerates rapidly in proportion.
After the timer fades or if hunger/thirst get to a certain low threshold the "screensaver" fades to black and the screen returns, fuzzy at first then back to normal.
It would skip forward 6-8 hours and consume food and water like you were sitting on a bench but heal more than usual.
The player could even get a small movement buff for a while after waking up.
That way sleeping would be somewhat of an inconvenience to the player IRL having to wait but would provide in game benefits as well.
You could say 30 seconds represents 6-8 hours, but it would have to skip time continuously. Otherwise, if the player does this, then remembers he wanted to do one last thing before tomorrow, he'll have to wait until the morning or have wasted their time.
Otherwise I'm all for it.