What I would like in Subnautica
Amazonasmann
Germany Join Date: 2016-03-24 Member: 214760Members
Germany Join Date: 2016-03-24 Member: 214760Members
Hi,
I love Subnautica. I played Natural Selection 2 for several hundred hours, and it really pissed me off when Unknown World announced that the development would be outsourced to continue delevopment on Subnautica. However, some weeks ago I saw a video about the farming update and thought I would give it a try. Best decision ever. I am a Software Developer myself and program games for fun and this all is my personal opinion, with hopes I give someone inspiration to improve the game.
After about 20 hours of playtime I have EVERYTHING. A fully upgraded Cyclops with nearly endless power cells in it. My base looks awesome, has 10 floors and I have multiple smaller bases with moonpools. It is sad that I have literally nothing more to do in this game, except starting from anew and do the exact same thing again. One of the biggest problems is the resource respawn. I searched a lot and found out that there is none. Not even the fish? I mean, if you build an aquarium they breed like rabbits, but in the world they do not reproduce? Why does Quartz or Lime Stones etc. not respawn? Even if you want it to be "realistic", there are so many elements that are just not realistic so that the respawn would be the smallest problem. I wanted to build my base completely covered in glass, just to find out that I simply can't because there is not enough Quarth around. I have my main base near the ship between a Kelp Forest and Save Shores, the best place in my Opinion. I drained my environment from nearly all resources and then continued in the grand reef, until it was empty.
This is my main problem: It is not possible to play Subnautica "endless". My personal problem is not that there is not too much to discover, it is just that building a base that covers the whole map is not possible. Also there is just one room available to build. And that is the multipurpose room. Why not make a room that automatically "grows" like the pipes, so you can make very very big rooms? You could also add "resources collectors" that harvest resources like copper or titanium automatically. Another thing would be to have something like "smelters" in the base, where you put in raw resources and get processed stuff.
When I bought the game, I thought the world is procedurally generated like in Minecraft. It turned out that it wasn't like this and I was disappointed. After I played a few hours, I thought "ok, this is not even bad". I think it is totally ok not to be procedurally generated, because you want some stuff to be discovered, like the big mushroom tree. So a possible thing would be to make "the void" procedurally generated. So you have a big map in the middle, which is always the same, but around this is a procedurally generated world with all the biomes you implemented.
At this point in time, Subnautica is UNIQUE. It provides a one of a kind atmosphere, tackling everyones fear of the endless dark water and what is below you. The sounds and the atmosphere is sometimes really really frightening, but you have to go there because you need something. You should really take advantage of your game, as long as it is one of a kind. There are so so so many survival games, because they are really popular, and I think that Subnautica is actually at the very top. At least for a few hours of playtime.
On your current roadmap there is nothing that really gets to me. You will add new biomes and creatures: I grab my Seamoth, look over hundreds of hours of development within 5 minutes and maybe never go back. There are some more fundamentally things that need to be done first, make the replayability endless with very less effort. I also saw a news post that there might never be a multiplayer, I was very sad because I wanted to play this game with my girlfriend. It would have been awesome. But I understand that it takes a lot of time. However, you would be surprised how many people do not buy Subnautica because it is singleplayer only. TBH, if I see a game in steam that is singleplayer only, I probably won't buy it. Even if it looks super awesome.
Farming upgrade was cool, but one single hanging fruit tree is enough to keep you alive forever. Put it in the cyclops and you have endless water/food wherever you go. Despite that, the farming upgrade is really pointless. I think it was a lot of development time, but the only useful thing that came out is the hanging fruit tree. Why farm something else?
Want plants for the looks of your base? Too bad, there is only the multipurpose room. Please add a buildable room that expands like the corridoors ... please ... make us build bigger bases. And make it so that resources respawn..especially Quartz.
Those are just my thoughts and I wanted to share them with someone, all because I love this game so much. I would love to hear your opinion about this.
I love Subnautica. I played Natural Selection 2 for several hundred hours, and it really pissed me off when Unknown World announced that the development would be outsourced to continue delevopment on Subnautica. However, some weeks ago I saw a video about the farming update and thought I would give it a try. Best decision ever. I am a Software Developer myself and program games for fun and this all is my personal opinion, with hopes I give someone inspiration to improve the game.
After about 20 hours of playtime I have EVERYTHING. A fully upgraded Cyclops with nearly endless power cells in it. My base looks awesome, has 10 floors and I have multiple smaller bases with moonpools. It is sad that I have literally nothing more to do in this game, except starting from anew and do the exact same thing again. One of the biggest problems is the resource respawn. I searched a lot and found out that there is none. Not even the fish? I mean, if you build an aquarium they breed like rabbits, but in the world they do not reproduce? Why does Quartz or Lime Stones etc. not respawn? Even if you want it to be "realistic", there are so many elements that are just not realistic so that the respawn would be the smallest problem. I wanted to build my base completely covered in glass, just to find out that I simply can't because there is not enough Quarth around. I have my main base near the ship between a Kelp Forest and Save Shores, the best place in my Opinion. I drained my environment from nearly all resources and then continued in the grand reef, until it was empty.
This is my main problem: It is not possible to play Subnautica "endless". My personal problem is not that there is not too much to discover, it is just that building a base that covers the whole map is not possible. Also there is just one room available to build. And that is the multipurpose room. Why not make a room that automatically "grows" like the pipes, so you can make very very big rooms? You could also add "resources collectors" that harvest resources like copper or titanium automatically. Another thing would be to have something like "smelters" in the base, where you put in raw resources and get processed stuff.
When I bought the game, I thought the world is procedurally generated like in Minecraft. It turned out that it wasn't like this and I was disappointed. After I played a few hours, I thought "ok, this is not even bad". I think it is totally ok not to be procedurally generated, because you want some stuff to be discovered, like the big mushroom tree. So a possible thing would be to make "the void" procedurally generated. So you have a big map in the middle, which is always the same, but around this is a procedurally generated world with all the biomes you implemented.
At this point in time, Subnautica is UNIQUE. It provides a one of a kind atmosphere, tackling everyones fear of the endless dark water and what is below you. The sounds and the atmosphere is sometimes really really frightening, but you have to go there because you need something. You should really take advantage of your game, as long as it is one of a kind. There are so so so many survival games, because they are really popular, and I think that Subnautica is actually at the very top. At least for a few hours of playtime.
On your current roadmap there is nothing that really gets to me. You will add new biomes and creatures: I grab my Seamoth, look over hundreds of hours of development within 5 minutes and maybe never go back. There are some more fundamentally things that need to be done first, make the replayability endless with very less effort. I also saw a news post that there might never be a multiplayer, I was very sad because I wanted to play this game with my girlfriend. It would have been awesome. But I understand that it takes a lot of time. However, you would be surprised how many people do not buy Subnautica because it is singleplayer only. TBH, if I see a game in steam that is singleplayer only, I probably won't buy it. Even if it looks super awesome.
Farming upgrade was cool, but one single hanging fruit tree is enough to keep you alive forever. Put it in the cyclops and you have endless water/food wherever you go. Despite that, the farming upgrade is really pointless. I think it was a lot of development time, but the only useful thing that came out is the hanging fruit tree. Why farm something else?
Want plants for the looks of your base? Too bad, there is only the multipurpose room. Please add a buildable room that expands like the corridoors ... please ... make us build bigger bases. And make it so that resources respawn..especially Quartz.
Those are just my thoughts and I wanted to share them with someone, all because I love this game so much. I would love to hear your opinion about this.
Comments
Things are changing fast. I had many the same thoughts you have. I would think and hope resources would respawn, even if it is a long long time it would be nice.
But this is another point, why find the nuclear reactor for example? 4 Solars are enough to power everything.
I do agree the hanging fruit is OP, but they just got added in and I expect some serious fine tuning at some point. They're just trying to get things in at the moment. On their roadmap they have an upcoming month dedicating to polishing and fine tuning that should address stuff like that.
In the experimental builds they've already added a fish respawning mechanic. I was quite happy with that change, because things would just go dead once the predators killed everything. I'd suggest checking out the experimental build once they fix the broken swimming in current new games. It'll give you a good look at what's coming and may assuage some of your concerns.
Just don't load your current save if you plan to go back to stable. You'll break the save. Happy diving!
Another thing that came to my mind is, how easy it is to basically kill all fauna in the kelp forest. I remember when I started building my base, I was afraid of all the stalkers around me. I was wondering why there is not a single stalker anymore..and now I know: because I fed some stalkers and they killed each other. Now I do not have a single stalker in the entire kelp forest anymore. No chance that there will be stalkers here once again..this makes me sad.
I released 2 near the hatch to my base, and I was hunted for DAYS. lol
I love the nuclear power, I suspect it will be hard to find in the end.
One ore and bottle of water gets you 1000 units of power.
Amazonasman I play hardcore mostly and I am afraid of the Stalkers, killed a few with just the knife, in a new start game, that would hanged out near my base and if I went outside at night I would get buzzed or bitten.
I have found that I can dodge out of the way of the bite, if I see it coming, and stab them in the side.
Bleeders also kill the stalkers, sadly. I make it my mission to kill bleeders on sight. My last new game I saw packs of four terrorizing the kelp forests. :c
I had to fight a pack of 6 or 8 that was chasing a peeper fish, it was funny to watch, but I had to just save the peeper. Lost a lot of health. Now if I am in a cave and see one I kill it before I forget it is there and them bites me when I am not expecting.
i hope they will add mining in the future the aurora was a mining vessel were is the mining gear ?
And yes, mining gear would be great. Like I mentioned in my post, some sort of resource harvesting would be nice. This would resolve the "respawn" problem aswell.
Story? Ooh, juicy!
they have worked on them so maybe
elevator
elevator concept
I saw a video where some guy creates minecraft with unity engine in ~72 hours. Why not give us a mode that has a random generated map? If you want to develop a story, fine. Just do it with the "normal" mode. Add an "endless" mode where the map is generated. I don't really see a problem with that, since the only technology you can find is in the ship + biomes. Each biome has its own fragments and they are not placed by hand...