The Dreaded Respawn Issue
EmperorDragon
Join Date: 2016-07-13 Member: 220175Members
Join Date: 2016-07-13 Member: 220175Members
I have seen many conflicting reports regarding this longstanding issue, some people say resources still don't respawn whist others say that the issue appears to have been fixed by recent updates when respawning fauna was fixed. I myself still have to travel further and wider to get a bit of resources, eventually being forced to just use console cheats which kills the game's lasting appeal in turn.
It clearly seems to me that resources still don't respawn or regenerate, I do not know if this is due to current development stage limitations or a tragic oversight but, this is of upmost priority for a game of this type. The whole idea behind open world freeroam gameplay is to simulate a living world capable of sustaining itself throughout the course of potentially limitless hours of gameplay. Once you limit the number of flora, fauna and natural resources in the game world, you kill the entire purpose of open world gameplay. It forces the gameplay experience towards a linear fashion, the player "clears an area" and move on to the next until all areas are cleared, just like ordinary linear-style games. No matter how long it takes to clear the map, it is still an effective "time limit", it stays in the back of a player's mind that once the map is cleared and the game "beaten", there will be no choice but to either restart or quit. And even if the player can still revisit areas to roam and explore, there is no incentive to do so if there is nothing to encounter/harvest/mine etc. There is also no purpose for rare resources in the game because everything eventually becomes a rare resource.
I guess it will be fixed eventually but, many devs actually make silly design mistakes like this intentionally for some mind-boggling reason so we cannot be sure. I also don't get the reason behind the scanning station if resources remain limited, it's not really worth constructing, it is rendered completely pointless after the first or second resource collection trip because there's nothing for it to scan anymore.
Maybe the devs can give some clarification on this matter once and for all?
It clearly seems to me that resources still don't respawn or regenerate, I do not know if this is due to current development stage limitations or a tragic oversight but, this is of upmost priority for a game of this type. The whole idea behind open world freeroam gameplay is to simulate a living world capable of sustaining itself throughout the course of potentially limitless hours of gameplay. Once you limit the number of flora, fauna and natural resources in the game world, you kill the entire purpose of open world gameplay. It forces the gameplay experience towards a linear fashion, the player "clears an area" and move on to the next until all areas are cleared, just like ordinary linear-style games. No matter how long it takes to clear the map, it is still an effective "time limit", it stays in the back of a player's mind that once the map is cleared and the game "beaten", there will be no choice but to either restart or quit. And even if the player can still revisit areas to roam and explore, there is no incentive to do so if there is nothing to encounter/harvest/mine etc. There is also no purpose for rare resources in the game because everything eventually becomes a rare resource.
I guess it will be fixed eventually but, many devs actually make silly design mistakes like this intentionally for some mind-boggling reason so we cannot be sure. I also don't get the reason behind the scanning station if resources remain limited, it's not really worth constructing, it is rendered completely pointless after the first or second resource collection trip because there's nothing for it to scan anymore.
Maybe the devs can give some clarification on this matter once and for all?
Comments
The scanner room does seem more like a novelty than anything else at this point, though its stock may rise as development continues.
The whole point is that an open world in a game should be able to sustain itself, to be constantly dynamic and interactive. You do not clear it out like linear games, there is no "endgame" and you do not "beat" the game. The lifespan of the game is determined entirely by the player, whether you burn out after 50 hours or continue playing till 500.
I played Skyrim for 388 hours, if nothing respawned that number would have been easily cut down to 150 at least, considering my admittedly violent nature on that game.
This game is absolutely brilliant, it just need that boost in lasting appeal.
As for mineral deposits, I don't believe they do, but there's enough in the game that you don't need them to. And if they did, it would cut down significantly the amount of time you need to spend seeking resources, which is a pretty big part of the game. Even in Skyrim, if you mine an ore vein it takes months of in-game time for it to regenerate. I've played a bordering-on-unhealthy amount of Skyrim myself, and I've re-used veins only very very rarely.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/143536/desolation-and-respawning
Titanium, copper, and lead seems to be found in limestone deposits. While I don't know what kind of rock is under the sand on the subnautica world in the real world limestone makes up huge shelfs (Limestone makes up the Florida Platform, which is ~200 miles wide in some places, for example) that would require a bit of digging to get to, but would be a near limitless resource for a single individual.
Quartz is found in two places: first deep inside the planet which may be thrown up and out via seismic activity (perhaps those geysers found about can respawn quartz near them periodically?) and in some areas of the real world the sand is primarily quartz. The presence of corals and fish that grind them (boomarangs) might mean the sand in subnautica may be primarily ground corals (like Key West sand) , but it may also have a high quartz content (the rest of Florida's beaches) so perhaps some way to turn sand into quartz...?
I don't think either is out of the question given the level of technology the player has the ability to craft. Whether or not players should be able to do such things is another question entirely.
@Ralij is right about his statement, that some sand is made up of a huge percentage of quartz. In Germany we call it Quartz sand...and depending on the "quarry" where it's from, it can be almost white. I am not 100% sure but I think you can say the brighter the sand the more Quartz is in it.
In the earlier days of Subnautica they did use Sand to craft Glass like in the real world. I can't remember to be honest if we could also make Quartz out of Sand back then. Another option to make respawning at least a little bit more realistic is by introducing meteors into the game. They could hold various metals and or minerals and you could vary their size and of course spot where they come down. They could get a higher "drop chance" so to speak in zones where you already gathered all/most of the natural resources. To compensate that fact.
The Exosuit is going to have a "drill arm" option afaik. Because a drill arm would be slighty overkill if you would just break open sand or lime stones with it, like we can even do by hand right now, I'm rather sure that some kind of mining is on the way. Possibly by finding "mining spots" and using the drill arm on them you can gather the resources. It would be depletable but it's resources would respawn after time.
Of course the time spent seeking resources won't be cut down if resources respawn, it will actually be quite the opposite, notice how I mentioned and explained lifespan and lasting appeal before? If resources respawned or regenerated it will actually provide incentives for the player to travel around to revisit biomes and/or set up multiple bases with scanning stations at various locations where various resources are found. I wanted to build a magnetite resource base inside a jelly mushroom cave but, after I noticed that none of the resources respawn, there is no point in building the base anymore since most of the magnetite has been cleared out already anyway. Besides, I would not want to spend my limited resources building a base that only has a temporary use, I can recycle the base afterwards but still. Different resources are found in different biomes so, you will already travel between different biomes a lot more if there are always resources to be collected.
Remember that resources also don't have to respawn at the exact same place you found it before, there can be some randomness to it like in other open world games, or some dynamism can be added as @Ralij explained.
As for Skyrim, I know it is off topic but I just love that game. Things in Skyrim doesn't take that long to respawn, it was 30 days for dungeons and 10 days for exterior areas, this was reduced to 20 days and 7 days in later updates (I could be off with the exact numbers). The trick was to not revisit areas until they respawn, otherwise the timer gets reset (if you revisit an area on day 19, it will take another 20 days to respawn instead of only one more day). Also, it is impossible to master blacksmithing and enchanting if you mined ore veins only once, I frequented several mines and know Blackreach like the back of my hand from all the times I revisited it to mine geode veins for soul gems. I have also taken up blacksmithing as a profession and a source of income because the amount of weapons and armour I can create is not limited in number, thanks to respawning ore veins.
@EnglishInfidel Sorry I did not notice your thread before, I browse on my mobile which has seen better days. Things like opening large webpages, rating a post or using drop-down menus has a tendency to crash the browser. I will move the discussion over to that thread nonetheless.
In fact, I'd love to see bases and vehicles become much more resource intensive and plants/fish growing much, much slower to create a choice and consequence scenario when deciding on what to build.
I believe this game just needs a bunch of sliders of how quickly resources respawn and how far away. There's a few having your opinion, but also a lot having the exact opposite.
I mean, exploring for me is fun, going places is fun. Being forced there for basic resources is not, for me. exploring =/= going far to grind.
I believe not having stuff respawn actually reduces the survival feel. Being forced to hunt for resources you have collected plenty of, with no risk of bad things. I wouldn't even consider it exploring: you need to look for the leftover nodes instead of the beautiful environment and everything else.
I always end up with more resources than I know what to do with, lockers and lockers filled with copper and salt and all sorts of stuff. Gold in particular.
What they need to do is rebalance the resources that are already there.
As an example, we don't need so many magnetite/gold nodes. I could fill an entire room of lockers with gold. Turn 90% of them into quartz as it's always needed and make magnetite very rare.
Having said that, I do think they should respawn eventually, because you know, it's a game, and quartz can look pretty.
You should see this one then, living glass
Glass sponce