I'm trying very hard to understand the root of your complaints with the game. As near as I can figure, it boils down to three points:
1. The predators, aside from reapers, quickly become more of an irritating nuisance than a threat even without the 'moth. They don't enhance the atmosphere of the game.
-I agree here. I think Stalkers, and the *sharks don't add much to the game once you get past the initial fear of "That big thing can bite me". They could probably use some attention from the devs and for all I know there are already plans in place.
2. Inventory management is a pain.
-I'm torn here. I like the inventory cost of carrying around tons of gear. It encourages you to make a compromise between being decked out in air tanks and rocking a seaglide vs. having lots of carrying capacity when you're going out to scavenge. I also think it makes getting the cyclops that much sweeter. You can finally start taking serious storage with you when you go out for long treks. That said, the inventory limitation can feel awfully burdensome during base building or moving resources between storage elements. I think people would be open to a good plan to alleviate inventory limitations for things like base building if it maintains the gameplay choices introduced by finite carrying capacity.
3. Certain fragments are too hard to find.
-If I understand correctly, this amounts to the following: A new player exploring more or less at random could completely fail to find critical schematics. I think this is a legitimate concern. Not everyone wants to consult a wiki and I think that relying on external resources is in general a poor design choice. That said, I think care must be taken to ensure that not everything is handed to the player too quickly. Maybe additional signals that point players to where things like the moth, vehicle bay, and cyclops parts can be found should be given out after a certain number of days pass as a sort of fail-safe to prevent people from missing important items for too long.
Finally, I get that you feel strongly about your opinions, but I think a less aggressive approach would serve you well here. This community isn't a static entity and the group that rates convenience as less important than some other aspects of gameplay just took the short end of a rather polarizing debate. Having someone come in and push for additional convenience probably feels like salt in the wound. In short, take it easy. We all want this to be the best game it can be.
Now I need to get back to work, my lunch break is already running long.
I see partly the same problem. Everyone who plays now, knows its early acess and development in work.
In my opinion this game must change in many aspects to sell after the release of the version 1.0 and its only four months to the planed release (Trello timeline).
For hardcore survival players every information is a crap, but for casual players it is very importent and only with hardcore players the chances to make any profit are not good.
Try to think as a new player:
After the landing of the escape pod you go out and there is a very high chance to die several times in the first five minutes and you don't really know why. Then you realise that you has nothing to defend, you don't know where are the parts you need to build anything, you have no ingame map, must deal with many predators in large numbers etc. And then a bad comment appears on Steam.
And if you need a wiki to survive, than the game is not good. In my opinion an new player must be able to play without a wiki, youtube let's play or a forum.
I see partly the same problem. Everyone who plays now, knows its early acess and development in work.
In my opinion this game must change in many aspects to sell after the release of the version 1.0 and its only four months to the planed release (Trello timeline).
For hardcore survival players every information is a crap, but for casual players it is very importent and only with hardcore players the chances to make any profit are not good.
Try to think as a new player:
After the landing of the escape pod you go out and there is a very high chance to die several times in the first five minutes and you don't really know why. Then you realise that you has nothing to defend, you don't know where are the parts you need to build anything, you have no ingame map, must deal with many predators in large numbers etc. And then a bad comment appears on Steam.
And if you need a wiki to survive, than the game is not good. In my opinion an new player must be able to play without a wiki, youtube let's play or a forum.
Im no hardcore player and i did die several times in the beginning. Still i love this game. Maybe its,because im a fan of dark souls, but it took me exactly one death by stalkers in order to realize how to avoid and laugh at them. I crafted a knife for making creepvinesamples, not attacking stalkers.
Same goes for Sandsharks. The point of a tutorial is currently discussed under us players and even saying i dont need it, im not against a small tutorial telling new players a few ropes how to survive their first 10 minutes. But it should be skipable for players like me, that especially dont want a tutorial.
And still i dont get for what one would need the wiki, to survive?
No curiousity out there? The urge to explore and if you get eaten, learn from it?
WheeljackChilling in the Grand ReefJoin Date: 2016-03-17Member: 214338Members
I'm going to have to disagree about the Seamoth being unlocked from the start. It just takes too much away from the beginning of the game. I started playing this game several months ago and I can remember how shiny everything was, and how terrified I was whenever I poked my nose into a new biome. I had to be aware of everything around me. I had to blindly pick a direction and hope I'd find what I need. I had a lot of close calls, some lucky breaks, and I found some pretty cool things, too.
The moment I got that Seamoth? Game changer. Nothing scared me anymore. I didn't have to be cautious or on guard. Oh, look at the sand shark bumping into me. Nananana, you can't get me! Biters? Bleeders? Road kill~ Yes, there are things that toss the Seamoth about. Like the Reapers, but even they aren't a threat if you keep an eye on them and dodge their lunge.
I started a new game with the PRAWN update after a three month break from the game. A lot of things have changed from the last version I played. Tech has been moved around, blueprints are gone and have to be scanned now. Recipes have changed. I can't beeline for the Seamoth anymore, and you know what? Floundering around on the new update recaptured all those feelings I had when I started playing. It's great. I once again have to be careful and think about what I'm doing. I have to re-explore to discover where things are and I'm still finding new nook and crannies.
Even with the MP room being gone, I built my first tube base and was actually happier with it than all of my other starter bases. It was small and cramped, yes, but it was the beginning of the game. Most survival games, you always start small and work up to bigger and better things. And when I finally found the MP room? It gave me that sense of progression. I went from small tube base, to a step up into some thing nicer.
That same thing ties back into the seamoth. You go from no fins > fins > seaglide > seamoth > cyclops. Fun fact, before my long break I had never touched a seaglide. I didn't need it. I went from fins to seamoth within the first thirty minutes of the game. I used it to go everywhere. Even the cyclops was little more than an over-sized storage locker. That's a little broken, I think, and I'm happy to see the balancing going on.
I can understand why you're frustrated, or why people may not like it. When I heard the MP room had been taken away from the starting blueprints, I was not happy about it. Then I started my new game and was surprised to find it didn't actually take anything away. There's a saying I'm rather fond of, "less is more'. In taking away the MP room, and seamoth, and all the other changes, I'm getting a lot more out of the experience.
tdlr; I like the direction the devs have decided to take for the game. A lot of the life pod signals you get lead you to the tech you need next. That'll make the beginning a little easier on newer players and is far more immersive than hitting up the wiki or coming to the forums.
The only thing we currently might need for progression to be a bit smoother would be a signal that guides us to the propulsion cannon fragments. I had a hard time getting the cannon which delayed my trip to the aurora for a long time. Once you're in the aurora you have fragments for at least the moth and the suit. A little notification that you need the MVB to build them and we should be good.
Also OP, you're really kinda a dick right now. Might not be the best way to engage in a discussion.
How would it be to be happy about every lil piece of tech you have?
Its a spacefaring Vessel, we can be damn lucky that it even has blueprints for underwaterstuff and not only landbased tech, so we would be forced to explore and scrap what little stuff we can find, without being eaten by the unknown flora and fauna
I think not knowing the MFR and alot of other blueprints adds to the experience of being a shotdown lone survivor, that really can be happy as fuck for being still alive.
The Inventorysystem is exactly fine as it is. I need tons of Titanium for building a fortress of doom, down in 1300M ? Yes, than i HAVE to fucking prepare for its building by either crafting a small tube-only base for lockers or spam the near area with watercrages and fill them with the needed material.
Crafting in my base needs me to think about, what i want to build and fetch the needed material?
Hell yeah, thats the spirit of a fungame for me. Think, than act. Not act and be happy.
That doesnt even correspond to being noobfriendly.
Bought the game not long ago, being a total noob in it, i didnt googled a wiki or anything and still found out how to scan, how to build a seamoth etc etc.
So either im a rare case of a species, thats going to be extinct soon, called the "brainusing noob"
Or you dont put enough faith into the poor noobs.
Even without a guiding hand it should be clear to everyone, that you wont be able to build a seamoth with an indoorfabricator xD
So... Long things short: i cant agree to anything you complain about.
This guy gets it. Games need to stop worrying about being "noob friendly" and start getting noobs to use their own brain for what seems to be the first time in their life in some cases. They'll thank you for it later when they discover the thrill of discovery for themselves.
/thread as far as I'm concerned. We've talked about this enough.
-If I understand correctly, this amounts to the following: A new player exploring more or less at random could completely fail to find critical schematics. I think this is a legitimate concern. Not everyone wants to consult a wiki and I think that relying on external resources is in general a poor design choice. That said, I think care must be taken to ensure that not everything is handed to the player too quickly. Maybe additional signals that point players to where things like the moth, vehicle bay, and cyclops parts can be found should be given out after a certain number of days pass as a sort of fail-safe to prevent people from missing important items for too long.
Given all of the "Where are the <fragmentName> fragments!?" threads we've seen since the Prawn update, I'm wondering whether the game has managed to cross a line in fragment discover-ability. Now that fragments are almost only found in relatively deep wrecks and in much smaller numbers, it's become a lot easier to become stuck in the early game.
As a thought, perhaps the early journeys to life pods should take you past/to/near some important wrecks & fragments.
I started the game about 2 months ago. The beginning was quite hard but that's what I love about this game. Games used to be much harder in the past and the games today are way too easy. Seriously in almost every game today you get leaded, directed to a point in the game that's important.
Subnautica is a survival game where you start with nothing and have to work hard to get good equipment and vehicles. The game is challenging with a beautiful environment and scenery. You have to use your brain, remember areas and ores in different places and you need a strategy in the handling of the ressources.
It's great the way it is. Not too easy and not too hard.
When I started 2 months ago I never needed to use the wiki, youtube let's play or anything else. And I am not a "hardcore player" that's used to games like this. In fact this is only my 2nd survival game. Still I figured it all out by myself and it was very, very rewarding everytime I got further.
Long story short : I completely disagree with every single point of your complaints OP.
I don't think you really understand my point. I'm mostly complaining from a new player perspective, but you guys all seems to forgot your first moments when you were lost in the ocean.
Dear Ornafulsamee,
I know how you feel, but you have to look from a lore/ ingame perspective on it.
Your ship is shot down on an unknown planet, the computer does not know anything of that planet, the protagonist does know nothing of that planet.
So basically you have to find by luck / explore the items / ingredients you need, everything else would be a little strange. I mean you would need a planetary scanner or something like that to find out where the ressources lie.
On the other hand maybe if you are entering a Biome it could give a short summary of the most common ressources to read up. But that is a bit harder to implement.
The other way around seen, the ingame notifications you are looking for are nothing more than the wikipedia entries we have soooo.....
Regarding the names of the Biomes, yes, it would be cool to have an encyclopedia entry with a picture of the Biome and a short summary, but I guess that can be easily done...
And if you need a wiki to survive, than the game is not good. In my opinion an new player must be able to play without a wiki, youtube let's play or a forum.
So you've never played Minecraft? Even to date, there's absolutely no in-game guidance (if you don't use mods) on crafting recipes, where to find resources, or what you should be doing with your time there.
Subnautica already provides in-game info on crafting recipes and has signals, log entries, and other elements that hint at the progression path you should be following. The only thing it lacks is handing out maps where to find resources -- and yet even that does exist in some form, since there's an in-game scanning room you can eventually build (though not completely functional yet).
Granted there are some things that can be improved (such as awareness of important fragments) -- but the devs are working on that, with those same signals and other means. It's just not all done yet, because it's still an early access game.
I really don't understand your argument; it just sounds like you want to dumb things down and hand out stuff even faster than the game already does.
And if you need a wiki to survive, than the game is not good. In my opinion an new player must be able to play without a wiki, youtube let's play or a forum.
So you've never played Minecraft? Even to date, there's absolutely no in-game guidance (if you don't use mods) on crafting recipes, where to find resources, or what you should be doing with your time there.
This is a really great point. Its one of the most popular sandbox games at the moment, and you get ZERO guidance, at least in the PC version.
You do know that the game has not progressed that far from it's been on steam? I mean, it's far, but not THAT FAR.
True everyone has played it new game, but with knowledge of a veteran already in hand. But look around the forums. Did you not see everyone is sharing knowledges, asking questions, even though they are veterans. Fragments' locations are shifted, landscapes changed, after a major patch there is always something new to explore even though it's an area we're so familiar of.
Basics of gameplay. I am going on a limb here and say the word "We" instead of I. We were all beginners, we died to a lot of mechanics (floras and faunas, even bloody oxygen). We tried a lot of things that we "thought" would work. Apparently it does not. And we were not the first to discover it. A lot of the talks has been going on in the forum, yet we wanted to explore and tinker.
This is my personal opinion. The reason why "guide" exist is for a person who get stuck on some point in the game, or it is something irreversible that will take too much toll for the player to start anew. Subnautica? Hell yeah you can deconstruct everything at 100% refund cost without losing a single thing. The only word "stuck" I can think of in this game is getting stuck on a wreckage and unable to swim and drown to your death.
There my 2 cents.
I like to be noob again in Subnautica. I have good remember about first impressions and feels when and no glue what doing, how survive, how find water and dangerous in deep , e.t.c. It is was great time. I have feel like i real seat at alien planet in lonely and try survive. Now game very easy for me and not so much interesting. So now i would be prefer yet more hard survive mode+, at start -no any blueprints, smaller equipment size with some blueprint for extend size, lifepod must be destroy after a few weeks if have not repair, only lite version fabricator settled in lifepod, for making more complicated and big things need build normal version fabricator, more predators ( or more damage from each), less resources and e.t.c. So i total don`t understand peoples who what more easy start and less crafting.
Y'know? To alleviate this argument the devs could just add an "easy" button. Just one press and you have everything without working for it, you get the game ending, etc... All from one press of the "easy" button. Pretty much all of the achievement without any of the work, which leaves you kinda empty inside and makes you wonder why you spent money on the game in the first place...
Given all of the "Where are the <fragmentName> fragments!?" threads we've seen since the Prawn update, I'm wondering whether the game has managed to cross a line in fragment discover-ability.
No, it really hasn't. They've simply put most of the fragments in wrecks - something they've been saying they were going to do for a while now. And people had gotten used to where they would find this tech or that, so when they got shuffled around and put inside the wrecks, they kinda went "huh?".
As a thought, perhaps the early journeys to life pods should take you past/to/near some important wrecks & fragments.
They do. I forget which pod it is, but one of the first ones you get a beacon to is right near a wreck... that contains the Mobile Vehicle Bay plans and I believe also the Seamoth.
And for the record, I am LOVING the comm relay giving you beacons to things. Really helps move the story along, and I hope there is more to come.
-A small tweak regarding the oxygen, make it last 25% or 50% longer, while I enjoy the danger, the loss of time of getting air is too big right now. Also having to carry multiple air tanks is worsening the looting/crafting issue.
You do know that: 1) Being in your Seamoth or Cyclops or base refills your Oxygen. 2) Without a Seamoth you won't be going too deep down anyway so it's not going take long to get to the surface. 3) If you have a Seaglide it takes less time to reach the surface then using just fins. 3) It literally takes a second to refill your oxygen on the surface of the water. And 4) There is a modification station that allows you to make bigger Oxygen tanks having just 3 large oxygen tanks gives you 225 oxygen, If you had a whole inventory full, your going to have a shit ton of oxygen.
-A small tweak regarding the oxygen, make it last 25% or 50% longer, while I enjoy the danger, the loss of time of getting air is too big right now. Also having to carry multiple air tanks is worsening the looting/crafting issue.
You do know that: 1) Being in your Seamoth or Cyclops or base refills your Oxygen. 2) Without a Seamoth you won't be going too deep down anyway so it's not going take long to get to the surface. 3) If you have a Seaglide it takes less time to reach the surface then using just fins. 3) It literally takes a second to refill your oxygen on the surface of the water. And 4) There is a modification station that allows you to make bigger Oxygen tanks having just 3 large oxygen tanks gives you 225 oxygen, If you had a whole inventory full, your going to have a shit ton of oxygen.
I really don't see what you're complaining about.
I'm complaining about the scarcity of oxygen in base tanks, took me a while to realize you could stack them, but it takes so much space in our inventory, same goes for the seaglider, which i find cool but how comes he uses so much energy ? Everytime I used it I had to carry around multiple batteries for the trip, which takes in total at least 8 slots for just a quality of life improvement.
Basically my problem with crafting looting in his current state is it's all about compromises. Compromises between utility modules for seamoth and inventory space, compromises between air tanks and inventory space, compromises between travel time and inventory space. I think it's a bad design to have so much issues with carrying around your well earned loot while you have absolutely no problem to find what seems to be some rare materials.
My problem is about having a shit ton of available ressources, but #EDIT [transporting] a decent quantity for respectable building projects seems to take at least 66% of the time, the whole thing is worsened with unloading and managing your overall stock, with is boring, offer no challenge at all, and seems to be redundant.
On the other hand, and I already expect some "Wow this guy is self contradictory !" comments, I wish the rarer materials would be way more scarce, or located in quantity in really small caves, like a deep shallow vein, this way the challenge would be to find them, not to carry them around, which seems more exciting to me, because this way you could add more challenge by hiding theses "specials" spots or guarding them with some creatures.
Someone talked about minecraft, should I remind you that items actually stacks and the advanced ressources are more scarce ? Getting diamonds in minecraft feels like a big achievement while getting diamonds in Subnautica seems like luck, or mostly an annoying inconvenience since we need them to unlock a tool. I won't talk about the lack of utility of some minerals because of the current state of the game. But I think we can talk about the ressource distribution/management right now.
IMHO we should spend more time exploring the depths for rare loots and less time backstepping to the base to unload it.
Some people might not agree with it, but I would be glad to hear why you would stick to the current system, I don't see any way going back to our base every 30/40 units is a good point for the game. Just imagine minecraft with no stacking items since we talk about it.
This is a really great point. Its one of the most popular sandbox games at the moment, and you get ZERO guidance, at least in the PC version.
Yeah but minecraft is more of a lego sandbox, it's all about building, there's no story, no events, no nothing to discover except some random cool looking stuff. I've played it for hours some years ago and there was no special atmosphere like in subnautica, you are less likely to stop whatever you are doing to contemplate the fauna or the depths below you, it's all about building and looting stuff, and thank god subnautica is different on that point.
Given all of the "Where are the fragments!?" threads we've seen since the Prawn update, I'm wondering whether the game has managed to cross a line in fragment discover-ability. Now that fragments are almost only found in relatively deep wrecks and in much smaller numbers, it's become a lot easier to become stuck in the early game.
I might retract from the technological point I've talked about if they implement beacon like instructions (like the one telling you to break the limestone or to cut the creep vine) for the seamoths and the MVB. This way the new player would be easily aware that he can unlock new technology by scanning items, and that he should explore wrecks laying around. Easy to implement and quite simple.
This guy gets it. Games need to stop worrying about being "noob friendly" and start getting noobs to use their own brain for what seems to be the first time in their life in some cases. They'll thank you for it later when they discover the thrill of discovery for themselves.
A game being noob friendly is not a synonym of being casual, challenge-less, take Dota 2 for example, it's absolutely the most hardcore game I'm playing, but everything you need is at your disposal, every informations regarding heroes, spells, items can be easily checked in game on a simple click. Is Dota 2 noob friendly ? I would say yes given the genre and the efforts valve made, is it shallow and targeted at a casual audience ? Hell no.
Making a game obscure for new players is just a way to hurt the experience, impact the sales, the popularity, the reviews, for what ? For the pleasure of trying anything possible like in bad point and click games because we have absolutely no idea of what to do next ?
A good design revolves between short term guidance and long term understanding of the game.
Take Factorio for example, the basics are easy to figure out, but the more the game runs, and the more experience you gather, you start figuring ways to make everything more efficient, not knowing about a precise pattern doesnt impact the gameplay into a critical way, but it does impact it directly or mostly indirectly (less efficiency).
It is to you yourself to figure out how you can optimize you factory if you want, it seems more rewarding because it looks like a genuinely original optimization/workaround because you never needed to check the wiki or the forums before. I think learning things by ourselves is a big part of the fun this kind of game can offer.
Factorio pushes you to be creative in such a good way you expect everything you can think of working.
Minecraft does that too, well in a bad way, once you figured you have to mimic the item in the crafting table, you start to "draw" real life items with what seems obvious elements and it feels rewarding to discover new blueprints.
But because of the nature of the game, it is obvious the guessing game is not a viable way to discover everything you need.
Finally, I get that you feel strongly about your opinions, but I think a less aggressive approach would serve you well here.
Well I'm sorry if this looked like that, coming from different communities, I can understand peoples does not react the same. I'll try my best to change that in my future posts.
I disagree with pretty much all of your points. Subnautica is still partly a survival game, handing the player everything right from the start is boring. I think you'd be better off playing creative mode instead of survival.
I don't support everything just being unlocked, but I do have to comment that locking every single technology behind swarms of newly hyper-aggressive sandsharks is a bad move for the Prawn update. Did not improve gameplay, I daresay it made the game a great deal more frustrating and less fun.
Playing tag with a shark in your way is one thing. Hunting for hours and hours only to find the thing you're looking for is so well-defended you have NO PRAYER AT ALL of getting near it is just plain bad. You used to be good Subnautica. You used to be fun.
SidchickenPlumbing the subnautican depthsJoin Date: 2016-02-16Member: 213125Members
I really have no idea what you're talking about. Had zero trouble finding the fragments for seaglide, solar panels, MVB, Seamoth. Keep a couple medkits from the fabricator in your lifepod handy in case a shark takes a bite at ya and move on.
Try to think as a new player:
After the landing of the escape pod you go out and there is a very high chance to die several times in the first five minutes and you don't really know why. Then you realise that you has nothing to defend, you don't know where are the parts you need to build anything, you have no ingame map, must deal with many predators in large numbers etc. And then a bad comment appears on Steam.
I'm probably one of the most casual players this game has ever had. And - just like everyone on this forum - I actually was a new player in this game once. I felt lost and scared of the ocean. I died because I forgot to surface for oxygen. I died because I swam into a heat vent. I died because I wanted to poke the reaper. I died because I had nothign to eat. I died a lot. And I LOVED it. Every single death has taught me something new about the game, showed me what I was doing wrong, where I should have paid more attention, what to avoid.
If I did not face any challenges during my first hours in Subnautica, I would have no sense of accomplishment, no drive to go on. I'd get bored to tears and stop playing. In other words: I know it can be frustrating at times when a game just drops you in the middle of things and leaves you mostly alone to discover everything. But it's also gratifying when you go out there and learn how to survive, step by little step, until the ocean feels like home.
And if you need a wiki to survive, than the game is not good. In my opinion an new player must be able to play without a wiki, youtube let's play or a forum.
If you don't mind, I'll once again use my own experience as an example here: starting my adventure with SN, I had no idea what the game is about. I've never played a survival game before, and I mostly bought Subnautica because of the pretty fish. Because of my total lack of experience, I had no idea about typical survival game mechanics. I was lost and confused, but I never ever felt the need or necessity to look for information outside of the game. Why would I go read wikipedia or watch others play while I could gather all the info myself by trial and error? And yes, ventually I learned everything I know about surviving in that ocean all by myself... but I did that by actually playing the game and not giving up at the first difficult moment and coming to complain on the forum. Because this is how you create memories of a good adventure - you "just keep swimming" until you learn everything you need to know to survive.
At some point you should realize that most of the players or potential players don't know shit about the game.
And that's all the fun of getting a new game and playing it for the first time. Learning all the shit the game has to offer is part of the experience, an integral part of the entertainment value. From story perspective, you crashed on an alien planet, of course you know shit about it. You go out there, you do trial and error, you die once or twice, and after a while you know your shit. Personally, I'd love to somehow wipe my memory so I could experience Subnautica for the very first time again, be a noob. I still remember the chills I got finding myself in this vast alien ocean and having absolutely no damn clue what to do next.
That said, what you seem to be advocating for, is a game that hands you the tools at the start (seriously, a seamoth right off the bat? Why not cyclops and PRAWN while you are at it...), a game that guides you by the hand like mother hen, that makes finding components blatantly easy, and basically plays itself. What would you be doing then, dear player? Watching the creepvines grow? My sarcasm aside, every single one of us here was a noob in this game once. Instead of accusing the game of being a grindfest and demanding changes, however, we set out to explore, check every nook and cranny - we learned that world and we enjoyed the content. And I bet most of us have fond memories of that time.
TL;DR: I seriously doubt I'd still be playing Subnautica if it worked the way you want it to work.
Oh yes the noob experience. This is why I limit myself to an hour a week. That is the closest I can get to the original noobishness.
Oh please ) Another one of those "Make DarkSouls easier" threads. Right now the difficulty curve is almost perfect (it's a bit TOO easy, I'd prefer random attacks on the base with possibility to find it in ruins). You offer to turn it into arcade. Aren't there enough of these already on the market? I remember playing the first assassin's creed on the hardest difficulty and never paying too much attention , as the game basically played itself. No thanks.
Oh please ) Another one of those "Make DarkSouls easier" threads. Right now the difficulty curve is almost perfect (it's a bit TOO easy, I'd prefer random attacks on the base with possibility to find it in ruins). You offer to turn it into arcade. Aren't there enough of these already on the market? I remember playing the first assassin's creed on the hardest difficulty and never paying too much attention , as the game basically played itself. No thanks.
I don't offer that, do you even read, if you take everything I suggest in account, the game would be less about travelling here and here, but more about surviving and exploring, with less enemies, but they would be way, WAY more dangerous, and less endgame ressources to find.
Also you don't seems to know what Arcade means. And it's like you picked one sentence out of context and made a paragraph about that, why do I even answer..?
EDIT : while we're at it, if I suggested easier path to seamoth, I should have mentioned it would also stop to be the perfectly safe answer for most of early medium threats like the sharks.
I never understood how the seamoth is so durable while we have such an easy way to repair it (welder). I also imagine a leak system like the base or the cyclops ones, could be fun.
I think you forgot you were developing a game for mostly casual players, I don't want to memorize the whole map, I don't want to eat fish every 5 min, I don't want to get air every 70 seconds, I don't want to do so much backstepping between surface for air or base to load unload materials, the loss of time is incredible and boring.
I believe there is a "free build" game mode for people experiencing your problem.
-Less agressive fauna, I swear, getting aggroed every ten seconds is annoying for the ears and lessen the impact of said predators, which become more of a nuisance than a threat.
Good point. Animals should be better at sticking to their behaviors. This nonsense of sandsharks climbing 150m+ to attack people at the surface is absurd, and there's been far too many reports of them and other monsters basically camping the player's pod from the get-go. Fauna AI needs a complete and total overhaul in a bad way. Simply put, every creature should have a pattern of behavior and stick with it. Learning that behavior pattern should be the key to safely bypassing said creature.
-Items stacking, yes, it's not realistic, fuck that, let's allow stacking, or at least make it optional.
What I'd rather see is "Dedicated Storage" lockers. They only hold one type of item, but they can hold x10 as much of it. This way you can hoard at your base but we won't see divers lugging around fifty tons of titanium at a time.
-increased cargo size ? the current 4x4 boxes for the seamoth are laughable, I don't want to sacrifice cool looking upgrades for that, but I do because they are the most useful and it's frustrating.
True, but the Seamoth is really just an exploration vessel, not a resource gathering platform. The Cyclops can be packed full of enough lockers to build an entire seabase in one pass. While the Exosuit is good for resource gathering, it suffers from the same crappy storage as the Seamoth. What is clearly needs is an intermediate submarine, about the size of a pickup truck, with drill arms and a massive cargo area for this exact purpose.
-A small tweak regarding the oxygen, make it last 25% or 50% longer, while I enjoy the danger, the loss of time of getting air is too big right now. Also having to carry multiple air tanks is worsening the looting/crafting issue.
It does indeed seem silly that your average healthy 20 year old can hold their breath for longer than an air tank in this game lasts.
-Make a special room combining HUGE cargo and fabricator for crafting purpose, allow the fabricator to craft multiple object at once and able to craft subparts automatically. Also a storage room seems like a good idea.
Nice in theory but here's the thing: Except for mass producing titanium and glass for building projects, there really isn't any need for mass production because food, water and survival knives are the only really consumable objects in the game. Everything else is make once and keep forever if you play smartly.
Seriously, once you get the Cyclops you'll pretty much just ignore resources from that point forward.
-Don't make known technologies researchable, I dont know why I have to scan seamoth part to unlock it, but there should be more alien stuff to unlock while scanning fauna, so far I think the only benefit to scan it is the cyclops upgrade.
Now this is interesting. Learning alien technologies. I think that has great potential, actually.
-Aurora parts are interesting but right now feels "meh", I think there should be exploitable items in theses, prawn suits, seamoth, equipments, tools, etc... not just "go find THIS wreck to unlock the thing you absolutely need", which seems dumb if you consider most of new players don't know shit about the world map, I had to cheat (getting coordinates) to locate the wrecks I needed because swimming around and getting air every 30 seconds is not fun at all.
True, if it were not for Wikis the game would be a complete nightmare, and simply assuming that everyone is going to head over and memorize the Wiki before even booting the game is just plain silly. Like most people, I started off simply trying to play, found that I was getting basically nowhere fast, and then turned to the Wikis for help.
Thing is, that should not be considered acceptable development behavior. Then again I'm old and I remember when games came in boxes with manuals. Falcon 3.0... now that was an instruction manual!
Comments
1. The predators, aside from reapers, quickly become more of an irritating nuisance than a threat even without the 'moth. They don't enhance the atmosphere of the game.
-I agree here. I think Stalkers, and the *sharks don't add much to the game once you get past the initial fear of "That big thing can bite me". They could probably use some attention from the devs and for all I know there are already plans in place.
2. Inventory management is a pain.
-I'm torn here. I like the inventory cost of carrying around tons of gear. It encourages you to make a compromise between being decked out in air tanks and rocking a seaglide vs. having lots of carrying capacity when you're going out to scavenge. I also think it makes getting the cyclops that much sweeter. You can finally start taking serious storage with you when you go out for long treks. That said, the inventory limitation can feel awfully burdensome during base building or moving resources between storage elements. I think people would be open to a good plan to alleviate inventory limitations for things like base building if it maintains the gameplay choices introduced by finite carrying capacity.
3. Certain fragments are too hard to find.
-If I understand correctly, this amounts to the following: A new player exploring more or less at random could completely fail to find critical schematics. I think this is a legitimate concern. Not everyone wants to consult a wiki and I think that relying on external resources is in general a poor design choice. That said, I think care must be taken to ensure that not everything is handed to the player too quickly. Maybe additional signals that point players to where things like the moth, vehicle bay, and cyclops parts can be found should be given out after a certain number of days pass as a sort of fail-safe to prevent people from missing important items for too long.
Finally, I get that you feel strongly about your opinions, but I think a less aggressive approach would serve you well here. This community isn't a static entity and the group that rates convenience as less important than some other aspects of gameplay just took the short end of a rather polarizing debate. Having someone come in and push for additional convenience probably feels like salt in the wound. In short, take it easy. We all want this to be the best game it can be.
Now I need to get back to work, my lunch break is already running long.
In my opinion this game must change in many aspects to sell after the release of the version 1.0 and its only four months to the planed release (Trello timeline).
For hardcore survival players every information is a crap, but for casual players it is very importent and only with hardcore players the chances to make any profit are not good.
Try to think as a new player:
After the landing of the escape pod you go out and there is a very high chance to die several times in the first five minutes and you don't really know why. Then you realise that you has nothing to defend, you don't know where are the parts you need to build anything, you have no ingame map, must deal with many predators in large numbers etc. And then a bad comment appears on Steam.
And if you need a wiki to survive, than the game is not good. In my opinion an new player must be able to play without a wiki, youtube let's play or a forum.
Im no hardcore player and i did die several times in the beginning. Still i love this game. Maybe its,because im a fan of dark souls, but it took me exactly one death by stalkers in order to realize how to avoid and laugh at them. I crafted a knife for making creepvinesamples, not attacking stalkers.
Same goes for Sandsharks. The point of a tutorial is currently discussed under us players and even saying i dont need it, im not against a small tutorial telling new players a few ropes how to survive their first 10 minutes. But it should be skipable for players like me, that especially dont want a tutorial.
And still i dont get for what one would need the wiki, to survive?
No curiousity out there? The urge to explore and if you get eaten, learn from it?
The moment I got that Seamoth? Game changer. Nothing scared me anymore. I didn't have to be cautious or on guard. Oh, look at the sand shark bumping into me. Nananana, you can't get me! Biters? Bleeders? Road kill~ Yes, there are things that toss the Seamoth about. Like the Reapers, but even they aren't a threat if you keep an eye on them and dodge their lunge.
I started a new game with the PRAWN update after a three month break from the game. A lot of things have changed from the last version I played. Tech has been moved around, blueprints are gone and have to be scanned now. Recipes have changed. I can't beeline for the Seamoth anymore, and you know what? Floundering around on the new update recaptured all those feelings I had when I started playing. It's great. I once again have to be careful and think about what I'm doing. I have to re-explore to discover where things are and I'm still finding new nook and crannies.
Even with the MP room being gone, I built my first tube base and was actually happier with it than all of my other starter bases. It was small and cramped, yes, but it was the beginning of the game. Most survival games, you always start small and work up to bigger and better things. And when I finally found the MP room? It gave me that sense of progression. I went from small tube base, to a step up into some thing nicer.
That same thing ties back into the seamoth. You go from no fins > fins > seaglide > seamoth > cyclops. Fun fact, before my long break I had never touched a seaglide. I didn't need it. I went from fins to seamoth within the first thirty minutes of the game. I used it to go everywhere. Even the cyclops was little more than an over-sized storage locker. That's a little broken, I think, and I'm happy to see the balancing going on.
I can understand why you're frustrated, or why people may not like it. When I heard the MP room had been taken away from the starting blueprints, I was not happy about it. Then I started my new game and was surprised to find it didn't actually take anything away. There's a saying I'm rather fond of, "less is more'. In taking away the MP room, and seamoth, and all the other changes, I'm getting a lot more out of the experience.
tdlr; I like the direction the devs have decided to take for the game. A lot of the life pod signals you get lead you to the tech you need next. That'll make the beginning a little easier on newer players and is far more immersive than hitting up the wiki or coming to the forums.
Also OP, you're really kinda a dick right now. Might not be the best way to engage in a discussion.
I don't care what the polls said, this instant crafting is simply ridiculous, and ingredients need to be x3 at least.
I know, I know, most people disagree, but most people are just wrong, and in the words of SuperHans...
"People like Coldplay and voting for the Nazis. You can't trust people."
This guy gets it. Games need to stop worrying about being "noob friendly" and start getting noobs to use their own brain for what seems to be the first time in their life in some cases. They'll thank you for it later when they discover the thrill of discovery for themselves.
/thread as far as I'm concerned. We've talked about this enough.
Given all of the "Where are the <fragmentName> fragments!?" threads we've seen since the Prawn update, I'm wondering whether the game has managed to cross a line in fragment discover-ability. Now that fragments are almost only found in relatively deep wrecks and in much smaller numbers, it's become a lot easier to become stuck in the early game.
As a thought, perhaps the early journeys to life pods should take you past/to/near some important wrecks & fragments.
Subnautica is a survival game where you start with nothing and have to work hard to get good equipment and vehicles. The game is challenging with a beautiful environment and scenery. You have to use your brain, remember areas and ores in different places and you need a strategy in the handling of the ressources.
It's great the way it is. Not too easy and not too hard.
When I started 2 months ago I never needed to use the wiki, youtube let's play or anything else. And I am not a "hardcore player" that's used to games like this. In fact this is only my 2nd survival game. Still I figured it all out by myself and it was very, very rewarding everytime I got further.
Long story short : I completely disagree with every single point of your complaints OP.
Dear Ornafulsamee,
I know how you feel, but you have to look from a lore/ ingame perspective on it.
Your ship is shot down on an unknown planet, the computer does not know anything of that planet, the protagonist does know nothing of that planet.
So basically you have to find by luck / explore the items / ingredients you need, everything else would be a little strange. I mean you would need a planetary scanner or something like that to find out where the ressources lie.
On the other hand maybe if you are entering a Biome it could give a short summary of the most common ressources to read up. But that is a bit harder to implement.
The other way around seen, the ingame notifications you are looking for are nothing more than the wikipedia entries we have soooo.....
Regarding the names of the Biomes, yes, it would be cool to have an encyclopedia entry with a picture of the Biome and a short summary, but I guess that can be easily done...
Subnautica already provides in-game info on crafting recipes and has signals, log entries, and other elements that hint at the progression path you should be following. The only thing it lacks is handing out maps where to find resources -- and yet even that does exist in some form, since there's an in-game scanning room you can eventually build (though not completely functional yet).
Granted there are some things that can be improved (such as awareness of important fragments) -- but the devs are working on that, with those same signals and other means. It's just not all done yet, because it's still an early access game.
I really don't understand your argument; it just sounds like you want to dumb things down and hand out stuff even faster than the game already does.
This is a really great point. Its one of the most popular sandbox games at the moment, and you get ZERO guidance, at least in the PC version.
True everyone has played it new game, but with knowledge of a veteran already in hand. But look around the forums. Did you not see everyone is sharing knowledges, asking questions, even though they are veterans. Fragments' locations are shifted, landscapes changed, after a major patch there is always something new to explore even though it's an area we're so familiar of.
Basics of gameplay. I am going on a limb here and say the word "We" instead of I. We were all beginners, we died to a lot of mechanics (floras and faunas, even bloody oxygen). We tried a lot of things that we "thought" would work. Apparently it does not. And we were not the first to discover it. A lot of the talks has been going on in the forum, yet we wanted to explore and tinker.
This is my personal opinion. The reason why "guide" exist is for a person who get stuck on some point in the game, or it is something irreversible that will take too much toll for the player to start anew. Subnautica? Hell yeah you can deconstruct everything at 100% refund cost without losing a single thing. The only word "stuck" I can think of in this game is getting stuck on a wreckage and unable to swim and drown to your death.
I like to be noob again in Subnautica. I have good remember about first impressions and feels when and no glue what doing, how survive, how find water and dangerous in deep , e.t.c. It is was great time. I have feel like i real seat at alien planet in lonely and try survive. Now game very easy for me and not so much interesting. So now i would be prefer yet more hard survive mode+, at start -no any blueprints, smaller equipment size with some blueprint for extend size, lifepod must be destroy after a few weeks if have not repair, only lite version fabricator settled in lifepod, for making more complicated and big things need build normal version fabricator, more predators ( or more damage from each), less resources and e.t.c. So i total don`t understand peoples who what more easy start and less crafting.
No, it really hasn't. They've simply put most of the fragments in wrecks - something they've been saying they were going to do for a while now. And people had gotten used to where they would find this tech or that, so when they got shuffled around and put inside the wrecks, they kinda went "huh?".
They do. I forget which pod it is, but one of the first ones you get a beacon to is right near a wreck... that contains the Mobile Vehicle Bay plans and I believe also the Seamoth.
And for the record, I am LOVING the comm relay giving you beacons to things. Really helps move the story along, and I hope there is more to come.
You do know that: 1) Being in your Seamoth or Cyclops or base refills your Oxygen. 2) Without a Seamoth you won't be going too deep down anyway so it's not going take long to get to the surface. 3) If you have a Seaglide it takes less time to reach the surface then using just fins. 3) It literally takes a second to refill your oxygen on the surface of the water. And 4) There is a modification station that allows you to make bigger Oxygen tanks having just 3 large oxygen tanks gives you 225 oxygen, If you had a whole inventory full, your going to have a shit ton of oxygen.
I really don't see what you're complaining about.
I'm complaining about the scarcity of oxygen in base tanks, took me a while to realize you could stack them, but it takes so much space in our inventory, same goes for the seaglider, which i find cool but how comes he uses so much energy ? Everytime I used it I had to carry around multiple batteries for the trip, which takes in total at least 8 slots for just a quality of life improvement.
Basically my problem with crafting looting in his current state is it's all about compromises. Compromises between utility modules for seamoth and inventory space, compromises between air tanks and inventory space, compromises between travel time and inventory space. I think it's a bad design to have so much issues with carrying around your well earned loot while you have absolutely no problem to find what seems to be some rare materials.
My problem is about having a shit ton of available ressources, but #EDIT [transporting] a decent quantity for respectable building projects seems to take at least 66% of the time, the whole thing is worsened with unloading and managing your overall stock, with is boring, offer no challenge at all, and seems to be redundant.
On the other hand, and I already expect some "Wow this guy is self contradictory !" comments, I wish the rarer materials would be way more scarce, or located in quantity in really small caves, like a deep shallow vein, this way the challenge would be to find them, not to carry them around, which seems more exciting to me, because this way you could add more challenge by hiding theses "specials" spots or guarding them with some creatures.
Someone talked about minecraft, should I remind you that items actually stacks and the advanced ressources are more scarce ? Getting diamonds in minecraft feels like a big achievement while getting diamonds in Subnautica seems like luck, or mostly an annoying inconvenience since we need them to unlock a tool. I won't talk about the lack of utility of some minerals because of the current state of the game. But I think we can talk about the ressource distribution/management right now.
IMHO we should spend more time exploring the depths for rare loots and less time backstepping to the base to unload it.
Some people might not agree with it, but I would be glad to hear why you would stick to the current system, I don't see any way going back to our base every 30/40 units is a good point for the game. Just imagine minecraft with no stacking items since we talk about it.
Yeah but minecraft is more of a lego sandbox, it's all about building, there's no story, no events, no nothing to discover except some random cool looking stuff. I've played it for hours some years ago and there was no special atmosphere like in subnautica, you are less likely to stop whatever you are doing to contemplate the fauna or the depths below you, it's all about building and looting stuff, and thank god subnautica is different on that point.
I might retract from the technological point I've talked about if they implement beacon like instructions (like the one telling you to break the limestone or to cut the creep vine) for the seamoths and the MVB. This way the new player would be easily aware that he can unlock new technology by scanning items, and that he should explore wrecks laying around. Easy to implement and quite simple.
A game being noob friendly is not a synonym of being casual, challenge-less, take Dota 2 for example, it's absolutely the most hardcore game I'm playing, but everything you need is at your disposal, every informations regarding heroes, spells, items can be easily checked in game on a simple click. Is Dota 2 noob friendly ? I would say yes given the genre and the efforts valve made, is it shallow and targeted at a casual audience ? Hell no.
Making a game obscure for new players is just a way to hurt the experience, impact the sales, the popularity, the reviews, for what ? For the pleasure of trying anything possible like in bad point and click games because we have absolutely no idea of what to do next ?
A good design revolves between short term guidance and long term understanding of the game.
Take Factorio for example, the basics are easy to figure out, but the more the game runs, and the more experience you gather, you start figuring ways to make everything more efficient, not knowing about a precise pattern doesnt impact the gameplay into a critical way, but it does impact it directly or mostly indirectly (less efficiency).
It is to you yourself to figure out how you can optimize you factory if you want, it seems more rewarding because it looks like a genuinely original optimization/workaround because you never needed to check the wiki or the forums before. I think learning things by ourselves is a big part of the fun this kind of game can offer.
Factorio pushes you to be creative in such a good way you expect everything you can think of working.
Minecraft does that too, well in a bad way, once you figured you have to mimic the item in the crafting table, you start to "draw" real life items with what seems obvious elements and it feels rewarding to discover new blueprints.
But because of the nature of the game, it is obvious the guessing game is not a viable way to discover everything you need.
Well I'm sorry if this looked like that, coming from different communities, I can understand peoples does not react the same. I'll try my best to change that in my future posts.
I don't support everything just being unlocked, but I do have to comment that locking every single technology behind swarms of newly hyper-aggressive sandsharks is a bad move for the Prawn update. Did not improve gameplay, I daresay it made the game a great deal more frustrating and less fun.
Playing tag with a shark in your way is one thing. Hunting for hours and hours only to find the thing you're looking for is so well-defended you have NO PRAYER AT ALL of getting near it is just plain bad. You used to be good Subnautica. You used to be fun.
If I did not face any challenges during my first hours in Subnautica, I would have no sense of accomplishment, no drive to go on. I'd get bored to tears and stop playing. In other words: I know it can be frustrating at times when a game just drops you in the middle of things and leaves you mostly alone to discover everything. But it's also gratifying when you go out there and learn how to survive, step by little step, until the ocean feels like home.
If you don't mind, I'll once again use my own experience as an example here: starting my adventure with SN, I had no idea what the game is about. I've never played a survival game before, and I mostly bought Subnautica because of the pretty fish. Because of my total lack of experience, I had no idea about typical survival game mechanics. I was lost and confused, but I never ever felt the need or necessity to look for information outside of the game. Why would I go read wikipedia or watch others play while I could gather all the info myself by trial and error? And yes, ventually I learned everything I know about surviving in that ocean all by myself... but I did that by actually playing the game and not giving up at the first difficult moment and coming to complain on the forum. Because this is how you create memories of a good adventure - you "just keep swimming" until you learn everything you need to know to survive.
Oh yes the noob experience. This is why I limit myself to an hour a week. That is the closest I can get to the original noobishness.
I don't offer that, do you even read, if you take everything I suggest in account, the game would be less about travelling here and here, but more about surviving and exploring, with less enemies, but they would be way, WAY more dangerous, and less endgame ressources to find.
Also you don't seems to know what Arcade means. And it's like you picked one sentence out of context and made a paragraph about that, why do I even answer..?
EDIT : while we're at it, if I suggested easier path to seamoth, I should have mentioned it would also stop to be the perfectly safe answer for most of early medium threats like the sharks.
I never understood how the seamoth is so durable while we have such an easy way to repair it (welder). I also imagine a leak system like the base or the cyclops ones, could be fun.
I believe there is a "free build" game mode for people experiencing your problem.
Good point. Animals should be better at sticking to their behaviors. This nonsense of sandsharks climbing 150m+ to attack people at the surface is absurd, and there's been far too many reports of them and other monsters basically camping the player's pod from the get-go. Fauna AI needs a complete and total overhaul in a bad way. Simply put, every creature should have a pattern of behavior and stick with it. Learning that behavior pattern should be the key to safely bypassing said creature.
What I'd rather see is "Dedicated Storage" lockers. They only hold one type of item, but they can hold x10 as much of it. This way you can hoard at your base but we won't see divers lugging around fifty tons of titanium at a time.
True, but the Seamoth is really just an exploration vessel, not a resource gathering platform. The Cyclops can be packed full of enough lockers to build an entire seabase in one pass. While the Exosuit is good for resource gathering, it suffers from the same crappy storage as the Seamoth. What is clearly needs is an intermediate submarine, about the size of a pickup truck, with drill arms and a massive cargo area for this exact purpose.
Sad but true.
It does indeed seem silly that your average healthy 20 year old can hold their breath for longer than an air tank in this game lasts.
Nice in theory but here's the thing: Except for mass producing titanium and glass for building projects, there really isn't any need for mass production because food, water and survival knives are the only really consumable objects in the game. Everything else is make once and keep forever if you play smartly.
Seriously, once you get the Cyclops you'll pretty much just ignore resources from that point forward.
Now this is interesting. Learning alien technologies. I think that has great potential, actually.
True, if it were not for Wikis the game would be a complete nightmare, and simply assuming that everyone is going to head over and memorize the Wiki before even booting the game is just plain silly. Like most people, I started off simply trying to play, found that I was getting basically nowhere fast, and then turned to the Wikis for help.
Thing is, that should not be considered acceptable development behavior. Then again I'm old and I remember when games came in boxes with manuals. Falcon 3.0... now that was an instruction manual!
I wouldn't call it a farm fest but yes, it could definitely use a tutorial or better in-game guidance.