Yes. Its too EZ to breath. Make game harder plz. I should be choking on my own blood constantly, requiring a steady input of nutrients to live. If I'm not constantly on the verge of death the game is way too lax.
This game isn't in the survival genre for nothin'.
Now that I think of it, the whole development chain seems a bit loopy, looking at all the stuff that got nerfed;
Creepvine
Tanks (used to hold twice as much, but couldn't stack)
Fruit
Batteries
MP rooMs (not nerfed but gated)
Uranite being radioactive
Now Oxygen
Yes. Its too EZ to breath. Make game harder plz. I should be choking on my own blood constantly, requiring a steady input of nutrients to live. If I'm not constantly on the verge of death the game is way too lax.
A bit dramatic, but it does hit the point that, while all the adjustments on their own are fine, together they get a bit over-gated. Tweaks are based on individual gameplay mechanisms, not on general gameplay effect.
Having played around more in the new update, I can say the new energy drain for vehicles (I still have to encounter it for bases) is unfun. The energy control distracts from exploration, reducing both the time I want to take my Seamoth anywhere and the time I want to be outside of it, the latter of which rather harms wreck exploration. The principle is good, but the drain is too heavy (not to mention the oxygen charge delay). Anything that can be done to amend it is take more stuff with you, like the seaglide, extra oxygen tanks, power cells, and signals, which along with the default tools and health stuff leaves little room to scavenge, thereby necessitating multiple trips that increase the effect of the drain.
It definitely puts a great deal of pressure to find the moonpool and vehicles modification station frags to get better storage capacity on it. I don't feel terribly burdened by the change in energy, but I may also have gotten lucky that the second wreck I explored had the frags for the power cell charger. I have to agree on the oxygen delay though, time just spent sitting in the seamoth and waiting is not something I like too much and I'm not sure I see the purpose of it except to give the background systems time to sync energy usage with your oxygen consumption.
I would only be ok with it if it barely drained any power at all (I'd rather have many many small power drains than a few large power drains) and if you could use plants to generate enough oxygen to breath.
I agree with the few other people who've said this, but if the devs do keep it then I think it should only use a small amount of power, or have the ability to be supplied externally. Usually in a survival game the most basic elements needed to survive are the easiest to get, and I can't really think of a more basic element than oxygen. that's just my two cents.
Energy was too way to come by, and I really think the seamoth (I'm currently still using a plain moth, no upgrades) lasts plenty long enough for outings. I carry a single spare, and I have had to set up a power cell recharge station in my base, something I've never had to do before in previous games outside of the Cyclops, and I view both of these as a good things.
What does bother me is the rate at which my O2 meter fills in the seamoth. Here's the scenario: I get to a wreck. I park my moth by an entrance. I foray in. I come back... And I sit and play on my phone for 30-60 seconds while my breath refills before I can go back into the wreck to finish cutting open that door, or scanning that fragment. (exact duration dependant upon how many O2 tanks I'm carrying). This delay isn't present when surfacing for air, and as pronounced or relevant when you get to your base (unless you're building bases outside of wrecks for the purpose of exploring them.)
SidchickenPlumbing the subnautican depthsJoin Date: 2016-02-16Member: 213125Members
Again, to be clear, OXYGEN PRODUCTION DOES NOT DRAIN BASE POWER. The poll at the start of this thread is, therefore, complete hogwash as the devs cannot "keep" or "remove" a feature that is not in the game.
Energy usage is ok, minus a few tweaks needed like the power sapping Seaglide. Tools don't go through their battery too fast, the Seamoth lasts a good time and only needs you to hold a 1 slot powercell for backup power. The prawn lasts forever.
Energy use in base wasn't an issue for me until I built a moonpool and docking a Seamoth and somehow uses all 200+ power and turn the lights off.
The main problem with this game, in terms of food, water, and energy consumption, is that it assumes two things:
- You know where all the critical components for managing energy and ingestion are found
- You go out and get them ASAP
As a general rule, games need to be balanced so that upgrades help in something rather than being a necessity. You shouldn't HAVE TO have a water filtration system and alien containment/growbed to deal with food and water issues. You shouldn't HAVE TO have a battery charger/power cell charger/moonpool to deal with energy management. I think a lot of players who think things are fine as is don't take the new player experience into consideration. New players won't have all those resources. More importantly, they won't know WHERE those resources are, meaning they will be spending the *vast majority* of their game time farming goods just to stay alive rather than exploring. On top of that, copper is a finite resource and if they run out of nearby limestone before they get a chance to get the battery and power cell chargers, they are absolutely hosed as all vehicles in this game drain power at a fairly considerable rate now. What do you want them to do? Swim to wrecks that are sometimes hundreds of meters down? Swim to the Aurora through Reaper territory, lol?
All the above tools should be a convenience, not a necessity. As is, quite a few players may end up rage quitting and getting a refund before their first two hours of gameplay are up. That's not good.
I like the general idea but I still think that before it can be a fully good feature, the power systems and oxygen stuff needs to be reworked. Even with the recent power adjustments that came with the power nap update the power system is still pretty bad and mediocre. We should have more than just a number at the top of our hud that sometimes doesn't even make much sense. Like a power storage unit, a better power display, a more sensical power system, etc. With power changes and those oxygen idea the devs have in unknown on the roadmap I feel like this will be a good feature.
If you've still got active power supplies and no power in the base then it's a bug. It shouldn't be that hard however to get some alien containment cells, a few bioreactors, and some solar panels for steady power
The main problem with this game, in terms of food, water, and energy consumption, is that it assumes two things:
- You know where all the critical components for managing energy and ingestion are found
- You go out and get them ASAP
As a general rule, games need to be balanced so that upgrades help in something rather than being a necessity. You shouldn't HAVE TO have a water filtration system and alien containment/growbed to deal with food and water issues. You shouldn't HAVE TO have a battery charger/power cell charger/moonpool to deal with energy management. I think a lot of players who think things are fine as is don't take the new player experience into consideration. New players won't have all those resources. More importantly, they won't know WHERE those resources are, meaning they will be spending the *vast majority* of their game time farming goods just to stay alive rather than exploring. On top of that, copper is a finite resource and if they run out of nearby limestone before they get a chance to get the battery and power cell chargers, they are absolutely hosed as all vehicles in this game drain power at a fairly considerable rate now. What do you want them to do? Swim to wrecks that are sometimes hundreds of meters down? Swim to the Aurora through Reaper territory, lol?
All the above tools should be a convenience, not a necessity. As is, quite a few players may end up rage quitting and getting a refund before their first two hours of gameplay are up. That's not good.
You don't HAVE TO have those things. You can keep going out and catching fish for food/water. They do respawn, so it's not like you'll starve. You can even salt them/stock up for longer expeditions. Alien containment and filtration machines are unnecessary, and so are growbeds. They make life easier, to be sure, but you can get by quite easily without them. In fact (not to go all hipster here) I was playing this game before those options were implemented, and it wasn't hard to eat and drink. Likewise you don't HAVE TO have a charger - you can keep making new batteries/powercells. It's not the most efficient way to operate, but it should be enough to let a new player progress, and eventually they'll find the tech for the chargers (the battery charger, for example, being found in the wreck by life pod 17 along with the MVB / Seamoth fragments means if the player is following the beacons they'll be pretty much guided right to that tech fairly early).
In other words, the things you talked about ARE a convenience, not a necessity.
But that's the thing, though: If you wish to spend more time exploring that scrounging, you do in fact NEED those things. The rate at which you go hungry and thirsty means you need to catch and eat a fish every few minutes. Not only that, but you also need quite a bit of salt so that you can preserve your edible fish, not to mention salt or bladderfish for water consumption. Plus it's not like you can just make water or food on the fly ... you need to be near a fabricator, which means being near your base. The cyclops alleviates that somewhat as you are carrying a base with you, but that's something you acquire much later.
You're absolutely right in that pod 17 is right next to the wreck for the battery charger, which is great. And the Seamoth frags are also there. But with the energy usage change, Seamoth burns through energy considerably faster than it used to. And contrary to the battery charger, you don't get directed to the Power Cell Charger wreck at all early on, forcing players to the Aurora earlier than they may be comfortable with for supplies. And even with the battery charger, the Seaglide burns through batteries every two minutes, which means loading your inventory with quite a few batteries to explore. And even then, it's not like you can rely on your Seaglide to keep you alive when diving at wrecks 150m down or more.
Basically, the game needs to be balanced in either two ways:
- Reduce food and energy needs considerably. Make it so that these tools are less of a crutch.
OR
- Spread out the two chargers, alien containment, and water filtration system all around the kelp forests and grasslands so that players who play blind can easily stumble upon them and not grow frustrated at how much time they spend just staying alive and farming fish, salt, and copper. Especially the latter as it's not renewable. Remember, this is a game about exploration and uncovering the strangeness of this world. Let players actually do that.
I noticed the power drain on the seamoth yesterday after jumping back in from a depth of around 200m. I was like 'what the hell, the power is draining while stationary!?' I though a "mynock" had escaped the depths and was feeding on my seamoth lol. It didn't take me long to realise that the power drain was due to the oxygen replenishment. Which makes sense to me, i'm actually quite happy with the new change.
There is definitely a power drain on bases now for oxygen, but its so insignificant, it's barely noticeable. The only issue i foresee is if you are running off a few solar panels while there is a major drain on the base, like a ton of charging stations, water filtration and moonpool charging.
But that's the thing, though: If you wish to spend more time exploring that scrounging, you do in fact NEED those things.
If you wish to explore without worrying about food and power, then yes, you need to advance up the tech ladder. That does not mean the game is unplayable or too hard in the early game. It means your expectations are off.
Water is a bigger deal than food, because it drains faster, but bottles of water don't go bad, so you can prepare a bunch ahead of time. And you're exaggerating the actual rate at which you get hungry/thirsty.
It's also worth noting that you don't HAVE to cook the fish - you can eat them raw. It will drain some of your thirst meter to do so, but if you're hungry and have a bunch of water on you, it's perfectly reasonable to take the hit to water to refill the food meter. Hell, you can snack on creepvine if you need to. So your claim about needing to stay near a fabricator at all times is, once again, not true.
How's this: I challenge any experienced players with all the tools to act like they don't. Spend a single evening (at least few RL hours of game play) in the game without using your power cell charger, moonpool, Cyclops, water filtration, alien containment, still suit, growbeds. If you run out of power in your Seamoth, you have to hunt resources to craft another power cell. If you need food and drink, you can ONLY use fish and salt you find out in the open. Go ahead and use your battery charger as you do get directed to that early on and it's easy to find.
Then come back and tell people how much fun you had.
No offense, guys, but I think you're missing the point. We GET that the early game should have a strong survival element to it. The problem is not that. The problem is HOW MUCH of a survival element there is to occupy your time. You have to look at this from the perspective of a newer player who doesn't know this game, hasn't seen Youtube videos or spent time on the Wiki. They buy it on Steam, come in fresh, and play it blind. The food and energy requirements without all the above quality of life tools is HUGE. Even real life survival isn't this time consuming, *relatively speaking*. For new players coming into this game, all they see is that two-thirds of their time is devoted to just staying alive and hunting for food, water, and copper. How is this fun for them?
EDIT: Note that I have all the above tools now and got them quickly when I started playing. But I also watch a lot of videos and spend my time on the Wiki. I *knew* where to go and went there ASAP. My own gameplay at this moment is perfectly fine. But I'm not talking from my own perspective here at all.
The first 5 hours of a game I don't use any of these conveniences. For one, you can pick up fish and salt as you look around for resources and fragments, for another, you find quite a lot of water and lot of Batteries and Power Cells in the Aurora. More than enough to get you into the middle to end game when you have gathered the conveniences.
Except the Aurora is not something you do right off the bat. At all. It requires a bunch of tools, such as the laser cutter and propulsion cannon to be able to fully explore. Plus slowly swimming through Reaper territory is a bit of a bad idea. Although if you survive the swim (there and back) and are adept at dodging cave crawlers, you can pick up quite a few batteries and cells from the outside portion, yes.
I am absolutely pro-rebalancing and/or adding more bridging points like the reefback plans, but my current save is over six hours and of the things you've mentioned I only have acquired the power cell charger already (I think a little over four hours in). I don't have the rest. I get by with +40 water I prepare in advance and the occasional peeper or boomerang I catch when I need food. I also have yet to eat the nutrition blocks (I hate consuming items I can't replenish).
Maybe these are the words of an experienced player, but I am in no rush. I'll get better stuff eventually and I'll see the other biomes eventually. I get by steadily, gathering resources for blueprints I'll one day obtain and to improve my base to the current possibilities. Currently saving up for the PRAWN I just got the blueprint for.
And there's the keyword: rebalance. No one, including myself, wants to make this game "EZ-mode". I enjoy the challenge. I just feel that the challenge is excessive for new players who don't know what they are doing or where to go.
You *should* spend a chunk of time scrounging for goods in the early game. I'm just saying it shouldn't be at the ratio it currently is. If you know where to go and what you're doing, you're perfectly fine. If you don't ... not so much.
My recommendation is to make it less challenging in the beginning and more challenging at the end than it currently is. For example, add more really nasty creatures in the dark depths. Right now, only Reapers are really dangerous, and they are only in three zones, and as far as I can tell, can't harm the Cyclops at all (although I'm only so so at the idea of making the Cyclops an easy kill due to the resources you can carry on it). But right now, the really big challenge is almost entirely front-loaded where the newbie players lie.
For new players coming into this game, all they see is that two-thirds of their time is devoted to just staying alive and hunting for food, water, and copper. How is this fun for them?
Again, you are vastly overstating the amount of time required for getting food and water. The Trumpesque dystopian view of the early game just doesn't match reality, especially in recent patches. Back in the day when there was no alien containment, no growbeds, no edible fruits, and the fish tended to disappear from around your base, meaning you had to make long forays just to find something to eat, you might have had a point. But as it stands today I can step outside my lifepod or seabase and find enough fish to eat very easily. Even the ILZ has fish to catch now.
Wow, so much people want to keep this feature but when you need to wait less than 2 minutes everyone cry ?
This community is strange sometimes...
The biggest problem for me is the seamoth. You loose oxygen INSIDE of it. You can't do long travel now, quiet disappointed.
We can keep this feature if the cost of energy is less than now or remove this for seamoth.
I have not check in exosuit but in most of case it's not useful to stay long time in it.
Keep it, but I feel there should be an upgrade that prevents this, like an oxygen recycling system or something that you could install to prevent this.
How's this: I challenge any experienced players with all the tools to act like they don't. Spend a single evening (at least few RL hours of game play) in the game without using your power cell charger, moonpool, Cyclops, water filtration, alien containment, still suit, growbeds. If you run out of power in your Seamoth, you have to hunt resources to craft another power cell. If you need food and drink, you can ONLY use fish and salt you find out in the open. Go ahead and use your battery charger as you do get directed to that early on and it's easy to find.
Just for kicks I started a new game on my lunch hour. It took all of half an hour for me to have 12 batteries, a seaglide, the radiation suit from lifepod 6 (didn't go there until I got the signal for it), several salted peepers, several bottles of disinfected water, a knife, a scanner, fins, etc. And this is living out of the lifepod only.
And for the record, you dehydrate at approximately 10% per 3 minutes, or half an hour of playing to go from 100% to 0%. That means you need to drink 2 disinfected water or 4 filtered water every 24 minutes. In other words, you fill yourself up and there's plenty of time to go do stuff, even if you don't bring supplies with you.
The biggest problem for me is the seamoth. You loose oxygen INSIDE of it. You can't do long travel now, quiet disappointed.
I'm not sure what game you're playing, but that's not true. It will burn your powercell much quicker than it used to, but you absolutely DO NOT continue losing oxygen inside the seamoth unless it's out of power.
The biggest problem for me is the seamoth. You loose oxygen INSIDE of it. You can't do long travel now, quiet disappointed.
I'm not sure what game you're playing, but that's not true. It will burn your powercell much quicker than it used to, but you absolutely DO NOT continue losing oxygen inside the seamoth unless it's out of power.
You do lose oxygen in the Seamoth, just not continuously. It's something like you gain five oxygen points and then lose two. And so on. It's why it takes so much longer now before you can continue doing anything.
Comments
This game isn't in the survival genre for nothin'.
A bit dramatic, but it does hit the point that, while all the adjustments on their own are fine, together they get a bit over-gated. Tweaks are based on individual gameplay mechanisms, not on general gameplay effect.
Having played around more in the new update, I can say the new energy drain for vehicles (I still have to encounter it for bases) is unfun. The energy control distracts from exploration, reducing both the time I want to take my Seamoth anywhere and the time I want to be outside of it, the latter of which rather harms wreck exploration. The principle is good, but the drain is too heavy (not to mention the oxygen charge delay). Anything that can be done to amend it is take more stuff with you, like the seaglide, extra oxygen tanks, power cells, and signals, which along with the default tools and health stuff leaves little room to scavenge, thereby necessitating multiple trips that increase the effect of the drain.
What does bother me is the rate at which my O2 meter fills in the seamoth. Here's the scenario: I get to a wreck. I park my moth by an entrance. I foray in. I come back... And I sit and play on my phone for 30-60 seconds while my breath refills before I can go back into the wreck to finish cutting open that door, or scanning that fragment. (exact duration dependant upon how many O2 tanks I'm carrying). This delay isn't present when surfacing for air, and as pronounced or relevant when you get to your base (unless you're building bases outside of wrecks for the purpose of exploring them.)
Energy use in base wasn't an issue for me until I built a moonpool and docking a Seamoth and somehow uses all 200+ power and turn the lights off.
- You know where all the critical components for managing energy and ingestion are found
- You go out and get them ASAP
As a general rule, games need to be balanced so that upgrades help in something rather than being a necessity. You shouldn't HAVE TO have a water filtration system and alien containment/growbed to deal with food and water issues. You shouldn't HAVE TO have a battery charger/power cell charger/moonpool to deal with energy management. I think a lot of players who think things are fine as is don't take the new player experience into consideration. New players won't have all those resources. More importantly, they won't know WHERE those resources are, meaning they will be spending the *vast majority* of their game time farming goods just to stay alive rather than exploring. On top of that, copper is a finite resource and if they run out of nearby limestone before they get a chance to get the battery and power cell chargers, they are absolutely hosed as all vehicles in this game drain power at a fairly considerable rate now. What do you want them to do? Swim to wrecks that are sometimes hundreds of meters down? Swim to the Aurora through Reaper territory, lol?
All the above tools should be a convenience, not a necessity. As is, quite a few players may end up rage quitting and getting a refund before their first two hours of gameplay are up. That's not good.
You don't HAVE TO have those things. You can keep going out and catching fish for food/water. They do respawn, so it's not like you'll starve. You can even salt them/stock up for longer expeditions. Alien containment and filtration machines are unnecessary, and so are growbeds. They make life easier, to be sure, but you can get by quite easily without them. In fact (not to go all hipster here) I was playing this game before those options were implemented, and it wasn't hard to eat and drink. Likewise you don't HAVE TO have a charger - you can keep making new batteries/powercells. It's not the most efficient way to operate, but it should be enough to let a new player progress, and eventually they'll find the tech for the chargers (the battery charger, for example, being found in the wreck by life pod 17 along with the MVB / Seamoth fragments means if the player is following the beacons they'll be pretty much guided right to that tech fairly early).
In other words, the things you talked about ARE a convenience, not a necessity.
You're absolutely right in that pod 17 is right next to the wreck for the battery charger, which is great. And the Seamoth frags are also there. But with the energy usage change, Seamoth burns through energy considerably faster than it used to. And contrary to the battery charger, you don't get directed to the Power Cell Charger wreck at all early on, forcing players to the Aurora earlier than they may be comfortable with for supplies. And even with the battery charger, the Seaglide burns through batteries every two minutes, which means loading your inventory with quite a few batteries to explore. And even then, it's not like you can rely on your Seaglide to keep you alive when diving at wrecks 150m down or more.
Basically, the game needs to be balanced in either two ways:
- Reduce food and energy needs considerably. Make it so that these tools are less of a crutch.
OR
- Spread out the two chargers, alien containment, and water filtration system all around the kelp forests and grasslands so that players who play blind can easily stumble upon them and not grow frustrated at how much time they spend just staying alive and farming fish, salt, and copper. Especially the latter as it's not renewable. Remember, this is a game about exploration and uncovering the strangeness of this world. Let players actually do that.
There is definitely a power drain on bases now for oxygen, but its so insignificant, it's barely noticeable. The only issue i foresee is if you are running off a few solar panels while there is a major drain on the base, like a ton of charging stations, water filtration and moonpool charging.
If you wish to explore without worrying about food and power, then yes, you need to advance up the tech ladder. That does not mean the game is unplayable or too hard in the early game. It means your expectations are off.
Water is a bigger deal than food, because it drains faster, but bottles of water don't go bad, so you can prepare a bunch ahead of time. And you're exaggerating the actual rate at which you get hungry/thirsty.
It's also worth noting that you don't HAVE to cook the fish - you can eat them raw. It will drain some of your thirst meter to do so, but if you're hungry and have a bunch of water on you, it's perfectly reasonable to take the hit to water to refill the food meter. Hell, you can snack on creepvine if you need to. So your claim about needing to stay near a fabricator at all times is, once again, not true.
Then come back and tell people how much fun you had.
No offense, guys, but I think you're missing the point. We GET that the early game should have a strong survival element to it. The problem is not that. The problem is HOW MUCH of a survival element there is to occupy your time. You have to look at this from the perspective of a newer player who doesn't know this game, hasn't seen Youtube videos or spent time on the Wiki. They buy it on Steam, come in fresh, and play it blind. The food and energy requirements without all the above quality of life tools is HUGE. Even real life survival isn't this time consuming, *relatively speaking*. For new players coming into this game, all they see is that two-thirds of their time is devoted to just staying alive and hunting for food, water, and copper. How is this fun for them?
EDIT: Note that I have all the above tools now and got them quickly when I started playing. But I also watch a lot of videos and spend my time on the Wiki. I *knew* where to go and went there ASAP. My own gameplay at this moment is perfectly fine. But I'm not talking from my own perspective here at all.
Maybe these are the words of an experienced player, but I am in no rush. I'll get better stuff eventually and I'll see the other biomes eventually. I get by steadily, gathering resources for blueprints I'll one day obtain and to improve my base to the current possibilities. Currently saving up for the PRAWN I just got the blueprint for.
You *should* spend a chunk of time scrounging for goods in the early game. I'm just saying it shouldn't be at the ratio it currently is. If you know where to go and what you're doing, you're perfectly fine. If you don't ... not so much.
My recommendation is to make it less challenging in the beginning and more challenging at the end than it currently is. For example, add more really nasty creatures in the dark depths. Right now, only Reapers are really dangerous, and they are only in three zones, and as far as I can tell, can't harm the Cyclops at all (although I'm only so so at the idea of making the Cyclops an easy kill due to the resources you can carry on it). But right now, the really big challenge is almost entirely front-loaded where the newbie players lie.
Again, you are vastly overstating the amount of time required for getting food and water. The Trumpesque dystopian view of the early game just doesn't match reality, especially in recent patches. Back in the day when there was no alien containment, no growbeds, no edible fruits, and the fish tended to disappear from around your base, meaning you had to make long forays just to find something to eat, you might have had a point. But as it stands today I can step outside my lifepod or seabase and find enough fish to eat very easily. Even the ILZ has fish to catch now.
This community is strange sometimes...
The biggest problem for me is the seamoth. You loose oxygen INSIDE of it. You can't do long travel now, quiet disappointed.
We can keep this feature if the cost of energy is less than now or remove this for seamoth.
I have not check in exosuit but in most of case it's not useful to stay long time in it.
Problem is the early game. Mid to late, game is fine.
Just for kicks I started a new game on my lunch hour. It took all of half an hour for me to have 12 batteries, a seaglide, the radiation suit from lifepod 6 (didn't go there until I got the signal for it), several salted peepers, several bottles of disinfected water, a knife, a scanner, fins, etc. And this is living out of the lifepod only.
And for the record, you dehydrate at approximately 10% per 3 minutes, or half an hour of playing to go from 100% to 0%. That means you need to drink 2 disinfected water or 4 filtered water every 24 minutes. In other words, you fill yourself up and there's plenty of time to go do stuff, even if you don't bring supplies with you.
I'm not sure what game you're playing, but that's not true. It will burn your powercell much quicker than it used to, but you absolutely DO NOT continue losing oxygen inside the seamoth unless it's out of power.
You do lose oxygen in the Seamoth, just not continuously. It's something like you gain five oxygen points and then lose two. And so on. It's why it takes so much longer now before you can continue doing anything.