Across The Board Feedback And Suggestions From An Experienced Player
Jamescell
American Alpine Biome Join Date: 2015-08-18 Member: 207249Members
American Alpine Biome Join Date: 2015-08-18 Member: 207249Members
I’ve been playing the game for a while now, and I absolutely love it! I have a few suggestions that I would appreciate, but I also realize you (the Devs) are busy and your resources are limited. Let me know your thoughts if you have time. Also, will the floating lily pad islands and arctic regions make it into the game before release? What about the plant/specimen analyzer?
Damage and Oxygen Consumption: Taking damage should temporarily increase oxygen consumption. Such a change is both more realistic and would increase the stakes of dangerous situations which is something I believe the game needs.
Giving Terrain 3D Texture: A lot of the more polished art assets look absolutely astounding (the Gasopod, the Peeper, etc.). Terrain doesn’t seem to live up to the “popping” organic style that makes some parts of the game look so amazing. Most terrain is sculpted so that rock walls are essentially smooth and covered in a texture. Many areas don’t even have “popping” textures for terrain. But even if they did, walls would still be undeniably flat.
I’m not sure how viable this is, but I suggest creating large 3d rectangular models for terrain designed to fit next to others and repeat. These models could be stretched and would cover the surface of all terrain in game (the model varying based on the intended material). This would would allow for terrain to look much more real and polished. Visually popping textures would be accentuated by such a change. This would bring terrain up to par with the more visually polished aspects of the game. Think of it like making a mesh to go along with terrain textures and stretching that mesh along with the textures.
Resource Salvaging and Refining: Players should be able to salvage all items with the fabricator that are made of other resources in return for the component resources. However, such an endeavor should take significant amounts of energy. Also, natural materials such as stalker tooth, creep vine seed clusters, creep vine samples, mushrooms, crash powder, coral samples, (any organic matter) should be refine-able in the fabricator and yield refined materials. This would be just for the sake of thematic polish. It's weird using a mushroom for a battery or having a bunch of organic stuff in the inventory.
Storage and Foraging Changes: Subnautica uses sci-fi technology to make survival mechanics seem more feasible, and is largely a game that applies technology to survival. This should be the case with resource collection as well. Realistically, player should only be able to carry a few small items at a time. Realistically, players shouldn’t even have an inventory. However, this would make the game unreasonably difficult.
I suggest that instead of magically carrying around boatloads of materials, players spawn with a “synthesizer” built into their suit/arm. The synthesizer will work much like the habitat constructor but only for deconstructing things and with an almost instantaneous animation time. The habitat constructor would lose the ability to salvage and the player would use the synthesizer to salvage base parts.
The synthesizer wouldn’t require energy to use; the idea being that it loses energy for storing items but regains that energy when those items are removed from the inventory (think non-spontaneous and spontaneous reactions). Most resources would now take longer to collect, but would yield more to compensate. There would also be an animation for synthesizing catchable fauna from one’s hand to the inventory. An alternate button would allow players to synthesize all items in close proximity simultaneously.
Polishing Flora: Add stem models to the mushroom leaves in the mushroom forest so that they may regrow. Make the mushroom tree actually look good and give it or the areas near it or in it some sort of practical significance. Add stem models to the bases of table coral so that they regrow after being harvested. Creep Vines lack visual polish and do pretty bad things to framerate. I suggest remodeling them to be more vine-like, thicker, have real textures, and to tone down the physics effects on them. Better looking and less laggy- it's a win win.
Making the Air Bladder Useful: The air bladder isn’t actually useful. Often I’ve tried to use it to get to the surface in a tight situation, but it doesn’t make a noticeable difference from simply swimming upwards.
Make the airbladder an equipment add-on that players can wear as part of their suit. The bladder would be filled with helium that would lift the player upwards much more quickly than it does now. Because it would be an equipment piece it would not need to be in-hand to use.
Oxygen Pipes Are Weird: I personally think that oxygen pipes don’t fit the game. Oxygen management Is an interesting mechanic, but it’s entertaining to overcome that challenge in ways that don’t involve reforming the environment. Oxygen pipes also don’t make sense. They would need energy to pump oxygen downwards and they would have to float to be even close to realistic.
The game has a very non-invasive dynamic, and seems to be getting less invasive with further updates. Pipes, like terraforming, is an outdated feature that conflicts with the dynamic of relatively non-invasive exploration. Pipes are also a clunky solution in a game saturated with advanced personal technology. If anything there should be an advanced oxygen tank upgrade that uses energy to partially if not fully compensate for oxygen consumption.
Polishing Fauna: I know, it’s a matter of resources. However, remodeling older fauna (and even flora) would add a huge amount of polish, visual cohesion, and wow-factor to the game. I believe that the Crashfish, Stalker, Reaper Leviathan, Hoverfish, Boomerang, Hoopfish, Holefish, Shuttlebug, Garyfish, Jellyray, cave crawler, and Ampeel would all benefit greatly from remodels. The Boneshark, Sandshark, Crabsquid, and Shocker are iffy. Meanwhile, the Crabsnake could really use more detailed, organic, and visually popping textures. Maybe segment like the segmented body of a crab?
I have a lot of opinions regarding how these creatures could potentially look and behave. I'll probably make a separate post just to cover it.
Floating and Mountain Islands: Everything above sea level seems to especially lack polish. The mountain island and floating island have very crude terrain sculpts and textures, and the floating island has a lot of non-interact-able plants. Don’t really have suggestions besides make them nicer, but that takes time and resources. Also, I think that the sunken islands would look a lot nicer if they had actual models instead of being sculpted using terrain-scuplting tools.
Damage and Oxygen Consumption: Taking damage should temporarily increase oxygen consumption. Such a change is both more realistic and would increase the stakes of dangerous situations which is something I believe the game needs.
Giving Terrain 3D Texture: A lot of the more polished art assets look absolutely astounding (the Gasopod, the Peeper, etc.). Terrain doesn’t seem to live up to the “popping” organic style that makes some parts of the game look so amazing. Most terrain is sculpted so that rock walls are essentially smooth and covered in a texture. Many areas don’t even have “popping” textures for terrain. But even if they did, walls would still be undeniably flat.
I’m not sure how viable this is, but I suggest creating large 3d rectangular models for terrain designed to fit next to others and repeat. These models could be stretched and would cover the surface of all terrain in game (the model varying based on the intended material). This would would allow for terrain to look much more real and polished. Visually popping textures would be accentuated by such a change. This would bring terrain up to par with the more visually polished aspects of the game. Think of it like making a mesh to go along with terrain textures and stretching that mesh along with the textures.
Resource Salvaging and Refining: Players should be able to salvage all items with the fabricator that are made of other resources in return for the component resources. However, such an endeavor should take significant amounts of energy. Also, natural materials such as stalker tooth, creep vine seed clusters, creep vine samples, mushrooms, crash powder, coral samples, (any organic matter) should be refine-able in the fabricator and yield refined materials. This would be just for the sake of thematic polish. It's weird using a mushroom for a battery or having a bunch of organic stuff in the inventory.
Storage and Foraging Changes: Subnautica uses sci-fi technology to make survival mechanics seem more feasible, and is largely a game that applies technology to survival. This should be the case with resource collection as well. Realistically, player should only be able to carry a few small items at a time. Realistically, players shouldn’t even have an inventory. However, this would make the game unreasonably difficult.
I suggest that instead of magically carrying around boatloads of materials, players spawn with a “synthesizer” built into their suit/arm. The synthesizer will work much like the habitat constructor but only for deconstructing things and with an almost instantaneous animation time. The habitat constructor would lose the ability to salvage and the player would use the synthesizer to salvage base parts.
The synthesizer wouldn’t require energy to use; the idea being that it loses energy for storing items but regains that energy when those items are removed from the inventory (think non-spontaneous and spontaneous reactions). Most resources would now take longer to collect, but would yield more to compensate. There would also be an animation for synthesizing catchable fauna from one’s hand to the inventory. An alternate button would allow players to synthesize all items in close proximity simultaneously.
Polishing Flora: Add stem models to the mushroom leaves in the mushroom forest so that they may regrow. Make the mushroom tree actually look good and give it or the areas near it or in it some sort of practical significance. Add stem models to the bases of table coral so that they regrow after being harvested. Creep Vines lack visual polish and do pretty bad things to framerate. I suggest remodeling them to be more vine-like, thicker, have real textures, and to tone down the physics effects on them. Better looking and less laggy- it's a win win.
Making the Air Bladder Useful: The air bladder isn’t actually useful. Often I’ve tried to use it to get to the surface in a tight situation, but it doesn’t make a noticeable difference from simply swimming upwards.
Make the airbladder an equipment add-on that players can wear as part of their suit. The bladder would be filled with helium that would lift the player upwards much more quickly than it does now. Because it would be an equipment piece it would not need to be in-hand to use.
Oxygen Pipes Are Weird: I personally think that oxygen pipes don’t fit the game. Oxygen management Is an interesting mechanic, but it’s entertaining to overcome that challenge in ways that don’t involve reforming the environment. Oxygen pipes also don’t make sense. They would need energy to pump oxygen downwards and they would have to float to be even close to realistic.
The game has a very non-invasive dynamic, and seems to be getting less invasive with further updates. Pipes, like terraforming, is an outdated feature that conflicts with the dynamic of relatively non-invasive exploration. Pipes are also a clunky solution in a game saturated with advanced personal technology. If anything there should be an advanced oxygen tank upgrade that uses energy to partially if not fully compensate for oxygen consumption.
Polishing Fauna: I know, it’s a matter of resources. However, remodeling older fauna (and even flora) would add a huge amount of polish, visual cohesion, and wow-factor to the game. I believe that the Crashfish, Stalker, Reaper Leviathan, Hoverfish, Boomerang, Hoopfish, Holefish, Shuttlebug, Garyfish, Jellyray, cave crawler, and Ampeel would all benefit greatly from remodels. The Boneshark, Sandshark, Crabsquid, and Shocker are iffy. Meanwhile, the Crabsnake could really use more detailed, organic, and visually popping textures. Maybe segment like the segmented body of a crab?
I have a lot of opinions regarding how these creatures could potentially look and behave. I'll probably make a separate post just to cover it.
Floating and Mountain Islands: Everything above sea level seems to especially lack polish. The mountain island and floating island have very crude terrain sculpts and textures, and the floating island has a lot of non-interact-able plants. Don’t really have suggestions besides make them nicer, but that takes time and resources. Also, I think that the sunken islands would look a lot nicer if they had actual models instead of being sculpted using terrain-scuplting tools.
Comments
The inventory thing might be neat. Fast versions of the build effects that are on spawned subs, and having stuff "appear" in the hands rather than pulling it out of... uh... somewhere. Some of that stuff is pretty big, where are we keeping it? Good rationale for adding a "clip" of stored stuff to the repulsion cannon. Making inventory more complicated than that, though, is again complexity for the sake of complexity.
You might want to check out the dev Trello board, they're working on pipes already. As well as a bunch of other stuff. A lot of your points seem to condense to "Hey, that game you're working on? You should work on it, kthx." UWE has been impressing me as a team who is pretty solid on identifying what needs to be worked on, and working on it, and not getting caught up in feature creep.
...Yup, pipes planned for the 20th of this month.
I have no idea what you're talking about.