Multiple Difficulty levels, Virtual Inventory, and movement speed with gear.
CharterOak
Join Date: 2016-12-20 Member: 225252Members
Join Date: 2016-12-20 Member: 225252Members
I finally decided to give this game a review. This is the review I gave. I'll change it as needed. But these are some of the things that hindered my enjoyment of the game and have me not playing anymore. I still gave it a thumbs up, btw.
Input is welcomed. Just try to be kind.
Review:
Honestly... I want to give this game a glowing review. The visuals are gorgeous... The game play is fun... The concept is right up my alley. The problem for me is the difficulty level. It's kind of hard core. For some it may be perfect. For me it was too tough. I was running out of necessary things like batteries and water before I could find any of the more important things to push forward my exploration.
The game does have a couple of levels of difficulty that involve taking all the needs and hazards out of the game. And this is all fine and good. But I like the needs and hazards. I just don't want them to be at a level I was unable to cope with.
What I think the game needs is an easier level of difficulty, IN ADDITION to the current tougher level of difficulty. Quicker respawn of certain resources like copper and salt for a medium level of difficulty and maybe a bit less aggro from the more aggressive fish. And for an easy level of difficulty add to that less resource usage. Food, water, and batteries, as well as air would get used more slowly and even less aggro from the aggressive fish.
Next I would get rid of the current inventory situation entirely in favor of a virtual inventory. No more physical storage everywhere that you have to route through constantly and try to keep organized. Instead have a handy bar someplace that says you have so much crystal, so much salt, so much copper, etc. Stuff that is harvested would go directly to this virtual storage and never need to be handled at all after harvesting... Maybe it's just me.
Last... I would get rid of the drops in speed for using more oxygen tanks or equiping items. As it stands right now you go around 1/10nth slower for every oxygen tank equiped and every item you currently have out and are using. Equip 5 tanks and you will go around half as fast. It's just annoying, IMO. Especially for newer players. I don't see the need for it.
Other than that... wonderful game... Gorgeous. Really gorgeous. And the concept is wonderful. I'm just not playing it these days because of the difficulty.
Input is welcomed. Just try to be kind.
Review:
Honestly... I want to give this game a glowing review. The visuals are gorgeous... The game play is fun... The concept is right up my alley. The problem for me is the difficulty level. It's kind of hard core. For some it may be perfect. For me it was too tough. I was running out of necessary things like batteries and water before I could find any of the more important things to push forward my exploration.
The game does have a couple of levels of difficulty that involve taking all the needs and hazards out of the game. And this is all fine and good. But I like the needs and hazards. I just don't want them to be at a level I was unable to cope with.
What I think the game needs is an easier level of difficulty, IN ADDITION to the current tougher level of difficulty. Quicker respawn of certain resources like copper and salt for a medium level of difficulty and maybe a bit less aggro from the more aggressive fish. And for an easy level of difficulty add to that less resource usage. Food, water, and batteries, as well as air would get used more slowly and even less aggro from the aggressive fish.
Next I would get rid of the current inventory situation entirely in favor of a virtual inventory. No more physical storage everywhere that you have to route through constantly and try to keep organized. Instead have a handy bar someplace that says you have so much crystal, so much salt, so much copper, etc. Stuff that is harvested would go directly to this virtual storage and never need to be handled at all after harvesting... Maybe it's just me.
Last... I would get rid of the drops in speed for using more oxygen tanks or equiping items. As it stands right now you go around 1/10nth slower for every oxygen tank equiped and every item you currently have out and are using. Equip 5 tanks and you will go around half as fast. It's just annoying, IMO. Especially for newer players. I don't see the need for it.
Other than that... wonderful game... Gorgeous. Really gorgeous. And the concept is wonderful. I'm just not playing it these days because of the difficulty.
Comments
Also yes please no more air tank reduction speed it does nothing for anyone
While I do see your points of view, as you are a newer player, a lot of your problems could be fixed with experience. Knowing exactly what you are going to do when going into the game is key. For example, when starting up a new game, answer the following questions.
1. What are the immediate threats?
2. What resources are nearby?
3. What am I going to do first? How am I going to do it?
4. How am I going to progress? (Are you going to start a base immediately, or are you going to rely on your lifepod?)
5. What do I want to do in the future? (Making goals is very helpful for the first few hours of the game.)
As for the speed drop when holding items and tanks, it was more of a realism choice. You would certainly go slower with a heavy tank in the real ocean, and you would go slower while only using one hand to swim.
And the Virtual Inventory sounds a lot like, *sigh* No Man's Sky. Personally, I don't want Subnautica to do anything with that game. Or anything like it for that matter. That would bring up many a gamers' No Man's Sky wounds. Not the greatest first impression when the game comes out.
My point in making this thread was to give some constructive thought as to why, even though I love the concept of the game and large parts of the game I have shelved it in some degree of frustration. It can be helpful for developers to know why their product did not work for some people. And often those players move on, frustrated, without ever passing on any constructive reasons or things the developers could have worked on.
So, I'm passing on things that would make the game more new player friendly and fun for me in the hopes that it will help the developers and other new players that may have the same issues. Because players don't become experienced if they can't figure things out and move on in frustration first.
Thanks for the ideas on how to move forward and the input.
It is impossible to run out of food and water if you stay near your pod. That thing regenerates power. Now batteries is indeed a bit of a sore subject, once you know your way around you go and find battery/cell recharger and batteries/cells issues vanish instantly. Until you do know that however it's pretty bad. Since people will make seaglide and most people that have been here for long don't really like seaglide for that exact reason, they will build seamoth and probably cyclops before seaglide.
No... just no. The inventory system you are described is the most rubbish from the ass bullshit that makes no sense what so ever. No Mans Sky has it... while I personally don't hate that game because I didn't jump the train and only looked at it after it was patched(foundation update), my biggest grievance with it is the inventory(second one would be their abhorent survival mode... it is really shitty, yes I left the planet yes I warped about but once I found out about some mechanics that are never mentioned I dumped and normal mode was about .... I don't know... infinitely more interesting? since I wasn't forced into anything and could do everything but when I wanted). It's retarded. Aside from the fact some minuscule component that goes inside your multitool taking more resources then a city block in NY would need it is all jammed into one space. Things don't stack, things stack, you need upgrades there you need a stack to just lift off and then you realize that it is just plain stupid. When you realize your inventory with 10 extra slots isn't enough to build an upgrade you know the system is broken.
The same for distress beacons, mentions of islands south of the crash site, etc.
I think if more people actually slowed down and thought about what the repercussions of info they just learned have on them, they would find it much easier.
I guess the breakdown is in communicating to the player that that's how they need to think (like in an actual survival situation, you wouldn't just brush off information because you totes want to check out that new cool looking thing over there).
Not saying that's the only thing to blame for this problem, but, knowing a bit more now, it's all very easy. And looking back, I'm not sure exactly how the devs are supposed drop any more hints as to what to do.
I mean, take the first few seconds of the game. Put out the fire, PDA says "please familiarize yourself..." and that's about as far as it goes as most player give the PDA a few clicks, slap it into their pocket, and dive headlong into the ocean almost before the PDA finishes saying "plz 2 actually use this, it's handy for your survival" (although a lot of them do pause to survey the pretty environment from the top of their pod first).
How could Subnautica change that tendency without forcing players' hands?
I mean, for crying out loud, most players have played several hours and died several times from low health before they realize there's a medkit fabricator in the escape pod (that blinks at you when it has a new medkit, no less). Some never even discover this.
Around half never repair their escape pod, even when they get the repair tool, despite the fact that looking at the damaged area says "damaged pod, use repair tool" or similar.
Which is why the devs were forced to make the communications relay self-repairing, as a lot of players never would even repair it (seems kind of like a top priority in survival, right?)
Sorry if that seems like a rant, and please comment back with your thoughts on this.
A bit too late for that since No Man's Sky's Base Building is heavily inspired by Subnautica. Since NMS is already out while Subnautica has at least a few more months before it is officially released, then some people might think that Subnautica was stealing from NMS instead of the other way around.
Something tells me that misconception will be crushed very quickly with evidence like this, and this
Note the date.
I have to agree with 0x6A7232 that the game gives plenty of hints to get you started. For instance, the Lifepod 17 signal is the first one you get and it leads you to a wreck with the battery recharger. Water is easily obtained by going for +40 bottles which recipe is in the fabricator, but most people only go for the +20 bottles obtained from bladderfishes.
(In all fairness, coral tubes and the like haven't been directly scannable for a long time and that makes it impossible to find out about their use until you've already smacked them with the knife, which you have no push to do so without knowing what they are. And there's no push to make a scanner atm either.)
I do think SN lacks a unified system of helping you forward. There's the arrows for punching outcrops and cutting vines, there's the building instructions, there's the data entries, there's the signals, there's the recipes, etc. It can be overwhelming to have to keep track of so many places. Personally, I always love those multipage instructions guides in the menu or F1 so I can get some of the basics down while the clock isn't ticking.
Resources other than fish don't respawn. There's some conflicting reports on it, but even those reports that say stuff respawns never talk about significant numbers. I would love respawning resources, personally. This game is meant to not end until you want it to, after all, so keeping players back on resources seems off to me.
Sorry for some of the language used in the responses. It's not right and you don't deserve that kind of negativity.
Which makes a lot of sense since you just need 1 Bladderfish for Filtered Water while you need to find 1 Salt Deposit and 1 Coral Sample, then you need to convert that to Bleach, then convert the Bleach to Disinfected Water. Then there is the problem of looking for the Salt Deposit on the ground while it is easy to find Bladderfishes swimming around. Of course, the optimum method is having a Water Filtration Machine provided you have a decent power supply at your base since it gives 2 Big Filtered Water (50 water each) about every 30 minutes and 2 Salt Deposits which can be converted to Disinfected Water or curing Peepers from your Alien Containment. You can get 4 Salt Deposits every 30 minutes being at the base every 15 minutes.
On side note I do agree that scanning gives a ton of info and following beacons gives you all the essentials. Heck you get free radiation suit from one of the first beacons, the one after that gives you compass. Anyway speaking of scanning. Wonder how many people never realized you can eat bulb tree stuff... even tho it tells you it is edible damnit.
We can always refer people back to those posts if and when such misconceptions arise, since I'm almost positive at least a few people will jump to that conclusion sooner or later.
I get where you're coming from (gameplay), but I mean it a little differently (guidance). That is, what I've yet to see a single LPer do is go in the fabricator menu and look into the water tab to see what they need for this basic survival need. What usually happens is that they catch a bladderfish and convert it to water because they can, seemingly never noticing there's another, more profitable recipe for water. Stuff like tools, the ingredients for those they'll actively look for, but not for water. +20 over +40 never strikes me as a conscious choice.
And at least for early game, the ingredients shouldn't be the problem. Fish you have to chase & catch, while salt just lies there easily visible, especially if you're looking for quartz concurrently and are already tuned to white shinies. Coral tubes hand you more than ten pieces of coral before they disappear and the lifepod's energy is free.
Which isn't to say I don't believe in more options for water. Like, I know weather is not a priority to the devs, but how useful would it be if we could have a device that collects rain in four +[X] bottles as long as it's built on the surface? We'd only be able to use it for surface bases and its use'd be weather-dependent, but it could ease up stress for early game.
Once again, this post is made to try to explain what can happen to those people who are not getting the game right off. It is meant to try to help give a window into the perspective of some players in as effort to make the game more new player friendly.
For me the fun part of the game is the exploration aspect. Going out and taking risks in order to find cool things. I enjoy the risks because they make the discoveries worth something... But without the discovery the fun to be had is pretty limited.
The problem was a combination of two basic things. One, spending all my time working on the mundane things such as trying to make water etc. What would happen is that I would find all the salt in the area early on and make a bunch of water. This would last a while. But eventually I would use that water faster than I could find salt. And once I ran out of salt I would really be up against it. It would start to take all my time just trying to make water. I would even start to run out of bladderfish after a while.
The second problem exacerbated the first. It was a lack of speed. I often could not even find the seaglide fragments. And when I could I would use the batteries faster than I could find copper and so would be no longer really able to use it. Then, as I was running out of resources I would turn to air tanks in an effort to explore farther and deeper to find more resources. But with the air tanks slowing me down that would make trips take quite a long time per area searched. Long trips out and long trips back meant even more problems with water. I'd often come back severely dehydrated, which slowed me down even more, and if I had not found a haul of salt on that trip I might have issues with having enough water. This would mean going out to catch the now scarce bladderfish for a while. Which made for excessively long turn arounds. Most of my time would be spent on this type of stuff and too little of it on the exploration and discovery.
The basic issue, as I saw it was that I was using resources faster than I was finding them. This led to a cycle and really put a damper on my ability to get out and explore, because I was using all my time just surviving. Unfortunately, the current difficulty solutions cheapen the risk in the game and the harvesting and discovery aspect by taking out the risk and making many items in the game unnecessary. This makes finding things less rewarding and fun.
These are some of the reasons I would like to have an easier level of difficulty with respawning of things such as salt and copper(for batteries). It may also explain some of the reason why I prefer not to have the air tanks and equipped items slowing me down by as much as 50%. The aggro request was to help a bit with the fact that med kits compete with water(they use bleach) for a new player and are thus also scarce. All of this limits the exploration and discovery, which, in my opinion, is the fun part of the game.
The inventory request came from my experience with Mass Effect. Early on they had the same issue as many games. Loot everywhere competing with a constantly full inventory. As the Mass Effect series went along though, they moved to simply using a character page for swapping weapons and armor and eliminated the inventory as we know it. It was so much less hassle. That concept was extremely well received by myself and my friends, so I thought it would be good here too. Here it would probably take the form of eliminating the inventory, but keeping the character screen for swapping items. Harvested items would be kept track of in a resources bar, while gear would be kept track of using a simple click menu for each slot. Could just be me.
A window into my thinking and requests.
Yeah, those Seaglide fragments are hard to find if you don't know where to look. Just look in random single boxes out in the Safe Shallows and Kelp Forest. They almost always hold a Seaglide fragment.
In the end my blunt opinion is that it's a survival game. Survival should be your primary goal.
Food's generally my biggest concern in the opening, because water's easy to secure with the Bleach method but I struggle to catch fish. Risking the Kelp Forests for the Hoverfish or going after Garryfish is more profitable for me than trying to catch elusive Peepers, since my computer's a touch on the low-grade side of things. Gravspheres help though, keeps them from leading me on a merry chase across the seas.
Batteries though? Yeah, the seaglide eats those up way too quick. Unless you know exactly where you're going and have a bundle of them on hand, it's almost not worth using. Instead of taking a dive to the ocean floor with it, just bring some pipes and have the air come to you. I've actually done that to gather lithium from the Mushroom Forest early in my last game without even scanning the seaglide. Once you get the battery charger the resource collection for batteries is pretty much solved, but you'll have to find it first...
A lot of it is still the salt/water, copper/speed equation I have already listed.
But I think the true break point is in sustainability. When you start the game you have a sustainability timer that starts ticking for you.
If you can find the items you need to achieve sustainability in the game in under 1-2 hours you are golden. You enjoy the early game and find it pretty easy. You know what you need and you know the places to look to have a good chance of finding the items you need. And once you find them you can move forward from a much more sustainable position into the more exploration and discovery aspect of the game. Some players seem to more naturally be able to pick this up and they are successful in the game, find it to be not so difficult, and have more fun.
On the other hand, if you can't find the items you need to achieve sustainability in under about two hours you end up on a tetris treadmill. You start to run out of resources and are fighting a losing battle vs thirst. You start to grow frustrated after several unsuccessful play throughs and feel the game is too hard. You do not know what you need to do or where to look to find it. Your speed is slow and your water is low. You spend most of your time looking for salt and don't really make it to the exploration and discovery aspect of the game. Some players do NOT naturally seem to pick up how to get beyond this before they grow frustrated and shelve the game leaving a negative review. They found it too difficult and not as much fun as they had hoped.
Basically, if you can't win the sustainability battle in the first hour or two you will be in the second category of players.
Imagine trying to survive for hours with only the original blueprints because you don't know where to find others and may not even know most of those things are even out there.
I've already listed several ideas I had to help players get beyond this. They largely involve re-spawning salt and copper. Maybe these are not the right solutions. But I believe the development team will be well served to understand what is causing some players to not be successful and leave the game frustrated. I do this in the hope that it will point the development team toward what areas to work on in order to help players eventually find success in the game and recommend the game to others.
Yes. Many players of this game are successful. That's awesome. But not all are. I'm trying to provide a window into WHY some players are not successful, since most players still with the game have been successful and probably will have had a rather different experience than those who were not successful.
That said, I disagree with some parts and I feel like you are new to genre.
I'll take into account two popular games:
Terraria - Crafting/Exploration: Has no hand-holding at all and the night begins in 10? minutes with zombies spawning.
Don't Starve - Crafting/Survival: Has no hand-holding at all. The night has some time to fall in but if you haven't thought about putting up a fire, you'll be dead very fast. (I think there was a slight clue on that, not sure)
Now Subnautica, compared to these two, actually provides you some insight. If you take your time to read the messages and logs in your PDA (and your PDA is the first thing introduced) you learn
>the standard procedure
>some survival tips
>other pods, which has PDAs that reveal more
I do criticize the game about story being detached, but the basics are pretty well-covered.
And you can explore the whole crafting menu (well, not whole-whole, but most options are readily available) at any time, so if you think like "I want to build stuff", you can see there is a Habitat Builder and you can go for it.
And more importantly... this game is supposed to be dark.
You are alone.
You have to survive.
And you need to find ways, actively, to do that. There is no one that will show you the way.
You must make the way.
I'm not saying the game can not have any more pointers at all, but it's a very thin line.
I think it's important that you discover things through need.
For example, I noticed bladderfish wasn't enough for water, so I checked recipes and learned about disinfected water.
I noticed cooking some fish every time wasn't enough. So I checked recipes to learn about cured food and tried it (So I can stock them without loss of nutrition) and I started checking the nutrition values for each fish and stopped hunting garyfish.
Or, as I picked random stuff I noticed you get new recipes, so I started trying to pick different things to unlock recipes.
If you do not like this and you find this harsh, I'd respectfully say you are expecting the wrong thing from this game. Because, to my understanding, this difficulty is part of the experience.
Again, this is not to say no improvements can be done.
And seeing your inventory and o2 tank requests...
Maybe you should play the creative mode and maybe even with some codes.
Because it sounds as if you like the overall design, the concept but not the gameplay. Creative is exactly for this imho.
An eloquent and accurate assessment. My apologies for any not-understanding I have done.
In retrospect I do agree, somewhat. But at the same time problem is the "wasted" resources. On my current save I didn't get chargers for the first 20? hours, stasis rifle/propulsion for the first 40? i had 4 X connectors in a square as a base for maybe 30 hours. But the thing was I didn't drain the salt supply from around my shack making something I didn't really need, I most certainly didn't waste all the copper feeding something as rubbish as seaglide because it took me a single battery to see just how wonky the thing is. Yes you will screw yourself hard if you try to make new batteries to feed seaglide and it will suck profoundly.
The problem however is that some resources are non-renewable. Once they are gone from readily accessible easy to find sources you are pressured. I remember suggesting generation of resources near lava geysers after x amount of time. That would have "helped" alleviate resource starvation. But on the other hand managing your expectation is not a "bad" thing per-say. So you just spent all the copper from a mile around making batteries... and now you have no copper left... not using your brain is not really such a great argument.