Dunes bottomless pit?
scifiwriterguy
Sector ZZ-9-Plural Z-α Join Date: 2017-02-14 Member: 227901Members
Sector ZZ-9-Plural Z-α Join Date: 2017-02-14 Member: 227901Members
While exploring the Dunes with my Cyclops the other day, looking for silver bulk resources and trying to keep the bloody leviathans from mating with my sub (or whatever they were doing to it), I came across a very sharp drop in the landscape about 1.2km due west from Lifepod 5. Naturally, started a descent in the Cyclops to see what was down there.
It turned out this terrain feature was more of a conical depression that made navigating the Cyclops deeper tricky, but I eventually got to 1475m and found the floor. Or not, as it turned out; the pit kept going deeper, but 1) wide-beam wasn't going to fit in the hole, and 2) even if he did, he'd fold. So, my thalassophobia screaming "NO!" at the top of its lungs, I got out and dropped a few flares down the hole.
They vanished into the deep. I'm not going down there by my own self, that's for sure. So far as I can tell, it's a bottomless pit.
What did I find? Is this the Dunes sinkhole I've heard about? A new, unnamed terrain feature? A secret ending where if I swim all the way down I pop out in a swimming pool in Secaucus, NJ, and no longer need rescue?
If anyone knows, I'd really appreciate being let in on it because I gotta tell you...it scares me, frankly.
It turned out this terrain feature was more of a conical depression that made navigating the Cyclops deeper tricky, but I eventually got to 1475m and found the floor. Or not, as it turned out; the pit kept going deeper, but 1) wide-beam wasn't going to fit in the hole, and 2) even if he did, he'd fold. So, my thalassophobia screaming "NO!" at the top of its lungs, I got out and dropped a few flares down the hole.
They vanished into the deep. I'm not going down there by my own self, that's for sure. So far as I can tell, it's a bottomless pit.
What did I find? Is this the Dunes sinkhole I've heard about? A new, unnamed terrain feature? A secret ending where if I swim all the way down I pop out in a swimming pool in Secaucus, NJ, and no longer need rescue?
If anyone knows, I'd really appreciate being let in on it because I gotta tell you...it scares me, frankly.
Comments
Yeah, it doesn't go anywhere and there's nothing in there. As Cap'Fearless pointed out, one of the possibilities is that they'll be sticking leviathans in it to deter players. The Trello card on the matter though only says "Fix Void or make it more dangerous to be in" and one of the proposals for making it more dangerous was by putting leviathans in it. They can't hurt your Cyclops though, so the danger would be less so than say constant damage over time like the Void in Minecraft.
Unless that card's changed as of late, that's what it wrote the last time I checked a few weeks back. I'd hate to see them go the Invisible Wall route for fixing it though.
That would serve no reasonable purpose due to realism. Some games go with a warning message about heading into extremely dangerous territories or it is desolate for kilometers. To deal with this, Subnautica just needs to extend the map for 100 meters in each direction and add some boring plant life and stop players from moving into that restricted area. It is easy for lots of games to give the illusion of a massive world with impassable regions like mountains and oceans, but Subnautica is stuck in the ocean.
Whatever the solution may be, I agree that the bottomless drop off at the edge of the map really needs to go.
Regardless of how scary or dangerous they might make it, the drop off screams at me:
"HELLO FELLOW PLAYER THIS PART OF THE MAP DOESN'T EXIST BECAUSE WE DIDN'T MAKE IT HAHA JUST TURN AROUND AND FORGET YOU EVER SAW THIS."
It's not appropriate to make the limits of the game so glaringly obvious. It really wrecks immersion.
Additionally, adding a bunch of monsters to the edge of the map might backfire because new players might interpret that as meaning there is something important or worth exploring over the edge of the map.
Players should actively avoid the edge of the map because they know nothing interesting is there ... not because they are forced to ...
My suggestion? Take inspiration from nature and replace the drop off with a gradual abyssal slope, which becomes more and more flat and featureless as you descend ... and make the slope descend beyond the pressure-withstanding capacity of any of the vehicles in the game:
Here is a real-life atoll depth profile for comparison:
An abyssal slope could potentially be achieved by procedural terrain generation to extend the map (maybe endlessly) in all directions so that an edge is never encountered.
I like this idea, though I would hope we would be allowed to get to the abyss depths, even if it were only using a remote control sub/drone.
I would like to see an abyss biome though, with weird creatures. And maybe monsters! But other than that, yes; procedural generated sea bed, even if just dunes, but with some procedural generated resources.
Noooooo!!!! That would be awful and spoil the current level of realism we have.
Yes, that would work.
Don't Subnautica coordinates usually consist of three values, the X,Y & Z?
Sure, but I figured the Z was irrelevant - especially since I didn't know if there even was a maximal Z.
Dang. Here I thought I'd found something cool.
Thanks for checking! It still creeps me out, but at least it has a name now.
Everything in Subnautica's cool though!
You know, that's true more in Subnautica than just about any other game I can think of offhand. The world is so intricate and convoluted that there's always something to find, or at least experience for the first time. It's part of why I love this game so much despite my crippling thalssophobia...which, oddly, I think this game is helping me with.
That's because it's underwater, I keep on saying
Games that lack that y axis just get boring I find. Except for Skyrim. Man, I love Skyrim.
Which is a large part of why I was disappointed (to put it both mildly and politely) when they covered up the Dunes-ILZ access point and are talking about axing the Crash Zone entrance. They both had such amazing potential, and they weren't removed for time constraint or resource reasons either
Can't access the ILZ through the DGR anymore (apparently the gradual transition in depth was "too confusing") but at least the Lost River entrance is still there. The reapers in the Dunes scare the heck out of me too, especially given how open and baren the place is ;v; Though it's much more manageable once you get the exosuit. They largely ignore it because they're usually high up in the water column and don't generally dive down to grab you (The mountains ones definitely do all the time though), and unlike your seamoth they don't do a whole lot of damage to it.
With the closing of the Dunes-ILZ / Dunes-LR junction though, I've lost a lot of reason to go into the Dunes. Its sole remaining redeeming feature for me is the Silver there.
A weak hope, maybe, but you know...devil's advocate...
From the Discord responses people posted in my thread on the matter, I doubt that's the cause. I didn't see any real good reasons for these entrances being sealed up really though, and it's just limiting the player's freedom in the world - especially in the later portions of the game (Which is already horrifyingly linear and straightforward right now, compared to the early to mid game)
That's why I tend to not advance the plot. I love sandboxing Subnautica. Not total Creative Mode; I still have to go hunt my resources and all. But making my own path, you know?
Well it's not just the story, but progression in general. They've limited the Lost River to just the two Blood Kelp Zones and the Deep Grand Reef (Though the DGR's entrance is pretty close to the BK one...), and that's fine. However, they cut the Dunes ILZ entrance (Which looking at the map here, would have led into the Lost River's ILZ-Corridor entrance, which would have been cool but oh well. Straightforward "exploration" it is.) and are going to cut the Crash Zone entrance, which leaves just the Lost River. So exploration-wise, that's a rather limited progression into the lava zones. At least you still have a few ways into the Lost River, but imagine if they had it like the early concept: Snaking out across the map and entrances all over. Just like the ILZ used to be; an entrance in three distant parts of the map.
Story or no story, the late game progression doesn't give you the same sort of options the early game does and by further limiting the world itself you have even less, even in Creative. I can't build my Dunes research base anymore since the seafloor ILZ pit got sealed up for instance
See, I hadn't known about any of these controversies before joining the forums. Now that I do, I'm actually glad; it reduces the feeling of loss when you don't know what you were missing.
Subnautica does that beautifully in the early to mid-game. Sure, for some of us "veterans" there's going to be a more efficient path, we know where most things are, and the easiest ways to get them. We don't need to stray into certain dangerous areas to get the Cyclops pieces because we know we can get them from (relatively) easier areas. However, the option is still there - and of course, newer players are given more chances to find them rather than finding them all in one place...
....Like the Exosuit, which has all four of its scannable fragments in one single spot in the Aurora. That though, ties in with what I said about people playing longer knowing these things. Right now, you're not really directed to the Aurora like you are the Lifepods and the Mountain. You can go the whole game without repairing it. You might potentially find a Prawn fragment or two before you get into the Aurora... Or, you could find the prawn storage and scan all four there without needing to dive into deep sea wrecks. Myself, I play under the limitation I'm not allowed to scan the Seamoth or Prawn frags in the Aurora, and I have to find them elsewhere. To me that's more enjoyable.
However, once the midgame point is past, things start getting more "narrow". The game not so subtly directs you to the Lost River, and the Lost River winds into the ILZ, and the ILZ leads to the ALZ in one single point, and there the game is wrapped up. The Lost RIver isn't as expansive as the early map for it was, and while there's plenty of potential for that to change Post-1.0, this is the way things currently are. I can accept the Active Lava Zone having one entry point. However the Inactive Lava zone being reduced from an intimidating cave complex that stretched across the map to a single chamber and single entrance is beyond disappointing. The reasons given have been similarly disappointing (to me anyway), and while they did say they "might" keep the eastern corridor, it's likely the actual entry point will be relocated from the bottom of the Crash Zone to somewhere else.
Honestly, I'd love it if they reopened an entrance in the Dunes, and kept the Crash Zone entrance. That would give us three entrances, just as much as the Lost River has.
Dunes - Northwestern entrance. Surface access. Reapers guard the opening, a possible Sea Dragon in the corridor itself. Merges with the LR-ILZ junction.
Crash Zone - Eastern entrance. Surface access. Radiation until the Aurora's repaired, reapers above and a sea dragon within. Largest of the three corridors, it'd be the most threatening too. Abyssal-level entrance that would be well hidden due to its out of the way location, you'd be more likely to find it as an exit while exploring the ILZ.
Lost River - Southwestern entrance. Cavern access. Story-themed entrance and has prowlers, crabsquids, and later on the "Ghost" Leviathan. More suited for Prawn suit access.
I don't use Discord, so there's no real way for me to express how much I want these entrances to stay rather than being sealed up one by one and further limiting the already limited late-game.
I still really, really believe that sealing these up was a bad idea, and really goes against the whole exploration aspect the game so emphasized. Unless the exploration part only applies to the early-game, then these decisions are just being detrimental to the late-game gameplay. When has being given more freedom, and more opportunities to discover things, when has that been a BAD thing?
And this isn't even like the Rock Puncher situation. These aren't "concepts" they're scrapping. They're already implemented content and areas they're cutting out.