Should the Sea Dragon Be Nerfed / Weapons power Increased ?
mikeloeven
Join Date: 2017-04-14 Member: 229623Members
Join Date: 2017-04-14 Member: 229623Members
From a game design standpoint I dont get the Sea Dragon. If intended as a boss than there should be a method to fight it off and if intended as a hazard that cannot be defeated that there should be some method to outrun it. Currently the game has neither the player cannot outrun it in a prawn which is the only vehicle that can survive the depths at which they are encountered and so far they seem to completely ignore the effects of both gas and vortex torpedo. Something has gotta give here either the weapon systems need to function as a proper deterrent or the sea dragon needs to be slowed down a bit / loose interest more easily. Personally I have no problem having to fight for my life against a boss monster but when not one single weapon i have available actually manages to drive it off and the creature cannot be outrun. This indicates a rather serious problem from a game mechanics standpoint since there appears to be no method of dealing with the threat appropriately. When (not if) the dragon manages to grab you you can make it drop you by punching or drilling it in the face however the problem is it will not swim away any significant distance and the AI will re-acquire a lock on the player sometimes within seconds making this completely ineffective.
Now one could simply avoid the area where these creatures spawn however the ILZ and ALZ are critical locations for story progression and at some point in time the issue of the Sea Dragon needs to be addressed. Not really saying that players should be able to kill it outright however there needs to be some mechanism in place to defend yourself which currently there is not.
(someone suggested a Stasis Arm for the PRAWN suit though i am not sure if anyone has had success using stasis fields on the sea dragon )
Now one could simply avoid the area where these creatures spawn however the ILZ and ALZ are critical locations for story progression and at some point in time the issue of the Sea Dragon needs to be addressed. Not really saying that players should be able to kill it outright however there needs to be some mechanism in place to defend yourself which currently there is not.
(someone suggested a Stasis Arm for the PRAWN suit though i am not sure if anyone has had success using stasis fields on the sea dragon )
Comments
Greyfairer
They've got a Decoy already, but yeah it would be nice to have some mroe ways to make fauna leave. There was a note about... I think it was the Koosh Bushes or Floating Stones? Being 'possibly' used in a way of scaring fauna away, not sure if that's still in the plans or not.
Also I dont know about you but I was wandering around the ILZ in my prawn not even getting near the dragon and it would lock onto me half way across the map and use me as a chew toy. Also i dont think most people would risk taking their cyclops into the LR or ILZ. and when i was hanging around the thermal plant I could see it's head clipping through the ceiling of the magma chamber trying to get at me despite the fact there was no way it could have detected me from the outside
update: I wonder if its similar to the crabsquid issue and the dragon is homing in on light sources. PRAWN has a massive coding defect in that the lights cannot be toggled like other vehicles.
Well Mark and Jack seem to insist on taking it in there all the time, I often used to - "used" to - back when the Dunes Sinkhole and Crash Zone Abyss were both in the game, but I guess different people have different experiences? Exosuit, swimming in the open, the sea dragon just ignores me and everyone I see playing. The AI can detect you and your vehicles from behind walls, though they really shouldn't be able to.
I still firmly believe the Seadragon is laughable in its current state; it'd rather avoid you or hunt down lava lizards on the other side of the chamber than attack you. It doesn't scare me at all like the Reaper does. But again, different experiences and all.
In any case, we aren't supposed to view any critter as an "enemy". They're just animals. So if there's any need for more tools they're in the stealth, diversion, and deterrent department, not the weapon one.
Problem is far too many people want "Kill them!" as their means of "defending themselves" rather than stealth, avoiding, deterring, etc.
As a thought, we got shields for the cyclops... Maybe we can have weaker shields for the exosuit too? Or an upgrade that boosts walking speed?
Any word yet if the Medical Lab, Lab Equipment and Transfuser will be made active or given a use before 1.0 launch? I don't recall seeing any mention of them in the Trello board lately.
I'd be happy if we could get a limited-use stealth option in the game, either as a cloaking device or a Transfuser serum. The game already uses this logic with the INVISIBLE code, activating it could give a short duration where enemies will ignore you.
Also for a matter of balance, while you would appear invisible, your motion could still attract certain fish; or in the case of Bleeders/Biters they could still sense your blood if at lower health. Think of it like the Cyclops Silent Running mode but for the player: you can't be easily seen by enemies, but if you're not paying attention they can easily find you if you're not being careful.
Inject yourself with Sea Dragon DNA, it thinks you're a young sea dragon and ignores you. Then gets all angry at things that have the nerve to attack you XD
Does not guarantee safety in your cyclops, unless you can somehow convince them its also a sea dragon hmmm...
I was just thinking... Earlier I was playing SA, using the Terraformer to try digging out to see if the ILZ tunnels were still there (The Dunes one isn't. I even clipped under the terrain to look around) and got bored after a while and spawned a sea dragon by the Aurora. After it finally killed the reaper there it started shooting fireballs at me then devoured me. I respawned in my little base nearby and came out only for it to promptly attack me again.
I have NEVER ONCE had the Sea Dragon be so single-minded in taking me out. Never. So I go back to the ILZ through the (only remaining entrance because more biomes to explore in an exploration game is a bad thing apparently) Lost River to see the new and improved Sea Dragon. Turns out, it's not improved. The Sea Dragon there spent the majority of its time ignoring me and/or attacking nearby fauna. I had to swim up into its face before it'd attack me, and usually it'd just swat me away while turning to swim off and continue attacking everything except for me.
I go into the Dunes and spawn one. It swims around for a bit, then attacks me. I spawn one in the Grassy Plateus, and it attacks me very often. I reload and then spawn a sea dragon into the same spot, along with a reaper and some stalkers. It ignores me for the most part, and focuses on killing everything else.
I've come to think that the Sea Dragon's main problem comes from it being stuck in a place where there's far too many OTHER THINGS in its aggro range besides just the player. The more things within that sphere of influence, the less likely it's going to attack you because there's so many other things for it to choose from.
The ILZ Chamber's a huge, open place. Packed full with fauna. Unlike the sole remaining ILZ Corridor, which has substantially less fauna in it - or rather, they're less spread out. If the other larger corridors were still in and had a sea dragon packed into it, they'd be far greater a threat than the Chamber sea dragon or the Active Lava dragon since the chance they'll target you over the dozens of other things floating around over a wider area is that much higher.
That's the sea dragon's problem there - the way its AI is picking its targets. That's why I don't fear the Sea Dragon compared to the Reaper - places infested by Reapers they're open and lifeless. YOU are the only target nearby, so they single you out. The Sea Dragon is in an area that's also wide and open, but its packed full of various fauna and providing so many more targets for the Sea Dragon to attack, that you have to go out of your way to make it see you. Or conveniently be in a spot that's lacking in fauna so the Sea Dragon's AI actually has a chance to pick you over some random lava lizard floating around.
In short, the Sea Dragon's already nerfed into the ground, because of its AI problems. Damage-wise it's a real threat, but that threat is wasted on it because of how much it'd rather attack a helpless lizard or larva than go after you. Unless of course, you're in the cyclops which has a big target painted all over it. :P
You mean a tranquilizer? +1, sounds good.
And before you ask why I didn't look it up the internet here is almost non-existant
I generally dont go for the whole Kill It aproach the problem is there is no effective way to move unwanted creatures away from your base or craft. I would really like a way of knocking out creatures combined with a way to tow the larger ones so they can be safely relocated
Total agreement. The ability to subdue a dangerous animal doesn't necessarily need to mean lethality. To have that ability in game would be incredibly useful without breaking the minimal-violence ethos. (For example, I could relocate that gasopod that keeps farting holes in my seabase rather than using the far less friendly PRAWN drill arm.)
(Well, except for Cave Crawlers. Because they deserve to die. And crabsquids freak me out, so no love there, either.)
Like when I play monster hunter, I often go for the non-lethal capture than the uh, more direct route. It's trickier and easy to screw up but it's more fun. I'd like ways of dealing with Subnautica's less understanding fauna in a similar way, or at least have more ways of keeping them away from me and my base. What might be fun is if there was a way to convince the leviathans your cyclops was a young Sea Dragon - Reapers would avoid it because its their only known predator and who knows if its parents are nearby, and the Sea Dragons would ignore it because its "one of their own. They'd only go hostile once you exit it, but would still ignore your expensive and possibly loot-loaded sub.
Bonesharks would probably still attack it though because they're hyper-aggressive like that.
You forgot Bleeders and Biters :P
It's not for nothing that a game franchise built a lot of success on the ability to choose lethal-versus-nonlethal: Deus Ex. And the ability to fight non-lethally really resonated with the gaming community. There's a demand and an interest there. The only stumbling block is reworking the AI to accommodate the new mechanic which, in all honesty, probably won't be easy at this stage of development. But still, everything you said really only sounds like a tremendous improvement to the game.
And yeah, I did, didn't I. Sorry about that.
I like the fact that the creatures in SN are actually believable. Some are territorial or aggressive against threats so a gang of reapers attacking you because you look like a threat could be implemented.
I was thinking more along the lines of a dozen or so Stalkers charging out of the Creepvines... Reapers seem kind of like solo creatures. ...But there is that Reaper attack on the Degasi... was that the Reaper they dragged there, or was it another? Hmm.
I'm not sure what happened at the degasi base, but we see 2 reapers in the same area near the front of the Aurora. Their hunting areas certainly overlap so they could possibly team up for a short time.
And I wonder why those Reapers are there. They couldn't be guarding anything, since the way you get into the Aurora is surface-level (And I've never in my 200 hours of gameplay had that Reaper actually swim up to get me, he's always deeper down in the water column) and down below it is.... Well, soon to be nothing. Sea Dragons coulda come up from that soon-to-be-nothing to grab said Reapers though.
As for the Degasi situation...