Hard mode
gevlon
Join Date: 2018-01-19 Member: 235222Members
Join Date: 2018-01-19 Member: 235222Members
I completed the story on "hardcore mode". I've explored the whole map and made an ugly MsPaint map (link to blogpost with screenshots at the bottom). I've built a 1km long base (from ILZ to the containment door). I haven't used bioreactors or growbeds. Yet the game was easy. It wasn't bad, because the puzzle was interesting. But it was a one-time fun, like a book. It's over now, and I don't see reason to play again. I'm not alone. Steam Spy says 1835K people bought the game, but only 182K played it in the last two weeks. 90% of the players said "this was fun, goodbye". This is called "no replay-ability". Why is it important? Because it increases the amount of play the player gets from the same game, ergo, he is more likely to promote it to other people. I sure won't blog about a game I no longer play and staying as it is, I won't play again. Replay-ability also allows allows streamers, bloggers, video makers to promote the game, as currently they can make one playthrough and that's spoilers anyway.
The key to replay-ability is hard mode. One that the player can't beat first time, so he plays again. Then on a harder setting, constantly challenging himself. This is my main point, a game needs a hard mode, any hard mode to give a reason to play again, after the story is complete. No, the current hardcore mode is piss-easy, you can only die if you do "hold my beer" class stuff, like hugging a reaper or dumb mistakes like making a new air tank and leaving it on the fabricator table.
I designed a hard mode, but any mode that challenges the player is good to provide replay-ability.
Note to trolls: I'm talking about a new game mode you select at start. I don't want to take away your Freedom mode!
Developer note: only #4, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10 and #15 need to be implemented for playtesting, as the rest can be “imagined there” by a benevolent tester (who doesn’t build “disabled” stuff despite they aren’t disabled).
Finally, please realize that while this mode is much harder than the current “hardcore” mode, it’s still doable by any player who puts in no brains just grinding and waiting. After all, 100K energy can be collected with a few thermal plants and lots of AFK waiting, eating an odd fish every now and then. So here comes the infinitely scalable challenge mode (this does not need to be implemented to playtest, a benevolent tester can just imagine it):
Early in the game the player gets a Sea Emperor vision that many sentient creature eggs are held in the failed research facility and they sensed the presence of another sentient being (the player), so now they will hatch on day X midnight (X needs to be determined via playtesting) and will die in that facility. At the usual place, the player finds buddyfish eggs that are available at infinite numbers (respawns in 1 sec), the player can take as many as he pleases. To keep them alive after the hatch timer is up, they must be in alien containment units (they are very vulnerable to the infection, wouldn’t survive in the ocean). When the hatching happens, the buddyfish who don’t have their living space die. The eggs everywhere in the World are removed (hatched and died). The hatched buddyfish can be removed from the containment if the player wants to move it between bases and held in inventory or even lockers, with the restriction that they all must be in containment units again at midnight or they die.
The buddyfish also need to be fed every day, each consuming as much food as the player does (which is about 36 units per day, a cooked peeper is 32). For simplicity, the food is removed every midnight from the lockers of the base where the containment units are in the order of old cooked fish > cooked fish > salted fish. Rotten cooked fish, raw fish, snacks and player-edible plant parts are not accepted. If the lockers don’t have enough food, the buddyfish that didn’t get fed die.
The player gets credited for the amount of buddyfish alive when the cure is found (from there the buddyfish can be released to the ocean, they will no longer die to the infection). As there is no limit to grab more buddyfish at start, there is no limit for the difficulty of the game. The player must plan bases and balance farming fish and salt (some comes as byproduct of water purification for himself, but not enough) against farming materials for his cube charging base. Please note that there are little amount of fish and no natural salt in the hot areas where heat power plants are feasible, so travel and proper planning is required. Please also note that the amount of edible fish and salt deposits are limited and with no respawn, it will run out. The player must go further and further from the buddyfish base to find food and finally he’ll find none. You can’t solve this problem by playing hundreds of days and grinding hard, as the buddyfish need food every day, while you need food and water. If you plan wrong, your buddyfish will die, making this a challenging problem to solve and its own endgame competition with videos of guys winning with some huge bases with large number of buddyfish containment units along with another huge base at the lava zone charging the batteries.
My blogpost with all the screenshots.
The key to replay-ability is hard mode. One that the player can't beat first time, so he plays again. Then on a harder setting, constantly challenging himself. This is my main point, a game needs a hard mode, any hard mode to give a reason to play again, after the story is complete. No, the current hardcore mode is piss-easy, you can only die if you do "hold my beer" class stuff, like hugging a reaper or dumb mistakes like making a new air tank and leaving it on the fabricator table.
I designed a hard mode, but any mode that challenges the player is good to provide replay-ability.
Note to trolls: I'm talking about a new game mode you select at start. I don't want to take away your Freedom mode!
Developer note: only #4, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10 and #15 need to be implemented for playtesting, as the rest can be “imagined there” by a benevolent tester (who doesn’t build “disabled” stuff despite they aren’t disabled).
- Disable growing any edible or material (deep shroom) plants. Also disable breeding edible fish in the alien containment unit.
- Disable bioreactor, that thing is just broken as biomass is infinitely available in the game everywhere.
- Disable medkit replicator (except the one in the lifepod), as one can make medkits with the normal fabricator, using energy
- Disable any respawn of any resource or creature (including the silly sea treader spawns shale, but that’s not needed for playtesting). Beside the Sun and the heat, if you take something, it’s gone.
- Make leviathans unkillable and impossible to lure away from their patrol point
- The current energy production of a single solar panel is about 1/second at sea level over a daily average (more at midday, none at night). That’s “infinite” considering the energy demand of items. I can charge 2 batteries and a Seamoth inside the Moonpool with a single solar panel, which is bizarre. Energy should be a limited resource, forcing the player to either choose what to manufacture or spend lot of time farming materials for many solar panels, as time means hunger and thirst. I suggest 1 energy/minute per solar panel. Yes, I suggest a 1/60 nerf in this mode. The lifepod can have the output of 3 normal solar cells.
- Decrease the scanner room energy consumption to 1 energy / minute (or even free), so a nerfed solar cell can run it. As the map is fixed, the scans can be bypassed by memorizing locations, which is anything but fun gameplay or even worse, pausing the game and looking up on the internet. As scanning has resource demands, memorizing will be still advantageous, but not a “make or break” thing.
- The current energy production of the thermal plants is also too high, especially since there is 50oC everywhere in the inactive lava zone and 70oC in the active. Players should either find hotspots or build many (which is time finding magnetite, gel sack and ruby). I suggest 3 energy/minute for a plant placed at 50oC and +1/minute for every +10oC with 7/minute max. Thermal plants shouldn’t be able to build in the 5 m range of another plant (not needed for playtesting), preventing abuse of surface heat spots (one small vent shouldn’t power a dozen plants). You can take that energy of course, but not infinitely. If you want lot of power, you must go the lava zone or farm awful lot of copper and quartz for stupid amount of solar plants.
- Decrease the power production of a nuclear plant to 10/minute and a rod should deplete after providing 200 energy, making it enough for a pit-stop or temporary scanbase, but not for a real habitat, forcing players to either use the Sun or heat. It’s a micro-plant anyway, fitting into a room, not a real big nuclear plant!
- Batteries should spawn empty when crafted. No more infinite energy from copper and acid mushrooms! At start the player should get 2 full batteries, (along with the 2 snacks, water, flares and fire suppressor), as you can’t build battery charger without habitat builder and a scanner and those need non-empty batteries to work.
- The Cyclops and the Prawn recipes require no power cells but they spawn with (full) power cells. The repair and pathfinder tools spawn with a full battery inserted but need no batteries in the recipes. This is a bug, inconsistent with Seamoth and other tools and should be fixed in all game modes. I suggest items to have no batteries/cells when built but need none to build and the player inserts them before use. However the alternative, demanding batteries/cells in the recipe is good too, assuming that the charge of the battery doesn’t change (no fully charged flashlight built from an empty battery).
- Power cells should inherit the charge of the batteries they are built from. Having a full power cell from 2 empty batteries and some rubber is a bug.
- Disable bleach recipe, it’s both stupid (you can use bleach to remove bacteria from water, not salt from seawater) and is making water trivial to make. Players should either catch bladderfish or spend energy on purifiers.
- Fish should not live forever in a locker. After capture, the fish should rot in 10 minutes, the player should either fry it for immediate consumption or salt it for storage (which would give purpose to all the salt the purifier makes)
- The ion power cells are created from ion batteries as usual and the ion battery recipe is the same too. But the batteries should hold 10000 energy instead of 500 and spawn empty. Ion power cells should hold 20000 energy.
- Remove the functional blue tablet from the game. 2 are needed to complete the game, one to open the containment facility front door and one to open the Emperor container. Replace the tablet with a broken one (if that’s too much work to create, just a placeholder item), that provides the recipe for crafting the tablet, like scanning the broken purple tablet at the enforcement door gives the purple tablet recipe. Change the recipe to use 5 ion power cells instead of a single ion cube, accepting only fully charged power cells. That makes the crafted blue tablet cost 100000 energy. Yes, as I proposed 5 energy/minute for a thermal plant placed in the 70oC active lava zone, that’s 333 hours for a single thermal plant to charge the needed 10 batteries. This should give the player a hint to find more materials for more power plants and maybe hotter spots. Optimizing this would be the main challenge of the mode, giving constant place for improvement and allowing players to show off their monster power bases. Also, the time building this monster base would mean need for food and water.
- Of course this difficulty mode should have only one life like hardcore mode, to prevent people bypassing leviathans simply by “I swim like they aren’t there, if I die, I just respawn at my last base losing 3 minutes”, keeping the World dangerous.
Finally, please realize that while this mode is much harder than the current “hardcore” mode, it’s still doable by any player who puts in no brains just grinding and waiting. After all, 100K energy can be collected with a few thermal plants and lots of AFK waiting, eating an odd fish every now and then. So here comes the infinitely scalable challenge mode (this does not need to be implemented to playtest, a benevolent tester can just imagine it):
Early in the game the player gets a Sea Emperor vision that many sentient creature eggs are held in the failed research facility and they sensed the presence of another sentient being (the player), so now they will hatch on day X midnight (X needs to be determined via playtesting) and will die in that facility. At the usual place, the player finds buddyfish eggs that are available at infinite numbers (respawns in 1 sec), the player can take as many as he pleases. To keep them alive after the hatch timer is up, they must be in alien containment units (they are very vulnerable to the infection, wouldn’t survive in the ocean). When the hatching happens, the buddyfish who don’t have their living space die. The eggs everywhere in the World are removed (hatched and died). The hatched buddyfish can be removed from the containment if the player wants to move it between bases and held in inventory or even lockers, with the restriction that they all must be in containment units again at midnight or they die.
The buddyfish also need to be fed every day, each consuming as much food as the player does (which is about 36 units per day, a cooked peeper is 32). For simplicity, the food is removed every midnight from the lockers of the base where the containment units are in the order of old cooked fish > cooked fish > salted fish. Rotten cooked fish, raw fish, snacks and player-edible plant parts are not accepted. If the lockers don’t have enough food, the buddyfish that didn’t get fed die.
The player gets credited for the amount of buddyfish alive when the cure is found (from there the buddyfish can be released to the ocean, they will no longer die to the infection). As there is no limit to grab more buddyfish at start, there is no limit for the difficulty of the game. The player must plan bases and balance farming fish and salt (some comes as byproduct of water purification for himself, but not enough) against farming materials for his cube charging base. Please note that there are little amount of fish and no natural salt in the hot areas where heat power plants are feasible, so travel and proper planning is required. Please also note that the amount of edible fish and salt deposits are limited and with no respawn, it will run out. The player must go further and further from the buddyfish base to find food and finally he’ll find none. You can’t solve this problem by playing hundreds of days and grinding hard, as the buddyfish need food every day, while you need food and water. If you plan wrong, your buddyfish will die, making this a challenging problem to solve and its own endgame competition with videos of guys winning with some huge bases with large number of buddyfish containment units along with another huge base at the lava zone charging the batteries.
My blogpost with all the screenshots.
Comments
Tweak the above values as needed to make it hard enough, but don't nerf the energy, even a pocket reactor would be stupidly powerful (last I knew Voyager was still ticking, and it was launched like 50 years ago with a really really small amount of radioactive power).
Anyways, that's just a nitpick, really cool idea. have you checked out the Subnautica Modding Discord and pitched your idea there? Sounds like a really cool mod, if they don't make it an official game mode (and even if they do, having a functional mod might make it easier to prove the concept?).
i only gave feedback for some stuff because i got bored
anyways, a massive grind =/= a fun and interesting challenge.
- The n00b must die! You go to a PUBG match as a n00b, you end up #80 with no kill. N00b goes to CS:GO, boom, headshot. N00b goes mythic raiding in WoW: wipe. The good playe succeeds, the n00b gets whatever death penalty the game has (-ranking, repair bill or simply all his playtime wasted without any progression)
- The n00b must be slow! Every healthy person can complete the Marathon running... over 8 hours. A good player can do it near 2 hours.
The first is very alien to Subnautica. While one can redesign the game that way (Leviathans oneshot Seamoth and then kill you and have 500m aggro range), it would be a very different game. The second is exactly what I'm proposing: a good player who can figure out a proper build order so he doesn't waste energy on needless stuff progresses fast, n00b waits for energy. The good player knows how to find nuclear fragments, n00b has to spend lot of time searching. Good player knows where the fish are and how to catch a full inventory in 5 minutes, n00b wastes lot of time fishing. Good player stacks up on fibers when he is near kelps, n00b realizes that he is out of meds and have to travel half map to grind.For the n00b to lose lot of time, the good player also has to lose some. But he isn't feeling it "grind", as he is constantly optimizing and thinking how to do it faster.
If you think that this mode would be a massive grind for you... maybe you are a n00b. I don't blame you as the game didn't really challeng one's ability to optimize builds or to know where materials are (hint: quartz at blood kelp, titanium at dunes, copper at ILZ).
Finally: you must realize that in order for a mode to be "hard", it must suck for n00bs. Where everyone progresses with ease, that's easy, by definition. Yes, there would be lot of players who couldn't complete this mode without soul-crushing grind: the n00bs. Luckily, Freedom mode will always be there for them!
The nuclear plant is for when you want to not be bother with fiddling with power during its use and instead put in the effort all up front. Tons and tons of grind to make it so you don't have to grind. Or, as you might say, what a n00b does what he doesn't want to be a noob any more and wants to get gud.
This have two problems: at first, it leaves the niche of "I need a little base here but there is no heat or sun around" open. Players should be able to build a base everywhere, just not optimal bases. The second is that a "set up at high cost and forget about it" is essentially a "win state". The game would change from "reach goal X by clever building" into "reach nuclear reactor by clever building (because everything after that is trivial)"
In my opinion you're being a little overemphatic about the benefits of your suggestions, without taking the time to evaluate how others feel about them. We naturally tend to hold in higher regard our own opinion, but that's just our ego. Ideas need to be discussed and thoroughly tested before being acknowledged as good.
I agree with a few of your points. Some of them were already discussed extensively in this very forum.
However it seems to me that your "hard" mode would be just a longer grindfest than the game already is. Grinding is not hard, all it requires is free time.
You are also inconsistent when suggesting the design of nuclear plants should not be based on "roleplay", but instead on "gameplay". Right after venting that bleach does not remove salt from seawater.
The game focus is on exploration rather than on survival. I also prefer survival over exploration and I also feel like Subnautica is too easy.
But I also abhor grinding. I can tolerate it to some extent, but if I feel like my progress is being thwarted by a grindwall I simply stop playing.
If you search this forum there are lengthy discussions over harder game modes, energy management, recipes and much more. I'm not suggesting you resurrect old posts, but it might make for an interesting read.
Sort of how like you can customize your Osiris world if you want, or choose the pre-defined world, with a few default presets.
Having said all of this, I love this game a lot. You can tell the developers really care about the product they are bringing to market, and want to have their community involved. I have started this game multiple times, and have a couple 10-20+ hour save files.
I explicitly wrote that the 1-17 suggestions just make a grindy game, not a challenging one. The challenge comes from keeping buddyfish alive. That can't be just "grind 1000 hours", because the buddyfish get hungry every day, so if you don't get enough fish a day, you are not progressing at all. Ergo, you are challenged to work better, not more
The bleach RP was in (). The real reason is gameplay: "is making water trivial to make"
If the game focuses on exploration, maybe the mode should be called "exploration" instead of "survival".
@0x6A7232: while customizable settings would be good, it would be also user-unfriendly. People wouldn't know if their settings would make sense, nor they could compare their progress to other players
@MickJagger: yes, I agree that a massive leviathan should be a threat to a seamoth or a swimmer. However it must be balanced against "I went exploring, that thing came out of the blue and now I'm dead". Also, unless they get a real AI, they can be just learned and avoided. Once you know where they live, you just don't go there if they are nasty.
Yes, in a way you're challenged to survive and to keep your pet alive. I, however, don't care about the pet. And limiting resources forces the player to roam about the map, doesn't necessarily make it harder. It will remain easy to catch fish and survive. Moving around to catch food is just another "grind" experience.
You would interrupt the player advance to force him to fish. One would get a seamoth, with nothing but storage modules, get to an "unfished" location and wander around for 15-20 min with a seaglide fishing.
There you go, enough fish for weeks (I'm assuming one has enough salt).
And food should grow back. Fishes should breed. Otherwise we would starve to death. To me it's not about completely stopping those things, but rebalancing them.
As I stated, there are many ways to make a game harder. Your's just do not appease me.
And there's no such thing as "a real AI". Even our most complex playing computers, such as AlphaGo aren't "real AIs" yet.
I know the answer of the current state of Subnautica: nothing. Hence they - except a few enthusiasts who build pointless and beautiful bases - do nothing. They quit playing.
For instance, it is very easy to finish the game without ever visiting the Bulb Zone, or the Blood Kelp Caves (You can farm the blood oil from the most exterior zones and then ditch it).
But then again, merely forcing the player to explore also doesn't make the game harder. And simply increasing grinding does not enforce pleasurable replayability.
Replayability may be increased by providing additional story content and easter eggs after end-game.
But then again, there's nothing wrong at the absence of content besides the original playthrough. Most games are like that, except multiplayer and or competitive games. Roguelikes are also on vogue.
To me Subnautica is borderline an art game, which dazzles you time and again, without requiring great challenges to do so.
I would love a harder game, maybe with more dangerous and unpredictable creatures. Random spawn locations, roaming leviathans, larger aggro range and more damage would all be cool with me. Maybe a little more grinding in the form of modifying current planting mechanics, which are easy to acquire and maintain.
Like I said, it was all extensively discussed already and I'm feeling too lazy to bring it all up again. There are also excellent counter-points to those I just brought up.
Currently Subnautica has achieved an unparalleled experience to new players (I'm a fan of exploration, survival and ocean games and, imo, nothing else comes close regarding exploration and ocean). I expect the replayability to steadily increase now the game has officially launched due to the engagement of the modding community. Also, the devs are clearly interested in improving and expanding the game.
Also, there is absolutely no reason to not add a harder mode. At worst, no one plays it, and a few hours of development lost. After 3 years, that's nothing. On the other hand if any of the modes get popularity, they can become a major selling point.
This is why easy modding support is important. The easier it is to mod, the easier it is for fans to create their own custom versions of the game, which if they gain popularity, become that selling point (look at all the custom mods that are very popular in MineCraft, Skyrim, etc etc).
If you read a spoiler, you're just spoiling yourself. That's where the name comes from. The design of the game is not to challenge the player. It is hard to explain why if your mind is already set that games have to be challenging and competitive.
I have hundreds of hours in this game. My 5yo plays it. My mom, whom is in her sixties, watched me playing one weekend and was dazzled. She played on her own for quite some time.
Currently we are experiencing the notion that games do not require violence or challenges to be fun. They are an art form and there's enough variance in the market to please most tastes.
I also want a harder Subnautica, but claiming the success of the game is tied to this notion is just naive. If your arguments to support a hard mode are just replayability and possible spoilers, then I believe you're going through the wrong route.
The game is practically finished (apart from some minor bugs) and delivers great content for its price range.
In my opinion you want a harder game for the same reasons I want. I like the game and, currently, there's nothing like it in the market. Therefore we want more variance, but not in other games, we want it in Subnautica.
Besides a harder mode, I also want new mechanics, procedurally generated content, new vehicles, and such. As the team behind the game is small, I'm hoping these will be tackled by the modding community. Hopefully, as @0x6A7232 wants, with support from the devs.