Below Zero - Feedback thus far
Grayp
London, UK Join Date: 2020-08-16 Member: 263311Members
London, UK Join Date: 2020-08-16 Member: 263311Members
As an avid fan of the original Subnautica I thought I would leave some feedback regarding where I think Below Zero could use some help.
Note: I will be leaving off anything story/content related as much of that is placeholder/missing voices/still on the way/tbd.
Note 2: I am about 8 hours in.
Note 3: This post deals with areas I feel there could be improvement, as opposed to positive re-enforcement which I plan on covering at some time in another post.
The world feels claustrophobic
The original was vast, with huge open spaces that screamed terror in the dead of night - huge beasties could be coming at you from any angle, or during the day you could stare in awe at this beautiful world at a distance as you zoomed across from above. I remember hearing terrifying roars and not knowing which direction the monster might be in. In below zero, the world feels almost squashed, as if trying to squeeze it into a smaller map. If I hear a creature it almost feels safer with cliff walls on either side of me.
Aside from that, the caves are all narrow connecting pathways which are easy to get lost (and drown in). In contrast to the original, heading into the purple jelly cave for the first time was one (many) incredible eye-opening experiences in the game.
The modularized Seatruck is no Cyclops
Perhaps the designers thought that Cyclops was too strong, or almost removed the need for base-building and they wanted to keep that front-and-centre. This reasoning aside, I feel that the Seatruck (in its final form) is several steps backward from the incredible experience the Cyclops was. Several areas the Cyclops is just a better experience:
Some things are just too hard to find
Having to craft dozens of batteries (and even worse, power cells) because you have no way to charge them isn't fun. I have 6 dead cells in storage for my Seatruck which I don't know what to do with. In the original, blueprints could be found in multiple places, lots of which you were pointed to (or found on the way to) by signals from the radio. In Below Zero I almost feel direction-less without the radio giving me a goal to stumble (slowly) towards.
I also have yet to find a diamond, despite having quite a few things which require it in construction. Is there even a moonpool in Below Zero?
I have found a half-dozen doors (too many to remember the location of) which require a laser-cutter (which I am nowhere near obtaining). Its not a great experience for me to personally have to document everywhere I need to come back to with the laser cutter. Yes, I could use beacons, but this kind of admin isn't what makes the game fun - it detracts from it.
19-Aug EDIT:
I managed to do a deep-dive in Twisty Bridges, after reading I need to go down like 350m to get Seatruck upgrades. Basically means a 1-way dive if you dont find those air-plants, which SUCKS on hardcore (good luck not dying if you don't know where to find those). On top of this, those sea traps down there are bugged - I hit it like 32432432 times with the knife after it grabbed me - still couldn't stop it. I'm stopping playing at this point until there is more polish - this was a very frustrating experience.
This is all I have for now. If I find more I may edit this post. Thanks for reading!
-Lloyd
Note: I will be leaving off anything story/content related as much of that is placeholder/missing voices/still on the way/tbd.
Note 2: I am about 8 hours in.
Note 3: This post deals with areas I feel there could be improvement, as opposed to positive re-enforcement which I plan on covering at some time in another post.
The world feels claustrophobic
The original was vast, with huge open spaces that screamed terror in the dead of night - huge beasties could be coming at you from any angle, or during the day you could stare in awe at this beautiful world at a distance as you zoomed across from above. I remember hearing terrifying roars and not knowing which direction the monster might be in. In below zero, the world feels almost squashed, as if trying to squeeze it into a smaller map. If I hear a creature it almost feels safer with cliff walls on either side of me.
Aside from that, the caves are all narrow connecting pathways which are easy to get lost (and drown in). In contrast to the original, heading into the purple jelly cave for the first time was one (many) incredible eye-opening experiences in the game.
The modularized Seatruck is no Cyclops
Perhaps the designers thought that Cyclops was too strong, or almost removed the need for base-building and they wanted to keep that front-and-centre. This reasoning aside, I feel that the Seatruck (in its final form) is several steps backward from the incredible experience the Cyclops was. Several areas the Cyclops is just a better experience:
- You had to actually spin up the Cyclops, and the whole thing shuddered- it gave you the feeling of this great piece of machinery in all its power! Even the AI voice sounded powerful.
- The bridge/control/station had a massive glass dome, with an expertly thought-out control scheme, allowing you to see so much of the fantastic underwater world around you. In the Seatruck, my view feels pigeon-holed in comparison.
- The external cameras on the Cyclops not only allowed you to manoeuvre effectively, but also watch (in terror) as the giant monster-eaters circled above you. I feel this added terror to the game - not removed it, and allowing you (the player) to view the magnificent world around you can only be a good thing.
- Storage space. There are plenty of topics on this one so I don't feel i need to elaborate too much here. The main issue for me is: what is the point of going on a grand expedition if I am going to have to turn around after 5 minutes? Being able to craft habitat constructions and lockers in the cyclops was a fantastic design decision, one which Below Zero is poorer without.
Some things are just too hard to find
Having to craft dozens of batteries (and even worse, power cells) because you have no way to charge them isn't fun. I have 6 dead cells in storage for my Seatruck which I don't know what to do with. In the original, blueprints could be found in multiple places, lots of which you were pointed to (or found on the way to) by signals from the radio. In Below Zero I almost feel direction-less without the radio giving me a goal to stumble (slowly) towards.
I also have yet to find a diamond, despite having quite a few things which require it in construction. Is there even a moonpool in Below Zero?
I have found a half-dozen doors (too many to remember the location of) which require a laser-cutter (which I am nowhere near obtaining). Its not a great experience for me to personally have to document everywhere I need to come back to with the laser cutter. Yes, I could use beacons, but this kind of admin isn't what makes the game fun - it detracts from it.
19-Aug EDIT:
I managed to do a deep-dive in Twisty Bridges, after reading I need to go down like 350m to get Seatruck upgrades. Basically means a 1-way dive if you dont find those air-plants, which SUCKS on hardcore (good luck not dying if you don't know where to find those). On top of this, those sea traps down there are bugged - I hit it like 32432432 times with the knife after it grabbed me - still couldn't stop it. I'm stopping playing at this point until there is more polish - this was a very frustrating experience.
This is all I have for now. If I find more I may edit this post. Thanks for reading!
-Lloyd
Comments
I hated Cyclops. First because it actually is another major base, but I already had enough with managing just one. Second, because the damn thing was too big to fit anywhere. Regretfully, I needed it to haul resources for building a rather large hop-base in Tree Cove, otherwise risks of dying in ILZ were too high.
Also, Cyclops made traveling through leviathan-infested areas too damn easy, so it took a lot of suspense/challenge from the game for me.
As for blueprints, It seems that wrecks are replaced by landbases for most base-related blueprints.
As for deep dives. Airpump. In the original I used airpumps with pipes to search the wreck near the mountain island at ~350 m and collect magnetite from jellyshroom cave. Slow and a bit repetitive, but pretty reliable.
I do agree that silent running was too strong. There needed to be another way for managing leviathans if this wasn't as good, but unfortunately that isn't an easy problem to solve. The fun in silent running came from not knowing where its limits lay. You had to turn it on and prey that the big beastie never saw you. It was exhilarating.
Wrecks were replaced yea - but there are far too few "bases" to make up for the wreckage not being there, and in the original you could find blueprints for things in multiple places. You didn't have to motor through jelly infested-waters, then manage a trek on land for almost an hour just to find a much-needed cell charger blueprint hidden in the corner of the map. Don't get me wrong, the trek was great, but such a necessary blueprint being hidden away for so long (which I may never have found without help) is more frustrating than rewarding. And this is 1 example out of many I feel.
Airpump... Dont get me started. You find it fun to build all those pipes and carry them for a 400m down-dive, only to have to relocate it every 5 minutes as your exploration area exands? Wait you cannot relocate it because now your inventory is has other stuff in. Better go back to "base" first. No thanks, thats not fun.
-Lloyd
I played the original about a month ago 100% blind and had an incredible (and terrifying) experience that I had hoped to recreate with BZ.
I am currently ~15 hours in and wanted to make some comparisons of my approach to both games and whether this change was intended by the developers.
The perhaps biggest difference is the availability / choice of vehicles and tools.
In subnautica I had a very early run-in with a reaper having just got the radiation suit and this traumatizing experience made me appreciate the speed of my seaglide above all else.
- As soon as I got the Seamoth that was my new home. I played probably 90% of the game using the Seamoth avoiding / outrunning everything that can deal damage.
- I saw the Cyclops as a slow mobile base and strangely enough as the only option that can actually hide from predators. I used it for one trip through the deepest zones where it remains to this day.
- The Prawn suit was this slow clunky mining equipment that can neither hide nor run and thus never left the sparse reef.
Now for Below Zero:The first big change is the depth of the starting area, mainly the Twisty Bridges, and how much deeper you need to go to find even basic tools. This is made possible through the new oxygen plants that changed my "on foot" diving depth from ~100m in subnautica to ~250m in BZ.
What also had a big impact on my gameplay is the fact that I only found the moonpool after I had explored pretty much everything that is accessible without so I was limited to the base vehicles only.
Luckily I build my first main base in the Thermal Spires and the scanner showed a really big tube underground which gave me the champion vehicle of BZ:
At first I was sceptical as in the first game. The Prawn has similar problems to the Seatruck in that it has difficulty avoiding danger (and was made even less mobile with the removal of the hook) but at least I could explore deeper and colder regions with it. The first trouble didn't take long thanks to loud walking taking my hearing and thrown up sand taking my vision
and a Cryptosuchus decided to make me its next meal. With flight never an option in this thing I decided to try the shark-nose-punch-defence which worked a little too well because I belive I broke its skull.
Large parts of the game were suddenly a lot less scary and I remembered a PDA comment from the first game:
"It is normal when first piloting a Prawn suit to feel a sense of limitless power.
Prawn operators receive weeks of training to counteract this phenomenon. You will have to make do with self-discipline."
Little did I know that this was the developers way of saying "Please don't use this piece of military equipment to recreate Pacific Rim and turn the dead zone into an actual dead zone".
Unfortunately I ran into a similar situation again when I first explored the Crystal Caves and what should have left my heart pounding and me having to take a break instead made me write this.
Here I thought the removal of the stasis rifle was meant to limit fighting as an option.
The largest surprise in supernautica: Above Zero seems to be immune to punches but sadly cannot really return anything either making orientation the only challenge of that area.
As for tools and other blueprints I also think they should be less easy to miss but hopefully the story can help with that as it did in the first game.
Battery and Powercell chargers were the biggest offenders but for now there is a (way too effective) remedy for that: the Recyler, capable of extracting 100% of the building materials + energy from a tool that had its battery taken out.
For the developers:
I assumed the removal of the stasis rifle intended to reduce combat but at least for me it had the absolute opposite effect and killing was also the only realistic way to scan some meaner inhabitants. Please reassure the changes from subnautica actually lead to the game being played the way you intended and thank you for such a great experience.
1. The camera lock on Z axis. It might work well for other first person games, but not being able to freely spin around 720 degrees is an absolute pain and takes a lot of immersion out of the experience. This game takes place underwater, remember?
2. The Seatruck... some love it, some hate it. Some people say Cyclops was just too big, and I would argue with them. Basically, Seatruck on it's own is a Seamoth without storage module. But if you add fabricator, storage, and some other modules to it - it becomes even less nimble than Cyclops. Hell, it becomes hard to even turn without 20+meters behind you.
To remedy that, I think it would be cool to make attachable modules not static, but rubber-like (you know, like actual truck modules work?). It should, in theory, make traversing wider caves, twisty bridges, etc., much easier and much MUCH less frustrating. Let's face it, each and every one of us got literally stuck at some point and had to wiggle our way back.
3. Biomes. This is arguably the most underdeveloped aspect of the game, and seeing how much love it received it original Subnautica, it saddens me to see such a shallow (literally shallow) selection of biomes. Whereas Subnautica had various biomes, then biomes underneath it that connects to other biomes, this one gives you absolutely no drive to upgrade your depth limit beyond 500m, because there basically is nothing beyond that, except for Crystal Caves (which is so poorly designed, I got the hell out of there permanently after getting my nickel), that NEEDS to change. Enough with the islands, remember what game you are creating, stop trying to change the game into what it's not supposed to be. Make more underground biomes, expand upon existing ones, give us more places to explore.
4. AI. Well, there's not much to talk about here, because there's not much going on with that. See Shadow Leviathan>hide behind a crystal>wait for that stupid fish to reset it's agrro>continue with your life. Final boss defeated.
5. Finish the game, we don't care how long it takes, but saying things like "we won't be adding multiplayer, because it would push v1.0 release too far" is a slap in the face for every fan. And while I don't expect to see COOP implemented, you're supposed to create a good game, not "push it". Get your sh*t together.
6. Story... I mean, I don't even. I'm up for the idea of a story, and I think Subnautica had a decent, engaging story. But it wasn't like you HAD to follow it, your main goal was clear throughout the whole game - survive, escape. It was really that simple, non-intrusive, and it highlighted other features of the game - the gameplay. This time around, it's a mess. I know it's not finished, but honestly, I don't want to see it finished.
That's it, I apologize if I appear aggressive here, it comes from my passion for this game. I think it is a great game, but the development is taking more steps back than forward, forgetting what made it great in the first place. I do hope that changes and I can pour a lot more hours into it.
Thanks for reading this messy post.
The developers have decided that we're supposed to be Hindus and never kill the critters. They removed the stasis rifle and made some of the critters very difficult if not impossible to kill. Here's the issue with that. It's a survival game. The critters kill you. Whether it's the snowstalkers jumping on you and eating your face off or the cryptosucchus dogpaddling you to death or Shadow Leviathan Balboa who literally withstood 10 minutes of left jabs from me in a Prawn suit, they all hunt you down and kill you. The natural response to the threat against one's life is to remove the threat: fight or flee. But the developers here have decided to deny the most basic survival instinct that all life possesses and impose a moral system on me that removes one of my two options... because reasons.
I get it. It's a game. Not real life. But if you don't want me to kill the critters, you need to give me specific in-game counters to every critter that attacks from the brute sharks to the leviathans. You actually did it with the snowstalkers (flares) and ice worms (thumpers), which is great game design, but you didn't with the underwater threats. Maybe that's a design decision that needs to be re-evaluated in the light of your moralizing on non-violence?
2) On the vehicle changes
The sea truck is supposed to be a hybrid of the Seamoth and the Cyclops. The Seamoth never needed to be replaced. It was one of the most useful vehicles in SN:1 and a mainstay of play. The Cyclops was supposed to be a mobile base. I used it like that. I'd bring it someplace, park it, and do most of my exploring with either the Seamoth or the Prawn. It worked out.
But BZ's map is smaller and more dependent on giving you caves and nooks and crannies to explore that make navigation with a Cyclops impractical, if not impossible. I'm ok with it going away. The whole map would have to be redesigned for it if it remained. But the substitute: giving me the Seatruck and modules is a poor exchange. The Seatruck cab itself is bigger and slower than the Seamoth, and has no storage module. If I want storage, I have to get the module 300+m down and accept even bigger and even slower, making exploration that much harder. I did most of my first playthrough of BZ with Seatruck + Storage module. The horsepower upgrade isn't sufficient. Not even close, not even with only one module.
You give me the aquarium and sleeper modules (the least useful) as the most accessible. I can finish the blueprints in the Purple Vents. But if I want the most useful ones, the storage and fabricator, I have to do a deep dive into Deep Twisty. Why are the most necessary ones harder to reach than the cosmetic ones? The original Cyclops was easier to design and construct. And the docking module. At least I could relatively easily dock with the Cyclops. The Seamoth was easy. The Prawn was occasionally a pain to jump into the right location, but try and hit the sweetspot on a Seatruck Docking Module if it's not on the ground. Jump, miss, repeat. Not fun.
And the cameras. The Cyclops had cameras and sonar to help you navigate. The Seatruck had a backup camera, but it was causing trouble. It didn't incorporate the lighting and other ambient filters. It chewed up resources. So they removed it. Now maneuvering with a loaded Seatruck is much more difficult. Even real big rigs at least have sideview mirrors, but not this Seatruck. You navigate blind... and slow. It really is a poorly designed vehicle that's frustrating to use which is why people complain about it.
I know this is an Early Access game. We're seeing an unpolished, unfinished product. I'm hoping your story improves significantly. Right now, it's not intuitive to play through. I still don't understand what exactly is supposed to have happened. I keep hoping you'd remove the awful new PDA voice. It's a terrible substitute for the original and implemented with flimsy support in the story. It's the one Xenoworkx thing in the entire game and we're supposed to accept that as justification while literally every other thing in the game is Alterra. For a character that's supposed to hate Alterra, everything she uses and builds comes with it's branding. I'm hoping you get the Snowfox right. I love the thing, but right now it's a pain to use, stops randomly on terrain, crashes into stuff, turns like it's on rails, and I have to spend half the time I'd want to use it carrying it packed up. I'm hoping you have enough places in the environment where I can actually build a base. In SN:1, it was one of my favorite things to do. In BZ, it's hard to find places I can actually fit a base let alone the new large room structure. And finally, I'm hoping you fix the pacing because right now, the game play isn't smooth. There are lots of major roadblocks that shouldn't be there (Seatruck MK1 being the most glaring example) and lots of stuff that comes too early and too easily (cosmetics).
Here is what I am seeing consistently and unanimously in this feedback thread:
Other issues which have been mentioned at here but I have also seen elsewhere which are noteworthy:
Shoutout to a change which I think is great and a step in the right direction: removing tools to deal with Leviathans. In the original, once you had the stasic rifle (or heck, even the repulsion cannon), dealing with Leviathans became a non-issue, making them really not all that scary anymore which lessened the experience. You are supposed to feel terror and helplessness when one sees you - and all you can do is run and hope it doesn't catch you.
Keep the feedback and suggestions coming (even if its just to agree or disagree with whats already posted), I'm pretty sure the developers are reading this and taking it all into consideration.
There's a lot to like in BZ, and I'd love to run it through, just to see the story play out. But, honestly, some of the changes make it an inferior game to the original that I'm kinda glad I didn't play it all the way through the escape.