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Well, actually, I've had a while to think and I've come to a rather simple conclusion.

If it was a waterborne disease, surely it would benefit studies to have them situated on an ocean planet, no? I don't know, that's the best I could come up with

It would not be a simple model swap. The same animations cannot be used. Have you seen female models being animated on male rigs(mans1ay3r's gamer poop series comes to mind)? Believe it or not females have different body proportions than males and these differences in size and shape mean movements happen differently as well. If the same animations are used all sorts of weirdness can ensue beyond looking bad and actually affecting gameplay. Imagine piloting a seamoth with hands that are blocking your view. Holding your PDA where a thumb or something is blocking what one of your items are, or the PDA is just floating in space because the hand no longer reaches it because the wrist bone needs to be moved, etc. If we are to accept that new animations are necessary let's look at what animations are needed (TL;DR- it's a long list);

Standing Idle loop
Bringing up PDA
Holding PDA loop
Putting down PDA
Above PDA animations underwater(so your feet aren't standing on nothing)
Above PDA animations in mid-air(so your feet aren't standing on nothing while falling to your death)
Idle to Walking forward transition
Walking forward loop
Walking forward to Idle transition
3x the above 3 lines for left, right, and backwards
Diving into water from above it
Diving into water from lifepod hatch
Diving into water from Cyclops
Diving into water from Seamoth
Diving into water from Prawn suit
Leaving water from surface
Leaving water through lifepod hatch
Leaving water through Cyclops hatch
Leaving water through Seamoth hatch
Leaving water through Prawn suit hatch
Entering upper lifepod hatch
Exiting lifepod through upper hatch
Swimming Idle loop
Beginning to swim forwards
Swimming forward loop
Ending swimming forwards
5x the above 3 lines for left, right, backwards, up, and down
UNKx the above 5 lines for every item that you can see in first person
Also the same for Idle, Walking, Diving, and Leaving the water with every item
Seamoth Idle
Seamoth beginning to steer right
Seamoth steering right loop
Seamoth returning to Idle from steering right
3x the above 3 lines for steering left, up, and down
All the Seamoth stuff again for the Cyclops
All the Seamoth stuff again for the Prawn Suit

This list is getting a bit long so I'll try to wrap it up...

Generic Pain animations a thing? Would have to account for if above or below water and possibly moving in any direction.
Special animations like;
- Bleeder latching on to the player
- Bleeder sucking the player's blood loop
- Attacking the bleeder animation
- Possibly different animations depending on what item is being held in first person
- Bleeder being detached from player
- The Reaper Leviathan grabbing the player by themselves, in seamoth, and in prawn suit
- The same for the Sea Dragon Leviathan Emperors/whatever


I may be wrong about some of these animations, but the idea is to get an idea of the scope behind how much work goes into just animating a character.

Granted a lot of those animations may not need to be created from scratch and the existing male ones might work just fine for others, but they all still need to be tested to make sure that is the case. Furthermore I'm certain there's plenty of other animations I'm forgetting. I'm already recalling that the player interacts with certain objects like lockers and some items have their own uses, like swinging the knife or scanning with the scanner. A lot of the animations are simply transitions and I know you can use blending to have the game create them for you automatically but once again you have to test to make sure it's working correctly, which still earns them a spot on somebody's checklist and still takes time. Depending on how they do it all of these animations may need to be done a second time for a third-person model of the character as well. The way I'm thinking you would be using the third-person model would be in order to cast shadows. This would also be required if multiplayer ever became a thing(probably one of the reasons against it).

Source; 2.5 years studying game development while working on a bachelors in computer science, made a 3D game and engine from scratch in C++ in the last five months(with a team of four others, of course).

On the whole gender/sex thing, should be an option. Sooner would be better than later but eventually is better than never. Haters gonna hate. I'm sure the playable character gender thing has been discussed thousands if not millions of times before and I don't like complicating it with issues of politics, genetics, and socioeconomic concerns. Give it as an option and there should be no need for an argument or a quota or equality, just your choice.

I keep looking at that map. The three entrances, each miles apart from each other. One in the south, one in the east, and one in the northwest. The corridors spiraling towards the center. Why was this a "bad idea"? The Dunes entrance really didn't need to be removed. It would just go south a bit, hook up with the LR-ILZ junction, and then boom. When I saw Markiplier discover that corridor, I was so insanely looking forward to seeing it completed. Now no one will get that chance (And boy will he be disappointed when he can't get to either of the ILZ entrances he used to know)

Heck, with the Sea Dragons apparently hunting and eating Reapers, that entrance would have made a lot of sense to have. They'd swim up through it, enter into a reaper infested area, and there you have it. Same with the huge Crash Zone tunnel.

Having those three entrances there, even if one of them is now just a LR deepsea entrance, really looks good in my mind. The Lost River isn't very Cyclops-friendly, so that could be an Exosuit-entrance and the Crash Zone would be a Cyclops-friendly entrance. I really, really hope that they reconsider their approach to what they're doing with the ILZ, and keep at least the Crash Zone entrance now that they've removed the DGR one. Please, please consider keeping it. The news on the ILZ sealings has been so far my only major disappointment with Subnautica's whole development, and it'd be a terrible shame if it gets further gutted.

My current save is now exceeding 24 48 hours so i wanted to throw my thoughts out on progression. Note i'm aware this is WIP pre-release, e.t.c. and much may be planned, just giving my thoughts to date ok.

Right out the gate from the pod the difficulty curve of progression isn't a curve, it's a cliff. The two most basic items you need to progress further are a knife and flippers. And both mean trips into stalker infested kelp forests. And theres few if any safe areas inside the kelp forests and no kelp forests that aren't infested. Get those and and it becomes at least possibble to run away without getting hit reliably, but you still have to know having the knife out will make them aggro from further away and chase you indefinitely. But you still need to go back in there because you need silver, and given the terrible silver to gold ratio you'll be doing a lot of spelunking here to get a basic base setup. In the process of exploring around you should hopefully find seaglide fragments.

At this point you can use the seaglide to go explore deeper wrecks, (mostly in the grassy plateau area), and your fast enough the sort of stuff you're facing can't catch you if you just flat out leg it. Theoretically ofc if your insane you can use the floating air pump and pipes to visit nearly every part of the game, (I think only the active lava zone is off limits), but thats seriously hardcore IMO. Still the follow on semi deep wrecks are perfect in terms of loot and what that means for progression. The majority of them give you the fragments for the battery charger to make your seaglide self sustaining and the seamoth which is the traditional way to deeper area's.

And this is where the progression IMO more or less completely breaks down. Naturally you'll want/expect to find Powercell charger fragments. Except compared to the prior phase with it's battery charger fragments the powercell fragments are quite rare turning up in very few places relative to everything opened up. The upgrade path in terms of progression is pretty messy at this point too. You have 4 options. The Modification Station, The Vehicle Modification Station, The PRAWN Suit, and the Cyclops.

The modification Station, aside from the quite important and useful pressure compensators, (though why they're here and not in Vehicle modification i don't know), isn't very useful, at this point it's a pure Quality of Life advancement. Back when you had a seaglide it would have been very potent, exceeded only barely by the seamoth, and when you first got the seamoth it would still be a light upgrade of sorts. Bu by the time your coming to the end of the initial seamoth stage it doesn't represent much of a help. The vehicle modification station, especially if the pressure compensator was put here like it belongs carriers a bunch of useful upgrades, with the Perimeter defence and hull reinforcement being the two big ones. Technically unless i got a bug they are acquirable at initial seamoth stage, but from a single wreak only. However several of the upgrades require trips into rather more dangerous area's than you really want to be handling in the seamoth to get the resources required. Beyond that you start to run into issues with a lack of a clear upgrade path whatsoever.

The PRAWN is technically acquirable as a blueprint fairly early on and you can get the bits and pieces if you know where to look without excessive risk once you have a seamoth with the first pressure compensator. But without the cyclops to transport it around it's of very limited utility due to poor mobility. It does more or less render the pre-levithan area's quite easy to resource in, though IMO the stock storage and storage module upgrade effects are rather bad to put it mildly. And it gives you a limited ability to work vs Reaper Leviathans. They do enough damage you don't want to push it, (or so i understand, I'm at this particular progression point TBH), but you can fend them off and make them run so they don't follow you home when you leg it. It does however again have issue vis a vis required resources vs what's in the comfort zone for an unupgraded seamoth, (And even upgraded but i'll get back to this).

The Cyclops is basically a mobility system for the PRAWN plus a mobile seabase for extended missions without resupply. It does have total damage immunity at the moment, so it's great for exploration and wreak Spelunking, but for resourcing you have to fall back on the PRAWN, as the sorts of area's your entering are pretty dangerous outside of vehicles. And then the progression just stops whilst a whole class of post reaper leviathan threat level lifeforms exist.




Now all of thats a bit complex and meandering, it's a sort of initial thoughts bit so let me try and TLDR things bit.


Resourcing/exploration progression for each Biome goes a bit like this:

Exploration Phase 1: Avoid the Biome, the Predators can catch you and you can't effectively run away.

Exploration Phase 2: You can now run away, but your not super fast compared to the predators. You can explore around the edges at will, and depending on predator positioning, somewhat into the rest of the zone.

Exploration Phase 3: Your ethier fast enough, or a combination of tough enough and punchy enough to zip in amongst the predators whilst exploring. You can't quite explore at will, but you can get stuck in without serious problems if you don't play completely stupid.

Exploration Phase 4: You're now completely immune to the predators and can pretty much explore at will.

---

Resourcing Phase 1: Avoid, you cannot handle the predators at all.

Resourcing Phase 2: You can avoid the predators but you don't want to tangle so you can resource aroudn the edges but not the interiour.

Resourcing phase 3: You're quick enough or have enough offense/defense to zip around in amongst the predators resourcing, but don;t get cocky, they can still do you in if you get lazy.

Resourcing Phase 4: Your immune or nearly so to the predators and can basically ignore them.


Generally a given resourcing phase matches up with a given exploration phase, but there are exceptions ofc, (phase 4 being a general one).


As a rule of thumb the above progression works across a huge percentage of the games biomes. You start out a weeny little runt and through progression can gain the ability to stomp around with near impunity. But the tech that can let you stomp around one biome might still leave you a weeny little runt in another. Which is also good. It means as you progress you open up new viable area's to get stuck into resourcing, even as old area's becomes fairly easy to clean out.

And by and large that works. But as i talked out above it breaks down in a few key area's.

1. Right at the start of the game your forced into the kelp forests well before your equipped to zip around in there adequate to resource, first for the stuff to make the flippers so you can get from phase 1 to phase 2 on the resourcing and exploration aspects of the kelp biomes, and again for the silver to get a basic seabase up and running.

2. Reapers and post Reaper threats have this break down completely atm. Warpers can get you even in your vehicles, (bar Cyclops), rendering them pretty null and void, (and your so damned vulnerable outside of them obviously), Power leeches need no introduction, and Crabsquid have that EMP. WHilst the sea dragons bring very extreme raw damage to bear against the Prawn Suit.

3. In line with the above, post-reaper threats, (primarily warpers), can be fairly easily encountered in area's that in terms of the current slightly muddled progression are firmly pre-reaper in terms of resources required progression and fragment hunting progression.

4. The actual upgrade path after getting the seamoth is very unintuitive and not necessarily what you'd expect.




What kind of things would i like to see to address this.

4. Is probably going to sort itself out from bits and pieces on plans i've read and some extrapolating of one thing or another from that. Currently the mod stations are likely locked away because you get all the blueprints off the bat, i'm sure long term most upgrades will become like the PRAWN arms and Cyclops upgrades. Things you have to find. Similarly with how many fragments don't have models yet i imagine the placement of fragments will be receiving a through balance pass in future. Assuming these happen and the standard set by seaglide, battery charger, and samoth fragments is followed i foresee no real issues.

3. Is primarily an issue in terms of warpers though i know from reading up energy leeches can cause real issues down in the lava zones too. Given the fact warpers are eventually going to become more dynamic in their presence i imagine longish term they won't turn up in many of the places away from precursor bases that they do now without a certain amount of story progression.

2. Is likely to be another one that could/should IMO, (and may well be planned to), be handled via upgrades. EMP and teleport immunity are obvious ones, and i wouldn't be surprised to learn a perimeter defence system for every type of vehicle is planned which should i imagine handle those leeches nicely. And the apparently planned Mk2 and Mk3 hull reinforcement would presumably increase the ability of the PRAWN and Seamoth to survive attacks from things upto and including the Reapers and Sea Dragon.

1. is a matter of just doing a balance pass on silver frequency and a look at what absolutely should require silver, (and more uses for gold), vs what can be made to just use copper wire like the Seaglide would handle the bulk of this, a couple of kelp strands with seed pods on in the safe shallows wouldn't go amiss however as a stalker free way of getting the first set of flipper and a knife without having to play tag with a predator you can't outrun is desirable to the start of game progression curve. In much the same way there's gel sacks in safe shallows atm if you know where to look or what your looking at when you stumble across them.



So overall i think a lot of this will sort itself out as the polish is put on. But i still wanted to draw attention to it so it doesn't maybe get forgotten in the rush. At the same time as commented in another thread just as i'm typing this, i almost feel like the biggest issue is that the prawn and Cyclops combo is trying to fill far too much developmental space. They're trying to cover resourcing and 4 in every post shallows Biome, Exploration 4 in every post Stalker Biome, Exploration and Resourcing 3 in every pre-reaper threat biome other than those allready noted, and elements of Exploration Phases 2+ and Resourcing 2+ in Reaper and post reaper Biomes. Whilst it would have to be a post release project for obvious reasons i think a true minisub that is say twice the size of the seamoth can equip arms, but has cyclops like speed, (seamoth like tilt control), but with Seamoth crush depth and a Durability between the semoth and PRAWN, (so good upto all pre-reaper biomes but inadequate for reaper and post reaper area's), would help greatly smooth the progression curve and provide more of a feeling of continued progression after getting the PRAWn and Cyclops, (obviously the fragments for those would have to be repositioned some, with the minisub likely going in the aurora as the prawn is now).

Much the same thought applies once base attack are brought in but that's a bit outside the scope of this post, if you want a writeup on my thoughts there feel free.

Just came back to this thread.

Honestly, it didn't explode as much as I thought it would.

At this point, I thought people would be choosing sides, preparing for a full on flame war.

Good job people, you're better than reddit users.