SN is a bit of an odd game for me. It's not really a game I'd ever pick up as it doesn't match my normal genres.
When I finally decided to give it a try, I was really pleasantly surprised and I have to admit that I'm now hooked. I think what hooked me was the "freedom" mode; without that mode I suspect I'd have become bored and annoyed with the game in quick order; as I say, survival games aren't really my thing.
The game balance has improved considerably in recent updates and I think it getting close to where it needs to be. My biggest issues with the game now resolve mostly around navigation and getting lost, and some incomplete features, like the scanner room list not being scrollable.
It is great to see how the game improved during early access, the regular releases with great updates to content and features. I really hope the game will be a great success once released; it deserves to be.
Some things I'd love to see in this game (which is great by the way):
- A mapping function (same as everybody else) - no spoilers needed, just a plain old map that shows me where I am, expands as I explore, and allows me to mark points of interest as I discover them.
- Let the Cyclops dock with the base (same as everybody else).
- Make the snap-to-fit finer for base building so that I can line things up and fine tune things as I see fit.
- Make the snap-to-fit coarser for interior decorating so I can line stuff up more easily.
- Or make snap-to-fit adjustable so I can do it myself. The would be the best option.
- More subs (because subs are cool). A little, really zippy one would be cool. A medium one built to transport the PRAWN suit would be great, too.
- A shared inventory (because inventory management, while realistic, is also tedious).
- A shared inventory (because inventory management, while realistic, is also tedious).
I think it would be cool to have a base-block or corner block (like the water filtration system) dedicated to a self-organising inventory, with a much higher capacity. For technicality, I would have it work the same as the normal inventory, but only display one of each material stored in it (along with a number). It could cost power and some special materials for the mechanics of it. This I think would satisfy EmptyPepsiCan's suggestion too.
I have definitely seen an improvement in all aspects of the game over my time playing it in early access. I still feel there is a bit of hard-gating with the tech once you've explored everything around 250m, but I may just be behind with exploring pods, I'll keep you posted with that regard.
When I found you were introducing alien-related content into the game, I rapidly lost interest, but your actual implementation of them is far better than I anticipated. Generally I find aliens an overused and unimaginative concept, but you keep the subnautica atmosphere and emotion consistent in spite of their presence, and I think that is what makes it work so well. I actually found myself wanting to engage in an old doom-style shoot-em-up when I first explored the facility, which made me so surprised, since this is a very different style of game and I didn't think the two could merge so seamlessly. Anyway, I am only half way through this playthrough, so I'll probably update with some more feedback later.
I have an experimental build where the QEP looked limp and deactivated but I hadn’t cured myself or deactivated the array in any wave at all I am concerned about the bug and the possibility of it making in into 1.0 unfixed.
-The ladders of the base should be retractable, in some thight areas you are always clipping against them.
-The controls of stacking together the different building blocks of the base, especially deconstructing certain rooms, where other objects are attached to this room, is just very error-prone/glitchy.Basebuilding in this kind of games should be as easy as stacking lego blocks, but it definately is not in this case.Often if you want to build a building onto a foundation square you cant even build it in the middle of it, but rather have to build it on one of the corners.
-A teleporter system to teleport from base to base would be nice
-AI controlled freight submarines which you can programm on a route to transport/exchange ressourches between several bases (like the freight ships in the Anno games) and a buildable automated industrialised resource processing chain (like in the minecraft mod industrial craft: ) for the late game meta, would be cool.
Scanner Room:
-I would like to see the scanner room icons changing to small points, instead of circles if the ressourches are fare away and the further they are
away the smaller the points are. The scanner room clutter looks very bad, the way it is now, its just way to distracting seeing all those circles.
An additional degree of trancparency could also help.
-Add maybe a mobil signal repeater station for the scanning room,which you can carry around with you and drop into the water and which extends the range of your scanner room range.If the range of your scanner room is 500 meter then you can drop it off 490 meter away from the scanner room to extend your scanner room range about x hundret meters.
(Im not so sure about this one anymore because having to build additional bases in dangerous areas and managing to get ressourchers in those additional bases is a rather fun part of the late game meta, so maybe no repeaters).
Hard Mode:
I know this game is designed in a way that everyone can enjoy it, no matter if casual player or dedecated player .And the game does that exceptionaly well, most of the time.
In the early till mid game the fact that this game is very easy and forgiving most of the time, didnt borther me at all.But in the late game when i wanderd out in those deeper more dangerous regions, i was kind of dissapointed of how harmless and forgiving most of the predators are. Even the leviathans spot you only if you swim right infront of their face (as long as you dont use the cyclops, because this thing attracts leviathans like light attracts insects). Only the bonesharks hunt you down relentlessly. And the crashfishes (very early in game if you dont have any speedbuffs) and warper are kind of annoying too.But thats it, all other creatures are just extremly easy to avoid. Take the sandshark for example, got anyone of you really hit by that creature, if you are not doing it on purpose?
Long story short: A hard mode where creatures are more aggressive, their attacks are more focused and harder to avoid and do more damage, would be very cool. Same counts for the environmental hazzards like the vulcanic erruption holes, of hot steaming water, which you can swim into with taking only very little to no damage at all. Some additional creatures which you can only see in hard mode, like for example some more exotic, non snake looking leviathans,which are even bigger then the allready exiting ones(or just as big, but even more disgusting looking) could be very cool.
Vehicles in general:
-Option to toggle the vehicle enter and exit animations on and off.
Seaglide:
-The 3D holographic map for the seaglide is also just terrible gimmicky and useless.The only thing it does is blocking your field of view.
And you have to press the mouse button so many times to toggle the seaglide in a mode where the light is on and the map is off.
Better would be if you could blend in a 2D map into the seaglides view while holding a key and if you let go of the key the map disapears again.
Cyclops:
-If i switch to the camera view of the cyclops, then i cant see my compass anymore.That should be changed.
-The steering wheel of the cyclops is to big and blocks to much of your view.
-There needs to be a shortcut keycommand for switching into the camera view of the cyclops.It hurts the flow of the gameplay if i have to click the camera icon everytime with the mouse.
-If the air bubbles created from a brain coral rise up and hit and burst at the hull of the cyclops, they create a noise which is way to simular to the sound a creature makes when it rams your ship or you make when you ram against the environment.
-It would be good if the enemy alert of the cyclops could be deactivated temporarily, or if it would no longer be triggerable through creature attacks,like the one from the ampeel, which cant damage your shield anyways.
-It would be good if the cyclops alarm would still activate when you are outside the ship (mining with a prawn suite for example) if a leviathan shows up.
(Im not so sure about that anymore either, maybe better no alarm if you are outside,because it takes away from the tention of having to look on your own)
- You should be able to remote control the cyclops,simular to the cameras of the scanner room (while you are sitting in the prawn suite for example and wanderd to far off for mining purposes) after recieving a upgrade/neural implant.
Prawn suite:
-A rare to find special elite prawn suite,which has 3 or 4 arms instead of only 2, so that you can dock more differnt arms,would be cool. The suite could be hard to find (bottom of the void) and would need many expensive ressources to construct.
-Drilling a mineral block with the prawn takes way to much time, its just not fun waiting that long to empty one mineral block.
-The prawn should maintain its momentum better, after catapulting you forward with the grappling hook arm.Especially when you do sling shot (swing-by) maneuvers, when you let go of the grapple in the right timeframe and extend the momentum even further, with some bunny hops/jumping shortly after you land on the ground again, or using your jetpack afterwards to stay longer in the air. But instead the friction of the ground just sucks up all the forward momentum, after landing and doing a jump right after the landing, to extend your forward momentum(which you got from the catapulting with the gravling hook) does also not work most of the time.You also can not grapple hook onto a hill if you stand on the bottom of the hill, because you just crash into the hill instead of landing ontop of the hill even if you use at the same time your jetpack.
Look at how the grappling hook works in titanfall 2 they have managed the maintaining momentum and landing on higher objects while using the grappling hook perfect:
It does not need to be as fast as in titanfall 2 but you should at least be able to maintain the momentum better or swing ontop of a hill better if you use grappling hook and jetpack at the same time.
Performance:
-The level streaming and lod(level of details) streaming needs to be improved alot.Often the game loads entire rifs or seagrass regions suddenly into your field of view, even if you are only 50 meter away.
-The frame rate drops down very often,especially if you jump out of the water,then its often even more of a stuttering/little freeze then a drop.
- If you build a foundation square more then 6-8 meter above the ground of the ocean, it should always just attach floading tanks to the bottom of the foundation square instead of trying to connect the foundation with support legs to the ground in a weird and unappealing way,especially if you have very uneven ground under you. This way it would look way cleaner and there would be no forest of support legs visable.
- The scanner room icons need to be toogleable on and off and color swapable(just like the beacons or signals) on the tablet.
- You should be able to switch tools while running and your flashlight should point forward while running so that it can iluminate the way while you are running on the islands at night or in caves.
- Somethimes the escape key lets you swap out of a menu and sometimes not, so one and the same keyinput does multiple different things in a context sensitive way, that can be confusing for many players.
- It would be great if you could move around your lockers inside your base without having to deconstruct or empty them before, maybe by using the propulsion cannon.
- The menus in the tablet could be color coded and/or have symbols to find things faster. Every Icon is at the moment white on a blue backround. In the first 5-10 hours it was kind of hard for me to find things in the tablet menus quick, because everything looked the same color wise.So i did often not use it in the early game. And i had also problems memorizing which objects are in which colum of the habitat builder menu.Some of the habitat builder menu colum icons could also be a little bit more clear, maybe also colored or bigger/more high res icons.
- A recycling machine, which deconstructs ressources back to their origininal form, like converting titanium ingots back to titanium, or recycling a advanced wiring kit back into its core components.
- The models of the bladderfish and boomerang fish while holding them in your hand (if you have equiped them), look really low res and bad, compared to the hover fish or the other fishes, which look really good while holding them.The bomerang fish and bladderfish model for holding them in your hand could definately need a short rework.Your game looks so good most of the time but whenever you hold one of those 2 fish models in your hand the imersion and magic is gone for me.
- A weather system with thunderstorms,rain and giant twisters which suck you up in the sky and drop you 100th of meters away down again, or hurricans which create big waves, could be great for the dlc.
- Some flying enemys could also be cool dlc wise(maybe even a flying leviathan,but plz no flying dragon,we have already 2 dragon leviathans in the game.Something more exotic and freaky/scary looking could be good).
i know its released and all but here are my thoughts: no matter what mask you wear you always have the same visor in first person i think it would be even cooler if your visor would change depending on the mask
I guess that's not much of an "Early Access" feedback, but I'm not sure where to ask this (also I don't have rights to create a dedicated topic, so pardon me for breaking any rule)
Can I edit the location for "SNAppData" folder to place it outside of Subnautica's game folder?
I have multiple hard-drives and would like to reduce micro-stutter by reducing fragmentation of save files due to necessity to read textures and read/write save data on same drive.
P.S. I'm not interested in buying SSD or setting up RAID drive, thank you.
P.P.S. Thank you for such a stunningly great game, folks!
I have been watching my 10 year old Son play this for the last few months and he convinced me to sit down and have a go at it. normally I only play multi-player games with him to get him matts and stuff to give him a boost etc.
Well I just could not pull myself off the game, what a beautiful, immersive experience. The graphics are nothing but excellent and the music is fantastic.
Hats off the everyone involved for making this a truly awesome game, I can not say enough good things about it.
Your probably sick of hearing the word multiplayer but if you carried on with expansions and made this multiplayer, co-op I think this game would take off in a big way.
I am really craving for more to do in this and am quite sad I completed it lol, running a server with my friends and family on would be amazing!
Its been some time since I've messaged on here and I wanted to reach out to the UWE team and congratulate you on an excellent game. Subnautica is great and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The quality of the end product was sublime and easily exceeds the quality of products coming from the "AAA" studio community. Its great to see that many of the old team members are still developing/designing/implementing. I'll continue to follow and throw money at you guys :P
a bigger world to explore would be nice, say 3-4 times as big. Also remove the ability to get full seamoth AND prawnsuit blueprints in aroura, seems silly to me to get both in same place when u have to hunt for cyclops parts. maybe just acquire the seamoth the and have to find the prawnsiut...hence bigger map.
This may very well be the best VR title there is now, or could be - if it was really VR and not just VR supported. Ergo my suggestion which I'm sure has been suggested before, but htc vive controller (and oculus rift) support would be remarkable. VR emerges everything. The game offers both survival as well as... super scary shit, but the use of non-vr controllers or mouse really take you out of it. If there was support that could be as simple as actual movement with the touchpad and a button that fits it, but even better: swimming requiring the swimming movement with the controllers to move around (you can still just pick up stuff with a button) I'd definitely go out of my way to advertise it to everyone.
Hope to see Below Zero include:
1. Some narrative reveals from the first game. (eg What really happened to those Degasi crewmembers? What's the ancient link between Precursors and Mongolians?)
2. Airlocks!
3. More airlocks!
So i have a question and nothing i look up seems to be helping me at all. Do you need internet to start up subnautica for ps4 or can you play it without any interent at all.
Ok first off love this game played it since launch. Now i left it alone for a while due to its many bugs. I noticed last week that it had lost its preview status and promptly installed on my new xbox one x. Upon playing the game and noticing many new features and some but not all bugs gone in its current build i found myself at times with nothing to do waiting for the next event to move me along. Nothing to do i hear you say in large aquatic playground. Let me explain.
I found myself at times needing items to build equipment in order to progress. These items were either not spawning in the areas i was currently allowed to explore or they were in areas i could not explore due to lack of equipment. Equipment i needed to build in order to find items to build that equipment. Then i would get a message and the game would roll on untill i came across the same above situation. I would then spend most of the time looking for these items that did not spawn or did'nt have the equipment to find waiting for the next radio message.This as of yet has been the nature of my experiance. Let me give you an example. Diamonds, now with playing earlier builds i new roughly were to find them. So with my many searches comming across wreckages that needed a cutter i looked in vain for this item. I also needed them for another piece of equipment that would have allowed me to move on. It was not untill i think the pod 19 message i was able to find two of these diamonds through sheer luck i am sure.
I'm also sure the blueprint section is broke i have the knowledge to build ultra fins but the option to build is not in the fabricator nor is the ultra high tank.
I will however press on i'm sure you are on the ball. But seriously the game needs some flow to it instead of this stop start feel. If there are intervals between messages give us the chance to find the mats needed to build equipment you have already provided for us.
Also your website claims its still preview on xbox one yet my launcher has lost it's preview lable. Just thought i would throw that in. A great and beautiful game looking forward to playing it when it all comes together.
I will however press on i'm sure you are on the ball. If there are intervals between messages give us the chance to find the mats needed to build equipment you have already provided for us etc...
Okay there's several things you mentioned here I can help explain better, so bear with me.
Diamonds:
These can be tricky to find, however once you have a sea moth it's relatively easy (You can obtain the blueprint to build one by scanning the wreckage bits found in the relatively shallow (under 100m) zones around the life pod, it just takes some searching. ) Once you have a seamoth head north to the floating island and down around 250m you'll find shale (dark black rocks) bust those open and you'll get some diamonds relatively quickly. Or alternately head to the sea treaders path (to the west, big sandy area) look for the giant creatures with the stilt legs, follow in their wake and bust open all the rocky debris they leave behind, tons of diamonds and other materials can be farmed in very little time.)
Missing Blueprints:
The ultra high capacity cant and ultra fins aren't built at the normal fabricator, they are crafted at the modification station.
This is a seperate crafting station, you'll run across scannable fragments for the blueprint for it while exploring various wrecks and lifepods.
Radio messages:
If you need more time between the message intervals on the radio you can simply not answer it and leave the message waiting. It'll wait there for you until you answer it, letting you easily "pause" the storyline to farm/craft etc. Also it's worth noting the radio messages happen in a set interval, independent of your actions between each one. I.e you don't need to salvage one life pod before the radio message will appear for the next one, etc. You can just answer the radio, note the new ping on the map and ignore it until you feel like checking it out and the next message will arrive on the radio and wait for you to answer it after a set time interval.
I hope this helps you with some of the more confusing bits of the game, feel free to pm me if you need any further assistance.
One minor thing that annoyed me in Subnautica is the inconsistency between the Moonpool and the Cyclops' vehicle bay. The two are functionally almost identical which makes the minor differences all the more jarring. For example, the cyclops allows you to access vehicle storage and upgrades from a panel, whereas the MP requires the player to undock a PRAWN suit beforehand. IMO it'd make sense for both MP and Cyclops to provide this panel alongside a third button to access the power cells of the docked vehicle. Adding these features to the Moonpool would make emptying out and re-equipping a PRAWN at your base a lot more convenient.
Secondly there's the autorepair module that I'd like to see implemented for the moonpool, either as a mod or as a default feature. This wouldn't change the game much in terms of balance or gameplay but it feels like an oversight/inconsistency not to have it.
Finally, I wouldn't mind the option to rename/recolour docked vehicles in the Cyclops bay, but this is obviously the most frivolous of the three points.
I just got through my first couple of hours, so here is my "New player experience" feedback:
1. Great job on the hardware optimization! I'm able to play on my ancient desktop (4th gen i3, 750Ti). Even with minimum details it still looks good to me!
2. I thought I would like the idea of managing hunger and thirst, but now I hate it... Would it make sense to allow for an option to change that setting? Does it affect gameplay at all other than for those two features? I see that I can edit the file, so should there be a way to turn that off in the game options?
3. Chests - it's really painful initially to manage all the loot you find lying around. I have like 10 chests floating around with various stuff I found. Why can't the primary chest at the pod be big enough? Alternatively, I wish I could build one huge chest on the sea bed below the pod, so I don't have to worry about all the stuff I have to keep just in case. I guess it's natural to hoard, there are currently very tedious tools to do it - why not make it easier from the start?
4. I really like how the perishables work - eat that fish now, or it goes bad - definitely adds to the theme!
5. Out of all things that limit my enjoyment currently is lack of basic blueprints/equipment to start off. And by basic I mean REALLY basic: compass and basic multi-purpose room blueprint. I can build a scanner room with cameras that do have compasses, but one for me? Or build an empty room? Nope... I get that the protagonist isn't an engineer, but if he can build a foundation and tubes without blueprints, he should a be able to build a basic multi-purpose room as well. Not to mention having compass as a standard issue equipment in the pod... I'm like 10 hours into the game and still can't find these items/blueprints.
6. I'm not sure if I messed up my game - I went to the beacon for the ship that was coming to save me, which obviously was not very successful at it. I thought I would be able to save that spot on the map and come back there... NOPE! I can't find that island any more... I didn't realize that beacons have to be built. Also, the game DOES save locations of the other signals (the two pod locations - they disappear, but your PDA remembers those spots.
7. One of my favorite games of all time is Factorio, which seems to be similar in many aspects to Subnautica and one thing that I wish I could see here too is:
- the game being able to figure out sub-component crafting (so I don't have to craft wires myself, before I craft a sign - if I have basic components, the game should craft those by itself)
- automating tedious tasks - like getting fresh water, food, mining resources.
I know this is NOT Factorio, but if I can't automate that, I simply turn off the food/water requirement, as I refuse to hunt fish every 10 minutes...
8. Overall - Amazing game! Looks great and since I can turn off hunger/thirst, I will definitely stay with it for some time!
Propper Vive support please.. At least a keyset and mouse but using Vive controllers as a Xbox controller would work just as well for me. As suggested previously. That's all I really want. One of my favorite survival / exploration games. Would love to have it in VR, not just a VR suggestion that I can't pass the loading screen without buying a controller specifically just for this game. I pre-purchased your Subzero game... Please continue to support the original as well and update this. Thank you.
I HATE the Sea Monkey stealing equipment thing. Stole my Seaglide. Rage quit the game. I will not play it until there is a way to disable or minimize that crap.
Clipping. It probably been mentioned a lot but this really bugs me. I make a cool base only to have fish swimming through my walls and air bubbles floating up. I know it's early access and things are buggy but this was an issue in the first Subnautica and still is. This really needs to be resolved for below zero as it really is very frustrating and kinda kills a bit of the enjoyment of base building.
I don't know why there doesn't seem to be any recent feedback regarding BZ but here goes mine anyway:
Now I have to mention, that I obviously don't know which of my points are impacted by actual choice of design and/or the fact that we're still in EA here, so take this into account where appropriate. Also I'm trying to keep this spoiler-free but still do read at your own risk.
In vanilla, even though faced with an immediate crisis in form of the crash of our spaceship and the threat of having to secure our own survival, the shallows really felt quite safe and very pleasant to look at. The grassy plateaus where also still quite bright, same for the kelp forests unless you went right into the middle of the actual kelp.
In BZ, at least for me, there doesn't really seem to be that safe haven in the already extremely hostily frozen environment. I admit, that I'd have no idea how to implement a more homey zone short of thermal activity (which was also present, albeit I think in only two places) in the shallows of vanilla.
In terms of feel, only the blood kelp zone of vanilla really gave me the creeps, whereas in BZ I don't really like any of the water zones. Due to the crater nature of vanilla, there was a much smooter depth transition in the game, where generally going outward meant going deeper. With the obvious exception of mountains, only the ocassional, usually hidden cave would go against that and would thus not disturb the feeling.
Now BZ is not a crater, but it still feels like it can just drop a few hundred meters down at any point with no warning and on top of the fact that there's nothing that feels like a safe haven above or below, since wheather is usually 'dangerous' and there's no visually pleasant & safe zone, I never got the feeling of vanilla, where even in a certain briney tree cave close to the very bottom of the map, to just want to linger, explore, build a nice base which as many windows to look out from as possible. Either the zone is too dark, to visually unpleasing or from the audio it feels like there's at least three legions of leviathans right in front of my doorstep, even if it's just two Cryptosuchi.
On the side of the story, I actually prefer BZ over vanilla. I've read that people feel like the amount of plot forces them to act all the time where in vanilla they would just try to survive and uncover the story on accident. I get the accidental story part and 100% agree with it. All I wanted to do in vanilla is survive and get off of that planet. Whilst following up on the other lifepod leads you find out that and why you cannot and how to fix it. That had a really nice flow for it, was beatifully told and presented and felt like decent closure upon finishing the game.
With BZ, you don't take a detour to some random planet where you then randomly crash for no apparent reason for either of those two things. You come here for a reason and with a (sort of) plan. While I think the intro needs some fiddling with, since the actual making the land crash seems a bit forced and like the protagonist is way more stupid than she turns out to be. Even if she's not a pilot by trade, that did look like somebody needed it to crash for the plot to work a bit too much for me.
So then you 'land' and again have to shift your focus to surviving first and somewhat readjust if you played vanilla, since some of the recipes changed. This is where I start to disagree with some of the other opinions. The fact that right now I already have a plot and know what to do does not force me to immediately act on it. I can still just do other stuff before furthering the story. There was no timer placed on my action to my knowledge. I didn't really want to linger much, due to the atmospheric reasons above and the fact that I wanted to know how the story continues.
The actual main plot felt solid to me from a storytelling point. To me it needs way more filling in terms of reasoning, explanations and details, but since many of the dialogs read "TBD", I 99% believe that the developers know that and are working on it.
The secondary main plot concerning a certain 'passenger' I also generally liked, yet I cannot give a final statement on, since it did not appear to be finished in the current EA version.
Both involved characters being scientists seems a decent enough explanation for them to overcome the initial disagreement over the status quo by means of curiosity, dialogs state that there's 'cultural' exchange meant to be as well as them bonding over the primary plot.
What I - at least in the current state - don't like as much is the involvement of a certain survivor of another crash. The EA version at the time of me writing this is the only one I've played, so I don't know if and who they might have been involved in prior versions but right now it feels like they're just involved because somebody on the dev team wants them to be in the game. It doesn't feel like they actually need to be involved in anything. The resource access they provide could just as well be provived about anywhere else. The story hints they provided - in the current version - seemed almost to small to be really meaningful and could also have been provided by notes/pdas, keepsakes etc..
Comments
When I finally decided to give it a try, I was really pleasantly surprised and I have to admit that I'm now hooked. I think what hooked me was the "freedom" mode; without that mode I suspect I'd have become bored and annoyed with the game in quick order; as I say, survival games aren't really my thing.
The game balance has improved considerably in recent updates and I think it getting close to where it needs to be. My biggest issues with the game now resolve mostly around navigation and getting lost, and some incomplete features, like the scanner room list not being scrollable.
It is great to see how the game improved during early access, the regular releases with great updates to content and features. I really hope the game will be a great success once released; it deserves to be.
- A mapping function (same as everybody else) - no spoilers needed, just a plain old map that shows me where I am, expands as I explore, and allows me to mark points of interest as I discover them.
- Let the Cyclops dock with the base (same as everybody else).
- Make the snap-to-fit finer for base building so that I can line things up and fine tune things as I see fit.
- Make the snap-to-fit coarser for interior decorating so I can line stuff up more easily.
- Or make snap-to-fit adjustable so I can do it myself. The would be the best option.
- More subs (because subs are cool). A little, really zippy one would be cool. A medium one built to transport the PRAWN suit would be great, too.
- A shared inventory (because inventory management, while realistic, is also tedious).
- Expanded Cyclops with room for 2 vehicles.
Just some thoughts.
I have definitely seen an improvement in all aspects of the game over my time playing it in early access. I still feel there is a bit of hard-gating with the tech once you've explored everything around 250m, but I may just be behind with exploring pods, I'll keep you posted with that regard.
When I found you were introducing alien-related content into the game, I rapidly lost interest, but your actual implementation of them is far better than I anticipated. Generally I find aliens an overused and unimaginative concept, but you keep the subnautica atmosphere and emotion consistent in spite of their presence, and I think that is what makes it work so well. I actually found myself wanting to engage in an old doom-style shoot-em-up when I first explored the facility, which made me so surprised, since this is a very different style of game and I didn't think the two could merge so seamlessly. Anyway, I am only half way through this playthrough, so I'll probably update with some more feedback later.
-The ladders of the base should be retractable, in some thight areas you are always clipping against them.
-The controls of stacking together the different building blocks of the base, especially deconstructing certain rooms, where other objects are attached to this room, is just very error-prone/glitchy.Basebuilding in this kind of games should be as easy as stacking lego blocks, but it definately is not in this case.Often if you want to build a building onto a foundation square you cant even build it in the middle of it, but rather have to build it on one of the corners.
-A teleporter system to teleport from base to base would be nice
-AI controlled freight submarines which you can programm on a route to transport/exchange ressourches between several bases (like the freight ships in the Anno games) and a buildable automated industrialised resource processing chain (like in the minecraft mod industrial craft:
Scanner Room:
-I would like to see the scanner room icons changing to small points, instead of circles if the ressourches are fare away and the further they are
away the smaller the points are. The scanner room clutter looks very bad, the way it is now, its just way to distracting seeing all those circles.
An additional degree of trancparency could also help.
-Add maybe a mobil signal repeater station for the scanning room,which you can carry around with you and drop into the water and which extends the range of your scanner room range.If the range of your scanner room is 500 meter then you can drop it off 490 meter away from the scanner room to extend your scanner room range about x hundret meters.
(Im not so sure about this one anymore because having to build additional bases in dangerous areas and managing to get ressourchers in those additional bases is a rather fun part of the late game meta, so maybe no repeaters).
Hard Mode:
I know this game is designed in a way that everyone can enjoy it, no matter if casual player or dedecated player .And the game does that exceptionaly well, most of the time.
In the early till mid game the fact that this game is very easy and forgiving most of the time, didnt borther me at all.But in the late game when i wanderd out in those deeper more dangerous regions, i was kind of dissapointed of how harmless and forgiving most of the predators are. Even the leviathans spot you only if you swim right infront of their face (as long as you dont use the cyclops, because this thing attracts leviathans like light attracts insects). Only the bonesharks hunt you down relentlessly. And the crashfishes (very early in game if you dont have any speedbuffs) and warper are kind of annoying too.But thats it, all other creatures are just extremly easy to avoid. Take the sandshark for example, got anyone of you really hit by that creature, if you are not doing it on purpose?
Long story short: A hard mode where creatures are more aggressive, their attacks are more focused and harder to avoid and do more damage, would be very cool. Same counts for the environmental hazzards like the vulcanic erruption holes, of hot steaming water, which you can swim into with taking only very little to no damage at all. Some additional creatures which you can only see in hard mode, like for example some more exotic, non snake looking leviathans,which are even bigger then the allready exiting ones(or just as big, but even more disgusting looking) could be very cool.
Vehicles in general:
-Option to toggle the vehicle enter and exit animations on and off.
Seaglide:
-The 3D holographic map for the seaglide is also just terrible gimmicky and useless.The only thing it does is blocking your field of view.
And you have to press the mouse button so many times to toggle the seaglide in a mode where the light is on and the map is off.
Better would be if you could blend in a 2D map into the seaglides view while holding a key and if you let go of the key the map disapears again.
Cyclops:
-If i switch to the camera view of the cyclops, then i cant see my compass anymore.That should be changed.
-The steering wheel of the cyclops is to big and blocks to much of your view.
-There needs to be a shortcut keycommand for switching into the camera view of the cyclops.It hurts the flow of the gameplay if i have to click the camera icon everytime with the mouse.
-If the air bubbles created from a brain coral rise up and hit and burst at the hull of the cyclops, they create a noise which is way to simular to the sound a creature makes when it rams your ship or you make when you ram against the environment.
-It would be good if the enemy alert of the cyclops could be deactivated temporarily, or if it would no longer be triggerable through creature attacks,like the one from the ampeel, which cant damage your shield anyways.
-It would be good if the cyclops alarm would still activate when you are outside the ship (mining with a prawn suite for example) if a leviathan shows up.
(Im not so sure about that anymore either, maybe better no alarm if you are outside,because it takes away from the tention of having to look on your own)
- You should be able to remote control the cyclops,simular to the cameras of the scanner room (while you are sitting in the prawn suite for example and wanderd to far off for mining purposes) after recieving a upgrade/neural implant.
Prawn suite:
-A rare to find special elite prawn suite,which has 3 or 4 arms instead of only 2, so that you can dock more differnt arms,would be cool. The suite could be hard to find (bottom of the void) and would need many expensive ressources to construct.
-Drilling a mineral block with the prawn takes way to much time, its just not fun waiting that long to empty one mineral block.
-The prawn should maintain its momentum better, after catapulting you forward with the grappling hook arm.Especially when you do sling shot (swing-by) maneuvers, when you let go of the grapple in the right timeframe and extend the momentum even further, with some bunny hops/jumping shortly after you land on the ground again, or using your jetpack afterwards to stay longer in the air. But instead the friction of the ground just sucks up all the forward momentum, after landing and doing a jump right after the landing, to extend your forward momentum(which you got from the catapulting with the gravling hook) does also not work most of the time.You also can not grapple hook onto a hill if you stand on the bottom of the hill, because you just crash into the hill instead of landing ontop of the hill even if you use at the same time your jetpack.
Look at how the grappling hook works in titanfall 2 they have managed the maintaining momentum and landing on higher objects while using the grappling hook perfect:
It does not need to be as fast as in titanfall 2 but you should at least be able to maintain the momentum better or swing ontop of a hill better if you use grappling hook and jetpack at the same time.
Performance:
-The level streaming and lod(level of details) streaming needs to be improved alot.Often the game loads entire rifs or seagrass regions suddenly into your field of view, even if you are only 50 meter away.
-The frame rate drops down very often,especially if you jump out of the water,then its often even more of a stuttering/little freeze then a drop.
- The scanner room icons need to be toogleable on and off and color swapable(just like the beacons or signals) on the tablet.
- You should be able to switch tools while running and your flashlight should point forward while running so that it can iluminate the way while you are running on the islands at night or in caves.
- Somethimes the escape key lets you swap out of a menu and sometimes not, so one and the same keyinput does multiple different things in a context sensitive way, that can be confusing for many players.
- It would be great if you could move around your lockers inside your base without having to deconstruct or empty them before, maybe by using the propulsion cannon.
- The menus in the tablet could be color coded and/or have symbols to find things faster. Every Icon is at the moment white on a blue backround. In the first 5-10 hours it was kind of hard for me to find things in the tablet menus quick, because everything looked the same color wise.So i did often not use it in the early game. And i had also problems memorizing which objects are in which colum of the habitat builder menu.Some of the habitat builder menu colum icons could also be a little bit more clear, maybe also colored or bigger/more high res icons.
- A recycling machine, which deconstructs ressources back to their origininal form, like converting titanium ingots back to titanium, or recycling a advanced wiring kit back into its core components.
- The models of the bladderfish and boomerang fish while holding them in your hand (if you have equiped them), look really low res and bad, compared to the hover fish or the other fishes, which look really good while holding them.The bomerang fish and bladderfish model for holding them in your hand could definately need a short rework.Your game looks so good most of the time but whenever you hold one of those 2 fish models in your hand the imersion and magic is gone for me.
- A weather system with thunderstorms,rain and giant twisters which suck you up in the sky and drop you 100th of meters away down again, or hurricans which create big waves, could be great for the dlc.
- Some flying enemys could also be cool dlc wise(maybe even a flying leviathan,but plz no flying dragon,we have already 2 dragon leviathans in the game.Something more exotic and freaky/scary looking could be good).
Can I edit the location for "SNAppData" folder to place it outside of Subnautica's game folder?
I have multiple hard-drives and would like to reduce micro-stutter by reducing fragmentation of save files due to necessity to read textures and read/write save data on same drive.
P.S. I'm not interested in buying SSD or setting up RAID drive, thank you.
P.P.S. Thank you for such a stunningly great game, folks!
Well I just could not pull myself off the game, what a beautiful, immersive experience. The graphics are nothing but excellent and the music is fantastic.
Hats off the everyone involved for making this a truly awesome game, I can not say enough good things about it.
Your probably sick of hearing the word multiplayer but if you carried on with expansions and made this multiplayer, co-op I think this game would take off in a big way.
I am really craving for more to do in this and am quite sad I completed it lol, running a server with my friends and family on would be amazing!
Tony
maybe more story,idk. its good game so far
Hope to see Below Zero include:
1. Some narrative reveals from the first game. (eg What really happened to those Degasi crewmembers? What's the ancient link between Precursors and Mongolians?)
2. Airlocks!
3. More airlocks!
I found myself at times needing items to build equipment in order to progress. These items were either not spawning in the areas i was currently allowed to explore or they were in areas i could not explore due to lack of equipment. Equipment i needed to build in order to find items to build that equipment. Then i would get a message and the game would roll on untill i came across the same above situation. I would then spend most of the time looking for these items that did not spawn or did'nt have the equipment to find waiting for the next radio message.This as of yet has been the nature of my experiance. Let me give you an example. Diamonds, now with playing earlier builds i new roughly were to find them. So with my many searches comming across wreckages that needed a cutter i looked in vain for this item. I also needed them for another piece of equipment that would have allowed me to move on. It was not untill i think the pod 19 message i was able to find two of these diamonds through sheer luck i am sure.
I'm also sure the blueprint section is broke i have the knowledge to build ultra fins but the option to build is not in the fabricator nor is the ultra high tank.
I will however press on i'm sure you are on the ball. But seriously the game needs some flow to it instead of this stop start feel. If there are intervals between messages give us the chance to find the mats needed to build equipment you have already provided for us.
Also your website claims its still preview on xbox one yet my launcher has lost it's preview lable. Just thought i would throw that in. A great and beautiful game looking forward to playing it when it all comes together.
Okay there's several things you mentioned here I can help explain better, so bear with me.
Diamonds:
These can be tricky to find, however once you have a sea moth it's relatively easy (You can obtain the blueprint to build one by scanning the wreckage bits found in the relatively shallow (under 100m) zones around the life pod, it just takes some searching. ) Once you have a seamoth head north to the floating island and down around 250m you'll find shale (dark black rocks) bust those open and you'll get some diamonds relatively quickly. Or alternately head to the sea treaders path (to the west, big sandy area) look for the giant creatures with the stilt legs, follow in their wake and bust open all the rocky debris they leave behind, tons of diamonds and other materials can be farmed in very little time.)
Missing Blueprints:
The ultra high capacity cant and ultra fins aren't built at the normal fabricator, they are crafted at the modification station.
This is a seperate crafting station, you'll run across scannable fragments for the blueprint for it while exploring various wrecks and lifepods.
Radio messages:
If you need more time between the message intervals on the radio you can simply not answer it and leave the message waiting. It'll wait there for you until you answer it, letting you easily "pause" the storyline to farm/craft etc. Also it's worth noting the radio messages happen in a set interval, independent of your actions between each one. I.e you don't need to salvage one life pod before the radio message will appear for the next one, etc. You can just answer the radio, note the new ping on the map and ignore it until you feel like checking it out and the next message will arrive on the radio and wait for you to answer it after a set time interval.
I hope this helps you with some of the more confusing bits of the game, feel free to pm me if you need any further assistance.
Secondly there's the autorepair module that I'd like to see implemented for the moonpool, either as a mod or as a default feature. This wouldn't change the game much in terms of balance or gameplay but it feels like an oversight/inconsistency not to have it.
Finally, I wouldn't mind the option to rename/recolour docked vehicles in the Cyclops bay, but this is obviously the most frivolous of the three points.
I just got through my first couple of hours, so here is my "New player experience" feedback:
1. Great job on the hardware optimization! I'm able to play on my ancient desktop (4th gen i3, 750Ti). Even with minimum details it still looks good to me!
2. I thought I would like the idea of managing hunger and thirst, but now I hate it... Would it make sense to allow for an option to change that setting? Does it affect gameplay at all other than for those two features? I see that I can edit the file, so should there be a way to turn that off in the game options?
3. Chests - it's really painful initially to manage all the loot you find lying around. I have like 10 chests floating around with various stuff I found. Why can't the primary chest at the pod be big enough? Alternatively, I wish I could build one huge chest on the sea bed below the pod, so I don't have to worry about all the stuff I have to keep just in case. I guess it's natural to hoard, there are currently very tedious tools to do it - why not make it easier from the start?
4. I really like how the perishables work - eat that fish now, or it goes bad - definitely adds to the theme!
5. Out of all things that limit my enjoyment currently is lack of basic blueprints/equipment to start off. And by basic I mean REALLY basic: compass and basic multi-purpose room blueprint. I can build a scanner room with cameras that do have compasses, but one for me? Or build an empty room? Nope... I get that the protagonist isn't an engineer, but if he can build a foundation and tubes without blueprints, he should a be able to build a basic multi-purpose room as well. Not to mention having compass as a standard issue equipment in the pod... I'm like 10 hours into the game and still can't find these items/blueprints.
6. I'm not sure if I messed up my game - I went to the beacon for the ship that was coming to save me, which obviously was not very successful at it. I thought I would be able to save that spot on the map and come back there... NOPE! I can't find that island any more... I didn't realize that beacons have to be built. Also, the game DOES save locations of the other signals (the two pod locations - they disappear, but your PDA remembers those spots.
7. One of my favorite games of all time is Factorio, which seems to be similar in many aspects to Subnautica and one thing that I wish I could see here too is:
- the game being able to figure out sub-component crafting (so I don't have to craft wires myself, before I craft a sign - if I have basic components, the game should craft those by itself)
- automating tedious tasks - like getting fresh water, food, mining resources.
I know this is NOT Factorio, but if I can't automate that, I simply turn off the food/water requirement, as I refuse to hunt fish every 10 minutes...
8. Overall - Amazing game! Looks great and since I can turn off hunger/thirst, I will definitely stay with it for some time!
Hang on for the ride well done Subnautica the Seatruck Stereo needs to be fixed not working yet
"Additional Notes: Subnautica is an Early Access game, and minimum specifications may change during development"
under both minimum and recommended hardware requirements.
Now I have to mention, that I obviously don't know which of my points are impacted by actual choice of design and/or the fact that we're still in EA here, so take this into account where appropriate. Also I'm trying to keep this spoiler-free but still do read at your own risk.
In vanilla, even though faced with an immediate crisis in form of the crash of our spaceship and the threat of having to secure our own survival, the shallows really felt quite safe and very pleasant to look at. The grassy plateaus where also still quite bright, same for the kelp forests unless you went right into the middle of the actual kelp.
In BZ, at least for me, there doesn't really seem to be that safe haven in the already extremely hostily frozen environment. I admit, that I'd have no idea how to implement a more homey zone short of thermal activity (which was also present, albeit I think in only two places) in the shallows of vanilla.
In terms of feel, only the blood kelp zone of vanilla really gave me the creeps, whereas in BZ I don't really like any of the water zones. Due to the crater nature of vanilla, there was a much smooter depth transition in the game, where generally going outward meant going deeper. With the obvious exception of mountains, only the ocassional, usually hidden cave would go against that and would thus not disturb the feeling.
Now BZ is not a crater, but it still feels like it can just drop a few hundred meters down at any point with no warning and on top of the fact that there's nothing that feels like a safe haven above or below, since wheather is usually 'dangerous' and there's no visually pleasant & safe zone, I never got the feeling of vanilla, where even in a certain briney tree cave close to the very bottom of the map, to just want to linger, explore, build a nice base which as many windows to look out from as possible. Either the zone is too dark, to visually unpleasing or from the audio it feels like there's at least three legions of leviathans right in front of my doorstep, even if it's just two Cryptosuchi.
On the side of the story, I actually prefer BZ over vanilla. I've read that people feel like the amount of plot forces them to act all the time where in vanilla they would just try to survive and uncover the story on accident. I get the accidental story part and 100% agree with it. All I wanted to do in vanilla is survive and get off of that planet. Whilst following up on the other lifepod leads you find out that and why you cannot and how to fix it. That had a really nice flow for it, was beatifully told and presented and felt like decent closure upon finishing the game.
With BZ, you don't take a detour to some random planet where you then randomly crash for no apparent reason for either of those two things. You come here for a reason and with a (sort of) plan. While I think the intro needs some fiddling with, since the actual making the land crash seems a bit forced and like the protagonist is way more stupid than she turns out to be. Even if she's not a pilot by trade, that did look like somebody needed it to crash for the plot to work a bit too much for me.
So then you 'land' and again have to shift your focus to surviving first and somewhat readjust if you played vanilla, since some of the recipes changed. This is where I start to disagree with some of the other opinions. The fact that right now I already have a plot and know what to do does not force me to immediately act on it. I can still just do other stuff before furthering the story. There was no timer placed on my action to my knowledge. I didn't really want to linger much, due to the atmospheric reasons above and the fact that I wanted to know how the story continues.
The actual main plot felt solid to me from a storytelling point. To me it needs way more filling in terms of reasoning, explanations and details, but since many of the dialogs read "TBD", I 99% believe that the developers know that and are working on it.
The secondary main plot concerning a certain 'passenger' I also generally liked, yet I cannot give a final statement on, since it did not appear to be finished in the current EA version.
Both involved characters being scientists seems a decent enough explanation for them to overcome the initial disagreement over the status quo by means of curiosity, dialogs state that there's 'cultural' exchange meant to be as well as them bonding over the primary plot.
What I - at least in the current state - don't like as much is the involvement of a certain survivor of another crash. The EA version at the time of me writing this is the only one I've played, so I don't know if and who they might have been involved in prior versions but right now it feels like they're just involved because somebody on the dev team wants them to be in the game. It doesn't feel like they actually need to be involved in anything. The resource access they provide could just as well be provived about anywhere else. The story hints they provided - in the current version - seemed almost to small to be really meaningful and could also have been provided by notes/pdas, keepsakes etc..
All of that being said: 5/7, would buy again.