In conservation of difficulty
trisdino
Denmark Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159590Members
Denmark Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159590Members
The recent updates to the game, not to mention the Trello posts, have all been incredibly exciting, and Subnautica seems to be coming along very, very nicely. However, let us not get ahead of ourselves, lest the game suddenly ends up with too much content to properly piece together. The easiest time to designate functions for separate features is, from what I have observed, during their initial creation.
What the heck am I talking about? Well, I feel that now is the best time to discuss how certain things in the games development will play out, specifically difficulty and creature interaction. You see, in these last few months, dozens of creatures have been added to the game, which is of course great, but they lack focus and specialized behavior - understandable considering they were just added, but it still needs to be addressed. As has been noted many times before, and acknowledged by UW, the animals are incredibly harmless, not noticing you until you are very close, unable to catch up to you unless you slow down, and quickly giving up the chase if you get too far away.
This, coupled with the introduction of things like the bladder and stasis gun, means that the game could potentially get far too easy, if careful consideration is not taken into balancing these factors. Even increasing the AI intelligence, making creatures more aggressive, and upping their speed, all things discussed by the devs, will not matter in the slightest if you can just launch towards the surface with the bladder, or freeze them in place with the click of a button.
I will provide my suggestions for balancing this, but would also like to hear yours, as this certainly needs to be discussed.
Items:
Creatures:
What the heck am I talking about? Well, I feel that now is the best time to discuss how certain things in the games development will play out, specifically difficulty and creature interaction. You see, in these last few months, dozens of creatures have been added to the game, which is of course great, but they lack focus and specialized behavior - understandable considering they were just added, but it still needs to be addressed. As has been noted many times before, and acknowledged by UW, the animals are incredibly harmless, not noticing you until you are very close, unable to catch up to you unless you slow down, and quickly giving up the chase if you get too far away.
This, coupled with the introduction of things like the bladder and stasis gun, means that the game could potentially get far too easy, if careful consideration is not taken into balancing these factors. Even increasing the AI intelligence, making creatures more aggressive, and upping their speed, all things discussed by the devs, will not matter in the slightest if you can just launch towards the surface with the bladder, or freeze them in place with the click of a button.
I will provide my suggestions for balancing this, but would also like to hear yours, as this certainly needs to be discussed.
Items:
Stasis gun: First off I would make it quite hard to craft, making it a mid-late game item. Secondly, I would make it require ammo, which is limited and also rather difficult to acquire.
Bladder: I would make it take a while to activate, so that you need to wait for couple seconds after activating it before being lifted into safety. I would also give it only one charge, and require it to be refilled with fresh air from the surface after use.
Bladder: I would make it take a while to activate, so that you need to wait for couple seconds after activating it before being lifted into safety. I would also give it only one charge, and require it to be refilled with fresh air from the surface after use.
Creatures:
Stalker: The stalker is, at least at the moment, the first predator the player encounters, and thus, it should not be the most deadly. However, it should still be more than capable of killing you. In real life, a large predatory shark near the surface would not necessarily be less dangerous than one in deep water, and while this is a game, retaining tension and fear is key to building atmosphere and an enjoyable gaming experience.
I would give it a fairly large aggro range, perhaps around 20-40 meters. Considering it's slender build, I would make it very fast, making up for its slight lack of damage in its ability to chase down the player. This would be balanced by the fact that in the safe shallows, the player should always be fairly close to their life-pod, or some other place to hide.
Sand shark: At the moment, we all know that the sand sharks are little more than cute, bumbling goofballs. They spend their days milling around in the sand, occasionally going peekaboo, before diving back down into it. However, they have some of the greatest potential in the game. The sand sharks represent one of the few large predators who can effectively ambush the player, and could add a huge amount of tension to early and mid game explorations of the grassy plateau.
I would make the digging dust cloud far less noticeable, and reduce the size of the sand mount they create - the plateaus are mostly flat, and at the moment they stand out like a sore thumb, even when not moving. I would also make them spend the vast majority of their time in the sand, only briefly emerging to hunt a nearby creature, before digging back in. The last major thing I would do with them is give them the ability to grab the player, and drag him into the sand, effectively choking him. Many predators today do this, and it would be a very scary prospect.
Mesmer: The Mesmer(that is what the cuttlefish thing is called, right?) is a very unique creature. I love its design, and am very interested in what it could do. Personally, what I would like to see from it is to have it live up to its name - have it actually mesmerize players, at least the first time they encounter it. The Mesmer is not a large creature, in fact, it is about the same size as many of the larger harmless critters which can be encountered, so players do not immediately regard them as a threat. They also do not look that scary, with the other predators all having very distinct "mean" looks, while the Mesmer almost look cute.
I would try to play up this aspect as much as possible. You probably all remember the dilophosauruses from jurassic park, and horribly inaccurate disgraces to science that they were, the Denis Nedry scene is basically what I have in mind, but un-scripted, with players being enticed by the Mesmer, getting too close, and then being attacked.
I would give it a fairly large aggro range, perhaps around 20-40 meters. Considering it's slender build, I would make it very fast, making up for its slight lack of damage in its ability to chase down the player. This would be balanced by the fact that in the safe shallows, the player should always be fairly close to their life-pod, or some other place to hide.
Sand shark: At the moment, we all know that the sand sharks are little more than cute, bumbling goofballs. They spend their days milling around in the sand, occasionally going peekaboo, before diving back down into it. However, they have some of the greatest potential in the game. The sand sharks represent one of the few large predators who can effectively ambush the player, and could add a huge amount of tension to early and mid game explorations of the grassy plateau.
I would make the digging dust cloud far less noticeable, and reduce the size of the sand mount they create - the plateaus are mostly flat, and at the moment they stand out like a sore thumb, even when not moving. I would also make them spend the vast majority of their time in the sand, only briefly emerging to hunt a nearby creature, before digging back in. The last major thing I would do with them is give them the ability to grab the player, and drag him into the sand, effectively choking him. Many predators today do this, and it would be a very scary prospect.
Mesmer: The Mesmer(that is what the cuttlefish thing is called, right?) is a very unique creature. I love its design, and am very interested in what it could do. Personally, what I would like to see from it is to have it live up to its name - have it actually mesmerize players, at least the first time they encounter it. The Mesmer is not a large creature, in fact, it is about the same size as many of the larger harmless critters which can be encountered, so players do not immediately regard them as a threat. They also do not look that scary, with the other predators all having very distinct "mean" looks, while the Mesmer almost look cute.
I would try to play up this aspect as much as possible. You probably all remember the dilophosauruses from jurassic park, and horribly inaccurate disgraces to science that they were, the Denis Nedry scene is basically what I have in mind, but un-scripted, with players being enticed by the Mesmer, getting too close, and then being attacked.
Comments
To compensate, it actually will use battery energy but that hasn't been implemented yet. Thus as of now it has infinite uses. I think the loot pole would help because the player could attach a peeper to the pole and try and lure the stalker to the peepers while swimming safety.
I say this in a time frame wher the early game takes a significant portion of the game... After all, the beginning is probably going to woe the player quite a bit, it is best in my eyes to use that
Thus the stasis rifle wouldn't actually be too early in the game, time wise
Honestly I'm hoping for a net to craft that will be available from the creep vines since they have no use as of now... And it would make a lot of sense considering how hi tech the stasis rifle really is, it should be rather difficult to get unless there are more higher tier defensive techs to use instead of the stasis rifle in the late game
Basically, some kind of net, early then stasis rifle in mid game, and projectx for the late game
Ofc the more items the better !