Game Progression
Vlaad
Join Date: 2012-10-03 Member: 161403Members
Join Date: 2012-10-03 Member: 161403Members
Greeting from subnautica hardcore player!
While enjoying UWE groundbreaking projects such as Natural Selection and Subnautica I cant help but notice that between modern game trends, both those from corporate dinosaurs and small trendy projects, this creation belongs in a group of creative mammals. How difficult it is to claim your own creative space only developers know.
On the other, more critical view on these games they seem to lack something that would make them monumental... In case of subnautica I feel that it lacks depth (no pun intended). Will try to pinpoint some personal issues.
1. Positioning of player start: Safe shallows is in the middle of map (high ground if you will) and its way too convenient of a start. Diving feels way too safe, materials are too easy to come by. It also give one almost no reason to construct a base else since its most optimal road to any destination.
2. Survival is way too easy. I play only hardcore and so far only one rip (reaper) in 4 games total. No influence of depth, temperature/ elements. Players character just seems spaced out regardless of situation hes in. Being a lone survivor of a crash to (supposedly) inhospitable world, diving i alien ocean should leave psychological mark on a player character.
3. I gather that its meant as an exploration game but it still needs a reason to go to explore. Sitting in solar-powered cyclops one it is fairly easy and safe to explore edge to edge of a map with little to no reason to go out. Meaning, it takes about 4-5 hours in total to get to end game (achieve everything that game has to offer) and end game is more or less... Well anticlimactic.
4. Low replayability.
My suggestions:
1. Move player start elsewere or move safe shallows. Randomize start locations for hardcore players at least to give us more initial challenge if we so desire. Randomize fragment locations to some extent. Make materials more hard to come by. Give us more advantages to start a base in inhospitable/dangerous locations.
2. Stamina bar influenced by various factors:
2a. Decompression, forbid the player to change depth rapidly (take some damage/move slower/get fatigued).
2b. Sickness from being exposed to low temperature for too long. Temperature in bases as a factor.
3b. Introduce rest as necessity to recover stamina.
3. Random artifacts of some sort in areas. Either alien tech to make life easier (materials for better diving suit, better vision, elements for endgame choices (4) etc.)
4. Make progress slower, add some king of randomization/uniqueness or choice for endgame. (Leave the game or become more adapted to it?)
Note, I am well aware that game is in its early state. Reading roadmap I figure that game will get better but still a bit more actual survival elements would make experience more intense.
In the end, I have to say that Subnautica even in its current state is worthy of recommendation and that it is excellent value for money. As every consumer, I hope that this game will get even better!
While enjoying UWE groundbreaking projects such as Natural Selection and Subnautica I cant help but notice that between modern game trends, both those from corporate dinosaurs and small trendy projects, this creation belongs in a group of creative mammals. How difficult it is to claim your own creative space only developers know.
On the other, more critical view on these games they seem to lack something that would make them monumental... In case of subnautica I feel that it lacks depth (no pun intended). Will try to pinpoint some personal issues.
1. Positioning of player start: Safe shallows is in the middle of map (high ground if you will) and its way too convenient of a start. Diving feels way too safe, materials are too easy to come by. It also give one almost no reason to construct a base else since its most optimal road to any destination.
2. Survival is way too easy. I play only hardcore and so far only one rip (reaper) in 4 games total. No influence of depth, temperature/ elements. Players character just seems spaced out regardless of situation hes in. Being a lone survivor of a crash to (supposedly) inhospitable world, diving i alien ocean should leave psychological mark on a player character.
3. I gather that its meant as an exploration game but it still needs a reason to go to explore. Sitting in solar-powered cyclops one it is fairly easy and safe to explore edge to edge of a map with little to no reason to go out. Meaning, it takes about 4-5 hours in total to get to end game (achieve everything that game has to offer) and end game is more or less... Well anticlimactic.
4. Low replayability.
My suggestions:
1. Move player start elsewere or move safe shallows. Randomize start locations for hardcore players at least to give us more initial challenge if we so desire. Randomize fragment locations to some extent. Make materials more hard to come by. Give us more advantages to start a base in inhospitable/dangerous locations.
2. Stamina bar influenced by various factors:
2a. Decompression, forbid the player to change depth rapidly (take some damage/move slower/get fatigued).
2b. Sickness from being exposed to low temperature for too long. Temperature in bases as a factor.
3b. Introduce rest as necessity to recover stamina.
3. Random artifacts of some sort in areas. Either alien tech to make life easier (materials for better diving suit, better vision, elements for endgame choices (4) etc.)
4. Make progress slower, add some king of randomization/uniqueness or choice for endgame. (Leave the game or become more adapted to it?)
Note, I am well aware that game is in its early state. Reading roadmap I figure that game will get better but still a bit more actual survival elements would make experience more intense.
In the end, I have to say that Subnautica even in its current state is worthy of recommendation and that it is excellent value for money. As every consumer, I hope that this game will get even better!
Comments
Interesting... I built my base only once in Safe Shallows and never again. Why? Its too shallow. I had troubles piloting the Cyclops there. I find it way more convenient to build the main base in Grassy Plains. Usually at the border to Kelp Forest. (I have 2 spots that I like, one is at the border of Grassy Plains, Kelp Forest, Grand Reef and Sparse Reef - there is a cool trench that I use as docking tunnel. And the second is at the "main" entrance to the JellyShroom caves.)
I understand you but I never play harcore for one reason alone: I had experienced too many death-on-loading bugs to be comfortable with this game mode. Just yesterday I loaded a save where I was happily cruising in the Seamoth - bam... dead. Seamoth gone. Player was resurrected in a random location. Would not like this to happen to me in hardcore mode.
From an exploitative perspective i would argue that safe shallows are the best place to build the mainbase. I think the mountain island is the best. It offers Uranium, Gold, Lithium, Magnetite, harbors sources for food and water (airsacks). The island borders kelpforests (kelp, silver), batches of mushroom forests and the Kooshzone. The floater Islands, a little area of safe shallows, grassy plains and the whreck with the water filtration plant blueprint aren't far off. So an exellent place to settle.
Big runner up to the mountain island are the wide grassy plains in the west of the game world.
2) Survival is too easy - I agree.
3) There isn't much of an endgame currently. Still in the works. Also the biomes aren't diverse enough but hopefully in the comming months everything will come together.
On a side note, the only reason I don't play hardcore every game is because I've had it happen too many times that I place a base structure and it had some quirky effect on the surrounding terrain that I just couldn't live with seeing every day and wouldn't be able to correct without having the ability to save and reload.
Blueprints are WAYYYYYY to easy to learn in this game. if you know where to look u can get any blueprints in 3-5 minutes easily. Hardcore mode is meant to be more a challenge than the regular mode imo and shouldnt be attempted by someone completely new to the game.
I've got lots of ideas for tweaking the hardcore mode (we've got a long discussion about) but most of them are only affecting the game start. Meanwhile I've conceived that the difficulty in game isn't the survival. Once the story goes on you'll notice ...;)
I could get behind this idea in theory - but what about players who don't have a moonpool yet? It's one of the more difficult blueprints to achieve due to where you have to go to find the fragments. New players won't be able to achieve that so how will they repair their Seamoth as they explore and try to find the fragments (edit: or have not built a Cyclops)? It becomes a Catch 22 in that case.
I think solar panels for the Seamoth and Cyclops should be integrated upgrade options - not some wonky piece of hardware stuck to the outside as currently implemented (and maybe not even intentional?) ... Surfacing to recharge the Seamoth seems in-line with discussions of Oxygen limits in it as well... you will periodically have to surface it to recharge and re-oxygenate - but that doesn't solve repairs if you have no moon pool to dock it. Not everyone even wants a Cyclops (I never even built one on my last playthrough - focused on a base and moonpool instead) but should I be forced to build one just so I can dock my Seamoth?
Lastly, damage to the Seamoth can be caused by small fish collision so this really makes it imperative you be able to repair it by hand frequently even while out exploring.
PS: Hitting a lot of little fish is nearly impossible in many biomes and has nothing to do with the skill of the driver. Even with the Seamoth hull upgrade you still take damage from them and they seem to dodge right in front of you. That type of damage is unavoidable. Players have to be able to repair that sort of minor damage on the fly.
Yes, and that's exactly the problem. Hardcore normally doesn't mean just 'one life' .. it means harder, Vexare, and not the same balancing like for the vanilla fraction. But here is it again ... vanilla players that take position for a game mode they shouldn't ever play, cranking an off topic fundamental debate. Sorry, I'm too tired to explain you the genre.
2. If you have figured it out, it's pretty easy, yes. The first two - three times on hardcore I died always in the beginning (through drowning or exploding fish). Nonetheless I agree with you that hardcore isn't very hardcore to other sandbox games. Tech is easy to find, too.
3. Story is missing. What me drives to play this game is to explore the Aurora. But what I take from the trello board is, that there will be more "relicts" to discover in the feature.
4. Like you already did, randomization would be my suggestion. If you start a new game, biomes will be shifted... the "Sunless Sea" (http://store.steampowered.com/app/304650/) is doing this.
Doubt that's going to happen. As the whole map is hand crafted you can't just move biomes around and we're so far into the game development that it's not feasible to make such a tremendous change on the game system.
@lxh: You know full well how easy it is to take damage in the seamoth, especially at depth. Sometimes fish run into you while you're stopped and it gets damaged, and forget having an unexpected encounter with a bone shark or sand shark, so criticizing someone's driving is a little harsh.
As for the definition of hardcore mode in this game, yes, it means exactly what @Vexare said, the same game mechanics without the wiggle room of extra lives. As I've said before, however, the game really needs a general increase in the level of difficulty so that one small difference between survival and hardcore modes will actually mean something. Looking at the Trello roadmap, it really does look like the Devs just haven't gotten to that part yet, as the "Creatures Attack" update is probably going to do a lot to increase the aggressiveness of the fauna.
You can drop just a corridor with hatch down at the sea bed. Then enter it for some sweet fresh oxygen ^_^
Still have to get to the seabed... The shallowest fragments I've found are at least 300m down, so it's *possible* that you could find them, but between the depth limit of the seamoth and the limited O2 you can carry, it would be difficult. I guess, though, if you were to just fill up on high capacity tanks, you'd have several minutes to swim around looking. All of this ignores the hopefully coming change that the character will have a dive limit of 200m (this is where the depth meter goes red while swimming) without special diving gear (either a special suit or the exosuit).
I took the Seamoth to it's crush limit and then hopped out and swam to the moonpool fragments when I spotted them. There are ledges along the edge of the biome you can find them. It's not easy but it's definitely doable without a cyclops if you're veeeery careful. I wouldn't have done it my first playthrough but second one, when I opted into experimental and started a new game, I was a lot more confident. I also knew I could go to red on my own diving limit beyond the seamoth limit.
Pretty certain I found all my Moonpool fragments in less than 250m depth at the very edges of Grand Reef. It was scary but also exhilarating to challenge myself to do it and scurry back to the Seamoth as fast as I could. And yes, I had the extra fast swim fins, powerglide and 3 tanks along, just for the purpose of getting those moonpool fragments. I'm sure all that will change in upcoming changes to how deep you can go without special oxygen and suits etc.
Well you just base hop from the reef fringe. Basically along the sea bed you swim into it and whenever you run out of oxygen drop down corridor and hatch enter, wait to recover, leave, then deconstruct corridor and hatch move forward and repeat.
Easy peasy
I can't wait until free O2 in bases isn't a thing anymore...
I must declare one thing: I wouldn't propose harder benchmarks for the hardcore mode if the current balancing wasn't totally boring easy. And yes, I didn't even scratch my seamoth within hours ... believe it or not. I'm a motorcycling streetfighter in real life. But anyway, just to state it clear, the actual difficulty balancing might be perfect for survival- and other modes ... but NOT for a hardcore mode if that should deserve its designation.
So please, if you don't play on hardcore, do not intervene! It's just brainstorming possibilities for a very special clientèle. OK?
I would rather have a finer granularity over the difficulty of the game than just 2 or 3 game modes. I know games (like the Anno series) that offer lots of options that a player can customize to adjust the challenge rating to his liking.
We could have options like
The game menu could offer 3 "presets" where UWE presents how they envision "survival" and "hardcore" and players up for a challenge can still turn the difficulty to "insane" if they wish.
This way we could end the discussion about "how hardcore should hardcore be" and return to a creative collection of options that we would like to see. Most of what I put into the list should not be too much effort to parameterize and put into the game. (Should... then again I am no Subnautica dev...)
This "harcode" vs. "enjoycore" discussion is in every game and I am so tired of it. But it will be there in every game since there simply are differences in what a person experiences as "fun". Some like a hard challenge, some simply like entertainment. And since both views are "right" and none is "wrong", the discussion goes on forever. And it cannot come to any conclusion since people simply are different.
Regards, Dinkelsen
I'd solve it by a difficulty.ini
Some other points could be:
Btw, I know why you're not playing on hardcore. I go around this problem by 'saving' resp. quitting the game inside the base.