What is this game about ?
Taiphoz
UK Join Date: 2016-01-01 Member: 210749Members
UK Join Date: 2016-01-01 Member: 210749Members
This sounds like a stupid question but it's really not.
Some people say this game is about exploration, I challenge that notion with the fact the world map is so small, you can cover it side to side in minutes, yes it has depth but only in a few locations does that depth really factor in like the Grand Reef or Bloodkelp islands. you'r still able to explore just about everything within an hour or two of starting a game.
Some people say it's about building, I challenge that notion as well given there are far to few building options at the moment.
It's not a lets go raid the world boss type of game because fauna don't drop loot, and the game seems to be unable to deal with dead things they often just float around.
I know were still alpha/early access/beta what ever you want to call it, like it or not but early access is just another word for soft launch, I doubt the game will ship many more units when it actually hits version 1.0, most people who have seen it either bought it already or moved along.
So I'm wondering, What is the end game, what's the goal, what will the goal be in 1.0 my fear is that very little in terms of game objectives or goals will change from now to 1.0, have the dev's mentioned yet what their view of the games end game or ultimate goal is?
What is the end game goal for Subnautica insert answers and opinion bellow.
A better question is what would YOU like the end game objective to be.
Some people say this game is about exploration, I challenge that notion with the fact the world map is so small, you can cover it side to side in minutes, yes it has depth but only in a few locations does that depth really factor in like the Grand Reef or Bloodkelp islands. you'r still able to explore just about everything within an hour or two of starting a game.
Some people say it's about building, I challenge that notion as well given there are far to few building options at the moment.
It's not a lets go raid the world boss type of game because fauna don't drop loot, and the game seems to be unable to deal with dead things they often just float around.
I know were still alpha/early access/beta what ever you want to call it, like it or not but early access is just another word for soft launch, I doubt the game will ship many more units when it actually hits version 1.0, most people who have seen it either bought it already or moved along.
So I'm wondering, What is the end game, what's the goal, what will the goal be in 1.0 my fear is that very little in terms of game objectives or goals will change from now to 1.0, have the dev's mentioned yet what their view of the games end game or ultimate goal is?
What is the end game goal for Subnautica insert answers and opinion bellow.
A better question is what would YOU like the end game objective to be.
Comments
Subnautica is a survival game. You crash on some alien planet, try to survive by any means (which includes building and a bit of farming now and then) and hope for your rescue.
Oh, and for "objectives" in-game: I read that the devs want to give the comm relay a real purpose like it would be in a survival scenario. They plan to implement some messages you have to follow in order to proceed in the story line or something along that line. http://subnautica.wikia.com/wiki/Communications_Relay
On top of that you only need a handful of rare resources to make what you need and you can usually get modules to spawn at the edge of biomes. Once you have everything there is nothing else to do except build crazy bases, which doesn't appeal to everyone. I have literally only used my cyclops once and the only purpose I found for it was carting materials to build a new base.
The predators in this game also have some of the easiest to abuse AI I have seen. All they do is a lazy charge and you can easily just strafe around them while they struggle to turn fast enough. This includes the leviathan as long as youre in a seamoth. Ive died to more Crash fish than leviathans.
I just don't know how you can do that. I have 60+ hours in this game and i think i only explore about 60% of the map. If by exploring you mean swimming at the surface and then diving one time in each biome, i would be no longer surprised. In this game, I'm always looking for pretty places , taking photos, establishing small bases with nice field of view...
As for the end game and the goal, i have no idea. For the moment, there isn't any goals or objectives others than the ones you decided.
As for the game and what it's about? It's a packaged deal. I don't think any part of it is more important than the others. You're going to touch upon it all when playing. The difference is what the players prioritize themselves. The nice thing about how this game is set up is you can play it how you want. You can make a beeline for the cool gear to build an amazing base and then go do actual exploring. You can take your time, explore outward at a pretty leisurely pace, and then build your base. You don't even need a fancy base if you'd prefer not to be bothered with it. A small base will serve you just as well as some the gigantic mazes I've seen. I mean, wow, I'd get so lost in some of the bases I've seen posted to the web! They're amazing but I need signs. Lots and lots of signs please. XD
As for when the story comes, I think it's going to be slotted into the other points of the game pretty seamlessly. It'll guide you along, and a lot of new players might not need to immediately go hit up the forum or wiki to find things. It'll encourage the exploration in a way that I think will be pretty natural. Or so I hope, anyway.
tl;dr:
Subnautica is a game you can make of it what you will. Play the survival part, the exploratory part, the building part, the story part in the future. You can focus on one over the others and still have a great time!
Yeah right Obby, you try and grow potatoes underwater! Hmm... Peepers... AHA, it's all so clear now, I see what's going on here!
So yeah being one of those hardcore type players I really need something to do for mid, late and end game.
As for building bases, its not something im opposed to being a massive FTB(modded minecraft fan) but building in this is extremely limited if building is supposed to be one of its big things, once youv build 1 base you'v built em all, near zero customisation bar the placement of the sections/rooms/hatchs etc, thats not to say I don't like the building its good we need way more rooms and parts to play with but thats something I hope we have to look forward to.
Nice views... lol .....
@Obraxis : no comment on what the end game might be ? Story aside I don't want spoilers I just hope that aside from the story there is going to be some nice deep end game to mess with. ?
Also, you said that "this game lacks a bit of direction and focus", yet you say that implementing a story would cut the sandbox aspects... I'm confused, isn't that a contradiction?
And I think the devs mean by "peaceful game" a game where the player doesn't go on a rampage just because he feels like it or because he is able to do so. If you don't know the reason, here you go http://kotaku.com/revulsion-with-real-guns-inspired-developer-to-make-a-g-1768960503
Sure, the aggressive fauna is annoying right know, especially stalkers, since they stick to me like a magnet and keep biting until I'm dead... on hardcore mode... after 12 hours on a save
And yeah, I played Subnautica for 200+ hours and there are still places I haven't seen, so I can just agree with @Bale and @Wheeljack.
And I really don't see how real life politics should be the basis for a game. Not only that, but that touches on something that makes me very angry, which is that so many people seem to feel that guns have some sort of magical power to make people violent. It not the fucking one ring, it can't corrupt you. If someone shoots up a school, its because THAT PERSON WAS FUCKING NUTS. Picking up a gun is an effect, not a cause. Take away, guns, people will just kill each other some other way. You think that there was no war or murder before guns? If anything, people have gotten LESS violent since then. People need to stop scapegoating guns for real social and economic problems.
What to do about aggressive fauna? How about making it so that every single creature save reefbacks that are bigger than a rabbit ray doesn't behave like a fucking smart missile?
Aside from the fact that there is no one coming back to save the protagonist. The protagonist of the Martian was always in a race to make sure that he could survive until the rescue came. The protagonist of Subnautica is permanently stuck there with no hope of rescue.
In my humble opinion exploration is more than the terrain though. For me watching and studying the fauna and flora of the biomes counts as exploration as well. They're still working on adding more complex behaviors into them, but just trying to figure out what a given creature is or does, what it eats and all that other stuff without a guide is appealing to me. The lack of a map means I get to practice my cartography as well (though underwater makes it sorta hard... altitude maps are beyond me still) which I think counts as an exploration element.
Exploration is about more than the big shinies and impressive moments. In my experience, primarily in hiking, its the little things that are the most wonderous and most fun to explore.
Just a thought. I hope that didn't come off badly, just wanted to share my experiences/perspective for your consideration
Cheers.
Let me translate this for the people who have not played as long, his sentence implies that the game is vast full of stuff, in reality the place he's not been to after 200+ hours of play has nothing in it he wants, needs or even cares about, or is just flat out empty and void of all life.
Ok. You realize there is like nothing to study right ? Its sll super simple AI they aint doing anything special. Amyone can grasp their full range of states by just swiming past them, whats to explore here ? Surely you dont mean a paragraph of usless flavour tect in the pda ?
Think less 'ai' and more 'unknown species'. I try not to look at the flavor text, honestly. Its neat to have, but I'd rather make deductions on my own.
Look at the mechanics of how a given species swims, what fins it has if any and how this would effect its movement, look at its jaw structure, the apparent predominant senses (ok, this game is definitely oriented towards visual species with all the giant eyeballs everywhere) and link them to other species nearby and devlop a framework from there. Peepers are heavily visual and fast, but shouldn't be as agile as boomarangs, who are both less aware and slower. each species has a different diet based on their jaw structure. Garyfish are adept at hiding (even though they don't have that behavior in game) You could make deductions on what is its natural predator (if any, I can't imagine what would eat an acid mushroom) and adaptations to avoid it as well as the predator's adaptations to catch it.
Why are purple brain coral solitary? Why do coral communities live together the way they do? What does each species contribute if any? Are there patterns in the distribution of certain resources and why (salt especially, in the safe shallows are near coral communities 90% of them time, so by what mechanism do the corals separate the salt and water?)
Way overthinking it? Yeah probably. But I find it to be an entertaining exercise.
Are you role playing ? if so cool... but your fantasy has no place in this discussion.
I really wouldn't troll on something like this (or early access games in general, it would defeat the point in being part of such a community!). I just think the frame as is has some positive points so thought I'd share my perspective of things.
Cheers.
And yes, I agree with the fact that the game tries to go in every direction. Best example would be that they give us the option to build stationary bases, yet they want us to explore the world. Well, I don't know, isn't it likely that people tend to stick around their bases and their closer surroundings?
And why so angry all the sudden? It seems you are an expert when it comes to psychology, especially social behavior and voilence of humans.
Then tell me, have you ever heard about the stanford-prison experiment? They gave some ordinary people power over others, and they abused this power to oppress those people. It went out of control and they had to cancel the whole experiment. It doesen't happen immediately to every person, but sooner or later power corrupts the moral thinking of humans, which results in violent acts.
And I'm sure you heard of the habituation thesis and/or the imitation thesis when it comes down to media education. People tend to imitate acts of violence when they see some use in it and if their so called "superego" is too weak to stop them from using it.
There IS some connection between the media consumption and "people who have gone nuts" as you called it. Sure, it is not a causality, but it is a minor factor in violence (his social environment plays a bigger role, but my post already got too far off topic)
Just to name a few psychological explanation for this human behavior and why I support the dev's way of development.
And I never said that there was no violence before -_-
But you are right, we learned a lot over the past few centuries, we used a bit more brainjuice and stopped some of the violence.
@Taiphoz Who knows? As I said, I haven't been everywhere, that doesn't mean that there is nothing where I haven't been.
The initial experiment was that people put a rat in a cage with two dishes of water to drink from. One of them was just water, the other contained water with heroin in it. After a while, most of the rats had begun drinking the heroin-laced water almost exclusively, and eventually overdosed and died. From that, they concluded that someone who tries heroin is likely to become addicted and eventually harm themselves. That experiment is pretty much the foundation of our modern understanding of addiction: that drugs themselves cause it.
However, much more recently, another experiment was done. The two dishes of water were the same, but the cage was very different. Instead of keeping the rats alone in a small cage with nothing in it aside from these two dishes of water, this cage was designed as a paradise for rats. There was lots of food, lots of toys, and lots of other rats. And do you know what? Of all of these rats, only a few drank more of the heroin laced water then the regular water, and none of them overdosed.
Do you see how this applies to gun violence? Is it really suprising that, when placed alone, in a small cage, with nothing to do, nothing but these two dishes of water, they turned to drugs? Is it that different for humans? Is abuse of others a product of the ability to do so, or is it a product of despair? Try that experiment again with people locked in disneyland instead of a prison, and I bet you will get different results.
That's an very interesting argument, I like it.
Although comparing animals with humans is a bit difficult, but some behaviorism theories make sense, even if they were tested on animals and I think the one you mentioned is one of those.
And about the concept of the stanford experiment, it's a bit difficult for me to explain in english, but I try it anyway :-P
Those in the prison experiment adapted to the information they know about prisons, you know, these typical movie parts where you see some guards beating up some prisoners for example. They took over the typical behavior they have seen in movies. That's what concerns me, the fact that people could develop the potential to harm other people by playing FPS or other shooters (although I played CoD and other shooter for yeeeears myself and I haven't harmed anyone yet
Not the weapon itself, but how humans view the weapon is a problem, and a lot of people see it as a powerful tool which makes them way stronger (because humans are literally screwed in the wild). And there are some people who can't handle power well and they get corrupted. I can already see the videos on youtube: "50 bonesharks killed in 1 minute!!!" or "ALL reapers blown to bits with [insert name of weakest weapon here]!!!" I guess that's my biggest concern when it comes to weapons: people who can't handle them responsibly.
Orly?
The argument about people acting how they did because that is how media portrays prisons may have some merit, I will give you that. But it still goes with the idea that people are behaving in a negative way because they are in a negative environment.
And if people want to make videos on youtube about how many things they killed in this game... Who cares? they probably already do that. Doesn't mean it needs to affect how everyone else plays the game.
With so very few clues of the actual story its kind of not surprising that most players come to this conclusion. Alot of us waits, patiently, for the whole picture to be revealed to us to make conclusions as to what the point of the game will be when its finished.
Others however want to try 'n guess what the point is right now in Subnautica. They're probably all wrong id say. How can they be right? we know so little of the whole story, its impossible to say for certain if the character is alone, will the point be to just survive 'till rescue or escape the planet by his/her own means or maybe will they choose to stay on the planet once the main goal is achieve ....
At this point its all pure speculations and you can be sure of one thing, speculations will not stop on the contrary itll just increase cuz curiosity makes us want to know
Story:
1. Something-something get 'set-up' with base
2. Something-something Comm. Relay to help with that.
3. Something-something mystery as to why the hell your ship got shot.
4. Something-something notes/clues/caches/fragments left behind leading to...
5. Something-something very naughty third-party who has
6. Something-something imprisoned gentle, peaceful Sea Emperor Something-something
7. ... explains why, oh, iunno, EVERYFINK ATTACKS ME!
8. something-something free Sea Emperor, but it AIN'T EASY BUCKO.
9. Something-something naughty bad guys start huntin' yo' ass.... something-something tension/creeping dread/rising flood waters in yer baseicle.
9. something-something Emperor freed, naughty boys smacked.
10. something-something launch platform, perhaps with freed emperor's help.
10. Y I GO HOME???? DIS PLACE BE BOOTIFUL! Ok... igohome...
And why the hell not? The question asked by you in the OP was what endgame objective WE, as the players would like to set. This is Ralij's chosen endgame fun, who are you to tell them how to play their game. Seriously. To each their own and let's respect that.
Personally, I want to explore and build bases. This is what I find fun. I fire up the creative mode and go look around. Scan everything and then read about it. Learn about the world the developers have so meticulously created for us. Find interesting spots to build outrageously big and complex bases. This is why I bought the game, this is what I am looking forward to in the finished product, so my end game objective will be to build the best designed base, with fish farms and farming plots, in the most interesting spot on the sea floor. Not the hardcore survival, not juggling resources and constant living in fear of dying.
And if anyone is going to tell me that my choice has no place in this discussion because only hardcore matters... well, I'm a paying customer just like everyone else, I've earned my place here.
Secondly I said RP is cool, I didn't find it valid for the topic as its more a play style than an end game objective, I guess an argument could be made either way tho but I stand by what I said.
It has a place, but his playstyle is possible with a minimal amount of content. Adding more isn't going to ruin his experience at all.
Don't forget the fertilising them with your own poop. (At least that's what happened in the book).
This. Especially here in the USA the gun-worshiping culture is becoming a bit ridiculous. I support people owning firearms for hunting, home defense and recreational purposes. But the vitriolic reaction of a certain rather large portion of the population to ANY restrictions on guns whatsoever is a problem. The old addage "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is true in essence, and its true that people would still kill each other without firearms - but it's a hell of a lot harder to control people via legislation than firearms, and it's a hell of a lot harder to kill 50 people in a movie theatre or a school armed with a melee weapon or even a bow & arrow. To have a real solution to the violence issues facing our country, we must be realistic about the problem. So until we find a way to prevent people being born crazy (or at least detect it when they are), its not so much that we need to "blame guns" as it is that we have to control the thing that is within our power to control.