Different Difficulties

SamNautica

People are complaining about the game being either too easy or too hard and I see only one solution. This game needs various difficulty settings.
I'm not going to force this to the devs seeing as it would obviously be very tough to make but difficulty settings, but it would definitely make the game more enjoyable for everyone. Here is what I am suggesting:

New Player: You start with all the blueprints and receive in-game tutorials.

Easy: Slower fish, dangerous creatures more rare and less aggressive.

Medium: What we have now.

Hard: Faster fish, dangerous creatures stronger, more common, and more aggressive

Custom: This one is really pushing it, but it would be cool to be able to alter different settings independently. For example, you could have dangerous creatures be less powerful, but more aggressive.

For those who may think this like Hardcore, Survival, and Freedom, it's really not. For example, someone who is not as good at it but loves the challenge presented by hardcore, they could play it on easy mode.

Feel free to leave questions, comments, suggestions, or insults.

Jim_

For making the game easier, I don't think starting with all blueprints would help the gameplay. I do like the idea of reducing the aggressiveness of the creatures.

Other easy mode changes might be: fewer resources required to build stuff (ex: 1 glass instead of 2 for windows), longer lasting batteries, longer lasting air supply, less damage from predators, slower draining food and water meters.

Midnight_Tea

The problem with difficulty selections is that they're usually presented to a player before they start the game -- and thus have little idea of what the "right" challenge for them is. Often they'll just go for whatever is the default or whatever difficulty they always pick. Two, balancing modular difficulties is either very challenging or the changes are mostly superficial. All that can be worth it, if it's the right kind of game.

Thing is, the "right" kind of game for that would be an arcadey affair, where showing off your skills is the main point of the game. Subnautica doesn't quite work like that -- what demonstrates your skills in this game is your ability to have a beautiful and prepared base or bases. Also showing off your skills isn't quite the driving focus of this game. Subnautica is not a game that challenges you to master or domineer it anyway -- no, you're the one being domineered 80% of the time. That's part of why this game stands out so much I think.

With all that said, I'm totally in support of the idea of custom-generating worlds in the vein of Don't Starve. I'm all for your idea of accessibility, OP. Just I'd prefer it to come in the form of adjusting things like resource abundance or what aggressive creatures can spawn in what density. Works better with, say, a procedurally generated world but there's no reason Subnautica shouldn't be be more accessible.