Some thoughts on balance tweaks and game mechanics after a few thorough playthroughs.
kaplooi
Join Date: 2016-12-15 Member: 225000Members
Join Date: 2016-12-15 Member: 225000Members
Let me start out by saying I like this game, a lot, and I've really been enjoying playing it so nothing below is meant as negative criticism, only observations on how some changes could be made, if possible in the time that remains, that might make things a little more enjoyable for the sort of players who play for maybe 10-20 hours, get frustrated, and complain that resource gathering survival games quickly turn into a tedious grind. I don't count myself among them, but I can understand some of their complaints. I realize I'm late to the party with the release date fast approaching, but I simply didn't find this amazing game until recently so apologies if all of these things have already been suggested and ignored. There's multiple forums with a lot of opinions so it's hard to check everywhere. These are ordered roughly descending by order of complexity but I don't think any of them would be colossal changes.
The scanner room. A common gripe is that the scanner room is nearly useless in its current form. Not in regards to bugs in target object location but more in regards to limited range, which limits usefulness. Some things that could make it potentially much more useful:
1. Depending on how difficult it is to fix scanner location bugs consider relegating the importance of scanning and making the space into more of a 'drone command center' that allows greater camera drone range with a 'Relay Beacon' (computer chip, copper wire, titanium) built by the Scanner Room fabricator. If possible, re-use the existing mechanics used by the power transmitter (i.e. visible transmission lines but of a different color than power) for a 'deployable' similar to a regular beacon (re-use model with some minor tweaks) that would expand camera drone range by a 500m radius per beacon. The range displayed on drone camera would be its range from the nearest beacon or scanner room. Each deployed beacon would cause a fixed power drain from the base transmitting to it. (Maybe 2-3 beacons equals about the same as a water filter. i.e. pretty power hungry to make building an extensive network of drone relays pretty power intensive but power balanced enough to enable a substantial range upgrade with just a few relays. Maybe include a scanner room specific 'power efficiency module' that lowers power drain from relay beacons but requires a rare resource to build to help constrain it to the late game). Relays should be a deployable so that placement is unconstrained to the ocean floor. (It also allows for scanner room fabricator only construction).
2. Camera drones MUST appear on the HUD with a unique icon like vehicles do. If not enabled by default, perhaps this could be unlockable with a separate drone specific 'HUD chip'. This should be done regardless of whatever form the scanner room ultimately takes since it basically makes drones able to act as markers for points of interest discovered while roaming. Without it, time spent exploring with drones feels largely wasted.
3. Place a complete set of scanner room fragments somewhere appropriate in the Aurora wreck to enable early/mid game usage. A common complaint is that by the time the fragments are found and the room is built the player no longer needs to find any of the things the scanner could have helped locate and its merely for 'completionists'. With HUD indicated camera drones and relay beacons extending range, players would have a viable game mechanic to at least locate wrecks earlier on even if they aren't yet equipped to physically travel to them to scan fragments. Point being, if it's a possible way in-game to help prevent frustrated players from simply looking up wreck location coordinates online that's a win for not breaking immersion.
Addressing complaints/concerns about silver scarcity:
1. Personally I don't think it's that scarce once you learn that the Kelp Forest caves have lots of silver, but if you don't know that it might seem really scarce in the early game since so many pieces of
base tech need computer chips and wiring kits. Something clever that could be done besides just sticking more silver in more places would be to add a game mechanic that leverages the laser cutter to allow
for mining large resource deposits. Given that it's currently only useful for cutting open sealed doors it would be a good way to double its utility. It should mine at maybe half the speed of the Prawn
suit drill arm to make mining possible earlier on but more arduous than with the drill arm. 1 battery charge should last long enough to yield maybe 5-7 resource chunks or whatever seems balanced.
Constraining it in this way maintains the Prawn suit drill arm as the superior way to mine later on. Along with this change maybe place more large silver deposits on the border between the grassy plateaus
and kelp forests which puts more silver closer to the safe shallows, but locked to requiring a mining tool.
2. The wiring kit could be changed from 2 silver to 1 copper wire 1 titanium to help alleviate complaints about silver scarcity. (i.e. Building things that need a computer chip and a wiring kit is a pain point
for people who can't find silver easily.)
Prawn suit tweaks:
1. Unless the player has a cyclops with the depth upgrade module (expensive) it is necessary to traverse great distances in the ILZ and ALZ regions with the Prawn suit exclusively. To address this, make
the jet pack upgrade provide stronger thrust vectoring. In other words, trade more upward thrust for more directional thrust when the player is thrusting while pressing a movement key so that the prawn can
move laterally at roughly the same speed as the Seaglide (12ish m/s) between fuel burns. Vertical jump capability would remain the same.
2. Make the Propulsion Arm more powerful than the handheld model. (i.e. the ability to grab and propel stalker/sandshark sized creatures but not leviathans) It's much bigger so it should be more powerful.
Also, maybe make it similarly upgradeable at the modification station to allow repulsion? This would improve its utility and make people less likely to only ever build a drill arm.
And finally some 'would be nice' but aren't really necessary (yet are probably the easiest to do) dive suit upgrades:
Stillsuit:
A body mineral/electrolyte reclamation upgrade that replenishes the players "electrolyte and mineral balance" as a cheesy explanation for justifying increasing food by a few points rather than decreasing it by a few when drinking reclaimed water. It would be a marginal gain for sure, but would help extend long excursions and give completionists another thing to build that serves a mildly efficacious purpose.
Reinforced Dive Suit:
First clarify in the description that the suit also provides significant thermal protection, making it the go-to suit for lava zone exploration. I think a lot of players are probably unaware that it
provides any thermal protection. Maybe an ultra-reinforced suit upgrade providing 75% protection and full thermal resistance everywhere but in contact with molten lava.
The scanner room. A common gripe is that the scanner room is nearly useless in its current form. Not in regards to bugs in target object location but more in regards to limited range, which limits usefulness. Some things that could make it potentially much more useful:
1. Depending on how difficult it is to fix scanner location bugs consider relegating the importance of scanning and making the space into more of a 'drone command center' that allows greater camera drone range with a 'Relay Beacon' (computer chip, copper wire, titanium) built by the Scanner Room fabricator. If possible, re-use the existing mechanics used by the power transmitter (i.e. visible transmission lines but of a different color than power) for a 'deployable' similar to a regular beacon (re-use model with some minor tweaks) that would expand camera drone range by a 500m radius per beacon. The range displayed on drone camera would be its range from the nearest beacon or scanner room. Each deployed beacon would cause a fixed power drain from the base transmitting to it. (Maybe 2-3 beacons equals about the same as a water filter. i.e. pretty power hungry to make building an extensive network of drone relays pretty power intensive but power balanced enough to enable a substantial range upgrade with just a few relays. Maybe include a scanner room specific 'power efficiency module' that lowers power drain from relay beacons but requires a rare resource to build to help constrain it to the late game). Relays should be a deployable so that placement is unconstrained to the ocean floor. (It also allows for scanner room fabricator only construction).
2. Camera drones MUST appear on the HUD with a unique icon like vehicles do. If not enabled by default, perhaps this could be unlockable with a separate drone specific 'HUD chip'. This should be done regardless of whatever form the scanner room ultimately takes since it basically makes drones able to act as markers for points of interest discovered while roaming. Without it, time spent exploring with drones feels largely wasted.
3. Place a complete set of scanner room fragments somewhere appropriate in the Aurora wreck to enable early/mid game usage. A common complaint is that by the time the fragments are found and the room is built the player no longer needs to find any of the things the scanner could have helped locate and its merely for 'completionists'. With HUD indicated camera drones and relay beacons extending range, players would have a viable game mechanic to at least locate wrecks earlier on even if they aren't yet equipped to physically travel to them to scan fragments. Point being, if it's a possible way in-game to help prevent frustrated players from simply looking up wreck location coordinates online that's a win for not breaking immersion.
Addressing complaints/concerns about silver scarcity:
1. Personally I don't think it's that scarce once you learn that the Kelp Forest caves have lots of silver, but if you don't know that it might seem really scarce in the early game since so many pieces of
base tech need computer chips and wiring kits. Something clever that could be done besides just sticking more silver in more places would be to add a game mechanic that leverages the laser cutter to allow
for mining large resource deposits. Given that it's currently only useful for cutting open sealed doors it would be a good way to double its utility. It should mine at maybe half the speed of the Prawn
suit drill arm to make mining possible earlier on but more arduous than with the drill arm. 1 battery charge should last long enough to yield maybe 5-7 resource chunks or whatever seems balanced.
Constraining it in this way maintains the Prawn suit drill arm as the superior way to mine later on. Along with this change maybe place more large silver deposits on the border between the grassy plateaus
and kelp forests which puts more silver closer to the safe shallows, but locked to requiring a mining tool.
2. The wiring kit could be changed from 2 silver to 1 copper wire 1 titanium to help alleviate complaints about silver scarcity. (i.e. Building things that need a computer chip and a wiring kit is a pain point
for people who can't find silver easily.)
Prawn suit tweaks:
1. Unless the player has a cyclops with the depth upgrade module (expensive) it is necessary to traverse great distances in the ILZ and ALZ regions with the Prawn suit exclusively. To address this, make
the jet pack upgrade provide stronger thrust vectoring. In other words, trade more upward thrust for more directional thrust when the player is thrusting while pressing a movement key so that the prawn can
move laterally at roughly the same speed as the Seaglide (12ish m/s) between fuel burns. Vertical jump capability would remain the same.
2. Make the Propulsion Arm more powerful than the handheld model. (i.e. the ability to grab and propel stalker/sandshark sized creatures but not leviathans) It's much bigger so it should be more powerful.
Also, maybe make it similarly upgradeable at the modification station to allow repulsion? This would improve its utility and make people less likely to only ever build a drill arm.
And finally some 'would be nice' but aren't really necessary (yet are probably the easiest to do) dive suit upgrades:
Stillsuit:
A body mineral/electrolyte reclamation upgrade that replenishes the players "electrolyte and mineral balance" as a cheesy explanation for justifying increasing food by a few points rather than decreasing it by a few when drinking reclaimed water. It would be a marginal gain for sure, but would help extend long excursions and give completionists another thing to build that serves a mildly efficacious purpose.
Reinforced Dive Suit:
First clarify in the description that the suit also provides significant thermal protection, making it the go-to suit for lava zone exploration. I think a lot of players are probably unaware that it
provides any thermal protection. Maybe an ultra-reinforced suit upgrade providing 75% protection and full thermal resistance everywhere but in contact with molten lava.