Making Subnautica a roguelike

WispWisp Join Date: 2007-12-18 Member: 63211Members, Reinforced - Diamond
Hi all,

It's interesting to me that UWE announced Subnautica, despite apparently not having made many concrete decisions on what the gameplay will be like. This is strange, but also exciting as a member of the community. It seems that our input is more likely to affect major elements of the design.

I've heard some members of the community propose elements similar to Minecraft, where Subnautica would be more about world building and sort of conquering nature. I love the feeling in Minecraft that you are entering a hostile space and creating civilization out of it. I don't think Subnautica's settings lends itself well to this type of gameplay, however. I would like toward games like FTL: Faster Than Light for inspiration.

FTL is a roguelike, which is a very broad genre consisting of two primary elements: randomly generated worlds and permanent death. I already saw a developer say that Subnautica's environments will be procedurally generated. So effectively what I want to see is permanent death. In my imagination, Subnautica is a game that starts you off with a basic submarine and lets you explore the depths in search of resources to upgrade and improve your submarine. There doesn't necessarily have to be an end goal in mind, but there could be. Everything would be a risk/reward scenario where you could try and sneak past dangerous critters in search of treasure, or eschew combat in favor of protecting your ship. Permanent death in roguelikes creates a great feeling of tension, because every action you make threatens hours of progress.

Something to think about.

Comments

  • AurOn2AurOn2 COOKIES! FREEDOM, AND BISCUITS! Australia Join Date: 2012-01-13 Member: 140224Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Forum staff
    Thing is, Ftl works as a roguelike because it's a short game with a simple objective. From what i've gathered, subnautica probably isn't going to be a short game with a simple objective. Give us a permadeath option, but don't force it upon the weak peasants who can't take that kind of thing.

    But damn FTL underwater is bringing salt to my tears, that would be beautiful.
  • willow512willow512 Netherlands Join Date: 2013-12-17 Member: 190203Members
    At first I thought Roguelike.. Hell no! But roguelike really only means: Randomized levels/critters/potions and turn based permadeath. Turn based is of course not appropriate, but the rest is pretty much what we understand SubNautica to be like.

    I'd hope there to be a free load/save option none the less. :) Maybe it can be made optional. Maybe it can be made so you can only save from inside your colony.
  • Squeal_Like_A_PigSqueal_Like_A_Pig Janitor Join Date: 2002-01-25 Member: 66Members, Super Administrators, NS1 Playtester, NS2 Developer, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Developer
    We actually have made a lot of decisions regarding what the gameplay is going to be like in Subnautica, it is just that the reveal of that information is going to be given out over the course of the next weeks/months. This is both for PR purposes, and also so that we have more time to develop and prove some of these directions that we are going in, before revealing them to the greater public.

    However, Wisp, you are definitely getting somewhere with the last paragraph of your post.
  • AurOn2AurOn2 COOKIES! FREEDOM, AND BISCUITS! Australia Join Date: 2012-01-13 Member: 140224Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Forum staff
    edited December 2013
    As a Fervant FTL player (got all teh ships!) I must say there is alot to say about the Roguelike genre. It comes with it's kinks, sure, but.. well..
    Ok lets put it this way: You're alive, in a roguelike, that MEANS Something, it is generally an achievement in itself to say you survives #mins or #levels. In other games, there's no meaning to being alive, Being alive is a fact, a normality. This is why roguelikes have much more replayability in them.
    but when you die you feel frustrated yes? That's the point, if you feel frustrated, it just eggs you on to do better this time, which means, replay value!
    also, if you add in score and silly death things, dying isn't always that much of a bad thing. :)
  • NarfwakNarfwak Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5258Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica PT Lead, NS2 Community Developer
    edited December 2013
    I don't know if it's a good idea for the entire game to be centered around permadeath, but I do like the idea of a "hardcore" option a lot. The problem with permadeath is that it makes the skill/knowledge floor too high for some people and is going to end up alienating a lot of players. Not everyone likes being punished with having to start over when they make the natural mistakes a novice is bound to make in the process of learning a new game. I think that's even more true for exploration and crafting games where you want players to experiment and try out all kinds of crazy stuff rather than creating their own little safety bubble that they never leave for fear of losing all their hard-earned stuff. It's okay to lose some stuff - in fact it would be pretty boring if you didn't - but losing everything because you wanted to try something silly or just goof around for a bit just isn't for everyone.

    It also makes very difficult enemies or environments feel more frustrating and cheesy as you don't necessarily get enough time to learn how they work unless the game is designed in such a way that you are expected to die quickly and can respawn and get back to where you died extremely quickly. With a "hardcore" option you can still have really tough challenges in your game as players can play the normal mode first to learn how to deal with them, or can simply fall back to that if they decide that permadeath just isn't for them. Besides, there's something to be said of the satisfaction earned when you conquer a game by drowning it in a pile of your own corpses.

    Disclaimer: I don't really know any more than you do about the game yet, so this is pretty much just conjecture based off (what I think are) similar games like Minecraft, Terraria, Starbound, etc.

    Second edit: FTL is absolutely fantastic and I love it to death. I just don't think it's the right fit for SN.
  • WispWisp Join Date: 2007-12-18 Member: 63211Members, Reinforced - Diamond
    You mentioned players creating a "safety bubble."

    It seems to me that many of the best rogue-likes have a mechanic that forces you to not stay in a bubble, keeping you on the move and hunting for more supplies. FTL uses the Rebel fleet and Spelunky uses the ghost for this purpose. If you stay in one area for too long, the game will come after you with a vengeance. Perhaps in Subnautica's this element could be represented by fuel. Your fuel will constantly decrease, so you have to move to stay alive. You will be able to stay in one area for a good amount of time, but not too long - otherwise you'll get stranded and die.

    I think my FTL games average between 30 minutes to a few hours. That seems like a good length of time for playing Subnautica, no?

    I guess it depends how far the developers want to expand on the construction aspects versus the survival aspects. If the game really is about world building, then a permanent space to express yourself is critical. Pouring your time into building space only to lose everything is usually more frustrating than anything. But how much building can you really do underwater? I'm guessing most construction is modifying and upgrading your submarine, along with other equipment. That's along the lines of what you do in FTL.

    I disagree that permadeath makes a game inaccessible to a wide audience. There are plenty of very popular rogue-lies.
  • AurOn2AurOn2 COOKIES! FREEDOM, AND BISCUITS! Australia Join Date: 2012-01-13 Member: 140224Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Forum staff
    The anti safety bubble will be the use of lazersharkonoses who are constantly chasing you down? PLEASE?!
  • TzudroTzudro Miami, FL Join Date: 2013-12-31 Member: 191181Members
    I'm a casual gamer. If there is to be permadeath, make it optional, please. No, I'm not a hardcore gamer. I never try to grab all the achievements our trophies or whatever, I just want to have fun. Getting frustrated when I lose all of my stuff because I decided to explore a cave sounds like it really sucks.

    Most games have a purpose. Get to the last boss, save the world/princess/sibling/dog etc., conclude the story. Beat the game. Win.

    I'm hoping SN stays away from this idea of finality, the thought that:
    "You've seen it all, you've done it all, turn off the game, do something else."

    Most games play similarly every time (even if they're fun, eventually you get bored and move on), and SN seems to have the potential to play very differently over time...even going so far as to say that if you decided to start over, your game would be completely different and not resemble your last game at all as far as what you see and how your ship turns out.

    Maybe the first time around you made a ponderous floating lab and crawled along, collecting specimens of everything and developed new technology.

    Maybe the next time you made a quick, maneuverable vessel and tried to get to the furthest reaches of the eternal ocean.
  • DC_DarklingDC_Darkling Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
    @Squeal_Like_A_Pig
    Well done. Im not a huge fan of permadeath but having the option sure is a big bonus. There is a market in many games for both.
  • SeldkamSeldkam Join Date: 2014-01-01 Member: 191213Members
    I really hope there is an Alpha or some form of early gameplay before I head out to that world called college lol. I've ALWAYS wanted a game like this, and Im so far fascinated at the things that could be done with this game.

    As for a roguelike… It could work well. With a game like this I'd like to see some hardcore elements such as difficult combat, or some form of actual gameplay mechanics that makes the game a challenge; a challenge that can, with time, be overcome. In my opinion the best games are difficult but give the player a lot of room to improve upon and learn, such as Dota. Dota is "hardcore" in many ways but the more one learns, the more forgiving the game seems. That's what I'd like to see in this game. Just my 2 cents.
  • zbott105zbott105 Join Date: 2017-01-02 Member: 225902Members
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    ... This forum needs a : necro : emoticon.
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