Picked up Subnautica for the first time in a long while...
Nyito
Join Date: 2016-02-11 Member: 212904Members
Join Date: 2016-02-11 Member: 212904Members
And sadly, I'm putting it back down again for the forseeable future, but I figured my feedback as a returning veteran might be useful. For reference, I last played before wrecks, farming, even the bases on the island and down in the purple cave biome were implemented.
I started off in Experimental, with a plan to tech rush. Of course given much of the new tech is now in wrecks and not just scattered about, it was an interesting adventure. I was happy to see the new battery swap system, and that the Seaglide was now a mainstay of the early game. I even appreciated how the main multipurpose room wasn't default tech, encouraging use of the lifepod for longer. Still waiting for a way to tie the lifepod into a base somehow, but overall, early game is much improved. In my experimental game, I did notice one major problem that was a problem even back when I played; silver is too rare, gold is too common. It seems to only have gotten worse, with the red grass biomes being utterly devoid of sandstone chunks to get silver out of. I suspect this becomes a non-issue with the PRAWN Drill, but I haven't gotten that far, and likely won't be for a few more updates. In my Experimental game I explored most of the Aurora; was very pleased to see how much bigger it has gotten, and got the usual stable of vehicles built. Found and reported numerous bugs along the way, but my game finally ground to a halt when exploring a wreck in the grand reef.
Firstly, the wreck seemed to be multiple copies of itself pasted over itself. I had to cut the same door open 4 times. Annoying, another bug to report, this is Experimental after all, it's to be expected. After cutting my way in and getting all the new tech out of it, I boarded my cyclops, and the game crashed. No big deal, re-load the most recent save. All seems fine, helm the cyclops, start to move, crash. Repeat, crash again. Report bug. Try to exit cyclops and swim away, crash. Try to launch Seamoth and move away; crash. No matter what I do, game crashes. After fifteen hours invested into this to have the game die to a bug, I was annoyed. But I can hardly be upset about encountering a gamebreaker on the Experimental build, so I decide to revert my game to the stable build and start over.
This time, with a better understanding of where all the tech is, the new mechanics, I rushed the Aurora, fully explored it the same day it exploded, came back with a haul of batteries to create my basic tools, having skipped everything except the welder, laser cutter and scanner. Got the cyclops before I got my first base, built a PRAWN and just decided to explore and unlock most of the tech before even sitting down to make a permanent base. Unfortunately, I ran into that same bottleneck. Silver. I don't know why it's so rare. I suggested this way back when I played last, but either silver should not be needed to create wiring kits; use gold for that instead, or silver should come out of basalt outcrops instead of gold. There's a clear mismatch of resource needs to resource availability in the game. That's fine for rare and high-end materials like diamond; except in the midgame I know where I can get a ton of diamond. In fact, I can do so early game, if I wanted to spend the time collecting it from the precursor island. Silver seems to be in absurd scarcity, until, presumably, you get the PRAWN drill and can crack all the big resource deposits.
Finally, I decided I had enough of trying to find silver and decided to bite the bullet, build a base earlier than planned and build a PRAWN drill. I chose the surface vent near the rear of the Aurora as my usual base site. I set up the basic infrastructure of my base, just a couple rooms, corridors, and a moonpool. I had exactly enough silver saved to build everything I needed. I planted down my thermal reactors... and was greeted by the old bug of constantly connecting and disconnecting power plants. Which is unfortunately a complete game-stopper for me. I tried a few of the old workarounds from back when I played; putting the plants opposite the vent and linking them through a power transmitter, making sure the Cyclops is far, far away. Neither worked. If it wasn't such an old bug I'd probably have been more patient with it, but to see that gamebreaker still around after this long just shut my interest off.
Still, I enjoyed my time with it for the most part, and I did notice a few other things I'd like to see changed/added:
A thermal/solar charger for the Cyclops. I understand not wanting to make the Cyclops too easy to power, but right now it's just busywork to keep it charged. You can infinitely charge it off of Power Cell Chargers, which is presumably a bug that will be fixed, but even if it is, there's other ways. Obviously off of a base's main power, which seems to be intended, but in the field a PRAWN with a thermal charger or Seamoth with a solar charger works as well. Just takes longer and generally wastes your time. Ideally, as a player we'd get both, but just solar power could be a nice limiter, preventing the Cyclops from charging during deep dives, being able to leave it next to a thermal vent and let it charge while you explore with your secondary vehicle.
An upgrade console that can be built in the Cyclops. I was rather enjoying my nomadic adventure with my Cyclops and PRAWN; the lack of Seamoth provided a very interesting challenge, given I opted for the PRAWN over it. But even after unlocking the Drill Arm, I had to establish a base just to build the Drill Arm and solve my silver crisis. Perhaps the Drill Arm is accessable earlier; I suspect next playthrough I'm going to rush for it, but being able to manufacture Seamoth/PRAWN modules in the Cyclops would provide some much appreciated flexibility in playstyle.
Silver! It's a common theme; everything I did in-game seemed to be based on that need. Unfortunately, that doesn't really create a challenge so much as simply force a build order. Rush the PRAWN & Drill Arm. And associated Moonpool and Upgrade Console. That's not interesting. I'm a base-builder at heart, and even I appreciated the change of pace operating from the Cyclops without a home base provided. If no upgrade console for the Cyclops is ever going to happen, then silver has to be made more abundant in the midgame to support more than the one tech path. And even if you can at some point build PRAWN modules from the Cyclops, being forced to by a resource bottleneck isn't what I'd call enjoyable or compelling.
Sea Treaders! I love these guys. My only problem is their stomps only create copper and lithium. I did complain at one point that copper was far too rare; but that was before batteries were rechargeable, and so you were going through copper at quite the rate. This could be another avenue for fixing silver... but really, I'd prefer to see their chunks give literally every mineral available in the game. Obviously things like diamonds and kyanite should be much more rare than titanium or copper (or silver!) but them providing a renewable source of all mineral resources is sorely needed to maintain the kinds of dozens of hours of playtime in a single save, building truely amazing megabases I'm hoping Subnautica will eventually provide.
Aurora! I love the expanded Aurora, and I hope to continue to see it grow. However, the material variety available from the boxes in and around the Aurora sorely needs to be improved. I walked out of the Aurora, after two trips, with so many batteries and power cells that I only ever crafted two; the initial two needed to create the scanner and laser cutter. And I guess turned half my batteries into power cells to have enough to support the infinite recharge cycle with the Cyclops and still have a couple spares on hand for emergencies, if that counts. Having there be boxes of bleach or random minerals like magnesium, or even rarer components like wiring kits and computer chips could certainly liven it up. And allieviate the silver bottleneck somewhat! Speaking of the Aurora's loot...
Nutrient Blocks should really be craftable. Perhaps even a late-game schematic available only in the depths of the Aurora, but nonetheless craftable. Maybe made from a fish, some creepvine, and some of the fruits you can farm. Fairly steep requirements for a very effective food.
The gloves slot. Do something more with it or get rid of it. It's just pointless right now. The only item that goes in it is the radiation gloves, there's no challenge in getting said gloves specifically, as the 'free' suit comes with them, and the crafted suit does as well. There's no choice to be made with it; or even whether or not to leave it empty.
There were a few other small anomalies; a compass not needing magnetite but needing to pick some to get the schematic, welders being basically an alternate schematic for a battery after the first one (not that I needed batteries at any point), being able to use empty batteries to create fully-charged tools and power cells, all of which I reported through the F8 feedback system as well. But I think that more or less sums up my thoughts on this current iteration of Subnautica. I still see a lot of potential; I just wish at this stage all the real game-stopper bugs would have been fixed by now, at least on the stable build.
I started off in Experimental, with a plan to tech rush. Of course given much of the new tech is now in wrecks and not just scattered about, it was an interesting adventure. I was happy to see the new battery swap system, and that the Seaglide was now a mainstay of the early game. I even appreciated how the main multipurpose room wasn't default tech, encouraging use of the lifepod for longer. Still waiting for a way to tie the lifepod into a base somehow, but overall, early game is much improved. In my experimental game, I did notice one major problem that was a problem even back when I played; silver is too rare, gold is too common. It seems to only have gotten worse, with the red grass biomes being utterly devoid of sandstone chunks to get silver out of. I suspect this becomes a non-issue with the PRAWN Drill, but I haven't gotten that far, and likely won't be for a few more updates. In my Experimental game I explored most of the Aurora; was very pleased to see how much bigger it has gotten, and got the usual stable of vehicles built. Found and reported numerous bugs along the way, but my game finally ground to a halt when exploring a wreck in the grand reef.
Firstly, the wreck seemed to be multiple copies of itself pasted over itself. I had to cut the same door open 4 times. Annoying, another bug to report, this is Experimental after all, it's to be expected. After cutting my way in and getting all the new tech out of it, I boarded my cyclops, and the game crashed. No big deal, re-load the most recent save. All seems fine, helm the cyclops, start to move, crash. Repeat, crash again. Report bug. Try to exit cyclops and swim away, crash. Try to launch Seamoth and move away; crash. No matter what I do, game crashes. After fifteen hours invested into this to have the game die to a bug, I was annoyed. But I can hardly be upset about encountering a gamebreaker on the Experimental build, so I decide to revert my game to the stable build and start over.
This time, with a better understanding of where all the tech is, the new mechanics, I rushed the Aurora, fully explored it the same day it exploded, came back with a haul of batteries to create my basic tools, having skipped everything except the welder, laser cutter and scanner. Got the cyclops before I got my first base, built a PRAWN and just decided to explore and unlock most of the tech before even sitting down to make a permanent base. Unfortunately, I ran into that same bottleneck. Silver. I don't know why it's so rare. I suggested this way back when I played last, but either silver should not be needed to create wiring kits; use gold for that instead, or silver should come out of basalt outcrops instead of gold. There's a clear mismatch of resource needs to resource availability in the game. That's fine for rare and high-end materials like diamond; except in the midgame I know where I can get a ton of diamond. In fact, I can do so early game, if I wanted to spend the time collecting it from the precursor island. Silver seems to be in absurd scarcity, until, presumably, you get the PRAWN drill and can crack all the big resource deposits.
Finally, I decided I had enough of trying to find silver and decided to bite the bullet, build a base earlier than planned and build a PRAWN drill. I chose the surface vent near the rear of the Aurora as my usual base site. I set up the basic infrastructure of my base, just a couple rooms, corridors, and a moonpool. I had exactly enough silver saved to build everything I needed. I planted down my thermal reactors... and was greeted by the old bug of constantly connecting and disconnecting power plants. Which is unfortunately a complete game-stopper for me. I tried a few of the old workarounds from back when I played; putting the plants opposite the vent and linking them through a power transmitter, making sure the Cyclops is far, far away. Neither worked. If it wasn't such an old bug I'd probably have been more patient with it, but to see that gamebreaker still around after this long just shut my interest off.
Still, I enjoyed my time with it for the most part, and I did notice a few other things I'd like to see changed/added:
A thermal/solar charger for the Cyclops. I understand not wanting to make the Cyclops too easy to power, but right now it's just busywork to keep it charged. You can infinitely charge it off of Power Cell Chargers, which is presumably a bug that will be fixed, but even if it is, there's other ways. Obviously off of a base's main power, which seems to be intended, but in the field a PRAWN with a thermal charger or Seamoth with a solar charger works as well. Just takes longer and generally wastes your time. Ideally, as a player we'd get both, but just solar power could be a nice limiter, preventing the Cyclops from charging during deep dives, being able to leave it next to a thermal vent and let it charge while you explore with your secondary vehicle.
An upgrade console that can be built in the Cyclops. I was rather enjoying my nomadic adventure with my Cyclops and PRAWN; the lack of Seamoth provided a very interesting challenge, given I opted for the PRAWN over it. But even after unlocking the Drill Arm, I had to establish a base just to build the Drill Arm and solve my silver crisis. Perhaps the Drill Arm is accessable earlier; I suspect next playthrough I'm going to rush for it, but being able to manufacture Seamoth/PRAWN modules in the Cyclops would provide some much appreciated flexibility in playstyle.
Silver! It's a common theme; everything I did in-game seemed to be based on that need. Unfortunately, that doesn't really create a challenge so much as simply force a build order. Rush the PRAWN & Drill Arm. And associated Moonpool and Upgrade Console. That's not interesting. I'm a base-builder at heart, and even I appreciated the change of pace operating from the Cyclops without a home base provided. If no upgrade console for the Cyclops is ever going to happen, then silver has to be made more abundant in the midgame to support more than the one tech path. And even if you can at some point build PRAWN modules from the Cyclops, being forced to by a resource bottleneck isn't what I'd call enjoyable or compelling.
Sea Treaders! I love these guys. My only problem is their stomps only create copper and lithium. I did complain at one point that copper was far too rare; but that was before batteries were rechargeable, and so you were going through copper at quite the rate. This could be another avenue for fixing silver... but really, I'd prefer to see their chunks give literally every mineral available in the game. Obviously things like diamonds and kyanite should be much more rare than titanium or copper (or silver!) but them providing a renewable source of all mineral resources is sorely needed to maintain the kinds of dozens of hours of playtime in a single save, building truely amazing megabases I'm hoping Subnautica will eventually provide.
Aurora! I love the expanded Aurora, and I hope to continue to see it grow. However, the material variety available from the boxes in and around the Aurora sorely needs to be improved. I walked out of the Aurora, after two trips, with so many batteries and power cells that I only ever crafted two; the initial two needed to create the scanner and laser cutter. And I guess turned half my batteries into power cells to have enough to support the infinite recharge cycle with the Cyclops and still have a couple spares on hand for emergencies, if that counts. Having there be boxes of bleach or random minerals like magnesium, or even rarer components like wiring kits and computer chips could certainly liven it up. And allieviate the silver bottleneck somewhat! Speaking of the Aurora's loot...
Nutrient Blocks should really be craftable. Perhaps even a late-game schematic available only in the depths of the Aurora, but nonetheless craftable. Maybe made from a fish, some creepvine, and some of the fruits you can farm. Fairly steep requirements for a very effective food.
The gloves slot. Do something more with it or get rid of it. It's just pointless right now. The only item that goes in it is the radiation gloves, there's no challenge in getting said gloves specifically, as the 'free' suit comes with them, and the crafted suit does as well. There's no choice to be made with it; or even whether or not to leave it empty.
There were a few other small anomalies; a compass not needing magnetite but needing to pick some to get the schematic, welders being basically an alternate schematic for a battery after the first one (not that I needed batteries at any point), being able to use empty batteries to create fully-charged tools and power cells, all of which I reported through the F8 feedback system as well. But I think that more or less sums up my thoughts on this current iteration of Subnautica. I still see a lot of potential; I just wish at this stage all the real game-stopper bugs would have been fixed by now, at least on the stable build.
Comments
As for things like the glove slot, there were originally plans for a glove with webbed fingers to make you move faster and such and I am assuming that is still an idea for them. The magnetite required for unlocking the compass but not needing it is a bug and should be fixed soon, I think when they wanted to make the compass easier to get they forgot to edit the code to where it doesn't need the magnetite to unlock anymore. Silver is a big problem that really needs to be addressed.
Yes you have a lot of good points and I am going to make sure the devs see this and know your feeling and points because they are good and fair and thought out not like some other complaints I have read.
Silver is actually easier to get than you'd think. Sandstone is now more common in cave-like areas of the Kelp forest and Grassy plateaus, and is rarely seen on the surface level. If you work to go into the more dangerous and constricted areas, you're rewarded with a plethora of Sandstone chunks. The best place to farm silver is the northern Kelp forest next to the Mountain Island; there's a significant abundance of caves full of sandstone there, and its a beautiful section of the biome most people gloss over.
You're still gonna get your inventory flooded with gold though. I find it mildly entertaining that gold is relatively useless in this game.
I think the devs still rely on silver to control the slowdown of tech progression. Almost every tech needs silver and by making it rarer, it takes longer to progress through the game.
Nutrient blocks:
Would like to see a recipe turning 10 food into a nutrient block or a nutrient dispensing vendor machine.
Gloves:
If the devs ever planned another glove pair they should do so. Until then it's the most senseless paperdoll slot of the game.
My suggestion would be to replace the glove slot with a suit upgrade slot that could allow different things, like holding a battery for HUD power or an emergency one time shock or acid defense system when a big predator gets you. This solution would be more flexible as the type of upgrade isn't defined.
Recharging:
Recharging the Seamoth and Prawn works and could be expanded to the Cyclops, but why use it when the power almost lasts forever. It's still much too unbalanced. Right now the Seamoth and Prawn can travel through the whole map more than once with a single power load. The Cyclops can rely on infinite power cell recharges.
How it should work:
Seamoth using solar recharge for low depth unlimited travels. But power is consumed very quickly otherwise. For night or deep dive travels the power efficiency module should allow a max of 5 miles travel, so you are forced to use docking at bases or the Cyclops. The Prawn power should also drain quickly, but the heat recharger should be superfast, so that the Prawn should be able to operate infinite long wherever it finds enough heat or a docking possibility. The Cyclops could either recharge solar or thermal, but not both. It should also be rechargable through docking. Real bad places for power support should be cold water dark depth places, like Lost River or Inactive Lava Zone.
It's not strong enough to build things from; it's decently conductive but there are better options. And in Subnautica it's not even that scarce.
Although, I think sometimes it might be possible that you get a 'bad' dice roll on game start?