Thoughts on the game (Comming back after 6 month hiatus)
ArthurDent
Join Date: 2013-10-31 Member: 188904Members
Join Date: 2013-10-31 Member: 188904Members
I just re-installed to try playing subnautica after setting it aside for several months.
I was pleasantly surprised with how well it now performs graphically.
I was disappointed with the survival gameplay.
There are several problems I had with survival:
Yeah. Currently the severe lack of copper and the lack of a sea glide or moth really removed the fun from survival. (Once you get the sea moth, and the sea moth bay the game becomes allot more fun)
I was pleasantly surprised with how well it now performs graphically.
I was disappointed with the survival gameplay.
There are several problems I had with survival:
- Spending allot of time hunting for tan rocks on tan rock surfaces, trying to find copper... and then receive titanium. This was pretty frustrating. I want to be exploring, not playing where's waldo.
- Not having a means of traveling quickly from place to place without cheating. I played for 3 hours without cheating (looking at wiki) and I was unable to discover enough parts to "research" any form of advanced propulsion (Faster fins, sea glide, sea moth). This would be simple to fix, add a sea glide to the first escape pod you find, and more researchable items at debris fields.
- Why the heck is the basic base building now requiring research?
- No items, loot, research or titanium at some debris. Several of the debris spots with the cargo pods has no loot. There should at least be titanium from all the metal there.
Yeah. Currently the severe lack of copper and the lack of a sea glide or moth really removed the fun from survival. (Once you get the sea moth, and the sea moth bay the game becomes allot more fun)
Comments
As for base building, now it's not one of the very first steps anymore and you're meant to live in compartments with limited space until you explore enough and find the big rooms, it honestly doesn't make the game that much harder.
And yes, it's true, in some small wrecks you can't find much cool stuff, but there's always a bunch of scrap lying around, so it's not like you can't find anything in them.
2) Fins will spell the recipe out for you in the fabricator, and the mats are very easy to get. Seaglide fragments are all over the starting areas in crates. Having both easily expands your area of exploration to allow you to find seamoth fragments. The game shouldn't hand you everything right off the bat. Speaking of..
3) The game shouldn't hand you everything right off the bat. I prefer the tradeoff of having solar right away and losing rooms, since rooms opens up being able to build large tanks, reactors, filtration, etc.. right off the bat. Most stuff you need for the start of the game can fit snug in corridors until you find an abandoned base.
4) I've not seen a debris field without at least metal salvage, but I agree that should be around and in all of them.
I very much like the slower start with a more exploration/progression focus vs scattered fragments everywhere and tons of blueprints available out of the gate/after a quick loop around the safe shallows.
We had a micro-house build fest on here when they took the multipurpose room out and you really can cram a lot of stuff into a single module. IIRC, I had all the constructable pieces (fabricator, comm array, medkit, chargers) minus the upgrade module, sufficient plant food for indefinite survival, and a handful of storage lockers. Early game is about survival and not base building now, for better or worse.
Can't say I've ever had a problem with the first one, even on my first play through. The game does point you to them to start with at least so cant really suggest anything with that. The copper hunt is kind of a pain to start with, but its a breeze compared to silver
Perhaps the game should point out in some way that there are better transportation methods available. On the other hand, the lifepods are near several wrecks so the game does show that wrecks have loot, which should lead the player to seek them out to see what goodies are inside which would lead to seamoth/seaglide, no? The fins are easy enough I think since its already in the menu so if you're exploring the menu you would find it pretty readily.
I guess my question to you is: why didn't you look through the menu? Did it feel unnecessary to see what you could make or did it just seem like tedium? Memory of what was there? Just wanted to get to exploring? The above paragraph is what I figure the devs had planned for people to find it and you took a different path so perhaps knowing why might be helpful information.
Thank you for the feedback and welcome back!
Wildlife isn't spawning. This is conspicuous in the kelp forest - there's one section right close to spawn where stalkers appear as normal. The rest of it? Quiet as a grave. The only life I see outside of the starting area is reefbacks and cave crawlers. No stalkers. No sand sharks or bone sharks. No reaper leviathans, even (at least not so far as I've been able to explore - see below).
Resources aren't spawning. In that little fragment of kelp forest where the stalkers exist, that's the only place I've been able to find anything beyond limestone - and even limestone doesn't exist once I get more than a minute or two swimming away from the pod. Places that used to be rich - like passages next to one of the geothermal vents between Kelp Forest and Safe Shallows - I could understand being toned down, but there's nothing at all - not one solitary rock to be had. Underwater Islands, Mountains - not one piece of quartz, never mind basalt or uraninite.
The only things I can scan are fixed architecture. I found one Seaglide fragment right under the pod, and eventually another in the aforementioned bit of functional kelp forest. That's it. Every other box I've come across has been empty, and every wreck I've searched is bare of nearby fragments. Floodlights, furniture, a few PRAWN pieces, and the base architecture on the floating island are all I've found - despite several hours of searching, including worming air pipes into a couple wrecks. (Not that I can get very far in some of those wrecks, given my lack of access to diamonds.) Certain fixed things like the PDAs are there to be found, but no fragments. (I haven't been able to search the Aurora in detail because the only propulsion cannon fragment I've found is the one just inside the Aurora itself, at the fork between the Admin office and the cargo bay.)
I've got into at least one of the precursor structures, but without effective means to go into deep ocean I haven't dared even try looking for more. I have found that areas that I'd normally never have dared go without a Cyclops* - the Mountain and the front of the Aurora - are perfectly safe, if terminally boring, because there's nothing moving there but me.
(*: well, slight exaggeration, but even in a Seamoth those places made me nervous, and I'd never, ever have swum out there without so much as turning on the Seaglide, which I can do now.)
In a way it's reassuring that some people are getting the full experience, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume the OP just hasn't been searching, because based on my experience it's entirely possible that there's simply nothing there to find.
Crafting does need work. If I have all the prequesites prequesites... it should auto convert scrap into titainium, when I select the knife. Or at least highlight items in yellow that I have enough ingredients to make the preqs for that item.
Missed it. I went to two different pods, went to the Auora and the floating island. Explored a couple debris areas between start and auora.
Yes, I did build the starting fins... but even with them it takes 10 minutes to cross the map. Ended up spending a lot of time swiming to and from poi that I could see from the surface (Auora, floating island).