Add the multipurpose and alien containment rooms to Lifepods
Pendji
Denmark Join Date: 2017-03-13 Member: 228896Members
Denmark Join Date: 2017-03-13 Member: 228896Members
Think about it. You land in this world, not sure what you're capable of creating.
"Oh a platform, connectors.. Ladder.. Room? No?"
You spend anywhere between 1 to +8 hours living in a hallway with a hatch. You can end up creating a cyclops before you ever get a normal room, why?
I just replayed the intro sequence and you're given a radiation suit, something that takes at most 10 minutes to make, for free, from a lifepod. This could easily have been replaced with the lifepod of an engineering team, giving you building blueprints. This way you could also time-gate the multipurpose room, since you don't want players to start with it.
An hour into the game you get a relay and gps message labeled 'Engineering team lifepod' or something containing the multipurpose room and maybe 1/3 alien containment blueprints.
I find it really stupid that you can't breed fish within the first 5 hours of the game, when you see eggs right left and center from the get-go. I was living in my cyclops with a base far down into the Grand Reef before I got even my first containment blueprint. You'd think you'd go "Maybe I can make an aquarium in this water based world" faster than "I can build a huge submarine from rock".
Also, a connector going upwards with stairs would be amazing. Build a one-level grid of rooms and all, then one going upwards into an observatory. The instant teleport of a ladder puts me off a lot; seems like a temporary fix at best.
"Oh a platform, connectors.. Ladder.. Room? No?"
You spend anywhere between 1 to +8 hours living in a hallway with a hatch. You can end up creating a cyclops before you ever get a normal room, why?
I just replayed the intro sequence and you're given a radiation suit, something that takes at most 10 minutes to make, for free, from a lifepod. This could easily have been replaced with the lifepod of an engineering team, giving you building blueprints. This way you could also time-gate the multipurpose room, since you don't want players to start with it.
An hour into the game you get a relay and gps message labeled 'Engineering team lifepod' or something containing the multipurpose room and maybe 1/3 alien containment blueprints.
I find it really stupid that you can't breed fish within the first 5 hours of the game, when you see eggs right left and center from the get-go. I was living in my cyclops with a base far down into the Grand Reef before I got even my first containment blueprint. You'd think you'd go "Maybe I can make an aquarium in this water based world" faster than "I can build a huge submarine from rock".
Also, a connector going upwards with stairs would be amazing. Build a one-level grid of rooms and all, then one going upwards into an observatory. The instant teleport of a ladder puts me off a lot; seems like a temporary fix at best.
Comments
The mp room is specifically put out of reach as a luxury boost after spending some time appreciating the comforts of a nice corridor base. There's really no reason to push the mp room to the front - eggs aren't the only early game item you don't immediately have a use for. Gas pods and stalker teeth come to mind.
It's as if the alien structures are quest 3 of the game, Aurora being 2, and they just skip past it. Even a 'try fixing Aurora' from Sunbeam would fix this very easily.
Yeah sure, development, but they've moved blueprints and fragments around back and forth with every update. They make two things more comfortable then remove one from your radar. Having to find parts for the solar panels made more sense than the most common room you'll be building.
You do get a hint that there's land out there from one of the comm relay messages. That should be enough to send you looking for it. Find either island and you're in business for building a multipurpose room.
The fact of the matter is that the MP room is a luxury. You don't need one; it just makes things more convenient.
Beyond that, why would anyone put blueprints in a lifeboat? Check out a lifeboat inventory sometime, a real one. Here's what you'll find: food, water, basic medical supplies, maybe a multitool, and signaling devices. That's it. No blueprints on building a beach house or repairing a tanker. A lifeboat is meant to get you off a burning and/or sinking ship in one piece and keep you alive for a little while so rescue can find you. Same goes for the lifepod. It's not there so you can settle a new planet; it's there to keep you from dying for a little while.
The whole point is that you're in a survival situation. You have next to nothing and need to scavenge to survive. That's the focus of the game. Take that away and you have "human survivor lives in luxury on an alien planet while dealing with a case of alien acne."
Because most people look at the wreck of the Aurora and think "I'm sure I can find supplies there!" And they're right. This is honestly the first I've ever even heard the suggestion that someone would think, "Hey, giant wrecked spaceship. Nah, I'm not going to check it out."
At the end of the day, survival/exploration game means that if you're not proactive and putting effort into it, you're going to fail. It's a design principle of the genre.
And these things, you are correct about. I can repeat the whole thing about the game being in development, but it's true the hints towards the Aurora and Floating Island are at this time weak and make for a confusing game(play) experience at present.
Here's the original thread from June 2016 when we first heard about the MP rooms being de-defaulted; how we feel about it and what the devs' argument is. Might be worth giving it a read, but tldr, it's about creating progression in the game. One doesn't "need" an MP room until one goes basebuilding below 200m (when solar panels are useless and the only non-mp room alternative are thermal plants).
That said, there definitely are things the game could ease up on. I know some people have complained that the small bed doesn't fit in the corridors. I don't use the sleep feature much myself, but it seems weird to me to have to wait on it for that long. Equally, there's an annoying mismatch where you can find planter pots relatively easy, but don't have much use for it in terms of food until the islands are visited, yet have planter beds/the alien containment at the same accessibility as MP rooms even though you could use them early on not to have to go into the Kelp Forests just for creepvine. (This also ties in with another person's complaint that the medkit fabricator is too accessible and freebie, which I agree with, but if at current one were to rely only on manually made medkits, one'd have to go swim with stalkers and that does not scream balance to me.) There was some talk about the devs wanting to add a planter function to adult reefbacks and some in the fandom want planter pots for outside too, but you know, lots of words to communicate agreement that the MP room at present is too much a make-or-break to truly be considered a luxury and UWE does need to use the next few months finetuning the experience to be fair.
Maybe, but there's quite a number of people who don't register the Aurora as more than decoration, especially when they get up close and the detail is a tad lacking. The reapers, even with their lowered aggro range (and I can't even find the Lifepod #4 "guard"?), are also a deterrent making people think they shouldn't go to the Aurora yet. It actually isn't that clear at present. A number of other progression tidbits aren't either, like that you have to fix Lifepod #5 or how to get stalker teeth.
Really? The Aurora was among the first places I went; as soon as I had radsuit parts, I was off. And the tooltip from the smoking, dangling wiring in the lifepod that a repair tool was needed was enough to get me scouring the place for those parts, too.
I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm right, or any variation thereof. It's just that ever since games like Fallout 4 have hit the market, converting what used to be useless set dressing into something you really should take notice of, the paradigm seems to have shifted to "if you can see it, there's probably a point to it." Granted, that design philosophy is far from universal, but it's definitely gaining traction.
Really, though, I think if you look at the track the devs have been on in terms of what they're giving us at the outset, it's actually getting closer to the spirit and genre of the game. It's survival, and survival means "bare necessities." For a seabase, bare necessity means room for a few lockers, maybe a fabricator. @Scubamatt showcased a great minimalist base in the thread you linked, and I've built similar bases myself (although not as aesthetically pleasing as Matt's).
Being able to build a subsea rec room isn't necessary for basic survival, so it shouldn't be in the default blueprints. Food, water, and medical supplies are necessary, and they're in the library to start. If you want bigger and better, you should have to work for it, and not just by gathering up ultra-common resources. Think of getting the MP room as an unlabeled miniquest, if it helps.
Heh, you're saying there's one kind of people and I'm saying there's another kind of people so we aren't contradicting each other, only coming at it from different angles. I really love to read feedback on SN and would like to be able to rec it to as many people as I can trick into listening to me, so this stuff is something I keep track of.
It's just that it takes a while to understand how thorough the gameworld is (people expect bigness from an AAA game, while indie games are generally met with an understanding the company only has so many resources) and that, yeah, there in fact is gameplay on dry land and the Aurora offers part of it, in addition to all the warning signs to keep away like radiation, which thank you for reminding me. The existence of the radiation suit doesn't always change a player's mindset that the Aurora is a no-go area. Add to that an overwhelming amount of options in early game (hence why I support locking more recipes to emphasize each one through discovery) plus the pressure to keep food & water secure and there's a portion of the playerbase that doesn't have time to consider potential paths without external help. I firmly believe SN can do them a better while maintaining its survival mindset. More elaborate tier systems like we already have for water (bladderfish, bleach, coffee machine, stillsuit, filtration machine, and even then I feel a rain collector if we get weather will not be superfluous) would help create much-needed bridges and some better communication to get to the Aurora would be nice too.
Interesting how that dynamic is beginning to invert.
Good point. We have the signal beacon feature, so there's already a mechanism in place to guide players to points of interest. It just needs to be more...effectively applied in some cases. Like dropping a signal marker on the Aurora's engine compartment after the core blows. It would show players that not only is the Aurora not a no-go zone, but that you're expected to get yourself there. It also stands to reason that such a signal marker would appear; the PDA is "smart" enough to correctly diagnose the symptoms of an impending core failure, accurately predicts time to failure, and provides a ton of other highly-specific guidance - telling the player to get him-/herself to the engine core and patch it up.
Similarly, even key Precursor locations could receive signal markers; the PDA warns of an intense energy signature near the mountain island, so adding a signal marker shouldn't be a stretch. It could help steer even novice players around to the realization that places that seem off-limits really aren't.
Would that do it?
IMHO anyways.
That's so cynical!
...100% accurate, but still cynical...