Alternate ending
SouthernGorilla
United States Join Date: 2017-07-26 Member: 232057Members
United States Join Date: 2017-07-26 Member: 232057Members
I know the current endgame is to get cured, disable the gun, build the rocket, and escape. That's all well and good... but I'd like to stick around. I'd like to work towards creating not just a home for myself, but a nice resort for people to visit and enjoy the wonders of this new world.
The idea is that you'd have to develop an understanding of the precursor technology so you could harness it for yourself. Figure out how to get all that free energy from the huge thermal plant they built, control the gun to defend your new home from marauders and Alterra bill collectors, eradicate carar, and create various resort locations throughout the map so people could see the different biomes. Then instead of a rocket, build a transmitter so you can contact people to invite them to your new world.
Maybe later in the game you could find new data packs or PDAs that had blueprints for interesting things like geodesic domes (as mentioned in another thread) or luxury items entirely unnecessary for survival. Then you could decide whether you wanted to work towards the rocket or stake a claim on your new home. Add a layer of risk by somehow making it a strict either/or decision so that failing left you stranded again.
Even if they don't add such a choice in the future that's probably what I'd work towards as my own personal endgame. I might even start now playing with ideas as to what sort of resorts I'd build and where I'd place them. Granted, I'd never "win" the game that way. But games are all about fun.
The idea is that you'd have to develop an understanding of the precursor technology so you could harness it for yourself. Figure out how to get all that free energy from the huge thermal plant they built, control the gun to defend your new home from marauders and Alterra bill collectors, eradicate carar, and create various resort locations throughout the map so people could see the different biomes. Then instead of a rocket, build a transmitter so you can contact people to invite them to your new world.
Maybe later in the game you could find new data packs or PDAs that had blueprints for interesting things like geodesic domes (as mentioned in another thread) or luxury items entirely unnecessary for survival. Then you could decide whether you wanted to work towards the rocket or stake a claim on your new home. Add a layer of risk by somehow making it a strict either/or decision so that failing left you stranded again.
Even if they don't add such a choice in the future that's probably what I'd work towards as my own personal endgame. I might even start now playing with ideas as to what sort of resorts I'd build and where I'd place them. Granted, I'd never "win" the game that way. But games are all about fun.
Comments
Who said anything about monetizing the game?
Maybe some win state that required you to stabilise the ecosystem after Carar? At the moment, Carar doesn't seem to affect the fauna in any functional way. Maybe Carar-infected fauna should be hyper-aggressive, leading them to decimate prey populations and pick fights with their own species, thus causing more deaths overall? If fish respawn rates are tied to population numbers, then you should see results pretty soon. It should be up to the player to hatch eggs and re-populate areas. If creature AI were improved as well, you could have more of a challenge to get the right species to settle in each area.
I meant monatizing the world of subnautica (I could have said "4546B" but... nah)
We have a giant gun base. They can try.
@Lulzes is absolutely right; most players need objectives. (Not all, but most.) By and large, if you dump players in an unstructured world, they'll create goals for themselves - original Minecraft is a good example - but that'll only last so long. Without some kind of structured objectives, most players just get bored and wander off.
Some approaches have tried to fix this problem, like the Bethesda RADIANT quest system, which has been...erm...varyingly successful, depending on who you ask. Tropico also took a good stab at it. Stellaris tried, but bogged down in too many details and layers of complexity. Fortune in this field has been fickle, but not nonexistent.
Now, me, I like games that don't have a definitive "end" state. "You can play this far, no farther." I hate it because all that hard work I invested has become something I can no longer enjoy. So games like Skyrim, Fallout 2 through today (the real ones, not the spinoffs like BoS), Mass Effect 2 or Andromeda mean more to me than games which just hit the "win" condition and halt. I'm a sandboxer at heart. So an endgame like Lulzes suggests, rebuilding the ecosystem or exploring creature behavior in more depth (no pun) would be an outstanding last act for a player like me. But, as mentioned, creature AI would need a drastic upgrade.
Some kind of Radiant-esque objective system for the endgame, if properly implemented, could work. But, mainly, allowing us to experience another phase in the gameworld's evolution would be very rewarding for many gamers, and could offer the infinite-gameplay reward as an alternate ending of sorts.
(PS: I don't think commercializing the planet is a winner, though. Alterra is pretty grumpy about competitors, based on their own in-game documentation. They have three modes: ignore, stomp, or buy. Alien tech on the planet they won't ignore. Paying you, a lowly shipwreck survivor who's already run up a confirmed bill of over 600,000 credits means they won't buy - if anything, they'll have you in debtor's prison before you can even suggest selling. Which leaves stomping. And getting your head caved in by an unstoppable foe isn't a great finale for any game.)
Wherein lies another possible ending/expansion - instead of going back to face bills and your crappy job while some corporate slug moves in on 4546B, you could stay. As you say, Alterra would then "stomp", but my impression is they wouldn't risk human life on one misbehaving employee and a bunch of sea creatures, they'd send in the killer robots - plus they have a thing against humans with guns (I don't see UW creating human NPCs, but Alterra robots? Why not?). You could recruit help from the Sea Emperors or tame the local wildlife to help you fight off Alterra drones.
Didn't James Cameron make that movie?
Or you could just leave the gun activated
I wouldn't make the resort thing a win-state, but the rest of your comment is spot on to what I'm thinking. They could add the precursor research data to the game and make the hatchery and incubators scannable. We already have non-functional scientific equipment. Maybe we could repair it, or scan it and rebuild it. That would unlock the recipe for the elixir the sea emperor gave us and allow us to cure carar everywhere. Then build some sort of contraption to mass produce the cure and place it in the aquarium so the pipe system could distribute it throughout the world.
Or, use the transfuser to add the emperor's immunity to the eggs of other creatures. Then make sure enough of those eggs hatch to establish a solid population and release them in the appropriate areas. The immune critters would quickly outpopulate the others and eradicate carar. So the win-state would be immunizing X eggs from each species to ensure they spread out successfully.
The main point is that stabilizing the world is the primary goal. What you do with it afterwards is another question.
Oi, don't be smart