Final thoughts on the game !
Osydius
France Join Date: 2015-09-19 Member: 208031Members
France Join Date: 2015-09-19 Member: 208031Members
Hi,
So I've been playing the game for about 2 years now and, as we are getting close to release, I decided a few months back to start a new game in hardcore and see how the game felt from beginning to end (it was just after the silent running update so at least up to the end available at that time, i.e. the spawning of the eggs). During this playthrough, I tried to put myself as much as possible in the shoes of a new player. So for instance, I waited until I got the signal to go to the Island rather than go there almost immediately to get my fruits. That type of things.
Overall, the game is much better than it was even one year ago. The story is great, the use of the radio to somewhat guide the player toward new technologies is a good idea, love the Aurora and the amount of wrecks you can now find with the tech inside, find it fascinating to find and read the degassi survivors' PDAs, the SeaDragon is trying to beat the Reaper in the "nightmare fuel" category... overall I feel really good about the state of the game.
But, and you knew this but was coming, I feel a few issues still have a detrimental impact on the game and I wanted to bring them up to the devs' attention:
- Base placement bugs: I start with the small one first - it still bugs me to have such a hard time connecting my Moonpool and Scanner Room to my main base. It's like the system is actively trying to prevent me from putting them at the right level. I don't know if the Ghost update has fixed this as I haven't had time to check but damn it's annoying.
- Tech progression: I feel that the acquisition order of new tech is a bit chaotic.
For instance, I found all parts of my Cyclops, as well as the Prawn suit and the Moonpool, way before I found the Modification Station. That is weird since the modification station is very useful in early/mid-game, for instance to get underwater cooked fish (which becomes much less interesting once you get fruits mid-game). Same with Speed Fins or High Capacity Tanks, which in my opinion are mostly useful in the middle of the game (they stay relevant thoughout game but once you get subs, a bit less so). Actually, from my point of view, the Modification Station should be one of the first tech you find (even before the SeaGlide).
In the same way, the StillSuit should be found rather early when water is still an issue for players. When I got it during my playthrough, it was a bit too late in the game and so I only kept it for a very short time because I already had all the water I needed with fruits + Filtration Machine, and the recycled water was constantly taking up my inventory space. If I had had it early however (like the first suit even before radiation suit), I would have used it all the time (on the Filtration machine btw, we should be able to turn it off. It uses so much energy that if you get energy deprived (in the night for instance before you get reactors), the only way to stop it is to remove it).
Also, from my point of view, you should be able to get the Speed Fins before you get the Seamoth. I feel it makes more sense that way because once you get the Seamoth, the Swim Charge Fins become the go to Fins as you have the Seamoth to move around fast.
- Useless Tech: Some of the tech feels useless when playing the game (fun yes, but not necessary).
Such techs are the DiveReel, the Flares/the Flashlight (depending on which you prefer), the Current Generator, the Gravsphere, the Light Stick, the Pipes, the Floating Air Pump, and the Creature Decoy.
The Divereel has never worked for me, the Flashlights is less useful than the Flares which provide light at 360° and doesn't use batteries (but I know some people feel exactly the reverse), the Light Stick is a battery-dependant Flare, the Current Generator serves no real purpose to my knowledge, and the Gravsphere, while cool, is also without purpose as fishing is really not an issue in the game (I've never met a fish so elusive I couldn't catch it in 3-4 secs at worse).
I also don't see the point of Floating Air Pump and Pipes. I mean I guess you could use them for cave exploration but seems like a lot of work for nothing, much easier to simply grab extra Air Tanks and go (it being understood that I played the whole game using a single Air Tank, updated up to Ultra High Capacity in the end, and apart from one time in a wreck where I took a wrong turn, I never once was close to drowning).
Maybe the Creature Decoy should not be part of that list but I never felt the need for it during my playthrough. Either I simply avoided the creatures by running circles around them, or I did what I needed to do fast and got back to my sub. I can't think of any situation where I even thought "Damn, I wish I had that Creature Decoy..." (and as mentioned, I played in hardcore).
More contraversial, I feel the Scanner Room is also crazy cool but useless. I still don't know how we're supposed to use it. Finding resources in this game is not hard, it's surviving while gathering the resources that is the difficult part. Now the drones are very cool but once again not really useful as you can do the same exploration with the Seamoth or yourself. If they could scan or pick up stuff, it would be another story but as they are, once you get pass the cool effect, you never use them again. I didn't use it once aside from building it for fun and yet never had an issue finding raw elements. If it covered the whole map when fully upgraded thought, now that would be a fantastic room to have.
- Underused biomes: all biomes are simply beautiful, but some of them feel somewhat more decorative than useful. So for instance I barely went during my playthrough to the Bulb Zone, the Dunes, the Mushroom Forest, or the Sea Traders path. Even the Grassy Plateau, now that we are much much less reliant on Silver and much more on copper, have lost a lot of interest.
Those Biomes are not "resources gathering biomes". You just go there once or twice to get to a wreck or gather a small quantity of something or check a life pod (which usually leads you to a wreck) and then you never really have to go again.
So while completing the entire game (with all blueprints acquired) I went to the Underwater Island only once for the wreck, went to the Sparse Reef once for the Alien base, went to the Sea Treaders' Path once for the wreck, went to the Grassy Plateau only for the wrecks and pods, went to the Dunes once for a wreck, and went to the Bulb Zone once for a wreck and a pod.
I know I missed a few Caches or wrecks in the process but I never felt they were needed to complete the game.
By opposition, I spent hours in the Safe Shallows and Kelp Zone and Mountain gathering resources and crafting stuff. Now of course, it's not like we should spend an equal amount of time in every Biome, but that means that since there are no unique resources in those biomes that are needed to complete the game, you only ever really need to make one base in the Shallow Reef for the whole game because that's where you'll spend most of your time gathering stuff and it's in the center of the map. For the rest, you can use your subs for short visits.
So it would really be useful to assign certains raw material to those Biomes specifically in order to increase traffic to those Biomes (like you could make lead specific to grassy plateau, sulfur specific to mushroom forest, etc.).
- Resources Distribution: I made a post a long time ago saying that we were too reliant on silver throughout the game. Well it's no longer the case, but now the silver has turned into copper. So weirdly, after a few hours of gaming, I had tons of raw elements which are supposed to be rare, like Gold, Lithium, Silver and even stalker teeth, but I was always short on copper, forcing me to spend my time exploring the Safe Shallows for more. As I said above, finding resources is not a real issue as the game is now so it wasn't a real problem but it's weird to see how easy it is to find rare resources compared to basic resources. This means that as you play, copper very soon climbs up to the top of the priority list. I myself often disposed of a piece of gold or aluminium oxide crystal, for a piece of copper because I knew it would be much faster to find another piece of gold or aluminium oxide crystal, than another piece of copper. The only raw material higher than copper for me was Stalker Teeth as it takes longer to get them and it's more dangerous.
And that's it. Those are all the issues that bugged me during the playthrough.
I didn't get back on some other things I mentioned in previous posts like docking for the cyclop or the weird fact that this is a world where we can materialize fully build sophisticated equipment from raw resources, but still use flares to see in the dark, because frankly we can live without them for now (hope you are already gathering ideas for an update though, wink wink).
Other than that, can't wait to play the full version !
Cheers
So I've been playing the game for about 2 years now and, as we are getting close to release, I decided a few months back to start a new game in hardcore and see how the game felt from beginning to end (it was just after the silent running update so at least up to the end available at that time, i.e. the spawning of the eggs). During this playthrough, I tried to put myself as much as possible in the shoes of a new player. So for instance, I waited until I got the signal to go to the Island rather than go there almost immediately to get my fruits. That type of things.
Overall, the game is much better than it was even one year ago. The story is great, the use of the radio to somewhat guide the player toward new technologies is a good idea, love the Aurora and the amount of wrecks you can now find with the tech inside, find it fascinating to find and read the degassi survivors' PDAs, the SeaDragon is trying to beat the Reaper in the "nightmare fuel" category... overall I feel really good about the state of the game.
But, and you knew this but was coming, I feel a few issues still have a detrimental impact on the game and I wanted to bring them up to the devs' attention:
- Base placement bugs: I start with the small one first - it still bugs me to have such a hard time connecting my Moonpool and Scanner Room to my main base. It's like the system is actively trying to prevent me from putting them at the right level. I don't know if the Ghost update has fixed this as I haven't had time to check but damn it's annoying.
- Tech progression: I feel that the acquisition order of new tech is a bit chaotic.
For instance, I found all parts of my Cyclops, as well as the Prawn suit and the Moonpool, way before I found the Modification Station. That is weird since the modification station is very useful in early/mid-game, for instance to get underwater cooked fish (which becomes much less interesting once you get fruits mid-game). Same with Speed Fins or High Capacity Tanks, which in my opinion are mostly useful in the middle of the game (they stay relevant thoughout game but once you get subs, a bit less so). Actually, from my point of view, the Modification Station should be one of the first tech you find (even before the SeaGlide).
In the same way, the StillSuit should be found rather early when water is still an issue for players. When I got it during my playthrough, it was a bit too late in the game and so I only kept it for a very short time because I already had all the water I needed with fruits + Filtration Machine, and the recycled water was constantly taking up my inventory space. If I had had it early however (like the first suit even before radiation suit), I would have used it all the time (on the Filtration machine btw, we should be able to turn it off. It uses so much energy that if you get energy deprived (in the night for instance before you get reactors), the only way to stop it is to remove it).
Also, from my point of view, you should be able to get the Speed Fins before you get the Seamoth. I feel it makes more sense that way because once you get the Seamoth, the Swim Charge Fins become the go to Fins as you have the Seamoth to move around fast.
- Useless Tech: Some of the tech feels useless when playing the game (fun yes, but not necessary).
Such techs are the DiveReel, the Flares/the Flashlight (depending on which you prefer), the Current Generator, the Gravsphere, the Light Stick, the Pipes, the Floating Air Pump, and the Creature Decoy.
The Divereel has never worked for me, the Flashlights is less useful than the Flares which provide light at 360° and doesn't use batteries (but I know some people feel exactly the reverse), the Light Stick is a battery-dependant Flare, the Current Generator serves no real purpose to my knowledge, and the Gravsphere, while cool, is also without purpose as fishing is really not an issue in the game (I've never met a fish so elusive I couldn't catch it in 3-4 secs at worse).
I also don't see the point of Floating Air Pump and Pipes. I mean I guess you could use them for cave exploration but seems like a lot of work for nothing, much easier to simply grab extra Air Tanks and go (it being understood that I played the whole game using a single Air Tank, updated up to Ultra High Capacity in the end, and apart from one time in a wreck where I took a wrong turn, I never once was close to drowning).
Maybe the Creature Decoy should not be part of that list but I never felt the need for it during my playthrough. Either I simply avoided the creatures by running circles around them, or I did what I needed to do fast and got back to my sub. I can't think of any situation where I even thought "Damn, I wish I had that Creature Decoy..." (and as mentioned, I played in hardcore).
More contraversial, I feel the Scanner Room is also crazy cool but useless. I still don't know how we're supposed to use it. Finding resources in this game is not hard, it's surviving while gathering the resources that is the difficult part. Now the drones are very cool but once again not really useful as you can do the same exploration with the Seamoth or yourself. If they could scan or pick up stuff, it would be another story but as they are, once you get pass the cool effect, you never use them again. I didn't use it once aside from building it for fun and yet never had an issue finding raw elements. If it covered the whole map when fully upgraded thought, now that would be a fantastic room to have.
- Underused biomes: all biomes are simply beautiful, but some of them feel somewhat more decorative than useful. So for instance I barely went during my playthrough to the Bulb Zone, the Dunes, the Mushroom Forest, or the Sea Traders path. Even the Grassy Plateau, now that we are much much less reliant on Silver and much more on copper, have lost a lot of interest.
Those Biomes are not "resources gathering biomes". You just go there once or twice to get to a wreck or gather a small quantity of something or check a life pod (which usually leads you to a wreck) and then you never really have to go again.
So while completing the entire game (with all blueprints acquired) I went to the Underwater Island only once for the wreck, went to the Sparse Reef once for the Alien base, went to the Sea Treaders' Path once for the wreck, went to the Grassy Plateau only for the wrecks and pods, went to the Dunes once for a wreck, and went to the Bulb Zone once for a wreck and a pod.
I know I missed a few Caches or wrecks in the process but I never felt they were needed to complete the game.
By opposition, I spent hours in the Safe Shallows and Kelp Zone and Mountain gathering resources and crafting stuff. Now of course, it's not like we should spend an equal amount of time in every Biome, but that means that since there are no unique resources in those biomes that are needed to complete the game, you only ever really need to make one base in the Shallow Reef for the whole game because that's where you'll spend most of your time gathering stuff and it's in the center of the map. For the rest, you can use your subs for short visits.
So it would really be useful to assign certains raw material to those Biomes specifically in order to increase traffic to those Biomes (like you could make lead specific to grassy plateau, sulfur specific to mushroom forest, etc.).
- Resources Distribution: I made a post a long time ago saying that we were too reliant on silver throughout the game. Well it's no longer the case, but now the silver has turned into copper. So weirdly, after a few hours of gaming, I had tons of raw elements which are supposed to be rare, like Gold, Lithium, Silver and even stalker teeth, but I was always short on copper, forcing me to spend my time exploring the Safe Shallows for more. As I said above, finding resources is not a real issue as the game is now so it wasn't a real problem but it's weird to see how easy it is to find rare resources compared to basic resources. This means that as you play, copper very soon climbs up to the top of the priority list. I myself often disposed of a piece of gold or aluminium oxide crystal, for a piece of copper because I knew it would be much faster to find another piece of gold or aluminium oxide crystal, than another piece of copper. The only raw material higher than copper for me was Stalker Teeth as it takes longer to get them and it's more dangerous.
And that's it. Those are all the issues that bugged me during the playthrough.
I didn't get back on some other things I mentioned in previous posts like docking for the cyclop or the weird fact that this is a world where we can materialize fully build sophisticated equipment from raw resources, but still use flares to see in the dark, because frankly we can live without them for now (hope you are already gathering ideas for an update though, wink wink).
Other than that, can't wait to play the full version !
Cheers
Comments
Since they implemented the cyclops in the game for the first time alot of work and ajustments were made to it. The new upgrades added recently (shield , fire suppression etc...) added positively to the experience sure but the thing is so big and clunky to use that i end up about never use it so much its a pain to drive it anywhere thats not open water ..... Anyone that took it for a ride in the Grand Reef knows what im talking about. Its an endless nightmare of immense frustration to ram it thru all the way down to the lava zone really. The other entrances to the Lost River are'nt better either ...
So what i always end up doing is to jampack the depth-upgraded PRAWN full for powercells, first aid kits, purple artifacts and water/food and skitter my way down there merrily.
Am i the only one getting the severe impression that the game world was'nt made big enough with the Cyclops in mind? Or that maybe they designed the Cyclops too big for its own good ....
2-i do see that some techs are useless (for some people) but not all people play the way you do some people are so afraid of big wrecks so they use the dive reel and some don't even know where to look for water filtration machine so they take the stillsuit and so on (believe me you tube is filled with surprises)
3-this one is for you rainstorm
As i said above not everyone play the way you do you don't like the cyclops? well that's your opinion and I respect that
But it's not that useless I find it extremely useful I always pack recources for things that i need recources in deep areas(kyanite,sulfur,etc) instead of going back to the top and it's a good storage area if i want to build a base somewhere
(For the cyclops navigation there's a way to the lost river through the bulb zone just go there and then make your way to the mountain island in the middle you should see it and also you can go through the blood kelp biome hope I helped with something)
Honestly I think it was conceived as a cool idea with no real thought about how implementation within the game world wouldn't work as well as it seemed on paper.
I too dislike the Cyclops, and much prefer zipping around in the Seamoth.
I've said it before (a lot) and I'll say it again... there's a massive gap in the tech-tree as far as vehicles are concerned, a missing link; the Seamoth is like a motorbike, fast with little storage, and the Cyclops is a huge Mack truck, slow and awkward with lots of storage space... but what we really need more than anything else is a middle ground, a white Transit van for general purpose uses.
Underused biomes, resource distribution and harvesting process
Tech problems
If the Cyclops length would be reduced, it would fit far more through most places, without sacrificing anything other than devs time.
Other driving improvements could be little side thrusters, tilt control, cam HUDs, etc.
* Dive reel - agree
* Gravsphere - I use it for protecting cyclops from Lava Larvae, and also collecting fish for bioreactor
*Lightstick - energy use really needs to be less for it's meagre light sphere, also get rid of the damn green placement outline!! No one places it.
*Pipes/pump - seem utterly useless to me. Dive tanks are just as easy to make but better
*Agreed. Decoy is ridiculously large, it shouldn't be over 2*2! All it's doing is making noise and heat?
*Scanner room cameras badly need range boost, +100m for each range upgrade would make them worthwhile but not OP.
*Biome uniqueness - this is really hard, since there aren't that many unique resources, and it would be annoying if you could only get it in one place. I think resource distribution is almost perfect as is, just a little copper deficient.
*Breeding creatures has no purpose - agreed, or at least I haven't found a purpose yet
*Research would be awesome, perhaps in DLC!
*Inconsistent tech - yep, it annoys me too that Cyclops/Prawn don't require power cells! Water filtration needs an ON/OFF switch. It also needs to produce 5x as much water to match its absurd power drain.
*Power cell charger needs a buff or we need a Cyclops charging dock!
Great game
Good use of Gravsphere. Thanks.
Yeah, never placed the lightstick.
There was a time where multiple tanks should be cut, so relying on pipes was for sticking to a single tank. I used it mainly for the wreck at lifepod 17 with pipes allowing me to unlock it early without using multiple tanks.
As there's only eating use and most plants don't get into tech recipes other than the hatching enzyme, this is a bit difficult. But generally the bulb, big mushroom, membrane tree and glowing jellymush should be enough for supporting uniqueness. So a small try, to explain:
- tiny bulb could be used for poison adding together with gaspod to create a repellent or stunning torpedo
- jellyshroom seed with membrane tree from Grand Reef to add to gel sack for the aerogel recipe
Not much to change really then 2 recipes and you would need to visit the other biomes a bit more. Low costs, but high outcome.All tech that needs batteries or power cells should be created empty as those parts can be created seperately and ingame support for it is already there, thus minimal reprogramming of the tech tree.
Water filtration draws too much power with not much output, I agree. Simple solution would be to increase the 2x2 inventory to 4x4 to fill in the same time. And maybe increase bottle water capacity to 75.