Subnautica Below Zero gameplay flow (and optimization)
EvilSmoo
Join Date: 2008-02-16 Member: 63662Members
Join Date: 2008-02-16 Member: 63662Members
Both SN and SB:BZ suffer from this- the only way to really learn how to play the game, is to have played the game for a few dozen hours.
And how do you do that? Wander around randomly? BZ is even worse, because SN had the Aurora as a MASSIVE landmark, and its mere presence presented a few fairly obvious things to do- explore and repair it.
I tried getting my father to play SN. First off, he had no idea what to do- my first point. Many players want SOMETHING to suggest what to do. This man dumped a LOT of time into Chernobyl, exploring and derping around is not the problem. With both SN games, they explain little, there's no hub or mission system. Just some vague escape pods in SN, and BZ just... dumps you in and says "have at!" And the update is even worse now, with flying in all ninja-like.
Then Subnautica started to try and melt the (actually decent) mobile video card in his laptop. Other games don't DO that, just Subnautica. My desktop card doesn't care, but this is IMPORTANT.
How to fix this? Missions. Self-generated missions, to acquire blueprints, or point the player to regions with higher concentrations of desired resources. I've never really liked RNG in breaking mineral clusters, either.
Also, optimize the engine and let us turn stuff down. Dangit, running up the room temperature or melting laptop cards is Not Cool.
If that BZ living pod had a little mapping system, that gave the player an idea what was around down to like 100-200m, so you could run around getting blueprints for the stuff, and put HUD waypoints over kelp and such, and popped a few default missions to get the player going, IMO, that would help a lot. I only knew ALAN was down there cause I already knew it from previous play. Nothing pointed me anywhere, or gave me the slightest idea what to do or where to go. Then you try and swim around, and oh hey, massive sharks. I might be a genocidal maniac who can work with a knife, but sharks are effective walls a lot of the time.
And how do you do that? Wander around randomly? BZ is even worse, because SN had the Aurora as a MASSIVE landmark, and its mere presence presented a few fairly obvious things to do- explore and repair it.
I tried getting my father to play SN. First off, he had no idea what to do- my first point. Many players want SOMETHING to suggest what to do. This man dumped a LOT of time into Chernobyl, exploring and derping around is not the problem. With both SN games, they explain little, there's no hub or mission system. Just some vague escape pods in SN, and BZ just... dumps you in and says "have at!" And the update is even worse now, with flying in all ninja-like.
Then Subnautica started to try and melt the (actually decent) mobile video card in his laptop. Other games don't DO that, just Subnautica. My desktop card doesn't care, but this is IMPORTANT.
How to fix this? Missions. Self-generated missions, to acquire blueprints, or point the player to regions with higher concentrations of desired resources. I've never really liked RNG in breaking mineral clusters, either.
Also, optimize the engine and let us turn stuff down. Dangit, running up the room temperature or melting laptop cards is Not Cool.
If that BZ living pod had a little mapping system, that gave the player an idea what was around down to like 100-200m, so you could run around getting blueprints for the stuff, and put HUD waypoints over kelp and such, and popped a few default missions to get the player going, IMO, that would help a lot. I only knew ALAN was down there cause I already knew it from previous play. Nothing pointed me anywhere, or gave me the slightest idea what to do or where to go. Then you try and swim around, and oh hey, massive sharks. I might be a genocidal maniac who can work with a knife, but sharks are effective walls a lot of the time.
Comments
Scanning ANY sea-truck wreckage for ANY portion should unlock a mission that results in base sea-truck becoming unlocked.
Other things in that vein.
In latest BZ, it never even MENTIONED the base building tool. Or what to do, or where to go. My BEST indication of ANYTHING to do was a vague picture in the PDA? Not really good enough. Robin would have to be a maniac or a moron to land on a planet with absolutely no idea where anything was, or what to do about it. Doesn't seem like a moron, but the former does seem likely. I mean, what's her PLAN here? Find her sister if Alterra was lying, find her sister otherwise, find what happened to her sister. Okay.
Then what? Be smug about it while she's trapped on an alien planet under the control of a hostile corporation? She doesn't seem to have any exit plan whatsoever.
I'm just checking because it kind of sounds like you expect all this to have been in place already.
I like that the game doesn't railroad me and hold my hand for every little tidbit of the game. Yes, I felt a little bit lost at first. But I felt a sense of accomplishment when I got to the end credits. There's plenty of content on YT or streaming services to watch a play through or just get the little bit of help one may need.
It's a survival game, you're an employee of a major corporation that really doesn't care if you survive, so why would they give you a robust survival suite of tools and database knowledge to do so?
Bad writing is bad writing. Bad ideas are bad ideas. Bad optimization is bad optimization. Early access is a state, not an excuse.
A marginally competent operative should have SOME exit plan in place before landing (unsupported) on a hostile planet. In SN it made sense, since you had no plan to be on the planet in the first place. But this one? She's there intentionally.
And a game engine should not over-stress video cards. *MY* card doesn't really care, but it should NOT melt a decent laptop. And it's a decent laptop, but not an overpriced video card like I'm running.
Yeah. Their criticism was levelled at both games.
Personally I like the aimlessness of the original game and dislike the more narrow and directed approach of BZ. So I don't think they are the same in this respect.
Though I also think it's smart to cater to as many tastes as possible when designing games. A more structured, linear mission system could be there as an option. Something you choose either as a gameplay setting or when starting a new game.
My card wasn't great (comfortably above min spec but not awesome) and I have to confess that I stopped playing the original game because it was super choppy even with graphics turned down. Swimming around was generally ok but full speed in the seamoth was very ugly.
It was visually jarring to see everything loading in so slowly and also for me to be constantly hearing the thuds of fish I'd hit without ever seeing cos of said slow loading.
I decided to put it aside until I had a better card so I could actually enjoy it. Which I do now but haven't gotten around to that yet.
I think I saw something about an update which touched on optimization, but since I am on a different machine I can't fire it up for comparison.
"Other games don't DO that, just Subnautica." As a laptop gamer, I disagree. Any game with similar or better graphics WILL make your laptop overheat, IF you aren't using a proper cooling system (i.e; ventilation mat, vacuum cooler). I'm playing in the summer heat and my game ran smoothly on medium graphics (2015 laptop with gtx970m, nothing crazy), BECAUSE i'm using a cooling system. When I turn the fan off? Hehehe, you could put thermal plants around my house and count my FPS with one hand
Salad Days gives you a couple pictures with key locations marked on them, but you still have no form of a map to compare them too, so they are useless. It would be nice if one of our tasks was to hack into one of Alterra's satellites for a map with our location on it. Doesn't have to be of the entire game map, but of specific areas like Glacial Basin and enough of the starting area to give the new player a leg up. Save spoilery areas for later, or to discover on your own, but BZ needs something to give us some bearings.
There have been comments that giving players direction is "babywalking" them through an exploration experience. I disagree. You're in a fantasy world where you have no context as to why you're there and what your character is supposed to be doing. The game has to provide that. The intro cutscene only shows a crash, then you have to run like a mad woman to get to water. That's all you get. The rest you're supposed to read on a PDA and most of that is not yet implemented (NYI). Frankly, that's poor game design.
The game needs triggers in place to guide you. Very quickly you need to be told what the heck you were doing out in space in 4546b's orbit in the first place. If Robyn is supposed to be going there intentionally, why? That should be crystal clear. She didn't forget just because her ship crashed. That's objective #2 right after oxygen. If they're going to go with the Sam storyline as the primary, fine. Flesh that out. Guide us through that with the various supply drops and bases we encounter. Don't just slap a bunch of stuff in the PDA and say "read." It's a game, not a lecture. The reading should add flavor. If it's essential, it should probably be voiced and replayable like the Degasi stuff in the original. By doing this the player can discern what is essential to the story and what is fluff for your own exploration and enjoyment.
The Precursor architect is similar. He's a downloaded conscience in your mind. He should be speaking to you. Frequently. He's there because he needs a host. The host was unwilling. He wants a new host. They should be talking about how to make that happen. He knows what he needs. Tell Robyn. Voice it. It's a core part of the story. You can choose when you advance it. Maybe you want to spend forever exploring or farming for a new base or whatever, but he needs to interact with the player. It can't just be you exploring, then he spawns a random waypoint three biomes away. You give the player some precursor technology, why didn't you just get it instantly when Robyn picked up the architect? It's in her head. Well, he needs to trust you to tell you and you need a purpose. Recyclotron should appear fairly early. No reason not to. Quantum locker should appear when you have an impetus for a second base. Etc.
It should also be noted that certain gear is essential to advancing the story. It needs to be available systematically. Forcing players to deep dive well past the limit of their vehicles and with no explicit directions is frustrating. It's very risky. The world is big. The caves are small, twisty, and ridiculously easy to get lost in. If you're meant to explore, you need to provide gear to allow sufficient time to do it. If you're meant to deep dive to earn it, give the player some indication of where to dive, probably seeding the first fragment high enough to encounter it naturally, then requiring deep diving to finish the blueprint.
The standard and high capacity oxygen tanks needs to be accessible above 100m. The ultra-high capacity one should be accessible above 200m. The sea truck is limited to 150m. That means the moonpool and vehicle upgrade bays BOTH must be available above that. Asking players to deep dive to 370m to get it is ludicrous. Few players would naturally try that especially in that rat's nest you have to navigate. You have to go watch a walkthrough video to know to do that. The game should NOT require that. You should have the information you need to play the game provided in the game itself. The hover bike blueprint should appear earlier in the glacial basin, so you can use it to explore the place. Same with the penguin since you need it for the cracks and crevasses. Same with the cold suit. And the game must absolutely tell you how to deal with the snow stalker before you encounter it and decide to kill it, only to realize you can't harvest fur from the dead ones. In fact, if the game seeds stuff from people who've been there before, they should provide hints to how to deal with the monster AI. Do you need flares? No lights? Lights and loud noises? Kill or be killed? These are all things that should be in the bases, honestly, given that they're essential for survival and open the door to exploration. Honestly, they need to do probably several game pacing passes to make sure enough fragments and ingredients are spawning and the blue prints are dropping at the right times to make a smooth playthrough. They're not even close right now. Tons of roadblocks.
I know the game in under heavy revision right now. While you're storyboarding, please think about some of these things and build the world accordingly. If you build a zone, give us some places in it to explore and reasons to do it. Pace out the resources and blueprints so I can progress logically and without having to go look up where to find stuff in a spoiler-filled walkthrough. I like being able to figure stuff out on my own, but it's an alien fantasy world. You're going to have to provide some guidance.
My point is that the things you're talking about may be planned, may even be written and being tested internally, just not deployed to the public game yet. We don't know, so why be so judgmental before we see what future updates bring? Like if you had access to a draft of a book that was still being written, you wouldn't complain about the lack of plot continuity because you know it's not done yet. Well, I wouldn't, anyway.
Also Robin isn't an operative, she's a scientist. She's a competent scientist who can survive on her own, but she's not someone who has training on infiltration or whatever. Honestly I thought her half-baked plan was written in on purpose, to show you an aspect of her character. She's angry at her sister's death and Alterra's obvious cover-up. She'll do whatever (she thinks) it will take to find out what really happened, even if it means not having details like an exit plan thought out ahead of time.
I quite like the new story, actually. c.c
But anyway, maybe try to be a bit more chill about obviously missing features in something that's still being built?
The only thing that bothered me in the start of the game was lack of storage space for the hoards of materials I've gathered.
Not knowing what's useful in the early game, one tends to hoard every and anything. All eggs, plant seeds and so forth. If I could change anything in the original early game it would be extra storage in the pod, or a more obvious progression into a small base with storage in mind.
Agree, the games performance are obviously lacking and desperately needs a major performance overhaul. And it should payback easily, since the game would be accessible to far more people/systems.
I enjoy free roaming games far more than mission oriented ones. Hate being given missions that are usually ignored for a while and when you go back to it there are like dozens of them. Also hate progression tied to missions, it usually hurts replayability big time (I have replayed the original countless times mostly because of this).
And I don't mind SN RNG, since it's something 1 chance in 2/3. If you break a few clusters you're bound to acquire the minerals you want.
Maps are somewhat a controversial subject. Personally I avoid using them and try to find my way without it, if possible I disable maps in the games I play (that's usually a rare feature). To me guiding yourself without a map adds an extra layer of immersion and difficulty. In SN I also play without waypoints. I disable them all: pods, vehicles, camera drones, you name it.
I do however understand the want/need some people have of maps, so in my opinion it should be optional to provide a better experience for everyone.
Regarding the sharks (and almost all other fauna in the game), just keep swimming and ignore them. If needed pop a medikit. SN, and the little I played of BZ, is a easy game. Most of the deterrent power the fauna holds on the player is the fear inducing factor they hold. Once the player steps over that boundary (which isn't a requirement, but helps a lot) and ignores most creatures, their game experience turns much smoother.
Bear in mind that the original SN is already a huge success, just go to Steam and read some of the 100k+ reviews. Would it have done this good if it followed the hand holding recipe of pointing the player wherever they needed to go? I don't know, it could go either way. However, the reviews seem to point that a large majority of the player base likes (a lot!) this free exploration approach.
This is something that bothers me with BZ, it feels much more linear and constrained (maybe in part because most of the early game loop lies inside a bay). I haven't played for ages and know they changed a lot in the game, but I'm actively trying not to play to enjoy it more when it comes out.