For some weird reason, they though that those players who have 20+ hours of exploration and resource management behind them would love to play another game: visiting ancient temples in luminescent caves deep underwater to scan huge skeletons to complete a majestic story.
No, it’s not a crow’s view over a haunted forest where fantasy heroes will walk in after the cutscene is over, it’s an underwater cave from the same game where I made this screenshot:
If there are witches, there must be evil altar with green slime flowing around it:
Oh, it’s an underwater cave with fossils, my bad. By the way, stupid fantasy witches eat this! I built a seabase on your altar, powered by perpetuum mobile potato fermentor and an overpowered scanner to map your whole complex!
I wish I knew what these guys were thinking when they though it’s a good idea to completely switch genre after 20 hours of gameplay. From a “realistic” underwater simulator to a fantasy quest game with practically no resource need. I tend to believe that the perpetuum mobile potato fermentor was placed on purpose: to make sure that even the dumbest player can’t run out of energy. After all, he’ll go to the internet and soon find out that potato beds can be placed in installations with no external light and they still grow, and then they can be fed to the bioreactor for energy.
After a bug took away my big submarine (didn’t destroy it, just placed it out of the World), I didn’t start over. The resource management part is a pointless grind if you don’t need resources after you got “enough” and the exploration story has no replay ability. So I joined the people who no longer plays this game, and judging from the low steamchart numbers, this isn’t a small group.
It’s a shame, because the setting, the graphics, the production lines is great. But it’s just a toy, which isn’t used in “the game” which is a linear story. Let me give some obvious ideas how could this toy be used for a good game:
- Give much less resources to the starting area. Only enough to get started, build a minimal base, a few tools, no submarine. Force players to explore further if they want more resources and more advanced items.
- Plants should take 2-3 play hours to grow, forcing planning ahead about food. Not: “have 1 potato, plant it, have 5 before you get hungry.
Put in seasons, with ice on the winter, taking away sunlight from the solar plants (obviously fix that plants grow without light). This way players either have to stockpile energy or find heat vents or nuclear fuel
These aren’t rocket science, it’s basic “survival game” building blocks. If the devs didn’t mean their game a survival one, than make it a pure story game with no previous “resource grind” for the submarines and techs. Make these de facto quest rewards, so the story-loving players don’t have to bother with such grind.
Simply put: figure out what is the desired playstyle and cater to that. Don’t change it mid-game.
I have a feeling you’d love Oxygen Not Included. It’s single player, but it’s probably one of the best resource management games out there. As an engineer I feel it will click a lot more, since you need to manage fluids and gases, have temeperature contolrs etc.
Oh, and Happy New Year.
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@tithian: Way to be offtopic. The point isn’t that there are other, better games which would imply that Subnautica is a “bad” game as it is. That would be a subjective opinion.
The post is about the fact that the game dramatically changes mid-game, disappointing the fans of the first half, while the prospective players of the second half don’t even buy the game because of the reviews and videos made about the first half.
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Went off topic because there’s nothing really to disagree about in your post. Thought I might present a close option where this change doesn’t happen, and fits the survival genre.
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At the risk of also being offtopic, I have another single player survival game suggestion for you. Not a potential project or anything obviously, but found it a lot of fun and it is also very popular on Steam – “There are Billions”. I have not finished it, but I suspect there is no switch and bait here.
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Yup, I really loved the first half of the game. If the build up to the bigger sub followed by the upgrades followed into the later half of the game then it would make a little more sense, but it’s still unnecessary. If the warpers came into the low shallows, or alternatively other invasive species started messing with your bases (and destroying them) then it would be more involved. (Sadly this only really happens when you crash your sub into your base, and it loses power and floods.)
Perhaps a different option would be to force players to build bases far deeper (or on land) and to have food stuffs only be available to harvest in dangerous areas. But yeah, the game had a ton of potential.
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To be fair, is it a “Survival” game, per se? Sure… (And I’m playing it too, one of my current goals is get more indie games off steam and play them… so this fits right in.) There’s lots of survival at the beginning… I ran out of water and died because I couldn’t figure out how to harvest the coral to make bleach. The annoying part for me is you’re constantly under the clock to get food… but at the same time your inventory is constantly full.
I guess I just suck at this game. It took me a while to figure out how to use the pump and tubes, too. I still don’t have it right… but I can set it up to degree. But then I got a bigger scuba tank. Meh.
But at some point, I wouldn’t mind if the game segued to a “Find a way to get me home!” game.
All in all, a fine start to a game, (Despite the years in apparent development.) I don’t really mind that though, it looks fine and there are no “We stuck in MTX to cover the bills!”
That said? There are some things I find a bit annoying, but it’s mostly the “Game Console” control metaphor. I kinda wish I knew “What to make next” without filling my inventory with things I can’t use, but that’s the game, I’m not going to “optimize” my time by researching it on the internet.
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