Just completed playthrough of the current build. Hell its been quite a while since the last time I played, a lot of new stuff was added!
Not to say the game is bad and is not worth its money (for its cost its a steal).
Actually I am very grateful for Devs for making it. It was a great experience playing it.
There are however several areas that I believe can be improved.
There are too many bugs, game quickly becomes too easy and not challenging and thus is becomes boring much faster than it should.
Bugs that I believe should be fixed:
1. I've seen my character stuck in mid air, especially common when walking on elevated ramps in Moonpool
2. Textures loading just right in front of player. Looks especially bad in red grass biome.
3. Objects pop upping too close, sometimes in front of player. Rocks, seabase pipes, corals in "mushroom forest", basically everything. Such problem didn't existed as far as Gothic 1 and Morrowind and that was almost 20 years ago! There is absolutely no excuse for not fixing it.
4. Objects falling through geometry. Especially Stalker teeth. You can see it easily when setting scanner room on search of Stalker teeth.
5. Creatures falling through geometry. Seen this with Crabsquids. They fall through wall in grand reef cave and become stuck there.
6. Creatures doing weird flips. Very common with Crabsnakes and Crabsquids.
7. Sometimes creatures were swimming right through my base.
8. Stalker that I grew in aquarium first teleported out of it into outside, then teleported back inside the aquarium and started killing all of the fish there, then after I killed it its corpse teleported into my base and become stuck in the wall. Crazy.
9. Base (inside of it) is visible through any geometry on any distance.
10. "Emergency power only. Oxygen production Offline... Power restored" warning every time game is loaded on all of bases and Cyclops. Pretty annoying. Also power is really down for 1 second or so.
There are other bugs as well, but these are top 10 most annoying.
The list of ideas below I've been writing for quite some time while playing the game. I would like to hear feedback from other players!
I hope I don't repeat myself there (I checked it before posting, but I apologize if I missed something).
Suggestions to make game more challenging:
1. It must be harder to save. I suggest that there should be only 2 ways of saving the game
- when you sleep in the bed the game is saved (this will actually make acquiring Cyclops much more exciting because it means that now you have mobile save point);
- by use of special single-use item called "log tablet" (basically this is log entry item you found on wrecks from other survivors.. it should be expensive - it should cost something like 1 microprocessor 1 diamond 1 quartz to manufacture);
2. When you die - you die. No respawn. You have to load the game from your most recent save.
3. By default ALL big creatures kill you in one hit. That include Stalkers, Sand Sharks and Bonesharks. What should happen you should see grab animation (like with Crabsnakes) and then blood or something and then you die. HOWEVER if you have certain items you should be able to save yourself, like this:
- Stalker grabs you but you have a knife: player have a chance to strike Stalker with a knife, Stalker will release the player and swim away with the player's knife stuck in it (special animation for knife strike is required), but player still loses like 40% of health.
- Shark grabs player but player still dies even with a knife.
- Shark grabs player but player have reinforced diving suit (there are chain mail diving suits in real life btw, it should look similar) - player fights with shark, it eventually releases player but player loses like ~80% of hp.
- Shark grabs player but player have both reinforced diving suit and knife - player fights with a shark, stabs it, shark swims away with a knife stuck in it and player looses only 20% of hp.
- For Crabsquids and Crabsnakes it should be pretty similar, except player should loose higher percentage of health, I'd say 80%.
- Reaper kills the player no mater what. In fact, it should break Seamoth during one grab attack, and Seamoth's tazer should not save it from Reaper because it trivializes Reaper to minor annoyance.
- If you have extended fins (I forgot the item name) when shark attacks you but you manage to swim away swimming backwards, shark should usually still manage to bite away part of your fin, so you need to make a new one.
4. Loosing large amount of health should cripple the player character - break his arm or leg. When arm is broken you can't use item by it, when leg is broken you can't swim as fast and can barely walk (ideally you need to hold the wall to be able to walk at all with your leg broken).
5. To heal broken limb you should either spend special item (something like nanobot injection) that can't made but can be found in life pods, wrecks and Aurora, or build special medical robot near the bed in multipurpose room / Cyclops that will heal you.
6. Certain enemies should infect you with poison, e.g. bleeders. You need to make antidote to cure poison. Also it would be nice if bleeders attach not just to you hand, but legs and body as well.
7. It should be impossible to repair vehicles while submerged. Right now even if under attack by leviathans, you can exit seamoth, repair it, and go back in. Also repair should cost resources.
8. Resources are too easy to gather. I suggest that they should not be spread around environment like they are, but rather be concentrated in the caves, so that there would be reason for player to take risk going there. Also, resources should be less universally spread, e.g. right now gold silver lead titanium copper can be found in pretty much any biome. Make it not like that. E.g. only few nuggets of gold and silver should be near starting area and for the rest you should travel to certain biome. Kind of like with magnetite that can be found only in Jelly Shroom Caves. So if you want silver, you need to search for it around e.g. underwater islands, uranium - go to blood kelp caves and so on. For titanium - I suggest it should be accessed ONLY from wrecks (and that will make crash zone a mother lode - just in case you won't get enough from wrecks).
9. Speaking of caves, there must be some unique collectibles that players should search around for. Kind of like snow globes in Fallout. These items should do nothing but just could be put on display in seabase. Item like big seashells (each unique) or pearls or gems. If you collect all of them game might reward you by unique-looking outfit (e.g. T-shirt that says "I completed 100% of the game and all I got is this T-shirt" (I wonder if somebody knows what game give you that
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10. Another thing about resources: I suggest that many of small caves are inaccessible for player by default, BUT you can build a special structure on top of locations with such caves: "Molecular Drill". It will drill an entry shaft for player so that you can go down and collect resources. It should cost you something like 1-3 full power cells. Once upon a time there was a Terraformer tool in the game once, but it was possible to break the game by using it too much. This suggestion is basically application of Terraformer but only in certain places and certain volumes so it shouldn't break the game.
11. Since resources are scares, there should be things like wire kits, copper wire sand microprocessors found in wrecks.
12. Grappling hook for the player character. This is a tool that can be used only on surface areas. Currently you can walk anywhere in the islands so its redundant, however I suggest changing geometry of the islands (and maybe alien installations too) so that there are areas that could only be accessed by grappling hook. Grappling hook is already implemented for Prawn, so it shouldn't be much work. Such areas could have rare resources, unique collectibles or pieces of the lore.
13. Seamoth, seabases and Cyclops don't produce oxygen. Instead we can connect seabase with air pump as one option and have oxygen producing machine (new machine) as another option (can be build in both seabase and cyclops) and as a third option have plants making oxygen (but you need very large number of plants).
14. Exiting Seamoth should reduce its oxygen reserves. As I understand how seamoth works, it doesn't have an airlock; when you open the door its simply flooded.
15. You should be able to make extra oxygen tanks for seamoth as a modification to seamoth. To refill you either need to go to surface or to base or to Cyclops (if it doesn't have its own oxygen machine than re-filling Cyclops will reduce its oxygen reserves).
16. Propulsion rifle is overpowered. Once you get it you become near invincible plus its a fantastic tool to grab resources from distance an to fish fish. I suggest that by default it should only work as "grab rifle" but you can modify it so it can work as "repulsion rifle" (for extra cool points: add animation during modification of how player character attaches programmator (should be part of modification station) to rifle and changes its programming). Need to experiment with UI, maybe this new "repulsion rifle" can work as both repulsion/default, maybe there should be a switch between two modes.
17. Alien bases look dangerous however they are very safe. That should not be the case. I suggest that there should be huge invincible but not very fast bot on each base that will follow the player (and can one shot the player if it comes close). Also there should be more type of key items that you should find on the bases to unlock "doors" there. Point is alien bases should be dangerous and scary places.
18. Warpers look creepy but they aren't really dangerous. Atm they are more of an annoyance. I think they should be much, much more dangerous. First, their teleport attack shouldn't damage you (wait for it). Instead their main attack should be melee grab, that always kill player no matter what. Second nothing from the existing tools deal damage to them, no your can ram them with Seamoth. Third, their behavior should be different: a couple of first time you see them they just stalk you e.g. swim around you at some distance, don't come close, swim away if you go to close to them. Then they should start attacking you. Then the should appear even in safe areas not far from player base. Then they should appear right around player base. And finally they should teleport player right out of his base into their claws. To deal with it player would have to relocate to other neighborhood (that will eventually reset Warper hunt status to new player base, so by not staying on one base for too long you can avoid them). Another way to deal with them would be certain late game item that I would talk about later.
18a. Extra cool point for eventually finding your life pod on the bottom and cut open just as the rest of the life pods. Trigger for that could be player moving to seabase and not being around his lifepod for some time (so that it would be believable that something butchered it while you was away).
19. Getting power is too easy. Bioreactor makes the rest of power generators obsolete. Its both very cheap and you can get unlimited power supply from either growbed or aquarium. I suggest that it should be removed (its model can be repurposed for something else). Instead you should use solar panels(that should really work only near the surface, like 10m depth tops)/thermal generators and power lines. As for nuclear reactor I suggest that it should never run out of fuel (naval reactors are re-fueled like once per 10 or even 20 years, and this with our current primitive technology that uses only 1-2% of initial fuel (far less than that actually) ), but making a fuel rod should take A LOT of uranite, like 20-30 pieces. It should feel like a huge achievement when you make it.
20. Getting food is too easy. Once you unlocked growbed or big aquarium than that's it. It shouldn't be like that.
- For growbed, growing stuff should require a lot of light (thus A LOT of power). For internal growbed there could be lamp on top of it that is automatically attached to the ceiling of multipurpose room. For external one you should make floodlights. Otherwise nothing should grow. Plus it needs water (for surface plants). So I suggest that (unless you put growbeds in the islands) water filtration machine is necessary in the "orchard room". 1 machine per 3 large growbeds. Small should be watered manually, unless there are only decorative flowers growing in them.
- For aquarium, in order to make fish multiply, you need to populate it with flora from the biome where these fish naturally live (and this flora needs light... so if you run out of power, ALL fish in your aquarium dies). E.g. if you want to eat Oculus, you need jelly shroom, cradle and other plants from jelly shroom caves (forgot their names tbh) in your aquarium.
21. Sustaining yourself is too easy. You can eat one kind of fish or even worse one kind of plant and be fine. That should not be the case. To remain health you must eat both fish and plants, unless you consume "vitamins" item. This item can be found in life pods, wrecks and Aurora and can't be manufactured. So if you want "Fish are friends, not food" achievement (that ABSOLUTELY should be in the game) you should scavenge around or speedrun. If you don't have proper diet, player character should be ill - max health decreased, strength decreased (can't do certain actions, e.g. fight sharks even with knife) and eventually dies.
22. Islands are too safe. Crab like crawler thingies are an annoyance, not a threat. I suggest more dangerous fauna. E.g. during the day there should some large flying predator that you should hide from to avoid, during the night there should be different danger, e.g. swarm of flying bleeders trying to suck you dry, and in the caves there should be a HORDE of cave crawlers. You should feel like your propulsion rifle is not adequate to protect yourself. Also having predatory flora would be nice too (e.g. surface tiger plant... but it would be nice to have something more hideous).
23. I would change behavior of some predators too. E.g. biters should ignore you, unless you have 50% health or less - in that case they should swarm you. Bonesharks ignore Seamoth until you turn lights on, lights make them crazy (atm they just attack you always and that's just not a fun interaction). Sonar ping should work like invitation for Reapers to fight for the territory (it would be fun btw if the completely ignore Cyclops until you use sonar; seamoth is the size of their prey so they should always attack it).
24. Speaking of Reapers, they should be more omnipresent. Only safe shallows are too shallow for them and kelp forest are not "transparent" for them (it is said that they see with their sonar). The rest of the biomes should be their dinner table. From the size of the Reapers it looks like their main prey are Bonesharks and Sandsharks and occasional stalker that wanders away from safe areas. As for how player should deal with them... Hm... Maybe Reapers need surface oxygen to breath, like some fish in Amazon? So staying near the bottom hiding between rocks for long enough should be a viable strategy. Also that would explain why there are no Reapers in deep biomes and caves. Another way to deal with them would be using decoy and 2 more instruments that I'll talk about later.
25. Flora should start grow on your seabase and on wrecks. That includes shell found on abandoned seabases and medusa-like stinger plants. To clean your base from it you need a special new tool called bio-disintegrator that you can't make because it is a weapon. But more on it later.
26. You got all the info about the Quarantine Enforcement Platform and disease way to fast. Instead it should've been dropped by very little pices at the time. Maybe not ever even telling about "disease" and "quarantine" specifically, to make players to guess what the heck is going on.
Suggestions to make game more fun:
1. Ability to use both hands. So that you can have e.g. flashlight in one hand and scanner in the other.
2. Ability to make a spear. Making and using a spear for human is as natural as using claws and fangs and beak is for the animals. We can make a metal tube, a knife and wire and one doesn't have to be a genius how to make a spear from these things. Spear however should be only enough to discourage shark-sized predators from attacking you from the front and kill cave crawlers (heck there SHOULD be some other sort of bottom-dwelling crawlers in the game, small ones, and big ones).
3. Explorer tool currently is not very useful. I suggest to improve it in the following way: once upon a time there was a bug when you could see pipes through geometry, thus it was possible to use pipes to "map" the caves (you could see 3d representation of the cave that way). So I suggest that explorer tool should walk similar way: you put nodes and on your HUD you can see connection between this nodes going through geometry. Since its a hood you should be able to turn it on/off at will. Also you should be able to chart as many caves as you like at the same time. Probably by adding extra button to explorer tool UI (e.g. "start charting new cave") that will mean that you started making new graph that should not be connected with the old one.
4. Mapping tool. Device that you can hold that maps areas where you have been to the 3D map that you can later watch in Scanner room projector, or as 2D map on the mapping tool. Should be expensive and found on some remote wrecks/aurora.
5. Function for lab equipment: currently scanner tool tells you everything about stuff you have scanned. I suggest that it doesn't and you need to put samples of stuff into lab tools and wait for some time to get full information.
6. Sharks and Stalkers are edible. In fact they should have enough meat in them to keep you sustained for several days, however their meat will quickly spoil unless...
7. Refrigerator machine for seabase. Allows you to store big game like sharks for future consumption. Cooking robot is an option.
8. Manufacturing room setup. It is common among Subnautica players to make a dedicated room for manufacturing. Such room have fabricator and lots of lockers around the wall, each containing raw resource. However its still tedious. It should be possible to make a manipulator looking thing or something on the ceiling, that will sort of connect fabricator to each of the lockers to that when you make stuff with this fabricator you can use what all lockers in this room contains as if they were in your inventory.
9. Speaking of lockers, you should see what's inside of lockers with glass walls. There already are models for each raw material and equipment so it should be trivial to implement.
10. Moonpool is too clumsy. I suggest it is removed and instead "moonpool" is an equipment that can be built in multipurpose room. If it doesn't fit (I'm not sure, than you need 2 multipurpose rooms stacked to build moonpool setup). What I don't like about current moonpool that it leaves too little space to walk around the pool, its clunky and you got stuck in the railings occasionally and even visually there is no place to walk around modification console. So I suggest that you can build such console anywhere in the base and for actual modification there should be addition set of manipulator arms that will add stuff to Seamoth. E.g. there already are models for storage boxes and torpedo launch tubes, so when modification is chosen than you can see these manipulators touch this areas and modification models appear like when you build stuff with build tool.
11. Scanner room is too clumsy. I suggest it is removed and instead 3D projector and camera bot (that you can use to check status of Warpers btw) control console are devices that you can build in multipurpose room. Scanner itself should be a machine that you can build outside, on the foundation, roof, or completely outside of base (but you will need to power it with cell or power transmitter in this case).
12. Base control room... Same as the above.
13. Actually, there could be single base control console/monitor device with which you can access all controllable devices on the base - scanner, cameras, upgrade console, power, manufacturing, radio, etc.
14. Ladder climbing animation like in the Cyclops. Current teleportation feels... awkward and a bit disorienting.
15. Add a proper spiral staircase that you can walk rather than climb.
16. More visions that Emperor sends you... Visions from Warpers would be nice addition too. Also you should see them while sleeping, until you have final stage of the Disease.
17. Speaking of disease, when you get final stage player character should start coughing like we see Bart do in the trailer.
18. Currently sonar "ping" shows only loaded cells of geometry. It looks awkward and even limits its usability. It should show faraway landscape too. Rendering of faraway landscape in open world was done as back as in Oblivion. If it could be done 15 years ago, it definitely could be done today.
19. Add sonar to sea glide. Current map projection that it shows isn't informative, in fact I don't know anybody who can read it. So either add sonar and remove this map, or make it display predators (like Cyclops panel displays leviathans).
20. It should be possible to make Cyclops run on nuclear fuel. Same as base nuclear reactor: you look for 20-30 uranite pieces and then you won't need to recharge it ever.
21. Cyclops should be the fastest vehicle in the game. For naval vehicles usually the rule is that the bigger it is the faster it is. Also fast Cyclops would add one more reason for players to want to have it. Currently it is outclassed by Seamoth and making it feels kind of forced, especially considering how hard it is to pilot and maintain (compared to Seamoth and Prawn).
22. Make all Cyclops functions accessible from hotkeys/controller buttons. It is very not convenient to turn camera to then manually press some button. Animation of player character pressing such button would be nice addition as well.
23. Escape rocket should be nuclear fueled instead of ion cells fueled. It is very odd that human vehicle would use alien technology, right? Also it feels forced that you should go to alien installation to scavenge for cubes for this rocket alone. In real life just 2 kilograms of plutonium contains enough energy to launch Apollo to the Moon, assuming all this energy can be extracted and used for propulsion. I bet that in the future nuclear rocket puzzle will be solved.
24. Purpose for alien Arcs. Right now most of them lead from one "point in nowhere" to other "point in nowhere". So what can be done with it? I see two options: first Arcs are accessible with Seamoth so that you can actually use them to travel around the map fast and safe. Second, some of these Arcs lead to hidden areas that can't be accessed in any other way.
25. And speaking of Arcs, it would nice that if activated Arcs showed not green glow, but actual destination of travel. The most primitive way to do it is by rendering texture from camera. The more fun way to it is by adding geometry from destination location that is visible only from certain angles... Portals are very fun feature to implement, trust me!
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26. Finally, touchy subject of actual weapons. I suggest that it should be stated that manufacturing of weapons can be unlocked only by order of senior officer. However when you make it to Aurora and find log that you are the only surviving member of the crew player character can promote himself to "acting captain" and thus unlock manufacturing of the weapons, however all of them must $uck in one way or another to not break feeling of danger.
- Death Ray Gun. Works only in surface areas. Will help you in the islands, but by the time you normally acquire it you've already explored the islands. Do nothing against security bot in the alien bases.
- Bio Disintegrator. Destroys flora and small predators like biters and can scare away sharks. Ignored by leviathans. Does nothing to Warpers. Does nothing to alien base bot.
- Heavy Bio Disintegrator. Can vaporize sharks and scare away leviathans. Require special power cells to run that can not be manufactured and can be found in Aurora in very limited numbers. Can force Warper to teleport away. Still does nothing to alien base bot.
PS. Oh and player character absolutely must talk. This is the biggest missed opportunity of the original game. There could've been many sarcastic comments by him, arguing with the AI (can you imagine how funny dialog about him wanting weapons could be?) and so on. Also, when you finish the game, they could unlock another player character with different voice lines who is different member of the crew (e.g. one of the pilots or passengers) and thus can unlock some more lore.
Subnautica PlayStation Update 1.08 Released - Subnautica
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