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I drew my own map on a notebook. It was a lot of fun and I recommend it.
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Jun 19, 2021 08:09
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Having mapping in the game would also make it a bit too obvious that the actual playable area in both games is very small.
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Jun 19, 2021 08:23
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Yeah subnautica would be much better if the area were multiplied by ten and the space was filled with identical draugr dungeons
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Jun 19, 2021 23:36
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ikanreed posted:Yeah subnautica would be much better if the area were multiplied by ten and the space was filled with identical draugr dungeons don’t know what the gently caress you’re on about, but yes, having a larger map would indeed make the game even better.
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Jun 19, 2021 23:42
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Why? How?
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Jun 19, 2021 23:43
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The map in Subnautica is much smaller than it feels when you can't see that map. The first time I saw what the Subnautica map looked like I was surprised and, honestly, kind of disappointed to discover the starting biomes are like half of its radius. The game is great at making the distances feel vast, as though you're covering more ground than you really are, and hence that the seas are huge, deep and mysterious. If I were recommending to a new player I'd tell them the same thing as I would about playing without hunger and thirst, which is to save referencing a map for your second playthrough. A map undeniably helps you orient yourself and locate things you might have missed or hunt down the resources you're grinding, but save it for once the sense of wonder that Subnautica is really good at has worn off naturally.
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Jun 20, 2021 00:16
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A map doesn't ruin much for me considering a large part of Subnautica's size is it's verticality and your average map doesn't represent that well. A far greater proportion of Subnautica's wonder was the design of the biomes and the sounds they filled the world with, as well as that verticality that resulted in so many moments of staring down into blackness and seeing or hearing hints of a new biome within that blackness.
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Jun 20, 2021 01:03
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I think Below Zero had the best map size, it just cut out all the empty areas. I certainly don’t think it needs to be larger than in the main game.
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Jun 20, 2021 06:22
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I think a vast map with a reason to build several bases would be awesome as a way to mark your progress whether lateral and/or vertical.
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Jun 20, 2021 08:48
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I think a map you build up yourself would have saved me a lot of stress and frustration, especially in BZ (that overland region where everything looked almost identical, constantly made worse with blizzards? not a great time). Fundamentally there's not that much difference from having a map showing all your locations you've left beacons so you're not constantly togging them and just having the beacon names floating at you.
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Jun 20, 2021 09:19
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The land bits were so bad it turned a great game to into a chore.
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Jun 20, 2021 09:26
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Oasx posted:I think Below Zero had the best map size, it just cut out all the empty areas. I certainly don’t think it needs to be larger than in the main game. Nah, it should've been bigger. Especially vertically, but I could've done with some more horizontal space too. I want to explore and build poo poo! But there's not enough to explore and not enough space to justify building extra bases. I get that maybe going back and forth all the time would become tedious though, but maybe they could introduce some kind of teleporter tech? Hang on... As for empty areas, the solution here is not to remove them, but to fill them with stuff.
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Jun 20, 2021 10:49
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More excuses to build bases would be welcome. It's fun to go hog wild with them but I wouldn't have minded if you needed them to serve as undersea cable anchor points, or to setup a mining base to open up some deep sea cavern or something, I don't know. Also at some points found myself wanting defense turrets / electric fields for sand sharks and other prey. A little bit more base automation would have been fun too. Maybe some late game recipes that let you auto-feed a bioreactor passing fish. And if you have materials in a locker in a base, for the love of god why can't that just automatically register with the fabricator.
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Jun 20, 2021 17:51
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Replaying original Subnautica and some of the land portions are pretty bad too. The part with the quarantine enforcement platform is OK but the other bits reminded me of Skyrim/Mass Effect where I'm fighting the physics system to climb hills.
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Jun 20, 2021 17:54
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Viridiant posted:A map doesn't ruin much for me considering a large part of Subnautica's size is it's verticality and your average map doesn't represent that well. A far greater proportion of Subnautica's wonder was the design of the biomes and the sounds they filled the world with, as well as that verticality that resulted in so many moments of staring down into blackness and seeing or hearing hints of a new biome within that blackness. having an exhaustive quantified inventory of those biomes to hand so you know all there is to find, where to find it, and when you're done fundamentally changes that experience in really obvious ways though, and even if you personally are totally zen about the whole thing and able to experience every moment with perfect wonder on your dozenth playthrough and wiki dive that is not the average gamer they're making the thing for A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jun 20, 2021 |
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Jun 20, 2021 19:28
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uXs posted:That's crazy, the scanner room is my #1 target because it's so useful. I think part of the reason for my not using beacons is that I played both games through early access before they added every area, so I had a rough idea of where things were when the games came out. I usually navigate using common landmarks and, when they add them, signals from lifepods/objectives. Also the game has a few cues that help you out, like for example the first game makes a sort of ambient underwater metallic crashy sound(?) when you're near a wreck. The same sound plays in BZ but I cant figure out what it indicates in that game, maybe nearby fragments?
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Jun 21, 2021 04:35
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I love this game. I made a toilet.
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Jun 27, 2021 03:11
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I'm the peeper
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Jun 27, 2021 03:30
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I think what Below Zero should have done was have the entire surface covered in ice with just a few access points scattered across the map and have it be a flat ice sheet for the most part. This way you could zip across the ocean on your bike and actually have a drat use for the thing. All the surface areas ended up just being isolated little sections with heat sources and food/water everywhere so there was never any danger besides the predators and the occasional blizzard. If the speeder bike was your primary way of getting around a larger sea map in a fast way I think that would also organically give players a reason to have multiple bases. In fact they could have cut the truck entirely.
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Jun 27, 2021 22:32
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Demiurge4 posted:I think what Below Zero should have done was have the entire surface covered in ice with just a few access points scattered across the map and have it be a flat ice sheet for the most part. How would you avoid drowning when you have like 30 seconds of oxygen at the start?
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Jun 27, 2021 22:41
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uXs posted:How would you avoid drowning when you have like 30 seconds of oxygen at the start? That's the neat part, you don't.
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Jun 27, 2021 22:56
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uXs posted:How would you avoid drowning when you have like 30 seconds of oxygen at the start? Just swim to the surface and get more air. 
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Jun 27, 2021 23:08
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The air bubble plants in BZ really removed all the tension from free diving. A bit of a shame.
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Jun 27, 2021 23:21
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Rynoto posted:The air bubble plants in BZ really removed all the tension from free diving. A bit of a shame. In my game I didn't find the first O2 tank upgrade for quite a long time, and the air bubbles had a great level of tension like that - without them I wouldn't have reasonably been able to free dive at all, and with only a minute or so of oxygen I had to stay very aware of where my next gasp of air was.
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Jun 27, 2021 23:28
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The Oz plants were one of the few things I thought bz did right. I could push further on and hope for an oxygen plant or run back to the surface or whatever.
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Jun 27, 2021 23:40
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Parallelwoody posted:The Oz plants were one of the few things I thought bz did right. I could push further on and hope for an oxygen plant or run back to the surface or whatever.  there was a good risk/reward mechanic with them.
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Jun 28, 2021 01:38
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Subnautica without any of that silly story or action crammed in. https://store.steampowered.com/app/883360/Beyond_Blue/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmjO9TusFn8
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Jul 1, 2021 06:54
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I played the first game for about 5 hours and really liked it. The atmosphere, the sense of exploring mysterious and unfathomable depths. But, it was just taking me too much time to do anything so I had to duck out. Watching a playthrough now to see what I missed, and man, the game gets wild. Also, the person somehow had a huge base and tools after four hours, so either I was terrible at the game, or they knew what to do. At that point I was still mostly swimming on my own looking for stuff to do. A little sad I didn't get to experience these things on my own as it really is an awesome game, but I just know it would have taken me forever.
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Jul 1, 2021 08:25
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I managed to do almost everything backwards in Below Zero and I feel like it really hosed up the storyline for me. It took me ~8-9 hours for me to actually get to the radio tower area (and get a habitat builder) because I somehow missed the one path that leads to it; I walked to every other place on the island early on then left because I assumed I was missing some progression item to get further. Outpost Zero was the last place I went, since I didn't have a map until then. IIRC I went Delta (missed all storyline) -> Phi -> Koppa -> Omega -> Delta -> Zero. I found every piece of the Ultra High Capacity tank before I had a modification table or the High Capacity tank's data. Lots of very careful diving with an air bladder and my Sea Truck parked 1m above crush depth. As far as I remember Robin never said, at any point, that she wanted to leave with Al-An to go to his home up until the point in the ending where it was mentioned like something they'd previously talked about it. The development between them felt super abrupt, like I'd skipped half the dialogue in the game. It was fun but a worse experience than the first game. Not sure what they could have done to prevent my gently caress up, though; make the path to the tower incredibly blatant?
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Jul 4, 2021 19:09
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Malloc Voidstar posted:I managed to do almost everything backwards in Below Zero and I feel like it really hosed up the storyline for me. It took me ~8-9 hours for me to actually get to the radio tower area (and get a habitat builder) because I somehow missed the one path that leads to it; I walked to every other place on the island early on then left because I assumed I was missing some progression item to get further. Outpost Zero was the last place I went, since I didn't have a map until then. My progression ended up being Phi -> Delta -> Zero -> Omega -> Granny QAnon -> Koppa -> Phi's backyard -> aliens. I poked around the deeper zones on the off chance there was more mystery but found nothing but alien bits, built a permahome base for giggles, then I did the distress signal for the other half of the story. As I said earlier though, after you've hit Phi and Zero you've got all the pieces of the mystery besides the execution. I hit Phi first because the Twisty Bridges seemed a bit too spoopy for the second step and as an American my national heritage tells me that when in doubt when exploring go west. I navigated Delta successfully by virtue of bringing along several beacons and being thorough, not because the path forward was intuitive.
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Jul 4, 2021 19:33
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I managed to walk to Delta first try with no problems, but every subsequent time I've visited it I've gotten lost and walked around in circles for 15m.
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Jul 5, 2021 10:17
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I finished both games on the Switch, with the end of Below Zero being a race against the crashing bug. If it weren't for that limiting my sessions to 30 minutes or less, the BZ interface and base-building improvements are very nice and I'd love to poke around this gorgeous world some more, dig up some rare eggs to hatch, build some bases along pretty landscapes, etc. How is the stability of the PC version of Below Zero these days?
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Jul 8, 2021 16:48
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I have never had it crash on Pc. Its generally pretty good for me.
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Jul 8, 2021 17:15
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I've yet to experience a crash at 48.7 hours.
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Jul 8, 2021 17:15
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I have never had a crash in either game on PC, but Below Zero is generally a lot less buggy than the main game.
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Jul 8, 2021 17:20
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That's reassuring. I'll pick it up for PC then, so I can keep my Switch save file around for whenever they stabilize the Switch port.
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Jul 8, 2021 21:48
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Wow did I sleep on this game for far too long. Installed and began playing this past week, I'm already up to 13 hours on my save file. Not sure what is or isn't spoilers, so I'll err on the side of caution as I ramble about some of the stuff I've been getting up to. This game is incredible, and my mod list is growing (up to 38) everyday with more quality of life or tweaks as I run into new equipment or vehicles. This game is like Skyrim to my brain, just without all the awful combat bits. Progress ramblings so far, no idea what is or isn't considered spoiler so just putting it all in tags: I'm pretty certain I've found one of the paths into the lowest-depth biome, I did a suicide run to go as far in as I could and a giant red baddie ate me, and I have a series of oxygen recharging breadcrumb stations heading down to the threshold. I'm fairly certain I am missing some suit upgrades in order for that environment to be feasible-- so far I'm still just using my radiation suit. I setup a small outpost at the 900m entry to this fire area, that'll probably be expanded significantly next time I make the trip down that way, I don't currently have any sim-city locations or fully pimped out locations.. however I'm thinking of doing so in that one room with the gorgeous underwater tree leading to the lava area. I also am on the lookout for an Orange tablet.. I've got a couple spare Purples, couple spare Ion squares.. Not sure where those need to go, but fully exploring the SW Island was next on my to-do list. Used some of them on the NE island while waiting for the pickup, and powered up the Island portals. I found another portal deep that was unpowered (!) in the River biome.. I think, I don't actually remember where that was so I hope one of the un-named beacons I dropped last-night was near it.. I've since installed a mod to rename beacons. Also the Cyclops is the best thing, I can't wait to find more vehicle upgrade fragments so I can actually start improving it / the Seamoth. Once I got it setup, I definitely installed a Nuclear reactor thanks to mods, and I now have everything I could need on the go. onesixtwo fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jul 8, 2021 |
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Jul 8, 2021 22:44
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I wondered what happened to the old writer and his latest Reddit posts are about COVID being new world order population control so he might have, uh, met some friction with the rest of the team. I applied to write on Below Zero so I feel a little churlish criticizing it but I did think it was weaker than the base game, narratively.
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Jul 22, 2021 19:09
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Also wandering around the huge glacial biomes with no map made me genuinely angry, angry at video games. This game had horrible critical path signposting.
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Jul 22, 2021 19:14
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General Battuta posted:Also wandering around the huge glacial biomes with no map made me genuinely angry, angry at video games. This game had horrible critical path signposting. Yeah, in 50+ hours of BZ I had never found the big thing you're supposed to find in the cave, I finally broke down and used the wiki... and it still took me like 20-30 minutes of stomping around in circles in the Prawn to figure out where it wanted me to go. onesixtwo posted:Wow did I sleep on this game for far too long. I made a secondary base there, it's a good location. I put it up on a ridge so it's just above the Seamoth's 900m crush depth, although most of my trips down there are in the Cyclops with Prawn in tow.
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Jul 22, 2021 21:36
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