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i completely share the thalassophobia but i supremely respect games that don't go in the shooter direction... fully because they're too many. its like, default game design and i don't think it has any right to be
Satisfactory has one really really powerful enemy to defend against: fall damage.
But it would also take years of work in a game that, let us remember, doesn't even have a complete tech tree yet. Additionally, forcing the player into certain gameplay methods is a viable technique.
Neither of these are flaws, the games were just not made with you in mind.
Subnautica has a freeze ray and poison torpedoes. You can literally freeze even the biggest monsters in place and just stab the shit out of them while they can't do anything.
It is a fucking terrifying game though. I felt real, physical pain getting into the water at night in the part of the map where there literally isn't even anything dangerous, but gradually the fact that you actually have a massive mobility advantage in the water over everything else helps make you feel more at home in it, even if the game does sort of continuously force you to push your comfort zone to progress. I wouldn't call it a treatment for thalassophobia by any means, but you do get desensitized to it in-game at least because that ocean is yours and you're the scariest thing in it.
Yes it's definitely a strange choice. I found Subnautica pretty scary, though it was mostly for the fear of drowning and getting trapped.
I mean that part is still scary. Even when I had the vehicles and there was no risk of drowning, I would still be scared of the leviathans and the sand sharks. But the scariest part of the game was early on when you have to traverse the wrecks with tight tunnels and you have a very limited amount of oxygen to do so.
I really think Subnautica would be a worse game if killing shit was easy. IDK anything about their IRL excuses, but all they needed to say was "it's not a shooter, it's a survival game. Here's some dumb lore reason why gun printer broke." You can put stun guns and poison torpedoes on your vehicles though, and a stasis gun that's so fucking overpowered they removed it in the sequel.
The lack of guns is actually explained, something about a prior incident with Alterra employees and printed guns.
IIRC the gas torpedoes are the only thing in the game whose only function is damage, and they're honestly worse at that job than the mining drill. You can technically spend like 15 minutes lobbing fart clouds to whittle down the big beasties that are too dangerous to drill, but it's really just to be able to say you did, because it's expensive and slow and you have way better tools for just avoiding them.
tldr it has things that can kill but still isn't a game about killing.
That feels like the point. Subnautica is all about the fact that the open deep sea never stops being terrifying.
Anyways half the beasts have bad AI, and it's super easy to ding them with the stasis rifle and make some seared fish steaks with the heated knife.
Subnautica was made by the same devs that made Natural Selection 2. The games share their setting, it's the same universe. Subnautica wasn't some tirade against firearms, it started as one dev thinking, 'Eh, I'm board of shooting mechanics and want to try something new.' Sure, part of what got him thinking about that was Sandy Hook, but I think you're overstating the influence a bit.
Personally, I think it works. 'Shooting' critters with a tricorder to get a wiki index is fun. Scanning the leviathans without becoming chum was exhilarating. Reading peeper phylogeny is my jam :meow-floppy:
If you really want, you can kill the beasties. I spent the better part of an hour luring a reaper into the shallows, so I could punch it to death with my PRAWN suit. Just to see what would happen. It turned belly up, and died. No loot, no resources. Just me and the corpse of a once great thing. The model didn't even de-spawn. It just... lay there. It made me feel hollow. I had a replicator. I had the means to flee. There was no need to kill it - that was the cold, detached act of... someone just playing a game. Sure, I was just playing a game. But that didn't make my stomach feel any better.
Is that ultimately silly? Yes, of course it is. But... for a moment, the fantasy broke the detachment. Acknowledged it diegeticly. For a moment, it became too real. Made me feel like my - dumb, computed, make-believe - actions had irreconcilable consequences. A book could never do that.
I think the in-universe explanation is that the mega-corporation doesn't want workers arming themselves.
"Weapons were removed from standard survival blueprints following the massacre on Obraxis Prime. The knife remains the only exception."
OH, yeah! huh. The reference is oblique enough, someone on the steam forms had an even darker interpretation:
'massacre' kinda implies that some other civilian crew got stranded on a planet, met the locals and decided to just build weapons and commit mass-murder.
So Alterra made military-grade technology a restricted thing.
I couldn't possibly disagree more with your first paragraph. That feeling you have about being anxious because you're in a hostile environment with only non-combat tools is one of the core themes of the game. You are a person from a utopian spacefaring society that no longer needs to kill things which are capable of thought. You have never killed anything. You have never thought of killing anything. You have never handled a tool designed for killing things. Your advanced space computer literally doesn't know how to make tools designed for killing things. And now, there's a lot of big scary shit trying to kill you.
Your computer AI has to reassure you that you can, in fact, survive on the flesh of dead animals because that's not something your species has done in a very long time.
It is, in my opinion, a very important part of the game which could not and should not be extracted just so the game could be made more generic.
game dev decisions that have annoyed me: tacking shitty realtime combat onto everything so the player can feel like a Victorious Conquerer rather than exploring other modes of play. just play half life 2 if you want a competent game about reflex-driven fighting, barbarian
tasting notes for my comment: imagine I'm wearing a Miles Edgeworth style cravat and sloshing around a comically large goblet of wine
American opinion on video games:
"why does game A not let me shoot stuff"
"why does game B, while letting me shoot stuff, not have more stuff to shoot at"I like that Satisfactory has no base defense. I don't want to have to constantly run from place to place showing things up. I like the chill feel. I can just put on a podcast and make my base. basically I want logistics nerd simulator number 5, with the addition of the exploration elements when I do want the risk of death.
The base building is what made me bounce hard off Fallout 4 in fact.
Similarly Subnautica, yes, no guns makes the game more tense, and there's enough stun weaponry late game to eliminate any real danger.
I like it sometimes, I just don't like it in everything, and I prefer games to be balanced and focused around a particular type of game mode rather than shovelling one off into a creative/freeplay mode when that's not actually what I want.
It's like a roguelike. I really like roguelikes, I don't want satisfactory to have roguelike elements.
logistics nerd simulator #5
Yes, and the logistics nerds love it.
I think the issue with the whole 'have a sandbox/pacifist mode' solution is that if this were the case, it'd mean that it's fairly likely the combat side of things would be focused on in terms of updates etc. Cos from what I understand of game design, it tends to be quite tricky.
i don't have much to add but maybe instead of a projectile gun or something military-grade a good late game weapon would have been a blue-green laser utility system that is basically a DPS weapon and cutting tool. similar to the other "non-lethal" weapons but relying on charges from a robust well developed power system.
i loved subnautica more for the exploration and feeling like i was a star trek away team more then the survival stuff. i want more games where you just explore alien worlds and catalog life and i say this as someone that loves a good kill-kill shoot game.
but yes there were times when i was just like "i want to fucking kill those cybernetic teleporters" because they weren't actual planetary lifeforms. and i hunted and killed them as much as possible.Satisfactory
It's interesting you bring this up, because I think the next Satisfactory update is all about overhauling the creatures and hazards you encounter while exploring the planet (and giving the player more equipment slots and gun stuff to deal with it). Though they never swarm you Factorio style so it's still pretty peaceful.
They're focusing on the creature AI specifically, giving them interactions with each other and more interactions with the player than "run forward and attack", but the update itself is still in the experimental branch and from the sound of things they aren't really focusing on upping the danger very much. If building an ever expanding factory that feeds a space elevator isn't your thing then I don't think update 6 will change that, it's just interesting that I think the devs also recognize that exploring the planet is kind of a weak link in the game right now and that's where they want to focus.
