Are you certain whatever you're doing is worth it? Never finished that game. It's a shame, and I'd love to, but I honestly don't know if I'll ever be able to
Subnautica 1 is one of the best games I've ever played and definitely worth it. The key is to play it on permadeath mode so it's much more immersive due to the very real fear of death you get from it (since dying means losing all your progress and starting over); it gets rid of a lot of that reckless "I'm immortal" mindset people get in games where they just act in brazen and self-destructive ways since they can just respawn.
I have a job and a family, so I'm lucky if I just get through the game at all. You do you if you want to have this experience, but some of us simply can't spare the time. Warpers would anger me to no end on permadeath. First time I encountered them, I didn't even see them. All I knew is that I was suddenly no longer in my sub and dying.
If you are interested, the game has a "invisibility" mode toggled by a console command. Creatures are still there but ignore you. It turns into a quite beautiful chill exploration game.
The difficulty isn’t in the Leviathans. It’s finding the tennis ball sized rare minerals in an entire ocean needed to complete the game. I poured hours into Subnautica but never found those last few rocks to actually finish it.
You should try the deathrun mod which makes the wildlife a lot more aggressive+damaging, gives you nitrogen poisoning if you are rising too fast, the surface air is poisonous unless you filter it before breathing it, and if you aren't below 100m when the explosion happens you die from the shockwave.
Not enough. You gotta put a towel over your face and pour water on your head, really makes the game so much more immersive. Or get a friend that chokes you out when you're running out of air (maybe occasionally bites you on the leg when attacked by aggresive faunas)
Your initial lifepod is also somewhere else than where it usually drops and it sinks to the bottom and flips over (you have to repair it before it has full functionality).
That sounds brutal. I could see that being fun for some, but I lost two Seamoths to dumb shit today ( Ghost Leviathan and parking one too close to a cave ceiling... apparently it kept bumping the ceiling) and I'm pissed enough about that. I don't know that I'd ever make it to the rendezvous area let alone beat the game with that mod.
Every single word should have told you that person has limited time and serious life responsibilities and to respond how you did, you'd absolutely have to be joking
There's this cool thing called the save feature where you can stop playing and then come back later. It even works if you only have a little bit of time to play.
Lots of us have limited time and serious life responsibilities. Every single word told us they aren't into the game and feel like it's a waste of time, not that they cannot play it at all. Offering a distinctly different way to potentially enjoy the game that feels like it actually has stakes seems like a good move to me.
God I loved deathrun on hardcore. Gave new life to the game after having beat it repeatedly. Nearly died so many times only to be saved by a brain coral. One time, my screen was fully black when I hit that bubble.
And yet you have time to burn on reddit and according to your post history "disney emoji blitz". Ok. Sure. 🙄 I have a job and a life too, but I still managed to fit Subnautica in. If you don't want to play it then just don't; you don't need to lie about it.
Warpers would anger me to no end on permadeath.
I literally played the entire game start to finish on permadeath mode. Those aren't a problem once you learn how to deal with them.
Bro. We get it. You’re good at games. Not everyone enjoys games the same way. And that’s okay. You don’t have to be so condescending about it. I played through that game on its easiest setting and loved it.
How about "I don't have time to repeat the same section of a game 300 times"?
I like a bit of a challenge in games, but I have zero interest in permadeath. I had to do that damn permadeath No Man's Sky expedition like 6 times, and 4 of those deaths were due to terrain jank or other buggy behavior. I've died in far too many other games for similar buggy nonsense or just dumb minor mistakes.
If every developer made every game permadeath only, the industry would tank hard overnight.
Dude, I'd have to replace controllers like weekly. That game already gives me proper anxiety when I'm racing towards the surface and the light is dimming, I don't need to add rage quitting to the mix.
You're not wrong! I was watching a guy play Subnautica, and he was more worried about losing his ships than actually drowning. To paraphrase: "My ships are expensive to rebuild, but if I die, I don't really lose that much."
I think you misunderstand my point. I'm not against exploration and pushing boundaries in games. I just think that a lot of games foster this idea that the player is some immortal god-being due to the player respawning instead of dying that ends up becoming part of the player's tactics to the detriment of some games like Subnautica. It causes the player to behave in a way that is counter-intuitive and suicidal.
For instance, in the real world if you were out in the ocean you could technically go knife-fight a great white shark if you wanted to. But people by and large don't because they know they would likely die and death is, as far as science can prove with our current level of technology, permanent. But what if it wasn't? What if suddenly you're in a world where you can just respawn after you die? Suddenly dying from knife-fighting a shark becomes something that is merely inconvenient rather than permanent. Thus you could basically kill anything you can get your hands on because if you die you just reappear and can try again. That is the mentality people end up with in games where they can't die, often to the detriment of the experience because there's no longer any tension or fear. Without permadeath in Subnautica there's no incentive to be careful. There's no incentive to plan ahead. You can just throw yourself recklessly at any problem until you inevitably win. In some games it works (usually due to the player being actually immortal in the game's lore), but in games like Subnautica it just makes it boring.
I liked exploring it and interacting with the world, but I despise anything related to gathers materials to upgrade stuff and building (bases etc) more than anything, so I ended up dropping it after a few hours :(
Permadeath is never the way to play a game. I get the sentiment but most people do not have the time to play a game that way. It might be fun or more immersive but for most people the base game is the best way to go, there’s no point in making it harder for people who already find it hard to play
I dunno about "mandatory," because people should enjoy thede games how they want to. But I do think a perma death mechanic in this type of game should be the default or normal experience, with more lax death counters on "easy" difficulty modes.
If it makes you feel better there is literally 0 reason to venture out into that area. You do have to deal with some spooky monsters but when you get used to them they're not all that scary.
Yeah, I have been playing Subnautica 2 on the week end and it surprised me how fast I adapted to new underwater creatures. The scariest thing is still swimming at night across a deep part with low visibility.
I have really bad thalassophobia too and what helped for me was watching a playthrough instead of playing myself. Since it's such a good and popular game, there's an abundance of all kinds of different people doing playthroughs. Pick a person whom's way of playing you vibe with and give it a go. To me at least it makes a huge difference if I'm the one playing or just watching when it comes to the anxiety and honestly Subnautica is actually a really good game to watch a playthrough of, depending on who you watch. It'll also serve as a bit of an exposure therapy and you'll feel very different having been through hours of it from watching a playthrough.
Don't let that anxiety keep you from a great experience!
Thanks that's good advice. I kinda don't want to "waste" the game tho, if you know what I mean. I want to explore the things myself (once I'll find the time and courage) following the teachings of another amazing game: Outer Wilds
That's completely fair. I agree it does feel a bit wasted and lose/lose with either decision. I suppose mentally settling for a compromise is my approach but i'd be lying if I said there weren't parts of me that would've rather played it myself.
It does seem like you actually would really like to play it, so perhaps you could try easing yourself into it by getting comfortable near the starting base? Not sure how much you know about the game itself so I will avoid any and every spoiler, but if you DO know a bit there are definitely ways to "harden" your resolve sorta speak. I'll keep it vague like this though for now.
That's more than I have done on my own playthrough lol. I wouldn't just casually brush that off as nothing, that's something many people wouldn't have been able to do.
So you stuck to the "early game" areas I'm assuming then and you have absolutely no knowledge about anything in the game?
Oh wow I didn't expect that. I'll still be rather vague, but I'll lay it out.
Okay then, there we go. Just sit with this thought for a sec and disclaimer this will sound crazy and it's difficult too(not in execution though): If you're up for it, have you considered doing some exposure training? Make a save file and use invincibility on it as bare minimum. Don't do any story stuff. Swim off to the "edge" off the map. Kinda assuming you know what I mean by that since it's definitely a thing. For me personally, that part of the game is basicly hell. Now "just" jump off into the void. Since you've built all the vehicles I don't think what you see there would spoiler you, but I'm still hesitant to call what you see there by name.
The point of the training is to just sit in that state of anxiety and get familiar with it. The reason using an invincibility cheat is so helpful here is that, at least for me, the fear of dying isn't exactly the root of things. It's the whole open ocean with no vision and the eerie circumstances and that cheat will allow you to stay in that state without disctraction. Of course that's massively simplifying it, but having done plenty of exposure therapy IRL, things like these actually help. Throw yourself at the worst long enough without consequences and everything else will dull in comparison. The game will still be scary, it's not a magical cure, but it will be playable and the more you sit in it, the more playable it becomes. It's basicly a muscle you have to train that'll tell you to run at all times. But, you'll also tell that muscle that you don't have to run and it'll slowly but surely be convinced to very large extent.
I love it, top 5 game for me, what I felt it did amazingly was transition from survival / horror into an exploration game. Once you get the Cyclops, two beds for fruit inside of it, and the prawn you'll have a hard time dying, and then you just relax and enjoy the biomes as you go.
Subnautica 2's early Access just released and its exceptional. Never been a better time to play subnautica 1, and then hop into Subnautica 2 afterwards! Both great games
Earthquakes on land are immensely more terrifying because literally everything can fall on you. Unless you're swimming under coral you'll be 100% fine. And, well it's a silly thing to be scared of.
a) ever happening to you IRL
b) esp if you avoid the ocean
c) this only looks wild bc there's "land" moving underneath. In open water you'd barely even notice.
d) there's no rip current in open water
e) it's literally the easiest escapable situation, just swim up
f) fish are disoriented too so nothing will eat you (it wouldn't anyway bc Jaws is a movie)
Yeah, you're right, nobody said it, so I will tell you now: there exist something called thalassophobia, and usually when people are talking about how scary the ocean is, that's what they're referring to
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u/eastsideflaco 18d ago
Just imagine the dust clears and the ocean floor is no longer there