Honestly I liked a lot Subnautica 1, and despite the leadership change, still look forward to Subnautica 2. Better juge on the product than on internet dramas.
Sometimes people have ideas that just don’t work out. Even if the same people make another game, unless they just make a carbon copy they’re going to try and do something different. Sometimes it doesn’t work as well as the original, but at least it’s not churning out the same thing over and over and hoping people don’t notice.
Granted, Gamefreak has basically been doing that for 25 years, so what do I know?
I heard it had a lot of issues during testing but I didn’t personally have any issues with it having played it the first time 4 years ago nor have I heard of any widespread game breaking bugs. Might just be your particular system :o
Draw distance sucks for a vast ocean of plants and sealife. Seriously, I have a really good video card, and this fucking Unity engine can’t draw 500 feet in front of me.
So many wall “suggestions”, clipping, other graphical glitches, especially near the end area
Incredible music, but it’s barely heard because the game either cuts it off midway through or decides to go silent most of the time
Bad save serializations that can sometimes spam a ton of error messages on load
You can’t kill anything, including warpers that are more dangerous than leviathans
Can’t walk with a Prawn in an alien base, because you end up getting stuck on the floor for some reason
Reaper in caves, who can drop you off the map
An insulting unrealistic O2 meter, and not enough keyslots
The Cyclops is. Fucking. Useless. By the time you get this thing, the leeches in volcano areas fuck you over, when power is already a precious resource. And it still needs full upgrades to make it even remotely useful in Lost River.
Torpedos are useless. Flares, Floating lockers, air pipeworks, nuclear reactor, alien containment, all useless.
Death might as well be like hardcore, since losing a vehicle is worse than losing 30 minutes of progress
I also find it unbelievable that the other player never experienced bugs, because I also had a lot of them during my play through.
But your list is a complete mess with a mixture of bugs and design decisions. And the latter aren’t bugs. That’s just not how it works. It would make your argument stronger, if you stay with the facts and not include your personal disagreements with game features.
Half of those aren’t even bugs. They’re intendes gameplay elements and they are what makes Subnautica such a good game! No being able to easily kill most creature is what makes the game better. Torpedos being borderline useless is what makes the game better. The extremely limited O2 meter makes the game better!
The cyclops is amazing. You’re just very obviously use it wrong. It’s not meant to explore the volcanic region. It’s meant as a mobile base and it absolutely excells at this!
Honestly, the draw distance optimization may be the only valid concern here.
Draw distance sucks for a vast ocean of plants and sealife. Seriously, I have a really good video card, and this fucking Unity engine can’t draw 500 feet in front of me.
IIRC, they did not really know what the first game was about while developing it. I remember reading a dev blog about them adding a bug report in game with screenshot attached, and how that helped them understand players expectations and direct the development of the game towards that instead of having a pre-defined vision of the final game.
Yeah, this is the right approach, especially with the subnautica community that seems to be really thirsty for drama. I was going to wait for reviews anyway before getting it, so this whole “devs beg community” is probably for the preordering folk.
That said, my money’s on “subnautica 2 will disappoint regardless” because it continues to build on the original instead of being new. What made the original so good was the novelty of that format, combined with the horror aspect and the fresh lore. Now, after two games set in the same world and the same general flow, people know what to expect so they will be extra picky about s2 and I wager they will end up underwhelmed. I’m still hoping s2 will at least be extra pretty because goddamn if I didn’t love the environments of the first two games.
Does the same logic apply to shoes hand-sewn by sick children?
How the fuck did capitalism manage to make people care more for inanimate objects or software than actual human beings.
You are trying to portray a black and white picture about a situation we all know little about. It’s word for word, and in such case it be hard to give more credits to either party.
I heard that there is a lawsuit brewing, maybe this will give us more objective informations.
In the meantime, the only way to see if either the founders or Krafton vision would be the best would be to release the EA, even with the lack of content Krafton is complaining about. Like that we would be able to make our own conclusion.
I would not ignore if Krafton do betray UW employees. But I also take into account that for now it is word for word, and depending on which side you believe, both sides can be sided with.
If the three ousted exec did abandon their responsibility as Krafton said, their dismissal is justified. If not and that’s a way to not pay the promissed bonus, then a boycot is justified.
There isn’t many way to know, other than releasing the EA now. Like that the customer can have and idea of the true state of the game, without having to base its opinion on a bandwagon.
I agree. But you said “Better juge on the product than on internet dramas.” and I dont see how the game would tell us anything about how Krafton fucks the developers.
Krafton says that the game isn’t yet worthy of EA. Ousted led dev says that it is. Someone is probably lying here. Only way to put an end to that is to lanch the EA this year, for us to juge if it is enough content or not.
From what I’ve read, that bonus isn’t tied to a specific release, but to an earning target.
Not being able to get to that target is tied to the fact that Subnautica 2 EA should have been a huge cash influx, which now isn’t possible due to the delay, and the only remaining way would have been either a sudden renewed Subnautica 1 and BZ success or for the mobile version to be a incredible success, which I doubt.
Releasing the EA wouldn’t be an “I win button” from UW. It could go both way. Either the current state is enough for user to buy it, and not refund it, or it will be a resounding failure, with huge refund percentages. In the first case, this may allow UW to get to that target, but in the second case, it may in the worst case make the studio go under before Subnautica had any chance to be released completed
They’ll release a “New!” version in a year with an improved screen as one of its bullet points, in a bid to get you to buy it again. And people will. See also:
New 3DS was actually a pretty huge upgrade over the original. Despite the name, it was effectively the next generation of the console. Or at the very least a half-generation.
If there was one god damned example of any company saying this and sticking to it I might believe them. But I have yet to be proven wrong. Sucks too as they were my go to for mods.
I bought it on confidence when it released. That was the last time I ever did this. I played 25 very boring hours and uninstalled it. It’s very difficult to figure out how you can fail so spectacularly with such a budget, such a long development time, and such a carte blanche with making a new universe from scratch
They changed the recipe. Skyrim, Fallout 3 and 4, Oblivion, and Morrowind all had something in common: handcrafted environments densely packed with points of interest.
Starfield used procedurally generated content. It generates abandoned mines and outposts from a tileset and then drops you in the literal desert between them.
Which is just frustrating because there’s some real improvements in mays of their usual systems elsewhere in the game. The I think the persuasion mechanics are a real step up from previous games and I’m amazed the system hasn’t been ported into Skyrim. They got flight mechanics to actually work in the Creation engine. Zero-G and low gravity works great. Gunplay and combat is even more improved over Fallout 4 (though it’s an incremental improvement over the revolutionary leap made with Fallout 4).
Imo, Starfield is mainly lacking in only a few (though critical) things. They need more than 4 fleshed-out companions, and have them for different factions; there’s a couple of NPC’s that I expected to become companions. Since they insistend on having procedurally generated content, they needed to add way more pieces to their tilesets and, more importantly, have an algorithm to stitch things together and have some actual variety. As it is right now, you get the same exact facilities copy-pasted as whole spaces with no variation. And they needed to not force you into the main storyline, or at least pull a Fallout: New Vegas and have multiple paths through the main storyline.
There’s a lot of good bones to be had in Starfield, which just makes the cock-ups more disappointing since they’ll lead to those imprpvements being abandoned
IDK, I still think about how the dufuses added recoil to laser guns in FO4. And the fact that land mines and similar traps change every time a save is loaded is super dumb because it’s just like “OH DID WIDDLE BABY GET BLOWN DA FUQ UP? LET ME FIX IT FOR YOU (Removes the landmines)”.
That’s not the only issue it has. They could’ve made procedural generation work, with having a combination of hand crafted and procedural environments. But it doesn’t seem like they have the skill to pull it off.
Issues this game has, and probably one of the major reasons why it’s so dead feeling, is how the world doesn’t react to you.
Tell me, what happens in Skyrim or Oblivion if you walk around town with your sword drawn?
What happens if you start randomly casting spells where the guards can see you?
What if you managed to get a certain artefact, wear a certain kind of armour, or work on upgrading a certain skill tree?
See what I mean? See what’s missing?
The dead, empty, open world tiles only compounds this. And how everything feels even more limiting because of how the game is strictly chopped up with loading screens.
Very true. So long as your shots don’t hit anybody, or your powers affect anybody, you can show them off all the time on the big cities and nobody gives a fuck. Using the whirlwind Sprint shout on Skyrim makes everyone around comment and a guard desperately asking you to stop.
And some of them are duplicates ! I discovered THREE identical locations just roaming about ! the same dungeon layout ! but different loot. Can you believe that shit
God how did they fuck that up? Who thought I’d want to fast travel there? Sure sometimes, but honestly I’d love it if it showed how many minutes to destination and then you started jumping.
You’re in the pilots chair, you see 10 minutes to the other side of the galaxy where your mission is. You hesitate because that’s far, but 2 minutes away is your home base anyway so might as well swing through and drop off some stuff, make sure the pumps and extractors are working. 6 minutes past that is that side quest you’ve been putting off, I guess we can do that too. You hit the jump button, stars whizz past. You go talk with your crew, get caught up on conversations. You jump back in the chair when the 20 second warning goes off. You jump out and arrive, but there is a weird signal on a nearby planet in this system…
Now THAT’s the game i wanted. Altering one mechanic right there completely changes the entire style of the game. I will forever be annoyed that everything in the game is instant fast travel. Sure have a button there to skip if people want to, but personally I prefer to lay back and fully immerse myself
It could have been so good and the game genuinely has some cool environments but for the most part there is just nothing to do. I’ve stumbled on some cool places like the Mantis hideout and stuff but the game is so repetitive and 98% of the planets are devoid of life.
And they wanted it that way. They were like well that’s what it’s really like! Which like yeah great, but that’s terribly boring for a game.
Another game like that was Mass Effect 1, where they had the undiscovered worlds, but even those were more entertaining. They gave you a mako, and each planet had at least one faction with at least some backstory to it so it wasn’t a complete waste. Starfield is like, nothing. I encounter the exact same building structure and camps multiple times on my single playthrough. Absolutely uninspired
Yep! When I saw that Todd said that I was kind of dumbfounded. I get that that’s how space is but like, that shits boring. They really could have had something special but they severely missed the mark.
On the one hand it sucks that a writer lost their job. And it’ll never not suck. On the other hand I love when Apex Legends looks bad. I lost Titanfall 3 for that?
In a better universe apex and tf3 could have existed at the same time
Unfortunately we live in the universe where games as a live service is the only model that big companies run on, which means all resources must go to just that one game
They ought to patch out the need for Ubisoft’s launcher. Same goes for EA’s back catalog, for that matter. At least EA’s newest releases don’t come with the launcher.
Even when you buy their games on Steam, there’s an EA launcher there in addition to Steam. This is the case for It Takes Two, for instance, but not for Split Fiction. Split Fiction only uses Steam if you bought it on Steam.
I can’t confirm for Steam, since I only have the game on EA app, but the game’s wiki page on PCGW shows the same DRM-free info (with correct launch steps).
I believe it was added after launch. I distinctly remember trying to play this game on the Steam Deck on a train with no internet, and the EA app complained about it and wouldn’t let me launch the game. It’s quite possible that this can be sidestepped by specifically putting the Steam Deck in offline mode, rather than just severing the internet connection, but I didn’t know to try that at the time, and it’s definitely DRM.
So just that I understand this correctly: I need steam to buy it, but after that it launches without steam after I download the installer? Like on gog?
If yes, holy shit, I would have never expected this from EA!! Last time I checked this company was pure scum, but this is a surprisingly nice move!
Only the newest ones. They haven’t gone back to remove the requirement from their back catalog, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Split Fiction don’t require it now. Meanwhile, Madden 26 still requires it, so I guess it isn’t universal.
EA’s games that released on Steam after Origin was a thing still launch a mini EA launcher when you press Play on Steam, much like how Ubisoft’s does on Steam. That’s at least how it seems the last time I tried it with Fallen Order.
Right, but that extra launcher causes problems, so I tend to avoid games that still have it. It’s why I still haven’t played A Way Out but played Split Fiction.
This is so strange. Wasn’t it not long ago that studios were crowding into very specific release windows ( usually november iirc ) so they could maximize initial sales? Maybe the digital release era has changed things. I mean, I get it if your game was in the same niche or smth, but “companies might tank” seems a little much.
Either way, if this is true, eoy 2025 is in for a dry spell when it comes to new games.
Edit: Also I find it hilarious how all these “industry analysts” keep popping up suggesting ominous things despite Rockstar not saying a peep about the game besides the trailer. Almost as if they were paid to do it.
Over time they realised that, while holiday windows or whatever have high sales, if there’s a better or more popular game coming out then, yours will just be forgotten.
That said, most “industry specialists” are just glorified influencers, so take it with a grain of salt
They aren’t crowding into those windows because competition helps their sales, it’s because they expect the biggest shopping period of the year will result in more sales than they lose. And there’s a reason only the biggest titles release in these windows.
Capcom made the decision years ago to release in February/March because they know a November window will drown them.
But… the defenders of multi billion dollar corporations told me that I was a crybaby for not wanting to create an account at a company who has had several outages and security incidents over the years. I can’t believe they were wrong.
Yeah, some of the Steam reviews on God of War Ragnarok were almost exactly like this.
“Oh, no! You have to use a third-party login to play your game! Get over it, it’s a great game, who cares about you having to go out of your way to arbitrarily create an account for a platform you’ve never used before!” - essentially.
Put the installer on a USB stick and sell it.* I assume you’ve never gone back to the electronics store where you bought your dishwasher and expected to sell your used dishwasher there.
But that’s against the User Agreement with GOG. You don’t have that right, DRM or not.
GOG are not selling you something you own, just like the rest of the gaming platforms. They just give you the right to download and keep DRM-free installers (for the most part) for games you license / purchase.
I like GOG, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t own anything you buy from them, you just possess. Ownership means you have control over that possession too which is only really true of a minuscule fraction of FOSS games that are licensed with MIT-0, 0BSD, Unlicense, CC0 or some other public domain license (which doesn’t include GPL, MIT, Apache licenses).
Ownership in terms distribution of digital software is a bit funky I guess, but from a consumers point of view, there’s really nothing GOG/game companies can do once you got the installer. You’re effectively owning the bits on your hard drive and there’s nothing they can do to control what you do with those bits. I guess from a lawyers perspective it may be different, but in practice there isn’t much.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the licenses though? A game licensed under MIT would be free to share, attribution shouldn’t be much of problem.
MIT still has copyright attribution which means you don’t own it, just have lots and lots of rights. You own the code, but you don’t own the name etc.
MIT-0 is public domain, there is no copyright by the creators, that right is assigned to all of us. You own that content and idea. It’s why anyone can use Sherlock Holmes and do anything they want with the character as he’s public domain. You don’t have to call him Schmerlock Hoves.
But yeah, for all intents and purposes to the thread, you’re right. MIT etc you can sell the code/binaries so gives you practical ownership.
Oh yeah, I have no doubt that Larian saw no need to block that feature but had their hand forced, they always were extremely modding friendly and welcoming of player made content
My first viewing I did mostly take it at face value. But in my defense, I was a dumb 11 year old kid. It wasn’t until Neil Patrick Haris came out in full SS uniform that I started asking questions.
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