Suggestions Thread - Subterrain

While of course I have tons of ideas what could be added, I don't want to clog the space with it - you've probably thought it pretty well already. I will, however, post what I'd change with current game mechanics.

1. Crafting should speed up time, just like resting. There is nothing interesting in watching bar getting filled.
2. Simple rotation of map could make it looks a little less repetitive (until you get more art done). Simply turn it 90 degree or swap axis, and you'll get 8 maps out of one.

Thanks for your feedback. Speeding up while crafting maybe a good idea. We will consider that.

Cheers.

3. Shock gun is worthless. It takes like 11 shoots to kill basic zombie. Without efficiency upgrade it's more than full battery. I can see few possible fixes:
a. increase damage, making it more like normal pistol. Quite boring typical weapon
b. make it area of effect or better chain-lighting weapon, so it's nice against larger groups
c. make the stun longer (now it's useless) so you can disable multiple opponents then finish them with knife
d. make zombies jump at you when you're close, so you can't just back-swing them safely with knife - it would make melee more dangerous, so ranged weapons, even if weak, more useful
e. make it push enemies instead of stunning them, and add some environment elements to push them at - like damaged electric conduits to burn them, sharp broken furniture to impale/cut them or open sewers hatch to drop them in

4. Combat in the long run is quite boring ATM. Infected attack so slow that you can come to them, slash with knife and get back before they have chance to respond. Possible fix as above - make them jump-attack, which can't be avoided by just getting back (but you could maybe dodge to side). To counter balance difficulty, you could largely improve damage done when you backstab them - either after you sneak, stun or successful dodge. That jump could be also used against them, just like pushing mentioned above in 3.e

5. You don't need to ask player if he really wants to enter new area. If he clicked stairs icon, then yes he does. Or make it optional in game setting.

6. Knife throwing maybe?

7. Currently flashlight gives less light just before running out of battery, and during first 90% of time amount of light is the same. So you always replace batteries when they're completely empty - no player choice included. I'd change it to linear decrease in amount and range of light. Just so players can decide when it's too dark for them, and change it. It would also make short range combat, which require less light range, more economic, as you can change battery later.

8. Those little cut scenes showing door opening are a bit immersion breaking IMO - sight of modern gaming, leading player by hand everywhere. It would be much better to see/hear simple text "tube departure access granted" or "apartment sector door unlocked". Maybe I just don't like when game pauses?

9. When you die, there should be option "load game", so you don't have to go back to menu, then play, then select save, ect.

10. Whole needs are done really nicely, but some things could be improved:
a. any physical activity (running, slashing, stabbing), so anything that uses your stamina should increase your body heat. If heat goes too high, you start sweating (loosing a lot of water). Now player can choose either light clothes (so he can dispatch more heat during fighting) or warm clothes (so he doesn't freeze that easily)
b. when It's cold, body should start burning more food (and water) to try heating up. Also movement and attack speed, as well as accuracy (shaking hands) should be slower. Simple "damage when cold" is plainly boring. Damage would be okay, but only at really extreme over or under heating.
c. hunger and thirst should reduce stamina limit much faster. So when you have 25% hunger, your stamina drops by 25%. Also eating/drinking should reduce hunger/thirst by % of current status. I.e. when you eat something that feeds 50%, and you have currently 50%, it will reduce your hunger by 50%*50%=25%. Eating the same food when your are 75% hungry will give you 50%*75%=37,5%. That would make eating when you are really hungry more economic. And more choice for player - either save more food by eating when really hungry, or stay well-fed (with high stamina limit) at cost of higher food consumption.
d. Indicators usually informs you about

11. You should be able to turn clothes and guns into crafting parts

Good luck!

Edited by: CalenLoki

The way shock gun is supposed to help you is that , you stun a zombie and then use melee weapon to kill it while it is stunned.

But I agree, at the moment, stun duration is too short, so we have increased it to 4 sec for version 0.6f

Your idea of using environment to damage the zombies sounds good, we have put that down on our list.

We had system where zombie gains sudden boost of speed when it attacks, but now it seems like it is not working after changing our navigation system to different one. It was pretty dumb to not notice that

We will change so that the confirmation is not really needed for moving in between stairs. We thought it would be nice since the game will be auto saved so to let the player have choice if he wants to save or not.

We are working on throw-able weapons! It's coming!

Cut-scene... this one is pretty hard to nail down. Some people say, they want to know where it is happening so they don't have to wonder around too much to find the place, or others like yourself want more vague idea only. Which way to go? We are not 100% sure yet so we want to hear more about this from more players and decide.

Somme of your survival needs idea is cool , so we will put them down in our list too.

12. I forget to write that - current SG upgrades: efficiency and capacity are completely unbalanced. First gives you 2x more shoots per battery and 2x more shoots in mag (200/5=40). Second gives you only 2x bigger mag (400/10=40), costs the same, occupy the same slot. No sane person would use upgrade capacity in current shape. Suggestion: efficiency upgrade change how much you get from every battery (it fills whole 200 with just one battery) but shoots still costs 10 - so you have only 200 shoots. Capacity works as now. Additionally when energy drops below 100, damage and energy consumption should drop gradually too - so player have choice when to reload (economy - use as much battery as possible vs combat ability - change battery in the middle). Just like with flashlight, food, ect. I love giving players choice!

13. Btw. Confirmation for switches is quite pointless too.

14. First aid kit (or however it's named) say something like "heals all bleeding conditions" which at first I understood as "stops bleeding". I learned quickly that it's false, and you need bandages for that. But you might want to change description.

15. I though a bit about whole health/needs/infection system, and here's how I'd do that:
a. First of all, all needs, wounds and penalties should be numeric values starting at 0 and going to infinity, rather than percentage starting at 100% and dropping to 0%. You can always be "more hungry" or "more exhausted"
b. I'd get rid of HP in current shape. For me HP (or "physical condition") should be just sum of all body elements like wounds and needs. It should be only value that is percentage (100%-0%) and should directly affect speed and precision of players actions (movement and attacking speed, accuracy) as well as immunity. It could also create some additional effects when it drops to some point, like hallucinations. Because the game is about infection, that should be way to die, while HP loss is just thing that reduce your ways to defend against it.
c. hunger, thirst and breath are three basic needs. Each point in them reduce HP by 1%, so to fall unconscious you need to collect total of 100 points in them.
d. scratches, wounds, fractures and contamination are possible outcomes of combat. They should slowly heal over time. Scratches, fractures and contamination can be partially removed with bandages, bracing and water/alcohol, but you always heals % of them (so when you heal 50 points of scratches with bandage 50%, you heal 25 points). Each received hit deals different kind of damage - simple zombies are quite weak, and mostly scratch you, while spitters mostly increase contamination. Also when you hit enemy with melee weapon, you got covered in his blood, increasing contamination without getting hit. Wounds and fractures should reduce your physical condition (HP)
e. Infection should not be something random - people don't like loosing game because of dice roll. It should be based, as in real life, on few things: gate for pathogen (scratches), source of pathogen (contamination) and immune system malfunction (HP). So chances of infection should be:
[(100-HP)/vaccine strength/100 * scratches/100 * contamination/100 = % chance of infection], check every in-game hour.
So to get infected (which ATM means "Game over") you'd need to screw self-maintenance, not just receive bad dice roll.
f. Now effect of infection. Right now it starts eating your hp pretty fast, and usually means game over, at least before you get any decent medicines. I'd go for way slower spreading, so you have a lot of time to start looking for cure - i.e. [current infection * (100-HP) / temperature over 36.6] so with 75% HP you need at least 4 infection points to worry about it increasing, even more if you take drugs that cause fever. Also effects, beside HP reduction, should include hallucinations, random movements from time to time, increased body temperature snd swearing (way faster food and water burning), ect.
g. Healing could be done as with any other healing - somewhere later in the game you research drug that reduce % of your current infection, but never all of it. To slow down spreading - take drugs that induce fever.
h. Last but not least, negative effects of using items. Just so players don't eat, heal and take drugs just before combat, but do it more evenly. Those effects decrease over time of course.
- Bandaging and fracture bracing hinder your movement, just like too thick clothes or too heavy backpack - effect combined with basic HP effect.
- Eating, drinking and taking drugs start digesting process, which is not light task for your body. Temporary decrease in HP.
- Adrenaline increase your HP temporary, but burns out a lot of nutritions.
- Painkillers decrease malus from wounds and fracture (so increase HP), but when you don't feel the pain you abuse damaged structures causing even more damages (i.e. swinging knife increase fracture points by 5% - unnoticeable before you hit 20 fracture points)

That's all for now. Sorry for wall of text, but my medical education had to speak
Btw. You said about uploading 0.6g, and I can see only 0.6f...

Cheers

16. Small bag is flat and laying on the floor. It shouldn't interfere with walking. So to move it you should drag it.

Short this time

I am going to print all your suggestions and then go through them with my colleague.

Ok, We have implemented some of your suggestions with version 0.6h

But the whole needs/survival stuff is going to take some time to implement. We were going to overhaul it anyway for the next version so it was perfect timing for your feedback to influence.

We are also going to overhaul how the weapon system works in general. We are going to do more of creating weapons out of assembling parts.. like a super futuristic stuff. So the mod upgrade for our current weapon is not going to stay as it is.

I have submitted a new version and just waiting for it to be authorized.

Historical moment.... I couldn't find any bugs in new version!
However, the heat system is really annoying. Mostly because I can't really negate it by smart playing - often on the station there are no warm places, and there is no other way to fight with cold. I just run out of healing items over time, and not because of real wounds.
I'm really glad that you implemented my ideas about eating and drinking. But because negative effect of hunger and thirst kicks in so late (25% and less) and sharply it just moved set eating point from "100%-food value" to "25%" - still not really choice for players.

Best luck!

It's nice to hear.

Yes we agree that heat and cold system is not complete. We plan to introduce place to warm up, and bring down the degree of coldness for the levels that has it cause they are supposed to be for act 1.