Good evening everybody! This is Aifos coming to you alive from planet 472830405201832832B, or whatever it is! And today we are going to talk about Subnautica! The first one, not the freezy one, which I haven't played! Now, a disclaimer right up front, I am about to talk a lot of smack on Subnautica, but I would first and foremost like to point out that I do like the game. I like the base building, and driving Submarines, and a lot of the biomes are very pretty.. When they load. It's a very nice game to relax to! However, I often hear it be called "one of the best survival games ever", and I can not simply sit by and let that fly. So, without further ado, let's talk about Subnautica's biggest problem; the importance of resource scarcity! Survival games are ultimately games about resource management. You go out into a dangerous world, and gather the resources you need to keep that dangerous world from murderizing you. To this end, there are two primary types of resources you'll be managing in any survival game; environmental resources--things like wood to keep your fire burning, and food to keep yourself from starving--and what I'll call key resources--these are things that the player is usually managing from the second they start up the game, all the way until the end, and depletion of them usually leads to a game over. In Subnautica's case, environmental resources are things like crafting materials, and food/water, while your key resources are hunger, thirst, and energy. For the most part, we're going to focus on those three key resources, and we'll start with hunger and thirst. [spoiler]Yes, neither health nor oxygen are key resources, because you're spending most of your time in submarines anyway, where neither of those things matter.[/spoiler] Early game, thirst and hunger are refilled much the same way. You go, catch a fish, then transform that fish into something else at a Fabricator. In the Safe Shallows--the area where you spawn--both of the fish you need for this are plentiful, and there are very few threats to keep you from gathering them. As you get more tools, in fact, gathering them just becomes easier over time. Once you reach the mid to endgame, things get even easier, as you can easily keep the fish in a tank where they'll reproduce, and the game gives you a device that'll give you free water at the cost of energy. Or in other words, two of our three key resources are basically free. Neither hunger nor thirst should ever really pose a problem to the player. But theoretically, that's actually just fine, so long as our third key resource, energy, does pose some sort of challenge. Energy comes in three forms; batteries for tools, power cells for vehicles, and base power for, er, bases. You can recharge the former two with the latter, and base power can be generated from a variety of sources, from thermal plants, to solar panels. It is more or less infinite, but since batteries and power cells will steadily drain when not on some sort of charger, this actually leads to an interesting situation where you have infinite power at base, but any expeditions into the wider world leave you running on a temporary power source that you have to properly manage lest you wind up stranded without a vehicle.. In theory, anyway. In practice, this potentially interesting dilemma is undermined by the fact that both batteries and power cells are incredibly easy to craft, so there's no reason to just not take some backups with you if you're heading out on a big adventure, and even if you don't anything besides the Seaglide has enough power to make it basically anywhere on the map without running out of energy. Or in other words, our third key resource is also basically free. At worst, players may find one of their tools dying out in the field, but never should they be faced with a situation where they'll be completely out of power. And our key resources all being more or less free is a problem only accentuated by the fact that our environmental resources aren't exactly handled properly, either. You'll be using the easy to get materials, like Titanium, and Gold all throughout the game, but for more rare resources like Nickel or Kyanite, you'll likely have everything you need after a single farming run, maybe two at most. This basically means, you won't actually be venturing into the game's hardest areas more than a couple times, meaning you won't need to stock up on food, water, or energy, and you'll have more Kyanite than you know what to do with before you know it. So why is our three main key resources being infinite a problem? Well, simply put, resource management is theoretically at the core of the game's challenge. With our resources being infinite, the game simply isn't that hard. I played through basically the whole game twice, on Hardcore mode, and never died legitimately. Ever. And, if survival is so easy, then that kinda undermines the point of a survival game, doesn't it? [spoiler]I say legitimately, because I did get killed by a glitch, where I was trapped underwater with land physics. So, all I could do was walk around on the bottom of the ocean, where I decided to just jump into a fire pit and die.[/spoiler] But, okay, Subnautica does theoretically have a solution to this problem. The way [i]I think[/i] the game wants you to play is to build bases all throughout the game. When you reach a new area, it wants you to stop and set up shop there, at least for a little bit, as you gather up resources and whatnot. And, all three of your key resources are actually much harder to come by in these later areas--they're too deep for solar panels, the fish residing there aren't as nutritious, and water can only be obtained through Filtration Machines, which do soak up a lot of energy. But, that's the thing, is there isn't actually much reason to do this; it's harder to survive down there, and due to the aforementioned environmental resource problem, it's not like you actually need to be down there very long anyway. It does give you a closer spawn point, granted, but most enemies in Subnautica aren't actually designed to kill you; they hit you once or twice to give you a scare and then swim off. So, you shouldn't really be dying that often, anyway. So, whare are some potential solutions to these problems? Don't Starve starts you off with an easy food source, just like Subnautica does, in the form of rabbits. However, every Spring, rabbit dens collapse and are unavailable for the season, and all other food sources require a bit of risk to obtain. In a similar vein, Subnautica could've made it so that overconsuming one type of fish caused it to slowly stop appearing in the biome you've been taking it from. So, players would naturally gravitate towards consuming the Peeper, but as it quickly became all they ate, it soon disappeared from the environment, and they had to find something new. This could also apply to the fish you turn into water, forcing players to start relying on disinfected water (which for the record I still don't know how to make), and later a Filtration Machine. The energy problem could've been easily solved by making batteries, or at least power cells, harder to craft, and by making power cells deplete faster. That way, the player would actually have to be mindful of their energy, rather than just carting a full recharge of Power Cells around in their Cyclops, which yes, I very much did, and I never used a single one throughout both of my playthroughs. Finally, the game needed a way to encourage players to actually make new bases in harder areas. The only idea I have for how they could do that is maybe that some of the late game materials could only be crafted in late game areas, such as Ion Power Cells needing to be crafted at the Alien Thermal Plant, or something. Y'know, just some reason to stay in these areas longer. Honestly, though, Subnautica is a fine game, but I would argue it probably shouldn't be considered a survival game at all, let alone "one of the best of the genre". I'd say it belongs in the similar-but-different genre of sandbox games, alongside games like Minecraft. Survival games are all about resources being scarce, to evoke that feeling of surviving in a harsh world, while sandbox games are all about resources being plentiful, so that they're more chill, and are more about exploration and freedom. [b][u]Tl;dr? Here's my point![/b][/u] Subnautica is one of the easiest games I've ever played, and anyone who thinks it's hard is a wimp! If any of you NERDS disagree with me, then give me any situation in the game besides glitches or going past Crater's Edge, and I'll tell you either how to get out of it, or why you shouldn't be in that situation in the first place! Punks! [spoiler]To those of you who actually read the thread, though, I want to know if Below Zero does a better job at handling this problem. Part of me is considering picking it up, but legit, Subnautica is way too easy, and I don't know if I care to play another one if they don't make it any harder. I want muh resource management! Or, maybe you think I'm wrong, and this isn't a problem at all. Tell me why, and I'll be happy to debate it with you![/spoiler] But that's all for now, folks! Jambuhbye!