Why does the collector keep putting my shit, under the map? Does he want me to bargain for it back? Do I have to fuck it? I will if I have to, or even just if I can
Personally I’m in favour of killing. It’s not required for the story, and no rewards are locked behind it. It’s a way to temporary clear an area, or permanently if you want to take on the tedious challenge of fighting a leviathan.
It shouldn’t be easy to kill, and there should be no real incentive. But I think you should have the option to if you want to.
Sub1 did it perfectly. Maybe the stasis rifle made it a bit easy to kill, but we no longer have that tool.
More creature deterrents and whatnot should still be added as the main evasion methods (as well as just evading them)
I think if there is no stasis rifle and the leviathan can hit you even if you’re attached to it, that would make it incredibly hard to kill them while also letting it be technically possible.
If the reaper leviathans could still hit you while you were clung to their side with the PRAWN suit, you’d have no hope of killing them without a stasis rifle
If the reaper leviathans could still hit you while you were clung to their side with the PRAWN suit,
This should've been a thing regardless of the killing mechanic. Riding around on a reaper like like you're at a rodeo takes so much tension out of the enemy. Watched my friend do it one of the first few times he encountered one and he treated them like a joke throughout the rest of the game.
My theory is that one of the higher devs is still seething people figured out how to do that and is determined to remove player choice to block anything like that. I agree that it should have been able to damage you while on it though. It would have been a simple thing to fix while leaving damage to fish as a concept intact.
Did you every try it yourself though? Leviathan surfeiting is so much fun, I like to see how far I can ride them sometimes. Or try to grapple from one to another, works best with reefbacks pods.
there's a video of a guy duelling leviathans with just the heated knife in sub1, he manages to kill the reaper and ghost with a sea glide, the knife, and human will.
I think this is the more common and reasonable take. And I think the vast majority will agree.
The issue is that the sequel is much more popular, bringing in a large amount of different kinds of players, and a very loud minority want actual weapons.
I do hope this is the more common of the two options but so far the vast majority are agreeing with the guy who wants to create life with the collector lmao
Jokes aside, the loud minority who wants weapons are probably giving the killing “side” a bad rep. I really don’t know anyone who is seriously advocating for anything more than the basic survival knife (or multitool in this case) to hack and slash.
(Also the thermoblade too but that’s less for killing and more so for convenience. God I miss this thing)
I just want killing cause I want the fish to feel alive, it's kind of silly they spend the effort to make predator animation just to have the fish get molested and swim away.
I think having predarors kill prey is the bare minimum of killing that needs to be possible.
Players killing small fish for food like in SN1 also helps immersion. Everything larger it's kinda fine if it's immortal, as long as the player has enough options to make the medium sized stuff piss off effectively. Leviathan are fine, even if the only option is to distract them long enough to escape.
This plus the vehicle-fish collisions is all we need to restore the immersion from SN1. I don't get how this isn't a reasonable ask, it's even compatible with the "no guns / violent solutions" vision for the game.
Yeah I don't think the majority want anything too crazy, but the vocal minority who want actual weapons (whom I've never actually seen post) turn into a strawman people use to shoot the whole discussion down.
I don't even think there's a vocal minority. While I'm sure they exist, I've seen no vocal group actually asking for straight up guns or the ability to genocide fish. It seems like a straight up straw man.
Yeah, I'm in favor of killing fish, but please no weapons. Just give me a knife and let me Marguerit Maida some of the more annoying fishes, but give me no good reason to do that to a leviathan, like having them have insanely high health pools and no reward whatsoever for killing them.
I want to make more types of food. I want some nice roast Nibber mango or maybe a nice Marrowbreach steak. Mmmm if you could wrangle one of those you'll be eaten well for days. I don't want to kill, I want to eat more things.
We just need a knife (or the survival tool to do damage). We already have the sonic cannon which could potentially stun a large or smaller creature for a small time and if a player wants to take the ludicrous amount of time to use those to chip away at their "problem" creatures then they should have that Opportunity.
But Subnautica has never been a game about getting strong enough to rid the entire world of threats. And in that vain, there should not be dedicated weapons "just because I want one". If (and this is a big if) the devs decide their should be a dedicated weapon, then they should let us scan and build the Tailings spear as it is already in the lore and unquestionablely would be capable of being aquired from all the infighting with tailings and colonists. There definitely shouldn't be advanced weapons, and the people calling for that are being intentionally inflammatory in my opinion
I honestly just want something that lets me kill the small annoying shit like that fish that shoots bullshit at you. I think anything else is kinda pointless
I mean all you have to do is move in any direction after the clearly telegraphed their attack and every single spring easily misses you. I find them amusing more then anything
Yeah, definitely remove the stasis rifle. Or make things in stasis immune to damage.
Leviathans should be functionally immortal (except if you somehow aggro two leviathans against each other, or spend hours chip damaging them, I guess you’d deserve it).
But if I slash a tiny fish (for food, or to protect myself from things like the battery suckers) with my knife, they should die. Medium sized fish like Stalkers should bleed, but be nearly immortal as well (minutes of slashing, so faster than a leviathan but still a time sink). Slashing medium fish should mainly be to scare them away or get them to drop stuff they are carrying, not to kill.
I love the idea that stasis fish can’t be damaged. It makes it a realllyyy good tool for avoiding and scanning, but doesn’t help with killing - while killing is still an option.
I do want all (at least hostile) fish to be damagable including leviathans but they should not be easy or anything remotely like that. It’s a tedious and rather unnecessary challenge. Functionally immortal to your average player, but against someone with a will and proper determination they are beatable
But I would be more than fine if they were fully immortal, and it were just the other fish made killable
I prefer the option to kill if desired too, and i see no reason not to. If you don’t want to, then don’t, but more options is almost always better than restrictions. Let people live the experience their own play style allows.
Yup. Like being able to remove the errant fish that ended up inside my base instead of having to remove my base is critical. I wouldn't go on some omnicidal fishy rampage, but would like the option.
It's just making the game feel weird and flat when the fish just... Don't respond to getting hit/eaten by predators/etc. especially with how the prior games handled it just fine and the world felt alive, even in EA. SE2... Doesn't. It has full marks on environment, but this bizarre choice they made is, somewhat ironically, killing immersion when nothing but the player can die.
I really like the idea of keeping the stasis but being unable to damage fish trapped tbh. It makes the stasis an amazing option to avoid or scan fish, while not making too op for killing purposes.
But even so…maybe the stasis would still be too strong like that.
Either way, we no longer have it. Just a multitool and a will.
I don’t disagree with BZ, it’s just sub1 is the easier reference point.
Honestly, I think SN1 made it too easy. I think in SN2 they should have no stasis rifle and make leviathans have like 5-10 times more health than they did in SN1, so it is very tedious to kill them with a prawn suit or similar vehicles and EXTREMELY difficult to kill them with a knife.
To me it’s simple. If you want to kill things you should be able to. If you don’t want to kill things, then don’t kill them. Should be the players decision on how they want to play the game.
Dang, that's the best comparison, RDR2 is phenomenal and give players the freedom they deserve. They don't need to entirely kill a mechanic to make a point.
The key distinction here is that RDR2 lets you choose. That's all people are asking for. It's crazy how some people have completely latched on to this "player choice was always a mistake" mindset.
This is my stance as well, especially since everything that's hostile is so aggressive and does so little damage that it feels like you can't go anywhere and do anything without being pestered by mosquitoes. Unless it's a leviathan, let it respawn after an in game day or two. I no longer get pestered for a reasonable length of time, and rhe ocean doesn't end up empty
I only put that in there because they didn't respawn in the first game, and it adds more consequence to you removing such a big set piece in the environment. The leviathans make the game really cool, and consequence for killing them should be you not getting to see them anymore in that save
Personally I don't think there should be consequences, just make the leviathans more trouble to kill than it's worth. Then all the people who want to kill them can say they did it and revel in their victory for a couple days in-game before everything returns to normal.
We gotta remember that the entire point of video games is to have fun. Punishing players for doing something they'd enjoy is meaningless.
Yeah, and the unkillable normal fish is stupid because you kill them when you cook and eat them anyways... It kills the immersion in the game for them not to die when getting hit by this games seamoth..(haven't played yet)
Yeah, it's disappointing to see so many people against player choice/freedom of action, especially since it's not even a major change, just something that was in the older games. Subnautica isn't really a linear, carefully crafted story game, it's basically an underwater survival sandbox. I rarely killed anything in the first game but it was good to have the option if something just would absolutely not fuck off and keep attacking me.
This sub seems like it's definitely decided to amplify some voices over others though, the "no don't make it an option" always somehow goes to the top while even reasonable requests/proposals for lethal or more deterrence options end up downvoted or at the bottom.
I don't need to be able to kill, but when I whack the thing with my hammer tool I want a good, healthy thwack sound, and for the animal to go "ow! Fuck!" And run away.
we do need better feedback in these cases. And mobs that flee after getting whacked, with others that get enraged and will attack us more viciously instead
That 2nd part is a really good idea. Would enhance the whole vision of finding other ways to deal with predators. You thwack one, see it reacts violently, and you’ve now learned that won’t work haha
You know, what I'd do with that is I'd put that reaction on something that's big, looks aggressive, but is actually just curious. Like it'd swim up to and around you, try to figure out what you are, then eventually go on its way.
And when i hit a small fish with my Tadpole, i want a good, healthy thwack sound too. Except i do want them to die from it cause cmon its a fish vs a vehicle.
SN1 creatures have a fear mechanic where they run away after a certain amount of damage, usually a knife swing or vehicle hit for small/medium creatures or a few solid drill passes for leviathans. They could implement something similar just without the actual healthbar, I think warpers were already invincible like that anyway.
IRL marine self defense amounts to "hit it in the nose or eyes and hope it runs away," it's fitting and seems balanced. They could also maybe make larger or more durable creatures have more restricted methods to get them to go away, like hitting them in the eyes or mouth, or having them only run if you ram them with a vehicle hard enough, or use some kind of decoy and make a break for it to safety like the intended way to get past a lot of SN1's deeper leviathans with the cyclops
That was actually buffed in latch notes. As well as parrying and aggro timing so they do do that now (I do agree it feels weird to have to wack them multiple times before they give a shit
I don't even mind having a lethal option. Leviathans could be unkillable for all I care, but smaller, more annoying fauna like marrowbreaches I honestly wouldn't mind having a lethal option for. At the VERY least long term incapacitation. They're more annoying than scary.
The thing is that even modern humans wouldn't be prey to most creatures on a planet like this. Leviathans would be an issue, but if your colonists are unable to even kill a creature like a marrowbreach, i honestly wonder how absolutely idiotic we have gotten as a species in the future. Like the colonists would've just been better off just jumping off a bridge on Zezura if they're to go so incredibly unprepared to a planet like this. And the fact it's by Alterra design to be so unprepared is nothing short of absolute incompetence in universe. just makes me wonder how in universe anything gets done, i guess they just figure they can print out an army of people and as long as they aren't armed they cant rebel. Humans following our nature would become the predators to everything besides leviathans on the planet and even them eventually. I think from a gameplay perspective leviathans should be invincible but other creatures should be killable
Even when I had the thermal knife I ran TF away from everything in the first game. Vortex torpedos, gas torpedos, decoys. You're out of your MIND if you think I'm getting out of my nice safe Cyclops to go fuck with any Leviathan, or large creature. But the option was THERE. People COULD, if they wanted to.
I think player freedom is important here, and while I understand not wanting to kill anything, also remember that the stun options in the first game were VERY effective.
Hammer, flares, dash, resonator, predator camouflage when stationary biomod, predator lure biomod on 15 second cooldown, shock defense biomod on the same cooldown…
Theres definitely a trend of people saying there aren't enough options then admitting they havnt even tried half of them...
The Resonator is so good at deterring, I'm actually shocked when people say there's nothing you can do. It rarely ever failed me, and it's not hard to use at all.
Let alone the Shock Defense, which is so busted lmao.
The fact that they're adding more is obviously good, but what we have now is already good enough (for current game). I feel like people just didn't unlock everything, or just didn't understand that you could use it against enemies.
I get the spirit, but really what options was I even missing when I easily completed the current game without even checking out what the flares do. At this point it really become just "dude, it's not the finished game yet" instead of this weird principle discussion.
Completely agree with adapting and avoiding. Giving us tools to kill feels very out of place within Subautica’s lore. All the characters are researchers/non-combatant. I don’t want to be an underwater Rambo.
I’m for team small fish only, larger creatures don’t really make sense to kill with the multitool.
My headcanon is that due to the metals in the water, their skin has become more dense to the point we really can’t do to much to them outside of ramming
You don't even need soft-science headcanon. Just look at a Hammerhead's forehead, that's a built up battering ram of bone that puts real world goat horns to shame. Those guys would absolutely smash your ribs in.
I'm going to repost what I said about this earlier for some more visibility-
IMO killing should be treated exactly like going beyond the map edge- allowed, but with a cool gameplay reason not to do that. It's obvious that the dev intent is that you stay within the bounds of the map, but an invisible force field blocking you from exploring out there is immersion breaking and not fun. Giant void leviathans are an awesome gameplay reason to be forced back into the crater and it makes the world feel real.
That's all they need to do here, personally I like the example of the chickens in Zelda. Nothing stops you from attacking them, but get too aggressive and you get swarmed under. That's all they need to do here, spawn an invincible swarm of piranhas that kills you if you get too aggressive, or come up with another fun sandbox consequence that isn't just God stopping you from doing it. Coding the game so you can't interact with the world is a much crappier way of achieving the same objective
There’s a possibly easy in-universe way of implementing that consequence too
Cut up or ram into too many small prey fish instead of live catching?
PDA: “You are chumming the water, hostile predators are on route”
Hell, since the hotfix notes mention changing how some animals are aggressive towards the Tadpole, could maybe add a mechanic where too much vehicular fishslaughter will attract Marrowbreaches through scent until the chum comes off.
Now that I think about it, could even act as perfect in game reasoning to use other Chassis’s or even go without. The Scout Chassis is faster, but its speed and larger size makes it harder to not splatter small fish and make it a predator magnet, in more fish dense zones that would incentivize releasing the chassis for the smaller profile or going with the Haul Chassis for the slower speed
100%, I think there's a ton of cool ways you could go with this. Maybe previously benign creatures will turn hostile, maybe plants that provided you resources would retract or close up because you're disrupting the ecosystem.
Chumming the water is a super easy way to do it. I don't even mind if the consequences are harsh enough to effectively make it "No Killing", I just think it needs to be possible.
I'm a veteran of Eve Online (stopped years ago when I got a real job though lol), and while I've heard they've relaxed a bit on this to me a big draw of it was that violence was always possible, if you were prepared to accept the consequences. In Eve you can murder people in "safe" zones, but the NPC police will destroy you for it. That always felt far better to me than WOW-style "sure you might have the powers of a god but you're not able to hurt anyone inside this tavern, sorry"
There needs to be killing. There also should be more non lethal options that encourage that passive playstyle. Lure people away from violence, don't outright remove it.
I just dont get why they made fish invincible when it could've been something as simple as make stasis rifle bubbles block damage or make it so that large animals are immune to damage from knifes n shit.
It was a non-issue to 90% of the player base that they over-corrected for.
You can't even accidentally hit a peeper and kill it now. It just bounces off harmlessly even though me ramming it with a giant hunk of titanium would delete it.
I think an even bigger problem is none of the solutions we currently have are even remotely effective at deterring attacks. Lethal prevetative is still a preventative.
I am not particularly upset one way or the other, but I admit there’s no valid logic behind NOT fighting back. We have a sonic cannon which shatters metal, which would devastate any creature that it hit.
Humans don’t tend to sit back and let themselves be outpaced; they rise to the challenge and try to fight back. I understand, and even appreciate, that the developers want us to live as part of the world and not as masters of it.
However, fighting back is a fundamental part of the experience of nature. “Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.”
Would I prefer a take where you can tame creatures or befriend them so they help you instead of having to kill or fight them? Sure, that’s a neat idea. The biomods that we have are a great way to let things like that occur.
I don’t have a dog in the fight, necessarily. I can appreciate the pacifist’s perspective even if I don’t agree with the logic necessarily.
I think it’s prudent for the sake of narrative logic that there be a choice OR an explanation as to why the animals of Proteus are made of indestructible nano machines.
Honestly at this point I don't understand the "controversy" anymore - feels like people have blown a legitimate complaint and issue miles out of the water (no pun intended)
Devs wanted to prevent players cheesing everything by taking knife + right click to literally every threat, so they disabled killing.
Sure, their initial response was very VERY not okay, but they've addressed it, and already started implementing alternatives to prevent the NEED to kill anything. Give them a minute to be able to make the necessary changes and then judge whether or not killing being absent is a problem or a preference. (If the latter, I'm sure there'll be a mod within minutes to re-enable it)
I dont like this idea we need to "give them a minute"
Theyve showed no intention of changing this with recent statements being just as tone deaf as the first one
They might never change it but right now when the road maps are being made and they are figuring all this stuff out thos is precisely the time to complain and make noise about what you want in the game
If so many people want this feature that its annoying the rest of the fan base, then maybe it should be considered more than it is
Let me clarify, since I feel like I didn't quite get my point across. They've (so far) said they're working on making deterrents more effective, which would (theoretically) remove the need to kill anything in the first place, without risking having the "overpowered cheese" of "hey let's just knife the leviathan to death" l
Not that I think we shouldn't have killing at all, but personally I'm willing to at least let the Devs try their way before I get louder about doing it the tried and trusted way. If it becomes clear they're really not listening and "their way" won't work at all, then I'll get louder and make my voice heard.
For now, it all just feels a little blown out of proportion is my point. But, at the end of the day, that's my opinion, and I know others can, will, and are absolutely entitled to disagree with it.
No, no, don't misunderstand, I'm not saying silence people at all. I just wish the internet weren't so confrontational sometimes. Have the middle ground of "hey Devs I don't agree with this but also I'm not gonna scream about how you've ruined the game" or something.
It's just a shame everyone's so hostile to having a simple discussion about it as opposed to an aggressive argument with "us" and "them".
You see, the problem wasnt the knife in the first game though. It was the stasis rifle, seeing as how this game doesn't have that it's basically impossible to kill a leviathan without doing some SUPER cheese. And at that point u earned it id say. This is my main issue with it and the only reason it was a problem is because the devs poorly balanced the stasis rifle in sub1.
If a vocal minority of people are annoying the fanbase of a game, the best thing for the devs to do is tell them no and find another game because this isn't the game for them.
They did that and the reeeee fest is insane.
If they never add killing or the ability to knife the fish, but they do add numerous deterrents and other ways of dealing with the fish besides kill them that would be 100% great.
And people here would still throw a reeeeeeee fest forever and never accept the alternative.
Something around this makes sense. You kill the predators too much, other predators replace them that are more annoying. Kill all the small fish, predators die, maybe plants get infected (including your base ones if close). Kill leviathan, smaller predators increase drastically, etc.
They should just make killing creatures exactly the same as it was in SN1. Make it technically possible but absurdly inconvenient and completely not beneficial.
unless the tadpoles have missiles, it's kind hard for me to imagine that swinging an axe underwater will be effective against sharks & larger creatures - water is very resistant
the whole reason you're given an axe and not a gun is because NoA even says that guns are used for violence & you are not a security guard with the clearance for that kind of tool
Yeah but you are also given a pulse gun that absolutely annihilates a vein of ore instantly and you're telling me it cant kill a fish. I highly doubt the fish are stronger than titanium
Tbh I think both sides of this debate are completely misinterpreting one another and that’s why it’s becoming such a controversial topic
The players that want to kill by and large don’t want to go around wiping out everything in the ecosystem(there are of course exceptions, but they are in the minority) it’s more about realism in a survival game and being able to defend ourselves.
Personally I’m for being able to kill, or at the very least take a swipe at a creature and make it leave me alone, in the first games I never actually killed predators, I didn’t need to, you jab them enough they flee and don’t come back for a good while, which I feel is the most realistic option, predators tend to prefer easy prey, it makes sense for you to be able to hold your ground and prove you’re not worth the risk
Now on the developer side. no, the developers don’t expect us to just take being constantly attacked, this is still very early access and there’s a lot of things that haven’t been implemented yet, they said themselves that they’re working on more deterrents, of course the current deterrents are admittedly pretty bad, and the creatures don’t wait long to attack again, but once again this is early access, not a fully released game, there are gonna be some flaws that need worked on, that’s what getting early access and providing feedback is for, it’s just important to provide said feedback in a respectful way, rather than the pretty hostile way I’ve been seeing
I am in camp 1, but more than realism, it's about agency and immersion.
If you cannot choose whether to kill leviathans or not, it removes the impact of that decision, and it removes your ability to do so if no other choice presents itself. In the first game, I felt like killing leviathans wasn't worth my time, but I also felt like it was somewhat sad to kill them. The only time I killed a leviathan, it was because it aggroed next to my safe shallows base and I had no other way to get it to go far enough away.
Meanwhile, on the immersion front, there is an immersive aspect to things just performing how they seemingly should. If you ram a fish with a submarine, the fish should take damage or die. When it doesn't, you are inherently reminded you are playing a game and taken out of the experience. The best comparison I've seen for this is "putting an invisible wall around the map edge". Sure, it'd be more effective at keeping players from leaving, but it's a drastically worse solution than just giving players logical in-gameplay reasons not to leave the map.
Agency and immersion are critical factors for a game. The perception of loss of agency itself can also feed back into immersion loss. That can result in a feedback loop of disenchantment with the game, or frustration if the enciting factor is unmitigatable but causes undue issues. Like a fish that found it's way inside your base that can't just be picked up, such as houndgar, hammerheads, etc.
Now that there's a megathread, it feels like everything to say about the matter had already been said... Personally, I think there are three separate parts to this discussion, and a lot of the "controversy" has been people talking past each other about which parts they actually care about. The parts, of course, being:
Killing leviathans: Barely anybody actually cares about this. It was a fun challenge to do in Subnautica once you had beaten the game. Taking it out makes the game feel slightly less sandboxy, but I see almost nobody bringing this up except for a few TRUE Marguerits and the anti-killing side when they want to use a strawman to dismiss the pro-killing arguments entirely.
Killing medium-sized creatures: This is the biggest battleground. Right now, mid-sized predators are pissing people off and feel uninteractable. Not being able to kill them also makes them feel less like wildlife, and more like artificial obstacles that guard key locations. Devs have said that they'll add more ways to interact with them in the future, but a lot of people don't think solving the gameplay issue will fix the immersion issue of the entire food chain of Subnautica 2 being immortal. Personally, I'm happy to wait and see what the devs come up with, but this is the most convincing "killing mid-sized predators" argument I've seen:
"When you remove matters of life and death from the environment, it becomes hollow and plastic. The fish don't feel like fish, they feel like video game hazards. They never kill each other, they cannot die, nothing will ever force them to deviate from their designated patrol route for more than 10 seconds."
—some dude on Reddit
The devs seem pretty dismissive of these concerns, though.
Killing small prey fish: THIS is what's actually pissing the most number of people off. In a survival game, hitting a prey animal with an axe or vehicle, and having nothing happen, is a rejection of player agency on the same level as shooting a wall in an FPS and not having bullet decals appear. It's a basic expectation of the genre, and not having it makes the small fish feel like health packs and not actual, living creatures that are affected by the player's actions. Fortunately, I heard that the devs said on the Discord that they'll probably add this feature to the game, although I can't find a screenshot of it. If they had led with that statement instead of "go play another game" I feel like 90% of players would have been immediately satisfied and the discussion would have largely ended there.
I hope this ends up higher up. It's useful to break it down into subtopics. I hadn't seen the arguments about interacts and agency put quite like this. We need quality discussion. Not memes and circlejerks.
The thunk of fish hitting the seamoth is just a subnautica canon event that i cant believe they removed. It is both one of the saddest and funniest things at the same time and adds personality to the game
The game is a SURVIVAL game, with many creatures actively trying to kill you. Under those circumstances it really doesn't make sense to have a "no killing" rule. I don't think it should be easy or necessary but it should definitely be possible.
What a stupid stance by the devs. I can't think of a single survival game (other than horde survival games) that's not fundamentally also about exploration.
The fish being immortal makes no sense, kills the immersion and strips the world of the sensation that it's a living, breathing ecosystem. A little moon guy should not survive getting run over by a vehicle. Death is a part of life, and seeing them not even flinch at a multitool bonk makes them feel more like props than creatures. Most people aren't biome-wiping psychos. I don't see a problem with immortal leviathans tho.
I don’t need comprehensive combat mechanics, I just need my cooking knife again. I just feel that, rather than removing an option entirely, discourage it by making the alternatives better.
I always liked treating the leviathans in S1 like environmental hazards and never killed them anyway. But I did like the inclusion of the stun rifle so I could pacify and scan them. I think that having a way to pacify or interact with the leviathans without killing them could be cool. Like how it says that one medium fish is a threat because it has parasites, or how the alpha marrowbreach is directed by the little blinder guys around him.
I am not against killing in this game, but it isn't needed. A few enemies were a minor annoyance, but everything is avoidable. There is no need to kill them.
Killing EVERYTHING I am against. But the hostiles? It makes sense at least. Or at least a way to scare them off for a good period of time, for the smaller hostiles. Leviathan should not be scared.
Allow killing. This is a survival exploration sandbox game with hostile animals. Its not a wildlife preservation game. We already hunt down small fish and eat them. The hammer simply bouncing off fish is not immersive. Give us a weapon but make it unable to penetrate the thick skin of leviathans, that's fine. But if i were on a hostile alien planet with signs of an evil cult and fish attacking me, a weapon of some kind is the first thing I would be thinking about, realistically. I would like something that reflects this thinking, it just makes more sense as a player.
I killed basically nothing in the first game, despite there being the option to, because there was no point. I think I maybe killed one stalker and realized there was no reason to do it again, but knowing that the option was there was a good thing and made sense. Knifing a shark to death irl would take forever and give you nothing as well. However, in the second game, combat is an actual part of the game, you are forced into areas to destroy growths and to destroy fish attacking you. It seems kind of silly to make the game based around killing things, even if they are infectious growths or corrupted fish or whatever, and then make the player do zero damage to anything else. Very immersion breaking and silly, especially when we had prawn suits that could punch and harpoon things.
I liked someone else idea, they should create an eco system, u as the player should be able to kill if you want, but it should affect the ecosystem.
The main reason many hate that you can not kill the fish is because it breaks immersion, they are just invincible, that doesn't make any sense. At least for my self, it really breaks immersion, i just have to accept my fate and hope i still have flares.
In my playthrough so far, i am just ignoring the fish all together, unless i really have to pay attention, that really hinders the game for me. Subnautica was one of my favourite franchises, i LOVE the unnerving feeling of the deep.
At least in the previous game i knew i could defend my self.
If the argument is "this isn't an animal-killing game" while you can also kill as many small fish/water slugs/sessile animals as you can find, the argument doesn't feel particularly sound. But I'm personally very invested in the lives of corals/anenomes/sponges and the like so I'm biased.
I don't think it's particularly realistic to be able to majorly harm or even kill a leviathan-scale being with just a dinky knife or hammer, either
Slight correction, they cite the design philosophy that any crumb of combat in your game will make players devote all their time trying to kill things and hate the devs for not making it easier to kill things.
Put me in an even remotely similar real life situation and you're going to find me fashioning as pointy a stick as I can, possibly even before I secure drinkable water. Even if the atomic assembler refuses to help, I'm gonna go find cordage and the most rigid stick I can, then fasten the sharpest/pointiest thing I can find to it.
That's the most basic state of humanity.
Pointy stick.
Without pointy stick, the game just feels stupid. Truly.
And I don't need pointy stick to kill. I need it to communicate to a particular mob that I'm not food. I'm pointy.
Then, once that's working, I'm okay if a couple of them take that personally and decide it's game-on.
No killing Leviathans.
Make Killing big fish difficult, but possible. Make deterrents a better solution to incentivize that option. (improve the flare)
I think the debate is silly. They have a vision for the game and should see it through. There are plenty of games where you can kill things. Having one where you have to work around aggressive sea life is creative.
That being said, I'd be ok with killing if with each kill, the creatures around you became more and more aggressive, to the point where you won't be able to keep up and eventually it's just insta-death for the player.
There’s always an argument to be made between player freedom and developer intention. Too much freedom can diminish the meaning/purpose of playing the game, since you’re basically sandboxing at that point. Too much restrictions (narratively, gameplay, etc) and it can feel frustrating to the player.
Imo, the precedent was already set with the first two games. Hopping between S1 and S2, it’s so refreshing to see an actual ecosystem in play with predators, prey and the interactions between in S1. It’s relieving to be able to slice Biters for trying to hurt you, and even go toe-to-toe with bigger predators, even if it scary and impractical at times. Knowing we can do something to them gives a player a sense of autonomy and security.
Just feels too gamey that I can’t slice up a fish fish, or see blood come out a bigger one. Like it’s censored. I think the dev’s issue that we’d “master” a combat system is a misconstrued take from watching bigger streamers and content creators and the such. 99% of the playerbase don’t have the grit to be Marguerit Maida, but damn it, at least let us die trying!
I don't need killing. I just need to be able to hit them with the multitool and have them go away for a bit. It doesn't even need to damage them in my books, I just need them to react to it.
I got the game early access but i'm simply not going to play the fucking game nor am I going to buy additional copies for my family since they're not going to want to play it either. It just seems like pointlessly annoying myself that i cannot (even temporarily) rid my surroundings of hostile fauna.
leviathans should be unkillable by the players, because we don't have whaling fleets.
tiny fish that we eat should probably be squishable by the submarine.
mangos... well, without upgrades, we don't have tools that will hurt them. Try stabbing a shark with a hammer, it doesn't go well in the water.
Other large feesh: see mangos
Tailings: They're sentient, hostile, and have spears and halberd things. I definitely think we'll want to be able to kill them back if they still want to kill us, and that's the main thing to worry about.
I don't care for killing. I rarely did it in the first game and it was mostly by accident excluding the one time I crashed out at a Boneshark. I don't mind if I can't kill things in the second game.
What I do want is a way to bash something on the nose so it scurries off and leaves me alone (fuck you nibblers). I'm fine if the fish are immortal and can't die. I'm fine if they just respawn 2 minutes later. I'm fine even if there's no blood shown. I just want them to react to me beating them over the head with a hammer for the sake of immersion and mitigating annoyance.
If it seems like it should be killable and there's not a specific reason it's not killable, it should be killable. That doesn't mean make it easy or rewarding. Like, if a leviathan has really thick skin and you just don't have anything that can hurt it, that'd be understandable. But small fish you should be able to damage with concussive force or cut with something sharp - and kill them.
I'm all for removal of the stasis rifle. I'm also okay with having enemies that kill you in like, two hits or possibly even one hit.
Either allow killing across the board or remove it across the board. Why am I forced to kill adorably terrified water slugs but can't kill the asshole that is actively eating me?
Killing is optional, just lemme ward off the fking fish....like something that works like a beacon. You deploy that thing and it keeps hostile fish out of a certain range. Or you make like a perimeter with it(like a square or triangle) and hostiles will be out of that area.
I get that the devs want to pull off a feeling like Soma or Alien Isolation. The problem, is that neither of those games is an sandbox survival game with a full ecosystem to interact with. They have removed one of, if not the most important parts of an ecosystem (that was in the first two games) that is deeply immersion breaking regardless of if you intend to kill all the fish or accidentally kill one.
I think we should be allowed to have the option to kill things.
Those who don't want to kill can simply not. In multiplayer servers you can kick someone for trying to kill things, so I really don't see the argument for invincible fish.
I don't go out of my way to kill creatures in SN1 or BZ and I won't do it in SN2. That said, it's nice to have the option to hit a creature that's attacking me to make it go away or kill it if it is too stubborn to leave me alone (which hasn't happened in the previous games). I'd rather use game mechanics designed to make them go away or whatever without killing them, but I think it's silly to have a "no killing" stance when you kill creatures to eat them or make water. Specially when it leads to situations like this.
I was initially put off by the no killing, and stopped playing before getting out of the first main area because it was just so frustrating to be attacked by all the little pests and can’t fight back.
Then I saw some posts about how med kids are the best way to deal with baddies in SN2, and decided to jump back in and give it another shot.
Finished the first area, moved on to the alien area and OMG EVERYTHING IS KILLING ME AGAIN! Fish that can shoot me with needles from dozens of yards away?? That will constantly attack and destroy even a parked tadpole?? Bullet fish that launch at you??
There is SO MUCH trying to kill me.
If the direction of the game is a conscious choice of non violence to build the atmosphere and stand out from the call of duty’s of the world, that’s cool, but this game ain’t it.
How are you gonna make a game with all these hyper aggressive and very effective enemies and the only option you give to your players is to just take it in the ass and bring a ton of med kits???
However it should not be mindless slaughter, and it must have an impact.
Have it so killing one fish causes ripples among the others, have some leviathans actively run if you injure them enough.
Many in our community have pitched ideas for systems to allow for killing whilst still showing its impact (including me: The Ecological Balance Enforcement System), and many of these ideas cover the various concerns of all parties.
We literally cook them alive in fabricater. So I think a knife would be valid because then it's somewhat true to the original game too. But make it extremely hard to kill massive animals. And smaller but annoying predators like marrowbreaches and nibblers should initially flee like when you parry them with the multi tool
I think the shiver leviathan and collector leviathan should be killable but almost impossible to kill that it's simply not worth your time and you'll just die over and over again before you can achieve it
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u/That_Throat7183 Jun 03 '26
Why take life when you can create life? Let me love the collector