Hopes & Dreams

Sunless Skies
1

So I’ve only sunk a meager 15 hours into Sunless Skies so far - I’m sure there’s a lot I haven’t found yet in the Reach, and far more waiting for me in the wider release. But that’s going to take a while, and in the meantime I thought I’d jot down a few hopes, things I’d like to see developed or included in some way. Perhaps others can add their thoughts?

1) Some of that juicy teaser trailer goodness. Being rocketed off the rails & into the High Wilderness would be an amazing start for a captain. By the same token, the clarity and design of the teaser-trailer map, its odd blueprint-esque quality, would (in my opinion) be a nice upgrade over the map we have at the moment.

2) On the subject of the map, I hope we get something that lets us uncover larger areas or rewards us for going well off the beaten path, repeatedly. I was driven to reveal the whole map in Sunless Sea, but already here I found that I developed a few well-worn routes quite quickly and rarely strayed from them.

3) The Dawn Machine. For where else would you find THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN than in space?

4) The perks and facets of your past blossoming into new storylines and story choices, having a great impact on how you approach a playthrough. Would be a welcome boost to replayability variety.

5) Clickable targets for space combat, clickable locations for asteroids and other space-based things. I’m not too hopeful that I’ll get to see the second part, but I think it would be another good use of the floating text approach.

6) And finally, a dream already fulfilled - that floating text. Loved it in the Sunless Sea trailer, loved it in the Sunless Skies trailer, and I was so happy when I saw it in game.

Anyway, the game may have some teething troubles, but I’m really pleased with what there is so far. Great hopes for the future.
edited by A Parliament of Hounds on 9/2/2017

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with regards to number 3): I wonder what the Mechanical Sun that now shines over Albion could be? :P

3

[quote=A Parliament of Hounds]
1) Some of that juicy teaser trailer goodness. Being rocketed off the rails & into the High Wilderness would be an amazing start for a captain. By the same token, the clarity and design of the teaser-trailer map, its odd blueprint-esque quality, would (in my opinion) be a nice upgrade over the map we have at the moment.[/quote]

Its worth noting - sadly - that the sunless sea trailer also contained a couple of things that never materialised ingame.

Like the vast eye opening under the ocean when you shine a light on it. That gave me hope for massive creatures that never materialised.

Or the journal text appearing directly onscreen, which ironically we now have

Depending what you mean by clickable targets, this sounds like something i’d be against personally.
Perhaps its from years of experience playing action games - and shooters particularly, but i find the combat to be challenging and enjoyable. Most of the ideas i’ve seen so far seem to involve dumbing it down and reducing the skill factor

4

“Dumbing it down” can also be said as “making it more accessible”. I’m generally uncomfortable with accusing people of wanting a “dumber” game when what they want might just be something closer to a difficulty level they can handle. Not everybody has played years of action games.

I haven’t seen anything to fight yet that didn’t just rocket past me and I never see it again, and I also have no idea if it was friend or foe because I had no idea what it was. Clicking it and seeing a name would have been extremely helpful. I also had extreme difficulty figuring out if a thing I saw was something I could “discover”, so I understand wanting to be able to just click something and see what it is. I bashed into that damn vine a hundred times before deciding it inexplicably wasn’t a thing that can be marked on the map.

(And the eye is a thing in Sunless Sea, it’s just not a monstrous creature.)

5

The eye is in Sunless Sea, just not in every game. With each new captain, there’s a chance that the eye will show up on the map in certain tiles (I usually found it on the east side). When you sail over it, it opens and gives you terror really quickly. The light is shown in the trailer, I think, to make it more visible. It’s also in Zubmariner, I believe, but I haven’t come across it in my zub yet, as I prefer to spend quite a while on each captain. Something to look forward to on replays!

As far as I can remember, the only notable feature shown in trailer that wasn’t in the final game was the floating journal text, which was always something Failbetter wanted to put into the next game.
edited by Kloxe on 9/2/2017

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Oh, the eye in zubmariner is fantastic - one of my favorite parts! No spoilers here though, of course.

As for clickable things and combat, I’m personally happy with combat and aiming the way they are, but I’d like to know what a new thing is before I shoot it (one of those ‘the character has slightly more world knowledge than I do’ type things), and I think it would be interesting to have crewmate or officer opinions accessible for some things you run into on the map - the officer discussions was something touched on briefly but wholly under-utilized in sunless sea.

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Ooh, that’s a good idea. Comments on places you can click on would be cool.

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yeah i like the idea of seeing what an enemy is about. i was trying for ages to click on the npc ships to see if i could interact with them, which would also be cool

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As I recall, the eye is always in line with the Iron Republic, so if you want proof it’s in the game you should just sail east from there. It does not appear in every game, though.

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[color=#6666ff]Noooooooooooooooo! It’s freaky and terrifying! cowers in the corner Which is what makes it fantastic I guess.[/color]
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[color=#6666ff]On a serious note, all feedback here has been documented.Thank you.[/color]
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[color=#6666ff]Just to add a point about reasons for going off the beaten path, I know I’ve said it before, but there’s much more to come in the way of ‘things to see in the High Wilderness’. Spectacles being just one example, so make sure you are checking back in on the game throughout development ;)[/color]
edited by FailbetterFuzz on 9/20/2017