fish not dying is immersion breaking

I agree that leviathans shoudn’t killable, but small fish not dying when you hit/drive over them feels really strange. And when it comes to self defence, you feel very helpless, flares and stunning doesn’t matter when your being stationary for longer periods such as basebuilding its extremely annoying. The complete lack of “player invoked death” to creatures doesnt make the game more challenging, fun, or harder, just strange and annoying.

Going to add a comment I posted to Reddit to this:

I understand where they are coming from with it. Is a bit weird though that there is no visual indicator when you hit a fish with the multitool. And it makes me think that bonking things with the multitool is not an effective way to scare off hostile fish. (I do know it works on at least the nibblers, at least temporarily.)

I don’t particularly want to kill anything in the game (other than for food). I am ok with using violence to deter things from eating me though and it feels like that mechanic needs a bit of work.

It also feels less immersive when my tadpole doesn’t occasionally accidentally kill a fish on impact. Again, not trying to kill anything but it happens.

Would prefer if the game had mechanics that made the environment worse when killing things than just preventing the players from doing so. Maybe make it so killing fish and predators lowers the respawn rate of prey fish, or that it ends up having more of those blooms begin spawning, and not just around angel combs but expanding into other areas. Or maybe make it so that top of the food chain creatures begin to actively hunt you because there isn’t other food to hunt.

I think there are just better, more immersive ways to handle no killing than making it that everything but the player is immortal.

Also, one of the things I liked in the original Subnautica was just watching a stalker or a biter nom another fish. Made it feel like I was in a living environment and not an environment tailored for a game.

On further thought I guess I get why they might have made everything unkillable. Four players vs a leviathan would significantly reduce the threat, especially with med kits instantly healing health. Still, I’d prefer it if it wasn’t you can’t kill things but instead you really don’t want to kill things or else bad things happen.

imho leviathans could be killable too should player try really hard. As for the rest of the critters- definitely yes. Right now, especially when wandering around, the inability to get rid of critters is just turning them into annoyanc

I fully think we should be able to kill things. Maybe not leviathans. Bit there is something about running around hunting for the feed that makes it feel more realistic. Sn1 I could hit something with my knife then pick them all up after. So I do think we should be able to kill things. I personally don’t understand why we can’t. They get killed by us anyway when we cook them.

I fully think being able to kill things makes sense you could like in subnautica one just massivly inflate there health pools so that only extremely dedicated players can do so but most normal players would give up on the idea, small fish not dying even to a save Multi tool doesnt make sense as smaking anything even with a hammer will still do damange even if its blunt it also removes stuff like the heated knife idea from the first game being a thing

I’m going to agree and say that not being able to kill things is game-breaking. I could see us being able to at least deter leviathans by ramming it with the tadpole. I like the idea that killing fish needlessly changes the ecosystem, but I’d suggest that by killing something, it basically creates a predator hotspot and draws predators in based on the locale.

I thought it was kind stupid that I could hit some of these agerssive fish in the nose with my tool and have them run off like in real life, for example I was watching nova channel and they said number one thing to do if you see shark is to get into the water face it dreict on and punch it in the nose if it comes at you hard as you can. shark exprets also said that predatory animals usally dont attack things they never encountered before becuase they end up being just as scared of you as you are of them, only reason predatory animals will attack person would be if it been around alot of people or if people feed them or around them alot.

so even if you cant hurt animal it seems like you should be able to damage and make it run off with the mutile tool hammer.

the idea that killing fish changes the eco system in this game is dumb we kill fish in the game all time we grab them with our hands and then cook them up for dinner I kill about 10 fish day doing this.

where playing subnuatic game not ECO the game. two diff games here and ECO is all about helping the eco system and they allow hunting in there game.

The devs overbearing stance on ‘no killing’ makes no sense from a logicial point of view AND a gameplay point of view.

• You catch things to kill and eat them.
• Creatures in both SN1 and SN2 use violence to attack and kill you.
• Both games’ stories revolve around the world dying and the people dying/being killed by other people or aliens.
• You could kill creatures in the original game. The devs took it a step further by adding poison torpedoes in the first game.

(Story spoiler) What sound logic does it make to send the supposedly last humans alive in the universe to an alien world without any way to defend themselves in a meaningful capacity? Even if we weren’t the last humans, it still doesn’t make sense.

Are the developers going to remove creatures attacking each other because it’s not consistent with their stance? Of course not, because that would be ridiculous. Players being unable to attack small predators and prey is hardly any different at all.

Are vehicles just meant to bounce off fish or push them away when running into them? Again, that’s just silly and ridiculous.

You can’t really explore areas with hostile life because your tadpole does not hurt them if you ram them and your only method of defence is running away… for an exploration game, this seems pretty counter-intuitive since hostile life is plentiful across the whole game. If sandsharks bothered me in SN1, I hit them with the knife and they went away. If they attacked my Seamoth, I rammed them with it and their either died or went away.

You are now at the mercy of whatever evasion tech or equipment the developers add to the game to escape even the smallest of predators. While I understand the game JUST opened to EA, flares beung your only option early-game is insane, especially since they take up inventory space. Again, the world is crawling with things that want to kill us, but the developers have left us at the mercy of a dash biomod and flares?

Players aren’t asking for a whole arsenal or ways to just purge the ocean of life. I just want to be able to thwack nibblers over the head with the axe or ram fish out of the way with the tadpole, and kill small predators, if necessary. We’re not asking to be able to fight leviathans.

Edit: After seeing the way the devs have responded to this, I have more to say:

Video games aren’t a place to morally grand-stand your playerbase and implement inconsistent ideas because you feel the need to virtue-signal to your players. The way this is approached right now is hypocrtical and inconsistent, and the responses the developers have given to the players about this issue have been childish.

Put your money where your mouth is at this point: remove all forms of violence if you want to be consistent, retcon the last two game’s stories about humans killikg each other and all the violence involved, and rescript this game’s story…. or, just add in the ability to defend ourselves.

The issue I have with it is that there aren’t really any good ways to avoid conflict, then the conflict has no counterplay. Can I craft a million flares to drop throughout my playthrough? Sure, but that isn’t fun, I don’t really get excited to explore in this game compared to the previous 2 games, because there is almost always some overly aggressive fish attacking me and chasing me down over a distance of several hundred meters. I get the feeling that the devs wanted the creatures in this game to invoke a sense of being hunted, which would be cool if it worked, but as things stand, it doesn’t, it just feels like a major annoyance. Now I’m annoyed at the game because I have no tools to defend myself against the creatures in any meaningful way. I understand how ridiculous it seemed to be able to kill leviathans in the first game with a knife, we can all see how that isn’t a design you want to repeat, but not being able to kill something my size or smaller when it is legitimately harassing me to the point that I lose interest in playing for the day makes no sense.

I really don’t understand why you cannot hurt any fish, especially if they can hurt you at any point.
In Subnautica 1, it was one of the best features; it is in human nature to arm yourself even if it’s useless against your opponent, so holding the knife gave it another layer of realism.
From an immersion and even gameplay point of view, it should be possible to hit the fish, which would then react by going away or becoming more agresive based on their natural behaviour and yes, you shouldnt be able to kill levithan with a knife, because you really wouldnt normally stand a shance, but smaller predators and fish being immortal? That is too much and can even deter players if they can’t fight against even the most basic of annoying biters.

Leviathans are supposed to be big and scary and likely impossible to detefeat, so avoiding them makes sense. It’s perfectly fine to have different mechanics to avoid or distract them.
However, it is extremely annoying for small, much more annoying, hostile creatures to be immortal. I don;t want to go on a killing spree, but if there’s an annoying smaller hostile fish in an area that I know I should be able to defeat, I don’t want to wast my time and resources constantly distracting it, when it keeps getting in my way. I cannot focus on how beutiful or interesting the enviorment can be, nor does it make me want to explore further.
To give an example from Subnautica 1 - stalkers and sandsharks can be annoying, if you have to be in their space for longer time. But if you attack them they back off and you see them flinch and bleed. Once you fight back it felt as if they understand that you aren’t a helpless peeper, even if they can try their luck again after some time. If they become particularly annoying you always had the option to fight back at your own risk and kill those individuals.
Make the leviathans unkillable, sure, but you don’t need to fix what isn’t broken overall.

In Subnautica 2 I just feel helpless, as in someone put “parent controls” and everything needs to be kid-friendly kind of way. I don’t feel more immersed. If anything, being told I’m expected to die a lot at the beginning of the game has only made it more frustraiting that everything can hurt me, but I can’t fight back.

I think it makes sense not to kill both large fish and small fish. Large fish have the SN1 problem where if you can just float up and stab them to death, they lose their fear factor. Small fish have a lore problem: the water is full of heavy metals. If you cut open a fish while it’s underwater (and yes, you would be cutting open the fish, the survival multitool has a blade that flips out when you swing), even more of the toxic water would get into their system, which would pose issues in fabrication.

It is genuinely shocking to me how many people moved through SN1 by killing whatever was in their way. In my first hour of gameplay, I killed a Rabbit Ray to see if I could get anything from fish I couldn’t pick up, and sadly watched it drift to the ground. I accidentally killed a Stalker trying to get it away from me too many times. I don’t think I surpassed literally any other challenge for the rest of the game this way. I understood this killing things sentiment when the multitool and resonator did essentially nothing, but the devs pretty quickly established that they were going to change how that worked, and the most recent devlog showed us examples of stuns and flinches. I think this is definitely what we needed, and shows that you do have some power in this world!

In SN1, because of the fear factor and size of dangerous creatures and the total lack of danger from smaller ones, whether hostile or not, I never felt the need to kill things to experience 4546b. You ignore the little critters and sneak past the big ones. I don’t think it’s being overly righteous to encourage you to play the game that way - I thought it was silly when I had a philosophy professor ban animal-harming language from their class (“shooting fish in a barrel”, “beating a dead horse” etc.) but it really did make me reconsider the way I talk about the world. I’m also not like. vegan or anything lmao I don’t believe killing animals is evil I just literally don’t think it was ever a big part of this game

It may seem stupid to not be able to rip and tear through things, but it might also help you play the game a little more like SN1’s story implied you should. Idk man. It’s not that big a deal so long as you incorporate the resonator into your tool lineup

edit: also like???? Are people really running into fish or getting their tadpole destroyed by things this much?? Even in 1 I wasn’t bashing into everything in my way, and in SN2 the only time my tadpole has ever exploded was when I manually saved, intentionally went past the EA border, then reloaded. I’ve never had to recraft. I’m notoriously bad at video games among my friend group like are you guys not exercising any caution at all??

Bring back small fish deaths ! It makes the game more realistic

I think the thing that many people, myself included, don’t enjoy is being hunted while trying to explore. Maybe some people don’t feel this way, but for many there is a psychological discomfort with exploring an area with a predator in it and not having tools to defend yourself. Not being able to deter said predator, or only having temporary solutions to them, does not make that itch in the back of my mind go away. Simply having an object that can inflict damage makes that discomfort come back down to a level that still lets me have fun. I don’t think 99% of the people asking for this are asking for it to kill leviathans, I think we all just want to clear predators from a place where we want to place a new base, an area we know we will highly traffic, or in any situation that causes general annoyance.

I think in 1.1 update as well,devs added flinching but hitting with multitool still doesn’t have a “right “ kind of sound,and there should be some blood when you creatures i suppose,no killing is totally ok that way,

That way you can bait the guys who wanna kill fish into giving 1000 hits to a nibbler but still doesn’t die,if they are persistent 🤣🤣