Grounded - shrunken kids first-person co-op survival game from Obsidian

[thesheeep]

Unlimited inventory generally represents having horses and carts, etc. and you use your imagination. Needing everything spelled out in full detail is another facet of decline, imo.

Then why play a game with graphics at all?
Do you need the visuals of the world spelled out for you in full detail? Such decline.
Just read text and use your imagination!

Obviously, this is about a compromise of what to ask of the player to accept as abstraction in a simulated game world.
I'd say anything non-trivial that can be achieved with in-setting means should also be shown to the player in some fashion.
Using different containers all in your base = trivial, can be abstracted away to a single base inventory.
Carrying several tons of equipment around = not trivial at all, should at the very least be shown somehow.

Consistency and coherency is key to immersion in a game that puts importance on simulation (so most RPGs) and "small" details matter a lot for this.

Eg If a game shows horses and carts to me in the setting (so the assets are clearly there and the devs did think about transportation), yet neither are anywhere nearby when I explore, then asking me to just imagine that they are is absurd - if that really was the designer's intention, it would've been easy for them to just put some wherever I travel.
It's like asking the player to just imagine there are enemies when their health occasionally drops a bit.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

unlimited inventory is mega-gay

 

[Zombra]

It makes the game feel like a job instead of a game. I can't see how anyone could find this fun. It's just tedious.

These games thrive on the feeling of immersion and actually being part of the world.
Stuff like unlimited inventory just takes that immersion and breaks its neck with Doomguy-like anger.

Absolute, S-rank horseshit. Spending dozens of hours dragging hundreds of little icons around little boxes, and only being able to carry 20 suits of plate mail instead of an unlimited number, does less than nothing to increase immersion. Instead garbage like this forces the player's attention on things that not only make no fucking realistic sense but are also dull, unchallenging, and deeply tiresome.

You know what's more immersive? The sleeping system. The shitting system. The long-term fatigue system. It makes no fucking sense that you never have to sleep, never have to shit, never have to take a shower, can sprint 50 miles without your legs getting sore, can get bitten a dozen times by a giant spider and be fine the next day, etc. But you know why these things are still more immersive? Because the game doesn't force you to play irrational, nonsense minigames (like Inventory Tetris) to address these concerns .. so you don't think about them at all, and aren't constantly reminded to ask questions.

Immersion isn't about being able to explain why the rules of the game are similar to the rules of the real world. It's about being drawn into a world, rational or not, by systems that feel natural and right. When the systems are annoying chores that make you question whether you're having fun at all, you are not immersed.

 

[thesheeep]

Spending dozens of hours dragging hundreds of little icons around little boxes, and only being able to carry 20 suits of plate mail instead of an unlimited number, does less than nothing to increase immersion.

That just sounds like bad inventory UI and space/weight management to me.
Which is obviously a problem, but any badly done design is a problem, that's not much of an argument.

You know what's more immersive? The sleeping system. The shitting system. The long-term fatigue system. It makes no fucking sense that you never have to sleep, never have to shit, never have to take a shower, can sprint 50 miles without your legs getting sore, can get bitten a dozen times by a giant spider and be fine the next day, etc.

Sleeping is in many games, especially survival-related ones, so not sure what you're talking about here.
Even shitting is in some games But even in games that don't have it, the game world usually offers ample "toilets". Which makes the act of dropping a deuce itself trivial, which is why it can be abstracted away. Same for taking a shower.
A game world that offers you affordable (and often "magical") healing makes not having leg sores or long-term fatigue or no consequences from dozens of spider bites pretty realistic.

Immersion isn't about being able to explain why the rules of the game are similar to the rules of the real world.

You are confusing "realistic" with "similar to the rules of the real world".
That's not the same thing and the core issue of you failing to understand the point.
"Realistic" when talking about games means consistent within the rules of the game's world (unless it explicitly states that it tries to adhere to our world).

When the game shows you how everyone is transporting huge volumes by means of horse carts (just an example), but you don't have to do that at all, then yeah, that's fucked up and breaks immersion.
Funny enough, DnD had bags of holding. Which are a real and tangible thing in that setting and can be acquired. It's a bit of a "magic" cop-out, but still better than what many other games do (aka nothing).

Again, consistency is king.
The PC should abide by the same rules as everyone else in the world (and all deviations from that should at least be believably explained).

It's about being drawn into a world, rational or not, by systems that feel natural and right. When the systems are annoying chores that make you question whether you're having fun at all, you are not immersed.

That's completely right.
And there is nothing that feels natural or right about unlimited inventories - again, in games that put an emphasis on simulation and haven't established something that would give everyone access to such a thing.
If you don't want to play a game that simulates you not having magical pockets, then maybe do not play a game based on providing a believable world?

But if you want to tell me that a game striving for providing a realistic world doesn't immediately break that promise by making your pockets endless, you aren't really fooling me, you're fooling yourself.

 

[Zombra]

"Realistic" when talking about games means consistent within the rules of the game's world.
The PC should abide by the same rules as everyone else in the world.

Sure, we're agreeing here. And in many games, you don't see the NPCs carrying 20 suits of plate mail (but not 21!!) either. There's absolutely nothing inconsistent about a world where tedious, unrealistic shuffling of resources back and forth between two 2' wooden chests is not something anyone spends their time doing.

And there is nothing that feels natural or right about unlimited inventories - again, in games that put an emphasis on simulation and haven't established something that would give everyone access to such a thing.

Completely disagree. It feels right if the player doesn't notice that there's anything wrong, and their attention is drawn instead are drawn to the systems that are fun and engaging. When an inventory system is tiresome, it feels wrong and takes one out of the game.

But if you want to tell me that a game striving for providing a realistic world doesn't immediately break that promise by making your pockets endless, you aren't really fooling me, you're fooling yourself.

Ehhhhhh, you're talking about "realism" and "immersion" as if they're the same thing. They really aren't.

--------

Let me restate the main point more simply. I've played a lot of games without inventory limits, and it's rare to be irritated, pushed away, or "unimmersed" by them, because one quickly stops thinking about it at all. However annoying inventory systems are frequently irritating and pretty much always immersion breaking.

Forest Dweller's immersion was clearly broken - that is a fact - because he came out of game to talk about how annoying it was. So for you to lecture him about how it actually was immersive and he's wrong to think otherwise is simply mistaken.

Sidebar - I still remember playing Windham Classics' Alice in Wonderland (1985), and realizing somewhere along the way that I kept picking up things and putting them in my pockets, and the game wasn't trying to stop me or make me sort through a bunch of lists, drop things on the ground and come back later, none of that shit. It occurred to me that oh, all of that stupid busywork is completely unnecessary for me to have the intended experience - in fact it would be colossally detrimental to that experience. Then I let it go and didn't think about it again, except to occasionally admire what a good design decision it was.

When a game is meant to be a story about someone walking back and forth between two boxes over and over, then yes, I agree that it is most immersive for that to be a featured system. But I don't believe that most games really strive to be that, and I don't believe that this game strives to be that. Even if this game is striving to be that, it failed to do it in an immersive way.

 

[thesheeep]

It feels right if the player doesn't notice that there's anything wrong

Yet here I am, noticing something that is very obviously wrong immediately when a game that tries to go for realism is giving me unlimited carry capacity.
Your defense of it is "you don't even think about it anymore once you are used to it" - and that is one shitty defense.
I want to think about the simulations going on in the simulationist game that I'm playing and I don't want those thoughts to lead to "actually, this doesn't make a lick of sense".

@Forest Dweller's immersion was clearly broken - that is a fact - because he came out of game to talk about how annoying it was.

How much time do people spend playing games they can also spend dozens of hours talking and ranting about all the things broken and wrong with it?
Hundreds, thousands of hours even!
I don't know if I could even stop ranting about all the things wrong in TW: WH, for example and yet, each session can easily suck me in for hours and hours...

The point is: You can be totally immersed in a game while at the same time being super annoyed or frustrated by it.
If the annoyance wins over, you won't want to play the game anymore, of course, but that's besides the point.

Meanwhile, it's hard to be immersed in a game when you don't like its simulationist approach to things.
Which is fine, but that's not the game's fault. And it doesn't make the game unimmersive.
It just means you don't like games that try to simulate their game world, including things that can be annoying to some (hint: everything can be annoying to someone).
But that's what you have to do if you are serious about actually providing an immersive simulation of the systems in the game world.
Plus, one man's annoyance is another man's "give me that shit!".

In other words, I don't think he was ever really immersed in the game, it just wasn't for him to begin with.
Which fits him saying he felt the same about other games going the same simulation route.

"It annoys me" is not an argument against the mechanic.
It's an argument against you playing games with that mechanic.

As I said before, it's a compromise.
Trivial things can be abstracted away, but non-trivial things being abstracted away is always immersion breaking.
And nobody will ever be able to claim that carrying truckloads of equipment around would be trivial.

 

[thesheeep]

All that said, I'll always be a proponent of giving players tools to ease the non-trivial parts of a game that can get tiresome if you have to do them too much for your liking.
Anything from carrying mules to setting friendly means of quick-travel.

Dealing with things that bother you because they are too realistic for your liking with realistic in-game solutions is its own warrantor of immersion.

 

[Zombra]

thesheeep Good posts, I disagree with a lot of stuff, thanks for your thought-provoking perspective, started typing another long call and response rant but instead I'm going to unclench my jaw and let it go

I'll keep the fun part though: while I was formulating my post, I looked at post count as an example of measurable data and saw this

 

[rusty_shackleford]

if anything, inventories don't go far enough
I demand volume along with weight

also, backpacks.

 

[thesheeep]

if anything, inventories don't go far enough
I demand volume along with weight

also, backpacks.

I'm sure you have played Cataclysm: DDA ?

Wet dream of inventory simulation.
Well, not just inventory, of course. The game fully sperges out in all aspects of its simulation.
Personally I think it goes too far (having weapon statistics of every item, wanna find out how effective bubblegum wrap is vs a cleaning cloth as an improvised weapon? Go ahead...)

Turn-based bike/car/tank/anything riding? Yes, please

But, funny thing: Even Cataclysm allows using nearby items automatically for crafting.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Zombra]

I binged HARD on this over the weekend with three friends and am pleased to say the game is VERY good. The long early access period did wonders; 'quality of life' was evidently a huge priority during development.

Of particular note are the systems for managing inventory. The itemization and crafting are rich and complicated, with dozens of recipes and scores of ingredients to track and harvest. However the interface cuts the user labor involved down to the minimum possible.

• There is a hotkey to "'Hot Deposit' to nearby storage", meaning if you are standing near a chest that has thistle needles in it, and you tap that hotkey, all the thistle needles in your inventory are placed in that chest. If you have (like we do) half a dozen or more storage chest with different categories of items, you no longer need to open them up one by one and drag and drop little ingredients one by one after a long supply run. You just tap that key and everything is filed where it's supposed to go.
• Armor and weapon stands allow you to instantly change your current outfit with what is stored on the mannequin. Swapping loadouts is a single keypress instead of an estimated .. let's see .. 21 inputs it would take to change armor if the design was less thoughtful about this. (I use this feature constantly as your armor loadout has a huge impact on performance in different situations: tanking, archery, ant disguise, underwater, and more.)
• A workbench near your storage chest will automatically access supplies from your workshop shelves. Again, no dragging and dropping rocks and grass from different chests into inventory before accessing the workbench to make a helmet. No! Click workbench, click helmet, press 'make' and it's done.

No other survival game (that I've played) respects the player's time like this and so easily lets you get back to the actual challenges of traversing the environment and actually getting the supplies. Putting thought into action is so simple here. I love it.

Also a note on difficulty: don't be fooled by the cartoonish presentation here. Even on Normal my team and I are constantly terrified when exploring new areas, and often apprehensive even when crossing well-trod ground. When the big spiders are out looking for food, there's basically nothing we can do to stop them if they find us. Even a wandering mosquito can turn a simple hunting trip into a lethal bid for supremacy, and god help you if another creature nearby hears the commotion and decides to get two easy meals by waiting for the first fight to end and then attacking the weakened survivor. Of course we've learned how to 'speak the language' and travel safely most of the time but that early game feeling of being out of control is real. And we just discovered the transition point to an "Act II" area where we will be dealing with new rules and tougher monsters all over again. It's great.

Lastly (for now) I really appreciate the balance between story and sandbox. Building a base and harvesting supplies could be an almost bottomless task for anyone who enjoys just doing that (and I've happily spent many hours just messing around with these systems), but behind it all is a sense of 'eventual urgency': the task of exploring the entire yard and finding all the various MacGuffins to return home. And it sure doesn't hurt that the main quest tasks and dungeons are (of course) well designed and refreshing against the backdrop of "kill, eat, get better, repeat". While there's no huge hurry and the kids seem content messing around day by day, it's clear that they don't want this life forever. Solving the mystery and ultimately reversing the shrink ray are compelling motivations, balanced just right against moment to moment concerns to make me want to pursue it all.

 

[ADL]

https://grounded.obsidian.net/news/grounded/teaser-update-1-2

MUTATION LOADOUTS​

You’ve been asking and we’re here to deliver! You can now configure 4 mutation loadouts in the Mutations menu. Players can quickly swap between mutation loadouts using a radial. The default binding to open the new radial is Right D-Pad on the controller or T on the keyboard. To make some room on the controller, the emote and chat radial have been combined into a single radial. We hope these changes will make survival in the backyard an even smoother experience.

ADDITIONAL CUSTOM GAME OPTIONS​

Speaking of the mutations, new options are available in the Game Settings when you play a custom game. Check it out.

All Mutations Unlocked allows the player to start with all the mutations unlocked and available, meaning you’ll be able to activate them at the beginning of the game! Please note that players are limited to two mutations at the start of the game unless they upgrade their Max Active Mutations in the ASL using Milk Molars. That, or enable Fully Yoked Start to fully max out the active mutations limit to 5. Fully Yoked Start will enable all Milk Molar infusions such as Max Health and Stamina to be fully maxed out.

“All Recipes Unlocked and Free” has been split into two separate options: All Recipes Unlocked, and All Recipes Free. All Recipes Unlocked allows all recipes to be unlocked but will require the player to gather materials to craft buildings or items. All Recipes Free means you will have the complete freedom to build what you want.

Handy Gnat Enabled will activate the Handy Gnat build helper for you to craft the base of your dreams. Wait… what’s the Handy Gnat?

HELP FROM THE HANDY GNAT​

Have a large base renovation in mind? Tired of gravity holding you down? See what the buzz is about and call on your local construction pro: Handy Gnat!

The Handy Gnat feature gives the player control over the handiest gnat around. Fly up and around to blueprint, build, and customize bases to your heart's content. In order to use Handy Gnat, you must have the Handy Gnat Unlocked custom game option toggled on. This option is toggled on by default for Creative and Creative with Bugs game modes. For Survival game modes, you must convert your game to a Custom Game first in the Game Settings menu to enable this feature. Once enabled, Handy Gnat can be activated in the Crafting menu or the Construction radial. The Handy Gnat can build from storage near your teen and even haul Grass Planks and Weed Stems. We hope this fly guy helps you create the base you want to build with less time and effort.

RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER STAIRS​

Here’s an exclusive look at a new base building recipe. Introducing the Corner Stairs!

Corner Stairs come in four types for Grass and Acorn materials: Corner Stairs, Interior Corner Stairs, Corner Half Stairs, and Interior Corner Half Stairs. The Mushroom material has two variants being the Corner Mushroom Stairs and Interior Corner Mushroom Stairs. We’ve got the Corner Stairs and plenty of new base building recipes in store in the Super Duper update so stay tuned!

 

[Ash]

I haven't touched online multiplayer in years, because it is degenerate. This actually almost makes me want to come back. Almost.

 

[Aghoric Visions]

Child protags.

INTO THE TRASH IT GOES.

 

[Infinitron]

The Grounded team is excited to bring Update 1.2.0 to the community today. Rightfully titled The Super Duper update, this massive update brings with it many quality-of-life changes, more than a hundred new items to craft, a brand new Base Coziness feature, and wasps, a new terrifying creature to fight. But first, let’s dive into the Super Duper… an item duplication machine!

 

[whydoibother]

Unlimited inventory generally represents having horses and carts, etc. and you use your imagination. Needing everything spelled out in full detail is another facet of decline, imo.

Or you could have a game that literally has a cart to extend your inventory

Or, more often in that game, boats. A boat can hold many times your own inventory in weight, and carrying heavy shit often revolves around building a port, building a road towards it, carts and boats.

 

[ADL]

Free weekend + sale

 

[Trithne]

This still limited to 4 players? It sounds like something that would be a good fit for my group but it needs to able to run a dedicated server, and support more than 4 people.

 

[ADL]

Yeah capped at four. No self-hosted option. I wish they'd make it eight at least.

 

[Zombra]

This still limited to 4 players? It sounds like something that would be a good fit for my group but it needs to able to run a dedicated server, and support more than 4 people.

There are no "servers". The save file for a shared world is saved in the cloud but that is it, it's locally hosted. Whoever connects first on a given day is the host for that day.

 

[Roguey]

Took advantage of the free weekend. Nice animations and art, but terribly aggravating design. I cheated my way out of not having to deal with item gathering but I should have cheated myself all the blueprints too, even though it breaks progression, because I didn't like having to go find and research random things to unlock items you need to progress. Didn't like the labs, didn't like that assistant manager boss that expects you to deal with respawning adds, lasers, and electricity mines all at once (and I played on mild too). The final battle is hell for a single character. I had to take advantage of my unlimited building cheat to surround those things you need to protect with dozens of walls and had to constantly mash down on that attack button to deal with all those respawning creatures that go at it for over 10 minutes. Will absolutely not buy.

 

[Zombra]

lol. Cheating your way through a 150 hour game in 3 hours and thinking you understand a single fucking thing about it.

 

[Roguey]

lol. Cheating your way through a 150 hour game in 3 hours and thinking you understand a single fucking thing about it.

It took 11 hours.

I used the difficulty tools they gave me. I don't care about grinding resources, just wanted to complete the game before the weekend was out.

 

[Volrath]

lol. Cheating your way through a 150 hour game in 3 hours and thinking you understand a single fucking thing about it.

It took 11 hours.

I used the difficulty tools they gave me. I don't care about grinding resources, just wanted to complete the game before the weekend was out.

Autism. Autism never changes.