Design Pillars of ONI or What Makes ONI ONI?

[PreliatorMax]

Browsing r/Oxygennotincluded I've found some threads suggesting for ONI to be like other games (add waves of enemies, tower defense, add hate/love dynamic between dupes) and somehow I got irked by them. It seems that some players are not satisfied with how ONI is. Why can't ONI be its own game? But that leads me to this question: what makes ONI, ONI?

I've found no post mortem from the devs explaining how they designed the game (compared to Don't Starve) nor there's a "the making of" video for ONI. I also dropped in during the launch sale and haven't experienced ONI's EA days.

So far here's what I can speculate on what's their design pillars:

1. The joy of exploration

See that area with pink and green gasses? A biome of lush pincha peppers and free roaming drecos. Don't you want to dig the cra- I mean explore and exploit your asteroid's resources? What crazy creatures and biomes will you uncover next?

2. The joy of experimentation

ONI tries to emulate irl physics but with major caveats (either due to technological, developmental or game design limits). But with the tools given, you can tinker your builds to your heart's content, inspiring that little scientist in all of us.

3. There are no enemies, just you vs yourself

Creatures are not inherently out to get you. There are no waves of enemies and random events that adds artificial difficulty. It'll be you, your creativity and perseverance vs your ignorance and impatience. Each problem that arises, there's a logical explanation for it that's present in the game world.

4. ONI is not a CDC sim

I've heard that slimelung is deadly during EA. Although I may attract the ire of this community, I somehow understood their decision of nerfing it. Although it makes medical tech unnecessary to borderline useless, at least it'll give players more freedom to experience design pillar 1 and 2.

If the the devs, or players who've played the game during its development add further or give accurate information about their design pillars for ONI it'll be greatly appreciated. As for me, so long as ONI keep to these pillars, I'm confident that the next expansions will add more things that I like to the game that I love.

9 hours, 119 views, no discussion, tough crowd. Back to reddit I guess..

[Sasza22]

Ok so let me start.

First time i saw ONI my thoughts were that Klei did a DST noob management simulator. Basically you got a bunch of noobs running around doing stupid stuff and you need to keep them alive. Once they are safe you can start taming the world. Unlike DST here you got a ton of machines that help you move stuff around and change one into another all requiring different resources and power most of the time.

So what is ONI for someone that played quite a bit of it? It`s a mix of few things:

1. Survival - This one only takes place until you stabilise. The devs decided to not make the main point so we don`t have natural disasters or ivading aliens and as you mentioned the disease system is pretty ignorable. Most disasters come from your own mistakes. I find those challenging but sometimes i miss some sort of a threat that requires a specific action, given how many tools you got: door permissions, schedules, red/yellow alert, maunal dupe movement and triage cots for dupes that get hurt during it. I kinda wish for a more survivalist ONI down the line after dlc but it`s still cool the way it is.

2. Industry - You are building a working system and keeping it that way. Using up resources and gathering new ones. Your systems get more complex and automated over time. Pipe lines get longer, base grows. It`s a lot of optimisation work. Dealing with geyser seasons, managing resource shortages, setting schedules for optimal work uptime. It`s pretty cool to watch all that work, as well as to find what`s wrong with the system and fix it. Can be sometimes frustrating but most of the time it`s fun. (at least for me)

3. Tech progress - You start with 3 no skill dupes with basic tools and almost no tech. Your first power source is a hamster wheel. It`s cool how it advances over time. Each new power generator requires less dupe time but more setup around it for it to keep working. New technologies help you automate your base more so you can send dupes to more advanced tasks. Dupes get better as well. They get better stats and perks over time but also need a setup around themselves to maintain morale. This is cool as better stuff also costs more. It also gives you a civilisation-esque sense of technology progress up unitl space. Dlc could enhance it even further nuclear tech, maybe fusion reactors etc. Also the materials you use get more refined over time (plastic, steel, thermium). There is still a lot that can be build upon this and i hope for the best.

4. Simulation - Everything is simulated. Quite an overexageration but it really simulates stuff you wouldn`t expect like gas flow or thermal transfer. While it`s not always super accurate it shows you some of the physics you usually don`t think about. Like who would think about thermal capacity of water vs oil. In ONI it actually matters. The simulation makes the game alive. It causes disasters if you don`t know what you are doing but also makes certain stuff work. You can actually make machines out of tiles and doors that work better than the structures in game. Makes me wonder if Klei makes a physics simulator next, where you construct basic machines from valves and logic gates and then connect them together.

5. Exploration and adaptation - The map doesn`t have everything easily reachable. It`s often a challenge to harvest the resources you want without spilling chlorine over your base or flooding it with salt water. You need to adapt your design around the map or shape the map around your design (it`s cool that you can do it either way). The exploration part could use something more i feel though. Like more stuff similar to the AETNs hidden in certain biomes that needs to be found. The hated boulders gave an intersting challenge of building around them at least early in the game (but people just rushed lv3 miners).

Anyway, before this post gets too long. The game has a lot of different aspects (i didn`t even cover all of them i feel) that you need to worry about. And you don`t have one definitive way of playing it. It`s flexible and gives you a lot of freedom. Even after playing 1000 cycles you can find stuff to do and it`s great.

[Gurgel]

Cute dupes! That you can either care for very much or that you can mistreat them excessively! Or both! (I miss the old food-poisoning response...)

 

[PreliatorMax]

Thanks for the brilliant post Sasza22. I also share your views and now I've realized that I've glossed over some pillars (i.e. survival and joy of progress in tech and industry).

Colony/base builders with survival elements and a focus on combat are a dime a dozen nowadays. There seemed to be a time when there's a trend of adding difficulty by randomization in survival oriented games. ONI is like an oasis to me. No combat, no waves of enemies that attack you "just because", and no hidden timer/value bar of random events. It reminded me of old school city builders like Zeus: Master of Olympus and the first Tropico. Although there are also enemies present in these games, they don't just randomly pop up. You can trade with them, placate them, or at least be informed ahead of time (by gauging their "hate" towards you) if an invasion is imminent.

Thanks to you I finally realized: I just hate random enemies in my games. I can deal with enemies but as long as it's not one sided (i.e. just you defending vs them attacking) and they can be dealt diplomatically.

Just imagine ONI's space map: you discovered an asteroid filled with your fellow dupes. Trade and barter with them (Klei can make it economically efficient to trade than to manually send rockets to nodes with resources that slowly deplete and needs time to recuperate). Send them goods to add more "goodwill" points that you can ask them for favors later. They might also have tech that is unique to theirs and therefore import their machines. I can't think of a scenario wherein they'll need to invade or you need to invade them.

I know I might sound hypocritical, I just want to buck the current trend of games with survival elements that adds random enemies.

[Hellshound38]

I just wish the separate asteroids were more thematically designed to add difficulty.

Like Volcano planet's volcanoes should get hotter as cycles pass, and output even more heat if magma output is blocked, while also preventing easy RNG generations. Instead we could get 5 cool slush geyser around the starting biome and the whole map becomes easier then a poorly RNGed normal asteroid.

For example my current base is a Rime map, and the water geyser and salt water geyser near my start immediate removed any challenge of fighting off the cold.

[Yunru]

On 23/10/2019 at 8:57 PM, PreliatorMax said:

It seems that some players are not satisfied with how ONI is.

That's because Reddit is cancer.

[Gurgel]

9 hours ago, Yunru said:

That's because Reddit is cancer.

And because some people are never satisfied, because their purpose in life is to complain in order to feel superior. A sad existence to be sure.

[natanstarke]

On 24/10/2019 at 4:54 PM, PreliatorMax said:

Thanks for the brilliant post Sasza22. I also share your views and now I've realized that I've glossed over some pillars (i.e. survival and joy of progress in tech and industry).

Colony/base builders with survival elements and a focus on combat are a dime a dozen nowadays. There seemed to be a time when there's a trend of adding difficulty by randomization in survival oriented games. ONI is like an oasis to me. No combat, no waves of enemies that attack you "just because", and no hidden timer/value bar of random events. It reminded me of old school city builders like Zeus: Master of Olympus and the first Tropico. Although there are also enemies present in these games, they don't just randomly pop up. You can trade with them, placate them, or at least be informed ahead of time (by gauging their "hate" towards you) if an invasion is imminent.

Thanks to you I finally realized: I just hate random enemies in my games. I can deal with enemies but as long as it's not one sided (i.e. just you defending vs them attacking) and they can be dealt diplomatically.

Just imagine ONI's space map: you discovered an asteroid filled with your fellow dupes. Trade and barter with them (Klei can make it economically efficient to trade than to manually send rockets to nodes with resources that slowly deplete and needs time to recuperate). Send them goods to add more "goodwill" points that you can ask them for favors later. They might also have tech that is unique to theirs and therefore import their machines. I can't think of a scenario wherein they'll need to invade or you need to invade them.

I know I might sound hypocritical, I just want to buck the current trend of games with survival elements that adds random enemies.

The trade part would be good for resources that are crazy hard to get like algae/slime for pacus. And yes more life to the game.