Why does the DST community seem so toxic?

[Wusscake]

Every time I join, I either get banned immediately, the match disconnects shortly after I join due to host leaving, or everyone frequently dies before day 7.  I've spent the last five days joining random servers and found only one competent player who was capable of surviving on his own.  I don't remember this always being a thing.  What happened?

[oCrapaCreeper]

Nothing you said describes a toxic community aside from being banned immediately (which there usually are reasons, host forgot to set to private, you type "guys where's base", etc). The rest seems to just be caused by inexperienced players. 

[Wusscake]

Right, but it's every single match that's not passworded or heavily modded.  The ratio of inexperienced to experienced players on these servers is overwhelming.

[JimmyJam]

Like oCrapaCreeper said, I wouldn't call that toxic. I have made loads of friends just by joining a public server having fun and adding them at the end of the game. Most people i meet are nice people. Also you cant really blame people for being noobs! We were all noobs at some point...

[Starlogy]

It's most likely because you were joining hosted worlds, rather than dedicated ones. Whenever I go public, I tend to stick to Klei's Dedicated servers, those are always the most fun for me.

[Wusscake]

I'm going to start doing that.  Every single hosted game I've joined today (6) never lasted more than a few days.

[Auth]

I'm sorta with you.

I wouldn't say it's toxic (although there are some toxic players I've seen) but joining any regular hosted server is one of the most shakiest experiences ever.

Either it's full of mods, full of new people, host just found out what the console is and that c_spawn("deerclops",100) is a funny command, they don't know what setting the server to friends only (or even just putting a password on it) does, the host demands you do something a specific way, etc, etc.

If you aren't the kind of guy that likes to host their own world, I'd recommend doing dedicated servers. Heck, even just community dedicated ones are usually better than normal hosted servers (if it weren't for that pesky broken voting mechanic...)

As for me, I host my world with minor "quality of life" improving mods (nothing game breaking or OP, just things like beefalo riding info, health info, a mod that keeps people from getting 100% punished for joining late game, yknow) and my main world right now is currently nearing 600 days.

[CaptainChaotica]

Phew.  After actually reading this topic, I'm quite relieved--I thought you were gonna call out a lot of us on the forum here for being jerks!  ("The DST Community" can mean more than one thing, after all.) 

All I can personally say is, _I_ never treat people like that!  Mine is a regular hosted server so it's up at odd, unreliable hours, yes, and it is modded.  But I only use fairly minor mods--no overpowered anime characters, nothing that clashes with the lore, style, look etc. of the game, and certainly nothing that massively tilts the difficulty level.  And for me the console doesn't even exist. 

AND, I will only kick/ban you if you'e a jerk.  That's it.  (How to tell if you're being a jerk?  If somebody asks you to please stop saying/doing what you're saying/doing because it's really bothering them...and you keep saying/doing it.  Pretty simple.)  My server may be small and unpopular, but I take pride in it being a place where players of all skill levels and backgrounds can play unharassed.  Also, mine is a public, non-passworded server and I've only been griefed once.  Ever.

The Klei dedicated servers _are_ more reliably available, but I hesitate to just blanketly refer people to them...as they're not adminned at all so vote-kickers can happen at any time!   Me, I'd ALWAYS look to see if a server at least has _some_ kind of actual person in charge.  Before you look at mods, passworded vs. not, or even what season they're in--see if there's a teacher in the classroom.  In this case, a little strictness is a _good_ thing.

Normal servers aren't always what you've run into so far, either.  You've just had a run of bad luck.  Trust me. 

...Notorious

[hkhm]

i can somewhat understand what the op means, i just got banned from a server for not reviving the host quickly enough.

on day 3.

after they died to batalisks.

and that was after getting verbally abused.

so i'm back on my own server, sitting alone in the ruins, hate-bingeing on powdercake, asking myself why i even try anymore.

[Shiaphei]

I usually only play dst with my friends in private and play on public servers when I'm bored. So I'm sorry you're meeting some people you don't like, but it's probably best to find people you do like to play with. Otherwise just ignore whatever bothers you.

[Pruinae]

1 hour ago, hkhm said:

i can somewhat understand what the op means, i just got banned from a server for not reviving the host quickly enough.

on day 3.

after they died to batalisks.

and that was after getting verbally abused.

so i'm back on my own server, sitting alone in the ruins, hate-bingeing on powdercake, asking myself why i even try anymore.

I would do a Telltale Heart for each one of them, drop the hearts on the floor and leave.

[Rellimarual]

 You've just had a run of bad luck. Most unpassworded servers have a lot of noobs, it's true, and some are fine. But experienced players also turn up now and then and that's where I've found the handful of good people I play with when more than one of us is free.

[AnonymousKoala]

We're not toxic, we actually just kick puppies, and sometimes players too. 

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

23 hours ago, oCrapaCreeper said:

Nothing you said describes a toxic community aside from being banned immediately (which there usually are reasons, host forgot to set to private, you type "guys where's base", etc). The rest seems to just be caused by inexperienced players. 

I'm a player with over 1800 hours of gameplay. I still ask that sentence at mid-late game servers almost every time and sometimes mistakenly so at early game. This hostility towards anyone who asks "where is base" needs to stop, because it creates prejudice and consequently toxicity.

23 hours ago, Wusscake said:

1) Every time I join, I either get banned immediately, 2) the match disconnects shortly after I join due to host leaving, 3) or everyone frequently dies before day 7. 4) I've spent the last five days joining random servers and found only one competent player who was capable of surviving on his own.  I don't remember this always being a thing.  What happened?

1) I would say that's people being inconsiderate idiots. Instead of banning, they could, you know, save their server game, shut down the server with a host announcing "oops, wrong settings, this wasn't supposed to be a public server, sorry" or something and then disconnect with a justified reason instead of being a **** when not even trying to be.

2) Yeah, blame Klei for not getting dedicated servers integrated fully in a way that doesn't require messing with the files and downloading external files or whatever. The dedicated server wiki is confusing for a lot and even when explained like in this video, it's still a menial and long task to just get a dedicated-like server going.

3) World day 7 or local day 7? I'm going to assume world day 7 and, yeah, that's the way the game's supposed to roll for newbies without external support, actually and I would agree with that. However, the deaths themselves with the ghost mechanics and the way people react to said mechanics... that's something debatable and while I don't like like the mechanic the way it's been executed too well, I also don't exactly have a good solution as a suggestion either and even if I did, Klei, at least now, wouldn't have the time and patience to look at or consider any of it.

4) Not being able to survive is part of the game's learning curve (or was originally intended to be), so I would suggest you to deal with it in terms of newbies, unless it's talking about late game worlds where newbies can't get any help and are stuck with late game challenges without any support. There are other types of players, like griefer trolls, just trolls in general, leeches etc. so, if you're thinking about those players, that's a whole another matter entirely. What happened, to my understanding is that people got more deviated to thinking that everyone should be a pro when playing DST as a result of the game's mechanics making newbies a total weight baggage to everyone else. Also, people started thinking the game should be more of a world management one than a pure survive and thrive type of a game. I'd say that's absolutely disgusting, but each to their own.

[Lumina]

On 18/02/2017 at 10:44 PM, Weirdobob said:

Either it's full of mods

I would not mind a server full of mods, if the mods are coherents ? consistants ? between them and DST itself. I guess the problem is more with ton of mods not really well designed, or lowering the difficulty too much, or only character mod. (Personal taste, i'm not a big fan of character mods)

I usually play with mods, between 10 and 20 depending of my mood, and if some are very simple (like the one preventing bee to attack you when you harvest honey with beekeeper hat), some add more things to the world (pickle it, Koalefanta Proboscidea, waiter 101, beefalo milk), more structure (aquarium), or stuff like this and it really add depth in DST for me.

[Donke60]

3 hours ago, Lumina said:

On 2/18/2017 at 1:44 PM, Weirdobob said:

Either it's full of mods

I would not mind a server full of mods, if the mods are coherents ? consistants ? between them and DST itself. I guess the problem is more with ton of mods not really well designed, or lowering the difficulty too much, or only character mod. (Personal taste, i'm not a big fan of character mods)

I usually play with mods, between 10 and 20 depending of my mood, and if some are very simple (like the one preventing bee to attack you when you harvest honey with beekeeper hat), some add more things to the world (pickle it, Koalefanta Proboscidea, waiter 101, beefalo milk), more structure (aquarium), or stuff like this and it really add depth in DST for me.

I use the festive mod one that brings the shipwreck characters in another one for warly if I want to play him cause most don't have the varity nerf  a pause feature cause you got to go to the bathroom and one that scales the hp to 6 players or DS or DSt cause I normally play alone thats all the mods I use.

[CaptainChaotica]

Yeah...that's the thing, at quick glance down the list it only says if a server is "modded" or "not modded".  Without a closer look you have NO idea what _kind_ of mods each one has...and unfortunately, as with almost every other group in existence, the more obnoxious examples are the ones everybody first thinks of. 

Me, I'm more like Lumina...the main mods I use all the time either just add pure cosmetics (paint for pig houses, animal variety, gnome variety), add more content that still works with the style and feel of the game (Pickle It!), or tweak things back to how they are in the singleplayer version 'cos that's what I started on (Willow the Unnerfed, No Thermal Stone Durability).  And the Fling-O-Matic Range Check--which gives you information that you CAN normally get in-game...but only once.  Which makes no sense.

I've also got the Teleportato one and the Increase Animals one that can put in more set pieces...but sometimes those don't play well with others/with the new updates, so they're quite often turned off.  And a couple festive ones, which I only turn on at the appropriate time of year.

Oh, and two character mods.  Both of which have balanced difficulty and use Klei artwork only:  Shipwrecked Characters, and Winnie (one of her many versions).  Having played as Winnie I can tell you--she's a bit _harder_ to play than some of the others, actually... (From both direct and viewed experience:  Vegetarian + winter = NO.)

So...basically not all mods are created equal, and not all of them make the game super-easy.  Some of them are just there to.._tweak_ it a bit. 

...Notorious

[Donke60]

3 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

Vegetarian + winter = NO.)

This just happened for me I'm testing a mod and the char is vegaterian winter is so not fun it didn't help that I got my crops late either

[LuxuryHeart]

On 2/18/2017 at 2:35 PM, JimmyJam said:

Like oCrapaCreeper said, I wouldn't call that toxic. I have made loads of friends just by joining a public server having fun and adding them at the end of the game. Most people i meet are nice people. Also you cant really blame people for being noobs! We were all noobs at some point...

I get that, but like...  I personally think that if you don't have experience, then you should play on your own before trying to play with others.  I played the Vanilla version, then I played Reign of Giants, then I played Shipwrecked.  After a while, my brother joined me and we played OFFLINE first just to give him experience and practice.  THEN we decided to join others on servers or host our own.  

[thistownneedsguns]

19 minutes ago, LuxuryHeart said:

I get that, but like...  I personally think that if you don't have experience, then you should play on your own before trying to play with others.  I played the Vanilla version, then I played Reign of Giants, then I played Shipwrecked.  After a while, my brother joined me and we played OFFLINE first just to give him experience and practice.  THEN we decided to join others on servers or host our own.  

people can chose how they wanna play the game, if someone likes he can play solo or offline, to gain experience or read the wiki, watch streams. but you cannot blame someone for not doing it and joining servers, its a multiplayer game.. every multiplayer game has griefers, noobs, toxic people. and there are ways to avoid or handle them. 

[Rellimarual]

Noobs can be annoying! But many of them seem to be pretty young and to not necessarily be that invested in becoming very expert players. Which is perfectly understandable given that this is a multiplayer game that even has a setting for "social" mode. They're checking it out via direct experience, not reading up on the wikia or watching tutorial videos, just as plenty of people decide to learn how to use new software by banging on it instead of reading the manual. They often have a great time doing that, which is what playing a game is all about: fun. Just because they are irritating for you (or me) to play with doesn't mean they're doing it the wrong way. They aren't interested in playing alone, and probably if you weren't stuck playing with them, you'd have no problem with a bunch of them blundering around together in the game as a learning method. I've learned not to get to invested in any map on an unmoderated public server, and just take it as it comes, looking out to form connections with the good players I occasionally encounter. It's Chinatown, Jake.

[CarlZalph]

On 2/19/2017 at 6:14 PM, CaptainChaotica said:

And the Fling-O-Matic Range Check--which gives you information that you CAN normally get in-game...but only once.  Which makes no sense.

You're in luck!

The range for flings display themselves in the base game now whenever you're going to build something.

[Pink_Infatuation]

I'd say its less about people being toxic, and just being inexperienced. Which people here have mentioned- but I totally agree. I've never seen this amount of people who were just not good at the game in a community- maybe because it's more readily apparent and easy to notice? but as long as they're learning and getting better, it's good. I guess I'm sounding kind of high and mighty, because after all I have put collectively a little over 900 hours into both single and multiplayer games, which not everyone can do. They have to learn somewhere, and I guess it's just a bad combination that they frequently don't trust other people to help/ be as good as them or are just toxic

[Bunions]

I think that there is a disparity between the style of gamer the art attracts and the skills required in part. Many times you get people who are social gamers or people who care more about the experience vice optimized game play or on the extreme end - min / maxing. 

Couple that with the fact that this game can be quite unforgiving and you have a clash between expectations and results, which leads to a fragmented community in part.

[hkhm]

i really have no problem with people being new and/or inexperienced. in fact, the chance to teach someone good basic skills for ds/t is rewarding for me. and i don't care if they make mistakes, they are sometimes really amusing and endearing (if a little frustrating when it happens repeatedly). everyone was new at some point and more often than not i am smiling when i hear their nervous anticipation of taking on some new challenge.

what i see as toxic is a player that plays wx-78 and forbids people on the server from building anything with gears because all gears are to be offered in tribute and if you build a fridge and he finds it, you are banned. a person who begs for help killing the dragonfly and then kicks you from the server when you finally do kill her so they don't have to share the loot. a host who asks you to play as wigfrid so you can make everyone helms and spears and then when you have made enough for their purposes, kicks you so that their other friend can play. and that is to say nothing of all the base-burners and thieves running around out there.

i know it can sometimes be difficult to discern a legitimately toxic player from people who are clueless or socially inept, especially over game chat. but i have noticed a strong uptick in really repellent behavior over the last few months.