404 game not found

[Lumina]

Not exact solutions, but you must have an idea of what you'll find fun, what is lacking. A clue, something.

[_Q_]

24 minutes ago, Lumina said:

Not exact solutions, but you must have an idea of what you'll find fun, what is lacking. A clue, something.

I told you this so many times already, that I'm getting bored of saying the same stuff over and over again.

[LadyD]

15 hours ago, _Q_ said:

I told you this so many times already, that I'm getting bored of saying the same stuff over and over again.

So lets say you had complete autonomy- what would you change in the game? You say it isn't balanced and you are bored so what would you change or add to fix that? 

I mean Klei could have easily put in an Easy, Normal, Hard slider but instead they gave us world options so we can decide how we want the game to be- if we want loads of rabbits we can have them. If we want hound attacks off we can do that too. I find these options give me plenty of choice to mix up the world and game, keeping it interesting as I explore different game aspects. 

[_Q_]

1 hour ago, LadyD said:

So lets say you had complete autonomy- what would you change in the game? You say it isn't balanced and you are bored so what would you change or add to fix that? 

I mean Klei could have easily put in an Easy, Normal, Hard slider but instead they gave us world options so we can decide how we want the game to be- if we want loads of rabbits we can have them. If we want hound attacks off we can do that too. I find these options give me plenty of choice to mix up the world and game, keeping it interesting as I explore different game aspects. 

The settings for things like berry bushes and what not are not sensitive, I had mod with my own settings a bit more sensitive but due to how rooms and spawning of prefabs on worldgen works it could lead to having 0 of given prefab instead of a low value of it.

And honestly adding a sliders with difficulty at this point wont do anything since mechanics of the game got buthchered, moved into different direction and so on.

I can tweak those things myself to some point but to fix many aspects of the game would require new graphics, new animations and what not.

Beside the fact that not all code in DS and DST prefab is made in mod friendly way.

Mybe will compile a list of problems, at some point, now its just not categorized nicley and a bit random, some of the most annoying problems were mentioned in this thread not even once:

- not balanced items, making many of them not required or just not worth bothering with, in many cases they give way to much benefits and are overpowered

- not used sanity mechanic, you only can go insane when you want it, its not a problem you need to deal with that will happen, you are totally in control of, your character is not reacting for tree guard spawn for example, if the big tree came to life next to me I would get scared a bit, sudden events like tree guard spawn, spider queen spawn and so on should lower your sanity, shadow hands and what not should also play some part in it beside taking a log or 2 from you, its not doing anything currently, to many ways to recover sanity fast, with not many things that are taking it away

- tons of easy food everywhere, if you cut out winter time you can survive on berries and seeds alone, but then there is crock pot that makes it all even worse with free sanity boosts and healing - why we even have healing items in the first place?

Food is kind of hard to balance atm, since you have only 3 things that it can do, hunger, sanity, healing, and two of those are totally not needed in food at all, but if you take away healing from fishsticks you end up with item that is no longer worth getting, maybe healing over time instead of immidiate effect, or some small bonuses here and there like running faster and so on instead, along with rebalanicing crock pot to make good food harder to get

- something would have to be done with swamps, the land of free stuff, just go th the swamps and get back with 5 tentacle spikes tons of free silk, glands and even monster meat, just for walking by near things that kill each other, totally the easiest area to stock on decent weapons and free clothing/healing items with some food on top of it

To many issues to fix currently. While I can fix some of them, others are not that easy to fix at all.

 

 

[DarkXero]

- Lets remove the birdcage and make it so buzzards drop eggs. Or birds even, with 5% chance on kill.

Good bye, Bacon and Eggs. You can't even have gunpowder now, good luck with that.

- Lets make the swamp guys not fight each other.

Good bye, free loot.

- Lets remove the thermal stone.

Welcome, all insulating clothes.

- Lets make it so you need a full set of waterproof items to stay dry during Spring.

Welcome, all waterproof clothes.

- Lets nerf the meatballs into kabobs tier.

Good bye, meatballs.

- Lets make it so you can only put one ice in the crock pot or else you get wet goop.

Welcome, mushrooms (lets nerf them too into gains of 5 (max)).

- Lets make it so bee boxes produce 3 honey (max) after 7 days. When offscreen or during winter, they don't work at all.

At least farms weren't removed (maybe we should).

- Lets make a Tam o' Shanter into a Top Hat.

This would be hilarious.

- Lets make it so any food doesn't give more than 10 health, and 5 sanity.

Sleep for it. Or make industrial amounts of food. Or wear a dapper vest and top hat (don't worry, Wickerbottom).

 

Now, what's going to happen? People are still going to find the easiest path. They will go and hunt koalefants and turn all meat into jerky or meaty stews. They will go and put monster meat and mushrooms and berries and sticks, and mass produce kabobs into the sky. They will go and use beefalo as meat reserves. Or a moleworm/rabbit farm. Maybe a dragonpie plantation. The strategy that yields better rewards will be executed again, and again, and again.

Do we call 404 here again or what? Won't people get bored here? Of course they will, they will hit the plateau of stability and find out they have nothing else to do unless they want to. It will be even harder for this people to do anything else but survive. Why go to the ruins? There's just gems there, and we need to keep doing the routine #3 in order to survive Summer. Surviving now requires following a convoluted set of rules, and you can't stray away from it or you die. Instead of grabbing meatballs and doing something else, whatever you feel like doing, you are constantly grabbing meatballs. Over, and over, and over again.

This is what The Long Dark is (less people play it; it also released after Don't Starve).

 

So what's my point? Nerfing and buffing may prove unsuccessful to do what you want to do (achieve fun through balance when we will still be doing the same stuff repeatedly). Current optional challenges aren't that great either. When you add optional challenges you need to put some sweet loot at the end. A stove? Lamps? A sanity crown? A campfire and some green caps are preferable. I don't want to spend 30 minutes hitting the Toadstool with a stick because nobody else was here and I am not Wolfgang. I watched joeshmocoolstuff kill Toadstool in 18 minutes with Wolfgang. It should be around 10 minutes, or it turns boring. What if you had 4 Wolfgang joeshmos? You would have a "raid boss" that dies after 5 minutes. Too short and it's a cakewalk. Too long and it's tedium incarnate. (Health scaling pls? Or maybe reward scaling?)

Instead of playing the nerf/buff roulette, I would like more non-optional challenges to integrate already existing features. For example, having the world evolve so the game gets harder with time. Make it so winter gets harsher with the years. We could have blizzards (starting winter of year 2) where the thermal stone would instantly freeze and be useless (you wouldn't be able to heat it up either), and you would need to have clothes prepared in order to not freeze. Next year (year 3) blizzard would get the sandstorm treatment, and now you need sandsnow goggles in order to see and not have your movement impaired. Good luck carrying a backpack. You had 2 years to prepare. Caves are going to be cold too. Maybe drop some icicles that do tons of damage. Or freeze structures so they are not able to work. Maybe add gusts of wind that blows campfires out, so you actually need the dragonfly furnace to carry on.

Lets make a Summer with electromagicmagnetic heatwaves that make you lose sanity during the day (but not during night and dusk, because it's more tolerable), the thermal stone is permanently hot outside the fridge, and the Tam o' Shanter will screw you. You better take siestas and have some cool equipment. If you dared to explore during blizzards you may have found some very special gelid ice that makes the ice box look like a sauna.

 

But for now, we wait...

[imsomony]

Excellent suggestions @DarkXero! The only thing I'm concerned about is when you said:

 

Current optional challenges aren't that great either. When you add optional challenges you need to put some sweet loot at the end.

 

Klei has been against forcing players to experience the game in a linear way since nearly the beginning. Rewards for completing a task are basically achievements, and I know you know (I've seen you here since I joined the forums way back in the day), they're very careful and cautious about goal-orientation in singleplayer. I know you weren't suggesting that, I just wanted to call that out, in case anyone else focused on that part. We have a lot of DST players now, who are used to raid bosses and such, and not so many coming in to DS on its own, where the style is different.

 

I really like your ideas with the world changing as it ages. Non-optional game challenges that make you continually adapt, as opposed to simply having "things to do". I feel like that would help add longevity and challenge as the years go on, while still allowing players to figure out and use whatever items/means they are happiest with to sustain themselves.

[Cyberboy2000]

2 hours ago, DarkXero said:

having the world evolve so the game gets harder with time.

Rip endless servers.

[Lumina]

8 hours ago, Cyberboy2000 said:

Rip endless servers.

This could be an optional option, like "harsher world over time" (yes, slow, no).

 

But i guess it was the original idea for "TTA" and was removed because some people aren't ready for a world becoming harder and harder, especially since everyone has his own taste of what is harder and what is fun. For example, Q want something harder and less boring but hates the Antlion, i want the world becoming harder and less boring but i hate giants, and so on.

 

I like some ideas of balance i saw here and here in the past. For example, can't use 3 ice as a filler. Or giving monster meat (and variant) to a bird could kill it. Or the idea of spider giving small monster meat instead of big so you can't do some recipe as easily.

In a mod i'm using (waiter 101), you can't use too many mushroom as a filler in crockpot without caution. If you do you can end with a bad recipe that will hurt your sanity. I like this because it force you to find others kind of food, especially in cave, to balance your recipe. Since the mod add a lot of food and some food ingredients, it's not really making the game harder, but it force you to change your habit if you rely too much on mushroom.

 

In a mod i'm making i will try (thanks to a nice modder that giving me the code i needed) to make snow in winter giving wetness after the first winter. Meaning that the first winter will be as it is now, but for the second one, you'll need to manage cold and wetness at the same time. Don't know if it will work well or be tedious (still need to test it), but the idea is to give more challenge, and things you need to prepare, without encouraging too much turtling. And if the change of weather is maybe enough to give more challenge this couldn't work without something to do during winter. Because when the weather is bad it's easier to stay at camp and just wait for a better time, but you don't want players to do that. And the fact is that by winter 2, people will usually have enough food/fuel to wait long periods of time doing nothing. So you need something attractive to make the player move and face the challenge.

Because who will go outside to be cold and insane without purpose ?

 

And i think that is maybe the reason why we don't have TTA as planned, but ANR. This is just my opinion and i could be wrong, but adding challenge and reward over time means that they need to be linked together to work (you can't have, let say, a harsh weather in winter, and a nice new thing to do in spring because no link between challenge and reward), and that the player must be ready for this. And this is the point : what if the player isn't ? Do you give him only the "reward" part like it's more free content ? Making the game easier and removing the purpose of the new difficulty ? Or do you make that the reward is here only if you have the challenge, meaning that some players that will avoid the challenge will never have the reward ?

Meaning you are creating a lot of content for only a small percent of your player base.

And what if some people like the idea of a harsh winter because they mastered winter, but hates summer and would totally dislike more difficulty in summer ? What if some players are ready to a world becoming harder only after two or three years of normal difficulty ? What if you enjoy the game, and the content, and want to play with all the structures and items and all stuff possible but don't like being forced to do something ?

 

And my guess is that TTA was planned to be "change over time", like more difficulty or things you have to adapt (it's why we have resource variants and petrified tree, because this was working ok). But maybe the others part, like game becoming harder over time, was to hard to balance and with some problems hard to solve, weren't working fine. I'm not saying it's impossible to have a world becoming harder and harder, but that it's a complex thing if you want to make this as an official thing. Especially if it leads to divide your community with players disabling the option.

So it's probably why the actual option of "optional challenge you choose if and when to fight" was choosen. Because people could adapt themselves : - you don't like bosses, you don't have to fight the bee queen or the toadstool - you want to challenge yourself, see how quickly you can beat them  - you want to build a nice base then go fight them, you choose when you fight. Year one, year two, year three ? It's ok, when you want.

 

Also, another problem with TTA, maybe a little less true now that the vote is changed is : if you create content that require you to survive until second or third winter, it also mean that some players will never see the new content. Here if i want to try a boss in the first year, i could. Maybe i will die horribly but i could try. If there is a new content in winter 2 during blizzard i must wait one year before seeing new content. And even longer for each new difficulty. Meaning that most of the Klei server would have never seen this content (maybe it's less true now), and meaning that if you lose a world before you are about to reach the new content, it's very frustrating. Also, possible that it make the first days more tedious for some, because nothing new and you have to wait before news things but this point is more or less valid depending of people.

 

Anyway i think that it wasn't really possible to make something like "more content and challenge over time" working before. Maybe it's more possible now but there are still big problems to solve. At least for an official klei update. For a mod, the logic isn't exactly the same.

[_Q_]

16 hours ago, DarkXero said:

- Lets remove the birdcage and make it so buzzards drop eggs. Or birds even, with 5% chance on kill.

Good bye, Bacon and Eggs. You can't even have gunpowder now, good luck with that.

- Lets make the swamp guys not fight each other.

Good bye, free loot.

- Lets remove the thermal stone.

Welcome, all insulating clothes.

- Lets make it so you need a full set of waterproof items to stay dry during Spring.

Welcome, all waterproof clothes.

- Lets nerf the meatballs into kabobs tier.

Good bye, meatballs.

- Lets make it so you can only put one ice in the crock pot or else you get wet goop.

Welcome, mushrooms (lets nerf them too into gains of 5 (max)).

- Lets make it so bee boxes produce 3 honey (max) after 7 days. When offscreen or during winter, they don't work at all.

At least farms weren't removed (maybe we should).

- Lets make a Tam o' Shanter into a Top Hat.

This would be hilarious.

- Lets make it so any food doesn't give more than 10 health, and 5 sanity.

Sleep for it. Or make industrial amounts of food. Or wear a dapper vest and top hat (don't worry, Wickerbottom).

 

Now, what's going to happen? People are still going to find the easiest path. They will go and hunt koalefants and turn all meat into jerky or meaty stews. They will go and put monster meat and mushrooms and berries and sticks, and mass produce kabobs into the sky. They will go and use beefalo as meat reserves. Or a moleworm/rabbit farm. Maybe a dragonpie plantation. The strategy that yields better rewards will be executed again, and again, and again.

Do we call 404 here again or what? Won't people get bored here? Of course they will, they will hit the plateau of stability and find out they have nothing else to do unless they want to. It will be even harder for this people to do anything else but survive. Why go to the ruins? There's just gems there, and we need to keep doing the routine #3 in order to survive Summer. Surviving now requires following a convoluted set of rules, and you can't stray away from it or you die. Instead of grabbing meatballs and doing something else, whatever you feel like doing, you are constantly grabbing meatballs. Over, and over, and over again.

This is what The Long Dark is (less people play it; it also released after Don't Starve).

 

So what's my point? Nerfing and buffing may prove unsuccessful to do what you want to do (achieve fun through balance when we will still be doing the same stuff repeatedly). Current optional challenges aren't that great either. When you add optional challenges you need to put some sweet loot at the end. A stove? Lamps? A sanity crown? A campfire and some green caps are preferable. I don't want to spend 30 minutes hitting the Toadstool with a stick because nobody else was here and I am not Wolfgang. I watched joeshmocoolstuff kill Toadstool in 18 minutes with Wolfgang. It should be around 10 minutes, or it turns boring. What if you had 4 Wolfgang joeshmos? You would have a "raid boss" that dies after 5 minutes. Too short and it's a cakewalk. Too long and it's tedium incarnate. (Health scaling pls? Or maybe reward scaling?)

Instead of playing the nerf/buff roulette, I would like more non-optional challenges to integrate already existing features. For example, having the world evolve so the game gets harder with time. Make it so winter gets harsher with the years. We could have blizzards (starting winter of year 2) where the thermal stone would instantly freeze and be useless (you wouldn't be able to heat it up either), and you would need to have clothes prepared in order to not freeze. Next year (year 3) blizzard would get the sandstorm treatment, and now you need sandsnow goggles in order to see and not have your movement impaired. Good luck carrying a backpack. You had 2 years to prepare. Caves are going to be cold too. Maybe drop some icicles that do tons of damage. Or freeze structures so they are not able to work. Maybe add gusts of wind that blows campfires out, so you actually need the dragonfly furnace to carry on.

Lets make a Summer with electromagicmagnetic heatwaves that make you lose sanity during the day (but not during night and dusk, because it's more tolerable), the thermal stone is permanently hot outside the fridge, and the Tam o' Shanter will screw you. You better take siestas and have some cool equipment. If you dared to explore during blizzards you may have found some very special gelid ice that makes the ice box look like a sauna.

 

But for now, we wait...

I'm not against easiest patch, the problem is the easiest path in current state of balance is way to easy, day to day survia is trivial and granted as long as you can walk and click on things, its minimal in nature and lacks any kind of challnge whatsoever.

Its obvious that after making a base and some kind of food production chain your survival will be easier, but here its just to easy, like totally casual, you don't need to do much to survive. World is unchanging, the seasons don't change the rules of survival all that much, no rabbits in spring, well thats not even a problem, you can just farm birds for the same effect, you will just use silk instead of grass, I still have 3 stacks of silk and nothing to use it on anyway. Part of the problem comes from the fact that developers think about spiders like a danger but spiders are just another resource, only new players can possibly die to spiders and spider queens, its quite easy to learn how to deal with spiders, and its just as easy to learn how to deal with other stuff as well, after you know all of that there is no longer any replay value in game, if you try to play it after learning all mechanics it will turn out sooooo boring. Thats only cause world is static and all mechanics are quite basic and easy to deal with once you know the rules, that is the reason the game don't have any tutorial, add tutorial to it and send it to any proffesional for review and the marks would drop drasticly. The only fun part is when you are learning and that last playtrough where you manage to survie all 4 seasons and kill all bosses. After that its the end, you know everything and can manipulate everything, at that point world should be afraid of you not the other way around.

[Asparagus]

inb4 Klei actually has plans to make Don't Starve Forever - a Don't Starve MMO-like game larger and grander than DST with tougher mechanics and tougher threats, larger maps, more biomes that function in the same way as caves where you go through loading screens to go the next large biome... O__O

[Tomuro]

can this game be added to xb1