Would you mind joining us?

[FTR]

I have question to you, beautiful people, why are you not joining late-day (21+) servers? I understand that it's a bit more rough, but I don't see why anyone would want to only play in autumn over and over.

Right now, people join autumn season servers at decent rate, but as soon as winter starts (sometimes bit later) many people abandon server and there are hardly any newcomers, which quickly results in server being dead and having to be refreshed for people to actually join.

I am not complaining or anything, it's more like curiosity to me. I try to help people who join in winter/summer whenever I can, but people just feel so discouraged to jump in at this period.

[Rellimarual]

Maybe you could put something in your server description saying you'll help out late joiners? Many servers with small crews can't or won't do that. (Personally, I feel that any player who can't find the base on their own is just going to be a leech.) 

[Sadmand]

You can not play on a public server, when you leave the people will commit suicide and start autumn again

[Cheetos]

Having witnessed this a lot myself, I'll assume the mindset follows some of these guidelines:

• Winter is harder to start in, if the server is not well kept then even just getting that first twig / grass to even torch things is obnoxious.
• It's harder for players to find initial flint for campfires and other materials on already started servers, especially when current players had all autumn to mass horde things.
• Prepping for winter I.E. equipment / base during winter, when you would rather prep for winter during the comfortable autumn, which is 2 hours and 40 minutes of prep time.
• It's rare that current players will help new players by meeting them at spawn with winter gear (some require this part of the game be done for them, if not they give up and leave).
• You were attacked by wild snow as a small child.

If servers wanted to kick up player retention, a suggestion could be some kind of temporary temperature immunity mod for day 1 players joining older "x day" servers. Somewhat similar to how they are given a "light" when joining in the dark. Gives them time to work on equipment, find or create their own base, without the older players handing them freebies or risking picking up a griefer / leech from spawn.

The other suggestion would be to become braver than all of us, take home strangers and guide them at the potential cost of the time you wanted to use on other things in-game, or the game progress you've made. You faithful soul you.

[Sadmand]

6 minutes ago, Cheetos said:

Having witnessed this a lot myself, I'll assume the mindset follows some of these guidelines:

• Winter is harder to start in, if the server is not well kept then even just getting that first twig / grass to even torch things is obnoxious.
• It's harder for players to find initial flint for campfires and other materials on already started servers, especially when current players had all autumn to mass horde things.
• Prepping for winter I.E. equipment / base during winter, when you would rather prep for winter during the comfortable autumn, which is 2 hours and 40 minutes of prep time.
• It's rare that current players will help new players by meeting them at spawn with winter gear (some require this part of the game be done for them, if not they give up and leave).
• You were attacked by wild snow as a small child.

If servers wanted to kick up player retention, a suggestion could be some kind of temporary temperature immunity mod for day 1 players joining older "x day" servers. Somewhat similar to how they are given a "light" when joining in the dark. Gives them time to work on equipment, find or create their own base, without the older players handing them freebies or risking picking up a griefer / leech from spawn.

The other suggestion would be to become braver than all of us, take home strangers and guide them at the potential cost of the time you wanted to use on other things in-game, or the game progress you've made. You faithful soul you.

they only need a thermal stone to survive

[Lumina]

I usually don't join in winter, because it's tedious and i can't be sure i will survive (must find enough to make a torch, freezing every x second), and i don't like being more a weight than an help.

[ItsPizzaTime]

2 hours ago, FTR said:

I have question to you, beautiful people, why are you not joining late-day (21+) servers? I understand that it's a bit more rough, but I don't see why anyone would want to only play in autumn over and over.

Right now, people join autumn season servers at decent rate, but as soon as winter starts (sometimes bit later) many people abandon server and there are hardly any newcomers, which quickly results in server being dead and having to be refreshed for people to actually join.

I am not complaining or anything, it's more like curiosity to me. I try to help people who join in winter/summer whenever I can, but people just feel so discouraged to jump in at this period.

Personally for me, it's not so much about the difficulty, but rather that a lot of boons / important early game things are already done and dealt with so it's just no fun to come into a world that's already been mostly pillaged. There are times were this isn't important to me, especially if the server i'm joining has a good friend on it, but when it comes to joining a random server I just don't see a point in contributing when players have already made all of the basic stuff and the world most likely isn't going to last long anyways.

[WorstNightmare]

3 hours ago, ItsPizzaTime said:

Personally for me, it's not so much about the difficulty, but rather that a lot of boons / important early game things are already done and dealt with so it's just no fun to come into a world that's already been mostly pillaged. There are times were this isn't important to me, especially if the server i'm joining has a good friend on it, but when it comes to joining a random server I just don't see a point in contributing when players have already made all of the basic stuff and the world most likely isn't going to last long anyways.

This, along with usually resources for light and food are the reason I'd never touch a 21+ day world, it's partially a game flaw (but not on Klei's part with the boons). And to be perfectly honest I'd say temperature immunity will fix this issue but, not in most severe cases. Let's say they implemented 1 day temperature immunity that's not enough time to get a foot-hold of established resources in a completely populated and looted server. The best option for them would be to just give each new spawned player after say... day 20 a set of essentials to survive for the current season. This way they have enough to live off for more than a couple days if they maintain it well enough.

[FloomRide]

Typically, when I join longer-running worlds, the spawn is stripped of vital resources. Most of the time I'll explore as much as I can without ever finding grass, and then have to struggle my way through the night with something incredibly unorthodox like werebeaver nightvision or firefly hopping, all while taking massive hits to my sanity. If you want late joiners on your server, state in the server description that it has resources at spawn or something like that. Otherwise, most players will avoid it for the aforementioned reasons.

Because I play a lot of Woodie, I can usually get away with joining in the middle of the first winter, and survive without any help. Anything past that would be a gamble, though, since there's no guarantee that there will still be grass at spawn.

Despite this forum's frequent talk of placing resource chests at spawn, I have never once seen a server with this, unless the base itself was connected to spawn.

[Rellimarual]

I put a science machine, fire pit and a bunch of axes at ours recently, and of course when I checked a game-year later, they'd burnt the science machine. A chest would last 5 minutes.

[FTR]

1 hour ago, Rellimarual said:

I put a science machine, fire pit and a bunch of axes at ours recently, and of course when I checked a game-year later, they'd burnt the science machine. A chest would last 5 minutes.

That's kinda sad really.

The idea I got recently is to always start camp around the spawn gate. Yes it's risky because griefers, but you can always rollback the world or try to get flingomatic asap. Spawn camp also encourages people to stick together because that's one camp everyone know about.

[Atkvin]

As a guy who only started playing a month or so ago, I'm still really shaky on many concepts in the game. I still can't remember how to make pierogi lol. I'm most comfortable doing what I know best, just repeating the process of finding materials, starting a base, getting early essentials and prepping for winter.

I'm not sure if there are many other players who feel this too, but I feel kind of useless past the beginning. I know the basics such as making thermal stones, umbrellas and such for seasons, but aside from trying to maintain necessities like food I really don't know how to get into more advanced stuff such as starting pig farms, going to the ruins(died everytime i tried venturing in caves so far lol), magic stuff and so on. That or I'm overthinking it and plain survival just gets boring compared to the thrill of starting out haha.

Addressing the subject about not joining late servers, there's also the jarring factor in immersion. I enjoy the odd chance of encountering friendly souls bustling around in early-game and even meeting new pals than spending an hour standing around helplessly, failing to maintain my stats again, dying cos of bad connection and dejectedly quitting. When joining a later server it sorta feels like barging into a well-established base, with no pre-established trust and friendliness in the pre-game to survive together in a tougher season to just start rummaging in every chest for flint and grass after proving my inexpertise almost dying just making it to base. It's just jarring and awkward asking for help(to save my noob ass once again :d:d)from other players I haven't interacted with much while they're busy with other things, y'know?

[MondayNight]

For me almost all boils down to "be an asset not a liability" (going both ways): I prefer to bring a plus in a match/expect the same from other people, and going in early autumn gives me plenty of time to gather all that's needed to not only survive winter and later seasons, but thrive and having a sturdy foothold towards boss fights. Plus the vast majority of time I make my own bases with own design (a bit obsessed with order and all that ). Starting from winter/other-late-season is harsh and, as others above pointed, without a "starting kit" or quick access to resources at spawn, can be a real pain and/or fairly certain death.

[Rellimarual]

We should share tips on how to incorporate new players, especially if they're not very experienced but are willing to pitch in. Sometimes they hang around the base doing nothing because they don't know what to do once the basics are set up and don't know how to offer help. It can be as easy as, "Would you mind chopping some wood?" We've invited players who were nervous about fighting bosses to, say, use the ice staff on Klaus' fire deer so that they get a chance to be part of a boss fight without too much fear that they'll get killed.

Another thing we've done at our base is set up a chest system where newcomers can take whatever they need from all the chests with a particular skin but have to ask about supplies in the regal and scaled chests where we keep boss drops and battle supplies. That way, they don't have to ask every time, and we don't have to worry that they're grabbing the eyeballs we're saving for a houndius. 

But that said, they have to make it to the base first. Making a base away from the spawn ensures that you don't get people who have no idea how to pick carrots or make a torch and who are constantly begging you for your grass even though the base is in a savannah. We have found some great folks to play with this way and managed to avoid taking on too much dead weight.

[Lumina]

22 hours ago, Rellimarual said:

We've invited players who were nervous about fighting bosses to, say, use the ice staff on Klaus' fire deer so that they get a chance to be part of a boss fight without too much fear that they'll get killed.

It's nice I don't feel comfortable with bosses fight so i would like an option like this, supporting the fight from a distance. Nice idea.

[JustAPineapple]

On 5/20/2017 at 0:58 PM, Sadmand said:

they only need a thermal stone to survive

And that means living long enough to make a alchemy engine

[Arlesienne]

Simple: because more often than not since the branches were merged, you will once again see griefers ruining the world, with or without normal players screaming to get out so that they roll back, or reset (thus removing winter), or anything like that. Unless you play on non-default settings, it takes a considerable amount of time to devote before you get to the juicy bits, especially if players literally pape, root and billage the server, picking every sapling close by, killing all tentacles "because they are scary" etc. - not fun. A good portion of people can't/don't want to devote so much time to playing on a random server whose admin they don't know. Even worse on dedis where you don't have an admin 24/7. I've been playing dedi-hopping over the last few months, getting in, getting something good for the collective, handing out my loot and logging off. Every time, my helping spree would be stopped by a griefer, Webber, Wickerbottom or Willow. All in all, it's rather tiringwhen nobody cooperates by talking etc. - ultimately, public servers which go on for some time become recognisable by the fanbase. For example I know I can feel safe on @raoglu's servers in spite of PVP, because the moderating staff reacts to acts of griefing (like burning pighuts just because) and the people who frequent them try to cooperate, even if that means going separate ways. I can't remember when any of my servers was last griefed; somehow they kind of... started avoiding them. If the server's admin is someone you know or heard good things about, you are more likely to take risks like entering in winter. Random servers? Usually a waste of time.