Walls?

[Charsis]

I think pathfinding of wall is both OP and too big a nerf. On one hand, you can make maze to slow mob down or trap them/trap yourself where you want, but on other hand, it make building just few walls waste of effort. You either have all area walled off where and how you require, or none at all.

Imho pathfinding around wall should only be considered when there are few wall in line. If one side is walled off, mob should not pathfind, but instead attack. For flying mob like bees and butterfly, can just fly over wall and ignore pathfind.

[CaptainChaotica]

Well, personally I find that the pathfinding of walls isn't exploitable ENOUGH.  I always thought I could make awesome mazes or at least corridors full of tooth traps to force hounds to come to me from only ONE direction, and make them managable...and then my dreams of Don't Starveian tower defense died immediately the second an impatient hound started EATING.  THE WALLS.  What?!  No...!  But....no!  You're...you're supposed to--I made this and used all these resourced to make you come in a LINE, so I could fight you only one at a time....! 

It's such a cool idea and I _still_ wish it worked.  It'd just be so satisfying to see!  But no, Don't Starve is most emphatically NOT a tower defense game and the hounds' whole _thing_, their POINT, of what makes them (potentially) dangerous, is that.  they.  SWARM.  you.  So I threw up my hands in defeat and now just do a generic big ol' pile of toothtraps, I dunno, just...throw 'em over there, I guess...which works but is _so_ much less freaking cool. 

Does that mean I think walls are completely useless?  No.  For one thing, I think they just make a base LOOK nicer; it goes immediately from "random bunch of stuff" to This Is A Person-Built Place Now the second you put some nice enclosing walls down.  More importantly, it seems that some bosses are attracted to the walls and will stomp them _instead of the hard to replace stuff_ if walls are present.  I've saved my fling-o-matics, fridges, magic stations etc. from Deerclops multiple times because of that, because he prioritizes the walls and that gives you time to lure him _away_ from the base...

So, my conslusion is that walls are NOT completely useless, 'cos if nothing else they can serve as a decoy.  As a builder type player myself, they also add a bit of morale boosting by just making it _look_ more like "civilization".

...and I just REALLY wanna see the dogs run my freaking maze just _once_, is that so much to ask?  : P

...Notorious

[HereBeJimbo]

22 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

I always thought I could make awesome mazes or at least corridors full of tooth traps to force hounds to come to me from only ONE direction, and make them managable...and then my dreams of Don't Starveian tower defense died immediately the second an impatient hound started EATING.  THE WALLS.  What?!  No...!  But....no!  You're...you're supposed to--I made this and used all these resourced to make you come in a LINE, so I could fight you only one at a time....! 

Imagine some kind of rat maze but instead of a rat and some cheese it's a hound and a winona

[D7X]

AI pathing is fine how it is. At a certain point "exploits" stop being exploits and become features. If you changed the way mobs path around structure/wall/statue combos you'd be removing a lot of the current end-game content for experienced players. It's a sandbox game and I'd appreciate it if you didn't throw my toys out of the sandbox.

[Finx]

On 22/01/2019 at 6:16 PM, NSAiswatchingus said:

I guess I'm confused how you're being forced to play with people you don't want to or aren't playing the way you want to. 

Yeah, it's a multiplayer game, but you're in control of the interactions you have.

I think I understand what Fang is trying to tell you so I will try my best to explain it with more detail.

The most common boss that walls strategy are used for is dragonfly so I will use her as an example. I think most people know how it affect the fight so I will skip straght up to how it affect other.

Using walls for dragonfly cut off one of the main feature that bump up the difficulty of the fight, the lavae. I think that it is safe to say that a fair amount of player did killed dragonfly with the use of walls at least once. On the other hands at least 95% of the people who play this game could not kill dragonfly without the use of walls even with Wolfgang. With all this what im trying to say is that strategy like that makes it possible for a greater amount of player to solo a boss in this case dragonfly which otherwise wouldn't be possible for them.

So how all that affect others then? Lets imagine you are hosting a world and a random join and use this strategy to solo this boss without even telling you. What will very likely happen is people might ragequit because this random took out a boss without you. I do this very often so I think at this point i've pretty much seen every possible reaction from people and this one is the most unfortunate that I have seen.

Anyway, thats in the case in which you could rollback, kick the guy or do other thing to fix the issue but in public server or if you are not the host well you just can't apply all these fix.

I'm not 100% sure if thats what Fang meant but I hope I didn't misunderstood his point. I don't want to make thing even more confusing.

[Well-met]

well just look at that. Year of the Pig is exploitable with walls. 

derrr

[Booklover]

I believe using walls is a tactic. You basically manipulate the AI's need to be smart by placing down walls and leaving a space for the AI to go. You are using your brains to make the game easier to survive in. Sure you can play without using walls but i believe that a player can accomplish way more with walls than if you just decide to go all out without walls. I don't mean to offend you by saying that you accomplish less without using walls but lets look at the facts here, by using walls you can cut short on the amount of time and resource needed to do something. Perhaps with walls you don't need to waste blue caps because you got attacked by lavae. You will also kill the dragonfly faster and thus save time. Its ok if you don't want to use walls but don't beg the devs to change something just because you think its bad. If you think its bad, don't use it. Don't go out of your way simply to change how walls work. That kind of behaviour is quite selfish.

Say you LOVE playing Wolfgang and how he is right now. Would you like it if a player suddenly posted how he is OP and exploited and bad for new players? Would you like it if that player wanted Wolfgang to be nerfed and destroy his "exploits"? NO! You want him to be the same Wolfgang you know and love. You don't want him to change and be nerfed! This player is currently doing what you are doing, wanting to change something merely because you think its too good, too OP, too like an exploit. Why do people pick this character? Why do people do this? Because this is the current meta. People build walls to beautify and to trick mobs. If you really want true walls, get indestructable objects. Walls are not really meant for defense, think of it as a time waster for mobs. Why waste time destroying walls when you can just walk around it? This mentality lets the AI to be tricked and led into its death.

 

[MondayNight]

6 hours ago, Finx said:

On the other hands at least 95% of the people who play this game could not kill dragonfly without the use of walls even with Wolfgang. With all this what im trying to say is that strategy like that makes it possible for a greater amount of player to solo a boss in this case dragonfly which otherwise wouldn't be possible for them

Oh, so all this walls-debacle is another thread centered around "bragging rights"?

Hmm. HMMMM! Who would've thought?!

[Booklover]

Seriously, just don't use walls if you don't want to "cheese" or "exploit" a mob. You don't need to create a thread to rant about how easy or reliant walls made us. Or how Klei should fix it. Walls and AI are coded that way. Sometimes you have to learn that changing something might not be the best. Same scenario with Willow, before she was nerfed, she was OK. After nerf players despise her due to her perks clashing with each other. If the devs listen to you ( I'll pray to god they don't), walls become useless, people will gather loads of materials to build indestructable structures and you will create ANOTHER thread about how indestructable structures are OP and should be nerfed blah blah blah.

Basically your suggestion will create a loop of nerfs centering around walls and indestructable structures. Sometimes ya gotta DEAL WITH IT, ok sweetheart?

[NSAiswatchingus]

26 minutes ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

Oh, so all this walls-debacle is another thread centered around "bragging rights"?

Hmm. HMMMM! Who would've thought?!

That's really what's going on here at it's core.

 

6 hours ago, Finx said:

On the other hands at least 95% of the people who play this game could not kill dragonfly without the use of walls even with Wolfgang. With all this what im trying to say is that strategy like that makes it possible for a greater amount of player to solo a boss in this case dragonfly which otherwise wouldn't be possible for them.

This is true. Different play styles, different skill levels, different player counts, different items available, etc., all go into account when a player decides how to engage the Dragonfly. This is a sandbox game that offers a wide variety of items and characters that can be used in any number of ways to overcome a challenge. Not to mention, most people don't want a huge challenge for every task in a game that involves doing the same thing over and over again. Nobody watches a video of someone doing the Dragonfly fight the most difficult way and thinks, "I want to go through that EVERY time!". Most people value their own time more than lame braggings rights so they generally look more toward easier strategies or ones that can automate the fight.  

 

7 hours ago, Finx said:

So how all that affect others then? Lets imagine you are hosting a world and a random join and use this strategy to solo this boss without even telling you. What will very likely happen is people might ragequit because this random took out a boss without you. I do this very often so I think at this point i've pretty much seen every possible reaction from people and this one is the most unfortunate that I have seen.

The idea that someone could just join my world, gather everything needed to fight Dragonfly, find Dragonfly, and actually kill her without me once inquiring about what they're up to is beyond me. Even if that does happen, 95% of the player base uses the walls strategy, as you said, so the odds of that negatively affecting someone is even lower. 

 

7 hours ago, Finx said:

Anyway, thats in the case in which you could rollback, kick the guy or do other thing to fix the issue but in public server or if you are not the host well you just can't apply all these fix.

Yeah. Sometimes you have to actually talk to other people and come to a compromise for the good of the group. Other peoples' fun is not less important than yours in a public server.

[maradyne]

Have mobs make a constant beeline for their target and attack any walls or structures in their path. Walls then serve their purpose better, while also reducing nonsensical cheese. Cheese will always exist, but it should at least make sense.

[Booklover]

45 minutes ago, lifetheuniverse said:

Have mobs make a constant beeline for their target and attack any walls or structures in their path. Walls then serve their purpose better, while also reducing nonsensical cheese. Cheese will always exist, but it should at least make sense.

I believe that the reason mobs like to find another way is bcuz the AI is "smart". The AI will not waste valuable time eating walls instead of finding another way to get to you. In doing so, the AI is technincally smart but we players love to cheese stuff so we made the AI show how smart it is by making it walk all the way around a gigantic wall. It might not be meant like this but seriously, if i told you that you could walk around a wall instead of trying to break it down, would you do it? Of course! It would be the most logical decision! But I DID NOT tell you that breaking is faster and easier! So you stupidly walked around the wall when you could have instead broke it

[maradyne]

It'd be better off if it was dumb but effective. They're animals, anyway. The way they currently operate is far more robotic-looking.

[MondayNight]

You all seem to only fixate on the wall strat for Dragon. Lemme crash your wall-nerf dreams present you some trusty lil "cheese" friends also doing their jobs as intended... in hands of "entrepreneurial" players:

Also "working as intended" for Bee Queen.

And not to gloss-over this beauty:

..aka walking on Sea/Abyss to "cheese"... pretty much anything.

And, oh, in all above no "ez op" walls required

 

What I want to point with these is "cheese" aka fun and ingenious ways of using game mechanics in taking down foes or making efficient farms is part of DST charm, the plethora of ways you can go about something, each time different. If not for these but always use of the only straightforward default way of "dealing with stuff" at least for me DST would've been long gone into my personal history of "games I've played at some point and got bored with/forgot about".

 

Also don't omit another important aspect of "the bragging try-hard legends" out there that mushed day 2 Dragonfly per example with only 1 Ham Bat, no walls, no strat beside "killing last larvae at the right moment": digging in game's code for mobs patterns of attack and other exploitable quirks. If that isn't the ultimate "cheesing" frankly nothing is.

[maradyne]

It's moreso that the above hacky strategies make the game feel bugged, broken, and more about how many exploits you can find than how much you can master mechanics.

I absolutely love AI manipulation in games, but Wall pathing sillyness and exploits like Jesusing the ocean...don't feel like gameplay. They feel like the kinds of issues that should be fixed a week after release.
Personally, I feel like after realizing that there's no way through, an animal like the hyper-aggressive hounds in this game would just smash their way through walls, signs, whatever they're being blocked by. Seeing them run against empty air infinitely doesn't feel clever, it feels like making use of a bug.

[MondayNight]

From what I know lore-wise, all the Constant is in point of fact a stage. "Jesusing the ocean" is not actually walking on an ocean: those are cartonboard props. Even the "splash" objects do on "ocean" is not water, but another symbolic prop. You can see real water on Oasis for example.

 

And dogs do munch walls, if anything those walls are "obstacles" just in jokey-name when is about hounds, Deerclops, Bearger etc. As previously stated, we don't actually have barricades in this survival game. Walls are more of a joke no matter the end of the spectrum you position yourself on. Plus don't forget the satirical humor of DST and tongue-in-cheek comedy underling all mechanics - for Pixel' sake, you have a giant Sheep snot-spitting you in the face and clobbering you with its hoofs till you're meat-pudding

[Bleksmits]

If any mob is about to suck because of wall he must go like this.

Spoiler

 

[maradyne]

...I mean, silly or not, a game should still be a game.

If the excuse for not fixing buggy behavior is that it's all a play and they're all cartoon cutouts and it's all a big meta joke, the hounds should be able to slip between the wall cutouts and eat our face.
In-universe rules are ok, though they should make some sense.
Meta jokes only go on for so long before suspension of disbelief kicks in.

[Swanky Psammead]

 

2 hours ago, lifetheuniverse said:

Cheese will always exist, but it should at least make sense.

This is the closest to my feelings regarding cheese in this thread. I like walling off the individual Lavae pools to keep them at bay, or walling myself in a box; I don't like making a single long wall on each side of a magma pool and tricking the Lavae into hugging the impassable magma pool terrain (they were literally born from it, they're immune to its temperature, why can't they just swim through?). I like cheesing the Ancient Guardian on pillars because he is a bloodthirsty mindless shell of his former self and it doesn't break my immersion to imagine that he would keep trying to hit me despite being wedged in; I don't like tricking Grumble Bees with fences that they clearly have wings to fly over, but I like using bunny armies or heated beefalo herds to cheese Bee Queen, etc. etc.

Cheese has its place in storytelling. It is cheesy of Indiana Jones to just shoot the Cairo Swordsman instead of dueling him with his whip. It is cheesy of Odysseus to get a cyclops drunk and then poke out its only eye after it passes out. Resourcefulness ought to be rewarded. But it bothers me when the cheese is implausible or breaks my engagement with the story's basic premises.

 

26 minutes ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

From what I know lore-wise, all the Constant is in point of fact a stage. "Jesusing the ocean" is not actually walking on an ocean: those are cartonboard props. Even the "splash" objects do on "ocean" is not water, but another symbolic prop. You can see real water on Oasis for example.

 

And dogs do munch walls, if anything those walls are "obstacles" just in jokey-name when is about hounds, Deerclops, Bearger etc. As previously stated, we don't actually have barricades in this survival game. Walls are more of a joke no matter the end of the spectrum you position yourself on. Plus don't forget the satirical humor of DST and tongue-in-cheek comedy underling all mechanics - for Pixel' sake, you have a giant Sheep snot-spitting you in the face and clobbering you with its hoofs till you're meat-pudding

This is exactly the sort of mental gymnastics I love to do to make cheese strategies more palatable to me, haha ^ _ ^ I don't totally buy it here though. DS is definitely satirical and tongue-in-cheek but it is serious sometimes too; the Constant has consistent rules governing its supernatural shenanigans, even if they are very alien. Even if the ocean/abyss is a strange abstraction or prop, that doesn't entirely explain the inconsistencies in why items sometimes sink in it and sometimes don't, and why it supports mobs but not objects.

That being said, in practice I mostly agree with folks who want more options for the playerbase even if they are clearly unintentional bugs. These are my preferences but I don't demand others adhere to them.

[MondayNight]

6 minutes ago, Swanky Psammead said:

..break my immersion..

Cheese has its place in storytelling. It is cheesy of Indiana Jones to just shoot the Cairo Swordsman instead of dueling him with his whip. It is cheesy of Odysseus to get a cyclops drunk and then poke out its only eye after it passes out. Resourcefulness ought to be rewarded. But it bothers me when the cheese is implausible or breaks my engagement with the story's basic premises.

 

..the sort of mental gymnastics I love to do to make cheese strategies more palatable..

Fair enough.

 

Now let's take a sweet moment off to look at this goodness:

..and imagine sunglasses-Wolf doing a magnificent Ruins rush.

Yeah.. plausibility

[Tapirus]

40 minutes ago, Bleksmits said:

If any mob is about to suck because of wall he must go like this.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Oh yes, as I said in another thread, I want the Houl Hound (with the ability of break walls like Bearger) being added in DST, so the small ones could use him as "battering ram" for the attacks.

[D7X]

2 hours ago, lifetheuniverse said:

It's moreso that the above hacky strategies make the game feel bugged, broken, and more about how many exploits you can find than how much you can master mechanics.

I absolutely love AI manipulation in games, but Wall pathing sillyness and exploits like Jesusing the ocean...don't feel like gameplay. They feel like the kinds of issues that should be fixed a week after release.
Personally, I feel like after realizing that there's no way through, an animal like the hyper-aggressive hounds in this game would just smash their way through walls, signs, whatever they're being blocked by. Seeing them run against empty air infinitely doesn't feel clever, it feels like making use of a bug.

I mean, I sort of agree with you but you're asking to remove something that has been in the game so long that it's basically a feature. DST doesn't have many intended methods of automation and if you made wall/structure/statue barricades ineffective without adding in an alternative (and any alternative would likely just be a more expensive and time consuming one with the same ends) you'd be severely damaging a lot of peoples experience of the game.

The true end-game boss of any sandbox game is boredom and its especially true in DST when you get to high day counts and you're faced with yet another hound wave or Deerclops or frog rain and all you want is to just not have to suffer through that same encounter again by kiting or resetting tooth traps or running to beefalo. It's not always skill that causes people to abuse the AI pathing it's often for the sake of saving time and literal sanity or pushing the limits of what you can do with an idea. Imagine trying to convince everyone in the world to no longer use their dishwashers because you think it's cheating to not do the dishes by hand.

The best compromise I could agree to is that Dragonfly's larvae do AoE damage to walls (and only to walls not structures or statues or players) and to leave everything else the same. It would stop people cheesing dragonfly quite so early and freely if that's the main concern here. Anything more would be too damaging unless it came with an update introducing automation mechanics that replaced the "exploits."

Also, if the problem is realism personally I think the AI is spot on. For hounds at least.

 

[maradyne]

52 minutes ago, D7X said:

Anything more would be too damaging unless it came with an update introducing automation mechanics that replaced the "exploits."

It's something else that needs to happen regardless. Tedium isn't good either.
These issues are such issues because they've been allowed to build up to a point where comments like this come up. The idea that fixing a bug isn't a good idea because of another issue that the game has. There's so much wrong that you can't fix anything without making someone mad.

Refusing to start anywhere leads to what we have now with buggy behavior in AI's, walls, structures, ect, which all intertwine together and create dependency on those bugs due to viable, non-tedious alternatives not existing. Resetting a tooth trap resetting all adjacent tooth traps would be a good example.
It's the same exact thinking that led the characters to be the way that they are now. Someone didn't like our changes? Welp, better not fix it or touch anything near that system for the next few years!

 

I'm just mentioning that last part because it's about to be really relevant. If Klei actually goes through with what they're saying they'll do, it's likely to be great for game health and long-term viability...but some of the comments here are going to repeated, a L O T, with Characters taking the place of Walls.
And it's the same scenario; you can leave the broken and badly designed things as-is, it's the safe option; people will be mad, but they'll only be as mad as they currently are. Letting the base game slowly bleed out and die is predictable, and thereby comfortable.
Or, you can take the dive, shed off the stagnation brought on by the fear of backlash, and try and actually improve.

People are going to get even madder about the coming updates than they've been about the stagnation, but hopefully Klei pushes through it and starts trying out braver changes after the first go.

[Tapirus]

27 minutes ago, lifetheuniverse said:

People are going to get even madder about the coming updates than they've been about the stagnation, but hopefully Klei pushes through it and starts trying out braver changes after the first go.

You're right, see big changes is good sometimes for try new experiences of gameplay.

[Finx]

11 hours ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

Oh, so all this walls-debacle is another thread centered around "bragging rights"?

People on these forum really have an obsession with bragging or what?

If you don't have anything interesting to say about the topic you can simply avoid talking because at this point you are making a fool of yourself more than the one you are targeting.

7 hours ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

Also don't omit another important aspect of "the bragging try-hard legends" out there that mushed day 2 Dragonfly per example with only 1 Ham Bat, no walls, no strat beside "killing last larvae at the right moment": digging in game's code for mobs patterns of attack and other exploitable quirks. If that isn't the ultimate "cheesing" frankly nothing is.

You are talking about Joeshmocoolstuff? From what I know he never did go through the game code to do any of his speedrun. If he would have done that most of his speedrun would have been more optimized anyway so it is safe to say that he didn't.

Whether is it an exploit or not remains arguable but what is clear is that if we consider it as such it still require a minimal of skill to the point were most player will use walls or any other strategy to kill dragonfly over this one.