The True Problem of DST

[Mario384]

I've wanted to have this conversation for a very long time now, but I haven't been really interested in DST for a while now until my big man Woodie got his rework today.  Feeding off of the want for improvement, I want to bring forth the biggest problem I have with Don't Starve Together: it's not a multiplayer game.

"What?", you might find yourself asking.  "Of course Don't Starve Together is multiplayer, I play with my friends all the time!  It's the reason DST exists!".  Well, I'm simply pointing out that I find DST fundamentally lacks a good multiplayer component, as in it doesn't function nowhere near well as it should.  Back when DST came out, everyone was giddy and excited that their favorite singleplayer game had just come out with multiplayer, and the experience could finally be enhanced by others.  The problem here is that Don't Starve's formula actually makes it quite lacking in the multiplayer department, only really functioning if you play solely with friends.  What I'm referring to is public servers, and the myriad of reasons of why you'd never want to play on them.

Don't Starve's main feedback loop is it's progression system, which keeps players coming back to survive another winter, or to finally go into the ruins and get that Houndootius Shootius they wanted.  While this is feasible on private servers, where you can organize times to play with friends, public servers offer no such thing.  Usually, your progression only really matters in the one session you get to play for, because your stuff is probably going to be gone once you come back.  And sure, we do have wilderness mode, but that doesn't stop other players from deleting and looting your base, nor does it provide a satisfying answer for how death should be impactful.  Since you just need to get back to the portal to respawn, the worst complication you'll face is getting your stuff back, and even after all of this, the server might be gone or reset after a few days.  Simply put, Don't Starve Together has no satisfying way to enjoy the game in a single session, outside playing by yourself or with friends.

Of course, this need not always be the case.  Forge and Gorge both temporarily solved this issue, with the unfortunate complication that they both might as well be different games.  PVP is technically a mode which can be played in a single session, but has always been extremely unbalanced, more so since the addition of Wortox, whose teleportation and healing basically make the system not work, not to mention boats.  DST Adventure Mode could also solve this issue, but as of now, there's been no plans for such things.  Klei keeps making these interesting and unique enemies, locations, and bosses, but they all end up being underutilized with all the other clutter added to the game.  I personally think giving something for people who just want to play the game with randos would really help people stay interested in the game, and allow them to have fun while still embracing the multiplayer element of DST.

[blizstorm]

you gave the solution to your problem. MAKE FRIENDS!

[loopuleasa]

I disagree

I play on pub servers all the time

You make friends all the time

You collab on all kinds of challenges, bosses, and base designs

It's multiplayer

The difference between playing offline and with others is massive, to say the least

[Sivdun]

Man, I feel you. You can only make so many big bases, kill all bosses and then you get bored of it quickly. I think the problem is that after a while you are getting too good for your own sake, since you aren't struggling anymore it gets repetitive. Starting new world or joining fresh pub isn't a challenge, it feels like a list of chores you have to do (gather wood, gather rocks, gold for alchemy, kill some pigs, get hambat and helmet etc.). People spice things up with mods (I personally use randomized seasons mod and set all world resourcers to low), they also do things like rushing ruins or dragonfly as fast as they can to see if they can do it. Maybe try that.

Personally, I would love to see adventure type game mode, where you set difficulty (ex. on hardest you can start with summer season and long night) and length (ex. different size of the map, only in caves world, since we have sailing, few islands you have to move around) of the game and you have a lobby like in Forge or Gorge but hosted by players or on dedicated servers made by players. Upon starting the game, server generates the world with random preset with objectives (ex. your group enters the portal and portal breaks behind you and your team has to fix it with resources scattered around the world or special items that you need to get back from enemies or trade for (Klei has it in the game already), boss you have to kill in order to win so you need to prepare for him before confrontation, or just find another portal and jump through it to finish the sesion.

I believe playing for short 1h - 3h sesions feels great since you have to be active and you can actually finish it. This kind of expirence Sandbox cannot provide and I wish there was something like that in DST.

[ADM]

No game is safe from bad players, DST as for others, there's no exact way to improve this unless you put 1k mods to reduce players influence on a world, so better play single at this moment.

Unless a game is competitive, I always play with my friends or join a group that organize their servers to play with. And it's fine at this moment  

[maciu67]

We have "solo" game and "together" game.

[00petar00]

I completely agree with what you said OP.

The issue with don't starve together is that it was a solo game, made into multiplayer. Public servers never work, the only ones you can trust KLEI official public servers, reset after each session.

I've only played on one endless server that added mods to spawn clockworks and all the other resources that aren't infinite (not counting about tumbleweeds, it is slow to gather gears that way). There's a mod that allows people to claim bases. This one server had that and i played on it for a while.

Problem here is that the game gets boring because that mod that respawns everything, makes game too easy. There's just no perfect balance here as you can't play without that mod on any public server for a long time as players will just drain the world of resources.

DST exists for you to play it with you friends or solo which i've spent 800 hours and with friends, i've spent like 150.

Public servers are quite a joke, people will grief, or just reset the server so they can play in Autumn and not winter where the original players left off. Only way for public servers to be of any use is for servers to not reset when there's one player on and he dies on purpose.

Next problem is that Hamlet will never get the updates it deserves because devs want to focus on DST, i understand that they don't want to introduce DLCs to a multiplayer game because different players will have different DLCs and won't be able to play together.

But i really enjoy hamlet/shipwrecked yet i need to go to a completely different game to play them. So many items/content missing between the two games.

[Crimson Chin]

4 hours ago, Mario384 said:

I've wanted to have this conversation for a very long time......

I unfortunately agree. DST is definitely an uncomfortable game to schedule with a group of friends and really does fall flat in public servers. The progression system that you brought up is another huge issue, and is pretty much why my friends and I just play PVP or mess around in creative mode servers anymore. We have seen everything, there is nothing left for us and the devs don't seem to be adding anything else for us either.

Well the game pretty much lacks a progression system, it always assumes you don't know what you are doing to make itself "challenging". Other sandboxes like minecraft and terraria just tower of DST in comparison. You can't just memorize how to fight and survive every situatuon in minecraft or terraria. Of course memory HELPS and you learn from mistakes in those games, but the challenge never goes away just because you know that this specific thing is dangerous. Pretty much every single thing in DST relies on you not knowing about it being a threat. Darkness, sanity, any enemy at all really.  Any threat literally anything when memorized becomes irrelevant.

The progression system totally relying on you not knowing how to do something completely unweaves and falls apart after playing for so long and by day 5 you probably have end game magic gear. Really once you know you can make a football helmet all difficulty and risk just goes out the window. Then we have the bosses that drop garbage, toadstool drops an item to deal with darkness, an already nonexistant threat to any player who killed toadstool. Its all out whack. That's another thing, unlike minecraft or terraria, DST completely lacks options. These options (and you know, the fact you can't memorize every single obstacle in these games) in minecraft and terraria give them extreme amounts of replayability. There might be like 1 or two more ways to do something in DST, but they are probably just more tedious and painful.. basically you would be crippling yourself, which I don't think you should have to do in an uncompromising survival game.

All in all, DST is a "sandbox" designed to be played endlessly, but loses almost all of its replay value after a few playthroughs since you can pretty much memorize every single threat that exists.

And the new RoT updates haven't been giving me too much hope either. You COULD go to the moon island and make glass cutters by doing a bunch of tedious work and unfun sailing.... or you can just stick with those day 5 dark swords. Also what is up with the malbatross? I and many others were expecting some huge new boss with really cool new mechanics and all we got really was... another kiteable health sponge? I know he makes... waves or something, but.... just.. so disappointing. What was the point? Why was he added if he adds nothing new to the game, just... more of the same. Just like every other boss, there is like one effective way to deal with him after your play through fighting him, which will never really change 

And ahhhh.. here is an ugly one I don't really want to talk about, but is probably important. These new  RoT updates... character updates... and especially Woodie's update have made me question if the devs... well... play their own game.... The issues and ineffectiveness of each one of these updates could be seen a mile away by any other player, but the devs seem to continuously make the same mistakes over and over again. It is a shame, I love Klei, but I really have been worried about DST's future lately. If they aren't having fun making the game, then what is the point in even continuing really? It isn't fun for them.. or us. I guess that is totally an assumption, but I don't know.. it really feels like that anymore. I'd love to be wrong.

Whew. Okay yeah got a little grim there, sorry. This does come from a place of love though, I just really do want to see the best for DST, and I don't think we will with the current road we are taking. Who know's though, maybe I am completely wrong and next update will blow everything I just said out of the water, I can only hope.

[1v0]

I have another problem with the game. I play DST only with my friends we are 3-5 team. So ok no problem so far.

The problem for me(and my friends) is that this is supposed to be a survival game, and when 3 out of 5 player are veteran players like myself (we started playing it back when RoG was in beta for DS). There is nothing to do in it.

So now we don't have what to do... we tried to survive ruins for some time, ok we did that survived there for half a year, we tried bosses ok but the new ones are optional and if we don't need the stuff we don't go to them... All of us are here for the survival... not for the boss fights. What I mean is - It's one thing to go fight an optional boss, and it's another thing a boss to come to your camp and destory it, you have to survive this.

I like the new updates but for now I'm waiting for more content so when I start playing with my friends we can have all of DST be new. As most of the new content is... little by little given to us(I don't have a problem with this). But most of the features are just optional. you can live years without going to the sea, you can play all you want without going to the moon island. I would like them to add a reason to go there, outside of some good items that you can live without. Add for example : an event like the volcano in SW. Then you need to go there or your survival will get harder.

Many ppl didn't like SW, for me I liked the flood and the volcano. That gave me a feeling of "end of the world" and I really enjoyed it. Sadly I can't find a screenshot of my base to demonstrate. But the island I had my base was 30-40 % of it covered in sandbags. It looked like a battlefield.

 

Lastly because all of this, none of us plays DST anymore. We are waiting for new content. If I call my friends to play we will play for 2-3 hours and get bored (and we will never continue the game we started) as everything is still like before. Nothing new to winter or the other seasons, no new weathers, no new enemys on the main land, nothing you NEED to beat in order to survive.

I called all my friends for RoT and well we started the game made a base and called it a night. Then we never continued the game we started. I don't feel like it, they don't too. Because we are waiting for more. For changes that are more impactful.

To put it short: there is too many optional stuff and nothing that is a MUST to survive.
 

[00petar00]

17 minutes ago, Crimson Chin said:

I unfortunately agree. DST is definitely an uncomfortable game to schedule with a group of friends and really does fall flat in public servers. The progression system that you brought up is another huge issue, and is pretty much why my friends and I just play PVP or mess around in creative mode servers anymore. We have seen everything, there is nothing left for us and the devs don't seem to be adding anything else for us either.

Well the game pretty much lacks a progression system, it always assumes you don't know what you are doing to make itself "challenging". Other sandboxes like minecraft and terraria just tower of DST in comparison. You can't just memorize how to fight and survive every situatuon in minecraft or terraria. Of course memory HELPS and you learn from mistakes in those games, but the challenge never goes away just because you know that this specific thing is dangerous. Pretty much every single thing in DST relies on you not knowing about it being a threat. Darkness, sanity, any enemy at all really.  Any threat literally anything when memorized becomes irrelevant.

The progression system totally relying on you not knowing how to do something completely unweaves and falls apart after playing for so long and by day 5 you probably have end game magic gear. Really once you know you can make a football helmet all difficulty and risk just goes out the window. Then we have the bosses that drop garbage, toadstool drops an item to deal with darkness, an already nonexistant threat to any player who killed toadstool. Its all out whack. That's another thing, unlike minecraft or terraria, DST completely lacks options. These options (and you know, the fact you can't memorize every single obstacle in these games) in minecraft and terraria give them extreme amounts of replayability. There might be like 1 or two more ways to do something in DST, but they are probably just more tedious and painful.. basically you would be crippling yourself, which I don't think you should have to do in an uncompromising survival game.

All in all, DST is a "sandbox" designed to be played endlessly, but loses almost all of its replay value after a few playthroughs since you can pretty much memorize every single threat that exists.

And the new RoT updates haven't been giving me too much hope either. You COULD go to the moon island and make glass cutters by doing a bunch of tedious work and unfun sailing.... or you can just stick with those day 5 dark swords. Also what is up with the malbatross? I and many others were expecting some huge new boss with really cool new mechanics and all we got really was... another kiteable health sponge? I know he makes... waves or something, but.... just.. so disappointing. What was the point? Why was he added if he adds nothing new to the game, just... more of the same. Just like every other boss, there is like one effective way to deal with him after your play through fighting him, which will never really change 

And ahhhh.. here is an ugly one I don't really want to talk about, but is probably important. These new  RoT updates... character updates... and especially Woodie's update have made me question if the devs... well... play their own game.... The issues and ineffectiveness of each one of these updates could be seen a mile away by any other player, but the devs seem to continuously make the same mistakes over and over again. It is a shame, I love Klei, but I really have been worried about DST's future lately. If they aren't having fun making the game, then what is the point in even continuing really? It isn't fun for them.. or us. I guess that is totally an assumption, but I don't know.. it really feels like that anymore. I'd love to be wrong.

Whew. Okay yeah got a little grim there, sorry. This does come from a place of love though, I just really do want to see the best for DST, and I don't think we will with the current road we are taking. Who know's though, maybe I am completely wrong and next update will blow everything I just said out of the water, I can only hope.

That's why our best times on don't starve were when we just started out. It is a big world with countless dangers, when you don't know what will kill you and your base is destroyed by deerclops in the first winter when you actually manage to survive that long.

I disagree with you about minecraft, that game has building as a bigger aspect then surviving. I find DST a much bigger world with more dangers then minecraft if you want to kill all creatures/bosses in both games. Do note that i am not talking about modded minecraft where people install 200 mods and countless other creatures, that actually makes it bigger then DST but it is not the base game and seems unfair to compare it to modded.

Problem with DST is the way they designed the combat system. How would they easily make a challenging boss? It is either kiteable or not and if it isn't, then good luck killing it solo, nearly everything in DST is kiteable and i enjoy it but it gets easy when you learn how to kite dragonfly, there's pretty much no danger of you dying to anything else that you can kite.

They needed to add that boss for there to be something out there in  the waters that players want to fight, to not make water feel empty or otherwise why'd they have the boat/island update. I agree that they should've put more effort, for example i really liked reanimated skeleton, it is truly a good boss fight but it is a bit hard to expect that much for each boss they'll introduce to the game, i'd like to see more bosses like that though.

Woodie update, artwise it is great and the transformations give it variety but the problem comes when all of his transformations are redundant. Every time you transform you lose more then you gain, that's how we can sum his update up. It is not a big problem if Klei actually decides to tweak the numbers and make his transformations feel great and useful.

I am really grateful to the devs and i really love don't starve, i don't think that they are making the same mistakes, it is mostly players that pressured them into making boats as a lot of players actually wanted shipwrecked for DST but shipwrecked is much much bigger then what we got, i don't really think it is worth even going into the ocean at this point.

I remember when DST was still in beta, when we didn't have caves and most of the content that we have today wasn't there back then. I still have great expectations and hope for future updates.

[1v0]

Spoiler

2 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

That's why our best times on don't starve were when we just started out. It is a big world with countless dangers, when you don't know what will kill you and your base is destroyed by deerclops in the first winter when you actually manage to survive that long.

I disagree with you about minecraft, that game has building as a bigger aspect then surviving. I find DST a much bigger world with more dangers then minecraft if you want to kill all creatures/bosses in both games. Do note that i am not talking about modded minecraft where people install 200 mods and countless other creatures, that actually makes it bigger then DST but it is not the base game and seems unfair to compare it to modded.

Problem with DST is the way they designed the combat system. How would they easily make a challenging boss? It is either kiteable or not and if it isn't, then good luck killing it solo, nearly everything in DST is kiteable and i enjoy it but it gets easy when you learn how to kite dragonfly, there's pretty much no danger of you dying to anything else that you can kite.

They needed to add that boss for there to be something out there in  the waters that players want to fight, to not make water feel empty or otherwise why'd they have the boat/island update. I agree that they should've put more effort, for example i really liked reanimated skeleton, it is truly a good boss fight but it is a bit hard to expect that much for each boss they'll introduce to the game, i'd like to see more bosses like that though.

Woodie update, artwise it is great and the transformations give it variety but the problem comes when all of his transformations are redundant. Every time you transform you lose more then you gain, that's how we can sum his update up. It is not a big problem if Klei actually decides to tweak the numbers and make his transformations feel great and useful.

I am really grateful to the devs and i really love don't starve, i don't think that they are making the same mistakes, it is mostly players that pressured them into making boats as a lot of players actually wanted shipwrecked for DST but shipwrecked is much much bigger then what we got, i don't really think it is worth even going into the ocean at this point.

I remember when DST was still in beta, when we didn't have caves and most of the content that we have today wasn't there back then. I still have great expectations and hope for future updates.

 

This is exactly what I mean and want. I want the feeling of danger I had when I started playing DS, the fear of the unknown. For new things to endanger my survival. Let me tell you how when I was a new player I didnt dare to go near the shadow hand or the eyes in the dark. Or how I was dreading the hounds waves and the rain frogs. How I didn't know when seasons will changes so I was getting ready as fast as I can and was aways in a hurry.

 

But now that I know everything...

-well I know when every season starts... - when hounds will attack and how to beat them - what to expect in what season - how to deal with insanity .Atm insanity is just a nightmare fuel farm nothing more. - when every season will start and end..

I want more randomness to the game. More unexpected stuff. More danger. More things that will come to you. If not from day 1 then from day 200 (after a player survives 200 days for example, not world days).

And this is why I have been wanting a DLC size (I will even pay for it) content. The best example is like you said the ocean, There are no waves no enemys, there is nothing that can damage you or your boat... unless you go into a rock. Thou to be fair that is still WIP.

[Ermac__]

26 minutes ago, 00petar00 said:

That's why our best times on don't starve were when we just started out. It is a big world with countless dangers, when you don't know what will kill you and your base is destroyed by deerclops in the first winter when you actually manage to survive that long.

I disagree with you about minecraft, that game has building as a bigger aspect then surviving. I find DST a much bigger world with more dangers then minecraft if you want to kill all creatures/bosses in both games. Do note that i am not talking about modded minecraft where people install 200 mods and countless other creatures, that actually makes it bigger then DST but it is not the base game and seems unfair to compare it to modded.

Problem with DST is the way they designed the combat system. How would they easily make a challenging boss? It is either kiteable or not and if it isn't, then good luck killing it solo, nearly everything in DST is kiteable and i enjoy it but it gets easy when you learn how to kite dragonfly, there's pretty much no danger of you dying to anything else that you can kite.

They needed to add that boss for there to be something out there in  the waters that players want to fight, to not make water feel empty or otherwise why'd they have the boat/island update. I agree that they should've put more effort, for example i really liked reanimated skeleton, it is truly a good boss fight but it is a bit hard to expect that much for each boss they'll introduce to the game, i'd like to see more bosses like that though.

Woodie update, artwise it is great and the transformations give it variety but the problem comes when all of his transformations are redundant. Every time you transform you lose more then you gain, that's how we can sum his update up. It is not a big problem if Klei actually decides to tweak the numbers and make his transformations feel great and useful.

I am really grateful to the devs and i really love don't starve, i don't think that they are making the same mistakes, it is mostly players that pressured them into making boats as a lot of players actually wanted shipwrecked for DST but shipwrecked is much much bigger then what we got, i don't really think it is worth even going into the ocean at this point.

I remember when DST was still in beta, when we didn't have caves and most of the content that we have today wasn't there back then. I still have great expectations and hope for future updates.

I think for bosses, i think there best options without fundamentally reworking how combat works is a focus on AOE and multitasking. Using your character's movement to dodge in all directions rather than just walking back to dodge a hit makes fights slightly more engaging. Multitasking as well since I think item switching and inventory management is a decent skill to have. Fuelweaver, and to an extent, toadstool, already make you do this.

[blizstorm]

For those who are looking for continuity, playing with many people and unscripted challenge, consider this as an inspiration and a challenge

00petar00, that Klei world failed to reset for 36 real days. So untrustworthy.

[00petar00]

1 hour ago, blizstorm said:

For those who are looking for continuity, playing with many people and unscripted challenge, consider this as an inspiration and a challenge

00petar00, that Klei world failed to reset for 36 real days. So untrustworthy.

That is impressive considering i'd like to know how many times the base has been burnt down.

There's a reason most veteran players don't like public servers, we don't want to play and lose what we make to griefers or server reset.

It would be much more fun to find a few good players on forums and play with them/pay for a server host.

I also don't like when new players aren't trying to improve but just eat your food or destroy your base with deerclops no matter how much you tell them to move, i am fine with helping and i've helped new players before and taught them about the game but that is only when they actually wanted to learn and not waste everyone's time.

1 hour ago, Ermac__ said:

I think for bosses, i think there best options without fundamentally reworking how combat works is a focus on AOE and multitasking. Using your character's movement to dodge in all directions rather than just walking back to dodge a hit makes fights slightly more engaging. Multitasking as well since I think item switching and inventory management is a decent skill to have. Fuelweaver, and to an extent, toadstool, already make you do this.

Fuelweaver is great, i know they can't make such great bosses every time but it is really nice, Klaus is also quite fun.

Toadstool would be so good if only klei at some point decided to put a really good item drop there.

I'd really love to see more bosses like these.

[Mario384]

3 hours ago, 1v0 said:

nothing that is a MUST to survive.

This is also something which miffs me about DST's design choices.  Pretty much everything added to the game is optional content, and does not change anything about how you survive.  The one thing that went against that is Antlion, all because they decided to make Dragonfly optional instead of mandatory.  It feels like the world is forcing me to go out and engage with it, instead of world engaging with me, which is something I don't feel exactly right for a survival game.  Sure, there is things which come to me, like the seasons, hounds, seasonal giants, but they haven't changed for half a decade, and are more of a chore at this point than an engaging fight.

[Ermac__]

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

That is impressive considering i'd like to know how many times the base has been burnt down.

There's a reason most veteran players don't like public servers, we don't want to play and lose what we make to griefers or server reset.

It would be much more fun to find a few good players on forums and play with them/pay for a server host.

I also don't like when new players aren't trying to improve but just eat your food or destroy your base with deerclops no matter how much you tell them to move, i am fine with helping and i've helped new players before and taught them about the game but that is only when they actually wanted to learn and not waste everyone's time.

Fuelweaver is great, i know they can't make such great bosses every time but it is really nice, Klaus is also quite fun.

Toadstool would be so good if only klei at some point decided to put a really good item drop there.

I'd really love to see more bosses like these.

Well the current drop balance for optional bosses is a whole 'nother can a worms I could get into, but I don't want to derail this topic too much with a rant.

[MondayNight]

My personal gripe with DST as a whole is the lack of an evolving world to keep pace with player's evolution.

 

And the fact all its concepts and themes, the little details.. don't seem to add up into a cohesive sum of it all.

It feels disjointed. Like different fragments, patches, ideas, half cups... put together to resemble something integral ...but is not.

DST bleeds in its proverbial corners the general thought of "it wasn't really complete and cohesive at no point in time".

 

And ofc the lore plays a part.

There's too much to write about and not really the place and time to do so. Sufficient to point again what other's mentioned or hinted: don't think there really is a strong direction, plan, purpose, in which DST world and subsequent "story" goes into. Yes, ofc is a survival sandbox, but still...

 

As for pubs, like Klei official Survival ones... I for one am doing solo rush-runs - bosses and/or ruins - for fun. And mostly get entertaining from what the others do, when and how, mostly the "madness" of newbies and noobs, chat "insanity" and the like.. hehe, pretty funny. Yet to each their own.

 

 

Oh and one more thing regarding "here is things which come..like hounds": can you guess on pubs and community servers who is disconnecting en-mass when dog waves pop in with a bark? Yep, the experienced players.. some of which I saw here on forums demanding harder settings. Hmm.. HMMMM! Heh!

[Cpt. KatKit]

You aren't the only one who saw people disconnect for 5 min breaks whenever hounds appeared haha. Although I never paid attention for their nicknames. 

[MondayNight]

At least they don't do it the manly-man way of handling dog wave properly - like yours truly sometimes: hop in a cave

[Be2014]

No more new characters fix what is there already. 

[loopuleasa]

11 hours ago, Sivdun said:

Man, I feel you. You can only make so many big bases, kill all bosses and then you get bored of it quickly. I think the problem is that after a while you are getting too good for your own sake, since you aren't struggling anymore it gets repetitive. Starting new world or joining fresh pub isn't a challenge, it feels like a list of chores you have to do (gather wood, gather rocks, gold for alchemy, kill some pigs, get hambat and helmet etc.). People spice things up with mods (I personally use randomized seasons mod and set all world resourcers to low), they also do things like rushing ruins or dragonfly as fast as they can to see if they can do it. Maybe try that.

Personally, I would love to see adventure type game mode, where you set difficulty (ex. on hardest you can start with summer season and long night) and length (ex. different size of the map, only in caves world, since we have sailing, few islands you have to move around) of the game and you have a lobby like in Forge or Gorge but hosted by players or on dedicated servers made by players. Upon starting the game, server generates the world with random preset with objectives (ex. your group enters the portal and portal breaks behind you and your team has to fix it with resources scattered around the world or special items that you need to get back from enemies or trade for (Klei has it in the game already), boss you have to kill in order to win so you need to prepare for him before confrontation, or just find another portal and jump through it to finish the sesion.

I believe playing for short 1h - 3h sesions feels great since you have to be active and you can actually finish it. This kind of expirence Sandbox cannot provide and I wish there was something like that in DST.

Do the full moon everything rush and then come back

https://www.evernote.com/l/AChfoIh7WqBGAJAgSdsSrM_exuD_0UN_BDs/

[FyreIsBoss]

and there i was, thinking this was gonna be some breakthrough to fix dst : ( 

Listen, I dont know if youve ever played rainbow six siege or csgo, but in those games if youre not playing with your friends u will literally cringe at everyone on your team because thats just how multiplayer is, sometimes u get some awesome dude who knows what hes doing, and occasionally you will get a random player who is still learning the game, aaaand it just so happens that dst has a HUGE learning curve.

[sudoku]

I agree. Back when they first said they were making new content for DST it was named "Through the Ages" and that had me really excited about the implications that they were adding content based on how long you survived but unfortunately i guess that concept was scrapped. 

However I think increasing difficulty once you survive a year would really allow for some great replayability. They sort of already have some mechanics that work this way like increased treeguard spawns, increased varg spawns, and of course tougher hound waves but I would also like to see maybe enhanced seasonal bosses for the second time you fight them (tougher/new move perhaps), as well as new events( like frog rain) that trigger the longer you survive. These could be weather related (thunderstorms/prolonged rain, blizzards/ increased cold or maybe even an onscreen effect like sandstorms, droughts/hotter) or mob related (all spider dens produce spider warriors instead of regular spiders, pigs ignore your gifts, anything that makes surviving tougher. I can see why they have held off on because most players most likey dont play past the first year so alot of that content wouldnt be seen by the general playerbase, but I think they could use development time for a single update like the reworks to accomplish the basics. 

[Scrimbles]

Don't Starve is not built to be a multiplayer game, unless Klei truly divorces it from what it is meant to be, which they seem to be on the fence about. Single player Don't Starve is a long time investment hardcore "uncompromising wilderness survival" game, but the DST team keep adding optional raid bosses, pets, and other vanity items instead of actual hardcore survival elements, disease is the closest thing since launch they have come up with, but nothing on the level of what Reign of Giants did for Vanilla Don't Starve.

 

It of course CAN be fun multiplayer, and if you have a set of people who are willing to set a schedules aside to maintain a consistent world then its okay, but otherwise it ends up as a weird drop in and out party game.

 

I honestly can't stand playing with random players, it just becomes "KILL ANCIENT GUARDIAN DAY 3" and a bunch of people abusing mechanics, making solo bases in the far corners of the map, or dragging others down when trying to team up. Singleplayer with mods is the best way I play the game, there's ZERO reason to play the single player game compared to modded DST.

That's especially upsetting because DST is getting all the focus, but it seems like there's so few people who will ever see the late game content unless they are playing SOLO, and yet single player Don't Starve got Hamlet, an unfinished expansion that AGAIN doesn't follow the "Uncompromising Wilderness Survival" tag line, but seem focused on mega base building, pointless bosses, and pointless vanity items.

 

And Houses. ugh.

[Queron81]

6 hours ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

Oh and one more thing regarding "here is things which come..like hounds": can you guess on pubs and community servers who is disconnecting en-mass when dog waves pop in with a bark? Yep, the experienced players.. some of which I saw here on forums demanding harder settings. Hmm.. HMMMM! Heh!

I play only on public servers and never saw people disconnecting because of hound waves.