klei An Open Letter to Klei

[AdventZen]

God what a dumpster fire of dumpsters...

My main issue with DST as it stands is that everything is laid out for you day 1, with very few exceptions. This is much to the detriment of both newcomers and old-timers: Having so much content to explore directly increases the learning curve, and makes the game harder to approach and get good at. There is no sense of progression besides the seasons, meaning any possible action a player takes, as long as they are ready for Winter and Summer, is equally valid. This is a core sandbox design choice, and at all survival.

 

I believe the game's difficulty should lie in it's environmental reaction to the player's continued survival, and not on the sheer complexity of the world's mechanics. A cruel world can never be truly conquered, only survived on.

 

That does not, however, mean the game should entirely ditch the sandbox elements, or add exponential HP increase to bosses yearly. It simply means the game should adapt to the player's skill level as they progress through the seasons.

 

Killing a Raid Boss should be meaningful. The giant creature tends to be stationary, territorial and quite clear about it's place in the power scale. If a player decides to take control of the world, and slay such a powerful entity, the world can and should bite back. (A simple example would be Bee Queen turning all bees aggressive towards the player for 40 days, regardless of season, upon her death)

Future content shouldn't be bloated and crammed at the very beginning of the game. Entertain this thought for a second: Killing the Shadow Pieces drops the fragment of the Moon on the Constant, unlocking the Return of Them content. (Mayhaps the game would check if the Shadow Atrium has already spawned)

This would leave the early and mid-game completely unchanged for the entirety of the expansion, allowing newcomers to acclimate with the game's setting before being able to access the new content. This would add an entire new goal after conquering the trio, an entire new mechanic to explore, an entire new way to tackle the game's challenges. This would allow Klei to raise the bar for the future additions. The bosses, creatures and mechanics would not need to be newcomer-friendly, and the devs would know exactly what the player can and can't handle at a given point.

 

Of course, much of the appeal of "hop in and play this exciting update!" would be lost, and this is all just a silly fever-dream suggestion, but consider the amount of longevity this would add to Worlds, and all the little sidegoals players could invent, to reach this new content.

 

Prolonged Survival should require some skill, otherwise it's just boney Sandbox.

[MrKoopa]

1 hour ago, maciu67 said:

Hmm... difficulty level

In solo DS, the difficulty level increased all the time opposite to DST

And how did it do that? 

[maciu67]

26 minutes ago, MrKoopa said:

And how did it do that? 

Vanilla < RoG < Shipwrecked < Hamlet

[00petar00]

14 hours ago, Mr.Mulk said:

There's a lot to digest here, perhaps it would be appropriate to add a TL;DR section to the post to make it more manageable .

I do not mean anything rude here, but to be honest with you this post is attempting to tackle too much in a singular post. As a result much of the wording here isn't the best and it's confusing at times. I would have recommended you decide which major point you care the most about and make a post discussing solely that. If you are actually attempting to reach out to Klei this would have been the best route to go with, as your points would have been much more digestible and easy to discuss, but I digress.

Anyways, from my understanding of reading this the main points are:

• Newcomer bias, the game is too easy and appears to be focused on attracting newer players more than satisfying "veteran" players
• The game has poor balancing, with the reworks showing some issues with Klei's process
• The game is too easy, part 2 featuring possible solutions

Starting with the first point I tend to agree that the game is generally easy. However I think that's it's unfair in this situation for the most skilled of the community to determine what the "right" level of difficulty would be, as each person, no matter their skill level is different in what they define as being an enjoyable experience. Not only is that Klei's responsibility to do so, but they furthermore have a legitimate incentive to make the game as newcomer friendly as possible. They want to sell copies of the game, and they want user retention, both of which are aided by the game being manageable for players just starting out. While it's usually a flawed argument to make, I do think the modding solution is applicable in this situation.

To the second point I think it isn't correct throughout this post to assume that "veterans" are a monolithic entity, and seems to entirely ignore the question of how do we define a "veteran" for starters. And the final issue with this is that you speak as a spokesperson for them, which is not accurate. When it comes to good discussion and debate etiquette it is incredibly important to recognize that you can only state you represent a group that you know shares the same opinion on a subject as you.

A better way of wording this post would have been "veterans who agree with me haven't been fans of the rebalances appearing extremely polarized in application."

While I appreciate you attempt to list some of the issues with the possibility of a "veteran" beta you don't address nearly as many as you need to. For example the point of how a "veteran" is defined is only vaguely hinted at with the statement of being Klei selected. The problem here is that any such system would certainly cause issues and accusations of favoritism in the community. Klei would have to set the bar somewhere, and a lot of people wouldn't make the cut who would then proceed to be angry, and present an issue to Klei. Polarizing the community is usually not a good idea, remember the Hamlet Beta? Even if Klei were to set the definition based on something quantitative, for example hours, that would present tons of issues as well. Hours are not an indication of a player's skill level. I know people with 2000+ hours who require assistance from mods in order to survive a full year. While it is usually a rough approximation the inclusion of a beta would 100% lead people to intentionally idle for hours, a problem already present in the game, or just cheat their hours on Steam. Finally, the beta would require a code, and I do not believe for a second such a code would be able to be kept private. Someone would talk, and within a matter of hours the code would be widespread throughout the community.

I've gone on a bit too long here so I'll avoid getting into the third main point too much besides suggesting in future posts avoid giving lengthy solutions and repeating yourself in different sections of the same post. Also when you word a post in such a way it is a "letter" to Klei you have to be extremely careful to not come across poorly, otherwise the post likely won't be well received.

TL;DR
While I don't disagree with everything this post is saying, I think the points selected weren't constructed well and the wording was overall poor in quality. I do not mean for this to come across harsh, everyone starts somewhere and you are entitled to your own opinion which is completely valid. I just recommend taking the time to ensure your posts are well constructed, and perhaps running them by multiple people of differing opinions first.

I decided to reply to you as you seemed more logical then OP, putting all veterans in his "letter" is quite bad especially when you know that a lot of people will disagree with you. I've played don't starve together since early access and DS before that and i don't agree with a lot of what he said.

It is obvious that just veterans shouldn't decide what should be made harder or not but generally game has gotten too easy over the years,most players that have invested some time into DST want in general the to be harder, or for there to be progression system. I dislike how whenever i reach day 100-200 on a world, i actually feel compelled to start a new world just to have stuff to kill that i haven't killed and redo everything, the building and killing all bosses/creatures so that i farm materials that i need, that is what i find the most interesting. Exploring the world and caves can also be seen as interesting, every world is different, sometimes you have a good map generation and sometimes not and you see some unique patterns or stuff generating next to each other.

Firstly, overall the game shouldn't be made too hard which is why i would agree with some people suggesting difficulty to be introduced when creating a new world with special items dropped from boss that wouldn't in normal game to make it interesting for veterans and newer players so once they learn the game, they decide to ramp up their difficulty. There just needs to be stuff that will keep players going in the world where they killed everything, what should they do? i've farmed dragonfly for deconstruction staff and construction amulet so that i can have unlimited thulecite, when i have walls around my beeboxes out of thulecite, that's when you realize  that there's nothing much for me to do, when im actually rebuilding walls with the rarest material in the game.

Honestly, why don't we have some boss limiting access to thulecite/ancient stations and once you kill him, the game would overall get harder like how Terraria works, that's a good way to add progression as by the point you want to get thulecite and access to ancient station, you should be pretty geared up. Ancient guardian in the caves is a complete joke and he is in the location after all the rewards, the whole caves and chests that lead up to him, you don't even have to fight him unless you want to kill fuelweaver at some point and don't forget that he can easily be blocked on any pillars or graves there, meaning you don't actually have to fight him, you just stand in spot and kill him while he can't reach you, and even if you actually need to fight him, he's basically a rook clockwork, not that difficult.

I'd be up for it if the game only spawned thulecite and ancient stations once you kill fuelweaver and when you do, game gets much harder but not in the annoying sense, creatures won't have more health but more damage and it doesn't need to be set for all creatures, as long as you kite like you usually do, you won't have problems, maybe introduce new bosses raiding player like deerclops once you kill fuelweaver.

Up until the Woodie update, i've been fine with all the reworks, there haven't been many changes requested by people on the forums for other characters, so i am kinda split here. Woodie has turned out really bad when he came out and i thought that devs may have not even play tested him with how awfully short and unusable his forms turned out, just staying as Woodie and not transforming was always a better option to pick, maybe they just didn't put enough time into playtesting but artwise he has turned out great and he has great versatility, fits right up my alley as a Wickerbottom player. 

I don't think there should be a veteran beta as everything there will be leaked, klei gains publicity and there's usually big hype when a refresh or new character or content update gets released and giving veterans the options to explore this first would ruin the experience for other players, they'll have the info or even videos on how to play a new character before it is even out. The only way this could work is if klei required you to sign a non disclosure contract which i doubt they'd bother doing just to  have veteran beta.

There's not much left that i want to say, overall progression is required so that we don't get bored after x number of days and finish everything, game needs more content/bosses that get progressively harder, this wouldn't punish new players until they at least have idea on what they should be doing, you don't see new players on day 100-200 without them using 20 mods to make game easier and this won't be gatekeeped by the number of days but by the boss or bosses you kill.

[MrKoopa]

48 minutes ago, maciu67 said:

Vanilla < RoG < Shipwrecked < Hamlet

I see, I thought you meant not DLC. 

[Mrklli]

2 hours ago, AdventZen said:

[*snip* doing something hard should unlock something new *snip*]

That's pretty much the change I'd like to have. Once you've played through the first year it's quite easy to survive everything the game will throw at you unless you deliberately go look for trouble. You already have all the basic resources and everything is fine. The longer you play the more boring it gets. Sure, one option is to scale up everything to make it harder but it would probably be something like the increased difficulty larger hound waves provide and imo that's just irritating. I think there are already enough trivial and repetitive tasks to complete and making the game more challenging by making those tasks harder/slower/more frequent wouldn't make the game more fun to play.

You could always go kill every mob the game has to offer and call that a challenge. I've tried that and, yeah it's fun, but I don't really see a point in repeating it over and over again just because killing the bee queen is such a blast. For me it's not. There is a ton of things I could do if I wanted to but I survive just fine if I don't do them and doing them is a pain in the butt with all the preparation needed and all you get from it is a couple of fancy items you don't really need. I'd be much happier if defeating the bosses would actually open new possibilities such as new biomes to explore, not just a recipe for a fire pit that won't really produce light but is still cool cuz you don't have to fuel it.

It's cool we have caves and the lunar islands but it would be even cooler if we had more "advanced areas" like them, unlocked by completing something like winning a boss fight or finding a rare artifact etc. It would give some objectives and a motivation for me to go out and do stuff I currently won't do because I don't think the profit I'd gain is worth it. Also it wouldn't affect the new players still learning how to survive dst.

I would love a mechanics similar to Hamlet's Aporkalypse: you'll trigger a nightmarish event by not doing in time something to prevent it. So it would be upto the player if they want to go hc and gain something amazing from it or just prevent the event and continue to play casually. I also enjoyed the Metheus puzzle and it'd be great if in the future we could get something like it. The more easter eggs and hidden things we have, the better it gets!

I don't really wish for new content or changes in difficulty levels as much as I wish for better reasons to do new things.

[watermelen671]

15 hours ago, BeanBagSonic said:

developers neglecting crucial player feedback

C'mon...now that's just rude. The developers do listen to player feedback, and there's a plethora of evidence supporting that argument. But just throwing that out and saying that doesn't count because "thEy ArEN'T liSTENInG TO ThE rEal fANs" is the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand.

18 hours ago, Canis said:

(For example: If you willingly leak contents in the closed beta, your klei account could get temporarily suspended for, say, a month. Also, you'd lose access to the closed beta.)

Dude...not cool.

Spoiler

Are you trying to get me shut down? 

15 hours ago, minespatch said:

Not me, I just want lore and art.

 

14 hours ago, Canis said:

I'm not naming names, but said posts are easy to find.

If you're gonna call me out and be all passive aggressive at least @ me! 

8 hours ago, ButterStuffed said:

"veteran beta". It seems a tad bit redundant to specifically reduce the amount of feedback that is given at a time. 

IIRC didn't Extra Credits do a piece on playtesting?

Spoiler

They did!

 

[Cpt. KatKit]

thousands of hours to be able to voice your opinions? There are people who beat harder games than don't starve in less than 50 hours. Not to mention someone's skill level has absolutely no correlation with their ability to communicate possible fixes and changes to improve the game. Those are usually done by having good play testers, not asking random people to work for free. Hence why betas are usually for finding bugs and very limited collection of suggestions by the community the devs deem worth of implementation time.

 

If they are going to add an expert mode they'll have to work closely with good testers to fine tune everything. If they are going to open beta it they should allow everyone to join. Even just for an idea of what kills most players. 

[Moonatik]

Hi, I would like to speak about the difficulty.

Is DST difficult when you start it for the first time? Of course yes. Theres no doubt. As a console player, let me tell you my very first difficulty. I wanted to craft my first crock pot and guess what, I couldnt recognize that black thing needed for the pot. No mouse, couldnt point this little picture, and couldnt read "charcoal"...  Well... You can laugh at me, or say it was obvious. But at this point, I never saw one, and I didnt burn a tree yet.

My point is: How you can find something you dont know, something you dont know what it is, or something you dont know it exists ?

 

So I have few questions about the knowledge of this universe.

- How many players did discover all by themselves without any guide ?

- How mods, datamining, C spawn, C control the world, C god mode, completely destroy the difficulty to learn, destroy the discovering. How all of this impact the feeling with this game ?

- Are we suppose to know some very specific details ? Details NOT available without mods and entering the matrix.

- Do you think a video game player could play DST for the 1st time, and as he knows nothing, as he heard nothing about it, could he play all his life without discovering certains things ? (maybe charcoals on console...)

 

So the damage is done now. And as I can read, as I can understand, this real big impact is underrated.

Difficulty is not having double hp for bosses or double damage for mobs. Larger events to face at some point are better. Optionnal bosses are a good point to work on. We could be forced to fight Toadstool. After x years, weird mushrooms could grow on suface, small, then bigger, starting poisoning small area around it, poisoning mobs who passing through, going larger and larger, leaving us with a unique option, beat Toadstool. It could be an end game story.  

Defeating the ancien fuelweaver could change many things too. With new set pieces spawnning on the map. By the way, set pieces are like fundamentals. I wish we could see more of these, not as a random thing. Could we have the treeguards ring everytime, spiders ring, every set we see in solo, plus more. With a kind of mystery to solve.. or not, or with new danger,  it could help if some of them appears at end game.

There are too many possible ideas... The weather, the Hamlet calendar idea... For keeping the player being interested and make him go further and further. But its weird to hear the game is too easy, just because all the equation was solved.

 

 

 

[Crimson Chin]

1 hour ago, watermelen671 said:

C'mon...now that's just rude. The developers do listen to player feedback, and there's a plethora of evidence supporting that argument. But just throwing that out and saying that doesn't count because "thEy ArEN'T liSTENInG TO ThE rEal fANs" is the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand.

Dude...not cool.

  Reveal hidden contents

Are you trying to get me shut down? 

 

If you're gonna call me out and be all passive aggressive at least @ me! 

IIRC didn't Extra Credits do a piece on playtesting?

  Reveal hidden contents

They did!

 

1. How so is what he said rude, and I'd argue you are the one "sticking your head in the sand" ignoring these issues. Where is the plethora of evidence suggesting that they are listening? Sure, they "fixed"the woodie rework, but the woodie rework would never have released in the state that it did, or arguably be anything like what we actually got if feedback was actually listened to. This can be said about all the reworks really. The various core issues of the game listed in this thread have never been acknowledged. Currently Klei is just adding pointless fluff content that ignores issues and doesn't add or take away anything from the game. They don't gain anything from this and neither do we, why would new or experienced players care for it?

2. A temp ban would be probably the... nicest way to punish someone for leaking something. I have seen much harsher punishments. 

3. Not sure if you ever replied in this thread for that line to be directed entirely at you even, but it wasn't. You can sum up a decent amount of people's post with "pack your bags and leave". Extremely hostile, uncalled for, and does nothing to actually address the issues brought up. Seriously, if we just keep getting "sticking our heads in the sand", nothing is ever going to change and these issues will never be fixed.

[Petit Citron]

I have only 535 hours of playing the game. I can barely survive a year.

As a result, my opinion is garbage and I have no visibility of its mechanics nor any right to criticize any aspect of the game.

In a few thousands of hours of gameplay, I'll be able to speak, but only for the character I main.

Until this very moment, I let the High Council of True Vets discussing for peasants like me.

 

 

[watermelen671]

1 minute ago, Crimson Chin said:

3. Not sure if you ever replied in this thread for that line to be directed entirely at you even, but it wasn't. You can sum up a decent amount of people's post with "pack your bags and leave". Extremely hostile, uncalled for, and does nothing to actually address the issues brought up. Seriously, if we just keep getting "sticking our heads in the sand", nothing is ever going to change and these issues will never be fixed.

Spoiler

2 minutes ago, Crimson Chin said:

Where is the plethora of evidence suggesting that they are listening? 

Well, just going off of memory:

1. See Wheeler
2. Willow's Fire Immunity
3. See Winona
4. See the entirety of ONI
5. See Warly's food mechanic

I mean I know I'm kinda being vague, but I'm so sick and tired of having to rehash these points. Go look them up if you're interested, I don't care.

Spoiler

Also, I'd like to point out a blast from the past to jokingly point out that people can, have, and will to continue to use the same arguments. 

Spoiler

On 2/16/2013 at 3:45 PM, wrongenvelope said:

(as someone else said, it's a pointlessly semantic argument, so what if DS isn't technically beta? If that ticks you off, Don't Play)

Also why can I still reply to this thread?! I mean...I'm tempted to, but that'd be the ULTIMATE of necroing.

14 minutes ago, Crimson Chin said:

2. A temp ban would be probably the... nicest way to punish someone for leaking something. I have seen much harsher punishments. 

Dude, imagine the legal hassle of trying to impose NDAs on 10,000 people on the internet, all from around the world with different courts of law. Either you're limiting the beta to Canada, with Canadian legal jurisdiction, or you have it open to everybody. 

Also keep in mind that Klei is an indie developer studio, do you really think they have the money to lawyer it up, having people sign NDAs and start knocking down doors enforcing those NDAs?

Spoiler

What's so bad about leaks? I mean, if I'm not allowed to "leak" anything during beta, I'm just going to hoard everything and post it all AFTER the beta. 

This is Klei, not EA.

 

[Canis]

1 minute ago, watermelen671 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

snip

It seems like with Klei, it's more of a coinflip If they listen. Im not saying they do or don't 100% of the time.

When they do listen, they hit it on the nail. When they don't, you get Woodie.

 

Does anything legal need to be involved with a forum ban? Klei owns this forum, so they can pretty much do whatever they want with it, and the people that are on it.

[Scrimbles]

I hate that almost all of their focus for game content has been optional, pointless trophies instead of real challenge.

I would love more things like disease (preferably fleshed out of course), bosses like the Bee Queen and Toadstool actually having a real "giant like" impact on the world, and more challenges on subsequent years survived, but reality is that a HUGE amount of the player base don't play the game for it's survival elements.

 

Klei is catering to the larger portion of the audience and ignoring veteran players who bought the game in the first place because of its survival difficulty.

And then, even with Hamlet, they STILL cater to those people. We can't even have a side set of expansions for single player that gives a hardcore experience, it's ALL about base building, optional bosses, and pointless trophies.

 

Clearly, as you can see, a large amount of the response to this (edit: your) post has been ""confused"".

Despite being there for much longer, and playing the game for it's original design purposes, we're the minority.

[watermelen671]

Just now, Canis said:

Does anything legal need to be involved with a forum ban? Klei owns this forum, so they can pretty much do whatever they want with it, and the people that are on it.

Well...yes technically. Now, I'm no lawyer, so I don't think I'm qualified to get into the legalities of stuff...so...I dunno, look into it yourself! >.<

1 minute ago, Ogrecakes said:

Clearly, as you can see, a large amount of the response to this post has been ""confused"".

Yes, because you did that preemptively without anybody having reacted to it yet.

Spoiler

 

[Crimson Chin]

1 minute ago, watermelen671 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Well, just going off of memory:

1. See Wheeler
2. Willow's Fire Immunity
3. See Winona
4. See the entirety of ONI
5. See Warly's food mechanic

I mean I know I'm kinda being vague, but I'm so sick and tired of having to rehash these points. Go look them up if you're interested, I don't care.

  Reveal hidden contents

Also, I'd like to point out a blast from the past to jokingly point out that people can, have, and will to continue to use the same arguments. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Also why can I still reply to this thread?! I mean...I'm tempted to, but that'd be the ULTIMATE of necroing.

Dude, imagine the legal hassle of trying to impose NDAs on 10,000 people on the internet, all from around the world with different courts of law. Either you're limiting the beta to Canada, with Canadian legal jurisdiction, or you have it open to everybody. 

Also keep in mind that Klei is an indie developer studio, do you really think they have the money to lawyer it up, having people sign NDAs and start knocking down doors enforcing those NDAs?

  Reveal hidden contents

What's so bad about leaks? I mean, if I'm not allowed to "leak" anything during beta, I'm just going to hoard everything and post it all AFTER the beta. 

This is Klei, not EA.

 

Firstly I apologize for having to reply like this, quoting specific parts on mobile is very much a pain.

1. Being vague... and saying that you don't care kind of proves that you are indeed sticking your head in the sand. Again what I said in my original post could be applied to all the reworks you listed.  If klei truly understood what the problems are and what players are saying, none of the reworks would be what they are. I don't play ONI so I can't say anything there except these are two entirely different games and anything there really doesn't apply to DST.

And if you don't want to bother providing detail and want to just tell me to go look myself for the "plethora of evidence" why bother getting involved if you don't really want to back up what you say.

2. Yeah I think you are misunderstanding what he was saying with a temp ban. 

 

[Scrimbles]

1 minute ago, watermelen671 said:

 

Yes, because you did that preemptively without anybody having reacted to it yet.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I'm not talking about my comment, I'm talking about @Canis

[Canis]

1 minute ago, watermelen671 said:

snip

 

They're talking about the OP.

[watermelen671]

Just now, Crimson Chin said:

1. Being vague... and saying that you don't care kind of proves that you are indeed sticking your head in the sand. Again what I said in my original post could be applied to all the reworks you listed.  If klei truly understood what the problems are and what players are saying, none of the reworks would be what they are. I don't play ONI so I can't say anything there except these are two entirely different games and anything there really doesn't apply to DST.

Okay then!

12 minutes ago, watermelen671 said:

• See Wheeler
• Willow's Fire Immunity
• See Winona
• See the entirety of ONI
• See Warly's food mechanic

• Skipping Wheeler because I can't remember the exact controversy and looking through the forums it appears you were there for it so why do I have to explain something you already know?
• Forums threw a huge dumpster fire over Willow's fire immunity, they gave Willow full fire immunity, dumpster fire was put out
  Spoiler

  And no, don't even go there saying it should've been there in the first place. You cannot blame a decision made to change something retroactively because it was made different nearly 4 years ago. 

• People didn't like Winona. Thought she was just a lame Wilson 2.0, with a crappy sewing kit. Devs decided to refresh her based off of fans suggestions to make her more in theme with her mechanical backstory. Then something else with the balance and her hunger and the devs fixed that too.

• You say " these are two entirely different games and anything there really doesn't apply to DST.", but ignore the fact that you're slighting Klei as a whole for "not listening to their fan base". Klei makes more than just Don't Starve, and they do generally listen to and incorporate feedback into their games. If you make broad generalizations that "Klei doesn't listen to feedback", then you're including the Klei studio as a whole and as such all of their other games. As such my ONI claim still stands.

• Warly didn't always have that neat little food mechanic. It was actually something suggested by someone on the forums and they then incorporated that into his play style.

Anyways this is where I tap out, so please refrain from quoting or summoning me because I don't wanna participate anymore. Also, I swear to nome if any of you say that this is me just being ignorant and that I have no real argument to stand on I will hunt you down and...yell some really verbose words at you. I just don't want to discuss this further, please respect my wishes.

[GenomeSquirrel]

1 minute ago, Ogrecakes said:

Klei is catering to the larger portion of the audience and ignoring veteran players who bought the game in the first place because of its survival difficulty.

You should not generalize about large groups without data to back it up. I’m veteran enough to have owned the game around the new powers update, and I still think the survival meter management detracts from the Zeldaish horror game I wanted. Personally, I don’t even think they managed survival well, overinvesting in static noninteractive threats like winter and summer and solving them with hats, as opposed to more creepy things hunting me down. I do think it’s the most interesting farm sim I’ve played; making farms themselves lackluster and playing winter straight. I don’t present this as a veteran opinion, there’s no correlation between me playing it a long time, and my opinion.

Ditch the veteran label, it’s a poor fit, survival fan is what you really mean.

[Crimson Chin]

1 minute ago, watermelen671 said:

Okay then!

• Skipping Wheeler because I can't remember the exact controversy and looking through the forums it appears you were there for it so why do I have to explain something you already know?
• Forums threw a huge dumpster fire over Willow's fire immunity, they gave Willow full fire immunity, dumpster fire was put out
    Reveal hidden contents

  And no, don't even go there saying it should've been there in the first place. You cannot blame a decision made to change something retroactively because it was made different nearly 4 years ago. 

• People didn't like Winona. Thought she was just a lame Wilson 2.0, with a crappy sewing kit. Devs decided to refresh her based off of fans suggestions to make her more in theme with her mechanical backstory. Then something else with the balance and her hunger and the devs fixed that too.

• You say " these are two entirely different games and anything there really doesn't apply to DST.", but ignore the fact that you're slighting Klei as a whole for "not listening to their fan base". Klei makes more than just Don't Starve, and they do generally listen to and incorporate feedback into their games. If you make broad generalizations that "Klei doesn't listen to feedback", then you're including the Klei studio as a whole and as such all of their other games. As such my ONI claim still stands.

• Warly didn't always have that neat little food mechanic. It was actually something suggested by someone on the forums and they then incorporated that into his play style.

Anyways this is where I tap out, so please refrain from quoting or summoning me because I don't wanna participate anymore. Also, I swear to nome if any of you say that this is me just being ignorant and that I have no real argument to stand on I will hunt you down and...yell some really verbose words at you. I just don't want to discuss this further, please respect my wishes.

1. For the 3rd time now, ill say that what I said in my original post applies to all of the reworks. Why did we even have to ask for fire immunity, why did they think winona's release downside was fine, why was woodie released the way he was? I still have the opinion these reworks fix nothing, and when it comes down to it each character is still a wilson skin with minor differences. The recent reworks don't change your playstle like a character should. They ignore the issues and .. build on top of it. The characters have definitely been better than their pre-rework counterparts, but I still don't think they fix anything. Woodie's was the first rework that I felt hurt the character more than helped. As someone said in this thread already he became a canadian stereotype who can shapeshift rather than a Canadian struggling with a curse.

2. I still have no knowledge of how the ONI team works, so I still can't say much there. Once again they are two ENTIRELY different games, with different teams, they work differently. Either way anything that happens on ONI doesn't really apply here. Why would a dst fan care if the ONI team communicates constantly with the fan base if its the exact opposite for DST? Maybe your right I shouldn't say Klei, but the DST team. For all I know they listen and communicate constantly with the ONI fanbase, but that doesn't matter one bit for dst. So sure, the DST team doesn't listen to crucial player feedback. 

3. Again why even reply in the 1st place if you don't actually want to have a discussion or participate..... Nobody is forcing you to leave your points, but if you do and someone disagrees they are free to tell you why... You can stop replying of course, but I just have to wonder why bother in the first place if you don't even want to? I am sorry, but this does feel ignorant, I at least appreciate you explained your opinion a little more, but I still feel like what I said stands.

[maciu67]

 

I see that my previous the post was not understood so this post will be its extension.

I wrote !7 mechanics which can make the game more difficult and various

• Increasing opponents' difficulty level

The simplest way to make game more difficult: increasing the health points of the monsters and adding new attacks to them etc.

• Increasing survival difficulty:

Tent have more complex recipe. Food spoils faster. etc.

• Difficulty progression

Specific actions performed by players bring certain effects eg. when players kill deerclops during first winter every next winter will be more difficult.

• Expert mode:

Optional expert mode which can be turned on before game generates world. This mode impedes all game mechanics increases monster's HP, changes theirs attacks etc.

• Increasing old mechanics difficulty 

(My suggestion:

Naughtiness is much more dangerous to the whole team:

Number of naughtiness points scored by at least one player

Effects:

20 points - One krampus appears within EACH player

30 points - Two krampi appear within each player

40 points - Three krampi appear within each player

50 points - Three krampi appear within each player. Krampi don't steal things, they attack the character immediately. Each three attacks "their" player.)

• Rare Items:

Players can't get all rare items until the end of the first year or after kill only one optional boss e.g. Tam o' Shanter falls out of the MacTusk only since the second year and players need ti kill Bee Quenn twice to gen Bundling Wrap blueprint.

• Panic Meter

This is more intense version of "Difficulty Progression". the player's actions are saved in the game's memory and when the players perform the appropriate amount of the given actions, they summon a wave of negative effects. The Naughtiness mechanics is similar to this.

• Evil Biome

This biome is much more dangerous than swamps and it turns food into poisoned food, causes aggression in mobs and disease in plants and most importantly it spreads.

• Evil Altar

Evil altar is similar to evil biome. It causes lots of negative effects and must be feeded to avoid this.

• Hardmode

When players perform the appropriate action (for example, kill a given boss), hardmode is activated. It impedes gameplay but also gives access to new materials.

• Time meter

The level of difficulty in the game depends only on the duration of the game.

• Little Challenges

In game customization player can choose what little challenge will be in game e.g. any backpack can't be crafted, food spoils 2x faster etc..

• Collectors' Punishment

The more materials the team has, the more difficult the game is. e.g. if players have at least 100 logs (in chests, backpack and in inventory) then the chance of spawning a treeguard increases.

• Judicial Terror

The more structures players have (especially like shadow manipulator), the more difficult the game is.

• Exploration Challenge:

World of game have structures, materials etc. which do not have their specific biomes. Players must constantly control them.

• Biomes and resources Management

Both biomes and materials are not constant at the beginning of the game. Changes may occur with players' decisions.

• Random event

For example more challenging weather event, celestial events (DS has only full moon and blood moon) enviromentals events etc.

[Scrimbles]

1 hour ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

You should not generalize about large groups without data to back it up. I’m veteran enough to have owned the game around the new powers update, and I still think the survival meter management detracts from the Zeldaish horror game I wanted. Personally, I don’t even think they managed survival well, overinvesting in static noninteractive threats like winter and summer and solving them with hats, as opposed to more creepy things hunting me down. I do think it’s the most interesting farm sim I’ve played; making farms themselves lackluster and playing winter straight. I don’t present this as a veteran opinion, there’s no correlation between me playing it a long time, and my opinion.

Ditch the veteran label, it’s a poor fit, survival fan is what you really mean.

"Dont starve is an uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic".

You can want whatever you want, but this quote is right there on the steam page, and on the main menu.

The game IS supposed to be what that quote says, otherwise they should just delete it.

[-Variant]

2 hours ago, Ogrecakes said:

I hate that almost all of their focus for game content has been optional, pointless trophies instead of real challenge.

 

1 hour ago, Ogrecakes said:

"Dont starve is an uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic".

This.

Now, I don't want to hold Klei hostage with a spear and a torch over a quote, but I really, really miss this aspect of the game.
I wish for more forced content, and if you're worried about newer players, have it later on in the game.

Most new, and to a record, older people can't surpass a year or 2.
Make some forced content that shows up later on in the game, but don't make it annoying, it needs to be hard and fun.
Looking at you, Antlion 40 day sinkhole waiting time.

[GenomeSquirrel]

12 minutes ago, Ogrecakes said:

"Dont starve is an uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic".

You can want whatever you want, but this quote is right there on the steam page, and on the main menu.

The game IS supposed to be what that quote says, otherwise they should just delete it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fXP4_2qRHng

Those words don’t even show up there. I was sold on spooky.