Why new content will feel underwhelming untill Klei does something about the farms

[GenomeSquirrel]

1 hour ago, Szczuku said:

Actually it's not. You'd have to go out of your way to craft, reset and restock the tooth traps. This is better than having to jsut feed 4 pigman and attack the one that can't escape in time.

The problem is not that there's the most efficient way to do something, there always is. The probelm is that the gap between the most efficient way and other ways is too big. That's what I'm trying to get across

But boats were designed as bad, look at how resource expensive they are, the amount of bee boxes you could make with similar material, how slow they are, how much they punish a broken boat compared to walking, how isolated fish are, how few resources like ice, berries, twigs, grass, or wood are near them, how bad it is to store fish, that miniboss that attacks you for fishing, needing adverts for lures, having lures be breakable, having lures use stuff like mushrooms not obtainable in the ocean.

Sea life is a thoroughly a worse means to survive, a novelty to keep you entertained if you’re already swimming in resources, but the gap doesn’t matter when it’s worse than land foraging. 

 

[Electroely]

4 hours ago, Szczuku said:

The only way new content can beat existing farms is only if it's even more broken than these farms. This is not healthy for the game. Players should have a legit choice when picking what resources to use. Instead these resources only get used when player goes: ''I want a challange so I'll only use Cokkie cutter helmets and eat only fish"

That's not exactly true, though. Cookie cutter caps are a good craft when you've gotten the shells while doing something else. The two ways you get them also usually involve getting other resources (salt and various treasures) so if you've already upgraded the Crabby Hermit's house and have leftover shells there's little reason not to make them.

As for fish... you don't have to eat only fish for it for to be viable. Deep bass and wobsters make for really good substitutes for large meat, provided you only use one (two will usually make Surf n Turf). You can use it to make meaty stew with 1 Meat, 1 Fish, 1 Monster Meat and filler or 1 Fish, 1 Monster Meat, 2 Morsels/Frog Legs/Drumsticks. You can make Honey Ham using 1 Fish, 1 Monster Meat, 2 Honey. Both dishes are good for hunger. There's also Surf n Turf and Lobster Bisque, both of which are really good healing foods. Especially Lobster Bisque, since it only requires 1 Wobster and 1 Ice (2 honey or 2 twigs work for filler).

Also, new content doesn't have to beat existing content. As long as new strategies aren't terribly inefficient or unfun, they can be viable. I think it's better to buff the worse strategies than it is to nerf the stronger ones. I don't remember the last time I've used a bunnyman farm because I realized setting one up every world gets very repetitive, and the game is completely playable without one. But I don't remember the last time I've used improved farms (without Wurt) either, since trying to get enough seeds through the birdcage is tedious because of the low crop->seed conversion rate and the mechanics of birds dropping what they produce on the ground and sleeping at night. Not to mention the 10-grass cost of each farm...

 

One more thing on cookie cutter caps... I think they have a decent niche in being durable and protective enough. I wouldn't take them to a boss fight for sure, but for regular fighting (like spiders or werepigs or whatever) I think they're useful because they last a pretty long time and even though they have lower protection, they're still good enough to allow you to heal or retreat according to your situation. Battle helmets are almost as durable (breaking somewhat faster due to the higher damage absorption), though, so if I'm playing with a Wigfrid I usually end up using those instead.

[Toros]

1 hour ago, shadowDigga said:

Nerfing something is a good way to make an update that came with the nerf instantly hated no matter how many good things come with it, because people who played before that update remember how things used to be.

It's better to buff new stuff to the level of old stuff, e.g. reduce the gap you mentioned by increasing usefulness of lower tier while leaving higher tier untouched. For example, while pig skins are easier to obtain than cookie cutter shells, pig skins are harder to be farmed by characters hated by pigs and pig houses can be destroyed by players on purpose (e.g. griefing). Cookie cutters come from invisible spawners that can't be destroyed by players (be it griefing or accident) and can be fought by anyone with equal chances. So basically cookie cutter cap should be buffed to football helm level in terms of difficulty of obtaining one. If, let's say, you were able to get enough cookie cutter shells to make 6-7 helms with durability worth of 10 football helmets as byproduct of clearing 2 salt clusters, then you'd definitely be less likely spending time solely farming pig skin to make football helmets. Here we go, no need to make obtaining pig skin harder when it's also used to make other stuff like umbrellas and hambats.

People act like you need to be in camp “only nerf strong things” or “only buff weak things” as if they’re mutually exclusive.  A much better approach is to use both options depending on the distribution on the weak-strong spectrum.

For example, if you have 10 characters and say 3 are vastly more powerful, you could either nerf 3 or buff 7.  If you have 10 characters and one is far weaker you could buff 1 or nerf 9.

I agree that making cookie cutter absorption similar to football helmets would be a nice change.

6 minutes ago, Electroely said:

That's not exactly true, though. Cookie cutter caps are a good craft when you've gotten the shells while doing something else. The two ways you get them also usually involve getting other resources (salt and various treasures) so if you've already upgraded the Crabby Hermit's house and have leftover shells there's little reason not to make them.

As for fish... you don't have to eat only fish for it for to be viable. Deep bass and wobsters make for really good substitutes for large meat, provided you only use one (two will usually make Surf n Turf). You can use it to make meaty stew with 1 Meat, 1 Fish, 1 Monster Meat and filler or 1 Fish, 1 Monster Meat, 2 Morsels/Frog Legs/Drumsticks. You can make Honey Ham using 1 Fish, 1 Monster Meat, 2 Honey. Both dishes are good for hunger. There's also Surf n Turf and Lobster Bisque, both of which are really good healing foods. Especially Lobster Bisque, since it only requires 1 Wobster and 1 Ice (2 honey or 2 twigs work for filler).

Also, new content doesn't have to beat existing content. As long as new strategies aren't terribly inefficient or unfun, they can be viable. I think it's better to buff the worse strategies than it is to nerf the stronger ones. I don't remember the last time I've used a bunnyman farm because I realized setting one up every world gets very repetitive, and the game is completely playable without one. But I don't remember the last time I've used improved farms (without Wurt) either, since trying to get enough seeds through the birdcage is tedious because of the low crop->seed conversion rate and the mechanics of birds dropping what they produce on the ground and sleeping at night. Not to mention the 10-grass cost of each farm...

 

One more thing on cookie cutter caps... I think they have a decent niche in being durable and protective enough. I wouldn't take them to a boss fight for sure, but for regular fighting (like spiders or werepigs or whatever) I think they're useful because they last a pretty long time and even though they have lower protection, they're still good enough to allow you to heal or retreat according to your situation. Battle helmets are almost as durable (breaking somewhat faster due to the higher damage absorption), though, so if I'm playing with a Wigfrid I usually end up using those instead.

I don’t think “make this because there’s no other use for a resource you acquire incidentally” is enough of a niche for an item because even if it is available you’d rarely take it if you had reasonable amounts of any other option.  Not many people will be farming enough salt to get more than a couple cookie caps before endgame where they’ll have plenty of pigskin on hand anyway (assuming there’s no wig).

Even as spider/werepig armor most people would rather use a cheap logsuit since logs and grass tend to accumulate quickly and once it gets low you can use it for firepit fuel.

On average you need to kill 40 cookie cutters for Pearl’s house upgrade, and kill 16 cookie cutters per helmet.

I don’t see it having a niche at all except midgame when you are trying to preserve pigskins and you don’t have woodie, wigfrid, or maxwell available.

No one uses grass suit, which is 60% absorption, because you take twice as much damage as readily available log suits and football helmets.  70% is still dramatically worse performance than 80%.

I’d argue that both nerfing the standard bunnyman/pig farms *and* buffing cookie cutter cap to 80% absorption would be great changes for the game.  If you want to encourage diversity in playstyle the best way is to make the risk reward ratios similar.  To be clear, that doesn’t mean you need to make them the same risk or same reward, but to maintain the ratio.

Right now bunnyman farms are somewhat tedious to set up but provide an abundance of meat and veggies forever with no further investment.

Farming cookie cutter caps is a tedious endeavor with little reward forever.

[Scrimbles]

I just want content to be worth doing in the broader context of the rest of the game.

Killing the Malbatross unlocks a new type of sail, but sailing fast doesn't accomplish anything, by the time you find and kill the Malbatross you could easily have found the Moon Island and Hermit island, and there are no threats you need to sail quickly away from. You can probably even build a boat bridge to the islands, which invalidates the need for fast sailing.

Killing the Crab King unlocks a really bad weapon with poor utility, and while its fair to say he will likely unlock some new crafts and content in the future, his drops aren't anything exciting as of right now.

The Cookie Cutter cap is 10x the effort of getting a Football Helmet for less reward, and the only use for salt if you are not playing Warly is to craft a salt box, and if you are in a position to fill more than one or two boxes full of ingredients its safe to say you have effectively won the game, further salt collection is pointless.

Fishing doesn't yield very good amounts of food for the time and effort, with the exception of Wobsters, but their nests spawn close to the islands shore, meaning people can just drop an empty line into their nests from land, and recieve free Wobster, which kinda makes the strategy involved with ocean fish pointless.

The new craftable Moon items aren't quite on the same level or depth as items you could find in the Ruins, and considering how easy it is to ruins rush and cheese the Ancient Guardian, it might take MORE time to build a boat, find the island, find the altar pieces, mine then, put them together, and get the resources necessary to craft what little items are available. And even then you only really get a good axe, and a fairly good alternative to the Dark Sword.

Granted, not all players can play with Caves enabled servers, so maybe Klei were going for an alternative to the ruins, but whats currently available doesn't come close to being as beneficial for players.

 

The Malbatross, Crab King, Fishing, Moon craftables... all of it feels like additional mini games and tasks that result in trophies more than valuable resources for survival.

The risks involved are low and the reward is low, more often than not all the Crab King and Malbatross, and other threats on the ocean will do is sink your boat, safely putting players back on the nearest land, with a small max health loss and a bit of wetness.

 

I honestly wouldn't mind all the new content if it was valuable in context of the core game, but it really just isn't, and it just feels like its going to stay that way to not affect the new player experience. Make content of such little impact that new players won't feel left out, but this just makes it feel... kinda pointless for people like me.

Some people are happy to just fish for no real reward, fight bosses for no real reward, and explore for the sake of exploring, and that's fine... but they could easily hit two birds with one stone but making these challenges yield REAL tangible rewards, which would help please multiple types of players.

[Mike23Ua]

The way I see it- Each new update to the game has brought in at least ONE new core gameplay Mob, new craftable structures and More.

Update #1- Added Sailable Ocean & Lunar Island biomes. (With several new mobs) Glass Cutter.

Update #2 added Cookie Cutters & Salt Stacks Formations, Salt Box, Malbatross.

Update #3 added Skittersquid & Several more areas of Ocean, Fishing Stuffs, 

Update #4 Added Wobsters & Pearls Island, Pinch Winch, Crab King.

There is clearly an overall existing theme to these updates where each update brings in at least ONE new mob, ONE new Craftable Item, and ONE new gameplay Element.

And if this update chain continues in this way, I will be perfectly happy with each & every update, Regardless of how Small & Meaningless it feels to anyone else.

on top of THAT each character refresh has brought in new gameplay elements, & skins.

This is pretty much what you would get from a DS Sequel.. and I can only hope they have no plans of stopping anytime soon.

You want to make the game challenging? Food won’t heal you at all, anything combined with 3 Ice always results in wet goop, Resting in a Tent or Lean-To ALSO won’t heal you.

And you can’t build a bird cage to Auto farm endless eggs.

Ive been saying this for awhile now but if you really want to make people feel challenged... take away all the stuff they are used to that makes their lives easier.

The game has Legit HEALING items... why should FOOD, Sleep, or mass Butterfly murdering also still Heal you?
 

And don’t even get me started on the many ways one can “Cheat” Death with Meat Effigy, Life Amulet, Server Rollback.

I come from some of the most brutally hardcore games you can imagine.... 
If there’s anything I know & know well, it’s Totally Uncompromising Mode.

The TL:DR- Klei doesn’t need to make these items in Return of Them stronger than Meta Items so that THEY Become the NEW Meta Items... they simply need to Break Meta forcing people who refuse to play anyway but Meta to play in completely new ways in Totally Uncompromising Mode.

[shadowDigga]

13 minutes ago, Toros said:

People act like you need to be in camp “only nerf strong things” or “only buff weak things” as if they’re mutually exclusive.  A much better approach is to use both options depending on the distribution on the weak-strong spectrum.

 

26 minutes ago, Toros said:

I agree that making cookie cutter absorption similar to football helmets would be a nice change.

I like how you wrap someone's opinion into a simple yet incorrect statement then spice it up with some complex words and then finish with a statement that most people here agree with. Really nice way of making your opinion look like an overall most accurate one from those present.

I hope you do realize that changing something that most people use often or constantly even a little for the sake of aligning it with an item that is underused to the point that some people are not even aware of its existence might not make them happy. They used something that worked well then it was changed in order not to change something else too much.

As for risk-reward ratio, there's an additional factor that actually weighs a lot - amount of usefulness stored in a single inventory slot. Best example would be Winona's one-use trusty tapes which stack to 40, which means 40 max uses per slot. Sewing Kit has 5 max uses per slot, which is 8 times less.

Pig Skins on the other side stack to 40 and each football helm needs 1 pig skin to make, which means whooping amount of 40 football helms you can make from a single slot full of pig skins. This is also the reason why I personally prefer carrying pigskins instead of having another Wigfrid helm - same storage space occupied, more value stored.

If cookie cutter shells also stacked to 40 instead of 20 while having recipe requirement decreased to 2 per cap for 600 durability and 85% absorption (football helm has 315 and 80%) cutter caps would've been a good alternative to football helms. They'd have similar usefulness storage-wise but each piece of cutter cap will be almost twice as useful as football helm and take 25% less damage compared to wearing football helm. Like, if you can already quickly farm a lot of pigskins that will last long time for everyday use it wouldn't matter if you used alternative resource that can also be farmed in decent amounts at once.

[Yuuko]

Bunnyman farm isn't bad, but its not optimal.  Stone fruits and spider farm produces a lot more food and is easier to manage.  Stonefruit came from new RoT content so maybe you haven't heard about them since you're still playing ANR meta...  We also have salt boxes now which is better than fridge at preserving foods.  Practically replaces the fridge, I suggest checking it out /s

I think being OP is okay provided it takes some set up, and there are multiple ways to achieve the OP results.  I welcome anything that removes some grind elements from the game, whether that's maintaining a supply of food, materials, or repeating bosses for loots, provided its also fun to set up and includes choice in method.

**for RoT content I do have critiques though**

Cookie Cutter helmets - I think they should definitely get something a bit better.  Maybe some thorn damage return effect would be cool, or just protect the 80% like football helmets.  No reason they can't just be an upgrade from football helmets since they're harder to acquire.  However living on a boat cookie cutters are the main source of monster meats which are important when cooking with fish so I kinda end up with these hats for free just farming food so I don't mind using them regardless of their stats.  I do think its stupid they give more wetness protection because its a worthless stat unless it pairs with some other gear to reach 100% efficiently.  Maybe they have other gears planned, like a complimentary armor piece that increases your wetness protection to 100% and has higher defense % to take advantage of the higher health on hat?

Also as cool as the strident trident is - I think a less rare weapon needs to exist for the seas.  Once you take out crab king you've pretty much accomplished all you'll need to do on the ocean, there should be a weapon between venturing onto the seas and conquering the raid boss that you can use.  I really like the Cutlass Supreme design and think it'd fit if they added sword fish, or maybe let you make a spear from a single gnarwail horn from a science machine or perhaps a glass tipped spear you can make from the Celestial Altar.

I mean - the Dark Sword analogs they're pumping out are great, but too niche and obscure really...  Taking a trip to the lunar biome to craft a weapon that is only better if you're fighting shadow monsters / fuel weaver instead of just crafting dark swords from the mountains of nightmare fuel you'll have if you're fighting enough shadows to warrant making a glass cutter just isn't worth it.  Same with Strident Trident - its too much an end game trophy rather than a new weapon option, although its cast effect is pretty cool.

Also - on topic of my critiques of the new content - I don't like their direction of forcing you to return to the crafting station to craft so many of these things.  This isn't just for celestial altar items which might be cool if you could just bring back stacks of glass to craft as needed, but also the baits / lures.  Kinda annoying that I need to keep returning to the bait station whenever I need to make some of these...

[Theukon-dos]

3 hours ago, Sunset Skye said:

This is just the same problem as always: players refusing to take advantage of any content that isn't the meta. The problem isn't that some things are better than others, the problem is that DST is a sandbox game and yet people refuse to play in the sand for more than 10 minutes after any update before returning to the exact same gameplay that's simply worked for years. If a complaint can be summed up as "this content is bad because it's not the meta," then the problem is that you're following the meta so strongly, and you shouldn't want changes that would harm so many other people's gameplay just because you can't break away from that meta.

It's not nearly that simple. As Game designer Soren Johnson once said, "Given the opportunity, Players will optimize the fun out of a game". This video does a good job of Explaining the concept, but to put simply, Many players will end up doing the most boring option if it's also the most efficient. and in Don't Starve' case, the Gap in efficiency is Extreamly high.

Let's take Farms for example. Advanced Farms are highly resource intensive, taking 10 grass, 6 manure, and 4 rocks, none of which are inherently produced by the farms. They require regular fertilization, don't work in winter and require a flingomatic in summer, and only ever produce 1 crop. Additionally, If you want a specific crop, then you need to feed the crops you do get inorder to obtain seeds. but the ammount of seeds you get isn't consistant, meaning that on Average, you're going to loose 75% of your farm's yield due to needing seeds. And if that wasn't enough, Most crop-Specific foods are sub-par at best. Stuffed Eggplant, Pepper poppers, Fancy Spiraled tubers, and Salsa Fresca are all sub-par recipes. Vegetable stinger is kinda alright sense it has a high sanity value, and Dragonpie is the only recipe that performs well. 

There is no reason to ever use Farms if you're not Warly. Quite possibly every other method of food farming is easier, cheaper, and faster. Fishing is only slightly better because Wobsters exist.

[Szczuku]

Guys please keep in mind that I didn't make this thread only for fishing or cookie cutter caps. I've only used them as an example. 

I meant all of future content that's yet to come and how it'll either be underwheling or even more broken than the current farms.

It's a discussion about a decision that Klei needs to make and not about whether or not you like the new content

Keep things on topic and polite

[X-lem]

6 hours ago, Toros said:

Cookie Cutter helmet is terrible.  Annoying to farm, only 70% resistance, durability is only 25% higher than football helmet, 35% wetness resist doesn’t synergize with any currently existing head or body armor.

Many head options provide 20% wetness protection, and an umbrella provides 90%.  There’s no combination where cookie cutter’s extra 15% protection isn’t either wasted or the total protection isn’t insufficient.

What exactly is “great” about it?

Agreed, it's a ton of work and doesn't provide much benefit over a football helmet even without a farm.

I think it's durability and water resistance should be increased. I think the protection level is fine. Its current benefit just isn't worth the time it takes to get.

[Well-met]

it's an extremely ugly hat and it shouldn't exist.

Or just give it spike-resistance like the bramble armor.

[minespatch]

How did a thread about farming(which connects to the title of the game) turn to a topic of the cookie cutter hat?

[GenomeSquirrel]

4 minutes ago, minespatch said:

How did a thread about farming(which connects to the title of the game) turn to a topic of the cookie cutter hat?

Wires got crossed wanting to talk about new content and farms, but new content has only one great farm, so the op had to straw man to avoid talking about the good one.

[Toros]

1 hour ago, shadowDigga said:

 

I like how you wrap someone's opinion into a simple yet incorrect statement then spice it up with some complex words and then finish with a statement that most people here agree with. Really nice way of making your opinion look like an overall most accurate one from those present.

I hope you do realize that changing something that most people use often or constantly even a little for the sake of aligning it with an item that is underused to the point that some people are not even aware of its existence might not make them happy. They used something that worked well then it was changed in order not to change something else too much.

As for risk-reward ratio, there's an additional factor that actually weighs a lot - amount of usefulness stored in a single inventory slot. Best example would be Winona's one-use trusty tapes which stack to 40, which means 40 max uses per slot. Sewing Kit has 5 max uses per slot, which is 8 times less.

Pig Skins on the other side stack to 40 and each football helm needs 1 pig skin to make, which means whooping amount of 40 football helms you can make from a single slot full of pig skins. This is also the reason why I personally prefer carrying pigskins instead of having another Wigfrid helm - same storage space occupied, more value stored.

If cookie cutter shells also stacked to 40 instead of 20 while having recipe requirement decreased to 2 per cap for 600 durability and 85% absorption (football helm has 315 and 80%) cutter caps would've been a good alternative to football helms. They'd have similar usefulness storage-wise but each piece of cutter cap will be almost twice as useful as football helm and take 25% less damage compared to wearing football helm. Like, if you can already quickly farm a lot of pigskins that will last long time for everyday use it wouldn't matter if you used alternative resource that can also be farmed in decent amounts at once.

The statement isn’t complex because the concept isn’t complex.  It’s much more efficient to buff/nerf outliers to bring things to a more similar level rather than shifting everything up and down.

You seem to not enjoy the presentation, but we essentially come to the same conclusions for the hat.

54 minutes ago, X-lem said:

Agreed, it's a ton of work and doesn't provide much benefit over a football helmet even without a farm.

I think it's durability and water resistance should be increased. I think the protection level is fine. Its current benefit just isn't worth the time it takes to get.

Water resist being buffed even to 50% wouldn’t change much.  Umbrellas are easy and when combined with most hats give wetness immunity.  I have no reason to use armor that helps less than 80% protection.

47 minutes ago, minespatch said:

How did a thread about farming(which connects to the title of the game) turn to a topic of the cookie cutter hat?

Cookie cutter hat is an example of new content that is strictly inferior in practice to already existing content and thus doesn’t even present a sidegrade option.  The main criticism many people have of RoT content is that it provides new content that works less well than existing content which doesn’t provide much incentive to explore it.

We can contrast this with ruins content, which while also optional provides unique and powerful benefits to the point people rush ruins because it’s worth the risk and effort.

Ancient Guardian provides substantially better loot than Crab King despite being easier to find and easier to fight.  Fuelweaver is more work to find and fight but provides much better rewards.  Strident Trident is an expensive item that only does dark sword damage while on a boat, and the active ability is cool but impractical, contributing to the feeling that new content is interesting but low impact.

That lack of impact decreases motivation to engage with the content since there are other interesting and more rewarding options to pursue instead.

[X-lem]

1 hour ago, Toros said:

Water resist being buffed even to 50% wouldn’t change much.  Umbrellas are easy and when combined with most hats give wetness immunity.  I have no reason to use armor that helps less than 80% protection.

Yes, but then you have to use both your hand and your body section to keep dry. Raising the water resistance to 60-75% would make it as effective as an umbrella, give armor, and only take up one slot. It would make a good spring fighting item.

[WkingDisaster]

Because the distance between the farest sea to the land is always 1 or 2 days sailing away, so it's easier to just farm everything from the land, but if the entire sea content is in an different world where there is only sea with no or tiny islands with no or little resources, then the sea food farming can be justified. Why not put all the sea content in a different world where you can only travel to from the portal in the ancien ruins, then your entire survival will have to rely on sea resources, because the new world is vast and landless and your packed food will eventually run out.

[Szczuku]

I really don't understand why you guys are over exaggerating so much. Nerfing existing farms is nothing new. Wendy's rework completely removed sanity stations. Did people complain? Sure. Did they stop complaining after 3 days? Yep. Did dst suffer a lot because of that decision? I don't think so.

Now I'll go over some arguments that have been posted here and why I disagree with them.

Veteran bad, meta bad

Spoiler

This is such a cheap and weak argument. As I said the meta is not the problem, the fact that everything is so much worse than meta is the problem. That argument is basically saying 'The game's perfect, you just have to play it like this'. This is not how that works. With that logic I could just answer every thread in Suggestions and Feedback with 'Just go and mod the game how you like' and technically I'd be right. But that's probably not the solution that OP was looking for, is it?

Sure, if I want to I can play without these farms. But that only shows how much of a difference they make and solidifies me in belief that they need to be nerfed.

Don't nerf, buff instead of nerfing

Spoiler

I have to agree with @Toros that you should buff/nerf depanding on which side is the majority. 9 op things and 1 weak thing? Buff the weak one instead of nerfing the 9 op ones.

However in this case I'm fairly certain that only a nerf to the existing farms is the right decision. Let's use food and bunnyman farm as an example:

If Klei was to nerf bunnyman farm, we'd end up with multiple sources of food, all providing a satisfying ammount. Not too much and not to low.

If Klei was to buff some existing food sources and future ones to match bunnyman farms' food production, then we'd end up with multiple food-farms that in just 2 days can create enough food to keep you in top shape for an entire season. That'd be broken and would make the game too easy. And I've only used food as an example. Imagine if farming multiple armors or weapons was as easy as farming football helmets and ham bats.

That's why I want a nerf, A buff would make the game too easy, while a good nerf would keep the difficulty at a satisfying level for both good players and new players

 

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, Szczuku said:

I really don't understand why you guys are over exaggerating so much. Nerfing existing farms is nothing new. Wendy's rework completely removed sanity stations. Did people complain? Sure. Did they stop complaining after 3 days? Yep. Did dst suffer a lot because of that decision? I don't think so.

Wendy's rework didn't target her sanity station to make way for better options.  Wendy's sanity station was pretty niche, some Wendy players did it but many players didn't, and didn't care about it.  Not that many people feel the need for a sanity station as being low sanity is often needed.  Meanwhile food production...

You're talking about bunnyman farms like they're op but they really aren't.  They're better than farming pigs, but even the method you're talking about "feed one and have it fight the others" is inefficient.  Considering a suboptimal farm is your poster example I think its fair to question your opinion on what is OP or not, and also argue that your own use of a suboptimal farm is evidence that we have both the options of farming, and variance in production to satisfy the playerbase.

The addition of stonefruits (RoT content) change a LOT in what is good farming.  Not only are they vegetables, they also break Wickerbottom's hold on farming.  She needs to use 2 casts from her book to produce another crop while a player who just waits will get a fresh crop pretty much every day.  They also provide us a path towards disease free crops and have natural unlimited shelf life before being cracked open.  There is so much we get from Stonefruit that it easily stands up as one of the best farms in the game.  And this was done without nerfing other farms, and also without stepping on their toes.  If people don't want to go to the lunar island they don't have to and they can keep doing bunnyman farms, or whatever it is they prefer.

People aren't going to start building farms / improved farms even if bunnymen are nerfed, so don't bother.  Farms are bad for a number of reasons - all of which demand buffs.  They require a seed to grow 1 crop, take too long to grow, require fertilization, and once you get the crop you can't reliably dupe the seeds.  You'll dump over half your crop into seed production.  The resources needed to craft them are also quite high for their small yield.  You can spend 10 grass, 4 stone, and 6 poop on a single farm which needs seeds and reproduction as listed above, or you can spend 2 twigs and 2 flint to dig up 25 berry bushes which you simply plant at base for constant production.  You'll need more fertilizer but it can be poop, guano or rot from berries for easy production.  Farms are bad and need a buff, nothing needs to be nerfed to get out of their way.

[Terra_Zina]

If there's one thing I've learned from playing lots of mobas is that playing by the meta gets extremely boring extremely fast. There's nothing more fun than taking a non support character into the support role and watch the enemy team struggle because they don't know how to handle this change.

The same thing applies to Don't Starve. I personally enjoy making and maintaining farms, the special foods it gives and farming for seeds. It's calming in a way.

Is it efficient? No. You can technically live off of nothing but meatballs and green shrooms, but where's the fun in that?

[Datanon]

something that i recently realized is that its hard to balance difficulty when youve got to a point where you can reliably make a bunnyman farm. theres not much they can do to balance worlds with more than one year since by then you are already very self sufficient and no matter how hard they nerf stuff, you will always be able to get the resources you need. the bunnyman/pigman farms are just an extreme of that, and most of the resources coming from it you end up not even using for a very long time

the difficulty scaling of this game is similar to most survival/souls-like games: its the hardest at the start and from there it only gets easier. if youre not doing a casual world you should probably be aiming to move on to another world as soon as you kill every boss and/or do your challenges until klei decides to make an official hard mode

i do agree, however, that some items are very underpowered when compared to others which require less effort or resources to acquire. foods are a great example of that, but yea that happens with a lot of equipments too

[axxel]

Here's how I feel about farms: 

I used them.  However, since I played multiple worlds with several restriction/changed options (please, try Lights-out at least once) it's always more interesting because lack of resources keep you busy. I like it. DST is a open sandbox game. If farms are game breaking, don't use them or force some restrictions on your world. I understand how people don't like the absence/destructions of resources/mob spawns but try it out at least.

For underwhelming items: Same as above, e.g. if your world hasn't  greencaps/cacti  and has no daytime, tents and sleeping bags are recommended.

 

[Well-met]

4 minutes ago, axxel said:

Here's how I feel about farms: 

I used them.  However, since I played multiple worlds with several restriction/changed options (please, try Lights-out at least once) it's always more interesting because lack of resources keep you busy. I like it. DST is a open sandbox game. If farms are game breaking, don't use them or force some restrictions on your world. I understand how people don't like the absence/destructions of resources/mob spawns but try it out at least.

For underwhelming items: Same as above, e.g. if your world hasn't  greencaps/cacti  and has no daytime, tents and sleeping bags are recommended.

 

handicaps are once again not the answer. most people leave worldgen default because it represents the core game. Every viable strategy is thus built around the core game.

[axxel]

1 minute ago, Well-met said:

handicaps are once again not the answer. most people leave worldgen default because it represents the core game. Every viable strategy is thus built around the core game.

I didn't present an actual answer but rather an opinion. Everyone is free to choose their settings and some are preferable if their pc have problems with many prefabs or someone is hosting a server for over 10 people. Playstyle like survival, pvp etc. is important, too. If people are like that, ok, I didn't know that. If I am checking the server list most of them are modded and have "easier" settings.

Dunno what you mean with handicaps. Every world is random and some worlds have better biome placement, good set-pieces and nice ruins aviability. Other worlds are not nice, with a glitched Walrus-Camp at the beach boarder, an Oasis in the middle of the desert and small ruins. You can only make the best out of it. 

[Toros]

1 hour ago, Terra_Zina said:

If there's one thing I've learned from playing lots of mobas is that playing by the meta gets extremely boring extremely fast. There's nothing more fun than taking a non support character into the support role and watch the enemy team struggle because they don't know how to handle this change.

The same thing applies to Don't Starve. I personally enjoy making and maintaining farms, the special foods it gives and farming for seeds. It's calming in a way.

Is it efficient? No. You can technically live off of nothing but meatballs and green shrooms, but where's the fun in that?

I’m not sure why you’re drawing conclusions from mobas because there’s very little a game like DST has in common and they are balanced on entirely different principles.

Relying on variety fatigue to drive diversity is not an effective strategy.  This ironically is especially a bad strategy in mobas because there is a competitive element and certain meta picks might have vastly better win rates or oppressive effects on what people feel they can choose to play.

If you have multiple mechanically similar paths, you remove any pressure to use a particular one.

47 minutes ago, axxel said:

Here's how I feel about farms: 

I used them.  However, since I played multiple worlds with several restriction/changed options (please, try Lights-out at least once) it's always more interesting because lack of resources keep you busy. I like it. DST is a open sandbox game. If farms are game breaking, don't use them or force some restrictions on your world. I understand how people don't like the absence/destructions of resources/mob spawns but try it out at least.

For underwhelming items: Same as above, e.g. if your world hasn't  greencaps/cacti  and has no daytime, tents and sleeping bags are recommended.

 

It’s funny to me that your attitude is “if farms are gamebreaking, don’t use them” and then explain how much fun you had when forced to use them.

A ton of people have been suggesting people just self-impose challenges but we will never see systemic behavior change that way.

That’s why the best option is to nerf things like bunnyfarms/stone fruit and buff things like Advanced farms (and remove regular farms entirely) because then you don’t have to self-impose challenges and people will naturally have and explore a greater diversity in playstyles.

To use a concrete example: Very few people used to use Woodie, because he was mechanically bad and werebeaver was disappointing to use. Klei could’ve taken the attitude “nothing’s wrong with Woodie, just stop playing meta picks” and nothing would change for him.  We know this because for years he was barely picked.

However, now that he’s been improved mechanically to be more fun and competitive with other options, he’s been played a lot more.

Point being that if nothing changes, nothing changes.  People don’t respond to “try something different” if the different option is strictly worse than their current option.

[GenomeSquirrel]

6 hours ago, Szczuku said:

I really don't understand why you guys are over exaggerating so much. Nerfing existing farms is nothing new. Wendy's rework completely removed sanity stations. Did people complain? Sure. Did they stop complaining after 3 days? Yep. Did dst suffer a lot because of that decision? I don't think so.

Now I'll go over some arguments that have been posted here and why I disagree with them.

Veteran bad, meta bad

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This is such a cheap and weak argument. As I said the meta is not the problem, the fact that everything is so much worse than meta is the problem. That argument is basically saying 'The game's perfect, you just have to play it like this'. This is not how that works. With that logic I could just answer every thread in Suggestions and Feedback with 'Just go and mod the game how you like' and technically I'd be right. But that's probably not the solution that OP was looking for, is it?

Sure, if I want to I can play without these farms. But that only shows how much of a difference they make and solidifies me in belief that they need to be nerfed.

Don't nerf, buff instead of nerfing

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I have to agree with @Toros that you should buff/nerf depanding on which side is the majority. 9 op things and 1 weak thing? Buff the weak one instead of nerfing the 9 op ones.

However in this case I'm fairly certain that only a nerf to the existing farms is the right decision. Let's use food and bunnyman farm as an example:

If Klei was to nerf bunnyman farm, we'd end up with multiple sources of food, all providing a satisfying ammount. Not too much and not to low.

If Klei was to buff some existing food sources and future ones to match bunnyman farms' food production, then we'd end up with multiple food-farms that in just 2 days can create enough food to keep you in top shape for an entire season. That'd be broken and would make the game too easy. And I've only used food as an example. Imagine if farming multiple armors or weapons was as easy as farming football helmets and ham bats.

That's why I want a nerf, A buff would make the game too easy, while a good nerf would keep the difficulty at a satisfying level for both good players and new players

 

By meta do you mean the mega base meta of pig houses and berries for miles or the pub meta of this world isn’t lasting until tomorrow, so mine some ice move a few spiders over and we’re set?