Dst needs either new mechanics or an overhaul of the old ones

[Szczuku]

Hello, new thread. 

I'm afraid that dst has reached a critical point or rather, a decisive moment in its life. It can either end up like Minecraft/Terraria and be a greater version of its past self or it can end up like Hamlet and just be a lot of flashy and advertisible content that not a lot of people will enjoy for more than a month. Keep in mind that I'm talking from the point of view of someone who doesn't know what's coming in the future (unlike devs).

You see in a previous thread like this I talked about how new content won't be used untill existing farms (like bunnyman/pigman) are nerfed. But tbh this can almost apply to the entire game. You have Eyebrella to counter all of wetness/lighting, a Tam to counter insanity etc. 

Mechanics, enemies and all that from 2016 are simply outdated and therefore are sorta a limit to the game's growth.

Which is why I'm certain dst needs new mechanics or an overhaul of the old ones. Either of these would probably allow Klei to experiment more with future items and such. Adding new mechanics and fixing the old ones would be the best but I understand the limitations of today.

Enlightenment and sailing are new mechanics but sadly as of now they haven't reached their full potential yet. Because when I'm saying "new mechanics" I'm thinking more about the ones that directly affect the player such as hunger or sanity.

Discuss.

[Lucenix]

I feel hunger is too easily controlled for a game entitled "Don't Starve", and isn't a mechanic that's entirely fun to play around, it can get a little bit tedious/frustrating depending on the circumstances. I am not saying it should be harder overall, I like having certain points in the game where I can relax and not worry about stuff while I gather myself and plan for the next step (instead of being 100% on edge every single moment). What I feel could be added is some sort of "step up" that makes you prepare better in terms of food so that hunger doesn't get out of hand, like a next tier of gameplay (like a new biome that's deep and hard to traverse, where food is scarce and yours is drained harshly) that wields new and powerful abilities and that, without due preparation and other parts of the game complete, is impossible to even attempt.

This is all to give the game a sense of progression and one step towards another (Terraria has armor/weapons in different tiers for example), like you needing to get a special blueprint from a boss to get an awesome but niche weapon/armor/utility-thingy that happens to be extremely useful towards another boss or area. I always thought the Shadow Pieces/Ancient Fuelweaver is an awesome progression (although it is a little bit isolated from the rest of the experience) because you need to get from one to another (scaling up in difficulty) and killing the last one gives you extremely good rewards (like resetting the ruins making gems and gears renewable).

This way, we don't make stronger bosses, just different ones. It's all fine and dandy that you have infinite pierogis if a debuff halves healing and sanity gain from foods unless you have the McGuffin from another boss/area/seasonal event.

[Well-met]

You have not actually pointed out which older mechanics you want changed and how.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

to be honest about eyebrella, its true that is op but for more than 1 player you will need a lot of ingame days to everyone have that gear but 100% wetness resistance in head set is just too much. In SW is ridiculous walking in puddles and dont being affect by wetness xd

the way works bunny a pig farms is so "ungly" in my opinion but i can understand that not all people want to expend hours gathering resources

new mechanics are always welcome but fixing the old ones, like targeting (walls op), adding an aditional key to do telepuff (like ctrl+right click), etc

i would like to see new mechanics for insanity. We have the same mechanics since the 1st updates for ds vanilla, nothing else was added. Also some bosses are just to tedious after few times you kill them like deerclops, bearger or ancient guardian, people even cheese this one. Since the 1st time i saw ancient guardian i feel like is so rushed, its just a clockwork with a skin (like there is not enought clockworks in the ruins), i would remake him the first.

 

[BluAngel]

I would really like to see some type of "hardmode". Devs could make major changes to the base game without worring that they somehow ruin the expirience. New players still would play good old dst and veterans would have challange. I hope that uncompromising mod from workshop will evolve into something like this.

[Hornete]

1 hour ago, Szczuku said:

I talked about how new content won't be used untill existing farms (like bunnyman/pigman) are nerfed.

I don't think bunnyman and pigman and other existing farms should be nerfed really, I think fishing should be more accessible to players perhaps.

I've been playing on some pubs lately as Willow, setting up boats and going out to the sea to fish, picking up some random people on the way. The thing I ran into most is that fishing is just so confusing to players new to the mechanics. The different baits, bobbers, reeling in, hooking, different types of fish and all of them is a bit hard for players to take in.

Personally, I love the fishing mechanics and I love getting out there and catching fishies, but seeing so many people confused to the mechanics not being able to catch fish, perhaps something could be done to make the mechanics easier to take in and understand.

But yeah, which mechanics do you think could use a revamp or have some changes? Disease is something I think pretty much everyone here on the forums can agree needs some changes, but what else?

[Mooagain]

I don't see the problem here. If you don't like pig farms or other OP items, then don't use them. That doesn't mean it should be removed from the game. 

[Well-met]

4 minutes ago, Mooagain said:

I don't see the problem here. If you don't like pig farms or other OP items, then don't use them. That doesn't mean it should be removed from the game. 

handicaps don't make the game design suddenly better so nah.

[Moonatik]

3 minutes ago, BluAngel said:

I would really like to see some type of "hardmode". Devs could make major changes to the base game without worring that they somehow ruin the expirience. New players still would play good old dst and veterans would have challange. I hope that uncompromising mod from workshop will evolve into something like this.

Here we go again. 

Is it really hard to imagine good things for this game without the vision of a "hard mode" ? Which lead as usual to mods and this Uncompromising mod. Which could be a great experience, why not ? I even started to watch a gameplay.

This game became too easy. But it's not an easy game. Adding new difficulties could be good, my point will be the existence of a separate mode. I'm against a separate hard mode where we could find new things we won't have in the classic version.

We already have easy things (beating a deerclop) and hard things (beating the fuelweaver). So if the eyebrella and tam becomes "OP", we could make them not repairable ? Would it be difficult ? It's just an example. Or only 10% for tam instead of 20 today. Lets make them hard to deal with and lets have new items which give us the same. We could at least have the choice.

I would like to explain why it seems too important to have everything in only one mode. But I can't. It's just a feeling. As a console player, PC players couldn't understand as I'm sure almost 100% of PC players used Commands and mods at least once. 

Working on hunger, sanity, items and new items, I'm ok with that. Sometimes I wish little games like DST could have the same possibilities as a AAA game. Could you only imagine if 200 or 400 people would work on it ? Shame on those AAA games when they're not even close of the feeling I, we, have with DST. But you have to admit that PLAYERS reached their limits, more than the game. And as we see the game is still going forward and become bigger... 

I mean, if now, the entire game has to be reworked... we can ask and wait for DST 2. But for now, one way to have new mechanics would be having new islands or new biomes with specific rules. Specific weather in that biome, permanent effect in that one, using specific items here to survive or to pass it through. It could change the vision we have on some items. They could become important without changing their specificities.

[Rafi.]

I understand what you say,but I don't think it's the problem of the game.
I use everything on the game, I love fishing, I love the lunar Island, one of my favorite boss is the Malbatross (big birb is nice).

I don't feel that the new content is unused, alot of my friends use the new content, I mean, from my pov, we love to discover and use all of the items the game can give us, like, Wobster, nobody talks about them, like, it's an awesome and cheap ingredient for really good recipes, and a good way for farming moonglass, I love them, I love the lunar island, I found the moon glass axe and glass cutter useful, they're really good tools/weapons. If you only play with the old stuff with the excuse "Why should I go to the lunar Island if I can just have better stuff here" what you say is true.

But, I don't feel like you should play the game with that idea in mind. You should always try new things, like, play the new characters, I don't know if you did, but, Wurt and Warly are really good characters that totally change the way of playing and actually, would makes the new content abit more appealing to you ? Stone fruit and kelp are awesome and the best option for having veggies for both, and that involve the need of a boat, so, I feel that all of these are useful and not outclassed, it depends only one you, what you want to do, and how you want to play. ~

[Lucenix]

2 minutes ago, Moonatik said:

I would like to explain why it seems too important to have everything in only one mode. But I can't. It's just a feeling. As a console player, PC players couldn't understand as I'm sure almost 100% of PC players used Commands and mods at least once. 

I can agree with this feeling so much (although I play on PC) because it's like you're playing a music piece... if you don't play it fully are you even playing it at all? Like in Darkest Dungeon, I feel you need to play with Crimson Court and the Farm to feel like you're playing the game.

The thing is, making things (items) OP isn't inherently bad, it gives you a sense of accomplishment and power, looking back at what you have done and what, in the past, was a challenge and really grinded your gears but now you don't even worry about it. Nonetheless, those accomplishments must warant a challenge and domain over the mechanics of the game (also, those mechanics must feel somewhat like your doing). One thing that I, as a really bad noob at DST, I don't feel like I particularly am doing anything when I just send deerclops into his doom (just running away from my base and getting other things to do my bidding). That's probably why I like playing Wigfrid (easy enough with good standalone fighting so it allows me to take risks and learn fighting patterns... also her character).

Probably the problem lies in the way the game isn't really about survival after a certain point, because there aren't enough things that seek you out and try to ravage you. Most times, you must seek out what to do trying things that may doom you (if you don't know them well enough) or just read about it online and realize there are really cheesy ways to do things.

To me, the game is just hard because I don't know what to do and strive for and I feel disencouraged from trying different things because they might just end me completely, but it's easy to see that for those who know what they're doing there isn't any challenge, that means the difficulty rampantly drops the more you know (not necessarily the better you play but you may argue this game is about information and getting used to things) so taking the leap by yourself is, in and of itself, the challenge that got trivialized by the min-maxing and breaking of the mechanics, leading to a banalization of everything else for the sake of efficiency.

[Szczuku]

4 hours ago, Well-met said:

You have not actually pointed out which older mechanics you want changed and how.

Well I didn't want people to think that I'm smuggling a suggestion into this subforum.

I did say stuff from 2016 so majority of the game. 

The general ideas I have when it comes to fixing are: variety and debuffs

Fighting- most enemies rely on melee attacks. Not to mention that the players can only kite or tank. How to fix? Add more variety to the mix. More middle-range weapons like tail'o'three cats. Make range weapons actually worth their cost or add ones that are easy to make. Enemies with different fighting AI and abilities. Shatered Spiders and Skittersquids are a good example- more than 1 attack.

Disease- I mean… do I need to explain why? How to fix? Honestly idk I'm going to leave it to you guys. To me disease is a lost cause unless characters get a 4th meter to worry about. Something like ''immunity' or whatever, y'know oni-style

Sanity- Being insane is considered a good thing. How to fix? I'd say add more shadow creatures like Shadow Hands. They try to indirectly kill you but you can't kill them. Well you can but they don't drop nightmare fuel. Maybe some debuffs to go along with insanity like slower crafting or smaller field of view

Wetness- everything can be countered with Eyebrella. How to fix? Different events that cause wetness with different items to counter them. For example: failing to paddle makes you wet and only torso equipement can protect you. Regular rain can be countered by Eyebrealla no problem. But a windy rain requires a different type of hat (wind does not function like in Sw). An acid rain depletes regular equipement's durrability faster and still makes you wet (plus I guess applies a poison debuff or something). Get another items to counter that. That'd also require Rainometer to be changed to not only show when it's going to rain but what type of rain will it be. Ideally it'd be designed well enough so that players don't end up carrying all 3 hats or whatever.

Hunger- too simple I'd say. How to fix? Add some ways for food to give players debuffs. For example vegetables/berries etc are dirty when harvested. Eating dirty food causes players to lose sanity. Early on the players could wash them in ponds or cook them over a campfire. Cooking requires a stick or food comes out a bit charred which starts to drain sanity after eating 5 charred foods. Eating too much too fast makes the player slow. Cooking should function like in the Gorge. I know that that's asking for a lot but I litteraly see no way to fix Crockpots.

As yall can see some ideas would be harder (if even possible) to add than others. And that's the problem. You can't make a mechanic interesting without making it more complicated. But making it more complicated suddently messes with character perks, how certain structures/items work etc etc.

And knowing this community and Klei it is out of question to change a character's perk without going for a full rework. For example Winona could very well have some sort of engine to move boats more efficiently. But since she was already reworked there's no way of something like this happening

[Scrimbles]

Insanity is a big joke for experienced players, to the point where being insane is often referred to as preferable, since you can easily farm Nightmare Fuel, and the current shadows stop in place and attack like 2 centimeters in front of themselves.

Wickerbottom's only 'real' downside is her ability to maintain sanity when using her books, and not having access to sleep, but that's kind of invalidated when sanity is a joke. Wolfgang's downside is his sanity, but when you can kill shadows in a couple of hits it hardly even matters.

Willow's entire refresh was balanced around Bernie, which you ideally, assuming sanity is a bad thing, should never, EVER be interacted with, but it turns sanity into even more of a snooze fest.

A recurring reason people gave for why Willow's old "freeze when insane" downside was disliked was because "It makes farming shadows harder". That just doesn't sound right to me.

I wish the normal shadows would be buffed, or we could get some new ones, maybe increase the amount of shadows able to spawn...

(Aside from that, they removed the Dragonfly as a seasonal boss, and added in these tiny little ground cookies that occasionally spawn, which do nothing and are of no consequence, wish those were actually threatening... if only there were a mod that solves these problems...)

[Viktor234]

2 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Wetness- everything can be countered with Eyebrella. How to fix? Different events that cause wetness with different items to counter them. For example: failing to paddle makes you wet and only torso equipement can protect you. Regular rain can be countered by Eyebrealla no problem.

You can get only 1.2 Eyebrellas per year due to the fact that Deerclops and Klaus spawn only once per year. So unless you're playing in a solo world, not everyone will be able to craft himself an Eyebrella to avoid 100% of the Wetness during spring. New players will keep joining and leaving and others will use Eyeballs for Houndius Shootius, making Eyeballs not that common.

7 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Disease- [...]

Hunger- too simple I'd say. How to fix? Add some ways for food to give players debuffs. For example vegetables/berries etc are dirty when harvested. Eating dirty food causes players to lose sanity. Early on the players could wash them in ponds or cook them over a campfire. Cooking requires a stick or food comes out a bit charred which starts to drain sanity after eating 5 charred foods. Eating too much too fast makes the player slow. Cooking should function like in the Gorge. I know that that's asking for a lot but I litteraly see no way to fix Crockpots.

Buffing foods coming from bases and nerfing foods you get from exploring sounds very newcomer unfriendly. Not everyone has access to a base and players should be able to survive on their own. A base makes your life easier, but you should not be forced to have a base to survive.

Those suggestions feel too much solo player based.

 

11 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Sanity- Being insane is considered a good thing. How to fix? I'd say add more shadow creatures like Shadow Hands. They try to indirectly kill you but you can't kill them. Well you can but they don't drop nightmare fuel. Maybe some debuffs to go along with insanity like slower crafting or smaller field of view

I think the real problem is that Shadows stop spawning if you manage to leave them behind offscreen. Also while it's easy to fight Shadows one by one, it's harder to fight shadows if they're paired with other enemies. I still see players having problems fighting Deerclops not because they can't dodge his attacks, the real problems is that Terrorbeaks etc. spawn over time due to his insanity aura, and they deal 50 damage per attack. Attacking Deerclops only allows the shadows to attack you and vice versa. Buffing the strength of all the available shadows will make the life of newcomers too hard.

[Moonatik]

51 minutes ago, Lucenix said:

Probably the problem lies in the way the game isn't really about survival after a certain point, because there aren't enough things that seek you out and try to ravage you. Most times, you must seek out what to do trying things that may doom you (if you don't know them well enough) or just read about it online and realize there are really cheesy ways to do things.

To me, the game is just hard because I don't know what to do and strive for and I feel disencouraged from trying different things because they might just end me completely, but it's easy to see that for those who know what they're doing there isn't any challenge, that means the difficulty rampantly drops the more you know (not necessarily the better you play but you may argue this game is about information and getting used to things) so taking the leap by yourself is, in and of itself, the challenge that got trivialized by the min-maxing and breaking of the mechanics, leading to a banalization of everything else for the sake of efficiency.

 

There's few things, like the more we play, the more optionnal bosses would affect the world. Mushtrees on surface, the more you let them and the more they'll grow, having rot effects around them. You cut them to be free but they still come. You would have to beat Toadstool in order to have 1 year of freedom, more or less I don't know. But they'll come back.

Same with bee queen. The more we wait the more we'll see killer bees boxes spawning here and here.

Antlion is already doing that unless you kill him.

Why not having some nightmare fissures on surface, not so much because it's already too much, until you kill the fuelweaver.

Spider waves ? I mean spiders deserve a real boss. The spider queen is fun, but we could have a giant king somewhere... Like in caves.

A mushtree in your rabbit village could kill some of them permanently. Same for pigs. Rotted house you'd have to destroy.

 

I already have this feeling that the game is constantly asking you to be focused. Preparations and anticipations are sometimes maybe easy, but it's a non stop thing. being used doesn't mean easy, not everytime. We need more uncontrolled things, I agree.

[Mike23Ua]

I’ve said it a million times.. I will say it a million more- I want an actual dedicated.. not mod created Hardcore Mode where items people use to make playing the game a lot easier are no longer able to be crafted- OR they Can still be Crafted.. but they no longer serve as much of a useful purpose as they do in Vanilla Don’t Starve Together.

What I mean by that is- The simple removal of Eyebrella means your relying more on Raincoats, Rain Hats and Umbrellas (all 3 items combined instead of 1 OP top Tier hat)

The Removal of Glommer’s Flower means good bye free Sanity station, You had better hope a Wendy builds Sisturn for you.

The Removal of Thermal Stone means relying more on other cooling & heating items such as for example- wearing a Iceblock hat and a floral vest while carrying a Whitley fan to stay cool..

If FOOD or SLEEP no longer healed the player you would have no other choice but to rely upon the various types of actual healing the game has (Eating Spider Gland or Mosquito gland, crafting healing salve, Honey Poultice, Booster Shot..) 

Not Butterflies though.. I’d make those purely cosmetic in an Uncompromising Mode, No health heals when eating them, no free souls for Wortox you guys get the idea.

I guess the TL:DR- I want a challenging Totally Uncompromising Mode where players are challenged to stay alive in a harsh wilderness survival game, You know... how the game felt when you first played it without a clue of knowing what to do.

The things I’ve stated above wouldn’t just make the game harder.. they would be like a brand new mode entirely.

And that’s what I want.. Klei’s very own Uncompromising Wilderness Survival Mode.. where established items and gameplay structure get turned upside down on its head.

[Scrimbles]

2 hours ago, Hornete said:

Personally, I love the fishing mechanics and I love getting out there and catching fishies, but seeing so many people confused to the mechanics not being able to catch fish, perhaps something could be done to make the mechanics easier to take in and understand.
 

I don't think its a matter of people not understanding fishing, I think its the fact that it yields very little food for the time it takes to actually get all the fishing equipment, and catch fish.

[Well-met]

the downside of eyebrella is it isn't a fighter hat.

considering 90% people wear permanent backpacks, eyebrella could easily catch them offguard.

[Mike23Ua]

13 minutes ago, Well-met said:

the downside of eyebrella is it isn't a fighter hat.

considering 90% people wear permanent backpacks, eyebrella could easily catch them offguard.

Not on Xbox.. swapping hats between Eyebrella and a Football Helmet is as simple as tapping left on your D-pad. So your never without Armor or in any serious danger.

So really Eyebrella is an item with 100% Reward and no real risk.

[OMGkawaiiAngel]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

Not on Xbox.. swapping hats between Eyebrella and a Football Helmet is as simple as tapping left on your D-pad. So your never without Armor or in any serious danger.

So really Eyebrella is an item with 100% Reward and no real risk.

The only risk is to forget to take it off once rain stops! that will have an impact on its durability... and trust me, I always forget to take it off.

[Mike23Ua]

9 minutes ago, Charlie Dark said:

The only risk is to forget to take it off once rain stops! that will have an impact on its durability... and trust me, I always forget to take it off.

Oh yeah that! I forgot about that lol.. I’m using the “Glass Eyebrella” so it’s pretty  

And currently I’m playing as Willow, so I always have extra sewing kits on hand for Bernie repairs.

I always carry around at least 1 Repair Kit and 2 Bernie when playing Willow.

if one Bernie dies in battle the second one instantly enlarged to continue fighting and I can swoop in to fully repair the dead one.

Something I HAVE actually noticed with every character Rework is that they’ve each gotten new core items that will 9 times out of 10 be taking up a few of your inventory slots, making managing inventory a little more difficult then it used to be in the past.

Willow- Lighter, Bernie, Sewing Kit.

Wendy- Abigails Flower, Mourning Glory/Flower Petal, Ectoherbology potions.

Warly- Portable Cookware, Ingredients.

You guys get the Idea... every character now has a few more items they need to lug around with them as a core part of their Kit. That’s a trend I don’t expect to change with any of the future reworks.. Otherwise- it arguably makes playing as other characters have the unfair advantage of not having to carry around extra stuffs.  

[me real life]

2 hours ago, Ogrecakes said:

Insanity is a big joke for experienced players, to the point where being insane is often referred to as preferable, since you can easily farm Nightmare Fuel, and the current shadows stop in place and attack like 2 centimeters in front of themselves.

I feel like there's a certain point though where "experienced players" should realize that, for the type of game DST becomes once you've conquered the learning curve once, being insane constantly is just not fun. For me at least, it's certainly not preferable to be in a constant fight with in-game mobs while that game's so desaturated and dark that I can't make out half the things on my screen. All while my ears are being blasted with insanity sounds that overpower everything else unless I turn off ambient sound entirely.

Nightmare fuel's cool, and items crafted with nightmare fuel are cool, but it's really not worth giving up all the fun to have a constant flow of that fuel when there's ways to farm it in small bursts when necessary.

[Scrimbles]

19 minutes ago, Sunset Skye said:

I feel like there's a certain point though where "experienced players" should realize that, for the type of game DST becomes once you've conquered the learning curve once, being insane constantly is just not fun. For me at least, it's certainly not preferable to be in a constant fight with in-game mobs while that game's so desaturated and dark that I can't make out half the things on my screen. All while my ears are being blasted with insanity sounds that overpower everything else unless I turn off ambient sound entirely.

Nightmare fuel's cool, and items crafted with nightmare fuel are cool, but it's really not worth giving up all the fun to have a constant flow of that fuel when there's ways to farm it in small bursts when necessary.

In it's current form its just kinda annoying, but not really much of a threat, absolutely agree.

If the objective is to annoy the player to death more than anything... well, I think it succeeds. Options to disable some of the more annoying sanity visuals and sounds should be implemented, but over all sanity definitely needs some work done.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 hour ago, Sunset Skye said:

I feel like there's a certain point though where "experienced players" should realize that, for the type of game DST becomes once you've conquered the learning curve once, being insane constantly is just not fun. For me at least, it's certainly not preferable to be in a constant fight with in-game mobs while that game's so desaturated and dark that I can't make out half the things on my screen. All while my ears are being blasted with insanity sounds that overpower everything else unless I turn off ambient sound entirely.

Nightmare fuel's cool, and items crafted with nightmare fuel are cool, but it's really not worth giving up all the fun to have a constant flow of that fuel when there's ways to farm it in small bursts when necessary.

i actually enjoy that. The most stressed is the character the most stress you have. How good feels to heal sanity or go to the surface.

that stress makes you do wrong things and die, such thing cant fit more.

but i think they should give the chance of change that sounds volume, sometimes i even feel sick if i play for long with low sanity. And can let you increse the volume in case you want to suffer a more deep experience xD

[Yuuko]

Ah look - a repeat of the last thread.  Only difference is this time you're not giving your ideas directly, now you're hoping the players give their ideas instead.  Not a bad turn, but I think it will repeat its self.  Some things can be called OP sure, but I think you fail to account for how strong knowledge and skill is in a game like this.  To a new player they are going to suffer from everything, starvation, insanity, wetness, hound attacks, surprise boss fights, hell a biome of hornets might get them killed.  The thing is you overcome these obstacles with knowledge and skill.  Even without eyebrella some people would never get soaked in spring, or freeze in winter.  Yes some items help with this, but the player had to know what to use, and how to get it first.

Also - and I really gotta stress this because eyebrella and tam are picked on here several times - scarcity does exist.  Playing optimally only 1-2 people are going to get eyebrellas for the first spring, you might get 0 tams too.  If you're playing with even just 3-4 people you're going to have to know how to stay dry and sane without these.

 

9 hours ago, Hornete said:

I don't think bunnyman and pigman and other existing farms should be nerfed really, I think fishing should be more accessible to players perhaps.

I've been playing on some pubs lately as Willow, setting up boats and going out to the sea to fish, picking up some random people on the way. The thing I ran into most is that fishing is just so confusing to players new to the mechanics. The different baits, bobbers, reeling in, hooking, different types of fish and all of them is a bit hard for players to take in.

I think accessability is exactly the problem.  To fish the sea as simply as possible you need a board, 8 silk, and you need a seed or berry for every catch.  Its not very efficient at all to fish this way.  If you want to go any further you need to build the bait station which uses drift wood.  This means you have to build a boat and row around before you can get a reusable lure.  At this point the advantages of sea fishing start to come through.  With all the equipment being reusable you just need to find a deep bass spawn that isn't haunted by malbatross (or kill her) and you're set.  I was very surprised with how quickly I could clear out a deep bass spawn, and with how good surfnturf are for healing I'm using them instead of perogies.

Building a boat is a massive resource sink though!  All the logs, grass, and spider silk you need is in direct competition with other essential starting items.  I've been going onto pubs recently seeing how well I can rush a boat and its not been easy.  I think the main problem with ocean content is that you can't opt to go there first like you can for cave life.  They should probably make a smaller raft that can be made easier so players can access ocean content from the start.  (or add Wilani and give her a paddle board, I'd play Wilani if her only perk was starting with a retrievable boat)