How would you make this game harder if you were a dev tasked to do so?

[Mysterious box]

9 minutes ago, Owlrus98 said:

Any change to the game's difficulty risks being a controversial change in a sense; not to mention that there are many small details that, if changed, could completely warp the way that people play this game. 

For example:

1. Making Pigmen, Bunnymen, and Merms not spawn from their houses after they have been killed more than 5 times each. This would make farming much more difficult, and force players to find other ways to eat on top of both building houses less and getting help from them more.
2. Not being able to over-eat food items (as said above by other members). This would drastically encourage players to use healing Items such as a Honey Poultice or Healing Salves as they can no longer benefit from bringing foods into battle in a reliable way.
3. Only Ruins shadow creatures drop Nightmare Fuel. A change like this would make fuel-farming less reliable on the surface, and promote the idea of both staying sane and hinder any benefit of being insane; making insanity a clear threat.
4. Only being able to craft at a crafting station such as the Alchemy Engine, or Shadow Manipulator save for a few select items like the axe. Not unlike the Pseudoscience station, such a change would force people to think about what they want before venturing out.
5. Not sleeping in a tent or bed roll can cause drowsiness after awhile. This would make sleeping mandatory, while also proving to harm the player if they neglect their drowsiness. Albeit giving some use to the tent and bedroll, this would severely affect the way Wickerbottom plays.
6. Food dropped on the ground or put in any container severely hastens the rate that it spoils. Again, encouraging people to eat their food while they have it, and penalizing those that don't take care of it.

Some of these are my ideas, and some were ideas I had heard before; but as you can see sometimes changes can warp the way that players may approach things going forward if not done right.

I love all these ideas and really wish there was a way to get a official mode with just these changes but I understand that making such a change has huge potential the upset a lot of people which is fair but still makes me sad.

[1bubbainpa]

22 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’m pretty sure this would all be tied to it’s own mode right? One idea I really hate that people throw around a lot is the thought of the world becoming progressively harder the longer the world exists.

This May be fine from an expert players stand point, but think about the casuals and the new players man.... Those people are going to join one of these progressively harder worlds and they’re only going to have even more of a rough time enjoying the game.

Surely SOME of you have to have friends or Siblings who are significantly less skilled than you right? Aight they see you online- They join your game.. whoopsie you killed FuelWeaver or are on Summer Year 4.. they’re going to be living in a NIGHTMARE and not the fun kind.

Its okay to discuss ways to change up the game as long as those changes do not further separate people from playing and enjoying the game TOGETHER with their friends..

At this point, you should be able to have backup equipment available that you can just give to anyone who joins your world mid-game.

Also difficulty and progression are tied together in literally every other game.

[Mike23Ua]

4 minutes ago, 1bubbainpa said:

At this point, you should be able to have backup equipment available that you can just give to anyone who joins your world mid-game.

Also difficulty and progression are tied together in literally every other game.

Not exactly, you’ve got to take into heavy consideration a persons actual skill level, Klei Created the No Sweat Mode because they wanted people to be able to peacefully learn the game without all the additional challenges that get thrown at you later, yes No Sweat mode is only available on the Mobile versions of the game but that’s besides the point.. it’s still a thing, Klei made.. and it exists in some capacity.

I have a friend who still dies to starvation with an inventory full of Birchnuts in their possession because they still have not figured out how to cook them.

Should the game become harder for him to join my world and play with me just because I’ve killed Them and rescued Charlie and that’s terraformed my entire land into something new and even more difficult to survive within?

No.. there should be better ways for people of varying skill levels to play Together.

I have to turn OFF Giants, Turn OFF Hound Wave Attacks, Set Autumn as the ONLY Weather Season, and basically make the game as close to no sweat mode as it can possibly get for me to play this game with my less skilled friends.

.... why do you guys think I petition so hard for personal sliders that effect you and ONLY YOU? I’m crazy- I want the Spider Warriors to have Poisonous bites that bleed out my health core over time until I craft an Anti-Venom.. but for my noob friend, Venomous Spiders would be even MORE of a complication for him.

Ahem.. PERSONAL SLIDERS- As in he can fight the same spider warrior as me and never be inflicted with the “poison effect” Meanwhile I’ll have to be more cautious because I CAN be.. We both get to fight the same enemy and both equally feel challenged and Threatened by it.

 

THAT Is What I Want... THAT is What I’ve been begging Klei for since Day One- 
The TL:DR I Want experienced players to be able to play and enjoy the game with less experienced players.

Sanitys not an Issue you guys say.. as a experienced player it’s good to be insane and never look back, yeah maybe new types of sanity monsters should attack ONLY YOU but meanwhile your noob buddy still struggles fighting Crawling Horror and Terrorbeaks.

Please stop saying “find better friends, or this isn’t the game for them..” 

If it Wasn’t because of Me begging them to play it with me they would’ve never bought it in the first place.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

46 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’m pretty sure this would all be tied to it’s own mode right? One idea I really hate that people throw around a lot is the thought of the world becoming progressively harder the longer the world exists.

This May be fine from an expert players stand point, but think about the casuals and the new players man.... Those people are going to join one of these progressively harder worlds and they’re only going to have even more of a rough time enjoying the game.

Surely SOME of you have to have friends or Siblings who are significantly less skilled than you right? Aight they see you online- They join your game.. whoopsie you killed FuelWeaver or are on Summer Year 4.. they’re going to be living in a NIGHTMARE and not the fun kind.

Its okay to discuss ways to change up the game as long as those changes do not further separate people from playing and enjoying the game TOGETHER with their friends..

you can see how many days have a world before joining

46 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’m pretty sure this would all be tied to it’s own mode right? One idea I really hate that people throw around a lot is the thought of the world becoming progressively harder the longer the world exists.

This May be fine from an expert players stand point, but think about the casuals and the new players man.... Those people are going to join one of these progressively harder worlds and they’re only going to have even more of a rough time enjoying the game.

Surely SOME of you have to have friends or Siblings who are significantly less skilled than you right? Aight they see you online- They join your game.. whoopsie you killed FuelWeaver or are on Summer Year 4.. they’re going to be living in a NIGHTMARE and not the fun kind.

Its okay to discuss ways to change up the game as long as those changes do not further separate people from playing and enjoying the game TOGETHER with their friends..

you can see how many days have a world before joining

[Mike23Ua]

31 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

you can see how many days have a world before joining

you can see how many days have a world before joining

Yeah I’m playing on Xbox, You see your buddy online, you click on their profile name from your friends list, you click Join game- You regret it afterwards once your in a day 3,000 running world.

[1bubbainpa]

8 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Not exactly, you’ve got to take into heavy consideration a persons actual skill level, Klei Created the No Sweat Mode because they wanted people to be able to peacefully learn the game without all the additional challenges that get thrown at you later, yes No Sweat mode is only available on the Mobile versions of the game but that’s besides the point.. it’s still a thing, Klei made.. and it exists in some capacity.

Don't Starve is literally built on the factor of being uncompromising.

"Uncompromising Survival & World Exploration: No instructions. No help. No hand holding. Start with nothing and craft, hunt, research, farm and fight to survive." -Don't Starve Wiki

Also you have to realize that mobile gamers are a very different crowd then when it comes to console and pc players.

12 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I have a friend who still dies to starvation with an inventory full of Birchnuts in their possession because they still have not figured out how to cook them.

Should the game become harder for him to join my world and play with me just because I’ve killed Them and rescued Charlie and that’s terraformed my entire land into something new and even more difficult to survive within?

Have you considered making a new world to just play with your friends and ONLY with your friends? That way, they're introduced to the basic concepts, and not thrown into the fray with Day 100+ threats like constant treeguards, spider queens, hound attacks, and changing seasons.

Like, I have a sibling and friends who has almost no interest in videogames whatsoever, but if for some reason they asked me to play don't starve with them, I would create a new world for the two of us instead of having her join my current world. This is not only to make sure she's not overwhelmed with content when she joins, but also to have a world thats "ours", and "ours" alone. We can see the progress we've made, the trials we've overcome, and all the failures we have in our own world or save.

I would do this with any game, even games that are easy for a person to jump in such as minecraft or terraria. Don't Starve is an extreme case where people need to learn the basics to survive, and the basics are learnt from day 0.

54 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I have to turn OFF Giants, Turn OFF Hound Wave Attacks, Set Autumn as the ONLY Weather Season, and basically make the game as close to no sweat mode as it can possibly get for me to play this game with my less skilled friends.

.... why do you guys think I petition so hard for personal sliders that effect you and ONLY YOU? I’m crazy- I want the Spider Warriors to have Poisonous bites that bleed out my health core over time until I craft an Anti-Venom.. but for my noob friend, Venomous Spiders would be even MORE of a complication for him.

Ahem.. PERSONAL SLIDERS- As in he can fight the same spider warrior as me and never be inflicted with the “poison effect” Meanwhile I’ll have to be more cautious because I CAN be.. We both get to fight the same enemy and both equally feel challenged and Threatened by it.

 

THAT Is What I Want... THAT is What I’ve been begging Klei for since Day One- 
The TL:DR I Want experienced players to be able to play and enjoy the game with less experienced players.

Sanitys not an Issue you guys say.. as a experienced player it’s good to be insane and never look back, yeah maybe new types of sanity monsters should attack ONLY YOU but meanwhile your noob buddy still struggles fighting Crawling Horror and Terrorbeaks.

Please stop saying “find better friends, or this isn’t the game for them..” 

Yeah, this is the same as above. Your friends need the experience of those early-game giants, hounds, and seasons. And if your friend can't figure out how to cook the birchnuts in his inventory, what makes you think they can fight a spider warrior?

56 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

If it Wasn’t because of Me begging them to play it with me they would’ve never bought it in the first place.

I know this is getting a bit off-topic, but this might be the bigger problem. You might be inadvertently forcing your friends to a play a game that they have no real interest in playing. As a result, they have no interest in improving their playstyle in a game they don't even want to play in the first place.

I know that this is a large assumption, so forgive me if I'm wrong on this matter.

[Well-met]

move the celestial meteor to the moon island

make ice flingo only hit plants

make every single mob attack walls if its in their way

make ice filler tier the same as other weird crockpot stuff like bones and twigs

make mobs avoid ocean edges for real

make tumbleweeds fall and vanish into the ocean

 

[Pixil]

Make food's healing take effect over time.

To put it simply, up to two minutes healing food will regen 1 hp/s for its given amount.

(ex: Pierogi heals 1 hp per second for 40 seconds. This effect would stack but not overlapping hp gain, which caps at 120 seconds, causing eating 3 pierogi to heal 1 hp per second for 120 seconds.) This effect would make characters like Wigfrid (for hp from attacking) and Wormwood (not relying on healing food) better compared to other survivors. This change seemed annoying to me at first, but removing the healing received entirely seemed like a bit much. Eating something like monster tartare/lasagna/meat would slowly take away your health in the same manner that healing would be done. Jellybeans would stack the healing done (with other healing food, for up to 3 hp/s for two minutes,) making it more important for boss fights. I'm not quite sure if this idea is good at all, as I confused myself writing it haha. That's all I've got, I'm not the greatest at figuring out what makes something balanced.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Yeah I’m playing on Xbox, You see your buddy online, you click on their profile name from your friends list, you click Join game- You regret it afterwards once your in a day 3,000 running world.

Well, lesson learned, after that that person will think about joining long term world like happends today with the number of hounds of the weather

. Or that friend can create a new world in other save slot to play since begining

[. . .]

adding an instant perma-death mode

[Yuuko]

Wow...  I'm glad y'all don't work for Klei...  Most of the suggestions here are just bad, some would make me quit the game.

Scaling difficulty - increasing the hp values and damage of monsters and bosses doesn't make the game harder.  It just makes it longer and more tedious without adding anything actually fun to the game.  Just look at mistery toadstool, that fight is miserable...  This isn't a combat simulator like dark souls or monster hunter anyway, so adding complex boss fights isn't even that fitting...  And why should they take away any rewards when every single fight in this game is already optional.

If you keep raising the "difficulty" these ways you reach a point where the game literally becomes unplayable, and wherever you stop raising the difficulty players adapt and plateau just as you have now.

Arguing about healing from food is just like arguing about food production and farms.  Farms need buffs, and you don't need to nerf any other food sources like bunnyman or pigman farms to recognize that farms are just bad.  Similarly non-food healing needs buffs, and no amount of nerfing to food healing is going to make non-food healing any better.

If you want to challenge yourself just don't make these things.  See how well the game actually works when you don't pick wolfgang, use food healing, or eyebrella.  If that makes the game more fun for you then do it!  Maybe quit rolling back when that Willow player comes in and torches your base lol  You can say "but I shouldn't have to xxx to make the game hard" but actually you should, because its a sandbox game... and in sandbox games you make your game happen.  From the characters you pick, to the farms you build, and how you fight bosses ect you pick your own level of involvement.  If you really think the game would be more fun with weaker armor, different healing items, and bigger health enemies then use grass suits, honey poultice, pick Wes lol No one is stopping you!  If you think that's more fun then do it.

If I had to make the game "more challenging" I would make a new game, with a new take on mechanics and new controls.  Sandbox games by their nature aren't that difficult.  Its mostly front loaded knowledge that once you've got it, the world becomes a simple place.  At that point its speed runs, farms, exploits, and creative designs.  After 1000 hours of dark souls even that game becomes pretty tame...

[Sweaper]

Didn't think this would get that many replies.

To expand on what I wrote before, the reason for the very low percent armor,different attack patterns and slow healing action was to make it slightly more like a Mon hun game when it comes to combat so you have to approach bosses carefully to not get 2-3 shot, also with more attacks you can make team play work better for even the simplest boss considering deerclops only has AoE attacks now, so while someone got its aggro, others can smack at any opening. As for food being slower to eat is to make that you can't facetank eat but need to reposition and wait for openings to heal up.

Obviously, Klei would never implement any of this. I just wanted to see what people would come up with their ideal harder version of DST, no matter if the currently player base likes it or not. I forgot to put this in the first post, my bad.

Edit: Also, I like the idea of progression. This could affect AI to make them smarter like prioritizing people trying to heal later on and increase their damage until no matter who you play as you'll be one shotted for the lols.

[wigfrids hat]

i have an idea;

how about a leech mode that requires two players to execute and must be consensually opted into? both players pick up a matching pair of items(say one yellow and one purple) and put it in their invo and for as long as each person has that item a small percentage of health, sanity or hunger drains faster from one person and is given to the other?. for one player it would make the game that much harder since they have to work with an active drain and it has the benefit of encouraging them to work with someone who is less skilled and can use the active increase to survive a little longer(which i suppose means it makes the game easier as well, haha). it also encourages more diversity in player roles since the person staying at base making meatballs isnt using their hunger as much and can just eat one of those meatballs when needed while the other is out getting pummeled by some randy beefalo

[Mike23Ua]

The TL:DR of everything I’ve ever posted on these forums is I want more open world sandbox biomes with new mobs, weather hazards & gameplay.
————————————

I Don’t want Dark Souls: DST Edition when it comes to Bosses (I actually ignore them mostly, because they’re NOT the reason I bought the game to begin with) I bought this game to be thrown into a Randomly Generated Open World Environment full of things that hates me and wants me to die. That is exactly what the description of the game read when I bought it and that is exactly what I expected upon making my purchase, NOT-

Build a large base, sit around doing mostly nothing, gather supplies, Battle a totally optional boss with said supplies, and even though our worlds are randomly generated- Almost everything has a Generic Biome location to find it within.

Come on Klei..it’s 2020, and I beg you guys to go spend at least two weeks playing Spelunky.. a game that Truly is (mostly) randomly generated.

#BreakTheMeta..

[Dunk Mujunk]

I was thinking about this topic last night, and honestly I have no idea how I would make DST harder for players with large amounts of DST knowledge. It would be easy to make it harder for new players, but not people with lots of knowledge (even new players with knowledge).

I was running around at night with WX, wearing a miners hat in the rain (piggyback on, no umbrella). I was thinking about how weak WX' drawback is. I was at full stats when night hit and I switched from my eyebrella to miners hat. I had all the time in the world, I knew there was no danger.

I thought ok, on a WX rework just make the rain do more damage, maybe have WX get wetter quicker. Something like that. Ok but then i'll just always wear my eyebrella whenever its raining and cancel that out. So let's say you remove the eyebrella. Then i'll just use a rain hat and umbrella. Take those away. I'll stand under a tree by a fire pit until it stops raining if I have to.

In the above situation the game isn't any harder, efficiency is the only thing that has been effected. For a lot of people in a lot of different situations this is the case I think.

Take the discussion of sanity and how much of a non issue it is (for many people). Ok, you make it a bit more threatening/challenging. Then people would either adjust and continue to operate as normal or just not be as insane as much. Ok, you make it much more threatening/challenging. People start carefully managing their sanity. Make it waaay more challenging/threatening and people will only go insane when they absolutely have to.

But everyone can still manage their sanity. The games not harder now, as a player  you've just lost efficiency in things related to nightmare fuel/sanity. Take away green caps and people will use tams. Take away tams and people will use tents. Take away tents and people will use jerky.

There is always an answer if you know the game. I'm not saying i'm a pro. I'm terrible at combat, I still die quite a bit. But i'm never in a situation where I don't know what the answer to a problem is, and there is always plenty of different answers. 

But if you start taking away options, or making the best options weaker, the next best option will be chosen and all that gets hit is efficiency not difficulty.

And for the record i'm not for/against increases difficulty. I honestly don't know how I feel about the topic.

Combat is a different deal, and I just ran out of time to type. I may continue later.

[b l a n k]

On 6/13/2020 at 6:57 PM, TopNoob said:

A penalty for overfeeding your character, like reducing sanity or just making food provide no benefits, this would prevent you from spamming healing/sanity food items 

So simple and yet so good. That would actually make sense for the food to refill only the stats depending of the hunger you're refilling.

If let's say a Pierogi, refill half of its 37.5 hunger because you have 131/150 hunger, then its stats boost would be halved as well, like 20 HP instead of 40. And 0 HP if you eat one while your belly is full. That would nerf the food spamming a lot and the characters would have to either plan more their fight (starting without a full belly) or take advantage of others healing items like Wormwood do !

[Hornete]

The food gives no stats if your hunger is full or almost full is a neat idea. But all it would do is simply shift the meta over to using other healing items, and food would then be barely used for healing.

So, Klei releases this change, everyone has a somewhat hard time at first but after a week or so the meta shifts and now other healing items are the meta while healing food is pretty much useless. Yay.

[b l a n k]

7 minutes ago, Hornete said:

The food gives no stats if your hunger is full or almost full is a neat idea. But all it would do is simply shift the meta over to using other healing items, and food would then be barely used for healing.

So, Klei releases this change, everyone has a somewhat hard time at first but after a week or so the meta shifts and now other healing items are the meta while healing food is pretty much useless. Yay.

Why healing food would be useless ? You heal the same if your belly isn't full, the idea is just to nerf the food-spamming at full hunger. I also don't see the issue to use healing items to heal, since they're healing items, you know, that's their purpose :3 They would be harder to use since the heal animation take way longer than eating, they would be harder to mass farm too, papyrus is kinda limited and healing salve would require an aimed investisment from the players to get the required materials, especially the ashes

[Hornete]

5 minutes ago, Xantown7 said:

Why healing food would be useless ? You heal the same if your belly isn't full, the idea is just to nerf the food-spamming at full hunger. I also don't see the issue to use healing items to heal, since they're healing items, you know, that's their purpose :3 They would be harder to use since the heal animation take way longer than eating, they would be harder to mass farm too, papyrus is kinda limited and healing salve would require an aimed investisment from the players to get the required materials, especially the ashes

Healing food would be useless during boss fights as you will probably be spamming them.

Are healing foods not "aimed investments"? The way I see it players will start farming spider glands, things to burn and rocks instead of getting meat, eggs, and veggies. I never said there was a problem with using healing items to heal, I use salves and poultice quite a lot, my point is the meta would simply just switch over to farming spiders, rocks and burn able items to help heal instead of setting up bunnymen farms or whatever other farms to gather ingredients for healing foods.

[b l a n k]

3 minutes ago, Hornete said:

Are healing foods not "aimed investments"?

Nope, the issue with Pierogi is you have them every time without even knowing it or seeking to make them, basically every meat and vegetable passing by and in your icebox can be made into Pierogis, and that's also why this food is over-appreciated and so much more used than Fishsticks

[Raeku]

This game is already notoriously difficult for new players. Experienced players, however, crave more challenge.

Solution? Leave the base game unchanged but add more progressive difficulty which the player can choose to pursue or ignore.

I.e. the caves/ruins hold very valuable and powerful rewards for players with the knowledge, skill, and inclination to take them on, but can be completely ignored by new players untill they master surface survival.

I propose more of the optional zones/adventures, obviously thd more varied the challenges, the better.

Maybe the lunar island can progress to eventually building or discovering a portal to the ACTUAL moon, a massive area comprable to the caves or surface areas. This zone could have it's own unique biomes/mobs/resources and even unique seasonal challenges.

After the pros master the moon? Maybe an underwater adventure requiring scuba gear? Maybe access to another world of the constant, possibly Them escaped to an alternate reality, and we can follow them there?

The options are endless, Klei has proven they can create a variety of alternate DS worlds.

 

My point is that the current base game should go untouched. It's more PROGRESSIVE difficulty we need, not a game overhaul.

[OMERICA]

I know for console players it’s not the case but there is literally a mod called uncompromising mode and it has all the things “veterans” asked for. In my humble opinion a game should not shape around expert play style. Most of its players are not experts. 
 

(however I really want insanity to have some downsides)

[Dunk Mujunk]

1 hour ago, Hornete said:

I never said there was a problem with using healing items to heal, I use salves and poultice quite a lot

Same here, we rely on poultices and salves far more than foods for healing. A few hundred days into a world and we have chests of the stuff. They could take all healing away from food we would be unaffected.

And if they took away healing items we would use food.

If they took away both we would use a tent.

 

[Pelontriques]

i would literally rather have any harder stuff be opted into, aside from penalties to already eating while full + drowsiness mechanics previously mentioned.

i'm, like, a bit of a noob but haven't figured out how to rush the dang ruins just yet, since, y'know, i haven't had a need to rush the ruins. hell, i still have trouble with deerclops but can figure out how to kite a treeguard / koalefant.

[Sweaper]

For the healing options, making the crafted ones the meta by nerfing food based on hunger would make the game harder, yes it wouldn't be hard since crafting them is just time consuming and using them just requires you to lose enemy aggro or wait for its attack to start healing, but harder nonetheless and that's what the task was about anyway.