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Merging Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together?


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Before simply saying, "No, Klei said 'nope', so it's not happening," and leaving, hear me out:

I know that Klei has stated that they consider Don't Starve as a complete game, and that they're not going to touch it anymore ever since they moved to DST. But then why does DST triumph over DS in terms of overall gameplay and popularity? Why is it that players like me who own both games feel more obliged to play DST and discouraged to play DS? (not all players, but I'm just saying that's how I feel when choosing which to play over the other). Because of this, I have reason to believe that it would be beneficial to both Klei and the Don't Starve community if the games were merged (preferably DS to DST rather than DST to DS). Like said by Klei, Don't Starve was meant to be a singleplayer game, and they're right! Things from singleplayer are meant to stay there, and that's why I am going to offer my ideas for how this could possibly work out.

First off, I introduce to you: Solo Mode!

One of the main problems I would like to address is that there have been complaints about DST's offline gameplay (no skins, no DLC characters, etc.) This is the part where solo Don't Starve would shine the most. Let's say that if you are traveling or the internet in your area is out, but you want to continue playing Don't Starve, regardless of multiplayer. This could also apply to those who prefer playing solo over multiplayer. You can then have an option to load or create a new solo world. This world will be locked in singleplayer, meaning that you cannot open this world for server hosting, but it has all of the features of solo DS such as the old bell, adventure mode, character unlocking, experience, and armor stacking. Likewise, a hosted game will stay as a hosted world, meaning you can't change it into a "solo" type world. If a connection is stable, you would also have access to all your skins as well, which was a feature many people wanted to be added to solo DS. DLC characters are a different story, as having some multiplayer characters in solo may break the lore of the game, but this is made up by the solo exclusive characters. Solo mode will also beat hosted worlds in a solo experiece as it will run much smoother on computers that can't handle multiple server shards as well as having more expansion content. Having a dedicated "solo mode" will also let new players get a better grasp of the game, since many people are introduced to this franchise through Don't Starve Together, rather than the original Don't Starve.

But what about Shipwrecked and Hamlet?

Shipwrecked and Hamlet will stay as DLC's for solo mode. They were designed to be for solo and will stay solo, community mods that aim to port those DLC's to multiplayer can do so, but it will be their responsibility to rework them to make a balanced and functional game.

And what about A New Reign, Return of Them, or future updates to DST?

Although I would love ANR and RoT features for a hypothetical "solo mode", I believe that they best stay as exclusive to DST. The reason being this is the lore of the game, and adding them to solo mode would break this. This applies to future updates that were meant for just DST too (except maybe QoL ones). Like stated by Klei, Don't Starve is complete, and we don't want to change this. Keeping it the way it is would be the best way to go.

What about character reworks? The characters from DS are so different than in DST!

There will be an option to enable or disable each characters' reworks in "solo mode" when in the world generation screen (but not in together worlds because the reworks were aimed to balance characters toward multiplayer, much like how the solo game was reworked to be a multiplayer game). A good example of this would be how a lot of people preferred the reworked Willow over the original Willow, especially since she no longer lights random fires, and a Bernie helps a new player fight shadow creatures more easily. This setting will only be available in the world generation of "solo mode", because there would be problems arising whenever swapping characters or changing the settings after world generation.

How will events work out?

Events such as winter's feast should stay a DST exclusive feature. Like I said earlier, let's try to make it easy on Klei by reducing what they would have to change if they were to merge the games. It wouldn't fit into the original Don't Starve anyway, at least in my opinion.

But why would anyone want a solo mode? Just go buy the original game if you're a loner!

I know, I've thought about that too, why should Klei take the effort of merging these two different games? For one, doing so would give Don't Starve a brighter future, players would recognize that since the game is now a part of DST, they will be glad knowing that new content will come or that feedback will be heard. Although someone could say that it is still the same thing, being two different games but just put into a single "box", I would disagree with that. By combining the games, any changes to the base game (such as updated textures, sounds, QoL updates, character rebalancing, character controls, bug fixes, etc.) will apply to both at the same time, thus eliminating the need to do the same things twice if they were separate.

A good example of this was the last QoL update to Don't Starve, which was a while ago, and introduced DST features such as beefalo taming and bundling wraps to DS. The extra work of rewriting the same features to match Don't Starve's less updated code is hard work on it's own, but if an effort was made to combine the games early on, this extra work can be eliminated for the future. It is important that if Klei makes a decision to take action, it would be as soon as possible. The reason for this is not anyone's expectations, but because the longer that they wait and the more that is added to DST, the harder it will be merge (I'm not saying DST exclusive features such as RoT but base game features such as beefalo taming that I mentioned earlier). Merging would bring another plus side, which would be the compatibility of workshop mods as both games will now all share the same source code, allowing the split modding community to be mended once again. Console support would be universal as well.

Having a solo mode will also be great for the DST community. For those who are too used to the gameplay of DST (and never played solo Don't Starve) and want a fresh gameplay, they can download the solo mode DLC(s) for a brand new experience. Why'd I say download a DLC? That's because we're about to go onto the next point:

Why would Klei want to do this? They won't be able to make enough of a profit to outweigh the development costs!

DST's current funding comes from skins (at least I think it does) and the introduction of those new to the game, after all, the developers have overdone themselves multiple times over with amazing updates at no cost to the players (besides the initial cost of the game). I believe that it would be best that the vanilla solo game would be added to DST with RoG included for free, much like how DST had free RoG features. Those who want the Shipwrecked or Hamlet DLCs can buy them from the default store found in DST, although it can be encouraging to sell them as a bonus included in a skin bundle for those who are dedicated to playing only multiplayer. Those DLCs may or may not be free to those who bought the solo game's DLCs, but I think at this point we wouldn't care to pay a little bit extra to see the game become whole again. DST's current priced could be raised as well to compensate the change. The DLCs' prices could be raised, since they are now placed in front of a much larger community who are more willing to spend some extra cash.

So...what happens to the original game?

I do not know. I have never worked as a developer for a steam game, nor do I know the backstage actions of it, such as what would happen to community content (mods and artwork, etc.). That being said, Klei will most likely decline this suggestion, but perhaps at least give a better insight into why. If they went through with it, perhaps the original game will no longer be listed and those who don't have DST (and only DS) will get a free copy to make up for it. Perhaps DST will finally have it's name changed to Don't Starve rather than Don't Starve Together (the "Together" really annoys me). Most importantly, is their solution to port the save files and progress, (and maybe steam trading cards?) if they chose to remove the original game, although it would be unlikely that it would be a problem since Don't Starve features cloud based file saving on Steam (I don't know the situation for console players, sorry!).

Other suggestions:

Here's a list of honorable mention ideas that came to mind:

-Adventure mode completion rewards? (Maybe skins or spools?) This could encourage more people to get back into the uncompromising style of the game that was mostly lost in DST

-Allow items from other characters in solo mode to be available similar to how you can switch characters in DST and still have or use the character exclusive items.

 

Change the world, my final message: Thanks for reading my wall of text, have a good day. If you have any thoughts, leave a comment or a suggestion, I guess. If you think this is a great idea, then give me a potato cup because then Nome and the other developers can't possibly ignore the delicious scent of so many fresh potato cups. Also I considered putting this under suggestions, but I felt like my voice would be better heard under general. Thanks for reading and Goodbye.

 

TL;DR: Wes is overpowered, please nerf

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The two games are too different in a lot of ways to warrant combining them. A "Solo Mode" like you're suggesting would be like switching between two games with the press of a button, it just doesn't make sense. You can play DST solo. You can play DS solo. They're two different experiences.
Also not to mention that DST is the sequel to DS lore-wise.

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23 minutes ago, Chris1448 said:

The two games are too different in a lot of ways to warrant combining them. A "Solo Mode" like you're suggesting would be like switching between two games with the press of a button, it just doesn't make sense. You can play DST solo. You can play DS solo. They're two different experiences.
Also not to mention that DST is the sequel to DS lore-wise.

Yeah, I did make mentions about that somewhere around here:

46 minutes ago, Knowbodie said:

But why would anyone want a solo mode? Just go buy the original game if you're a loner!

I know, I've thought about that too, why should Klei take the effort of merging these two different games? For one, doing so would give Don't Starve a brighter future, players would recognize that since the game is now a part of DST, they will be glad knowing that new content will come or that feedback will be heard. Although someone could say that it is still the same thing, being two different games but just put into a single "box", I would disagree with that. By combining the games, any changes to the base game (such as updated textures, sounds, QoL updates, character rebalancing, character controls, bug fixes, etc.) will apply to both at the same time, thus eliminating the need to do the same things twice if they were separate.

I do know that the games are extremely different as I had mentioned in the beginning, and yes this may be a far fetched idea, but I feel that if there's enough support for it, we could convince/support Klei in this (unless you have a specific reason not to) because this would be in a lot of ways good for the community and provide a future for the solo game. I did realize that making a "solo mode" button doesn't seem like a major change but I believed I made a good statement somewhere in there regards to that. And just as a side note, DS solo is not quite the same as DST solo, even without the DLCs. Hopefully that cleared up some confusion. :)

 

Edit: By Solo Mode I don't mean an exact button like the "Host Game button" but rather as a world generation option

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There's a few things from one that I'd like in the other, yes.  (Being able to gather while your hands are full, the alternate resources, gates/fences, and from the other side, the likes of Walani and Wilba, the ability to make your own liveable pig house but at some expense...)

But COMPLETELY merge them?  Nah.  Maybe a hair of tweaking towards each other on both, but that's it.

...Notorious

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29 minutes ago, Knowbodie said:

I did realize that making a "solo mode" button doesn't seem like a major change but I believed I made a good statement somewhere in there regards to that.

You may have misunderstood me. I'm saying it's TOO major of a change to warrant doing. You may not know it, but switching between too entire games with the press of a button is a LOT of work. The games are balanced entirely differently. Also, the singleplayer game still has an active fanbase, so I dunno what you mean about a brighter future.

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plenty of computers already chug playing one game. adding enough coding for two games would be technocide

 

just doing a QOL for solo would be sufficient and letting soloists get skin grants from single-player games and adjusting boss health would cover a fair few issues there

 

you are talking about moving a house because a tree spoils the view when just moving the tree would suffice

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3 minutes ago, CaptainChaotica said:

There's a few things from one that I'd like in the other, yes.  (Being able to gather while your hands are full, the alternate resources, gates/fences, and from the other side, the likes of Walani and Wilba, the ability to make your own liveable pig house but at some expense...)

But COMPLETELY merge them?  Nah.  Maybe a hair of tweaking towards each other on both, but that's it.

...Notorious

Personally I would be fine with them separate, the main reason I suggested a merge was to have a synced source code (such as mod compatibility, I've only made mods for DST instead of DS), bug fixes, introduction to new players (who only played DST), and possibly more content (since an update would affect both games, making it easier for Klei to update both as needed). Most of the base game would be left untouched.

Good to hear some opinions though!

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1 hour ago, gaymime said:

plenty of computers already chug playing one game. adding enough coding for two games would be technocide

 

just doing a QOL for solo would be sufficient and letting soloists get skin grants from single-player games and adjusting boss health would cover a fair few issues there

 

you are talking about moving a house because a tree spoils the view when just moving the tree would suffice

As for the storage size, I have also considered that Klei could possibly sell this hypothetical "solo mode" as a separate DLC when writing the original post, so that it would be optional to those who don't want it or don't have the space for it.

I think we all feel the same when Klei updates DST but not DS, even for the littlest things. So yes, I would definitely like to see a bit more content here and there for DS (nothing huge like another expansion, just small things like QoL stuff). There are some problems with your proposed solution though, because if you could earn skins in solo, would you be able to use them? Wouldn't they just end up in your DST inventory instead? But even if DS gets its own inventory, would the inventories be synced?

I'm not sure what you were referring to with the boss health there...

And lastly, I think a better way to put it is not moving the house, but rather "moving out of the house." Think of Klei's games as a giant apartment building, where each game lives in a separate room within it. By moving DS to DST, it's a lot like the process of moving from one home to another, and I'm not denying the fact that it's a large hassle to do such as packing all the furniture and belongings, meaning codes to patch and fix things (trust me, I've done coding before and when you start to realize the logic behind games, only then will you know how hard it is to code), but at least the two games will be "roommates" (or in other words, one game). And in this case, let's say the Klei team is a good friend of both of the "roommates" and likes to stop by to give the "roommates" some gifts. Normally, Klei wouldn't go visit Don't Starve's room because it's at the farther end of the hall and Klei is short on time so they only drop off gifts (meaning content and uptades) at DST's room. Because they're roommates now, they'll finally receive both of their gifts every time.

3 hours ago, Chris1448 said:

You may have misunderstood me. I'm saying it's TOO major of a change to warrant doing. You may not know it, but switching between too entire games with the press of a button is a LOT of work. The games are balanced entirely differently. Also, the singleplayer game still has an active fanbase, so I dunno what you mean about a brighter future.

I'm not trying to say that don't starve is dead, there's already plenty of posts about that and I'm not trying to make another. The point I'm making is that if Klei thinks their game is finished, they should give it a happy ending by bringing it to the DST community, which would unify the two fanbases.

The future I'm referring to isn't about a dying fanbase, but rather an addition of new players to the community or the continued growth of the game. The growing Don't Starve Together community is one of the reasons why it continues to be more successful than its solo counterpart. Most people learn about the game through Don't Starve Together, they don't learn about the game through Don't Starve, meaning that they're introduced to a content-fresh community and an updated game. When they look over at Don't Starve, they'll have second thoughts about even buying it, seeing that the game seems much harder alone and lacks the contents of DST without the DLCs, meaning that DST would be the cheaper and superior alternative without forcing someone to spend extra on a game they just bought. I'll admit it, when I was looking at buying DS, I was skeptical at first, but because I bought all the DLCs I learned to appreciate the solo game. For others who either can't afford or are not interested don't even bother considering to buy the base game (There will be a select group of people who prefer solo over multiplayer, but a majority of players choose DST over DS).

The point is, Don't Starve is not dead, but a finished game, and by helping it expand towards the DST community is a better choice than to leave it in the dust and brushing it off once in a blue moon. After all, Klei initially wanted multiplayer to just be an extension to solo, but this time it's a solo expansion to DST.

I don't know if my wall of text was missing something, but that's the general idea I was trying to point out, by doing so would be a win-win for both the community and Klei.

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I don't really want to get too deep into this topic, i could go over your whole thread and every thing that is stopping this from happening but i think you should be able to realize this yourself, so i'll just mention the main points.

DS and DST are two completely different games, code is too different and there's no possibility of merging or anything similar being done like updates ported to DS. This is the biggest reason nothing can be done about this.

The reason we all play DST over DS is because of the updates, there's tons of stuff that DS is missing and devs will not take the time to port everything as there's no point anymore as DST is just getting more and more updates, at some point DS will be completely obsolete and there shouldn't be a reason to play it, i feel like DLCs should be ported to DST, not for free, i'd be fine paying for them, that way i could stop playing DS completely.

Only argument is DLCs as i mentioned, i can partially understand why they are not ported currently, but give it a couple of years and DST will just have even more content over DS, at that point i really hope it is ported to DST.

Also i don't see why you wouldn't want DLCs to be available to multiplayer, a lot of content from DLCs would need to be balanced but i think it is just tweaking the numbers to fit more players better, shouldn't be too complicated.

There's really no reason for klei to port DS to DST, especially considering how big of an undertaking would this be.

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The only thing I agree with is that the base game should have skin integration, but every time someone has asked Klei about this they've been vaguely told it's "in the works".

Considering this was sometime ago I assume it's either very low priority or was just said to get people to stop asking.

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Honestly, I don't feel that one is over the other. I like RoG, SW, Hamlet, and DST. I often phase in and out of them periodically, sometimes I go through a DST phase that lasts one or two months and sometimes i go through a singleplayer phase that lasts a couple months. Granted, it would be nice to get things like replica relics, scaled furnace, endtables, and sculpting in singleplayer, but sometimes choosers can't be beggars.

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The only thing I want the solo ones to have is access to skins and ability to get skin drops while playing. That's all. If singleplayer had that, I'd probably have a proper Hamlet world. Everything else is pretty unnecessary, I feel. DST is perfectly playable offline, even has an option to make it a solo offline world by adjusting the number down to 1 (or how I do so I can invite people later if I want: Online, 2, and friends only).

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Considering State of Decay 2 pulled all old versions of their game and rereleased the game as Juggernaut edition with improved physics, graphics and all the DLC content (rather you did or did not already purchase this content) Then I would say I would love DS, DS RoG, DS SW, DS Ham, and DST to all be piled together all into the same product.

This allows people to use all their DST skins and also earn new skins while playing DS.. it also allows Klei to only have to update one version of their game instead of doing different updates for DS and DST.

(this is one of the reasons Undead Labs choose to just upgrade all existing versions of SoD 2 to Juggernaut Edition)

This ALSO lets people play as the rest of the remaining missing DS characters- Walani, Wilbur, Woodlegs, Wilba, Wheeler, Wagstaff.

But most importantly of ALL depending on what VERSION of DS/DST you Bought- Your game comes preloaded with some of that content already..

This is my single biggest defense against people saying “No it’s not worth it.”

Depending on what version of the game and what Platform you bought the game on- You will have access to content others paid for separately already as a core part of your game.

For example: There is no version of DS that you can buy on Xbox One that DOES NOT already include the Reign of Giants DLC expansion.

And then if you happen to be playing this game on Nintendo- There is not a version that you can buy that does not already include the Shipwrecked DLC expansion.

Who’s to say that isn’t Klei’s plan all along?? To update DS/DST to work together.

You guys keep saying it’s two different games with different mechanics- and that may be true... but....

I also see a World Gen Preset setting that lets me toggle the type of surface world and cave world that my game loads.. prior to hosting.

What is the difference between choosing to host a DS Classic world and a DST world?

Currently it only appears to remove DST boss biomes like Dragonfly... 

But “What If” changing it to classic meant truly playing DST with DS “Classic” world Gen (yes meaning we go back to pre-return of them cardboard cutout oceans.)

My point... is don’t knock the OPs idea before seriously giving it some thought- and while yes I may campaign like a broken record to see Shipwrecked and Hamlet biomes/mobs & content added to DST, but I campaign for these things because it would add a ton more content to DST, it would allow me to still unlock DST skins while playing DS Classic.. And most importantly of all... I wouldn’t have to choose between playing DS Solo without friends, or playing DST and missing out on my Solo dlc experience.

I would like to leave one final thought on the subject though- when asking for those expansions to become multiplayer it NEVER has to include DST mechanics.. I would have been totally fine with limiting them to still using their current “Classic” mechanics and just increasing the amount of players allowed to play together to 2 or 3 Max for SW/Ham worlds.

The biggest silver lining in all of this is that- if players did not like the changes Klei does to the characters with their DST Refreshes (cough, cough a few Woodie players) Then that is solved with simply switching to DS Classic gameplay.

And to quote a Miley Cyrus song- “You get the best of both worlds.”

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2 hours ago, BoySyrup said:

If it was Klei's plan "all along" they would've made DST a DLC for DS right out of the gate.

Plans change.. what wasn’t possible in 2016 may be much more feasible in the year 2020.

They sold DST as quote “a stand alone multiplayer expansion to the single player game.”

But as of these Character Reworks and Return of Them Updates DST is finally being treated as more of a Sequel instead of just “Stand Alone expansion.”

They completely scrapped the character concept of Wilton (some sort of Undead Pirate Skeleton Transformation that Woodlegs was going to have) because back then they couldn’t find a way to make it work... but here we are in 2020- And we have Woodie who Transforms between a Moose, a Goose and Beaver.

I wouldn’t rule anything out until Klei staff themselves tell us that it’s not happening.

And even then.. an “it’s Not happening..” being told to us right now in 2020 is subject to change through advancements in know how and technology by 2024.

 

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Hey everyone who responded, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I might make a similar post on Steam to see other players' thoughts too since the Klei forums is limited to only a group of people.

 

So far, there's been a lot of talk about how creating a merge is simply "not worth it." By this I'm assuming that you guys are trying to say that it's not worth Klei's resources, funding, and time to do such a task when newer content could be added to DST instead. 

If we had a scenario in the far future and Klei somehow has the funding, technology, and support for it, and let's say they manage to find a way to port/balance the DLC's to multiplayer, would you still want a potential merge, far after content updates and expansions such as RoT are complete? If not, then I'd like to have it explained to me your reasons as to why.

 

I've also heard from a couple of people that they would like an update to allow earning skins and using them in solo Don't Starve, without forcing a merge. I believe that this could be a possibility on its own, and potentially the most reasonable one in Klei's current state, since Klei keeps your inventory data and shares it with Steam to create a synced pool of information.

This this might not end up seeing the light of day because this would require Klei to make large updates the original game which was already claimed as finished, and this thread is mostly discussing the merge of two games rather than changing the original. It's also that by merging, it would solve the potential downsides to this method.

 

That is all for now, have a good day or night :juggling:

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