Functionality Suggestions

[shingouki]

Hey Klei! I really love this game, so far it's been extremely fun playing it. I've spent a decent amount of time on it so far and I really like what I see. There were some things that bothered me about the game though that I think can be improved in simple ways.

Note: I'm playing the Steam Build.

1) Hardcore Mode Option - When I died for the first time I was saddened by my character's passing (a really stupid death too, fought 8 enemies at once with low armor lol), however when I started up again I was expecting to start with a fresh slate. I was disappointed however that I had kept all my research from before.

I personally feel like every playthrough should be a completely fresh slate, ie: Nothing should be carried over through each playthrough. Some people might disagree with me, so as an alternative to this, could you include a hardcore "option"? The difference between regular and hardcore would be that you always start a fresh slate in hardcore. I feel that that sort of change is ideal because it makes death extremely "real".

In games such as Dungeon Crawl - Stone Soup, when you die, you die and its very disappointing, but it also binds you emotionally to your character that much more; even though you're just playing with a 2D static sprite that barely covers a pixels on the screen. Having this sort of restriction would (in my opinion) make the game a lot stronger overall.

2) Re-randomized World on every playthrough - I'm not 100% sure but it seems like every time I play the game, the world I play in is the same as the first one I began using. Again, I might be wrong about this, but I feel it would be ideal if the world was randomized every time you start a new anything. New character, new game, new world.

3) Scaled Research rewards - This goes alongside Hardcore mode. But it would be nice if you got less experience per each item researched of the same type. For example, researching saplings starts at some value...lets say 10 exp. Then the more you use saplings, the less value in experience it gives... 10,9,7,5, until maybe 3. Then it would stay at that 3 for the rest of that playthrough .

The reasoning I have is, research is setup so that you learn from what you deposit into the machine. After a while of research you will have learned pretty much all you can from the item in question, at which point it cant teach you much else.

A better alternative to this would actually be.....

3A) Randomized Research rewards - I think it would be better if the game would pick a random number that was set within a range of two numbers as a maximum and minimum value, with a small chance of giving a critical amount of research experience equal to 10 times the minimum value but no larger than two times the maximum value.

For example, a berry bush might give 20 - 5 exp on researching it, with a chance of a critical research experience boost(A Research Breakthrough! Eureka! Etc.). The boost would be 5exp * 10 = 50. However, since 50 is more than 2*20 = 40, it would get lowered down to 40.

This would be great because it would give usefulness for items you normally wouldn't put in for research, that are worth maybe a 1 exp point. Like If you give a flower an exp range of 1exp - 5exp, then they would go anywhere from 1 - 5, with a possibility of 10 exp.

This is balanced by the fact that you lose the flowers by throwing them in the machine, so you cant use them for anything else. But it leaves the "gambling" option open for the player.

3) Hotkeys! - Not sure if this exists, but it would be nice to be able to set hotkeys to shortcut your items.

4) Toggleable HUD - This builds on 3. It would be nice to toggle the HUD/specific HUD elements if you want to. Your game does a good job of letting the player know whats going on without having to constantly monitor the HUD.

When you get hungry the game tells you, when night time approaches you get notified, when you can make new items there's a noise to notify you, etc. It'd be nice to add onto this by adding visual cues for when your health is low (character limps/winces/drips blood when health is low), and then the game would be ideal with no HUD.

Playing a game without having to check a HUD is the ultimate in immersion. Plus there's a lot to see in this game at any point in time, so having the ability to have less HUD is better.

An alternative for no HUD would be...

5) HUD When You Want It - If toggling the HUD off completely won't work, it would be nice to take a more free hand approach. For example, if I'm out hunting/foraging I don't necessarily need my crafting menu. Nor do I necessarily need to see my item slots.

For those menus, it might be nice if they would appear if you hover over them with the mouse. Similar to how Mac OSX's GUI works. It would hide in the side of the screen when you're not using it, and when you are hovering over it, it would display. This could be broadened for use by adding the ability to toggle on locking it or not.

That way you'd get the best of both worlds.

6) Caves/Mines - I'm still early in the game so this might exist already, but it would be nice to have some cave exploration or mining options along with the world exploration itself.

7) Sailing - Again, I'm still early so this might exist. But those waves look cool, it would be fun to sail across them to get to other lands.

8) Towns with other inhabitants - Another place to meet people and perhaps do quests...or trade? Trade saplings for gold nuggets for example? Though I'm not sure if the game's theme is "You against the world", if it is this might interfere with that. But I don't think it's a terrible concept. Maybe make some sort of alternative inhabitant that could work in its stead? An educated pig for example?

9) Digging Competition/Mining Competition/Chopping competition - Random little competitions to pit you against AI's. Who can finish cutting down some tree field the fastest, mine all the rocks, dig up treasure...Speaking of treasure.

10) Random X marks the spot for treasure chests? - Might be a cool exploration aspect. Random treasure chests littered around the map to be discovered, Filled with randomized goodies.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. If I come up with more ideas I'll put them in here.

Thanks so much for this great game!

[JoeW]

Hi Shingouki!

Thank you for your awesome feedback. I can't go through your post point by point for a couple reasons. First, because I want to be able to say that many of your points are being evaluated, some actually in planning stages already (some announced, some not). We like to keep things a bit of a surprise here, so by saying "some" I get to avoid being specific.

Also, we like to pick apart the community discussion over these types of ideas. There are many people here who have strong opinions and their own ideas about many of the topics you discuss above. (I am sure other members here can point out what has been officially discussed before)

Thanks again for your post. Our development team is very active on our forums here and read just about every post that is made. Please stick around the forums here as we move through beta, I think you will really enjoy what we have coming in the future, and we would enjoy more feedback!

[mobius187]

While I haven't been around from the beginning, I'll voice my opinion and what facts I know. I'm sure other veteran members will chime in with other facts and opinions.

1) Hardcore Mode Option - When I died for the first time I was saddened by my character's passing (a really stupid death too, fought 8 enemies at once with low armor lol), however when I started up again I was expecting to start with a fresh slate. I was disappointed however that I had kept all my research from before.

I personally feel like every playthrough should be a completely fresh slate, ie: Nothing should be carried over through each playthrough. Some people might disagree with me, so as an alternative to this, could you include a hardcore "option"? The difference between regular and hardcore would be that you always start a fresh slate in hardcore. I feel that that sort of change is ideal because it makes death extremely "real".

I hear you. In ways Don't Starve is a very Rogue-like game, where death is permanent, but then you have things like the Meat Effigy for Wilson (who may be considered as "Easy Mode" due to his ability to dodge perma-death) and the fact that inventions/research points carry over into the next game. I'm not sure about hardcore mode, but I would either go with that option or just have it that none of the inventions or RP carry over between games.

I do however enjoy the fact that new content (i.e. new characters) is unlocked when you perish. It makes your efforts seem worthwhile, even when they end in death.

2) Re-randomized World on every playthrough - I'm not 100% sure but it seems like every time I play the game, the world I play in is the same as the first one I began using. Again, I might be wrong about this, but I feel it would be ideal if the world was randomized every time you start a new anything. New character, new game, new world.

Well there is a button on the main menu when you start a game called "Make New World". Unless you press it you replay the last world again. As for the character, that's your choice. I originally played as Wilson (obviously) and when he died I played as Wendy. In fact I'm still playing as Wendy... but there are the new character updates coming up, so we'll see.

3) Scaled Research rewards - This goes alongside Hardcore mode. But it would be nice if you got less experience per each item researched of the same type. For example, researching saplings starts at some value...lets say 10 exp. Then the more you use saplings, the less value in experience it gives... 10,9,7,5, until maybe 3. Then it would stay at that 3 for the rest of that playthrough.

The reasoning I have is, research is setup so that you learn from what you deposit into the machine. After a while of research you will have learned pretty much all you can from the item in question, at which point it cant teach you much else.

Research Points have been a huge issue, and one Kevin has identified as being..."flawed"... in its current state. He has gone on to say that changes will be made to the current system, but I have't seen or heard any of the specifics. The common thread of thought in the community is that RP should be harder to acquire. And yes, the idea of "decreasing returns" has come up as a potential solution. So, for example, you could place Grass inside the machine and it might reward you 5 RP, but then after that every time you put Grass into the science machine it either rewards you with 1, or maybe even 0, RP. Kevin pointed out that there might very well be people out there feeding their science machines Grass just so they can gather 1 RP per... which is super depressing to consider since that would be like hell.

3A) Randomized Research rewards - I think it would be better if the game would pick a random number that was set within a range of two numbers as a maximum and minimum value, with a small chance of giving a critical amount of research experience equal to 10 times the minimum value but no larger than two times the maximum value.

...

This is balanced by the fact that you lose the flowers by throwing them in the machine, so you cant use them for anything else. But it leaves the "gambling" option open for the player.

Well this might give an incentive to players to jam just about anything and everything into their science machines... but it wouldn't necessarily stop them from "grinding for RP", which is a problem. Personally I don't mind that certain items are rated with a higher RP value because they're harder to locate... the only issue is that right now nothing is so difficult to locate, and the RP reward is so high, that the pacing for research is off.

Another suggestion is that RP be done away with and replaced with another system that allows a more natural progression in research. I myself suggested that research be accomplished by collecting "words" from examining the world around you and then combining those words to create ideas, and those ideas become new inventions. Higher tier inventions would be kept out of the player's reach by placing the key words necessary to realize those ideas in more dangerous islands away from where the player initially spawns. And even then you would still need the resources to create the invention.

3) Hotkeys! - Not sure if this exists, but it would be nice to be able to set hotkeys to shortcut your items.

I believe more keyboard commands are in the works, but right now you can use the keyboard to pause/quit (ESC), move (W,A,S,D), rotate the camera (right/left arrow keys), and zoom in/out (down/up arrow keys).

4) Toggleable HUD - This builds on 3. It would be nice to toggle the HUD/specific HUD elements if you want to. Your game does a good job of letting the player know whats going on without having to constantly monitor the HUD.

When you get hungry the game tells you, when night time approaches you get notified, when you can make new items there's a noise to notify you, etc. It'd be nice to add onto this by adding visual cues for when your health is low (character limps/winces/drips blood when health is low), and then the game would be ideal with no HUD.

Playing a game without having to check a HUD is the ultimate in immersion. Plus there's a lot to see in this game at any point in time, so having the ability to have less HUD is better.

Right now the HUD is fairly minimalistic. The day/night cycle (top right) is very important to have displayed, IMHO, as it allows you to track your day and where you should be. I usually know when I need to start running back to my base camp by it. Without it we would be caught at sunset too often, and that cane be the difference between life and death early on.

The hunger and health gauges not only help you track how hungry or hurt you are, but also how effect food is at satiating your hunger and how close you are to being fully healed. The vocal cue for hunger is more to warn you how close you are to starving... and I mean that's the name of the game.

As for the inventory... it does a decent job of staying hidden, but people have discussed moving the invention HUD, as it's used somewhat more infrequently than the other gauges I mentioned.

As for immersion... I find it hard to immerse in any game that isn't first person POV. So the HUD doesn't distract from the experience, rather it is the matter of "screen real estate" that has people concerned.

5) HUD When You Want It - If toggling the HUD off completely won't work, it would be nice to take a more free hand approach. For example, if I'm out hunting/foraging I don't necessarily need my crafting menu. Nor do I necessarily need to see my item slots...

What needs to be seen or not is debatable, however the idea of freeing-up more screen space is always a bonus. And yes, bunnies have hidden among my inventory boxes... and I have minimized my inventory to get a better look before.

6) Caves/Mines - I'm still early in the game so this might exist already, but it would be nice to have some cave exploration or mining options along with the world exploration itself.

I recently brought up the idea, as nothing like this exists yet in the game. However I wasn't the first to suggest it. I believe that there may be technical issues with implementing anything that causes elevation changes or walls. Of course I won't go into detail here as to my suggestions on the topic, so feel free to look for that thread (i.e. Spelunking).

7) Sailing - Again, I'm still early so this might exist. But those waves look cool, it would be fun to sail across them to get to other lands.

Currently water is a "no access" zone, like the areas of dungeons where there are no rooms. It's for this reason that paths connect the islands. Of course the idea of creating boats or rafts has been mentioned, and I recall suggesting something along these lines as a means of transporting a character who has fully explored/conquered their initial islands to be taken to a new set of islands without the need to "Make New Map" and start a new game.

8) Towns with other inhabitants - Another place to meet people and perhaps do quests...or trade? Trade saplings for gold nuggets for example? Though I'm not sure if the game's theme is "You against the world", if it is this might interfere with that. But I don't think it's a terrible concept. Maybe make some sort of alternative inhabitant that could work in its stead? An educated pig for example?

Well I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm against this idea. Then again I hated when NPCs were first introduced into Minecraft. I like the idea that the player is surviving on their own. The pig men are as close to "civilization" as I want to ever see.

9) Digging Competition/Mining Competition/Chopping competition - Random little competitions to pit you against AI's. Who can finish cutting down some tree field the fastest, mine all the rocks, dig up treasure...Speaking of treasure.

Those sound like achievements... if so then you may not see them. I wouldn't entirely be against the idea if it wasn't an achievement. Especially if some of these activities appeared in a game, while others didn't.

10) Random X marks the spot for treasure chests? - Might be a cool exploration aspect. Random treasure chests littered around the map to be discovered, Filled with randomized goodies.

Well it's certainly an idea. I know I recently suggested something like this, but as an addition to beaches (a terrain type none of the islands have at this time).

I hope this helps, but my suggestion is you may find it more helpful to create shorter posts around only one suggestions, as answers all these questions eats up more time than some forum members are willing to spend. Even me... but hey, be sure to keep offering suggestions.

[shingouki]

Hi Shingouki!

Thank you for your awesome feedback. I can't go through your post point by point for a couple reasons. First, because I want to be able to say that many of your points are being evaluated, some actually in planning stages already (some announced, some not). We like to keep things a bit of a surprise here, so by saying "some" I get to avoid being specific.

Also, we like to pick apart the community discussion over these types of ideas. There are many people here who have strong opinions and their own ideas about many of the topics you discuss above. (I am sure other members here can point out what has been officially discussed before)

Thanks again for your post. Our development team is very active on our forums here and read just about every post that is made. Please stick around the forums here as we move through beta, I think you will really enjoy what we have coming in the future, and we would enjoy more feedback!

Hey thanks so much for your reply! I wrote some other posts about the game and suggestions (I'm good at those). You guys are Klei are slowly becoming my second favorite game company :3. Thanks for all your hard work, and keep making great games =].