Summer sucks

[Primalflower]

12 minutes ago, Well-met said:

everybody in this thread knows about flingos. We use them all the time.

The issue at hand is summer is simply tiresome. Babysitting flingos is not fun, building around flingos is not fun, wasting gears is not fun. If it weren't for their extremely abusable mob freezing power, flingos would literally have no purpose but to make summer a little bearable. Literally 80% of the playerbase handles summer by not even putting up with it, as they crawl to the caves until it's over.

"stay away from your base" holds no weight at all for a point.

I never said this was super enticing gameplay or how it has to be, i already stated that i am very open to things changing...i literally just wanted to clarify that things all over the world don't burn if you're near them...they only burn if they're loaded, which is about a screen + a bit more offscreen...so you can technically just flingo what is important and then stay away from everything else to protect what you can see...

15 minutes ago, Well-met said:

try creating a brand new world that starts on summer. you'll pull your hair out like no other situation would make you. Even a starter winter world isn't nearly as bad.

I have many times, both by just joining pubs that had already gotten to summer or just making a new world by myself...it's really not as weighted in winters favor as you think, especially just starting out and considering caves...

[ArubaroBeefalo]

2 minutes ago, Sunset Skye said:

Even if someone personally disables a bad feature, Klei is going to keep balancing the game around it because it's a part of the default settings. See: stone fruit bushes having special disease mechanics. In these cases I'd rather the bad features just be removed.

Bad feature or a feature that some of you dont enjoy? For me is a feature that has all the sense and without it what would you add? Another boss? Only the easy overheating? There is a lot of way to combat that "bad" feature 

[QuartzBeam]

"Uncompromising Survival"

If I had a dollar bill for every time someone used that tired marketing slogan to justify every bad mechanic Klei comes up with, there would be a mountain of money piled up to my chin.

 

Smoldering does not provide any meaningful challenge. All it does is go against the game's sandbox nature (which, you know, the devs wrote a whole article about, not just a 2-word slogan) by railroading the player into one of 3 options:

1. Spend 2 hours holed up in the oasis.
2. Spend 2 hours holed up in the caves.
3. Stick to making small, compact bases that require a manageable number of flingos, so none of that fancy base building that a big chunk of the community clearly loves.

[Notecja]

This is going to be hard get all in once: fun AND challenging AND not punishing survival during summer.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

4 minutes ago, QuartzBeam said:

"Uncompromising Survival"

If I had a dollar bill for every time someone used that tired marketing slogan to justify every bad mechanic Klei comes up with, there would be a mountain of money piled up to my chin.

 

Smoldering does not provide any meaningful challenge. All it does is go against the game's sandbox nature (which, you know, the devs wrote a whole article about, not just a 2-word slogan) by railroading the player into one of 3 options:

1. Spend 2 hours holed up in the oasis.
2. Spend 2 hours holed up in the caves.
3. Stick to making small, compact bases that require a manageable number of flingos, so none of that fancy base building that a big chunk of the community clearly loves.

Then they should change the slogan to friendly building sandbox because the survival aspect is so nerfed when you can survive all the season with nitre, grass, twiggs, an umbrella and a thermal stone

6 minutes ago, QuartzBeam said:

Smoldering does not provide any meaningful challenge

Like anything outside of boss fights?

They are made to put in danger your resourced. It could be frustrating but there is things to do in summer like going to the ruins, sea or oasis instead of being confortable in base. I do big bases and i need to stop to build because of this feature but is what makes summer the difficult one. If you loss your base because of fire you could be done without resources and structures

Again, turn in off and let people enjoy the game as it is made

[QuartzBeam]

3 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Again, turn in off and let people enjoy the game as it is made

CHANGE BAD.

FIRE PRETTY.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Just now, QuartzBeam said:

CHANGE BAD.

FIRE PRETTY.

Fire purifies

[xxXolot]

4 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Fire purifies

@ArubaroBeefalo is actually Willow in disguise.

[Mike23Ua]

This is where there needs to be additional game modes for this game- because unlike the op.. I agree, summer DOES Suck but only to a degree... it needs more content- Not Removal of content that’s already there.

I don’t think they ever intended for you to go around building bases the span of the entire damn map, I mean it’s great if you want to do that.. host mega base builder mode 3000- But some people like myself are crazy, some of us actually LIKE the destruction Summer Brings- And want more of it, Ahem..

LOTS MORE OF IT. 
Why? Summer is currently the last & final weather season you will experience (unless Klei decides to add more seasons later) in what is supposed to be an uncompromising wilderness survival game: 

to even MAKE It to Summer you have to Survive a angry Deerclops and freezing in Winter, Frequent lightning strikes, Moose Goose nests, Endless rains of Frogs, Beefalo in Heat, And a Hungry Bearger.

This is the last and final season in the game and it’s time it felt that way... it NEEDS to be the most challenging thing you’ll endure.. 

If you want your mega base, fine... do it in a less forgiving mode, but I want sinkholes that get so hot they blister up with lava & then explode into lava pools capable of spawning dragonfly larvae or Forge Magma Golems.

1 hour ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Removing content can be constructive if you think the entire thing should change, or if you think it does more harm than good by existing.

Ahem removing content- destroys the game I bought and enjoy for the game it was, NOT the game people who don’t like it want it to become... 

if you don’t like it, turn it OFF problem solved, but don’t campaign for its entire removal for the people who do.

Klei listens to their fanbase but nowadays they may be listening a little too much- if they see enough summer hate, it’ll go the way of disease.

Disease was annoying, but it should’ve been so much more to it: And I hope someday they reintroduce Disease 2.0 rather then removing stuff- let’s make it better.

And in Summers case: as the last and final season you endure, it’s time it felt that way.

[Nettalie]

Honestly nobody can convince me that wildfires are a justified feature that deserves to stay.

It is basically the same thing as disease, except it's been around for longer and thus it is established as one of the defining things in this game, when really all it adds to the game is more tedium than necessary, horribly obnoxious punishment for one small mistake (even more-so than the rest of the game, a single death isn't nearly as punishing as burning down a large part of your base you spend building up and refining) and making me want to just turn it off every single time.

"But it's challenging!"
No it is not. You can just avoid the entire mechanic by sitting around in one place the entire season. Either that or only building a miniscule base, so everything is covered within a flingo's range. At that point it only serves to screw with megabasers.

"But it's the last season so it should be more punishing!" 
The seasons cycle through each year, I don't think summer could be considered the "last" season at that point really, not to mention following up what is hands down the most punishing season with the least threatening season in the game just sounds... wrong in the first place.

"But you can just toggle it off!"
Correct! Just like disease, except like I said before, wildfires have been established for way longer and thus many just do not perceive them as a bad mechanic, but rather just as a "Don't Starve kinda thing", sorta like hound waves in my opinion (I will not go into why I do not like hound waves, this was just pretty much the only similar example I could think of).

Hell, I don't even see what function wildfires serve in a pure survival setting! The game at its core is very very much designed around first time experiences and learning to overcome whatever the game throws at you, adapting to new threats.
Nothing other than potentially seeing a flingomatic in the science tab would telegraph wildfires being a thing in the slightest, and if you do not have one, or enough ice, or gears, the game basically just tells you to prepare better for this event you could not have foreseen in your next run, and don't tell me you can just build this stuff back up, it'd burn down again anyways before you could set up proper protection against it. 
Compare this to the other seasons which while still harsh, at least still leave you the option to seek out a way of dealing with the threat they present. You could very realistically be caught off-guard by winter or spring and still manage to survive and potentially even be able to gather more resources, while summer either requires you to start over entirely or wait in one of 2 locations the entire time.

"But this gives you opportunity to explore caves!"
Yeah, but in doing so I am basically forced to neglect everything on the surface the entire season as oppose to just letting me tackle the caves at my own pace and keep working on stuff above ground until I would like to go there.

Sorry for the quite frankly very rambley comment but hhhhh I just really do not like wildfires and I can't understand why people cling on to them like this.

[GenomeSquirrel]

41 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Bad feature or a feature that some of you dont enjoy? For me is a feature that has all the sense and without it what would you add? Another boss? Only the easy overheating? There is a lot of way to combat that "bad" feature 

how many spontaneous fires have you seen for it to make sense to you? if you have something on that tree combusting I'd be interested, but generally people and dry lightning are common fire causes, so you can't just say its existence proves your point.

as for what could replace it, plants and insects are at their prime, they have tons of potential

[ArubaroBeefalo]

6 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

how many spontaneous fires have you seen for it to make sense to you?

Enough to realise that is a good feature to punish people that arent prepare. Many times i needed to farm something that i didnt farm at time making me go to certain spot and it result in fires putting in danger resoruces

I get that isnt the best feature but i dont want an end like the one disease get (which i think was bad when they could make it turned off by default)

They can make it to dont burn stuff that isnt in the screen (come on, is easy to stop fire if you spot it and you are prepare with the many tools to counter it) and to compensate add insects like you said but i dont think the way to fix stuff in the way is just adding mobs to fill the emptyness of removed festures. Is like having another boss for farms because now we dont have disease... i mean, there is already too much bosses and not so much new mechanics (i like lord of the flies but it has no impact at all)

Summer should give more reward to compensate the danger but the danger itself is good in my opinion. Is just that summer is boring because there isnt so much to do except killing a boss with a single drop (only nearly useful if you play with others or if you need insanity without purple amulets or bone helm), flowers to get seashells or a mediocre dish and fishing in the oasis (which isnt so usefull without winterfeast activated)

I dont really get why people dont like the game forcing you to leave burnable biomes or take the risk. I get that taking the risk for nothing or being at day 4k where you only want to build but if you like to build (the big issue with this feature + nonrenewable rources which can easily be fixed) you can also build a summer base in the caves and another in the oasis. It adds that building incentive to think about new themes and set pieces, at least for me.

Also the best season in general terms (unless you want wetness to use volt goat jelly) to clean the ruins is summer due to the lack of rains,  not having nothing better to do in the surface and the duration of this cleaning unless you are wolf, wigfrid or wendy 

Rpv. I dont think wildfires is a problem if you have icestaff, water balloons or luxury fan

The problem is losing berrybushes and other resources and not having nothing to do to justify taking the risk which cause boredoom in long term worlds

Removing it for these problems easily fixeable is like killing flyes with cannons

[Mike23Ua]

20 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

how many spontaneous fires have you seen for it to make sense to you? if you have something on that tree combusting I'd be interested, but generally people and dry lightning are common fire causes, so you can't just say its existence proves your point.

as for what could replace it, plants and insects are at their prime, they have tons of potential

You don’t replace staple franchise features just because a handful of players dislike them, Summer has a little more to it then JUST Wildfires.

Animals get so hot they spontaneously combust into Morsels.. it therefore makes sense that tree’s are going to go up in flames.

And I see Wildfires as being no more or less destructive as lightning strikes.

(blah blah blah but Lightning rod exists!) that may be true... but unless you plan to plant one every few feet in a forest- Lightning can still hit and set fire to a tree, and used to: the entire forest.

Recent sweeping changes to the game have changed that significantly lately: Spring rains now drastically reduce the potential of lightning strikes to spread.

The TL:DR their clearly Casualizing Don’t Starve- And I Don’t Like It.

I can only hope and pray they have plans for a harder mode or something, because at this point: I can say goodbye to summer wildfires, spontaneously combusting rabbits, and fire hounds coming to wreck things.

Proper care for your worlds and it’s resources should be a priority in an uncompromising wilderness survival game- you don’t just hunt some hunt tracks  to locate a new herd of a species you weren’t careful enough to avoid letting go extinct in your world.

[Souper]

3 hours ago, Lbphero said:

the point still stands that if you just keep your distance from things then they won't burn

I addressed this in the original post. The point of this being that I believe the design of "staying away from the thing you're trying to maintain and upkeep the most" is quite stupid.

3 hours ago, Lbphero said:

just...build a flingomatic on your base and stay away from things that arent flingomatic'd...are we really gonna extend this thread for 5 pages because you guys don't understand that staying away from things that you don't want to smolder is something that you can and should do? jeez...

also, summer lasts 15 days normally...

So just don't build things that can go outside of the range of a flingo? I understand this game is supposed to be "uncompromising." But there is literally nothing fun about a game that makes you constantly refill a bunch of flingos out of fear of losing potentially irrecoverable resources.

[CremeLover]

18 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

You don’t replace staple franchise features just because a handful of players dislike them, Summer has a little more to it then JUST Wildfires.

Animals get so hot they spontaneously combust into Morsels.. it therefore makes sense that tree’s are going to go up in flames.

And I see Wildfires as being no more or less destructive as lightning strikes.

(blah blah blah but Lightning rod exists!) that may be true... but unless you plan to plant one every few feet in a forest- Lightning can still hit and set fire to a tree, and used to: the entire forest.

Recent sweeping changes to the game have changed that significantly lately: Spring rains now drastically reduce the potential of lightning strikes to spread.

The TL:DR their clearly Casualizing Don’t Starve- And I Don’t Like It.

I can only hope and pray they have plans for a harder mode or something, because at this point: I can say goodbye to summer wildfires, spontaneously combusting rabbits, and fire hounds coming to wreck things.

Proper care for your worlds and it’s resources should be a priority in an uncompromising wilderness survival game- you don’t just hunt some hunt tracks  to locate a new herd of a species you weren’t careful enough to avoid letting go extinct in your world.

The problem is not how destructive they are, but how they are dealt with.

Lightning rod has a HUGE range, and can cover beyond your whole screen, plus it requires no maintenance, my entire base is filled with those.

Smoldering on the other hand, can only be dealt with flingomatics, that requires proportional amount of fuel in terms of how many flingos you want, and they cover much less range than a lightning rod.

I'm not asking for smoldering to go away, just the way to fight it be a bit less resource intensive. The problem with disease was the need to babysit your plants constantly, else your entire resource spawners would be gone. Heck, there are ways to extinguish fires, just give us a fire alarm whenever smoldering happens so we can tell what's going on and not just miss it before going on a trip and return to a burned base.

 

 

 

 

Also small mention that there's a big tell in your screen with a lightning strike appears, plus a sound effect, whereas smoldering is a very subtle effect and it can happen anywhere near you, even if you don't see it.

[MondayNight]

In past I complained about apparently belligerent, combat-oriented players prone to exaggerating importance of very-harsh in-game conditions, theoretically - through repeated topic/post requests - tilting the scales too much (imo) towards pure Survival, to the detriment of DST's Sandbox facet. I dubbed such players "try-hards" that more-or-less desire a certain DST's transformation in some giant Battle Arena with constant threats via harder and more frequent various mob (even boss) waves. Now (not actually now, but for some time) another group of people, one prone to playing game quite lax - even long-term fans of Creative mode-play (spawning stuff via Console in God Mode), lobby more-and-more for removal of diverse threats making Survival what it is, seeming tilting scale in the other direction, towards "Beefs & Critters fashion social tea party" Sandbox leisure. I for one don't believe this should be the direction DST should go to. More-so as for years game difficulty went down further-and-further. I get KLei might wish to cater to wider audience. But atm we have a lot of content leaning in Sandbox direction and too little for Survival. If Wildfires/Smoldering - that teaches players the consequences of environmental and base-protection recklessness, "morphing" plants plus structures into Charcoal & Ash - go the way of Disease, it will subtract even more from game Survival aspect. We need balance all around; currently there's more content geared toward optional end-game Sandbox, way more than Survival one.

On the other hand, if Wildfires/Smoldering get tweaked or replaced by other more-interesting Summer mechanic, I for one would be relatively satisfied (depending on the result of course).

[Alements]

My problem with summer is that currently there is no effective method to prevent summers wildfires. Flingos are expensive and do not cover a lot of space, watering cans were nice but still ineffective on larger bases. Also i don't like the face that summer is wildfires and antlion.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Just now, Alements said:

My problem with summer is that currently there is no effective method to prevent summers wildfires

Scott said that they will add a way to summon rain so maybe we will forget about wildfires in an elegant way

[GenomeSquirrel]

41 minutes ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

More-so as for years game difficulty went down further-and-further. I get KLei might wish to cater to wider audience. But atm we have a lot of content leaning in Sandbox direction and too little for Survival. If Wildfires/Smoldering - that teaches players the consequences of environmental and base-protection recklessness, "morphing" plants plus structures into Charcoal & Ash - go the way of Disease, it will subtract even more from game Survival aspect. We need balance all around; currently there's more content geared toward optional end-game Sandbox, way more than Survival one.

On the other hand, if Wildfires/Smoldering get tweaked or replaced by other more-interesting Summer mechanic, I for one would be relatively satisfied (depending on the result of course).

It’s always weird that people lump stationary box placement in with survival and difficultly. I could understand food, weather, and economy (I could accept wood and rocks as this games economy), but the only value I’ve seen in flingos is that sometimes players will coordinate getting the different materials.

[Mike23Ua]

I don’t like being given problems and then also turning right back around and having permanent solutions to those problems. It kinda defeats the entire purpose.

What I would like instead- is more mode choices: We have Survival, Wilderness & Endless, why not No Sweat & Hardcore?

Instead of removing game features, how about we instead give people more control over them? Don’t like X feature? Turn it off problem solved, hate Boss fights with tons of health that you don’t have the time to overprepare for but would enjoy fighting those otherwise unique battles? Tune them more to your liking to still be just challenging enough to you... but not complete cakewalks.

Want to learn the game at your own pace without dying to insanity, freezing etc? Turn on No Sweat Mode.

Want to reinforce the “Uncompromising” label of the game? Play on Hardcore mode-

Klei has a game that if they put more time and focus into THIS: 

Really has a chance to cater to people of various playstyles & difficulty preferences. 
Im not going to tell people they can’t disable Insanity and Shadow monsters- if they want to build a Mega Base and live with Catcoons that’s them.. let them enjoy it-

But what I’m NOT going to let happen is have existing features, changed... modified or removed completely to better benefit them- We should have control over that ourselves and not just have Klei say-

“People hated disease & found it boring so we opted to remove it.”

Instead what should become Klei’s priority is to maybe once every 2-3 months- or once every QOL update: Give that menu a good look over, & continue to improve and expand upon it over time.

For example: some people HATE fire hounds & want them changed, other people enjoy fire hounds and want them to stay.

The compromise should be: fire hound variant- More, less, none, or Flames do not spread.

Klei shouldn’t just remove something because people don’t like it- if they did that: It wouldn’t be Klei’s game anymore- it would be a game Klei is making based on what other people want.

And I don’t want that: I want the game Klei envisioned themselves- but if they want to provide OPTIONAL Modes or improve that menu with each QoL, I certainly wouldn’t be complaining.

Its only when features get out right removed completely- THAT is when I complain.

[Souper]

1 hour ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

In past I complained about apparently belligerent, combat-oriented players prone to exaggerating importance of very-harsh in-game conditions, theoretically - through repeated topic/post requests - tilting the scales too much (imo) towards pure Survival, to the detriment of DST's Sandbox facet. I dubbed such players "try-hards" that more-or-less desire a certain DST's transformation in some giant Battle Arena with constant threats via harder and more frequent various mob (even boss) waves. Now (not actually now, but for some time) another group of people, one prone to playing game quite lax - even long-term fans of Creative mode-play (spawning stuff via Console in God Mode), lobby more-and-more for removal of diverse threats making Survival what it is, seeming tilting scale in the other direction, towards "Beefs & Critters fashion social tea party" Sandbox leisure. I for one don't believe this should be the direction DST should go to. More-so as for years game difficulty went down further-and-further. I get KLei might wish to cater to wider audience. But atm we have a lot of content leaning in Sandbox direction and too little for Survival. If Wildfires/Smoldering - that teaches players the consequences of environmental and base-protection recklessness, "morphing" plants plus structures into Charcoal & Ash - go the way of Disease, it will subtract even more from game Survival aspect. We need balance all around; currently there's more content geared toward optional end-game Sandbox, way more than Survival one.

On the other hand, if Wildfires/Smoldering get tweaked or replaced by other more-interesting Summer mechanic, I for one would be relatively satisfied (depending on the result of course).

This is mostly a silly argument though. Just because a feature represents the playstyle you think should have more representation, it doesn't make that feature a good representation of that playstyle (e.g. wildfires are not a good survival feature based on the current implementation)

[Maxposting]

I want the bloody season to have lighter colorcubes.
It's literally the darkest season overlay and light wise.

[MondayNight]

54 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

It’s always weird that people lump stationary box placement in with survival and difficultly. I could understand food, weather, and economy (I could accept wood and rocks as this games economy), but the only value I’ve seen in flingos is that sometimes players will coordinate getting the different materials.

There are more ways than just Flingos to counter Wildfires.

 

16 minutes ago, Souper said:

This is mostly a silly argument though. Just because a feature represents the playstyle you think should have more representation, it doesn't make that feature a good representation of that playstyle (e.g. wildfires are not a good survival feature based on the current implementation)

I haven't written anywhere that "wildfires are a good survival feature based on the current implementation". In general am ok with them, as I've adapted. My point was "If Wildfires/Smoldering ... go the way of Disease, it will subtract even more from game Survival aspect." Aka If Smoldering is removed as a whole without any substitute/reiteration, like some in this thread suggested or implied. Imo Wildfires as a mechanic may benefit from some tweaks. "Evolution, not Revolution". Accent on "may". And further Summer elements added, like what I pointed at in my first post.

I could also indicate Ruins riding as a consistent source of Gears (usually around 20-40 per complete looting) for 10-20 Flingos that I believe can cover more than 1 biome with ease (In case mega-basing is your goal). As for fuel, Charcoal from controlled burning is plenty to power all of them. Then again, is my subjective assessment as "incredibly oppressive" is your very particular pov.

[Maxposting]

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

to even MAKE It to Summer you have to Survive a angry Deerclops and freezing in Winter, Frequent lightning strikes, Moose Goose nests, Endless rains of Frogs, Beefalo in Heat, And a Hungry Bearger.

what

[Lukmendes]

Smoldering is the biggest reason I don't bother with summer anymore.

Before I either lived in Oasis, fishing for stuff, or just made mini bases around with Endothermic Fire Pits to avoid overheating, to avoid overheating and not burn the main base, either option was pretty meh as I was essentially waiting for it to end so I can enjoy the more fun seasons.

Now, the problem isn't just the difficulty of smoldering, I find caves hard to deal with, and since I'm not that good, sometimes it's even harder 'cause I screw myself, but caves end up being fun because of the exclusive content it has, meanwhile, Summer only has the annoyance of smoldering, Oasis Desert having that sandstorm which you need to waste your time fishing to get two blueprints, praying to RNG it won't take too long so you can move around normally on it, and there's no cooking options with Endothermic Fires, so unlike campires, you can't use your time to cook while waiting for the temperature change, unless you a campfire for that.

So yeah, while I think smoldering is the worst thing in summer, it just doesn't have anything worth it to balance out the difficulty, it's just a bland season overall, and I honestly think that adding fun content in it is more important than getting rid of some annoyances (Though I really wish it wasn't such a pain in the ass to get Desert Goggles, having to rely on RNG when fishing to get one blueprint is bad enough, but you have to do it twice? Come on... At least have another way to get them).