Can we just talk about the concept of NPCs in DST?

[IronLobster]

With the season finale of ROT, we've been able to see quite a lot of changes in the constant. The one that really caught my attention was Pearl, since it's the first NPC in the game that has a series of quests which are rewarded by... arguably dull stuff for a lot of people. I was not fond of the idea at the beginning but now I think I'd like more of them in the future, perhaps with more challenging and/or fun tasks and more valuable rewards. I was thinking about Mumsy and Billy, imagine them as NPCs in a future where we could trade for some ingredients and other food related items, maybe with it a different cooking system? I personally find the addition of NPCs in the game as a big step, so long as it's not overdone and is actually worth it.

[Mike23Ua]

I believe that Dont starve and DST should be mostly randomly generated as was promised in the product description, if we keep getting NPC’s in pre-determined locations: The game begins to break that promise of randomly generated worlds.

and to a certain degree... it already has. But Pearl isn’t the only NPC in DST, we also have Inn Keeper Guy who has odd fascinations with Beefalo’s & Pig King.

I don’t think an open sandbox game really needs pre-structured quests.. Sandboxes are meant to be do what you want when you want, but with the latest update: to even experience it you need to have done X, X, and Y 

I just want more area’s to explore, new mobs to fight or maybe even tame as pets.. I don’t need NPC’s with Quests to do.

[IronLobster]

22 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I believe that Dont starve and DST should be mostly randomly generated as was promised in the product description, if we keep getting NPC’s in pre-determined locations: The game begins to break that promise of randomly generated worlds.

 

Yet, the pig king is pre-determined to always spawn in the mosaic biome, or dfly will always spawn in the desert, and even then they're all optional stuff. Dfly is not obligatory to progess, nor is the pig king and they're pre-determined to spawn in a very specific biome, same with bee queen. Even with pearl, the sandbox aspect is still in game when her island can spawn anywhere in the ocean. Yes, a sandbox is meant to do whatever you want, but a sense of progress (Like pearl quest line) is absolutely pivotal for late-game replayability. Before ROT mind you, you need to follow said X, Y Z steps in order to fight fuelweaver: Find 8 fossil fragments, fix the marble sculptures and then build their chess figures, then fight the shadow creatures in new moon to get the atrium, then go to the ruins and kill the ancient guardian, then find the atrium and socket the key, etc etc. All of this requires progress, decent gear, and time. It'd be lame if you could just go and fight the fuelweaver without doing any of these steps. With this update you need to follow, again, a series of steps in order to get to the moon storm event, which is late game, and even then ALL of this is optional. You can refuse to fight all giants, fuelweaver, explore the sea, interact with the pig king, hell, you can completely eliminate almost any threat in the world generation menu.