[Poll] On the Midsummer Cawnival, Postmortem

[Theukon-dos]

Very Unsatisfied other.

 

While I don't really mind the event not adding to core gameplay ( I mean it still sucks, but atleast I can ignore it) I still have no idea how this is supposed to be a summer event.

 

Everything is themed around painted eggs and hatchling birds. Sure, carnivals in general tend to be a summer thing, but if you just looked at a list of all the content added, the only reason to not assume that it would be a spring event is the conspicuous lack of rabbits. 

 

Also I'm sorry but the minigames where boring. Egg match and bird feeding where just clicking on the right objects, and the egg chase was super easy to cheese just by building a wall around the game.

[Ohan]

3 hours ago, Gourmand said:

The event was made my one dev

How do we know this? Has this been said anywhere? I thought the tencent deal was supposed to give them more resources 

I wonder if this is why the event was released without skins. Struck me as really odd 

[Hornete]

7 hours ago, Ohan said:

How do we know this? Has this been said anywhere? I thought the tencent deal was supposed to give them more resources 

While i'm not sure where it was said this update was coded by one developer, I wouldn't be surprised. It's not necessarily a bad thing it was only coded by one developer and I think it was very do-able for one dev to do, but that's just my two cents : p

 

[Baark0]

There are some nice building options, but gameplay wise this event is as bare bones as you can get, with the only game changing things being some corn seeds if for some reason you don't feel like planting normal seeds, and some summer insulating clothing that is outclassed by the eyebrella everywhere but the oaisis, and even then you'd still be better off with a thermal stone + ice chester or just going to the caves. I would've liked some new summer things, maybe a miniboss like WF. There was also a distinct lack of skins, and I personally really like skins, as they add more building options to the game, which is what keeps me around in the late game. Cawnival year 1 is a 6/10 for me.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

People miss that these events are made to still having updates meanwhile the team keeps coding important stuff. Is an inversion for future. Next summer we will have this update but klei wont waste much resources or time on it and, instead, will keep with the core gameplay updates.  Same with winter feast or halloween night

I understand that some people dont like those and prefer pure dont starve updates but i think is fresh to have this kind of updates that breakes the survival routine and brings some activities for long term worlds. Ofc i want more exploration and survival updates but these are welcome for what i said about having constant updates but with less effort and time in a future

[Mario384]

4 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

People miss that these events are made to still having updates meanwhile the team keeps coding important stuff. Is an inversion for future. Next summer we will have this update but klei wont waste much resources or time on it and, instead, will keep with the core gameplay updates.  Same with winter feast or halloween night

I understand that some people dont like those and prefer pure dont starve updates but i think is fresh to have this kind of updates that breakes the survival routine and brings some activities for long term worlds. Ofc i want more exploration and survival updates but these are welcome for what i said about having constant updates but with less effort and time in a future

What survival updates?  Outside of the farming rework and character updates (which, again, do tend to take away from the survival aspect due to poor planning), DST has pretty received no survival updates at all.  Over the course of several years, survival DST has gotten:

-Beefalo riding and Ewecus

- Lost Dragonfly in exchange for the Antlion

- A few other small things

Everything they've added pretty much falls under optional content which doesn't really have any impact on the survival experience outside of making it easier should you choose to complete it.  Which, it should be noted, isn't very necessary, since the game still doesn't scale in any notable way past the first year outside of hounds, which usually means that every year passing just means you have more and more tools to make the game easier without any challenge rising up unless you explicitly opt into it yourself.

They spent all this time on the ocean, which is essentially just a bunch of optional content, but unlike Caves, the ocean is a slog to traverse and still very empty, along with being very much detached from the rest of the game overall compared to Caves.  They made side events which gave a glimpse into how things like combat or cooking could have been improved, but then chose to never do anything with it or make an entirely different (and arguably worse) system for it instead.  I've wanted a reason to play Don't Starve Together for years, but as someone who doesn't care about the optional content, I really have no reason to return.  I just want something to change up the survival experience in a positive manner, but I've been left out to dry up.  Its really unfortunate.

 

I just want Through the Ages.

[minespatch]

2 hours ago, Mario384 said:

I just want Through the Ages.

Slipster, please.

[Baark0]

3 hours ago, Mario384 said:

I've wanted a reason to play Don't Starve Together for years, but as someone who doesn't care about the optional content, I really have no reason to return.

The caves and ruins are both optional content, technically pretty much everything in the game is optional, since most problems can be solved by just running away. Sure the oceans are a pain to explore, but since the oceans are so underdeveloped, the only worthwhile thing out there is crab king, pearl, and lunar island, everything else can be skipped. No reason to return is stupid btw, 3 new bosses were added over the course of RoT, so go givem them a try, so many new possibilities have been opened up thanks to RoT, and dubbing it all as "optional content" because the game doesn't force you to do it is horsesh*t. The game doesn't force you to do anything other than eat, carry around a light source, and maintain your temperature. Those aren't very fun things to do, which is why the game has all this other content in it. Maybe give the updates a chance instead of just saying "optional content bad".

[Mario384]

3 hours ago, Baark0 said:

The caves and ruins are both optional content, technically pretty much everything in the game is optional, since most problems can be solved by just running away. Sure the oceans are a pain to explore, but since the oceans are so underdeveloped, the only worthwhile thing out there is crab king, pearl, and lunar island, everything else can be skipped. No reason to return is stupid btw, 3 new bosses were added over the course of RoT, so go givem them a try, so many new possibilities have been opened up thanks to RoT, and dubbing it all as "optional content" because the game doesn't force you to do it is horsesh*t. The game doesn't force you to do anything other than eat, carry around a light source, and maintain your temperature. Those aren't very fun things to do, which is why the game has all this other content in it. Maybe give the updates a chance instead of just saying "optional content bad".

The caves and the ruins are both much better meshed into the actual content of the game, as all you need to do to access the caves is bust open an opening and bring a light.  From there, you can explore the caves as easily as you can the Overworld pretty early into the game, letting you utilize a lot of what the caves can offer earlygame and midgame, when establishing resources for survival are most crucial and impactful.  To explore the ocean, you need to craft a boat and a paddle at bare minimum, and you travel the mostly empty ocean at a snail's pace.  And, as you mentioned, the only content out there is endgame boss content, so you have no reason to utilize the ocean until lategame, when you're already well-off and as previously mentioned, the game no longer has anything but the optional content to challenge you with.

Also, your point about the game only forcing you to interact with 3 things is misleading.  In order to not starve, you have to interact with a good amount of the game's mechanics in order to provide food for yourself.  Both the mainland and the caves offer something to aid in this goal as early as the start of the game, so you're encouraged to interact with both, pretty good design.  Meanwhile, the ocean doesn't really have anything to offer you until much later.

As for the other two points, similar logic.  You'll need to get materials in order to perform both of them, which once again enforces interaction with the game's core mechanics.  Plus, there's so so so much more you just forgot to mention:

- Maintaining your health and sanity

- Fighting off mobs which seek you out (hounds, the giants, and similar)

- Constructing a base in order to optimize other tasks

- Obtaining new tools in order to ensure that seasonal changes don't screw you over

...and certainly more.  By the time I'm ready to explore the ocean and actually utilize what I can find in it, chances are I don't really need anything I could obtain from them anymore, they only serve to make the loop of doing the same thing over and over again every season easier, which honestly isn't all that necessary by that point in the game.

Now, if there was additional necessary challenges later into the game to make obtaining those boss items actually worth my time, perhaps I wouldn't be so critical.  But the reality of the situation is that you probably can go forever in DST if you're capable of surviving a year, since again, the game doesn't get any harder nor throw anything at you that you haven't seen before.  Remember: this is a survival game at heart.  While its nice and all to have all this optional content you have to force yourself into to ever see the effects of it, if I wanted to do stuff in that vein there's a lot of games that do that way better than DST is fundamentally built to.

 

Also, as a footer note: I did fight the new bosses, and I think they're pretty awful.  Malbatross is extremely annoying to fight and so is Crab King, mainly because I don't think boat combat in DST is fun at all (although I'd say both have more issues with them than just that, but they stem from being fought on-boat).  While the moon altar guy tries to do what fuelweaver does, it has an infinitely more boring design than fuelweaver does both visually and attack-wise, and I certainly don't think its worth the time investment to fight it.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

4 hours ago, Mario384 said:

What survival updates?

ANR and RoT which add things to the core gameplay

i didnt said that they added survival updates, i said i want them

[TheDoughboy1917]

It was a cute little event, nothing spectacular, but cute. I don't know if this is going to get any kind of addition, I don't really see what they could add anyway.

In all honesty I would really love to see another game event, like the Forge and Gorge, get released again. I know those weren't everyone's cup of tea but I thought it was so unique and a nice change of pace if you wanted to take a break from the regular gameplay.

[minespatch]

4 hours ago, TheDoughboy1917 said:

In all honesty I would really love to see another game event, like the Forge and Gorge, get released again

Not sure how long a hiatus the devs would need to take to make a new event.

[Sunset_Liddel]

i guess it was a cute event probably people expected more from it but i thought it was cool and hey we got to meet crown people probably normal crowns that involved somewhere in the constant i guess

[rainman895]

On 7/11/2021 at 7:10 AM, Mario384 said:

 

I've read all of your posts in this thread and after thinking for a while I gotta agree with pretty much everything you said. 

1) Crab King is objectively a bad boss fight gameplay wise though it has a lot of awesome ideas. 

2) As of now ocean content is barebones and sailing feels clunky BUT i expect ocean to be more diverse in the future update arc

3) Summer Cawnival isn't even about summer and doesn't really add anything to the game. Character reworks sometimes just don't work in some aspects. 

4) Malbatross though? It's definitely annoying to even summon this guy let alone fight it

5) Celestial Champion is not as interesting as its shadow counterpart - Ancient Fuelweaver. I remember when Klei made complex puzzles filled with secrets, it made lore so exciting, but with the Champion we only got 1 short video

6) A lot of new content feels optional because it was made that way, I think it's understandable but it's a double edged sword: on one hand old timers won't have problems playing the game without even trying something new however all of the new content just becomes redundant. 

7) Finally we haven't got much updates that would refresh our everyday survival experience or add something new to it. Out of all updates in RoT RWYS was the only one to do that.

It's a good thing that developers are in touch with players so i hope they will address the criticism in some way

On 7/10/2021 at 2:59 AM, minespatch said:

I want to see the crows be more villainous in the future.

 

On 7/10/2021 at 4:20 AM, Szczuku said:

What I don't like: the way it was all executed. Crows brought absolutely nothing to the table regarding lore despite the fact that they're an intelligent humanoid species. They say nothing of value, have little to no idle aniations and interactions and don't wander too far from the tree. Their cawnival decorations could be a bit more crude. I'd be fine with cawnival if it was something along the lines of 'survivors and crows try to create a cheery environment with what limited resources they have' not 'survivors purchase a bunch of brand new, silky smooth, fresh stuff'. If for exaple instead of plastic banners they used colorful leaves and vines. The cawnival setpiece ends up looking way too packed and cramped since most of the decorations are just those dumb little miniatures.

Making crows more mysterious or even menacing would be an awesome idea. As we all know these giant beaked humanoid crows just came out of nowhere and made survivors play their games for no reason. What are their goals? Where did they get all this stuff? Why are they intelligent species even though we can butcher normal crows and keep them imprisoned? 

If the design of the crows and their stuff would also complement this idea of "something is off":  decorations made out of dirt and twigs, minigames made out of clockwork monster parts and etc then I'd give that update a solid 5/10

[minespatch]

46 minutes ago, rainman895 said:

As we all know these giant beaked humanoid crows just came out of nowhere and made survivors play their games for no reason. What are their goals?

They already seemed hostile the way the younger crows kept being snide about my decorating. So there's that. 

[JazzyGames]

Considering the last RoT update added tons of lore, gameplay, and completely rewrote the endgame, I suppose I was ready for an update that just added lots of pretty trees n swag for my base.

[goblinball]

I personally think that midsummer cawnival isn’t a very enjoyable event, the mini games are simplistic and boring, the decorations are too brightly colored, and the music is just awful (when I heard the main menu music for the first time I thought there was something wrong with my headphones). Despite this, I don’t believe this was a disappointing event. This is an event, not a seasonal overhaul. If you expected a new boss along with tons of new summer-related content, this is clearly the first event you have ever participated in. I think in terms of amount of content added, this event demolishes hallowed nights and winters feast. Compare hallowed night’s trinkets, candies, and crafting tab no one ever uses to the cawnival; it’s ridiculous. Plus, the cawnival doesn’t actively make life easier like winter’s feast increased Klaus spawns or hallowed night’s potions (seriously nobody uses these but some of them are pretty good). These major benefits should not be seasonally exclusive, i much prefer the lunar new year’s and the cawnival’s bonus games for fun instead of hallowed night’s and winter’s feast’s major gameplay-effecting items and events. I do agree that summer desperately needs more to it, but I don’t think adding said summer content alongside a seasonal event is the most logical time to add it.

[CameoAppearance]

I thought it was fun and cute. It didn't blow me away, but I was entertained and it lived up to my expectations. I wish it had either lasted longer or been named something different, since June is more like the beginning of summer than the middle, but that's a pretty trivial complaint in the grand scheme of things. The crow people are an interesting addition to the lore and I'm curious whether they're going to show up again or if it's just this one event.

I do think it would have been cool if the event had some kind of substantial mechanical boon in it, like the mad science machine from Hallowed Nights or Klaus spawning in all in-game seasons during Winter's Feast, but on the other hand those features weren't in the first year of those events and the Cawnival might get something similarly useful in on a future go-round.

[minespatch]

9 minutes ago, CameoAppearance said:

I wish it had either lasted longer or been named something different,

That's why I was confused by Summer Solstice. I was expecting something like that but instead we got a late Easter event.