A Sense of Progression

[goblinball]

The "Return of Them" chain of updates introduced a lot of new content to the game, however a decent chunk of it revolved around a new plot line of sorts, a collection of tasks that culminated in a fight against the Celestial Champion. This "quest line" isn't the first of its kind, which was the Ancient Fuelweaver and the tools needed to summon it. These quest lines have created an issue which has been bothering me: Don't Starve Together lacks major progression in both the world and the player, despite the existence of major, overarching storylines with insanely powerful bosses.

If you don't understand what I just said, let me provide an example to both prove my point and help explain what's wrong: the weapon selection. A majority of weapons in Don't Starve Together can be obtained extremely early on. However, some of these weapons (the ham bat and dark sword) are some of the best in the game in both cost and damage, despite being obtained so early on. Once you can reliably get dark swords, that's it for weapon progression, it doesn't get better from here (thulecite club exists but who really uses that). This was perfectly fine before, back in vanilla DS, but with the introduction of stronger bosses and major plot-lines, it has become clear that stronger weapons need to be introduced as well. It baffles me that the weapons a player will use for bosses like deerclops and klaus (4,000 and 15,000 hp respectively) will likely be used on bosses like toadstool and the celestial champion (52,500 and 37,000 hp respectively). This issue applies to armor as well. While thulecite crowns and suits do exist and are objectively better than football helmets late-game, there is a certain threshold where armor is "good enough" due to the power of healing food. If you can get a bunch of blue caps, the only difference armor will make is how often you need to heal, and how much armor you need to carry around. You could use thulecite crowns for later bosses if you wanted to, but it won't realistically make much of a difference. Because of this I would much prefer new weapons than new armor, as new armor would either need to be insanely powerful or require a rework to how armor and healing works and potentially combat itself, and I doubt Klei has the balls to do that.

The other major part of DST which desperately needs progression is the world itself. As of now, the only major parts of the world that change over time (at least what i can remember) are hound waves and tree petrification. Tree petrification doesn't make the world any more challenging, it just makes wood more tedious to get. Hound waves (along with their depths worm counterparts) grow in numbers as the world progresses, which is great. However as far as I know they are the only thing that does this, and even then they could have been executed better (but that's for another day). If there are going to be major lines of progression with bosses that get more challenging the longer it goes, then the world should become more difficult too, both to challenge the player and provide incentive to travel to already-explored areas (assuming these stronger threats would have good drops).

Updates to Don't Starve Together have introduced new boss monsters that have gotten stronger and stronger each update. However, the world along with regular monsters have not gotten these boosts in power, and the player lacks any direct upgrades to combat these new stronger foes (and hypothetical stronger world that they should be fighting). I hope the next updates will resolve this issue, however as of now this is a problem, and it arguably shouldn't have been a problem ever.

[Ohan]

The fact that the celestial altar tab still only has 2 turfs, a bath bomb (which has since been practically rendered obsolete) an axe and a knock off dark sword to its name is so strange to me... where are the moon rock crafts? The opal crafts? The infused moon shard crafts? The lunar crafts using living logs?... compelling crab king drop..? Rain caller item?

i think a lot of people can agree with what you posted here, we’ll just have wait and see i guess.. 

[QuartzBeam]

1 minute ago, Ohan said:

The fact that the celestial altar tab still only has 2 turfs, a bath bomb (which has since been practically rendered obsolete) an axe and a knock off dark sword to its name is so strange to me... where are the moon rock crafts? The opal crafts? The infused moon shard crafts? The lunar crafts using living logs?... compelling crab king drop..? Rain caller item?

i think a lot of people can agree with what you posted here, we’ll just have wait and see i guess.. 

For what it's worth, Moon Shards are too common a material to make powerful crafts on their own. And Infused Moon Shards are a pain to store, so I'll be happy if we never need to use those for crafting. But Moongleams... Moongleams seem like they would be the perfect celestial counterpart to Nightmare Fuel, by virtue of being an ethereal form of Alter's power and having a very long shelf life.

[Cheggf]

I don't see how the bosses that are intentionally designed to be more difficult being more difficult is a problem. Based on the Glass Cutter dealing 68 damage Klei clearly rightfully knows that double damage is as far as a weapon's base strength should go.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

19 minutes ago, Ohan said:

The fact that the celestial altar tab still only has 2 turfs, a bath bomb (which has since been practically rendered obsolete) an axe and a knock off dark sword to its name is so strange to me... where are the moon rock crafts? The opal crafts? The infused moon shard crafts? The lunar crafts using living logs?... compelling crab king drop..? Rain caller item?

i think a lot of people can agree with what you posted here, we’ll just have wait and see i guess.. 

And the funny part is that 2 of these crafts shouldnt be there but in the turf crafting station...

Im still waiting my moonrock hammer

 

 

Edit: on topic, yes is silly to have bosses that, unless you want to make a rush or speedrun, you need several in game years to complete but the world remains the same. Also there is a lot of biomes that are useless in both shards

[Ohan]

9 minutes ago, QuartzBeam said:

For what it's worth, Moon Shards are too common a material to make powerful crafts on their own. And Infused Moon Shards are a pain to store, so I'll be happy if we never need to use those for crafting. But Moongleams... Moongleams seem like they would be the perfect celestial counterpart to Nightmare Fuel, by virtue of being an ethereal form of Alter's power and having a very long shelf life.

I just think the infused moon shards are a really neat material conceptually (like all the lunar materials) and their fickle/hard to store/acquire nature could warrant some interesting and powerful crafts. 

I had forgotten about moongleams but exactly, theres soooooooo much untapped lunar potential

[QuartzBeam]

1 minute ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

And the funny part is that 2 of these crafts shouldnt be there but in the turf crafting station...

Nah, they're right where they ought to be.

The Terra Firma Tamper was used by the Ancients to create natural, "mundane" turfs. You know, dirt, sand, grass, rock, that kind of stuff. 

The two turfs found in the Celestial Tab are anything but mundane. Moon Crater Turf is literally a broken off fragment of Alter's shell (and going off the Vitreoasis, it seems to be made from some sort of crystallized water). Mutated Fungal is, similarly, Blue Fungal Turf that has been corrupted by Alter's influence. It makes perfect sense that you'd need celestial magic to make them.

[Well-met]

The lunar storms are really buggy and bad, especially when you consider all the cool cut concepts for it

[JosePapp]

While I disagree with the arbitrary suggestion of adding more damaging weapons, I think that world progression would be great. 

Storms are already half programmed, what if Blizzards were a thing in winter and they moved around akin to moonstorms (but faster) and you'd need a heat source or goggles to traverse them. (Sort of like in uncompromising mode).

Heck, you could even use that for Spring and add heavy storms too.

 

[Dextops]

11 minutes ago, JosePapp said:

Storms are already half programmed, what if Blizzards were a thing in winter and they moved around akin to moonstorms (but faster) and you'd need a heat source or goggles to traverse them. (Sort of like in uncompromising mode).

idk about the fire pits things like that stopping the storms because it kinda just promotes base sitting for newer players who are still learning so i don't know kinda iffy bout it

[Muzarello]

I would like world progression if it wasnt in the first 100 days or optional in world menu, new player suffer enough with the harsher seasons and late game players who arent base builder dont get much, storms would be cool if not buggy.
I feel that klei is somewhat being too safe about medium mobs and more agressive behavior from mobs. Just a feeling after playing a bunch of hamlet for a while.

[Guille6785]

I don't think stronger weapons and armor locked behind long questlines is the smartest decision because by the time you unlocked them they'd be pointless

if new weapons get added I'd prefer fun mechanics to mess around with than simply higher numerical values

[Maxposting]

6 hours ago, JosePapp said:

Sort of like in uncompromising mode

No.

[JosePapp]

1 hour ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

No.

I understand that mod has some eyebrow raising ideas and that the community around it isn't always perceived in the best light, but among the weird changes are some genuinely good ideas, like the Blizzards,  the rat raids or the bug eating frogs. You gotta give credit where it's due

[goblinball]

21 hours ago, Cheggf said:

I don't see how the bosses that are intentionally designed to be more difficult being more difficult is a problem.

There's a difference between bosses being challenging and bosses having massive healthpools with no stronger weapons to compensate. I understand that bosses which are either "final bosses" like the celestial champion or "superbosses" like toadstool are obviously going to have more hp than earlier bosses like deerclops, however the difference in hp is just too much. This issue becomes even more concerning when you compare these HP values to bosses from DS and its DLC's (large iron hulk from hamlet, a boss which if ported to DST would probably have as much hp as the raid bosses, has 3,000 hp with attacks that do tons of damage [damage values being this high are likely to make up for DS's armor system being different from DST's, but even with this in mind, it's a lot of damage, emphasizing that it is not on the same tier as treegaurds or deerclops], for example). My only explanation for the powercreep which has occurred in DST is that the bosses' hp values have been bloated to compensate for more players, however boss fights with multiple people are still cakewalks and this doesn't consider people who play solo, nor does it solve the issue of only later bosses having bloated hp pools instead of all bosses, which is why I doubt this is the reason. If it was, then it has been executed terribly and I don't see why there couldn't be a boss hp scaling system depending on the number of players. (sorry if I got sidetracked here, most of this probably should have been included in my original post).

13 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

I don't think stronger weapons and armor locked behind long questlines is the smartest decision because by the time you unlocked them they'd be pointless

if new weapons get added I'd prefer fun mechanics to mess around with than simply higher numerical values

I never stated that new tools should be unlocked after you beat the game's most challenging behemoths, but rather they should be obtained before, while still not early game (if the strident trident was actually good, then it would be an example of what I want). Even if these tools were to be obtained after stuff like the celestial champion, they would still have use for miscellaneous farming and day 100+ hound waves, which I've seen people complain about due to how powerful they can become with no combat upgrades to compensate (I am aware tooth traps and houndius exist, however they are a form of automation, not a combat boost. If combat was an option for the earlier hound waves, it should be an option for the later ones, while still making the later ones challenging of course). What I'm about to say should have also been included in my original post, however it still applies even if new tools are provided late (however not too late otherwise part of it doesn't apply) so I will mention it here now that I have the chance: boosts in power would help make the game more enjoyable by making the player feel more powerful. They can now turn the tables and easily defeat enemies which used to be powerful, while still being challenged by late-game threats, this is just how a good progression system works. You can see examples of this in a decent chunk of the games lots of people praise and talk about (Zelda BotW, hollow knight, terraria, etc). I do agree that more weapons with unique mechanics would be preferable over just higher stats. I never said the new tools the player should get had to be boring, just more powerful.

[Cheggf]

31 minutes ago, goblinball said:

There's a difference between bosses being challenging and bosses having massive healthpools with no stronger weapons to compensate.

A higher healthpool is an absolute requirement for the fight to be difficult (unless you want to be a bad game like Warframe and just have the boss invulnerable for 99% of the fight). You could have all the mechanics in the world and have none of it matter if you kill the boss in 10 seconds.

But you do have more damage. A ridiculous amount. You can be Wolfgang with spiced chaud-froid with a bunch of other crap like catapults and just blow through all the fights in a moment if you really like being bored.

33 minutes ago, goblinball said:

This issue becomes even more concerning when you compare these HP values to bosses from DS and its DLC's

The only issue here is the bosses in DSA have far too little health. Punching something for a matter of seconds before it dies isn't particularly fun. I see no issue in the bosses having the health they do, none of the fights drag on (I haven't fought Celestial Champion yet so I don't know if he drags on) and if they died faster it'd be really boring. They're bosses, they shouldn't be felled with little more effort than a common enemy like Deerclops is.