What Game Design means and why it matters

[Mysterious box]

6 hours ago, Shosuko said:

Its kinda hard to argue a game with overwhelmingly positive reviews has bad game design for the same reason its hard to argue a beloved story is actually written "wrong."  If people are entertained by an entertainment, in what way has it failed?

As some have said - maybe its not for you.

There are some games where you get ramped up into what the game wants you to do and you quickly do that thing until the game is over.  DST is not that type of game.  To start with the developers specifically designed the game to NOT tell you what to do so that you could figure that part out yourself.  Some people might immediately go to the combat tab, fighting their way through any enemies they find.  Others might avoid enemies and combat entirely, preferring to seek out key resources like armor, healing, and allies.  The point of DST is that you decide what "playing the game" is.

One thing I like to do in DST is disable my attack button and see how I can fair.

I'd recommend reading up on Emergent Gameplay - its something the video you linked doesn't realize is a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_gameplay

Techincally a game being good it having good game design are not synonymous a game can be really well designed and still be bad and vice versa. Personally I love dst and consider it a great sandbox game but not a good survival game.

Edit: I hate when that happens lol

[BezKa]

3 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Snip

Something went wrong here, buddy

[Yuuko]

53 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Techincally a game being good it having good game design are not synonymous a game can be really well designed and still be bad and vice versa. Personally I love dst and consider it a great sandbox game but not a good survival game.

Edit: I hate when that happens lol

tfw: food critique calls favorite food place in town rubbish because he is classically trained and the peasants don't know what they really like anyway...

[AlternateMew]

21 hours ago, x0-VERSUS-1y said:

What you point out with your video is the fundamental difference between "gamers" and "normies" more than anything. "Gamers" usually started playing games regularly at a young age, when one learns very quickly, has a lot of energy and free time, can experiment a lot (hence why they play a lot of genres and are proficient at it). "Normies" or "casuals" often dwell into games later in life and do so sparsely. They learn them harder, more-so since the interests' pyramid has other stuff on its lower levels. That's why they more-often-than-not need assistance, tutorials and "Easy Modes".

This is extremely interesting to me and now it makes a bit more sense that the newer format of mobile games and their easiness seems to have seeped into many non-mobile games. I admit it bothered me that a lot of games nowadays treat people like babies who can't handle anything remotely difficult without handholding. 

It makes more sense now. And makes me hopeful that games will return to what they were as gaming becomes a lot more mainstream and more people are gaming young while their late-intro easymode parents let them play video games. 

(I'm not saying easymode should not exist. I'm saying easymode should not be the only option, and certainly does not need to always be the default option. Just like in DS/T it isn't the default option.)

[Mike23Ua]

32 minutes ago, AlternateMew said:

This is extremely interesting to me and now it makes a bit more sense that the newer format of mobile games and their easiness seems to have seeped into many non-mobile games. I admit it bothered me that a lot of games nowadays treat people like babies who can't handle anything remotely difficult without handholding. 

It makes more sense now. And makes me hopeful that games will return to what they were as gaming becomes a lot more mainstream and more people are gaming young while their late-intro easymode parents let them play video games. 

(I'm not saying easymode should not exist. I'm saying easymode should not be the only option, and certainly does not need to always be the default option. Just like in DS/T it isn't the default option.)

Hahahaha yeah uhm no.. sorry that’s never going to happen, In fact some game developers have already taken advantage of players who are too lazy to actually PLAY the game & just want to get the best stuff in the easiest ways possible (pay to win, battle pass level skips for a price, Source crystals & reforge tokens for a full price 160$ Injustice 2 game) Developers saw that people were actually willing to pay money to NOT play the game & just get the rewards so they took that ball & ran with it.

I get that DS/DST is supposed to be a no hand holding game.. but I think in certain areas of the game maybe just a “tiny” bit of hand holding wouldn’t hurt.. and what I mean by that is NOT tutorials or flashing waypoint markers telling you what to do..

but instead rather: Maybe we can get some standardized QoL features such as a SEARCH button for the crafting tab to type in what I want to find/build & be taken to that area of the tabs instantaneously rather than having to sit and scroll through each tab till you find whatever it is your trying to build- only to realize you DONT have the ingredients required in crafting that.. and you also can’t tell from the little picture if that ingredient the recipe wants is Cookie Cutter Shells or Moon Glass.

In single player DS this wasn’t important because scrolling these menus PAUSED the game and you could take however long you needed to find what your looking for, but in DST the game doesn’t pause and wasting your time scrolling through tabs you’ve forgotten where to build X item or structure from, can be the difference between life and death.

^^^^ In this area of the game maybe having clearly to read and understand LABELS on things would go a long way…??? I’m no casual gamer by any means and these menus are still confusing to even ME so I know for damn sure it has to be confusing & unpleasant for casuals..

When you have to go to Wikipedia page to find out what that picture of that ingredient in that craftable your looking at on screen even is… maybe that’s an example of bad game design?

When I play Ark Survival Evolved I only need to type into the search bar what in my 500+ craftable options I’m trying to find, without having to stand there scratching my head as I sort through them all.

And maybe it would help if the little pictures you see for ingredients had clear LABELS of what those things actually are? because after all… you don’t pick up a cooking book in real life and only get a picture of a pile of Salt and you have to question if that’s actually salt, sand, baby powder or what…

Klei CAN listen to input like this and make huge efforts to improve the game with QoL changes…

But as far as flashing arrows on your screen or a tutorial of any sorts…. heavy no thanks!

[Mysterious box]

2 hours ago, Shosuko said:

tfw: food critique calls favorite food place in town rubbish because he is classically trained and the peasants don't know what they really like anyway...

True applies for food and games really the end result is only as good as the enjoyment it brings regardless of most other factors.

[Yuuko]

One thing I will say is DST could alleviate the dependence on wikis to some extent by expanding the compendium.  Giving you an in-game place to learn about the game is better than having your players need to look things up online.  The way they implemented the compendium doesn't break the immersion as it only gives you detailed information after you've encountered it in game.  It would be cool if there were mob and crafting information in there as well.

[minespatch]

41 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Giving you an in-game place to learn about the game is better than having your players need to look things up online.

So like Oxygen not included with tutorials and notes?

[Primalflower]

27 minutes ago, minespatch said:

So like Oxygen not included with tutorials and notes?

do you mean the codex in the top right? if so i can agree

[minespatch]

1 hour ago, Lbphero said:

do you mean the codex in the top right? if so i can agree

That and the animated mini-tutorials.

[NightfallsCurse]

I have to say game design is pretty important, but DST's design isn't bad. It may not have the best design, but I have to disagree with the opinion that the game design isn't good.

Don't Starve is one of those games that has a nice game design, I can't say the design is bad at all!
If you don't like the design, the game just isn't for you, there are tons of games that may have a better game design than dst.

DST is also one of those survival games that just throws you into a world, no instructions/rules are given. You are going into a world completely blind and unsure of what to do as a beginner... instead you have to figure out EVERYTHING yourself, some other games don't do that, and give you instructions on how to play... If you don't like the design, again, this game isn't for you, choose another game with better design that fits you.

Also, there is no "failing" in DST. Although you may consider dying as failing...but resurrecting is very easy, touch stones, life amulets...etc... This game is meant for you to have fun! There is no "winning" or "failing". The game goes on until you die (unless it's an endless server)!
Don't Starve is a very nice, well designed survival game imo, but others may disagree... 

[AlternateMew]

13 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Hahahaha yeah uhm no.. sorry that’s never going to happen, In fact some game developers have already taken advantage of players who are too lazy to actually PLAY the game & just want to get the best stuff in the easiest ways possible (pay to win, battle pass level skips for a price, Source crystals & reforge tokens for a full price 160$ Injustice 2 game) Developers saw that people were actually willing to pay money to NOT play the game & just get the rewards so they took that ball & ran with it.

You're talking about a multitude of things here and only one of them is close to the thing I was talking about.

Pay to win is definitely a thing and yes it's not leaving because ez $$$. But that's not handholding. That's pay to win. 
QoL is not handholding, QoL like the search bar you mention is an interface design thing and yeah I agree it's totally needed the current one in DST is a MESS. But it's not hand holding. It's just letting you find the darn things in a horrid mess of difficult to navigate clutter. Maybe that's a bit hyperbolic. Point is I agree it could use a bit of help in that aspect.

Tutorials are it. Those are the closest. But what I mean about handholding is beyond tutorials. Simple things like "Don't get caught in darkness, here's how you make a basic torch and campfire", that's fine. But if, for example, then game had an untogglable feature where when your it puts a free torch in your hand when you enter total darkness, that would be too far. And that sounds ridiculous, but some games have absolutely implemented those silly little mandatory handholdy things and it's downright insulting. 

Thankfully KLei has not done that. Thank you for not doing that, KLei.

[Mantispidae]

Alright so for a thread that seems like its going to discuss the ends and outs of DST's game design and why it doesn't work out there really wasn't an attempt to do that. So I'm gonna give it a go. 

The first question raised is thus: What actually is game design, and the second- Why it matters. The short and sweet of that is that game design is the principles by which a game operates, namely its style, mechanics and how these things interact with the player. The "interact with the player" bit is really the why- games are intrinsically tied to the player, and everything about it ultimate has the goal of influencing the experience and impressions left on a player. So it's important- and it can take a lot of forms, have a lot of goals and takeaways. People also tend to favor certain choices over others, without certain ones being necessarily bad within the concept of the media sought to be made. What can seem like really poor game design to one person can be read as a very strong choice for other reasons to another person.

In the case of OP, and admittedly Im putting words in their mouth here, but then again they also claimed that anyone feeling positive about the game was just too stupid to see why it sucked actually, so I think im fine, is that they seem to prefer what I would call "explanative" game design principles, where the gameplay elements are meant to, to some degree, help explain the mechanics of the world and it's operation. These don't have to be hand-holdy elements either- a very strong example and personal favorite (in my opinion) would be Hollow Knight. Specifically one aspect of level design in early game places a geo rock (A source of money you see very early on) close to a wall with cracks. Most people don't notice the cracks, but do see the collectable, and in breaking that collectable they are basically guaranteed to break the wall and activate the "you found a secret!" sound. 

So with that simple action the player has just been told that theres walls that are fake, they should look for them, finding them plays a sound, and they get a reward for finding it- all very good things to know for the type of game Hollow knight is! And not a word is said- its just about using what 99% of players, even new to the concepts, would likely try. I think thats what OP wants out of DST- but that isn't the principle DST is built on.

Rather, DS/T is built on the idea of perseverance through play, a style more designed of the concept of try, try again. You're supposed to drop into the world not knowing what to do, and fail because you don't know what to do, and then next time around try something else. You don't know- can't, really, that darkness is going to kill you except for Maxwell cheekily telling you that night is coming. If you're luckily you live, either by getting lucky or guessing right, and the attempt continues till you fail. When you fail, you start over, think about what the attempt taught you, and give it another go. You might not play 'optimally' but the game isn't asking for optimally, just survival, and if you don't play optimal you probably hit a wall, and then you try again- different, a little more fine tuned.

That's the gameplay loop of Don't starve. And yeah, its not for everyone. But it's not bad. It plays on peoples natural want to get better at things, and the natural ideas of sandboxes and survival games where you want to figure out how to best manage your circumstances, and build yourself a good and comfortable world through hard work. You die, you lose, you try again, and eventually you do better. Not everyone likes that. Lots of people do. Die to the scary boss, then try running from it next time, then after a bit you feel more bold and more prepared so you actually try and kill it and wow- this time you lived! Next time you do better. So on and so forth. 

And that works for Don't starve. Because the game, ultimately, is about a weak little man being thrown into a brutal chunk of the world were he will die again and again and things will go wrong over and over. But you keep getting chances, so give it another go until eventually it works for you too. For all his failures Wilson's eventually on that throne.

[Captain_Rage]

This video sums up pretty well why the lack of tutorials is a good thing. If you cringe / laugh at the video, then bonus points for you, oldschool gamer. xD Modern AAA games seem to be extremely dumbed down (I don't even know what the video is spoofing or where the border is drawn in games like Call of Duty, since I haven't played them, but they seem completely devoid of letting the player discover things on their own).

The only harsh thing in DST is that you can lose all your progress if you are beyond the standard survive-all-seasons stage of the game and decide to take on an optional raid boss or covert content. Although that is also what makes Don't Starve Together great fun and exciting. Well, actually, the means to recover from disaster (such as Life-Giving Amulets, Touch Stones and Meat Effigies) feel pretty balanced. I guess it is tricky to have an uncompromising survival game cake and eat it too.

I think that any player who is too overwhelmed by some of the more obscure mechanics / things in the game will resort to looking up hints online on how to tackle them. It is up to the player to strike a balance between trying to figure things out on their own and  "ask a friend" / look it up online. No handholding necessary (there are already character quotes with hints in the game for some mechanics, like farming or fishing at sea).

Lastly, figuring out things on your own without any handholding along with your friends is really fun in DST.

[ZombieDupe]

On 8/31/2021 at 5:33 AM, Stonetribe said:

It seemed to me that most of the people replying to this thread didn't actually take the time to watch the video that op linked, so to give them the benefit of the doubt I decided to check it out myself to see how it might bring up any good points that could be used to argue that don't starve has terrible game design.

And, no, it really doesn't.

The video is about a little experiment this guy did where he had his wife, someone with almost zero experience playing video games, play though the beginning of like eight different video games. In it, he's mostly talking about the many different and subtle things that can confuse someone when trying to learn how to play a game and how it works. Only, the thing is that most of these things apply to the learning process of video games as a whole and the many things gamers become accustomed to over time such as the now common concept of moving your camera to better see your surroundings. I mean sure, someone who has never touched a video game will have more trouble with a game like don't starve compared to something simpler like say, the original super mario bros, but there will still be confusion regardless.

So, yeah, not a very compelling argument at all.. I guess I should have expected as much after the thread complaining about the tackle box getting a skin though.

I think a lot of people missed the point of this topic, I wasn't trying to express any particular issue I have with the game, that isn't what I want this topic to discuss, but largely the accumulation of things that result in player behaviour that leads them to think "what do I do?", "how do I do this?", "why can't I do it this way" and so forth, if these questions are even ever asked (more often than not a player just says "help" because the environment is perceived harsh by them as they don't know what to do, die, then leave). DS/DST suffer from this a lot when that can be addressed, and I think it's most important that Klei themselves reflect on a lot of the old content rather than solely just waiting for players to bring up an issue over and over before doing anything about it. Otherwise you are leaving any sense of design in the voices of your fanbase, which isn't fair and can be a double-edged sword.

The purpose of this topic was to point out that this confusion exists, how it exists and why it matters for a game to make sure that the possibility of this type of confusion is accounted for or at least alleviated to a high degree. We see, observe and hear time and time again the same issues spring up for many people and to me it's often a demonstration of bad game design (recent discussions around wildfires are actually a good example of that). Many of the games discussed in the video already have things to account for that to some extent. DS/DST doesn't account even for the most basic things that the player might miss, and they do, continuously.

On 8/31/2021 at 8:29 AM, Shosuko said:

Its kinda hard to argue a game with overwhelmingly positive reviews has bad game design for the same reason its hard to argue a beloved story is actually written "wrong."  If people are entertained by an entertainment, in what way has it failed?

It is until you look at the context of the issues. Many people may believe all sorts of ridiculous ideas and support them even if thorough investigation would prove them all wrong to at least some degree. To me these games are a good example of people not knowing or understanding what they don't know or understand, and it's particularly difficult to set a picture for people in this position for a game genre (survival) that has few and far between examples and examinations of good game design. Best I can think of really is Raft and maybe Subnautica doing things better.

On 8/31/2021 at 8:29 AM, Shosuko said:

As some have said - maybe its not for you.

Having spent thousands of hours into the game would dispute that. This argument doesn't hold up for anything regardless, you spent a few hours into the game "it's not for you", you spent many multiple hours into the game and start noticing its flaws "you've played too much and should move on" and so then no matter what you say, nobody's going to feel like whatever your point may be is even something to consider. You could make this point for any game and then every game is at least of ok quality by default. It also reinforces a possibly warped perception of people's favorite media who may be susceptible to not looking at some of their favorite media with a critical eye.

Remember you can like something and enjoy something even if it ultimately fails in quality in one aspect of another. These games have a decent amount of artistic integrity, the animations are often well done, sound design is often excellent and concepts presented in the game are uniquely intriguing to say the least. There are countless things that are well done. But one thing that really brings the game down to its knees is its awful game design in multiple areas, and my discussion of the combat gap is a great example of this, which I don't see people mentioning at all.

On 8/31/2021 at 8:29 AM, Shosuko said:

There are some games where you get ramped up into what the game wants you to do and you quickly do that thing until the game is over.  DST is not that type of game.  To start with the developers specifically designed the game to NOT tell you what to do so that you could figure that part out yourself.  Some people might immediately go to the combat tab, fighting their way through any enemies they find.  Others might avoid enemies and combat entirely, preferring to seek out key resources like armor, healing, and allies.  The point of DST is that you decide what "playing the game" is.

One thing I like to do in DST is disable my attack button and see how I can fair.

I'd recommend reading up on Emergent Gameplay - its something the video you linked doesn't realize is a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_gameplay

The "not telling the player what to do" is good so long as the set environment of the game itself can demonstrate that most players will generally recognise how to do things, which guess what, is the Emergent Gameplay you're talking about, so we're on the same page here. That's actually, in my opinion, the superior way of doing good game design, but it also takes the most effort to get right, because you have to make sure that the circumstances that the player finds themselves in during gameplay leads them to think the things you would expect them to do without some TOP TEXT and BOTTOM TEXT telling you exactly what to do. Ultimately though that requires extensive testing of control groups at its best, but if you are a programmer with a good understanding of game design intuitively, you may see many potential problems to account for right out of the gate, saving valuable time and money that would have otherwise been spent on testing things you didn't think of because you lack game design intuition, if that testing happens at all (which in Klei's case doesn't, we have open beta testing at best).

But if you use wanting to "not tell player what to do" as an excuse to not account for anything, you end up with many players incapable of learning anything themselves because how would they? Then the answer to that lands to be digging through game files, looking up guides, asking people how to do things, reading the wiki, and if that is the basis for a significant portion of your game's progression (which in DS/DST case it is) then you have failed in designing your game well. In other words, I'm saying DS/DST has little to no Emergent Gameplay and that it's a problem.

There are lots of examples in DS/DST where important progression mechanics are extremely contrived or just don't make any sense from a "figure it out yourself" standpoint. I won't point out what some of those are myself, I'm sure you can think of a few examples yourself if you have played the game long enough and can understand game design to some extent.

 

Actually I'm gonna put this into 3 points and what I think of them. You may find you agree with me ultimately.

1. Zero handholding. The game is badly designed and the player doesn't know what to do or what content even exists in the game for them to interact with, subsequently never getting anywhere without external help - DS/DST are games largely like this and it's a massive problem that has gone unaddressed for years.

2. Direct Handholding. The player is shown arrows, text popups, waits for you to do a certain thing <- this is what a lot of people seem to automatically associate and think you're arguing for when you're arguing that it's bad that you can't tell what you're doing. In my case, I am not arguing for that, at least not for the most part. I have seen them in action and recognise that they are annoying if you have way too many of them, especially all at once. It is the cheapest and easiest way to teach a player how to do this.

Don't Starve NewHome from the footage I've seen does exactly this and it is about as bad as the "zero handholding" mechanic. An exception however I think in best use-case, if all else fails, is actually showing the player controls when they are relevant to use, that's often a must-have for people who don't know control conventions especially (and don't even know about control settings if the game has any or ever check them if they do) unless you are ready for an extended learning curve that incorporates diegetic design for controls themselves too and so forth, but I have yet to see a game communicate that on this level, so it would be impressive if point 3 was used for controls really well...

Hey look, another visualised example of this type of "game design" that demonstrates exactly how bad and annoying it can get if taken to the extreme.

4 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

 

3. Emergent Gameplay. Whereby the player is ACTUALLY able to figure out the vast majority of things to do themselves due to the environment they have been set for and there are little to no prompts telling to what to do directly <- best, but most difficult thing to get right for a game. If you do it well though, your game's design then demonstrates great competence as it makes itself fun and accessible to many people without making the game boring. Mind you though, this is almost non-existent in DS/DST and it needs more of it. Freddo Films points out his experience of Emergent Gameplay from when going through the Archives for the first time. Provided he has prior experience with the game, and some pre-requisites for starting up the archives are never communicated (which he points out), but past that point, this area is actually decently designed, whether it was intended to be or not (point discussed at 12:16 but I would suggest hearing some points before that):

 

5 hours ago, Mantispidae said:

Rather, DS/T is built on the idea of perseverance through play, a style more designed of the concept of try, try again. You're supposed to drop into the world not knowing what to do, and fail because you don't know what to do, and then next time around try something else. You don't know- can't, really, that darkness is going to kill you except for Maxwell cheekily telling you that night is coming. If you're luckily you live, either by getting lucky or guessing right, and the attempt continues till you fail. When you fail, you start over, think about what the attempt taught you, and give it another go. You might not play 'optimally' but the game isn't asking for optimally, just survival, and if you don't play optimal you probably hit a wall, and then you try again- different, a little more fine tuned.

That's the gameplay loop of Don't starve. And yeah, its not for everyone. But it's not bad. It plays on peoples natural want to get better at things, and the natural ideas of sandboxes and survival games where you want to figure out how to best manage your circumstances, and build yourself a good and comfortable world through hard work. You die, you lose, you try again, and eventually you do better. Not everyone likes that. Lots of people do. Die to the scary boss, then try running from it next time, then after a bit you feel more bold and more prepared so you actually try and kill it and wow- this time you lived! Next time you do better. So on and so forth. 

And that works for Don't starve. Because the game, ultimately, is about a weak little man being thrown into a brutal chunk of the world were he will die again and again and things will go wrong over and over. But you keep getting chances, so give it another go until eventually it works for you too. For all his failures Wilson's eventually on that throne.

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I liked your post but I have a few things to say and I'm actually glad you brought this up.

The gameplay loop you're mentioning, if it worked that way, would be for almost none unless the game was a very quick game, like an Endless Runner for example, which it works well enough for. But again that's not how this game works and it isn't how players who know the game well is the reason for playing it. You play it for the extensive content if you know what it is, not to die countless times, learning nothing, getting increasingly bored due to the repetitive nature of starting all over again so frequently. What you will find is people looking for external help to survive indefinitely if they decide to persist with the game, and once they do death becomes almost negligible. Also death in DS/DST does NOT teach the player much, more often than not if you just go back in you are very likely to die to the same reason in a similar fashion again, because you have no way of realising how to better avoid the danger. I don't think most people here (of the people that continuously play the game) would actually like to play the game with the promise in mind of dying 100 times before you get past your first winter, then dying again. Many things take dozens of hours to even get to in the game even if you optimise as much as you possibly can, so clearly this type of design philosophy doesn't work for the games.

A lot of content dropped out recently is mid to late game content too, it's not going to bring in much new players and they already would be having a hard enough time bringing some older players back in. I certainly have had no will to play by myself, with friends, or anyone for that matter because of the flawed way the game presents itself. And that's not due to a lack of me trying, I have tried to play with people in my circles, but nothing in the game ends up engaging enough, it's either grind yourself through things by guidance or die, so you get bored either way. And babysitting players isn't fun either. Think about the times people may have told you "I would have never learnt that on my own" whenever you teach them something crucial about the way to approach the game.

This is why a better gameplay loop earlier on in the game would be one that you experience as a professional player; have the player die infrequently and as they play, progression is understandable and makes sense, creating Emergent Gameplay. This could be achieved through simplified ways of resurrecting (for example press a button and your ghost is teleported to portal to resurrect in Endless mode), maybe even set Endless as the main game-mode with some tweaking, combat being done in a way that the player can learn it on their own, grind being alleviated while retaining survival aspects and so on.

4 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

This video sums up pretty well why the lack of tutorials is a good thing. If you cringe / laugh at the video, then bonus points for you, oldschool gamer. xD Modern AAA games seem to be extremely dumbed down (I don't even know what the video is spoofing or where the border is drawn in games like Call of Duty, since I haven't played them, but they seem completely devoid of letting the player discover things on their own).

The only harsh thing in DST is that you can lose all your progress if you are beyond the standard survive-all-seasons stage of the game and decide to take on an optional raid boss or covert content. Although that is also what makes Don't Starve Together great fun and exciting. Well, actually, the means to recover from disaster (such as Life-Giving Amulets, Touch Stones and Meat Effigies) feel pretty balanced. I guess it is tricky to have an uncompromising survival game cake and eat it too.

I think that any player who is too overwhelmed by some of the more obscure mechanics / things in the game will resort to looking up hints online on how to tackle them. It is up to the player to strike a balance between trying to figure things out on their own and  "ask a friend" / look it up online. No handholding necessary (there are already character quotes with hints in the game for some mechanics, like farming or fishing at sea).

Lastly, figuring out things on your own without any handholding along with your friends is really fun in DST.

So you're ultimately arguing for the "Zero Handholding" type game design. As I pointed out earlier it can be about equally as terrible as as the "Direct Handholding" design philosophy (for the most part), which you are arguing against. Emergent Gameplay is what we need the most of and it's the hardest to get right, and the lack of it has been what has kept the games so terrible in that aspect.

On 8/31/2021 at 11:23 AM, SinancoTheBest said:

What do you even mean by that? Updates like Reap What You Sow and Hook Line & Inker aim to add more depth to existing mechanisms while inharently making them harder to pick up, especially for non-gamers, quite opposite of what you're arguing, that DST should explicidly aim to guide players how to play (Which is a suggestion that goes against the very philosophy of the wilderness feeling the game is going for).

 

I assure you that players who struggled to farm with the old farms due to their lack of prior gaming experience and transferred knowledge have even a harder time now, finding the rigamajig, trying it out, deploying it, figuring to craft a hoe, opening the plant registry, understanding how the nutrients or stress factors work, how to maximize yield etc. All this knowledge is even more demanding of reading guides, watching tutorials or having someone knowledgeable teach them. And it is a good thing, it's not a failure of game design, it's just the main design philosophy of the game that there is no explicid in-game guidence and knowledge is best acquired through tapping to the social, "Together" aspect of the game.

Actually you're wrong on this. The only thing that I have seen players struggle with is figuring out, finding out what a Rigamagig is and what it does and why it's needed (that's actually why I made a topic about questioning the Rigamagig actually, though I have seen some people figure out to craft it and use it every now and then). If you have farm plots set up already most new players will be able to craft a gardening hoe or pick one up to till it and plant seeds even if they have played just a little bit. I have seen it first hand.

A more complex mechanic doesn't mean it's harder to understand necessarily. It's about how the mechanics work, and if they work in a common-sense way, the complexity can even be beneficial as it can avoid the potentially disappointing "why can't I do it this way?" type scenarios. So to me, farming mechanics are generally a good example of Emergent Gameplay that actually does exist in DS/DST.

[BezKa]

And all this, to basically say: "Some people can't handle the game style so they won't play". 

 

Well, enough other people will, so I think that doesn't matter. After I played DS, DST and ONI, I bought most of Klei games on sale. I tried out Hot Lava. Liked it. I still play it. Tried out Mark of the Ninja. Didn't like it. I don't play it. Why? Because I find the 2d sneaking game really not fun. Or, in your language, the Game Design is """bad""" to me. I never finished it, I dropped it after few levels because I wasn't having fun. Unlike some other game, on which I have almost 2000 hours now. 

I don't understand why you want new players in the game so badly, ones that clearly won't enjoy it. If people can't get behind the game from the start, what makes you think they will like it once they are led to the mid-game stretch?

There are new players. I'm a relatively new player. And all those who stick around, say that the beginning was fun. Maybe, just maybe, it's players who should look for a game, and not games should look for players. Because if your game is good, it will get an audience. And DS franchise has an enormous audience. Not every game is for everyone. And that's okay. 

[Mantispidae]

I see the point you're arguing much clearer now, this is significantly better than original thread which, lets be honest, was vaguer than start of Don't Starve.

That said, I can't say that I completely agree with ya. For one, I think you really undersell how much people can actually enjoy failure-loops, and starting from scratch, and like the idea of failing a hundred times before they almost stop failing all together. I think you also under estimate how many people DO work a lot of the details out themselves, without ever opening a wikia. I know I only started the wiki mostly for enjoyment purposes after I had already seen something and experienced, and yeah I would learn new tips and tricks, but lots of people really do enjoy stumbling their way through things. I'd also disagree that dying can teach you very little, yeah, getting killed by a frog on itself won't tell you much. But you might learn that frogs will attack in hordes, and that can stunlock you, or that Abigail can handle those pretty well. Next time you might be encouraged to play more carefully, such as avoiding the ponds at day or just moving along if they aggro. You know how many times ive slammed my boats directly into rocks while too stupid to bring boat patches first? more than I should have, but hey, last time i was on a boat I brought a stack of 20, and hit less rocks. Lots of players couldve done fine without even bothering with the patches and everyone else on the server probably would have drowned in 2 minutes if they had tried. 

Other stuff you can learn by chance, and people like that too. I found it real neat the first time i noticed one of those spider spawns in the savannah meant caused a rabbit trap to catch a spider instead, its chance, but the trap does say "small animals" and rabbits- to many surprise, aren't the only small animals. That's not purely a bad thing. I won't pretend DS/T is perfect, heaven knows it isn't, and a big part of the wall for people is how easy it is to screw up early and have to try again. But the game is also a sandbox that lets people set the terms of their worlds, and you can have lots of them, so at least for DST anyone getting real frustrated on aspects can certainly try new combinations. Hell turn on creative and play around with the structures and new clothes if you just really want to see more, and then give it a proper try. If you never experiment with anything than yea i bet it would be rather boring, but then why bother with a sandbox at that point.

But to give you a bit of an example of this kind of gameplay, maybe more your style maybe not- Rain World. It's another game I love thats ultimately nothing like DST in terms of gameplay, but does follow similar harsh die-a-dozen times and tell you nothing type build. Funny enough, on of the only things you're told to do in the game is that you need to eat (dont starve!), and you need to get to a shelter before the end of the day. You're also taught how to jump, which i guess is a bit more than DS teaches, but its controls are a bit more odd and less standard.

Now, theres a checkpoint system in the game, so every time you sleep you technically make progress, but until you sleep you are in a groundhog day situation in which the current day repeats. Same timer, food respawns are still set, the only changes are small items spawns and exactly what the animal A.I does. If you save yourself into a corner, you can get stuck. Very easily. For hours. Dying to the same animals over and over again because its in the same annoying spot, or because the timer feels too short and food too scarce or because you came close and then got killed by another random animal that wasn't even there before. But it feels really, really good when you finally get to that next shelter. And for a lot of people that victory would be more luck than skill.

Funny enough, remember how I said the game teaches you to jump? Thats the only thing it really does. And theres a like a 100 page long google doc out there on every absurd detail of just how in depth the movement and jumping system is- if you have the skill for it, you can do jump slides and backflips and rolls- NONE of these are even hinted at. Not the slightest nod. You just have to experiment with your own abilities and inputs until you realize that when you do X while doing Y you backflip instead of just jump. Is it bad design that lots of people will give up because the game throws unfair deaths at you? maybe. Is it bad design theres so many cool things you can do with the right buttons you would almost never come CLOSE to finding unless you were buttonmashing? maybe. Is it bad design that there's technically no reward for learning them other than just doing the game slightly fancier? maybe. But I find the hidden aspects of the game fascinating and cool, and even knowing them I can't pull them off to save my life. But stumbling my way through it was the fun. IN DS/T's case I've stopped stumbling and found my fun in getting my worlds nicer and nicer or having 4 different games going with different mods and settings. If I get bored I'll take a break and may or may not come back. Lots of people will get to that point and tap out and thats fine- I'm sure plenty of people beat adventure mode and never touched the game again.

DST isn't perfect, and there is always room for improvement, but it's really not fundamentally broken or designed in a way utter unenjoyable.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Im soooo bad at shotters so they need an autoaim+1hit ko option so i can enjoy the narrative

[Stonetribe]

2 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

I think a lot of people missed the point of this topic, I wasn't trying to express any particular issue I have with the game, that isn't what I want this topic to discuss, but largely the accumulation of things that result in player behaviour that leads them to think "what do I do?", "how do I do this?", "why can't I do it this way" and so forth, if these questions are even ever asked (more often than not a player just says "help" because the environment is perceived harsh by them as they don't know what to do, die, then leave). DS/DST suffer from this a lot when that can be addressed, and I think it's most important that Klei themselves reflect on a lot of the old content rather than solely just waiting for players to bring up an issue over and over before doing anything about it. Otherwise you are leaving any sense of design in the voices of your fanbase, which isn't fair and can be a double-edged sword.

The purpose of this topic was to point out that this confusion exists, how it exists and why it matters for a game to make sure that the possibility of this type of confusion is accounted for or at least alleviated to a high degree. We see, observe and hear time and time again the same issues spring up for many people and to me it's often a demonstration of bad game design (recent discussions around wildfires are actually a good example of that). Many of the games discussed in the video already have things to account for that to some extent. DS/DST doesn't account even for the most basic things that the player might miss, and they do, continuously.

You do realize that there's more to game design than just explaining how things work to new players, right? Like, a lot more. If you're going to judge don't starve on that alone, then yeah most people wouldn't think it's very good. But even then, there will still be plenty of people who do like it for that exact reason since they find experimenting and discovering things on their own a lot of fun.

And, no, this doesn't lead to Klei changing the game for the worse, because most of the players that bother to offer feed back here on the forums are the ones that have taken the time to understand how the game works because they actually enjoyed the game. All the discussions from wildfires don't stem from a lack of knowledge, the reason that many people want it changed is because they know how it works and don't like it.

[ZombieDupe]

1 hour ago, Mantispidae said:

I see the point you're arguing much clearer now, this is significantly better than original thread which, lets be honest, was vaguer than start of Don't Starve.

That said, I can't say that I completely agree with ya. For one, I think you really undersell how much people can actually enjoy failure-loops, and starting from scratch, and like the idea of failing a hundred times before they almost stop failing all together. I think you also under estimate how many people DO work a lot of the details out themselves, without ever opening a wikia. I know I only started the wiki mostly for enjoyment purposes after I had already seen something and experienced, and yeah I would learn new tips and tricks, but lots of people really do enjoy stumbling their way through things. I'd also disagree that dying can teach you very little, yeah, getting killed by a frog on itself won't tell you much. But you might learn that frogs will attack in hordes, and that can stunlock you, or that Abigail can handle those pretty well. Next time you might be encouraged to play more carefully, such as avoiding the ponds at day or just moving along if they aggro. You know how many times ive slammed my boats directly into rocks while too stupid to bring boat patches first? more than I should have, but hey, last time i was on a boat I brought a stack of 20, and hit less rocks. Lots of players couldve done fine without even bothering with the patches and everyone else on the server probably would have drowned in 2 minutes if they had tried. 

Other stuff you can learn by chance, and people like that too. I found it real neat the first time i noticed one of those spider spawns in the savannah meant caused a rabbit trap to catch a spider instead, its chance, but the trap does say "small animals" and rabbits- to many surprise, aren't the only small animals. That's not purely a bad thing. I won't pretend DS/T is perfect, heaven knows it isn't, and a big part of the wall for people is how easy it is to screw up early and have to try again. But the game is also a sandbox that lets people set the terms of their worlds, and you can have lots of them, so at least for DST anyone getting real frustrated on aspects can certainly try new combinations. Hell turn on creative and play around with the structures and new clothes if you just really want to see more, and then give it a proper try. If you never experiment with anything than yea i bet it would be rather boring, but then why bother with a sandbox at that point.

I have yet to see this idea of people enjoying this type of loop to be proven true for anyone when further examining that player's experience. The case has always show to me to ultimately be the exact opposite. At the end of the day, even if some people somehow actually enjoyed this about the game given the content that directly goes against this gameplay loop, sacrificing this weird and inherently masochistic gameplay loop for one that provides more engaging and versatile progression in the game would be a win for many more people for certain.

Combat learning in DS/DST is at this point my go-to as an example of failed game design for this. It's how most are able to overcome challenges at ease yet you can never really learn that all on your own. If you persist you may end up playing as Wendy to have Abigail handle all your combat or as Wigfrid as she comes with a helmet that is relatively easy to craft more of, so you can just tank several enemies, but that means that players are given this wide roster of characters to play as and can only manage to scrape by somewhat with a few of them, and that in and of itself has to be realised as you go through multiple characters while playing as Wilson or Willow several times to start. Since you can't change character unless you play Wilderness at ease that also compounds to extending the grinding halt of progression.

Keep in mind that people who persist surrendering to external help extensively to learn things about the game largely invalidates that argument as well. If you look up things frequently to learn DS/DST game, you have proven this point.

1 hour ago, Mantispidae said:

But to give you a bit of an example of this kind of gameplay, maybe more your style maybe not- Rain World. It's another game I love thats ultimately nothing like DST in terms of gameplay, but does follow similar harsh die-a-dozen times and tell you nothing type build. Funny enough, on of the only things you're told to do in the game is that you need to eat (dont starve!), and you need to get to a shelter before the end of the day. You're also taught how to jump, which i guess is a bit more than DS teaches, but its controls are a bit more odd and less standard.

Now, theres a checkpoint system in the game, so every time you sleep you technically make progress, but until you sleep you are in a groundhog day situation in which the current day repeats. Same timer, food respawns are still set, the only changes are small items spawns and exactly what the animal A.I does. If you save yourself into a corner, you can get stuck. Very easily. For hours. Dying to the same animals over and over again because its in the same annoying spot, or because the timer feels too short and food too scarce or because you came close and then got killed by another random animal that wasn't even there before. But it feels really, really good when you finally get to that next shelter. And for a lot of people that victory would be more luck than skill.

Funny enough, remember how I said the game teaches you to jump? Thats the only thing it really does. And theres a like a 100 page long google doc out there on every absurd detail of just how in depth the movement and jumping system is- if you have the skill for it, you can do jump slides and backflips and rolls- NONE of these are even hinted at. Not the slightest nod. You just have to experiment with your own abilities and inputs until you realize that when you do X while doing Y you backflip instead of just jump. Is it bad design that lots of people will give up because the game throws unfair deaths at you? maybe. Is it bad design theres so many cool things you can do with the right buttons you would almost never come CLOSE to finding unless you were buttonmashing? maybe. Is it bad design that there's technically no reward for learning them other than just doing the game slightly fancier? maybe. But I find the hidden aspects of the game fascinating and cool, and even knowing them I can't pull them off to save my life. But stumbling my way through it was the fun. IN DS/T's case I've stopped stumbling and found my fun in getting my worlds nicer and nicer or having 4 different games going with different mods and settings. If I get bored I'll take a break and may or may not come back. Lots of people will get to that point and tap out and thats fine- I'm sure plenty of people beat adventure mode and never touched the game again.

DST isn't perfect, and there is always room for improvement, but it's really not fundamentally broken or designed in a way utter unenjoyable.

Rain World? You just activated my trap card!

It is by far one of the best examples of good game design I have ever seen in the survival genre, intentional or not and I have enjoyed the game quite a bit. Didn't take me hundreds of hours to finish it several times too, mind you. Provided the game is also unique, but so are DS and DST. Difference is the former actually progresses you through the game well even with intense difficulty, and difficulty itself never really goes away, while in DS/DST you learn nothing, but those who do don't learn through the game and the game becomes easy, with nothing left to challenge you.

There are flaws with RW that I can point out but it does one thing right and that is enable the player to actually finish the game even if they don't learn the large move-set they have available to them. Learning them helps and makes the game more exciting, but it isn't a requirement, at least not for easy and normal difficulty. For DS/DST learning how to kite enemies pretty much is. You only have to learn a few things to finish RW and experience most things it has to offer. I have seen outliers but the game is very much possible to complete without having to look up much or ask for help, if any at all. First 2 hours will be difficult but once the player gets to another region it's mostly Emergent Gameplay from there and you will finish the game at around 20 hour mark. There is a critique going in further detail about its design, what it does well and how it could be done better. Mind you, these are simple changes to make, while DS/DST has a lot more problems to fix at the very least from a coding time investment perspective.

DS/DST also has had a lot more topics here and there of people asking for help, and a lot more guides by comparison. While it may be that there are more players who have tried one game more than the other, as what I have discussed about RW, I don't think that's the full story. I'm sure that a lot of any discussions would have never happened if things were fine as they are. More importantly, there has been a divide between players during gameplay, those who know the game well and hate newbies because of the hassle they may cause and more casual players who may end up leaving the game for good. I'm stuck in the middle, enjoying the game a bit more when I play with experience players, being frustrated by new players yet sympathising with them about their own frustration with the game and so I end up ultimately hating the game for leaving this problem in when it doesn't have to be this way.

It has also bred toxicity. If new players did not go against the progression of more professional player skill level, dragging others down, but instead being able to become capable themselves and working together that would not only be a demonstration of good game design, decent Difficulty Curve and Emergent Gameplay being at play, but also bring more people together of all levels of proficiency.

 

1 hour ago, BezKa said:

And all this, to basically say: "Some people can't handle the game style so they won't play". 

 

Well, enough other people will, so I think that doesn't matter. After I played DS, DST and ONI, I bought most of Klei games on sale. I tried out Hot Lava. Liked it. I still play it. Tried out Mark of the Ninja. Didn't like it. I don't play it. Why? Because I find the 2d sneaking game really not fun. Or, in your language, the Game Design is """bad""" to me. I never finished it, I dropped it after few levels because I wasn't having fun. Unlike some other game, on which I have almost 2000 hours now. 

I don't understand why you want new players in the game so badly, ones that clearly won't enjoy it. If people can't get behind the game from the start, what makes you think they will like it once they are led to the mid-game stretch?

What do you mean by "game style" first of all?

Secondly Mark of the Ninja can be a game you do not enjoy inherently, no matter its quality, says nothing about its design unless you can reflect on how it does things. Some genres people simply do not enjoy inherently, that doesn't make them good or bad. There are plenty of games that are masterfully designed that I will not play simply because they do not interest me enough. Design is only one part of a game, but an incredibly important one. Quality of game design also isn't necessarily reflected by how many people may or may not enjoy it inherently, it's reflected by how the people who may be interested in the game to begin with and enjoy certain aspects of it will be able to enjoy it and how. That aside, I think DS/DST have a lot bigger market of people that would enjoy the game but that ending up not being the case because the game doesn't teach them important fundamentals in any way.

It isn't true that players who don't enjoy it now won't enjoy it anyway if the game was designed better. Some may not enjoy it regardless, but I know for a fact there would be many more people that would. Also if it were done right, it would save me from having to explain things to new players, having players whine about things constantly maybe leeches won't be a problem anymore. You may tell me to just not play on public servers, but I'll say that's just reflective of how bad it really is, otherwise why have the option of public servers to begin with if you are going to leave them in a terrible state that everyone tells you to not play on? Especially considering that around half the online servers are public, Klei official ones too. That's how you meet new people as well, private servers won't really allow for that without countless threads of "looking for people to play with" all around and I don't think that's a better solution.

1 hour ago, BezKa said:

There are new players. I'm a relatively new player.

Oh... well that automatically invalidates your overall judgement of the game's design in the grand scheme of things because... DS/DST is in this weird position where you will get to my sentiment eventually if you play for long enough, I've heard pretty much all players who have invested the time either get to that point or just "hate all noobs". Maybe not to the degree that they realise how flawed the game truly is because of those reasons, but they will recognise the problems as problems with the game nevertheless. That is, for a few thousands of hours of gameplay. I'm sure you will understand once, or if, you get to that point if you vary your experience to public servers too and whatnot.

 

12 minutes ago, Stonetribe said:

You do realize that there's more to game design than just explaining how things work to new players, right? Like, a lot more. If you're going to judge don't starve on that alone, then yeah most people wouldn't think it's very good. But even then, there will still be plenty of people who do like it for that exact reason since they find experimenting and discovering things on their own a lot of fun.

And, no, this doesn't lead to Klei changing the game for the worse, because most of the players that bother to offer feed back here on the forums are the ones that have taken the time to understand how the game works because they actually enjoyed the game. All the discussions from wildfires don't stem from a lack of knowledge, the reason that many people want it changed is because they know how it works and don't like it.

There's a lot more to game design for sure, but this is one of the most important things to get right. This game doesn't do that, that's my point. You won't discover or learn anything if there's a "learning wall", only if it has a good difficulty curve. Only way I have ultimately seen anyone learn the game is through external help, none has given me an example where they learnt some of the more integral things on their own. Where the initial learning came from is likely from players who went into creative mode, using console and dug through game files, reading the code to understand how things work. You think those are reasonable ways of making everyone who plays a game to learn it?

Yes, the wildfire discussion is only possible because people understand the issue and it is an issue, a badly designed game mechanic that can be much more annoying than a fun challenge. What gave you the idea that I was arguing against that? Players who give feedback through reviews on Steam for example don't understand the game well enough to judge it by all the content that it does offer and the reviews are skewed because many played it for a couple hours and stopped laughing at their mistakes, probably with the impression that it's just a small survival game that you will experience pretty much all it has to offer in the first few hours without realising all the progress they missed out on. Had they known all that exists, tried to get there and were incapable of without outside help, I'm not so sure the reviews would be so positive anymore.

[BezKa]

20 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

Oh... well that automatically invalidates your overall judgement of the game's design in the grand scheme of things because... DS/DST is in this weird position where you will get to my sentiment eventually if you play for long enough, I've heard pretty much all players who have invested the time either get to that point or just "hate all noobs". Maybe not to the degree that they realise how flawed the game truly is because of those reasons, but they will recognise the problems as problems with the game nevertheless. That is, for a few thousands of hours of gameplay. I'm sure you will understand once, or if, you get to that point if you vary your experience to public servers too and whatnot.

And tell me, how long do I require to become a qualified expert of the game? Am I only allowed to judge whether I like the game after 5 years? Or is it 3? 

I've got a feeling you should stop standing on your tiptoes while riding that horse. The game does have flaws, but one of its cores is not one. 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

37 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

Combat learning in DS/DST is at this point my go-to as an example of failed game design for this. It's how most are able to overcome challenges at ease yet you can never really learn that all on your own. If you persist you may end up playing as Wendy to have Abigail handle all your combat or as Wigfrid as she comes with a helmet that is relatively easy to craft more of, so you can just tank several enemies, but that means that players are given this wide roster of characters to play as and can only manage to scrape by somewhat with a few of them, and that in and of itself has to be realised as you go through multiple characters while playing as Wilson or Willow several times to start. Since you can't change character unless you play Wilderness at ease that also compounds to extending the grinding halt of progression.

sure because ds combat is so complex and hard to learn. Better for that non gamer people to play a game like dark souls which teach you how is the combat lmao

[Stonetribe]

35 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

There's a lot more to game design for sure, but this is one of the most important things to get right. This game doesn't do that, that's my point. You won't discover or learn anything if there's a "learning wall", only if it has a good difficulty curve. Only way I have ultimately seen anyone learn the game is through external help, none has given me an example where they learnt some of the more integral things on their own. Where the initial learning came from is likely from players who went into creative mode, using console and dug through game files, reading the code to understand how things work. You think those are reasonable ways of making everyone who plays a game to learn it?

Well that's, debatable.. I think that an awfully lot of people would argue that, I dunno, fun gameplay is far more important than explaining how every little thing in a game works. And besides the game does provide hints towards some of the more important mechanics in the form of character quotes. One of the very first things new players often learn is that darkness kills you, not just because it actually happens, but because the player character will say something along the lines of, "Gah, I need a light!" Same goes for hunger, wetness, freezing and overheating etc.. The crafting tab also provides very brief descriptions that hint as to what the items actually do, which is something that some other sandbox games, such as the wildly successful Minecraft, actual don't.

45 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

Yes, the wildfire discussion is only possible because people understand the issue and it is an issue, a badly designed game mechanic that can be much more annoying than a fun challenge. What gave you the idea that I was arguing against that?

Uh, because you literally tried to use it as an example of player confusion?

3 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

The purpose of this topic was to point out that this confusion exists, how it exists and why it matters for a game to make sure that the possibility of this type of confusion is accounted for or at least alleviated to a high degree. We see, observe and hear time and time again the same issues spring up for many people and to me it's often a demonstration of bad game design (recent discussions around wildfires are actually a good example of that). Many of the games discussed in the video already have things to account for that to some extent. DS/DST doesn't account even for the most basic things that the player might miss, and they do, continuously.

 

[Yuuko]

4 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

The "not telling the player what to do" is good so long as the set environment of the game itself can demonstrate that most players will generally recognise how to do things, which guess what, is the Emergent Gameplay you're talking about, so we're on the same page here.

Apparently not - because that isn't emergent game play.

Quote

\3. Emergent Gameplay. Whereby the player is ACTUALLY able to figure out the vast majority of things to do themselves due to the environment they have been set for and there are little to no prompts telling to what to do directly <- best, but most difficult thing to get right for a game. If you do it well though, your game's design then demonstrates great competence as it makes itself fun and accessible to many people without making the game boring.

This is not emergent game play.  A game can creatively teach you how to jump and shoot in a megaman game, but that doesn't make your ability to jump and shoot "emergent gameplay."  It just means they taught you how to play their game in a natural way.  Emergent gameplay is about players using the game in creative, often unexpected ways.  And for a developer to support emergent gameplay, or to design for it, largely means letting players explore the game mechanics to see what they can do.  Kinda hard to make a feedback loop of positive reinforcement kudos when players do something the game developer didn't even plan on because all the game developer did was set up the world for the player to find success in...

As for the "learn through death" loop, I think you're making a false assumption here in that a player learns nothing.  When it gets dark and you die, you learn you need light.  When you lose health because you're starving you learn you need to eat.  When you pick some berries and carrots around a pond early game you learn that frogs will agro you without you attacking them.  When you decided to fight them off you learn they gang up on you.  They are also very annoying causing you to drop loot, AND once you kill one you learn the loot sucks, and maybe don't waste your time fighting it.  So next time you play you learn to get materials for a torch before night, pick the berries and carrots but be careful of the frog, and go about your day.  Next time you run into an enemy you will probably realize that you don't actually need to fight it either.

Restarting is incredibly easy as well.  My first game session probably involved dying 10+ times to stupid things as I figured out the game.  Because its so easy to just die and start over, and because there was no real objective I was getting close to, its not really a bad thing to just wipe the slate clean and give a player another shot.

I think you vastly underestimate how much humans love problem solving that they'll do it without kudos rewards or coin indicators along the way.  Yes many games use these - but they also want / need to teach players how to play their game.  If you never learn how to jump and shoot in megaman you're not going to be able to even play it.  Like literally.  But there is no "beat the game" in DST, only playing the game.  I've played years in game without crafting a single weapon, or attacking a single mob.  The hands-OFF approach of DST is part of its good game design.

[Mike23Ua]

You know.. Klei didn’t WASTE their time adding inspection quotes to this game for no reason at all…. Those things actually serve a purpose- they teach you more about the characters, their personalities, and the world your surviving in.

I didn’t learn how to summon Bee Queen from these forums or Wiki… I learned that because I happened to be playing as Willow at the time & I took her up on her own dare when inspecting it (and immediately regretted it afterwards) 

The game has been quietly holding the players hand this way in MANY ways ever since the original DS game released in 2013… I learned that FLOWERS are Renewable from an Inspection Quote MAXWELL makes in the first game about “Flying Flowers”

The GAME Teaches you if your willing to actually pay attention, and NOT paying attention is rude and disrespectful to KLEI who in all honesty? Could’ve not added any quotes to the game at all and forced YOU to figure it out all on your very own.

BUT those quotes give the characters their personality & charm & make you love them.. and also help you learn things in an obscure way.. & I love everything about it.

It doesn’t JUST stop at Character Quotes- playing as the characters themselves will teach you New knowledge and force you to play the game in ways that maybe you HADNT been playing before.

Wurt forces you to rely on a diet of entirely veggies, forces the player not to rely on Pig King (the number one thing noob players Do)

Wormwood forces the player to learn that healing foods aren’t the ONLY way to heal.

Warly forces them to learn different food dishes instead of endless meatballs.

Willow teaches you the importance of raising and lowering your sanity.

Wickerbottom teaches you how to NOT rely on Sleeping to restore sanity.

Woodie teaches you “bad things happen on full moon nights”

Walter forces the player to pay attention to their health and avoid taking damage and because he can’t gain sanity from clothing items, forces them how to live without the most common noob friendly sanity restoring items like garland and top hats, or even the more advanced things like Tam’O Shanter.

even the games weather seasons changing forces the player to play the game in new ways- 

Autumn: I can chop birchnut trees and live off cooked Birchnuts alone! I can kill frogs that spawn from ponds!

Winter: Uh oh.. those Birchnut trees shriveled up and no longer drop Birchnuts, and those ponds I was relying upon for food are now frozen over NOW WHAT AM I GOING to Do?!

Spring: Well the rabbits I was relying on for endless food sources rabbit holes have collapsed and these Beefalo I was relying on for protection have become in heat & hostile, even the BEE’S seem to hate me now.

Summer: HELP Everything’s on Fire! Nooo my base is burning, Maybe I should stop running away scared from these pesky bats that came out that hole I busted open & go into this cave retreating down here for some safety from this unbearable heat? Oh.. neat there’s content down here too that I can gather resources from and take back to the surface with me for later- Who knew Torches weren’t the ONLY light sources in the game!?

The list goes on and on and on…

Please- PLAY the Game & enjoy the work Klei put into it, OR Resort to a Wikipedia page (which admit-ably some things require it such as learning how to craft tables & chairs from a very obscure as all heck way of doing it)

But for the love of god… Stop discrediting all the work Klei has put into this game.. they probably spent DAYS alone on character inspection quotes or making each character force the player to learn a very specific way of playing the game…

Dont let that work go under appreciated.

Thank You.