Let's talk about the difficulty curve.

[goblinball]

I also wish that the world of the constant along with your options as a player changed over time (I’m not going to elaborate on this, if you want to understand my opinions read my forum post from a while ago).

That being said, I don’t think DST needs to be made easier to learn. Constantly dying and learning was one of the most enjoyable parts of the game for me. Rushing to beefalo in spring for protection against a hound wave, only to realize that beefalo are in heat during spring and will kill me, was not a frustrating experience. It was fun, even if I died. Plus, players using the wiki or being taught stuff by other players isn’t a bad thing. The wiki exists for a reason, and I have a feeling that you get a free bonus copy of dst whenever you purchase so people can play with and teach their friends. It’s called Don’t Starve Together; everyone is trying to figure out and survive in this mysterious world together, and this requires communicating tips and strategies.

 

[Mike23Ua]

God please no… do not give the players tutorials or on screen advice (dark is coming build a campfire or craft a torch) that would just be hand holding in the finest definition of hand holding.. the character quotes explain this pretty effectively themselves- Its too dark I can’t see! What was that noise?! *player so and so died to Darkness*

that right there ALONE should teach you.. duhh maybe I need light or something kills me when the screen goes completely black.

However there are SOME more completely obscure features about this game that DEFIANTLY require looking up on the forums or Wiki to figure out & it SHOULDN’T be this way..

Wickerbottom hasn’t been reworked yet so let’s use her as an example to teach players something new WITHOUT A WIKIPEDIA 

Maybe they can change her examination quote for Chester to something like “Fascinating, this creature seems to be influenced by Nightmare Fuel I wonder if I stuck a whole stack of Nightmare Fuel in..”

This would indirectly teach anyone who plays as Wicker how to create Shadow Chester- It encourages the player to LEARN new things through the characters they can play as, their inspection quotes when observing things in the world, their abilities, their perks & their weaknesses..

Thats what DS and DST IS/WAS to me and it’s a beautiful thing: Not relying on Wikipedia pages to learn “one more new thing” each time you play..

[Vixen Doe]

jokes aside, I wouldn't have stuck with the game had it not been for the learning wall. FINALLY learning what to do and getting past an obstacle was hands down the best part of any playthrough, and to this day (nearly 350 hours on DST) I still have little moments like these. DST is not a game for everyone, and we shouldn't have to pretend like it is, nor adjust the mechanics to open it up to people who wouldn't like a game like this in the first place. Sometimes things can simply be niche, and there's nothing wrong with it.

[Szczuku]

The game should be harder.

If one manages to survive past day 100 we can assume that they get the basics.

Then, after the 2nd autumn, the game gets more and more difficult, maybe so much so that we could call that the 2nd learning wall 

[minespatch]

13 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

If one manages to survive past day 100 we can assume that they get the basics.

Not to bring up ONI again, but there should be a sweat and no-sweat mode. That way land builders can have no-sweat.

[Guille6785]

1 hour ago, Szczuku said:

Then, after the 2nd autumn, the game gets more and more difficult, maybe so much so that we could call that the 2nd learning wall 

the problem is not everybody wants this

[Szczuku]

1 hour ago, minespatch said:

Not to bring up ONI again, but there should be a sweat and no-sweat mode. That way land builders can have no-sweat.

That problem is already present in game.

I was trying to enjoy waterlogged by building my own biome- transporting nuts, gathering material etc. In winter and summer this was (as most of building/sandboxing) impossible due to: snow, freezing, wildfires, overheating. So I was left with only 2 seasons to work in- autumn and spring. Then guess what. I had non-stop frog rains for 8 days straight in spring. I ended up turning them off in world settings. But that feels like cheating, if I can turn something off in the world settings then why shouldn't I just give myself free crafting via console and skip all that 'gathering materials' part of the gameplay.

Klei should introduce some ways to turn off/halt certain mechanics in game, like an altar that you sacrifice something to.

18 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

the problem is not everybody wants this

And not everybody wants dst to fully become a happy, social, easy to understand, stress-free game. Is their opinion worth less than yours?

[Mike23Ua]

Yeah well the problem is DST is ALREADY starting to hold the players hand: I joined a random server on day 16 of that world and I was astonished to discover I already had sticks, grass and flint in my inventory upon joining this server- at first I was like “wait did I join a server ive been in before by accident?” Turns out- No the game literally just gives you free stuff now.. and it’s just ENOUGH to build a Axe to chop wood with and get started.

This to me is an Insult to what DS originally was, there were times I would die in Solo DS BECAUSE I couldn’t find twigs, grass or flint in time.. and now it’s freely being given for joining a world in progress a few days.

It doesn’t just stop there, you can also get items from joining mid winter to help you survive, I was Astonished at exactly how many Rabbit Earmuffs were just laying around because people started with them.

Thats how the game is becoming EASIER Ahem but.. at the exact same time- You can turn off Butterflies but apply MORE Flowers, you can Toggle More Cookie Cutters (bad Idea I highly advise against it if playing Solo) and RockJaw sharks the game like it or not… is becoming both easier and harder simultaneously at the same time.

You consider turning off frog rain cheating, I consider having so many cookie cutters jump aboard my boat while playing Solo to be highly unbalanced and a one way trip to a watery grave just because I dared to toggle more of them then default.

Am I going to complain to Klei that these boat killing monstrosities are too hard and need to be removed? No I’m not.. because it was My fault for not lowering how many spawn when playing alone: So getting Stun locked on the boat unable to kill them was my own fault.

does the game need step by step tutorials? Heck no.. that would effectively RUIN what the franchise was- and friendly reminder.. not even NO SWEAT MODE on the Mobile version holds the players hand telling them exactly what to do step by step..

However what no sweat mode DOES do is disable some of the stressful annoying things about the game so players can learn things at their own pace without the fear of freezing to death, overheating, dying to insanity creatures or even starving on empty belly.

Almost ALL of the above can be toggled on/off when you host your world- so if you don’t like the game on its default settings- Maybe start messing with these menus to host your own world as easy or as hard as you want it?

Playing on Xbox I’ve witnessed multiple player playstyles (even had a dude who waited till winter started then burned the base down all because HE couldn’t survive Winter and THOUGHT we wouldn’t either, but when I hammered down all his destroyed structures (which gives back half the resources used in creating them) and REBUILT everything he destroyed while he was a dead ghost floating around trying to cause as much havoc as he could, this player was absolutely Astonished when not only did we Survive Winter but I pretty much single handedly carried the entire server (refusing to revive him of course because yeah he was a jerk..) 

But: One trend I’ve noticed in Xbox players is that most of them have learned how to toy around with that lovely menu of things you can toggle on and off- I’ve joined worlds that were Autumn only with 24/7 day cycle, worlds with hound waves disabled or Deerclops not allowed to spawn- Klei have given these people tools to custom tailor how much suffering they feel like enduring and.. over on Xbox at least- I can say people are actually starting to USE these menus of things you can toggle on/off more/less over.

And if im being 100% honest, I think the casual players and the veteran players can co-exist BECAUSE of this menu people are starting to actually use…

However, playing together and both types of players feeling challenged would become a serious issue, one I hope Klei will look into ways of addressing in the future.

One of my favorite games of all time was BORDERLANDS the 2009 original game, and a large part of the reason WHY was because I could beat the game on New game ++ and be max rank fighting ultra strong bad*** motha Elemental monsters, where as the level 4 player who just joined my world would see that same enemy at their level and skill threshold, it allowed ME and that Beginner player to shoot at the same enemy TOGETHER and us both still get a moderately decent challenge out of it.

DST.. if it got progressively harder content: Would struggle even worse then it currently does in allowing players of various skill levels to still PLAY and Enjoy the game with their friends.

Because: One group will be bored with how easy they have to make everything for their noob friends, OR their beginner friends are going to be challenged more then they NEED to be by harder content and will likely quit the game in pure frustration.

With that said: the game sort of already DOES scale with how long a player has stayed alive (biggest example being birds dropping significantly less useful resources for you based on how long you’ve been alive) so it CAN be done….

But would Klei want to go through all that trouble & hassle when they could instead just add new biomes & content & update the menu full of things we can toggle on/off more/less over every so often along the way?

In conclusion: if a player wants to learn most the craftables without looking them up on Wiki, then that player should disable all the things that KILL them along the path of that learning process, and as they get more familiar with X craftable or Y feature or Z gameplay mechanic- They may later decide to Increase/Reduce them based on how they want their game to play at the time.

 

[Masked Koopa]

I think it's worth bringing up that the game doesn't really convey information intuitively, something that's pretty easy to forget if you've been at it for a while.

Some food sources are just awful for pretty much no reason, like rabbit and bird traps, or dishes like ratatouille. Enemies also has virtually no coherency in terms of visual design or hp. Why do bees have as much hp as spiders? Why are frogs aggressive? Why do bee queen and Dfly have 20,000 hp while deerclops has a measly 4000? 

Like I enjoy the game, but there's no denying that its design is far from something a player could reasonably figure out on their own, they'll just assume the game is extremely hard to the point where they lose interest in even trying, when most vets can agree that that couldn't be farther from the truth.

It's also possible that the game's too old to properly address all of those different variables, but I do think that RWYS at least did a good job at making the farming system something newer players can kind of pick up on, instead of a time and resource sink that pretty much never paid for itself.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

38 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

Some food sources are just awful for pretty much no reason, like rabbit and bird traps, or dishes like ratatouille.

Easy to access = less effective but noobs can survive with them. Not all the food sources should be as good as others when there is different experience levels

39 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

Enemies also has virtually no coherency in terms of visual design or hp. Why do bees have as much hp as spiders?

I dont see the problem here

39 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

Why are frogs aggressive?

Do you need a reason?

40 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

Why do bee queen and Dfly have 20,000 hp while deerclops has a measly 4000? 

In a lot of games there is different kind of bosses. Dst is one of that games

41 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

Like I enjoy the game, but there's no denying that its design is far from something a player could reasonably figure out on their own, they'll just assume the game is extremely hard to the point where they lose interest in even trying, when most vets can agree that that couldn't be farther from the truth.

That depends of the player. If is a player that always surrend when loses few tries then that player wont enjoy dst without cheating. If is a player who enjoy improve and likes a lot the game then there wont be a problem

Is a niche game

[goblinball]

 

5 hours ago, Szczuku said:

But that feels like cheating, if I can turn something off in the world settings then why shouldn't I just give myself free crafting via console and skip all that 'gathering materials' part of the gameplay.

Ultimately this is for you to decide. If you want to give yourself free crafting, you can. If you think gathering materials is fun, then you can simply not use it. You can customize your dst experience to be as easy or “cheat-filled” as you want, nothing is really cheating.

 

3 hours ago, Masked Koopa said:

Why are frogs aggressive?

Frogs are terrible, evil creatures. The correct question you should be asking is “why arent frogs the main villain of dst”.

[Mysterious box]

I think I fall in between for of these arguements the game expects you to learn thru failure which for basic concepts that's fine but things behind that generally need a wiki, vid, or outside source and that's fine for the part but there are times the game is very bad at conveying information like the crockpot system and even then there are many potential customers who likely dropped the game due to needing a wiki for the full experience.  As far as the game's difficulty goes it's more or less decently balance when considering casual players and more experienced players. I will say it feels like character perks have become too powerful tho at this point if Wanda doesn't trivialize a mechanic I'm positive there will be threads on her being a bad character.

[W0l0l0]

I've stated in the past that I feel that we need something along the lines of the gardeneer book/cookbook to help new players understand what's going on. 

Whether any of us likes it or not, a huge amount of new players are going to drop Don't Starve before they can even survive one in-game year. I really wonder what proportion of annual players actually visit the ruins, or have killed a raid boss. There's so much content that's dead weight to these players, because they're not going to constantly google how everything works. Has anyone ever killed the fuelweaver without any external help or by looking at the code?

This is what brings me to the cookbook thing. It's the closest thing to a tutorial without being anything like one. It can gather already discovered information, and show hints of mobs, seasons, plants and bosses that haven't been discovered yet. Being able to see the damage of your weapons, how Toadstool works, and where Klaus spawns in the style of incomplete notes from what your character has seen and done just feels so on-theme for Don't Starve, and would definitely encourage me to find whatever those remaining blanked pages should have on them. I'd feel like I was encouraged to fill it out, and that's its my own discoveries. It would allow the game to officially show loot and damage values, extend character quotes to reveal more when looking from the book, stuff like that. It's hard to convey all this information in character quotes alone. 

Obviously, the main problem would be the effort to make such an item. An interactive encyclopedia of everything in Don't Starve Together is easier said than done, and I remember Klei specifically outlining this fact. I can't help but bring it up again because I can't think of anything half as good, and it could be the bridge to helping unlock a lot of content for new players. 

[Mike23Ua]

I can just see that ^^^ “You just died to cookie cutter” maybe Avoid getting your boat too close to them next time?

Jokes aside: it would be like the Journal Log from Spelunky: A book that only fills up with information as YOU Yourself Uncover it- 

notice in my book that the monsters, traps and locations I HAVEN’T discovered yet remain as blank pages in the book.. you KNOW something goes there.. you just haven’t uncovered it yet.

 

a no hand holding self discovery guide like this I can get fully on board with.. and the cookbook and plant registry are two things Klei has already done like this.

But mobs, biomes, and craftable usefulness… thats ALOT of information and compared to Spelunky… DSTs journal would look like the world Dictionary in size.

Im honestly not sure if Klei would want to spend all the time creating a journal log that in depth, it would help players… sure- but do we really NEED it that in depth? And how much time would it take away from new content updates/character reworks?

besides: No Sweat Mode DOES exist in the mobile version of DS allowing players to explore and learn the game with most the things that will kill them (hunger, sanity, cold/heat) toggled off.. do we really NEED journal for every mob, biome & craftable tool/weapon in DST?

”Hambat- Better then a Spear but spoils over time because it’s a weapon made out of Food.”

”Swamp Biome- full of Mosquitos, frogs, Merms, Spiders & Tentacles.. be ready to be unexpectedly smacked by any of them while strolling through the swamp at night with a dimly lit torch”

“Spider- 3 hits with a Spear & it’s dead.. but attack one and they ALL come after you, Drops Silk, Monster Meat & Spider Glands”

“Spider Gland- useful for instant healing or used in craftable for even better healing, also used in crafting Telltale Heart.”

I don’t think people who want this in depth journal fully understand exactly how much more work then Spelunky Klei would have to put into their Journal Log..

But would it be better than having to look everything up on Wikipedia? Damn straight it would be…

In fact I want the games Mini shorts added to the actual game under that Cinematics tab that reads as “watch pretty movies”many CONSOLE players have no idea the game even HAS a story, and those animated shorts provide a lot of lore that’s currently… just not in the game.. it’s sad really! 

[Owlrust]

I think it would be nice to maybe have an item that lets you research items, structures, and mobs similar to how to Gardeneer Hat researches plants; giving hints to secret / in-depth uses for all sorts of things. It would also encourage newer players to venture out much more to learn what else they can find.

Scanning a birdcage might get you a quote like "It appears these birds can turn meat products into eggs". Or, when scanning a pig, "The scanner says that Monster Meat affects pigs the way a full moon does". For bees you might see something like "Flowers seem to multiply when bees pollinate them", and for a Fridge you might see "It halves the time it takes for food to spoil, and makes ice last forever".

 

I don't think either side (veterans or newcomers) should be particularly favored, but to find compromise if possible. Both sides if I'm honest have good points; on one hand you don't want the game to be so unforgiving that it turns newcomers away, but likewise not too easy where base building is the only thing worth doing because the game no longer requires any skill to survive. I just try to give my opinion where I can and trust the devs with their vision for the game going forward. No doubt you can't please everyone, but you can compromise.

[Mantispidae]

Somehow find it funny that the game having a buffer for late-game joiners is a sign of the game becoming "painfully easy". Dying because you had a bad world spawn and just couldn't find something is ultimately a rare death, the grass and twig spawn is just there so that when every chunk of resource gets dug up and planted on the other side of the map someone doesn't die and screw over everyone's sanity. The seasonal items I read no differently than the adventure mode in DS giving you a rabbit earmuff and campfire so that you don't freeze to death before maxwell even finishes the monologue. Its frankly just better multiplayer design to have those things in a game where a player can join into near-unwinnable conditions very easily and with no indication. Especially since the ability to die from bad spawn isn't remotely removed.

That said, I don't think every secret of the world needs to be revealed, and hidden things like Antlion's glass structures are cool- but many things are unfortunately pretty obscure. Most can be figured out via experimentation (Ex. The birds have a pretty clear starvation mechanic, which encourages players to try and feed them, which in turn teaches that feeding can give out returns in the form of seeds, guano, or eggs) but other stuff can be pretty hard to just happen to crack, like the concept of rare resource duping or chester transformations. Chester is a good general one because whos gonna by pure chance leave a single gem or nightmare fuel in every slot? Maybe a special quote for examining chester on the full moon or some sort of visual indication like chester having a glow?

The farming overhaul is probably one of the best examples of both cleaning up an old mechanic of the game to be extremely good while providing a means of actually figuring out the complexities of it without needing a wiki breakdown. I don't even bother with fancy grids for fertilizer minmaxing because I'm both lazy and stupid and I love farming giant crops. It's stupidly complex compared to the old system but its easy enough to make viable not understanding a lick of it and provides pretty good rewards (Giant crops) for those who do get better. And then you have the gardening book and tools to help actually figure out those things on your own! (or do what i do any just play wormwood and have them tell you)

I do think a lot of the game systems, with time, might see a bit of cleanup and being old doesn't mean they can't get rehauled. Some of them are pretty baked-in but I don't think it would impossible for Klei to do things like a combat tab rehaul where they rebalance some tools and add in new ones so that there is more variety in choices. Hell, when was the last time you made a blowdart? I'd love to see some of those things see more use even if they aren't top choices. Maybe add in a bestiary book for fun that tells you monster information provided you killed it, just stuff like Health: Very High, Attack Speed: Quick, or Special Ability: Causes Panic, Summons minions, Slows. Doesn't tell you anything the 'vets' wouldn't know but does makes some details accessible via in-game effort.

[Mike23Ua]

I think a good majority of the problem with DS and DST is that DST is a SEQUEL now days but back then… it was treated as a stand-alone expansion dlc that was pretty much just DS but with a few friends.

Which meant: Klei expected people to actually Own DS before playing DST, which also meant- That player learned a lot of knowledge through playing DS that DST just expects them to blindly know right off the bat.. Examples being: In Adventures Mode where Maxwell leaves a few chests laying around with useful items to help survive his challenges that YOU have to figure out the purpose for.

With DST being a Multiplayer Game I can understand WHY these hints at what you need to do were removed.. but at the exact same time: It leaves a player who has never played Solo DS with lack of knowledge of things you learn early on in DS such as: Thermal Stones will keep you both warm and cold, Winter/Beefalo hats help you survive Winter, Tents can be crafted for sleeping inside to restore Health and Sanity at the cost of losing hunger. Torches, Campfires, Mining Hats protect you from dying to Darkness.

These are ALL Things you will learn as you try to progress through DS Solo’s Adventures Mode.. So in that sense: Maybe adding a No hand holding Tutorial that players must figure out for themselves sort of have Charlie pop in and say “Say Pal you think you got what it takes to over-come this harsh land? Here’s a few tools.. it’s up to YOU to figure out what they’re used for” and UNTIL that player passes this Tutorial they are completely locked out of playing Multiplayer all together. Maybe a tutorial like this wouldn’t hurt.

YOU LEARN THIS STUFF IN DS SOLO VERSION, Klei expects you to go into playing DST already KNOWING this Knowledge you’ve learned from the first game… and I finally realize THAT is DSTs biggest obstacle between Veteran players, and Casual newbies new to the franchise.

Veterans have been through Solo DS, they’ve been challenged to their brink of rage quitting.. but they were also given hints along the way to help them learn, in DST those hints are absent.. DST is also significantly easier and more forgiving on dying then it’s solo counter-part, so anyone who complains DST is too difficult really should never touch the single player game.

I say this because there’s like 15 different ways of reviving in DST (I’m over-exaggerating..) but my point is in Solo DS you didn’t have Rollbacks, Telltale Hearts or the ability to completely disable dying altogether when you died in THAT game your save was deleted, GG thanks for trying

Last night I played a game of DST where someone had the seasons set to random starts and lengths.. and when I joined this server- the game spawned me in mid-Summer but with some basic resources I would need to survive with (grass, Twigs, Flint, and pretty parasol) these items… WILL keep you alive long enough to find more essential items.

And as much as I hated the idea of “free resources for joining an already in progress game world” I understand now WHY Klei did it- and maybe (if we’re lucky..) Players who spawn with these starter helpful items will be Smart enough to realize OMG these things can actually HELP me if I can’t find X better Meta item and need something in a pinch…

In a way: I look at starting with a parasol in my hand for summer as being no different from landing in Winter in Adventures mode with some already burning campfires a thermal stone & a winter hat 

“Say pal, think you can survive my challenges? Very well here are a few things to help aid you along the way.. Good Luck!”

[ZombieDupe]

On 9/1/2021 at 4:16 PM, Mike23Ua said:

I agree with a lot of what you said Op but at the exact same time I DONT agree with all of it.

--snipped tangent about settings--

Just wanted to mention something about settings and to a further extent presets and where they fail for DST despite being finally tweaked and expanded upon for once.

Settings only go so far as I went in more detail in this post of this topic. They are overlooked and that in and of itself is yet another problem. In ONI, even though more specific settings aren't shown to you, the presets are pre-requisites for you to even start the game. You have to choose acknowledging they are there, even if you take the default option anyway, whatever it may be. In DST, it's the exact opposite, under a button. Some people probably see how bland and document-looking the basic server settings look like and probably don't even aknwoledge that, even though it's in front of them before they host a server. That's probably why you end up with people hosting servers who kick/ban you instantly, forgetting to set the server to private beforehand. So you can start the game having not even acknowledged that settings or presets even exist and there is little to nothing that existing presets offer, which are all hidden under buttons of a paper layout menu anyway.

Take for example nightmare creatures. Sure you could remove them from the game so your friend doesn't have to deal with them. But what about yourself? I wouldn't have fun if I had to go to the ruins to get nightmare fuel or could barely get any at all. What works well for one player will not work for another if we just leave it at that. This is why I have been arguing for having the game start out easier, but become more difficult over time, and that the player should be able to pick themselves up and learn at a decent pace to overcome further challenges enabling them to experience more exiting content. If we just turn off all difficulty it becomes boring, if we turn all difficulty up it become unbearable. That's something settings, no matter how much you throw them in most cases won't simply solve everything, if much at all.

On 9/2/2021 at 6:37 PM, Mike23Ua said:

I can just see that ^^^ “You just died to cookie cutter” maybe Avoid getting your boat too close to them next time?

Jokes aside: it would be like the Journal Log from Spelunky: A book that only fills up with information as YOU Yourself Uncover it- 

notice in my book that the monsters, traps and locations I HAVEN’T discovered yet remain as blank pages in the book.. you KNOW something goes there.. you just haven’t uncovered it yet.

 

a no hand holding self discovery guide like this I can get fully on board with.. and the cookbook and plant registry are two things Klei has already done like this.

But mobs, biomes, and craftable usefulness… thats ALOT of information and compared to Spelunky… DSTs journal would look like the world Dictionary in size.

Im honestly not sure if Klei would want to spend all the time creating a journal log that in depth, it would help players… sure- but do we really NEED it that in depth? And how much time would it take away from new content updates/character reworks?

A JOURNAL OMG

Dang... That does sound like more of a trivia wiki in-game, which could come in extremely useful if absolutely necessary, but unfortunately I don't think people would be inclined to look much at it. I've rarely seen new ONI players click on menus to watch a minute clip that visually demonstrates the details of a mechanic, let alone the logs of information that are there. Also you probably won't have the time to look at it, since the game won't let you because watch out for that spider that's aggroed on you, so it would ultimately prove fruitless in a multiplayer setting I think. The cookbook itself already costs paper and some other stuff to craft and it only tells you stuff you have already cooked yourself, not much else. By the time it might matter you'll remember the recipes that matter by the ingredient. Some players I've asked around don't even know they have a map, so...

[Mike23Ua]

Okay well Having a lovely little menu full of things you can toggle on and off, more or less over may not be unusual to PC players because maybe a lot of PC games do this… but over on XBOX when I first picked up this franchise having a menu full of things I could custom tailor about my world and my gameplay experience was one of the things that made me fall in love with the franchise to begin with- here I had a game with features I could toggle to my hearts content to find that just right amount of balance in what I find challenging.

Now in DST your right if I have to lower all the difficulty to play with a less skilled friend I myself will be bored out of my mind- But there’s really not a whole lot Klei can do to balance that, there may be mods that apply personal difficulties per individual player- but as an Xbox gamer… that menu of things I can toggle on and off is the best I’m going to get.

However Klei has been putting in effort to provide for more flexibility (Aka I no longer have to completely delete my world save to change a handful of settings.. now I can just exit the world and change those settings then relaunch the world)

It allows me to effectively play in a world where when my less skilled friends are playing everything is easy going & less challenging, but when the hardcore players join and the less skilled ones log out I can exit the same world and ramp up the difficulty.

Is it a PERFECT difficulty system? Of course not… but it sure as hell beats having my noob friend join my 1,000+ day world that evolved and got progressively harder over time only for them to be completely overwhelmed in an unnecessary difficulty.

IF the game was set up this way (as many seem to strongly advocate for) then I would literally have to start NEW worlds to play with my less skilled friends and then ABANDON those worlds when they progressively become too difficult for them to play and enjoy anymore.

For a game called Dont Starve TOGETHER that would be a down right awful way of playing Together.

In short: it’s equivalent to State of Decay 2- the longer days go by the harder things become and the more zombie-infested the city gets, eventually YOU the player either through overwhelmed number of infected or due to you simply looting every location you can of all resources- you have to make the choice to abandon all hope and leave to a new less infected town.

IRONICALLY if DST played like that-  it would be like WANDA you have a limited amount of time to roam around before you eventually kick the bucket or have to rewind the clock back.

Only in THIS CASE it would apply to your entire world save and the progress you’ve made within it which personally I would not find fun when trying to play with friends.

[NightfallsCurse]

How about make it to where fuelweaver doesn't heal so much from his godawful minions, i'd prefer it to be decreased by 50%, 200hp is perfect healing for him, 400 HP IS SO ANNOYING

[Mike23Ua]

I feel the need to heavily stress that people who play this game franchise and Don’t want to resort to Wikipedia pages or looking things up on the forums: Should TOTALLY pay attention to their characters inspection Quotes..

You can learn how to do something as one character while playing as Another: For example I learned that Flowers were Renewable from a Quote Maxwell has about flying flowers.

Most Recently I’ve been playing DS Hamlet (it’s pretty new for Xbox) and I died because I kept sneezing my Inventory out of my hands- Not knowing HOW to deal with that, But TODAY while playing as WALANI in Hamlet her Inspection Quote has helped me learn something I did not know:

Spoiler

Interesting… thanks for the Tip Walani! 

My point here is if you want to learn to do things without Wiki/Online guides If you pay attention the game/games WILL teach you… you just have to actually care enough to pay attention to it- OR look it up online.

Theres no right or wrong way to play this game: Some people enjoy knowing it all through online tutorials or having others tell them, Me personally: I like learning through the quotes the variety of different playable characters have- as you can see above in the spoiler with Walani in Hamlet.