Should Klei shut down the Klei Official Servers?

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, Seero said:

ok an actual serious response

they should work on pvp, and since dst has a pvp option, that alone should make klei have a server for pvp

From my experience with PvP in DST.. it’s not any fun at all, your ALWAYS going to lose to Wendy, Abigail will make quick work of you while you don’t ever get anywhere near close to hurting the Wendy. Now unless you sneak into her Tent at night while she’s sleeping- Steal Abigails flower and burn it, you will no doubt in my mind: ALWAYS LOSE TO WENDY.

DST isn’t really a game that was designed with PvP being a priority, certain characters will straight up stomp a mud hole in other characters & it’s not even fair. I play ALOT of PvP games but Don’t Starve ain’t one of them.

If Klei wants to take PvP Seriously- Then I had a suggestion for that where you strip characters of all their abilities, give everyone the same stats, give them all a gigantic sign and put them on a large circular platform surrounded by Lava to attempt to be the last one left on the platform.

This type of PvP actually WORKS because it’s been done in Mario Party Mini-Games, and there’s even an entire game that’s built this way called “Marooners”

I wouldn’t mind a Marooners style PVP, but trying to rebalance the entire game with PvP in mind would be a headache- and more often than not: PVE has to suffer because of those rebalancing changes.

Look at Ark Survival Evolved as a prime example: Thylacoleo used to be able to climb walls, like that’s literally what you would tame one for- but in PVP people were using them to climb other players walls and then use their cyropods to throw animals into the enemy base to destroy it. The developers figured the best solution to this: Make Thylacoleo no longer climb walls.

Which made the Dino effectively useless for its original design intent.

Thats pretty much why I hope Klei continues to look at pvp in DST as an afterthought.

[Cr4zyFl4mes]

44 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

From my experience with PvP in DST.. it’s not any fun at all, your ALWAYS going to lose to Wendy, Abigail will make quick work of you while you don’t ever get anywhere near close to hurting the Wendy. Now unless you sneak into her Tent at night while she’s sleeping- Steal Abigails flower and burn it, you will no doubt in my mind: ALWAYS LOSE TO WENDY.

DST isn’t really a game that was designed with PvP being a priority, certain characters will straight up stomp a mud hole in other characters & it’s not even fair. I play ALOT of PvP games but Don’t Starve ain’t one of them.

If Klei wants to take PvP Seriously- Then I had a suggestion for that where you strip characters of all their abilities, give everyone the same stats, give them all a gigantic sign and put them on a large circular platform surrounded by Lava to attempt to be the last one left on the platform.

This type of PvP actually WORKS because it’s been done in Mario Party Mini-Games, and there’s even an entire game that’s built this way called “Marooners”

I wouldn’t mind a Marooners style PVP, but trying to rebalance the entire game with PvP in mind would be a headache- and more often than not: PVE has to suffer because of those rebalancing changes.

Look at Ark Survival Evolved as a prime example: Thylacoleo used to be able to climb walls, like that’s literally what you would tame one for- but in PVP people were using them to climb other players walls and then use their cyropods to throw animals into the enemy base to destroy it. The developers figured the best solution to this: Make Thylacoleo no longer climb walls.

Which made the Dino effectively useless for its original design intent.

Thats pretty much why I hope Klei continues to look at pvp in DST as an afterthought.

ehm, no. You don't always lose to Wendy. Your chosen characters doesn't really change much in PVP. Some have advantages - wicker can craft sleepytime stories, while others have to either find pan flute or craft it. Wortox can escape the pan flute. Wigfrid is obviously decent for cheap armor and defensive and offensive bonuses. But it usually comes down to who has pan flute. Also, do you know that blow darts exist?

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

From my experience with PvP in DST.. it’s not any fun at all, your ALWAYS going to lose to Wendy, Abigail will make quick work of you while you don’t ever get anywhere near close to hurting the Wendy. Now unless you sneak into her Tent at night while she’s sleeping- Steal Abigails flower and burn it, you will no doubt in my mind: ALWAYS LOSE TO WENDY.

DST isn’t really a game that was designed with PvP being a priority, certain characters will straight up stomp a mud hole in other characters & it’s not even fair. I play ALOT of PvP games but Don’t Starve ain’t one of them.

If Klei wants to take PvP Seriously- Then I had a suggestion for that where you strip characters of all their abilities, give everyone the same stats, give them all a gigantic sign and put them on a large circular platform surrounded by Lava to attempt to be the last one left on the platform.

This type of PvP actually WORKS because it’s been done in Mario Party Mini-Games, and there’s even an entire game that’s built this way called “Marooners”

I wouldn’t mind a Marooners style PVP, but trying to rebalance the entire game with PvP in mind would be a headache- and more often than not: PVE has to suffer because of those rebalancing changes.

Look at Ark Survival Evolved as a prime example: Thylacoleo used to be able to climb walls, like that’s literally what you would tame one for- but in PVP people were using them to climb other players walls and then use their cyropods to throw animals into the enemy base to destroy it. The developers figured the best solution to this: Make Thylacoleo no longer climb walls.

Which made the Dino effectively useless for its original design intent.

Thats pretty much why I hope Klei continues to look at pvp in DST as an afterthought.

abi is just a 600hp with 40 damage at most mob...

[cezarica]

You sure got some big balls for stepping up and admitting the mistake that was made and thus taking one for the team @JoeW, I tip my hat for that.

From a business point of view one customer ruining on purpose one or even worse multiple other customers game is not good business from any point of view no matter how you look at it. Anyway, looking forward to see what stuff you guys got in store for us.

[ZombieDupe]

On 10/15/2021 at 10:53 PM, JoeW said:

There are a lot of challenges to moderating a game like Don't Starve Together that I feel are unique to the DST experience. Not everybody thinks that accidentally burning down everything is a "bad" thing. Not everybody agrees on what should and shouldn't be done in the game at any given time. There isn't really any right or wrong way to play the game. Some people feel you must min/max to play correctly, some enjoy the chaos from trying to help people figure things out. Some of you absolutely love the chaos other people bring, some people like 100% cooperation at all times. 

Most of the forum can't even agree on how to play the game at any given time. 

We have no interest in enforcing how you or your friends play the game. I have supported something like a dozen online games with millions of players, and it takes a lot - A LOT of resources to maintain even basic game moderation. 

Combing through server logs, is especially interesting in trying to decipher what a persons original intention was when they burned the base down. 

It's one thing on your servers that you own, and you make the decisions. It's another thing as a company trying to do what is best for customers that purchased your game. I am not comfortable banning people unless I am absolutely certain what they did was bad. And as much as you might not like hearing it, screenshots don't cut it. 

Naively I guess. The idea was that those servers would be chaos, and if people didn't like it, they wouldn't play there. I don't think this is incorrect now, but I also see that there is a place for open public servers like DST has without the chaos. 

Now - I am aware that there are situations where people have flat out said they were griefing. But I am also aware of many of these situations that I have investigated (quietly) also had another side of the story where they were also harassed. And I am very, very resistant to banning people, unless there is no other choice. 

This landed us where we are now. We are currently working toward better tools for server administration. Substantially better logging and moderation capabilities as well as encouraging, providing and highlighting more player hosted dedicated servers as well.

We've been quiet because we haven't had an adequate solution, but we're well on our way on this. This will come little by little, and some of this is already starting (Steam chat filters are in the test build right now) and more that I can't talk about yet, more details will come out for this when I have more information. But for now, I wanted you to know where we're at. 

No reasonable person would look at the option to burn down bases and think that's a fun game mechanic. This sort of behavior has caused a lot more grief to many more people than any fun could be had just burning down hours of progress as you would have to spend yet more hours trying to fix everything or your work simply amounting to nothing. You want chaos, I want chaos too, but if you're going to have chaos, you're going to have to implement measures by which that chaos can be repaired or undone at an extremely low cost and/or the resources to repair are easy to obtain in mass (for example if your science machine is burnt, use a single log to repair it back, you lose resources still and want to avoid things burning but it isn't such a pain). Depletion of essential resources by easily accessible methods like pig skin, silk, honey comes and even fossils come to mind too. Abundance and replenishment by more conventional means is then your answer to the problem. How is anyone supposed to get an umbrella or football helmet joining in spring on your servers when all the pig houses in the world are destroyed? Chaos is only fair when a player has decent chance to learn and adapt to the issue not when you die due to no fault of your own.

If you're going to enable this behavior maybe add some anti-griefing option. Maybe not the best, but not the worst either will save a lot of headaches as it is impossible to progress or do anything fun when the whole foundation of everything in terms of content is set up in flames and destroyed. A base burning down due to negligence, as a esult of some wildfires or mob fires is fine and understandable even, but the direct act of burning down a structure generally benefits none. Players who attempt to burn, hammer or do something for which there is an anti-griefing condition for would not be able to do so then. Official moderation however is absolutely not the answer here and I think we both know why, though it appears not enough of the dedicated playerbase understands that.

Right this moment a group of people could simply dedicate themselves to hold every single one of your servers hostage in just a couple of hours, kicking everyone else out, burning everything down, creating death traps for everyone at any respawn point even if they manage to survive for a minute and make it impossible for anyone to play. Are you really fine with that idea? Is this the type of chaos you are ok with? Fix these sorts of issues through replenishment of essential and non-renewable resources, repairing burnt structures with ease and removing the option to burn several structures by any means and there will be little to no problems of this kind anymore.

On 10/15/2021 at 10:53 PM, JoeW said:

Now - I am aware that there are situations where people have flat out said they were griefing. But I am also aware of many of these situations that I have investigated (quietly) also had another side of the story where they were also harassed. And I am very, very resistant to banning people, unless there is no other choice.

This is a very important point that I know exactly how to address but you won't care about to my understanding. People get upset because of the general expectations that the game gives to most new players, they are then let down especially when people are unwilling to help them due to their own situation or because they deem them worthless unless they "git gud" and they won't get good unless they continuously pester other knowledgeable players that are actually willing to help them and deal with their pitfalls, read the wiki or look up guides because you have put in little to no effort attempting anything that would guide the player in progressing. This is assuming a player even cares to persist through the painful experience you have established to begin with and many people don't, we both know that for a fact. The game starts as a near impossible survival simulator but becomes a mostly chill sandbox experience given the right circumstances when you know everything. And as practice has shown there is no way to go from one to the other by learning things through playing the game alone. Keep this up and we will continue to have people hate each other like this, we will continue to have toxic people, elitists, egotists. People don't usually get angry over nothing, there is a good reason why this has emerged and the way your game often displays itself to people breeds that behavior. Just contrast the attitude of many vocal players of this game with the vocal playerbase of ONI and you'll see exactly what I mean.

If you make important changes (like ones I described) there will be no issue. Global scarcity and people seeing one another as worthless if they don't know how to play is your game's fault which you as a developer are responsible to address if you want the environment to change for the better. This has been going on for years and you have given little to no attention to but maybe you will now, who knows?

 

In short I would say implement changes that adhere to these principles so as to make a better playground for any type of player:

* Certain conditions for stopping players from burning, hammering or whatever else (have a setting to turn this off, you can add a beta for this, you can tweak the conditions during the beta and even after)

* Make more essential progression resources and in fact all resources respawn as part of regrowth for example. Bee hives, pig houses (could make it impossible to hammer the ones spawned by the world), reeds, cacti, GRASS, more aesthetic flora like spiky bushes and spiky trees, graves, I would even argue mandrakes every year or season to keep balance in check. Encourages exploration and revisiting of locations, alleviates frustration due to loss of such resources.

* Give more options to repair and refuel items and structures that don't take all that much resources. Not only can you have more fun using an item more but mistakes and especially intentional  won't be so devastating anymore. Easier and less punishing respawn mechanics would be great too (such as click button to respawn at portal), maybe even make Wilderness or Endless the default mode in some form for your servers.

 

Some people may not like some changes initially or never really and might end up very vocal about their rejection of the idea. But the effects cannot be seen until you change things accordingly and I can tell you right now that having played this game for way more than some people at your company ever will, I know for a fact that that these kinds of changes will ultimately have positive effect on the game as a whole. Try a beta for this to test some of these ideas and see the effects, tweak as needed until you arrive at a solution that doesn't ruin the game for so many people.

Oh and don't forget to replace bone shards with fossils in the deconstruction loot drop table for Bone Helm and Bone Armor (thurible also needs to drop something valuable), you have to be joking with this otherwise, I even pointed out a possible massive frustration scenario before with bone shards being the loot drops instead. If bone shards are the loot that will continue to drop from these items it would have been better to just have left these items alone and completely impossible to deconstruct. Doing the obvious that clearly would have positive impact is usually nowhere near as difficult, some players are crying for this change and I see no problem with having fossils be part of the loot table. Do you?

[Capybara007]

14 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

Oh and don't forget to replace bone shards with fossils in the deconstruction loot drop table for Bone Helm and Bone Armor (thurible also needs to drop something valuable), you have to be joking with this otherwise, I even pointed out a possible massive frustration scenario before with bone shards being the loot drops instead. If bone shards are the loot that will continue to drop from these items it would have been better to just have left these items alone and completely impossible to deconstruct. Doing the obvious that clearly would have positive impact is usually nowhere near as difficult, some players are crying for this change and I see no problem with having fossils be part of the loot table. Do you?

You havent learned nothing from your forums experience, dont tell a developer the changes you want and even less in a random forum thread, because they sure wont reply or even bother to read.

You made a fair statement but your request has nothing to do with the topic, you just want to see a window where a creator replies so you can talk about random suggestions, please dont do this anymore considering you arent getting results.

[ALCRD]

On 10/10/2021 at 8:39 PM, Mooagain said:

No, public servers are fun

Indeed in their own way they are.

Shutting them down would be a shame.

[b l a n k]

Official servers are one of the main reasons why I keep playing the game, that would indeed be a shame (for me, at least) if they were shut down

Griefer or other bad players exist in every game and they are never a valid reason to why the other good players should be penalized IMO (e.g. deleting the servers because of the lack of moderation). Most of the time kick & rollback to previous save does the trick anyway

The servers are also pretty stable, there are some rare times where it lags but that's like any other server and that's not a hindrance, I didn't even expect to see that point mentioned when I opened the topic