The unspoken rule of "vanilla" and options

[abrocator]

28 minutes ago, SinancoTheBest said:

The concept that Grass, Saplings and Bushes in the nature having an advantage over their dug up versions is simply superb design.

The advantage is that they don’t need to be fertilized.   See?  Already superb design.

28 minutes ago, SinancoTheBest said:

If these were implemented, I think disease would have been a pretty good mechanic- you'd be punished for not caring for your plants

Most “punishments” like this have an upside.  Tree guards can be killed for living logs.  Grass geckos can be penned and auto-scared by Chester.  Krampus Sack.  Lord of the Fruit Flies drops a minion.  It makes punishments interesting and even adds some stategy to them (like killing Glommer to spawn Krampus).

Disease is inherently uninteresting in this sense.  The way it worked had no possible upsides.  Likewise for your suggestion.

In general I don’t get this need to punish every little thing in the game.  Should we punish people for having too much meat in their ice box?  Maybe the Guardian of the Slaughterhouse could randomly spawn?

Because collecting saplings and grass tufts is just another form of hoarding.

As I’ve mentioned, punishments can be interesting.  They’re funny the first time because you die from chopping trees.  Hahaha, that’s so random.  And then you are fine with it afterwards since you get living logs.  Or you get wood from decidious trees instead (if using Bearger).  But disease?  It’s just lame the first time it happens and a chore all the times after that.

[Cheggf]

2 hours ago, SinancoTheBest said:

 

I agree that the idea of disease is good, but the mechanic of disease was garbage. There was nothing fun, interesting, difficult, engaging, or anything with disease. It's just every once in awhile go back to your plants, get rid of any decorations you might have that block their planting, shovel them up, put them back exactly how they were, and put any decorations back. It was tedious and nothing else.

Reworking disease would be the best, but that would also be more effort than the other choices. Given the option between the equally effortless default on, default off, or removed from game, I think default off is the best and default on the worst.

[Theukon-dos]

Sense it's been talked about a lot but hasn't gone into much detail, something needs to be said.

 

World gen settings are NOT difficulty settings.

 

It's true that the different settings can make the game more or less difficult. But the issues are that

1.It's hollow, uninteresting difficulty

2. It doesn't solve/nerf the underlying issues with the game's difficulty

3. Adjusting the Game's difficulty in this manner can also cause issues with aspects the player didn't want to touch.

Now then, let's break these down 1 by 1.

 

1. Hollow, uninteresting difficulty.

As said before, it is certainly true that adjusting the settings can make the game harder for people. If someone has a hard time dealing with hound waves, then claiming that increasing hound waves wouldn't give them a harder time is stupid. 

However, not all difficulty is created equally. And relying on world gen settings for challenge is among the lowest forms of difficulty. Dark souls didn't become popular because it's hard. It became popular because the developers spent thousands, nigh, tens of thousands of hours balancing and tuning the game's mechanics and enemies so that the difficulty was fair. There's rarely, if ever an instance where it feels like dying was out of the player's control.

Turning up monsters or turning down resources is the exact opposite of this.

Turning up the number of Hounds is harder, sure. But it doesn't change the mechanics of hounds. It doesn't give the hounds smarter AI, it doesn't give the hounds more advanced kiting patterns that make them more interesting to fight. It just means that I have to fight 10 hounds at once instead of 3 hounds.

Or, as a more solid example. I have gone on record several times to say that I consider the Sanity mechanic in DST too easy. And sure, I could increase the amount of Sanity monsters that spawn. But fighting half a dozen shadows at once isn't fun. And on top of that, it doesn't actually solve the issues I have with Sanity. I don't think Sanity's too easy because kiting shadow monsters is easy. I consider sanity too easy because the effects it has on the world are marginal at best. All it does is make 2 very specific mobs less practical as food sources, makes you need to fuel your fire pit more, and spawns monsters when you reach an arbitrarily low point on the meter. Just spawning more monsters doesn't solve the problems I have with sanity or make it more difficult for me. It just makes it more tedious. And that brings me to my second point.

 

2. World settings doesn't solve the underlying problems.

While I certainly can turn down resources or food items, and this will make the game harder in the short term. Most options in this case are going to end up trivial or a non-problem in the long term. 

Do I turn down Berry bushes? Well, I can still relocate a few stacks of them to my base. It's just going to take a bit longer to get enough.

Do I turn down Volt Goats and Beefalo? Well, they're just going to reproduce until the heard reaches a healthy level.

Do I turn down trees? Wood might be hard to come by, but pine trees are still going to be dropping pinecones which I can plant at base.

Do I start in spring instead of autumn? Well, the rain will certainly be a challenge, but Spring will have to end eventually, and once summer rolls around, I'll have already gotten the materials I need in order to counteract it, and then Summer will end and Autumn will start, and we'll just be back to the same yearly cycle.

Do I turn hound waves up? Well, all those hound teeth are going to let me make a massive field of tooth traps before winter's over.

 

Point of the matter is, just turning things up or down can often end up being a short-term solution. Food barely existing barely matters when I can still transfer a spider den and about 20 berry bushes to my base to have infinite meatballs. Or if I can get a few seeds from birds or tumbleweeds and grow the infinite well of health, sanity, and hunger that is a Potomato garden. And some of you may be thinking "Well can't you just turn those things off entirely?" And you would be correct. however, 

3. Adjusting the Game's difficulty in this manner can also cause issues with aspects the player didn't want to touch.

In part 2, I specifically called out Spider nests as a source of food that can be turned down, but not mattering when you do because you can just bring one to your base for free infinite monster meat. But this problem can be solved by turning off spider dens entirely, right?

Well yes, but this causes another problem. Spider dens are a reliable source of Monster Meat. But they're also the only reliable source of Silk, which is used a lot and in bulk. Sails, Bee hats, nets, bird traps. if I turn off spider nests because of their monster meat, then I'm locking myself out of a lot of items that I want to interact with. And this applies to a lot of creatures. 

Turning off beefalo means no Beefalo Wool.

Turning off Hounds means no hounds teeth.

Turning off Goats means no horns.

Turning off birds means no feathers.

 

And sure, you could argue that this is part of the challenge. But I don't think being able to farm silk makes the game easy. 'nor do I want to challenge myself with less silk. All I Want is for Spider Dens to not be one of the best food sources in the game. And no amount of changing world gen can fix that without serious compromise.

 

So, to reiterate, sure. Changing the World settings can technically make the game more difficult, but doing so adds hollow difficulty that doesn't really solve anything and can end up causing more harm than good. And sure, maybe Klei will add more difficulty-oriented options. I'd honestly love it if that sort of mechanic was implemented. But that's just the thing, maybe they'll do that. But they could also maybe decide that doing so wouldn't be worth the effort. Maybe they'd rather dedicate that development time to the ocean or caves. Or maybe they'll just drop DST outright and move onto the next game. It's certainly possible that Klei would implement optional difficulty settings, but you can't judge or defend the feature for a mechanic that might not ever exist. 

 

[Maxposting]

Finally someone else understands

[Mike23Ua]

I’d rather have Klei spend their development time and resources on this over mini-games, carnival attractions & pet dress up with the year of the x events.

THIS impacts the game I bought and enjoyed playing for being Dont Starve.. all that other stuff I mentioned above is newer stuff they started with DST..

THIS gives me more of the content and more control over the content I play the game to enjoy.. meanwhile- Year of the Carrat is only going to be fun for a few hours & then I’ll grow bored of it.

If Weather seasons truly started and ended randomly however.. then I wouldn’t be able to “Prepare” for Summer because I would ALWAYS need to be “Prepared” for Summer.

If Day lengths could be Random I wouldn’t know what type of “Daylight Cycle” tomorrow brings & when the little dail in the top right corner clicked over into a new “Day” I could potentially be spending that entire Day until the dial rolls over again in temporary “Lights Out Mode”

Instead of hiring a team of devs to crank this menu full of potential up to what I know it’s capable of..

I’m getting updates that let me race Charlie’s shadow rats in race courses, don’t get me wrong- Year of the Carrat was absolutely fun as heck and still the best “Pet” the game has ever had, maybe tommorow Year of the Catcoon changes that we will see.. but the “Point” I’m trying to make is that these are silly little batches of content that plays nothing at all like the franchise I enjoy Don’t Starve for being..

And if I had to choose between pet Carrats or more control/playability over the core game itself- Obviously Carrats are coming in second place in that race.

[Theukon-dos]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’d rather have Klei spend their development time and resources on this over mini-games, carnival attractions & pet dress up with the year of the x events.

THIS impacts the game I bought and enjoyed playing for being Dont Starve.. all that other stuff I mentioned above is newer stuff they started with DST..

What's "This"? If you want to talk about something, you need to explain it.

Quote

~~snip~~

If Weather seasons truly started and ended randomly however.. then I wouldn’t be able to “Prepare” for Summer because I would ALWAYS need to be “Prepared” for Summer.

Except all you need to do inorder to be "prepared for Summer" is have an Eyebrella in your backpack. Infact, that's also all you need to do inorder to prepare for spring too. And then for winter all you need is a Beef hat or a Tam o' Shanter. That second one most people are probably going to have on them anyways due to the sanity gain.

Quote

If Day lengths could be Random I wouldn’t know what type of “Daylight Cycle” tomorrow brings & when the little dail in the top right corner clicked over into a new “Day” I could potentially be spending that entire Day until the dial rolls over again in temporary “Lights Out Mode”

Ok. But what how does that make the game more difficult? All you to get through a lights out day is a lantern with enough fuel. And if that doesn't work out, a torch or a pre-built campfire will let you survive the day easy.

Quote

Instead of hiring a team of devs to crank this menu full of potential up to what I know it’s capable of..

You say that. But looking at your arguments, I'd say that everything I brought up there still applies here. All the current settings would add hollow and superficial difficulty at best, and the development time for adding actual "hard mode" options would likely be better spent working on content that everyone can use instead of content a small portion of the playerbase will use.

 

[Mike23Ua]

8 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

What's "This"? If you want to talk about something, you need to explain it.

Except all you need to do inorder to be "prepared for Summer" is have an Eyebrella in your backpack. Infact, that's also all you need to do inorder to prepare for spring too. And then for winter all you need is a 

Ok. But what how does that make the game more difficult? All you to get through a lights out day is a lantern with enough fuel. And if that doesn't work out, a torch or a pre-built campfire will let you survive the day easy.

You say that. But looking at your arguments, I'd say that everything I brought up there still applies here. All the current settings would add hollow and superficial difficulty at best, and the development time for adding actual "hard mode" options would likely be better spent working on content that everyone can use instead of content a small portion of the playerbase will use.

 

Why are you not listening?? Any content- Existing, Future, 40$ Paid DLC expansion, all of it goes right here into these toggles..

It really doesn’t need any further explanation then that, Regardless of how Easy or “Hard” that content is

(if you want balls to the wall Hardcore make yourself a mod because I’m certain very very few people actually want that..)

All I’m saying (and can be proven if you play Solo Don’t Starve) is when you select a toggle option: Such as Reign of Giants/Shipwrecked/Hamlet prior to hosting your world, additional toggle options (amount of resources, how often X happens etc..) can be toyed around with.

This impacts any currently available content, any paid dlc expansions, any free updates etc… 

As seen here:

[Theukon-dos]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

Why are you not listening?? Any content- Existing, Future, 40$ Paid DLC expansion, all of it goes right here into these toggles..

It really doesn’t need any further explanation then that, Regardless of how Easy or “Hard” that content is

(if you want balls to the wall Hardcore make yourself a mod because I’m certain very very few people actually want that..)

All I’m saying (and can be proven if you play Solo Don’t Starve) is when you select a toggle option: Such as Reign of Giants/Shipwrecked/Hamlet prior to hosting your world, additional toggle options (amount of resources, how often X happens etc..) can be toyed around with.

This impacts any currently available content, any paid dlc expansions, any free updates etc… 

As seen here:

 

IMG_4491.MOV 47.33 MB · 0 downloads

More settings to toggle doesn't solve the problems I have with the mechanic, it just means there's going to be more stuff to wade through.

If Klei adds, say, Monsoons from Shipwrecked. Me making a world that always has a Monsoon going on isn't going to add any interesting or meaningful challenge. It just means that I'm going to have a worse time playing the game.

 

 

[Mike23Ua]

On 1/26/2022 at 7:33 PM, Theukon-dos said:

More settings to toggle doesn't solve the problems I have with the mechanic, it just means there's going to be more stuff to wade through.

If Klei adds, say, Monsoons from Shipwrecked. Me making a world that always has a Monsoon going on isn't going to add any interesting or meaningful challenge. It just means that I'm going to have a worse time playing the game.

 

 

I think this is more of a “Skill” Issue then a challenge issue, but for players who have never experienced X.. or Just aren’t very good at Y, if they Suddenly had to deal with X & More Y the game would obviously become more difficult for them.

The Dont Starve franchise as a whole: is a learning process.. & the less knowledged you are about X or Y the more difficult it’s going to be for you.

In your particular case you posses too much knowledge to be challenged by it.

But take myself for example, I have no idea how to activate those metal sleeping centipedes down in the Archives.. & I’m still very much horrified of what their attack pattern will be like, how much Health they might have, etc..

Realistically Klei can’t ever add ANYTHING to the game that people will look into the code or read up on Wiki to discover the in’s and outs of how it works that will “Challenge” them.. the Challenge is in your own lack of knowledge or skill.

My sworn enemy in the DS franchise is MacTusk.. these things manage to kill me often so if I increase the amount of MacTusks in my world I’m challenged even further- that is UNTIL I overcome my fear of them and start easily killing them: Then just having more MacTusks would be seen as a good thing for more chances at Tam/Walking Cane/Tusks for Wanda crafts.

If I still rely heavily upon picking flowers for sanity or killing butterflies for health & hunger: Setting those to low or none makes the game more difficult for me.

Of course: Difficulty is subjective to the Player…

So of course no one on this forum is ever going to agree.

[Maxposting]

13 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Of course: Difficulty is subjective to the Player…

Of course it is, but I don't think you are supposed to push for further difficulty if you haven't even beaten the final bosses on default toggles

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 hour ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

Of course it is, but I don't think you are supposed to push for further difficulty if you haven't even beaten the final bosses on default toggles

why?  before knowing about raid bosses i tried some little challenge like random length seasons, playing as wes with seasonal bosses on more (i didnt even know about lag prediction so this was a big challenge back in the day xD), only caves basing, etc

the game isnt monster hunter, it has more. Some people enjoy just chilling, other enjoy just doing challenge or speed runs, other people like to enjoy all the vanilla content, others enjoy beating the same boss with gear gave by console commands over and over to learn perfectly the fight (and later few of them come here with arrogant statments about how pr0 thry are and how noobs are the players who dont agree with them), other dont enjoy fighting, etc

one thing is talking about balance without know how the character affects the content and other thing is force people to play like they dont like

[Mike23Ua]

9 hours ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

Of course it is, but I don't think you are supposed to push for further difficulty if you haven't even beaten the final bosses on default toggles

It’s not just about how “difficult” the content is, it’s also about how that content is presented to the player or what that content is centered on.

Like I mean, just because I don’t enjoy boss fights doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy exploring randomly generated worlds full of things that hated me and wanted me to die.

Thats why I bought DS, Shipwrecked, Hamlet and DST.

However (& it pains me to say this..) it feels like DST has become centered around Mini-Games and Raid Bosses & that just plain & Simply isn’t the type of game DS/Shipwrecked/Hamlet was.. I would absolutely LOVE more of the content I enjoyed about the franchise, maybe some new biomes.. maybe some old biomes getting updated with New Content, maybe even large dlc quality expansion with new climates, mobs, biomes, resources, weather seasons etc..

I remember a time when Dont Starve didn’t have any “Giants” & the ones it did eventually get weren’t these lengthy high HP grinds intended for multiple players, it was essentially taking a game & franchise I loved and flipping it upside down on its head.

there are a good number of people who would pay for Shipwrecked/Hamlet compatibility within DST (im pretty sure if Klei started a Kickstarter campaign to green light the production and development of that happening they’ll reach their Quota in no time..)

Klei is well aware of how commonly thrown about these forums new forum accounts join just to ask for Shipwrecked/Hamlet Together.

But has anyone ever stopped to ask why??

Like WHY is doing that such a popular common suggestion? 

Is it because their favorite character didn’t make the cut for DST? Is it because they enjoy the mobs, biomes, resources, weather and challenges of those respective expansions? Why are there so many player who want Shipwrecked/Hamlet Together?

Could it maybe.. perhaps be that we’re tired of every content update having these high health pool bosses tied to them or that we are tired doing silly little Mario party style mini games?

I don’t think I need to beat the Celestial Champion and have every bosses trophy displayed in my front yard to ask for more of the types of content that I enjoy..

I didn’t buy DST to play Mini-Games or fight Raid Bosses with high health.

I bought it to explore randomly generated worlds full of things that hate me and want me to die- like I had bought DS/SW/Hamlet..except this time I could do those things with some friends.

I can promise you that I didn’t complete every thing there was to do in Dont Starve before I bought Shipwrecked, and I can also promise you I didn’t complete everything there was to do in Shipwrecked before I bought Hamlet.. Just like I don’t plan to complete DSTs Return of Them story Arch before I can want the next SW/Ham sized expansion.

(sorry for the long post by the way)

[DrMcGillacactus]

25 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

(sorry for the long post by the way)

Nothin' wrong with some extra readin'

 

Spoiler

Your text walls are part of what I know and follow you for anyways

 

[Duck986]

12 minutes ago, GrMcGillacactus said:

Nothin' wrong with some extra readin'

Your text walls are part of what I know and follow you for anyways

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Walls of text should have meaning at least to be comfortable to read

 

 

 

 

 

[Mike23Ua]

6 minutes ago, GrMcGillacactus said:

Nothin' wrong with some extra readin'

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Your text walls are part of what I know and follow you for anyways

 

Thanks  

About two years ago I created this now archived thread 

 

Its not about what these toggles CURRENTLY Do.. it’s about what they COULD be able to do in the future that is important to Me..

We have 3 QoL updates that are set to arrive this year that impact the way you play the game.. so instead of saying

“that’s not how world Gen toggles work”

Maybe we should all be brainstorming brilliant ideas on how to make them better.

We had an entire QoL update that was just for World Gen Related stuff, and ever since then Klei has added to these toggles with every other update.

I eagerly await the day when random is truly random in every sense of the word (because currently random is only random for the first year and then afterwards if you had a 3 day winter, 15 day spring, 120 day summer it would remain a 3 day winter, 15 day spring etc..)

I want Random to mean I could be in Autumn one day & Summer the next, instead of going through repeat day lengths and weather cycles RANDOM should truly mean RANDOM.

I would also like for this to extend to “explore randomly generated worlds” I would die happily if Pig King had a chance to spawn somewhere other than his known biome or even not spawn at all..

[Theukon-dos]

(Oh hey, I forgot to post this last night. Oops)

 

On 1/29/2022 at 1:22 PM, Mike23Ua said:

I think this is more of a “Skill” Issue then a challenge issue, but for players who have never experienced X.. or Just aren’t very good at Y, if they Suddenly had to deal with X & More Y the game would obviously become more difficult for them.

The Dont Starve franchise as a whole: is a learning process.. & the less knowledged you are about X or Y the more difficult it’s going to be for you.

In your particular case you posses too much knowledge to be challenged by it.

But take myself for example, I have no idea how to activate those metal sleeping centipedes down in the Archives.. & I’m still very much horrified of what their attack pattern will be like, how much Health they might have, etc..

Realistically Klei can’t ever add ANYTHING to the game that people will look into the code or read up on Wiki to discover the in’s and outs of how it works that will “Challenge” them.. the Challenge is in your own lack of knowledge or skill.

My sworn enemy in the DS franchise is MacTusk.. these things manage to kill me often so if I increase the amount of MacTusks in my world I’m challenged even further- that is UNTIL I overcome my fear of them and start easily killing them: Then just having more MacTusks would be seen as a good thing for more chances at Tam/Walking Cane/Tusks for Wanda crafts.

If I still rely heavily upon picking flowers for sanity or killing butterflies for health & hunger: Setting those to low or none makes the game more difficult for me.

Of course: Difficulty is subjective to the Player…

So of course no one on this forum is ever going to agree.

You're right. Difficulty in DST is mostly a skill/knowledge issue. Which only further reinforces my point that more a difficulty slider isn't the right way to add more difficulty.

 

As I said in my original post, yes, if you're bad at dealing with something, then yes. Increasing the quantity of the thing you're bad at it going to make the game harder for you.

But as I said in my original post, that difficulty is hollow. Superfluous. Tell me, you're bad at Mactusk, yes? So if you crank those up, then how does the game become harder for you? You're going to have a bad time in winter, sure. But what about the rest of the year? What about finding food or getting armor?

Increasing the amount of Mactusk spawns won't actually make the game harder for you. It'll just make your winter season miserable until you figure out how to kill Mactusk reliably.

 

Also, if someone's still relying on butterflies for healing and hunger; then they shouldn't be trying to make the game harder for themselves. They're boned the moment Winter rolls around anyways.

 

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Thanks  

About two years ago I created this now archived thread 

 

Its not about what these toggles CURRENTLY Do.. it’s about what they COULD be able to do in the future that is important to Me..

We have 3 QoL updates that are set to arrive this year that impact the way you play the game.. so instead of saying

“that’s not how world Gen toggles work”

Maybe we should all be brainstorming brilliant ideas on how to make them better.

We had an entire QoL update that was just for World Gen Related stuff, and ever since then Klei has added to these toggles with every other update.

I eagerly await the day when random is truly random in every sense of the word (because currently random is only random for the first year and then afterwards if you had a 3 day winter, 15 day spring, 120 day summer it would remain a 3 day winter, 15 day spring etc..)

I want Random to mean I could be in Autumn one day & Summer the next, instead of going through repeat day lengths and weather cycles RANDOM should truly mean RANDOM.

I would also like for this to extend to “explore randomly generated worlds” I would die happily if Pig King had a chance to spawn somewhere other than his known biome or even not spawn at all..

Y'know what. I actually agree with you here. Difficulty-based toggles would be a really good way to go about implementing difficulty options. But that's the thing. This is just a possibility, a possibility that would take a lot of man hours out of Klei in order to implement properly. As such, you can't hold it up in it's current implementation as the missing piece for all those who want DST to be harder.

[CaptainChaotica]

...
(quietly hides her Huge worlds with randomised seasons (that she's been playing with for four years +) behind her back and slips away)

...Notorious

[Yuuko]

4 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

...
(quietly hides her Huge worlds with randomised seasons (that she's been playing with for four years +) behind her back and slips away)

...Notorious

but on xbox.......................................... lol