Updated Deck Ideas

[A Pufferfish]

I was thinking about ideas to make DST flow better on the Steam Deck, and I realized that skins and DLC characters would be very difficult to use well as you need internet for them, so I thought of a system that would work like this;

DST would "check" what skins you do and do not own when you go online after being offline, after going offline, you would have access to the skins you owned before doing so. Any skins/characters that were weaved/unraveled would be updated upon going online again, to prevent users from having access to skins they shouldn't on public worlds, and being offline 24/7 wouldn't be viable as they couldn't get updates.

 

For DLC characters, you would be sent back to the character selection screen.

 

EDIT: Removed the idea of unskinning items upon losing them, no clue why I even added that. Unskinning should only apply to character skins as they do currently, thank you for bringing that to my attention @QuartzBeam

[. . .]

I hope now with the Steam Deck out one of the next QoL updates will finally allow players to play in their online worlds while offline AND to switch the server mode between online and offline for your worlds between offline and online.

They should also make DLC characters playable while offline too.

[A Pufferfish]

6 minutes ago, . . . said:

I hope now with the Steam Deck out one of the next QoL updates will finally allow players to play in their online worlds while offline AND to switch the server mode between online and offline for your worlds between offline and online.

They should also make DLC characters playable while offline too.

I agree 100%! I love DST and want to play it on the Deck so badly, but I also want to be able to use my skins and play my DLC characters like Wortox. Really hoping they put the time in to make it work well! It also will help players who may not have internet 24/7 due to living circumstances, and won't feel excluded from things.

[Maxposting]

A lot of pc-players have talked about wishing a skin ( including dlc character) cache just like you mentioned, however one of the issues *could* be the potential for loopholes that allow skins, that Klei can't verify.

It would be a great feature a great feature regardless. Klei might have this on their list already.

[Cheggf]

On 3/25/2022 at 10:17 PM, BoxFace said:

Any skins/characters that were weaved/unraveled would be updated upon going online again

Full support of the game remembering what you have when you go offline. However, you shouldn't be able to find, weave, or unravel anything since that would be easy to abuse. People can already pirate skins & characters while playing solo so I don't think making it slightly easier to do that is a problem, but being able to spoof inventory changes would affect online and be an issue.

[maradyne]

Would love to see it. Sucks not being able to use skins/certain entire characters in my solo world when my connection's not great. Which is...a pretty common occurrence.

Also losing connection to a server on the same computer I'm playing on when transitioning to caves because it couldn't communicate with Klei. Kinda cringe.

[QuartzBeam]

On 3/26/2022 at 5:17 AM, BoxFace said:

If you no longer own an item, upon going into a world any skins would be reset back to the base design for them

This part sounds absolutely terrible. Why would the game retroactively unskin existing items just because you unraveled the skin?

[A Pufferfish]

On 3/31/2022 at 4:35 AM, QuartzBeam said:

This part sounds absolutely terrible. Why would the game retroactively unskin existing items just because you unraveled the skin?

Apologies on the delayed response, I don't know why I even stated that because I am well aware that's not how it works even now, I am going to make a small update to my post fixing that blunder, thanks for bring it to my attention.

[Chesmu]

The most of the idea for skins is to be online; It's a feature that promotes and advertises (intentionally or not) online play; Other than that there may be legal problems having access to them offline since I think they are property of Steam if they go there, not yours.

[Mike23Ua]

4 hours ago, Chesmu said:

The most of the idea for skins is to be online; It's a feature that promotes and advertises (intentionally or not) online play; Other than that there may be legal problems having access to them offline since I think they are property of Steam if they go there, not yours.

My skins don’t belong to Steam, Xbox has nothing to do with Steam.. I think my skins are saved somewhere within Klei’s Online Database servers you can view Here:

https://accounts.klei.com/account/transactions
 

I don’t understand how Klei doesn’t already have a system in place that can check to see if you are abusing the system to exploit skins/characters.

When logging back online after being offline for awhile: The game should simply remove anything that wasn’t in your Online Database the last time you were Online.

(You can’t buy characters or earn skins in offline play..) And when using Wardrobe you would only have access to skins you own- without the option of weaving/unraveling them until you connect online again.

Im no game designer and have absolutely no idea how to explain it in developer language but hopefully someone understands what I’m trying to explain.

(and if it won’t work maybe they’ll explain why it won’t work.)

[ArubaroBeefalo]

6 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I don’t understand how Klei doesn’t already have a system in place that can check to see if you are abusing the system to exploit skins/characters

how do they check if you are offline? 

[Mike23Ua]

55 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

how do they check if you are offline? 

I mean when you sign back to online-

The process would save your inventory while Connected to Online, and if (through illegitimate hacks) you have yourself skins and characters you didn’t have when your Inventory profile was last connected online: then the game would Delete those duped skins/characters next time you connected Online again.

It would probably require someone to set up the Klei inventory to be updated to this- but I figure if they’re about to launch Shared Inventories between the platforms we link to our Klei Account- Then their likely already looking into ways to do this also.

While I’m almost always connected to the internet so the situation only effects me when my town has storms/internet outages-  I can also understand how some kid with Divorced parents might have DST on their PlayStation/Xbox/PC/Nintendo switch: And let’s just make a scenario where- The Mom has internet at her house so the kid can go online, Momma buys this kid nice skins/dlc characters, but then when it’s dads turn to have his share in custody Dad is a cheapskate who doesn’t have internet or lives out in the country where Internets not so stable: That kid can take his Console over to dads.. but they won’t have access to their skins/characters because of no online.

However: if Klei had some sort of Anti-tamper system, we could save our Inventories/DLC characters to Klei Account, access what we own while Offline (can’t Unravel or Weave anything) and then once Internet is reestablished it connects you to Klei Inventory and overwrites your skins/characters with the same last file it had on file when you were last online.

Would it work??? I have no idea.. but I can dream.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

mean when you sign back to online-

that is what i mean, if i can crack the game and unlock all for free i won't go back to online and, if i do, i just need to reinstall the file that allows me to have everything for free when i play offline again

[Chesmu]

4 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

that is what i mean, if i can crack the game and unlock all for free i won't go back to online and, if i do, i just need to reinstall the file that allows me to have everything for free when i play offline again

I think there is a ban in suggestion here for tampering of that kind, since deleting skins will do nothing as you mentioned. I can see many problems here tho, such as mistaked accounts getting banned, redeeming an item with faulty internet connections that may act up this system, and most importantly there will be constant caching or saving of every single item you have that consumes specs of all kind.

[maradyne]

It would be nice if there were a backup mode of some sort for choppy connections/none at all. Like...a better Offline mode for solo? It isn't just the skins that are the problem, but shard switches on servers made in online mode as well.

Or DLC characters, like was mentioned.

 

Spoiler

 ...the problem I have with any argument for the current system is that if you were determined to use things that you don't own, there are far, far easier ways to do it than trying to spoof the account server that could be done in, like, a day.