Why all the Nerfs and Grind?

[ZombieDupe]

Realizing how much is gated from before with the sheer lack of modules you can actually install, it's frustrating to say that I don't ever want to play as this character again. But why? Why nerf him to this point? He didn't need nerfing! Neither did Wickerbottom, but now 2 of her books are basically useless! Wolfgang although has lost the general speed boost has stayed about the same in overall utility in the end.

But you know who's never getting a nerf? Wanda! Arguably the most powerful character in the entire game since she was introduced. Not a huge benefit early game, however the Alarming Clock very early on in and of itself is nothing to scoff at. And of course mid to late game she can just teleport to execute anything in her path even quicker. I don't expect characters to become on par with Wanda but at least really darn close! She is fun because of the game mechanics she has, WX was too until this massive nerf. I don't agree that the change was good with people who say it was, just because it introduced a somewhat interesting mechanic of modules. Being able to absolutely break 1 or 2 aspects of the game if you play well with a character is a massive part of what makes it fun to play as the character. Some may even argue that characters as powerful as Wortox are not all that useful long term, and this is a character that can periodically teleport, has an easy way to heal and gain hunger all in one! If you continue nerfing characters further on to this degree, I don't see what point there is to playing the game.

It's always lack of specific types of polish that really turn excellent gameplay mechanics into a grind even when you rework them and if the long grind in the game is set by design so we have to spend hundreds of hours to get anywhere continuously with no ways to make it faster, instead of you looking for ways to mitigate that as much as possible, then I don't think there's much respect left for me for Klei. Oxygen Not Included does things almost perfectly yet again we see grind halt in it, and at no point is taking out the grind of waiting for building a 20x20 setup mid to late game for you a priority (such as mech having suits for dupes that would allow them to carry much more and build faster). Some basic buildings like tempshift plates, insulated tiles and for some odd reason the critter feeder take forever for a duplicant to construct despite having high skill in doing so.

In DST in mid, late and even END game:

* Farming crops takes forever and you have to do way too much farming to get a decent yield (you removed Applied Horticulture, there are no automated ways to till or water crops, you can only have one fruitfly in the world and it's slow).

* Preparing for a boss takes forever because so many things have extremely low durability (why the hell do I need more than one ice staff for a full boss fight like Crab King in the first place? It's all so I have to grind to collect gems and other resources to craft it, there is no other reason).

* Getting some resources for fair bit of base construction takes forever (anything that requires boards is especially annoying to get through with the dozens, if not hundreds of trees you need to cut down, even if you just want to make a dozen chests to put stuff in as opposed to dropping garbage on the floor).

 

I would love to see you prove me wrong on this or you'll just end up proving me right. I don't want that, I don't think anyone would want that, but I have yet to see effort on this front being made. Or just keep the grind and taking more of what little fun is left out of your games. There's a reason neither of your most popular games ever get played to some level of conclusion by anyone particularly popular, and it isn't because these games are niche, it's because they are a massive grind to get through all the content. That's the reason why people who do stick with the games, have hundreds or thousands of hours in the game, not because of lots of engaging content that would actually take that long without it. Rarely anyone actually achieves the supposed ends of these games, and the fact is it is doable, you just have put way too massive of a slow and annoying time-sink into these things.

Many other games in similar genres to these don't take anywhere near as long to finish! Even rage games where losing hours of progress is extremely easy don't take this insanely long to finish! What's your excuse? It's not only that people may not want to spend so much time just to have a little fun, it's also that many people don't even have the time sink for it. If I've played for 200 hours in a game and I still have not completed pretty much everything there is to do and I can't do it extremely effectively at that point, maybe that's a bad sign of intentional grind like in "free to play" games, or just horrendously bad game design. You could very easily cut all the unnecessary grind like picking individual pieces of grass 10 hours into a single run. Making powerful characters is also one very key factor for this. This is how Wanda ends up being so powerful, and there's no way you don't know that, it's a character you unlock with in-game currency or buy outright.

The Lazy Forager for example still can't be refueled with nightmare fuel, despite the fact that pretty much everyone agrees that in every conceivable aspect it should be a thing, you know it would make a big difference, but you've done nothing with it for a very long time and I suspiciously wonder why.

[Antynomity]

forums will cry, no matter what.

[Lil K]

The WX rework was well received by the community, maybe because it added to the character a lot of variety, not making them stronger , but making them more interesting to play with. Of course there will always be people that dislike a new update on every single game, but the thing is, Klei pays attention to the forum and the forumers' ideas (most of them). I sincerely believe that, if the majority of this community agreed with what you are saying, Klei would do something to revert it (like what happened to Wolfgang). But I don't think this is the case.

[Faintly Macabre]

14 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

Being able to absolutely break 1 or 2 aspects of the game if you play well with a character

You didn't have to "play well". You hunted some gears and you got a Wicker to overload you to kingdom come. Wolfgang and Wanda require careful management for their game-breaking perks.

I don't know that this rework really got it right but WX absolutely needed a whack with the nerf stick.

[Just-guy]

39 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

Farming crops takes forever and you have to do way too much farming to get a decent yield (you removed Applied Horticulture, there are no automated ways to till or water crops, you can only have one fruitfly in the world and it's slow)

With a single Digamajig you can make 4 Farm Soil turf tiles and can plant 9 crops on each (more if you find a way), and since it's more likely you'll get a seasonal crop, you won't have to wait more than 4 days to get the crop, enough time to explore the map and return to collect them and even if you miss them and rot they will repeat their growth cycle.

That's how the system is, it rewards those who take care of their crops but doesn't punish harshly those who don't care about learning all the aspects of farming.

[Frosty_Mentos]

Wicker really didn't deserve a big nerf on her books, 10 crops is really pathetic in a high cost of one book that noone will use. It's sad honestly but using living logs for the plant book is pretty okay I think since it's much cheaper later on than early.

[cropo]

WX is much funner to me after the rework. They have a myriad of modules he can use, but they can't use every single one of them, a WX player should always feel like there is a crucial component missing in their stats(to me) and the rework does that nicely.  They can trivialize a few mechanics of the game at their choice at the expense of making others harder. They still have full healing from stale food so rot is far less of a concern to them they still heal stupid amounts from gears which don't expire, and they no longer need to have a Wickerbottom slave to zap them for invincibility.

 

Cutting trees is not a problem. Make a massive garden of eden full of trees where you want, then have Bearger come and demolish them all. Sure, the first year will have you struggling for logs, but you don't need an elaborate base with 200 chests everywhere in the first year.

 

Grinding for bosses has become a norm because of the introduction of Bundling Wrap, players no longer have to worry about spoilage on important healing and sanity and buff foods courtesy of Warly and having to actually prepare to fight them makes them a bigger threat than having them just come at you in a season with lower health so you can routinely murder them. It might not be your preferred solution(and I agree bullet sponges are crap) but the game was balanced around playing with at least one other player. The Crab King is generally regarded as one of the worst bosses so your complaints on the crab king are justified imo,  I really hate that boss myself and it definitely is an absolute, soul-crushing grind of tedium and boredom doing Pearls chores to unlock the pearl.

 

Farming is also incredibly easy, all you need to do is capture a bird and feed it carrots for the seeds. Carrots are nearly impossible to fail getting profit seeds from, and you can feed the extra produce to the captured bird until you have 36 seeds to cover all 4 farm plots and with a fridge you'll have so many carrot seeds you'll probably end up being able to eat just the seeds themselves for a few days and still have more than 40 left. You never have to worry about the nutrient system at all.  After awhile you can start saving up random seeds and plant them in specific seasons to try and get rarer plants like peppers for Warly's damage spice and Dragon Fruit and feed the first few harvests to the bird to get a profit on seed return and then mass plant those as well.  I would hardly consider it a grind, it's growing food which is supposed to be the main point of the game, it's even in the title. If you think ''getting food'' is a grind why are you even playing?

 

 

Wicker was nerfed but we're seeing this from the perspective of someone who hasn't had their character refresh yet, judgement on her will have to wait until she does get it then we can see what she'll really be capable of.   You could also just use Birds of the World and Night Time Stories to murder a bunch of birds for meat, which also makes it much easier to spawn in Krampus early for a chance to get his sack.

[lakhnish]

Wicker still hasn't had her rework, so any issues you have with Wicker can be addressed during her rework

 

[NoKrampusSack]

Deadass?

Really?

christ

 

[Eughstein]

i like how people started to complain about characters not being strong enough after "ultra op" wanda was added and want klei to make every ingame character as strong as dlc one

[ArubaroBeefalo]

didn't read the entire post and got overwhelmed by how many things i disagree with

[Cheggf]

Yeah man having permanent weather and darkness immunity while being able to eat food at 1% freshness and having a stack of never spoiling super food that restores a ton of all stats is super weak. It sucks how you have to play for, like, 5 days to be able to get all that.

Can we nerf the character that sucks until year 3 please?

[Maxil20]

While I do feel there are a few grindy elements in DST, I feel you picked a few that are fairly alright to do/repeatedly grind.
 

3 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

Farming crops takes forever and you have to do way too much farming to get a decent yield (you removed Applied Horticulture, there are no automated ways to till or water crops, you can only have one fruitfly in the world and it's slow).

• Farming pre RWYS was really eh and practically forced you to pick Wicker if you wanted Any decent haul in farming, and even that required you to constantly pick crops > feed a bird the crops > replant the crops > Book > Repeat.
• While there is no automated way to till crops, you can still get a very good haul with minimal effort. Sure, you can put in a lot of effort and get rewarded well, but there's no need to do so if you simply want a 1 crop + 1 seed haul.
• Since you mentioned Wicker for farming, I want to mention Wormwood is a very good farmer now. Wormwood can induce bloom (which automatically tends nearby plants around him), skip the tilling + 75% of the time it takes to plant a crop, and can plant on untilled ground. I spent 1 summer farming peppers/dragonfruit and netted over 2-3 bundles of each (while also getting seeds) from just one harvest.
   

3 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

Preparing for a boss takes forever because so many things have extremely low durability (why the hell do I need more than one ice staff for a full boss fight like Crab King in the first place? It's all so I have to grind to collect gems and other resources to craft it, there is no other reason).

Lategame you can build setups to speed up a majority of bosses, such as with catapults or (if you really invest time into a world) houndius. You can practically do this for any boss give or take other then the celestial champion (as it has too many attacks that downright 1 shot houndius/catapults) given some adjustments (ex: flingos for CK). Doing so allows for quick and easy kills with minimal costs, especially if you have boss loot like bone armor.
 

3 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

Getting some resources for fair bit of base construction takes forever (anything that requires boards is especially annoying to get through with the dozens, if not hundreds of trees you need to cut down, even if you just want to make a dozen chests to put stuff in as opposed to dropping garbage on the floor).

This one does have a few good arguments to be made here, although I do partially disagree on some resources, especially with the recent QOL update.

• Boards: Klei's recent QOL made turf crafting with boards significantly cheaper; Wood/carpet flooring are now 1/4th the cost they used to be and they outright removed requiring boards for the cobblestone recipe. While these turfs are likely only going to be used in a megabasing context other then cobble, a huge chunk of boards lategame were essentially sunken into crafting these turfs. I do agree stuff like chests will put a significant dent in boards though, and I easily required thousands of boards for my chest storage, especially when said chests can't really store a whole lot.
• Grass/Twigs/Reeds: Grass/Twigs are basically used for Any project Ever, and while it's not needed at insane rates like boards are, you will drain through reserves when doing various projects. Wicker's applied silviculture book does help with farming these resources, and non character specific methods are also usable (just not nearly as fast). Reeds are fairly hit or miss, especially since worlds can vary (tiny swamps vs. having a reed trap). They are not required for too much, but they make some powerful luxuries, especially the Wicker books or gift wrap.
• Enlightened Crown Shards: I'm amazed you didn't talk about these. Out of any grindy resource in lategame DST, this is the big one. The crown you deconstruct to get these already suffices you with just about any light issue that could arise in a casual context, and the moonstorm punishes you more the larger your base gets. Fighting the champion to get 5 crown shards each kill does not feel sufficent, especially in megabase contexts where the amount of lights you want for decoration can reach into the hundreds, and especially if you want to do cave builds.

3 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

The Lazy Forager for example still can't be refueled with nightmare fuel, despite the fact that pretty much everyone agrees that in every conceivable aspect it should be a thing, you know it would make a big difference, but you've done nothing with it for a very long time and I suspiciously wonder why.

Being patient and politely asking here and there is Vastly different then borderline insulting the devs to make changes. I would like to see buffs to the lazy forager as well (such as refueling and/or more durability), but I imagine they are busy with working on content and the like, and it's best for things like these to be brought up during a QOL update (which a lot of user requested features were taken into account).

[ALCRD]

[goblinball]

4 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

why the hell do I need more than one ice staff for a full boss fight like Crab King in the first place? It's all so I have to grind to collect gems and other resources to craft it, there is no other reason).

Tbf by the time you fight crab king you’ll already have a massive pile of blue gems and ice staves will be basically free. I’ve found preparing resources for bosses is never an issue; in fact, I’d say planning how much stuff to bring to the boss is fun. You don’t want to overprepare and bring too much stuff, but you also don’t want to underprepare and potentially die. It’s a risk reward type of thing.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 minute ago, goblinball said:

Tbf by the time you fight crab king you’ll already have a massive pile of blue gems and ice staves will be basically free. I’ve found preparing resources for bosses is never an issue; in fact, I’d say planning how much stuff to bring to the boss is fun. You don’t want to overprepare and bring too much stuff, but you also don’t want to underprepare and potentially die. It’s a risk reward type of thing.

yep i found that complain specially weird but if op has problems with blue gems maybe that explain the rest of the rant

that is the thing, the only "grind" about bosses could be wp but other than that... unless the player perform horrible the fights are prepare in few minutes

[HowlVoid]

If you consider the length it took Wx-78 to get to a point where they had a consistent overcharge, then this is a buff. 

While Wicker could give them a consistent overcharge you were basically completely tethered to Wickerbottom. This meant Wx-78 was a half a character and Wicker was a character and a half; in other words Wx-78's perks where really Wicker's.

The overall progression and versatility in circuits is both consistent and gives Wx-78 tons of control.

Consider current progression vs old:

Old early game- (Wicker mandatory presence) Wx-78 was very strong with 50% speed, Winter immunity, and a small light radius. This saves tons of time when considering what you can do with all a second (shorter) autumn and tons of speed.

Old Late game-(Wicker still present/tons of purple gem usage) The light and Winter immunity becomes weaker and speed becomes more of a qol thing for certain playstyles. With furnaces, sun callers, thermal stones, mushlights, and enlightened crowns combined with a lesser urgency to accomplish things speed becomes less of a necessity (not all playstyle ofc). Though you are still locked in to these perks meaning the power of these perks greatly fluctuates.

Current early game (No Wicker required)- The latest it should take to get a speed module 2.0 is day 11 (full moon) if you decided not to rush the ruins and there are no rooks on the over world; via spawning one with the rook sculpture. This is far more consistent than what was previously possible with no wicker present. With a Wicker present, depending on RNG to collect a red gem, it could potentially take longer or less time. With a Wicker present this is a nerf from old Wx-78, but not by much considering you can still have the strongest perk of the 3 (50% speed). Compared to old Wx-78 you may need to now stop to heat up by burning a tree and carry lightbulbs/star caller for light. 

Current late game (No Wicker required/tons of purple gems)- This is where the game gets a lot more spicy. Do you like beefalos? You may consider drone master+weather protection to greatly reduce any resources wasted on healing on the odd times you take damage. Do you like the enlightened crown? Easily replaced a light circuit, you can stack 50% speed and all that's different from the old Wx-78 is thermal protection but by now this is hardly a problem. Plus if you're willing to sacrifice 10% speed you can get the super processing unit and get some sanity Regen that was not possible before. These are just a few combinations of all the variety that is possible.

It is my personal opinion that Wx-78 isn't just more consistent, he's funner and far more versatile.

[Pruinae]

I agree with the Wickerbottom receiving nerfs part.
Applied Horticulture - Separated into 2 books. Horticulture Abridged being the part that was directly nerfed, not being able to grow that mass amount of crops honestly doesn't really matter late game, or at all in a game where 1 meat 3 ice is good food. If I'm playing Wicker I'll probably kill bee queen with tentacles as early as possible, so I can use the crown + tentacles for sanity (or cactus, or cave mushrooms... there's plenty of options) and jellybeans for health. The only part this nerf affects me is to farm rocks with stone fruits, even then it's still a pretty decent method to get rocks and filler. The Applied Silviculture part was nerfed indirectly with the addition of Grass Gekkos and Grass Gators, with those ending up being better to get grass and twigs late game.

On Tentacles - Good to farm/cheese stuff early on, replaced by catapults/bunny men late game.

The End is Nigh! - Was only ever used to charge WX, now only useful for griefing (if you can call that useful).

Sleepytime Stories - Good to make the ruins clockwork free early, if you can use a panflute instead you probably will since the cast time and sanity cost makes this book considerably weaker in comparison. Can be used along with Birds of the World...

Birds of the World - ...to farm mass amounts of feathers (mostly to cheese bosses if a reed trap is available) and morsels. Early on also used to farm Krampii.

So late game Wickerbottom is reduced to a morsel making machine. Thankfully she will still get her refresh, can't wait for the lore and gameplay.

[Cheggf]

10 minutes ago, Pruinae said:

The End is Nigh! - Was only ever used to charge WX, now only useful for griefing (if you can call that useful).

Charging wx, charging goats, making a long lasting light source that doesn't affect temperature, making a light show.

12 minutes ago, Pruinae said:

So late game Wickerbottom is reduced to a morsel making machine.

And if you're so late that you've automated everything and are rich enough to do things like freely use pan flutes most other characters are reduced to doing nothing.

[goblinball]

26 minutes ago, Pruinae said:

Applied Horticulture - Separated into 2 books. Horticulture Abridged being the part that was directly nerfed, not being able to grow that mass amount of crops honestly doesn't really matter late game, or at all in a game where 1 meat 3 ice is good food.

I’ve found whenever I’m playing wormwood and there’s a wickerbottom that horticulture abridged is actually pretty useful earlygame because it allows you to skip your first harvest (the one where you’re just planting random seeds), and let’s you jump straight into growing giant crops. Being able to squeeze a few extra crop cycles in the first year is really nice.

[Waoling]

I think you are being overdramatic it's not that bad.

[Starlogy]

You think WX got NERFED???

No other character is able to get a permanent 25% speed boost on DAY 1, not to mention every other module that was added with the rework. Permanent Moggles, being able to get up to 700(?!) health, health regen capabilities, I could go on.

OP is upset he can't shove gears down his throat to get max stats.

[Lumine04]

The fact he has not made any replies to people proving his philosophy wrong makes me think 2 things. One, this is a trigger post or two, he hardly has any free time and is unwilling to put in the effort that all the mentioned changed to WX and farming offer. These are insane major buffs 100% and I cant believe people disagree with the WX rework and farming rework.

[GelatinousCube]

Agree on Wanda and also not a big fan of the WX rework but disagree on pretty much everything else though.

Some of the Wanda defense here is ridiculous though, some people just continue to flat out refuse to admit she's leagues above the rest of the cast even though it's straight up cold hard fact.

As much as I don't think other characters should be on her level she certainly needs a nerf and I can understand the frustration of other characters being balanced while she exists in her current state. 

[MondayNight]

I would reckon, OP, that game-play in general has been buffed - granted, with slight, punctual nerfs (which really don't matter on long-run). Has it been made more engaging? Relatively so. Is it more fun? Arguably yes.