Should the game cater to beginners or veterans?

[Lumine04]

Simple as the title. It is a one-or-the-other question, yet Im sure some of yall will still say it should be somewhere in the middle. Or have the updates not sided at all in your opinion?

[Mike23Ua]

Actually it’s been a mix up of both catering to beginners, and veterans.

Examples being: Being able to now grow farming foods in Winter (they used to not grow at all during winter..) = Beginner.

Reduced Costs of Armors, Weapons, Cobblestone roads, Relocated survival items to no longer need prototyping like Rabbit Earmuffs = Beginner.

Adding more & lots more options to world Gen toggles so even more Nightmare creatures can chase me? = Veteran.

Doing the long tedious Quest line to activate the latest chunk of story content with Moonblind crows & Moonstorm stuff? = Veteran.

Reducing incoming Hound Waves to now include Vargs- This both Helps early in & Significantly Hurts you later on = Both

Being able to toggle None,Less, More, Lots more on most mobs, resources, etc.. = Both

Midsummers Cawnival (year 1) = Beginner.

Actually finding all 9 lost Kitcoons or building a WintersFeast buffet table with all available food dishes = Veteran.

You get the point..

[chincer]

some late game activities are only block by your knowledge of the game, im 500 hours in and i still havent kill celestial guardian once, and im ok with taking my time in reaching that point, ironing the weaknesses early lead to a smoother gameplay later on

i find some aspects of the game area bit confusing for new player, like hiding information, something you come to realize when you use mods is how many thing you benefit from knowing, like the exact effect of food, grow rates, ranges and what not, which while they add to the sense of survival of the game "is this mushroom going to kill me? is this safe to eat? what happens if i set this on fire?" once you know about it and all you have to do is remember it, it is just information you would rather have on display.

i like how the farming knowledge works, as in once you study the plants, you know what each seed truly is and what weeds look like and the game tells you. i would like more things to work that way

you die from eating a red mushrooms? congratz now you know the exact value of red mushrooms.

you have planted trees, and see them change before your eyes? your character now can tell you about grow rates in some way or form

rabbits killed you because you have meat? let your character tell you when you see rabbits next time

i just want the knowledge to slowly sip into the game, specially some stats like food and armor, without the need of mods, granted they help but if a new player doesn't know about all this useful mods like status announcements, crop pot recipes and even the mini map, then the game could seem too hard to get into

[MostMerryTomcat]

Why not both? Also don't forget intermediate players, recurrent casuals and the like do exist, and form bulk player-base. DST doesn't need extremes, polarization. If is anything I for one profoundly disdain, that's partisanship. More middle-of-road all-rounded development would be very welcomed. For all. Par example, till now, we got a lot of game content on the Sandobox, base-building, events and optional quests lane. How about now some core Survival "substance"?! Perhaps in increments, over time, as actual game-play goes. Progression.

[GenomeSquirrel]

I guess I’m more biased to beginners, the celestial champion quest line is the complete opposite of what I enjoy, particularly everything involving the crabs.

[Echsrick]

medium levels of skill

[Guille6785]

you can add content that benefits both, just focus on adding new things that feel fun to incorporate into gameplay

[Mysterious box]

I decided not to vote because I think a middle ground would be better currently it feels like there's a much larger swing towards casual and that the floor could stand to be raised slightly but it doesn't need some extreme difficulty spike nor does it need to change up the base island too much(tho I'd love if the base island got more filled out with hazards and mobs)

[Mike23Ua]

10 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

I decided not to vote because I think a middle ground would be better currently it feels like there's a much larger swing towards casual and that the floor could stand to be raised slightly but it doesn't need some extreme difficulty spike nor does it need to change up the base island too much(tho I'd love if the base island got more filled out with hazards and mobs)

See I for one disagree with this (mostly because I’ve played State of Decay 2 and I know very well what kind of impact being able to scale the worlds content/challenges to your personal preferences can bring)

For example if you tone down resources, but tone up zombies, but tone down Community Management but tone Up Scarcity of working vehicles- you can customize the game to be as easy or as hard as you feel like playing it, please note that the above is just an example of slider options but the TL:DR- Slide enough content one direction and the game gets harder, slide it the other and it gets easier, and based on what is slid in which direction the game automatically chooses the worlds difficulty for you.

(Green Zone, Standard, Dread, Nightmare etc..)

This technically works in DST as well and we even saw a brief preview of it with the Eye for an Eye update when they added the “A taste of Terraria” world Gen settings which increased frequency of depth worms amongst other things.

Which is why I continue to advocate for world Gen and world Gen settings to be the main focus of almost all of Klei’s attention.

As an example: imagine if frogs had several different variants, Passive, Neutral, Aggressive, Poisonous, Exploding.. this is a toggle you can pick to choose which variety of frog spawns in your game (Aka Reign of Giants frogs, Hamlet Dart Frogs etc..)

Literally allowing you to choose the difficulty that comes from that area of the game.

What’s important to note is that any new content that gets added to the game should go into these toggles.

Take the Moonstorm as an example, if I can start a world with an already active winter storm.. why can’t I start my world with an already active Moonstorm?

IF Klei did things THIS WAY they would not need to concern themselves with “is this content intended for casuals, intermediate or veteran players?”

Because you the player would get to choose when, how difficult, and how often you would interact with that content.

Hopefully someone understands very very  clearly what I’m trying to say here & I'm not just completely wasting mine or anyone else’s time by typing out these long posts without any credibility to them.

[Frosty_Mentos]

Option for both? I honestly would love more complex and diverse bosses around like Hamlet has or like Fueweaver/Celestial Champion, but I do also want some quality of life stuff around to make later game easier to survive. Overall I want hard dungeons harder than ruins and some deadly fun adventures to happen when exploring caves or something else, but I don't really want overworld to be any bit tedious. Klei have catered both sides tho. We got some harder characters with complex mechanics to make things more fun to play as, other character made a lil easier for newbies to enjoy and the rest of the content is yet to come overall is yet to come.

We really barely broke ice for what DST could have for it's content. There's yet a lot more needed to be added to compare to be feeling like a full game like they've developed Shipwrecked and Hamlet for singleplayer. Overall DST is a semi chill game if you're a veteran. For newbie both experiences are harsh unless it's multiplayer with friends unless they be noobies too. That be it.

[Owlrust]

DST caters to whomever plays it, in a sense. You could survive the 4 seasons, cook food, and fend off hound waves indefinitely if you wanted and that's not too hard. However there are many interactions that require a certain level of understanding and skill to get through them. You can mess-around year after year if you wanted to, or you can fight the Celestial Champion if you desire; it's really all about choice.

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

See I for one disagree with this (mostly because I’ve played State of Decay 2 and I know very well what kind of impact being able to scale the worlds content/challenges to your personal preferences can bring)

For example if you tone down resources, but tone up zombies, but tone down Community Management but tone Up Scarcity of working vehicles- you can customize the game to be as easy or as hard as you feel like playing it, please note that the above is just an example of slider options but the TL:DR- Slide enough content one direction and the game gets harder, slide it the other and it gets easier, and based on what is slid in which direction the game automatically chooses the worlds difficulty for you.

(Green Zone, Standard, Dread, Nightmare etc..)

This technically works in DST as well and we even saw a brief preview of it with the Eye for an Eye update when they added the “A taste of Terraria” world Gen settings which increased frequency of depth worms amongst other things.

Which is why I continue to advocate for world Gen and world Gen settings to be the main focus of almost all of Klei’s attention.

As an example: imagine if frogs had several different variants, Passive, Neutral, Aggressive, Poisonous, Exploding.. this is a toggle you can pick to choose which variety of frog spawns in your game (Aka Reign of Giants frogs, Hamlet Dart Frogs etc..)

Literally allowing you to choose the difficulty that comes from that area of the game.

What’s important to note is that any new content that gets added to the game should go into these toggles.

Take the Moonstorm as an example, if I can start a world with an already active winter storm.. why can’t I start my world with an already active Moonstorm?

IF Klei did things THIS WAY they would not need to concern themselves with “is this content intended for casuals, intermediate or veteran players?”

Because you the player would get to choose when, how difficult, and how often you would interact with that content.

Hopefully someone understands very very  clearly what I’m trying to say here & I'm not just completely wasting mine or anyone else’s time by typing out these long posts without any credibility to them.

I'm not a big fan of just boosting the enemy count to "raise the difficulty" that's more so just busy work for the sake of busy work rather than improving difficulty it should come from mechanics or well rounded enemies rather than I throw 6 deerclopes at you at once can you survive? I see that as artificial difficulty and I'm not sure making all content and mob behaviors togglable is a good idea I think that'd cause more confusion than it's worth as it essentially turns each persons game into different games with completely different rules making it harder to seek help or ask for advice.

[Mike23Ua]

6 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

I'm not a big fan of just boosting the enemy count to "raise the difficulty" that's more so just busy work for the sake of busy work rather than improving difficulty it should come from mechanics or well rounded enemies rather than I throw 6 deerclopes at you at once can you survive? I see that as artificial difficulty and I'm not sure making all content and mob behaviors togglable is a good idea I think that'd cause more confusion than it's worth as it essentially turns each persons game into different games with completely different rules making it harder to seek help or ask for advice.

Congratulations- you just explained the Xbox experience with this game.

if you think I’m joking.. I fully encourage you to play a minimum of 10 different random servers you join on an Xbox Console and you’ll quickly discover your playing by the host of that worlds rules.

[Mysterious box]

2 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Congratulations- you just explained the Xbox experience with this game.

if you think I’m joking.. I fully encourage you to play a minimum of 10 different random servers you join on an Xbox Console and you’ll quickly discover your playing by the host of that worlds rules.

You do know there are  servers with altered rules on pc as well right?

[Mike23Ua]

4 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

You do know there are  servers with altered rules on pc as well right?

Of course, except.. on PC you can play in Public/Dedicated worlds where the rules aren’t set by a Host- over on Xbox all we have at the time of me posting this is Player hosted, which means- every server I can join is being ran by whoever happens to be the hosts world setting rules.

Personally I don’t mind this myself & I enjoy the additional challenge of playing in someone’s world to discover what’s toggled on/off/more/less 

But my point was that this is an every day experience for Xbox Players, this is the only world choices we have.. so there would be no harm in allowing us to further make the worlds we host/join unique.

[Mysterious box]

6 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Of course, except.. on PC you can play in Public/Dedicated worlds where the rules aren’t set by a Host

If I'm remembering right kiel servers aren't set to complete default the rest are hosted by players.

[Cheggf]

The game should cater to the people that play it. I don't know why Don't Starve players larp about us vs them "veteran" and noob stuff all the time. Look at all the content updates. Everyone can pick Wolfgang. Everyone can pick WX. Everyone can craft items. It doesn't take long for someone to be able to fight AG. I don't think Klei is thinking about noobs and "veterans" when they're adding cool stuff because I don't think anyone except for a few people who post on the forums care. 

[00petar00]

Anything that makes the game have more stuff to do in your playthrough. I enjoy games that i can play for thousands of hours and still have new things to discover.

I think that Celestial Champion questline is really great for the game as they give direction to players that don't want to play just sandbox and in multiplayer everyone can join in on the boss fights and have fun.

I would love to see caves receive more updates geared towards populating them and giving reason for players to go down there and even build their base.

[Pinkamena11FazP]

Somewhere in the middle something fair but not too easy or extreme like crab king's ridiculous strength for being a lead way into an even harder boss. (I haven't beaten the lunar boss without cheats or mods because of how powerful one phase is.)  I don't want to have my hand held but I don't want to feel like I'm playing cuphead or Dark souls.

[LiamAshvinn001]

Beginners are important, but I prefer veterans since it means more challenges and I like pain.

[Wonz]

Why are there only two answers?

1. Beginners
2. Veterans

Every sane person would say both.

[GenomeSquirrel]

The problem with wanting both is that people can only do one thing at a time. There’s also the underlying question of how long do I want to prepare / wait before I can experience the new content.

 

[Datanon]

i dont know about "should", but i feel like they cater mostly towards veterans since most of the new content are extremely late game with a few exceptions

[Notecja]

I think both, and without going to such extremes. Imagine playing game casually, or after long break... But for now I would love some more late-game content + more survival, as we are getting in my opinion a lot of beginner + sandbox content. 

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Datanon said:

i dont know about "should", but i feel like they cater mostly towards veterans since most of the new content are extremely late game with a few exceptions

There's been like one late game thing added in the past year.