The tedium of sailing around mainland.

[Antynomity]

Let's start with the main problem, the world gen of the main island in all worlds.

For the purpose of this post, I've generated 5 worlds using default settings, revealed the map using commands and screenshotted all of them, let's go over them:




All of these have one common issue, there's nowhere to sail in between the mainland biomes, meaning you have to circle all the way around the mainland, next to the edges of the ocean to get to the other side.

The only one where that wouldn't be something inconvenient unless you're doing something specific is in the first screenshot, since all biomes are present on one side of the ocean.


How can Klei go about fixing this? There are two main solutions I've seen other people suggest on this forum and I'll list them both:
1. Separate the mainland into multiple islands (preferably decently close to eachother)
2. Add a mechanic similar to SW Fog, where it would mirror your position on the map on one axis when you go through it.

Do you think this should be addressed in a future update? I mean who knows maybe Klei is already planning to address this in the future, wish we knew if they do.
Do you have any other ideas of how Klei should go about addressing this? Feel free to comment.

TLDR:
To get to one side of the ocean from the other, you have to circle around the mainland, do you think this should be addressed in a future update? Do you have any other ideas of how to fix this?

[SonicDen220]

16 minutes ago, yourAnty said:

All of these have one common issue, there's nowhere to sail in between the mainland biomes, meaning you have to circle all the way around the mainland, next to the edges of the ocean to get to the other side.

TLDR:
To get to one side of the ocean from the other, you have to circle around the mainland

Or make multiple boats for different places. Crazy idea, I know.

[Horsheen]

just make a new boat and a driftwood oar and boom, you're golden

[Torpzun]

All 5 of these maps have locations where it is very easy to go from one coast to the other, not even needing to change biomes to do so. It should be very easy to explore the ocean without needing to sail around the mainland.

[Falkenpelz]

I want to be able to use beefalos for pulling a boat over land from one coast to another

[Antynomity]

9 hours ago, SonicDen220 said:

Or make multiple boats for different places. Crazy idea, I know.

I do that, and I don't mind, but I doubt I am the majority of the 30k daily players on steam, it only makes the ocean content more unappealing than it currently is for players that are interested in getting to know more about it or actively using it in-game.

[sudoku]

The worldgen is stuck in the past, back when the ocean was non traversable. Now that we can set sail on the ocean the worldgen desperately needs an overhaul to match the new ocean gameplay.

It doesnt even need to be that drastic, just cut the mainland into 2 or 3 big chunks and the ocean becomes 100x better suited for sailing.

[Well-met]

if you cut biomes then you get the very obvious problem of not being able to reach them on foot, forcing the need to rely on boats even for early on exploration.

its pretty clear klei never wanted to force boating upon players.

[sudoku]

13 minutes ago, Well-met said:

if you cut biomes then you get the very obvious problem of not being able to reach them on foot, forcing the need to rely on boats even for early on exploration.

its pretty clear klei never wanted to force boating upon players.

You could still utilise wormholes. They could make it so you ensure at least 1 wormhole on a chunk leads to a different ladmass.

Or they could do the seperation in a way where additional chunks are comprised of non essential biomes -second deciduous forest, mctusk savannah, bee land etc

At the very least if they want to cater to the vocal "no change ever crowd" they could make it a setting. But i do think this issue gets brought up enough that they should address it, especially when qol and refreshing old content is what the devs spend half their time on.

[Hornete]

Archipalego as a unique world setting would be very cool.

As the default though? No thanks for me, I feel that would be a very disruptive and unnecessary change for such a problem like this.

[Copyafriend]

8 minutes ago, Hornete said:

Archipalego as a unique world setting would be very cool.

As the default though? No thanks for me, I feel that would be a very disruptive and unnecessary change for such a problem like this.

Id want it as an option minimum, but to be honest, i love when games arent afraid to try new stuff. I would hate to see the new world gen relegated to an option.

the current ocean is held back by the ancient world gen all the way back from original dont starve (not even rog, original original), it only has new biomes, its the same style. And when a LARGE portion of the new content is reliant on the ocean, we need to start looking at the world generation to see if it works with or against the ocean.

So yeah id say we need updated world gen absolutely. Maybe it wont be as flashy as “its fully archipelago” or “no more mainland” but the “mainland” is too big. Making multiple boats is a **** answer to the question “what should i do”. Its the same ocean the map is literally just too big to reasonably sail around it. 
 

we can keep the old style as a “classic” option. But we now have boats and sailing, and the map needs to be reconsidered with sailing in mind.

[Mike23Ua]

I really love how Shipwrecked split everything up into an Archipelago of Islands. Now If anyone can recall way before Shipwrecked Single player DS ALSO has an Archipelago.. which was separated by Wormhole portals & that was way before a Sailable sea was even a thought.

Breaking the mainland up into Archipelagos in all NEW worlds would solve most sailing issues. It would be like people who still have worlds with Old farm Crops in them- all newer worlds no longer support the old crops and now use RWYS crop mechanics.

Now that there are cheaper versions of boats (grass rafts) there should be no excuse why players aren’t encouraged or even forced to sail early on.

Despite being a DLC that looked largely to take place out at sea, Shipwreckeds core mechanics actually involved sailing from one land mass to another, to gather resources, repair your boat, find food etc.. With DST- Almost everything you can ever need is in one large clustertruck (fun game highly recommend when your bored BtW..) of jumbled up land mass. There’s very little, if any reason at all to ever go sailing.

But if your Beefalo spawned on a distant Island or your Pig King Village was on the other side of a Hamlet inspired pond you need to sail across to the other side??

[Hornete]

17 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

[snip]

I don't have a problem with world generation being updated, I think that would be very great, it's just fully seperating the main land into entire new islands that I have an issue with.

My apologies if that was not clear.

[ADM]

I've mentioned it a few times but, for the last two years I've only played on multiple islands sort of worldgen and there's no way I go back to the vanilla setup since. It's not just for sailing but also to moderately centralise what's essential and what isn't from the mainland. I still like unimportant / messy biomes but not where they are.

(I'd say that a refresh of the biomes themselves, size and diversity would be a good combo if any gen tweaking is considered as well, but this is easier said than done compared to island gen options.)

There's obvious good and bad ways that could be done, but from my custom experience good ones do exist and I love how it plays out.

[Cheggf]

Ive always wanted archipelago as a world gen option, but definitely not the default. The world wrapping around like Shipwrecked is a good solution for the standard map. 

[Evelo]

I personally play with a Loop World that way you have an inner ocean and an outer ocean. It "kind of" solves this problem. It at least makes ocean exploration more enjoyable for me. Would recommend! (Branches: None; Loop: Always)

[Ardcrumb]

58 minutes ago, Evelo said:

I personally play with a Loop World that way you have an inner ocean and an outer ocean. It "kind of" solves this problem. It at least makes ocean exploration more enjoyable for me. Would recommend! (Branches: None; Loop: Always)

I do this aswell, crab King also seems to always spawn in the dead centre of the inner ocean too. 

[HumanBean150]

I like the idea of moving entire boats as a solution to this. 

I could see a special item as an actual worthwhile drop for crabking.

Being able to move the entire ship would remove a lot of the annoyance of sailing, and while I could see plenty of issues with an item like that both in terms of game balance and practicality to create, I want it in the game so they should probably add it :).

[Sub-Maxwell]

5 hours ago, HumanBean150 said:

I like the idea of moving entire boats as a solution to this. 

I could see a special item as an actual worthwhile drop for crabking.

Being able to move the entire ship would remove a lot of the annoyance of sailing, and while I could see plenty of issues with an item like that both in terms of game balance and practicality to create, I want it in the game so they should probably add it :).

I’m typically a two-boat kind of guy to solve this problem, but I really like the idea of a magic item that could be used to pick and place down boats in different areas. Klei likes to make puns and play on words for items (Weather Pain, Hibearnation Vest, etc), so maybe a “Ship in a Bottle” would be the way to go?

[Mencken]

I have no problem breaking up the mainland. Yes it will make travel more difficult but I feel that the game has gotten too easy.    Sailing on the ocean requires planning, traveling around on the land doesn't as there are always resources around.

in terms of atmosphere and playability I really love shipwrecked it's much more romantic. And building bases on your own island plus adding sea walls and lights make it very interesting.

[Well-met]

21 minutes ago, Mencken said:

but I feel that the game has gotten too easy.

because you play alot.

Changes that cater to the very experienced results in power creep and that is not a sustainable model.

[Mencken]

33 minutes ago, Well-met said:

because you play alot.

Changes that cater to the very experienced results in power creep and that is not a sustainable model.

I should rephrase that. What I meant by easy is that it takes too little time to find all the different biomes on the main landmass. In shipwrecked it takes much longer.

for me the excitement is also about discovering new lands but when you can outline everything in 8 to 9 days what's left?    I guess the restriction on map size is computing power.

 

[Hornete]

4 minutes ago, Mencken said:

I should rephrase that. What I meant by easy is that it takes too little time to find all the different biomes on the main landmass. In shipwrecked it takes much longer.

for me the excitement is also about discovering new lands but when you can outline everything in 8 to 9 days what's left?    I guess the restriction on map size is computing power.

 

I think the issue for me is world generation is really boring in DST. I've always loved DS and especially Adventure Mode because of the set pieces it had and some of the unique generation. Stuff like failed survivor bases scattered around in the caves and such, obelisk bridges, and the wormhole islands, I loved the Wormhole islands you could get once in a while, which was a solution for a rare bug where islands could generate in vanilla DS and so the game would place a pair of wormholes to 'fix' it, but intentional or not I think it was an awesome gimmick of the world generation in the game.

One of these days I would like a QoL update to focus on freshening up the world generation with new set pieces similar to those of the classic ones. I'd love to see some failed farm plot set pieces, the ocean especially could use some unique set pieces. The few set pieces that we've gotten in the few years are the bath bomb and glass axe sorrounded by lunar trees on the lunar island ones. Set pieces in general just feel so much rarer in DST too unfortunately.

Unique world generation and unique set pieces were part of the excitement for me when playing DS/T.

[ZombieDupe]

Wonder how the game would change if you split the mainland in two and would need to hop between the two using wormholes. Gives another incentive for boats too, if the mainland split can't be connected by docks alone. The main issue with boats, again, is just how slow they are to turn and control, especially with sails. Sails are also destroyed by monkeys and malbatross, and considering their cost, what is the point of having them? Just use driftwood ore instead, that gives you more control and you don't really need an anchor or a steering wheel either, more space for creating a portable base of sorts instead.

[archidus]

I just want to comment that map #2 has probably the worst Pearl's Island location I've seen so far. That is SO far away, omg

On 8/1/2022 at 8:20 AM, yourAnty said:

TLDR:
To get to one side of the ocean from the other, you have to circle around the mainland, do you think this should be addressed in a future update? Do you have any other ideas of how to fix this?

I don't think this statement needs to be addressed because I don't think that is something expected from the player. You don't *need* to reveal the map all around the mainland, you just need to find the way to the important points of interest (salt, pearl, king, lunar island and I guess the grove areas and moon quay), and for those things you usually don't need to and really shouldn't stay too close to mainland as some stuff spawns really far. Once you find something of value then you can station your boat nearby so that you can use it to reach that specific location, and perhaps create other boats for other PoIs if they're too far. 

I think the main issue is the lack of an easy way to find stuff in the ocean. Messages in bottles are the only way to reveal stuff from far away, and I kinda think we could include maybe a crow's nest to greatly increase your 'map reveal area' or a spyglass to let you reveal stuff like the messages in a bottle but you can actually select the position.

Just give the crow's nest a bit of a channel-time before the character gets to the top (similar to how sails take a while to be raised, even with the heave-ho thing), and make the spyglass kinda expensive (moon glass shards aren't exactly expensive, but I think they would work perfectly) to make sure those things aren't OP.

 

With those things you wouldn't feel too much of a hassle about sea exploration. Though I would still prefer to have faster boats, I think those are viable alternatives... 

 

Also yes, the whole 'sail through fog and suddenly you're at the other side of the map' sounds great and could easily be explained by "oh that's just Charlie trolling with you, and not allowing you to leave her playground". I don't see it as a solution to allow players to reach opposite points of the map more quickly, I just think it's neat, and better than random waterfalls around the world