What if skins required different crafting components?

[ZombieDupe]

I know there's probably going to be backlash against this idea. There wasn't much against microtransactions or even characters being locked behind some form of paywall before (none even cares you can't play with locked characters in LAN mode), though so maybe not.

It makes more sense if certain crafting recipes would require different components with different skins if the skin can warrant that. For example, some of the lantern skins could still require the 2 bulbs, but instead of grass and twigs to require something else. This does make it a little more pay to win, depending on the crafting component rarity and availability, but enables Klei to make more money, theoretically.

Why am I even suggesting this? Because I'm willing to accept this if you fixed some really irritating stuff in your game that you keep leaving off. I have countless examples to demonstrate how broken or annoying many mechanics in this game fundamentally are. But it probably doesn't get addressed because you have to release new content or because the staff don't know what they are doing and for some reason you appear to either have less than competent game designers or none at all. Maybe lack of testing and observing how other players play, where, under what conditions and why it happens. It's all important but it seems a lot is missed or deliberately thought of as fine, when it really is not.

Lack of regrowth or mechanics akin to it for many things ruins the game for newbie players when joining late for example, and the lack of robust support for any seasonal starts makes it all the worse. There is absolutely more focus on solo speed-running players and mega-base builders than actually making sure that cooperative play on your own servers actually works and is fun for players involved.

It baffles me why when you bring tiny QOL to help new players, it's half-baked. And when you are "finished" with a refresh, the few lingering issues never get addressed, like the fact that Webber's befriended spiders stay on the server and don't hop shards same with light bugs from the lunar grotto. For the former, here's a mod that fixes the issue (though appears broken at the moment), if you even consider it that (I hate when evident issues are subjective when it comes to defining them as "bugs", you just get to never address an issue by declaring it as "intended" and sweep it under the rug when clearly it should be changed).

I won't dwell on it any further here, but if you could focus more on fixing mechanical issues instead of prioritizing visual skin glitches (which I have definitely noticed you do), I would be happy to have skins require different components as slight incentives for that.

It's insane to think a developer cares more about "fixing" a crease in Maxwell's nose than fixing technical problems that have been lingering for years.

 

EDIT: I realize this does not make a whole lot of sense to a lot of people, and reasonably so, and in part this is talking about 2 completely different things entirely. But there is some issue with quality assurance issue here that rarely ever gets addressed, and if skins have more incentive to be purchased, Klei will have more money to throw into hiring someone who can fix these issues and maybe even have someone do advertising properly, because to be honest, beyond the initial trailer, the shorts and lore bits, while cool, have been lackluster by comparison and whoever the new crew have been, have been unable to not only replicate this, but try and fix the problems that have been sticking out for so long faster than new ones show up. Releasing content after content just inflates things, making sure that the existing material is solid is worth much more, but at the moment half of it or so has arguably been worthless to engage with in one way or another.

Simple example I can think of is, why have all these plantables like monkey tails and banana bushes and a whole entire new component for canons and docks exclusively? Very simple solution would have been to make the existing banana trees plantable with the seeds you get from the portal, same with reeds, and then you kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Maybe Klei doesn't have enough programmers? But I'm leaning towards lack of design competency, and it's especially true when you consider this game requiring tons of hours for every developer to actually play through it for like 2000 hours to fully become proficient themselves to play it and understand how others play and will play at this point, because the way it currently works requires that time investment due to the huge resource sink that every aspect of the game requires. Things just cost too much and that can be fixed, but that was only done for a few items, not for half the crafting menu.

As Klei implements more content, more issues just compile up as the content they bring in is never truly properly polished, me playing a ton in different ways with various different people, and alone too, while also observing others play, I notice a whole lot of problems that never get addressed, even if thrown into suggestions or bug fixes. And I know I'm not exactly alone on this.

A major annoyance I have that's not really a bug for example, is the lazy forager which still can't be refueled with nightmare fuel and it's really frustrating that you can't do that, because if you could, a window of a lot of opportunity would open with that item. Or the little fiasco with deconstructing bone helmet and bone armor, the loot table still hasn't been made to what it really should have been last I checked. There is tons more that I won't cover here, but if I had been in their place, I would have already fixed these issues long ago.

[Terra_Zina]

But they already are.

Spools.

[Just-guy]

17 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

or because the staff don't know what they are doing and for some reason you appear to either have less than competent game designers or none at all.

Ok, this is quite rude to the people working on the game.

[ZombieDupe]

1 hour ago, Terra_Zina said:

But they already are.

Spools.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

 

Regular skin eyebrella: 1 deerclops eyeball + 15 twigs + 4 bone shards

Moon glass skin eyebrella:  1 deerclops eyeball + 4 moonglass + 4 bone shards

Beastly skin eyebrella: 1 deerclops eyeball + 1 shroom skin + 4 bone shards

 

With such a mechanic in place, using a deconstruction staff, you could turn some ingredients into others by using skins as a proxy. Costly, but viable. Or, if the skin requires slightly easier-to-obtain components, you could build them with slightly more basic stuff.

 

1 hour ago, Just-guy said:

Ok, this is quite rude to the people working on the game.

It's not rude, there is no better way to put it if that is indeed the case. Or do you have an example of paraphrasing that which still communicates the point forward? If this was addressed to me, and true, and the person involved wasn't cursing all over, I would take that criticism as genuine any day.

[Just-guy]

1 minute ago, ZombieDupe said:

Or do you have an example of paraphrasing that which still communicates the point forward?

I don't because there isn't, your argument is not constructive in some way that can actually give feedback to the developers, it's destructive as it only belittles the work the devs do and calls them incompetent.

[ZombieDupe]

59 minutes ago, Just-guy said:

I don't because there isn't, your argument is not constructive in some way that can actually give feedback to the developers, it's destructive as it only belittles the work the devs do and calls them incompetent.

But I did give feedback, with some examples of what's happening and how to improve. If incompetency is part of the issue then it should be double-checked, or have someone hired to make sure that the team can set the record straight. The company has been up for years, I'm sure many on the team have been working in the industry for years now themselves for sure too so I would assume at least some of them would know how to make sure that the quality of their product doesn't flatline. There are games way more polished than this, made by teams smaller than Klei's with content almost on par with this game so I think it's warranted. In any case, that's just a possible hypothetical but I thought was important enough to note down as that appears to be part of the issue.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

16 minutes ago, Just-guy said:

Ok, this is quite rude to the people working on the game.

and more coming from someone who has such bad ideas always

[Just-guy]

52 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

 

Regular skin eyebrella: 1 deerclops eyeball + 15 twigs + 4 bone shards

Moon glass skin eyebrella:  1 deerclops eyeball + 4 moonglass + 4 bone shards

Beastly skin eyebrella: 1 deerclops eyeball + 1 shroom skin + 4 bone shards

There are almost 400 Belongings skins and I don't think any dev or player would like the that each individual skin filled the whole crafting menu when most of them would practically be the same item.

[Theukon-dos]

Wait what. You want different skins to cost different materials... So Klei can justify fixing their game?

My brother in Christ what the [REDACTED]? Ignoring the fact that such a thing is a terrible idea, the suggestion and the reasoning for it are completely unrelated. This suggestion isn't trying to fix any problems. It's just a facade so you can complain about the developers not catering the game too you.

 

Which, by the way, they totally are. There are regrowth mechanics and Klei recently added even more resources to the mix. And they added "seasonal starting items" all the way back in the QoL update where they overhauled world settings. And how does "Coop" not work? Yeah, pubs are probably not very good. But they're bloody pubs. "Improving coop" only means jack if the people are actively trying to work together. Pubs are the game equivelent of giving 6 random people a note in the supermarket and expecting everyone to work together to solve it.

[TheTrueStickman]

Ok putting the entirety of this weird and nonsense idea aside for a bit.

39 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

Beastly skin eyebrella: 1 deerclops eyeball + 1 shroom skin + 4 bone shards

Did ya really give the Dragon-inspired skin a *Toadstool* drop to make, instead of the in-game dragon's?

[flamboyant wolf]

1 hour ago, ZombieDupe said:

(none even cares you can't play with locked characters in LAN mode)

I care. 

I can't play half of my favorite characters unless I'm online. 

[WhackE]

This post is number 1 way to make your reputation drop to 0, Doctors hate him!

[Capybara007]

You want klei to change a system that works fine for everyone and approach them like if they were high schoolers learning programing, how nice

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, ZombieDupe said:

won't dwell on it any further here, but if you could focus more on fixing mechanical issues instead of prioritizing visual skin glitches (which I have definitely noticed you do), I would be happy to have skins require different components as slight incentives for that.

It's insane to think a developer cares more about "fixing" a crease in Maxwell's nose than fixing technical problems that have been lingering for years.

Gamers acting like games are made by a single person who does everything by himself is my mk ultra sleeper agent code word. Sends me into a viking rage. 

[-Variant]

This post comes off very... "vent" like, and more like a complaint under disguise. 
I'm willing to comment under belief the suggestion is genuine however:

All in all, I don't imagine the idea is going to fly with a lot of folks. It also goes against the entire idea and nature of the skins in the first place, and against KIei's vision for skins.

If the skins had their own recipes/costs, why aren't they simply their own things with their own perks?
Additionally, adding unique costs would bring a "pay to win" sense to the game AND topple on another sense of "forced meta" the game already suffers with.
What's gonna stop players from flocking to the skin with the simplest cost? 
You could argue that sort of mentality is going to bring in money but I'd also argue that sounds more like praying on peoples wallets behind a PTW mechanic.
It also doesn't make the skins feel fun anymore. At all. What if I want to use skin X because I personally find it really fun and pretty, but I can't simply because it has an absurd cost to it? That sucks the life out of using skins for decoration and visual pleasure. 

[ZombieDupe]

3 hours ago, -Variant said:

This post comes off very... "vent" like, and more like a complaint under disguise. 
I'm willing to comment under belief the suggestion is genuine however:

All in all, I don't imagine the idea is going to fly with a lot of folks. It also goes against the entire idea and nature of the skins in the first place, and against KIei's vision for skins.

If the skins had their own recipes/costs, why aren't they simply their own things with their own perks?
Additionally, adding unique costs would bring a "pay to win" sense to the game AND topple on another sense of "forced meta" the game already suffers with.
What's gonna stop players from flocking to the skin with the simplest cost? 
You could argue that sort of mentality is going to bring in money but I'd also argue that sounds more like praying on peoples wallets behind a PTW mechanic.
It also doesn't make the skins feel fun anymore. At all. What if I want to use skin X because I personally find it really fun and pretty, but I can't simply because it has an absurd cost to it? That sucks the life out of using skins for decoration and visual pleasure. 

I've made an edit to the original post. The point was to add in additional way to get advantage in game so that Klei could earn a little more money to have the opportunity to fix awful items and content so that the meta isn't boiled down to a single path or two, which it currently is and almost always has been.

Whatever the deal is, it would be great to finally have a huge QOL or two on the entire board of issues that plague this game. I could write a long post, categorized for them to look through for their next QOL update, but it seems pointless when basically none of these issues ever get addressed.

Maybe they need to play their own game more, on public servers as well as solo for a thousand hours total or so if they haven't already, because playing THIS game just a little isn't going to give you a broad picture of anything.

[Owlrust]

4 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

If incompetency is part of the issue then it should be double-checked, or have someone hired to make sure that the team can set the record straight.

I'm gonna be completely honest with you, this thread talks about how unpolished the game is, and how incompetent the devs are, but you haven't actually listed any problems outside of personal opinions, just very vague comments. 

It's not easy to balance a game when your entire fanbase is divided over every issue and no one fully agrees how the game is meant to be played or what's healthy for it. It's not fair to call them incompetent when most of the suggestions they get are opinion-based. Would it be fair if I said I haven't had any issues with the game and have adapted very well to every challenge presented and that new players as well as yourself should just get better?

[Flarezen]

This topic is a complete joke, this just feels like a troll post.

[Falkenpelz]

1 hour ago, ZombieDupe said:

The point was to add in additional way to get advantage in game so that Klei could earn a little more money

This is literally the concept of "pay to win" which is generally used by untrustworthy companies and takes the fun out of any game, because it forces players into situations, where they either have to be willing to pay (AFTER already purchasing the game) to use the same game features other players use or accept a disadvantage. The philosophy of Klei skins is, that they are purely cosmetic and don't change the gameplay. They make so many cool skins, they can gladly take my money for that, but not in exchange for an ingame advantage, thats just scummy.

[Dextops]

Just don't take the bait and move on

[maxwell_winters]

18 minutes ago, Owlrust said:

you haven't actually listed any problems outside of personal opinions, just very vague comments. 

The OP did mention ''a problem'' of players having harder time when joining a 100+ day pubs. Which can only be "solved" by completely removing the difficulty curve and turning DST into a casual game. 

[JoeW]

The forum guidelines are here. 

I don't know if this is a troll post or not, but the fact that I can't really tell and it's just generally rude - I'm locking it.