Some things klei could do to make the game more immersive (and uncompromising)

[Guille6785]

First of all, I've really got to hand it to the devs for their amazing work with the most recent patch. I'm honestly amazed at the efficiency and precision with which they tackle long withstanding issues with the game; many of the bugs that have been annoying many of us for multiple years at this point were addressed in the latest patch, including but not limited to the game's inconsistent attack speed, fuelweaver deaggroing when you use the lazy explorer (an item essential for the fight since the bone cage dodge at the edges got removed, therefore this change is highly welcome), alongside many other fixes that I'm sure will contribute to making the game a much more immersive experience for the average player while retaining that level of player freedom that the game is so highly praised for in the different ways that you can approach certain bossfights.

So far, this has all been an amazing step in the right direction, but I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said that DST is a completely polished product, as there are still countless other issues that need to be addressed as the game still has a long way to go before it truly becomes the immersive uncompromising survival experience that all of us here in the forums want it to be.

To put it bluntly, there's just so many clunky and immersion-breaking mechanics (AKA bugs, as none of these are intended features or "emergent gameplay" as the nerds would call it) in DST that just feel sooooo wrong and it makes me wish klei would dedicate at least a little bit of their dev time to revisiting these glaring issues since I am a firm believer that immersion is the #1 priority in an uncompromising survival game like this, and it just makes me mad to imagine what all the new players think about the game when they're faced with ridiculous exploits such as pig farms or when they encounter a """"pro"""" player making a complete mockery of the game by killing a raid boss completely on their own, which is supposed to impossible (but the devs don't care and they let these game-breaking glitches stay and harm the experience of everyone else, like me, who has to put up with them).

Therefore, I compiled a list of some of the most crucial things I think deserve to be addressed (at least sometime in the near future) in hopes of making the game a much more realistic and enjoyable experience for everyone, feel free to share your thoughts as well.

-Bring back disease to the game, but this time allow our survivors to get infected, too. The way this would work is that too much exposure to poop, being near livestock (like pigs and beefalo), or sometimes just standing in the wrong direction the wind is blowing would increase the chance of your character to contract the disease and start taking serious damage unless cured. I was thinking that since penicillin wasn't discovered until 1928 and our characters were taken to the constant before that, wickerbottom and wilson would have to go on a questline involving mushrooms to make some and provide the cure to the other survivors. This questline shouldn't be acessible until at least summer though, because getting the cure too early would trivialize the mechanic and that would be too powerful.

Personally, I always felt that diseases are a much needed element of the game that's simply missing, as surviving in the constant is just too easy with no real threats to worry about which doesn't help with the uncompromising tagline. This would also add a much needed sense of danger to players who farm 24/7 as they'd be at a much higher risk of getting infected and would thus make farming feel uncompromising too, as it dumbs the game down too much for the players that use them as they can get all the hunger they need for the day by simply picking a few vegetables off the ground.

On a related note, I dislike how players cheese the hunger system with pigs. It is scientifically proven that humans must eat Vegetables to survive, therefore I propose this QoL change that I also think would encourage players to farm more (I main wormwood after all xD).

-If you don't eat certain vegetable in 4 days, your character will suffer a condition.
Carrots - Blindness
Pomegranate - Scurvy
Berries - Common Cold

Additionally, eating too much raw meat will infect you with a disease as well. I know this would be especially problematic for Wigfrid, but she's an entirely different can of worms that I will talk about later in this thread.

-The entire crock pot system needs a rework, and badly. Meatballs are the sole reason the entire game is so easy and it's ridiculous the devs have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about them. Ice and twigs should not be valid filler, they're just too easy to get for how much hunger they net you. Additionally, the speed at which food cooks is a joke and frankly makes the game look really stupid. Food in real life doesn't take 15 seconds to cook. IMO the cooking system should be reworked to be more akin to the gorge, with a player having to stay by the crock pot to take the dish out when it's ready to prevent it from burning, with longer cooking times to make it more realistic of course, and some of the incredibly busted recipes like pierogies need heavy nerfs.

-The combat system needs a complete overhaul. I don't even know where to start here. First of all, the way armor works in this game is unlike anything you'd see in real life. If you were hit by a car, even if you were clad in armor from head to toes, you'd still get a few broken bones at the bare minimum. I think some sort of bleeding mechanic would be really helpful to address this issue, maybe every time an enemy hits you you have a 5% chance of rupturing an organ which will cause you to bleed constantly unless you craft a tillweed salve to tend to your wounds (food items healing you is ridiculous and should just be removed entirely btw). This chance would not decrease with the armor you're wearing btw (to make it realistic). I think this would go a long way to address the latent problem of players crafting 8 marble suits to cheese bee queen for example, IMO that's far too easy and braindead to be considered a legitimate strategy, I don't care what anyone says.

Of course, the character who'd suffer the most from this would be Wigfrid, but I think that's fine because as it currently stands she's by far the most broken and braindead character that the franchise has ever seen. The fact that at the very start of the game you can just walk up to a mid-game enemy like a pigman or a beefalo and facetank them and not only win but get rewarded for it is plain absurd. Compare that to Wanda, a powerful character who at least requires a ton of skill to use as she's a glass cannon, but in return she's widely agreed to be the best character for speedrunning. IMO that's a great example of proper character design which Wigfrid should be reworked to accommodate.

-Kiting needs to be removed from the game altogether. Let's face it, it's an exploit, it was never intended by the devs, and it only serves as a medium for toxic meta tryhards to boast about how """pro""" they are at the game while doing something that is trivially easy. Like, ok, you're just pressing some keys, am I supposed to be impressed??? Anyways I'm pretty sure most of us here can unanimously agree that kiting is far too easy for how much you get out of it. Heavy hitters like dragonfly and fuelweaver can be trivialized by simply moving out of the way which is simply spitting in the face of the developers who worked hard to add those bosses to the game. Kiting adds nothing of value except more ways to further turn the game into a joke which is why I think it deserves to be removed.

-Remove cheese from the game. This is definitely the most controversial thing on the list but it needs to be said. Pigs running endlessly at a bait pen when they should be able to simply destroy the walls in their way, using weather pains to nullify crab king's healing and needing only 6 ice staff blasts to avoid an attack that would immediately sink your boat, using the pan flute to shut down dragonfly's enraged form, separating bee queen from her grumble bees by abusing their ai, there are countless exploits just like these that frankly look so stupid and make the game look like an unpolished and unfinished college programming project. I genuinely don't understand how glaring issues like these manage to remain the game for soooo long, if only klei dedicated a single update only to fixing all the cheese in this game my enjoyment of it would skyrocket. I'd no longer have to live knowing that there are players killing bosses in their first autumn. I'd no longer have have my enjoyment soiled by those disgusting cheaters getting fuelweaver's drops without spending 3 lazy explorers to fight him. The game would be perfect if only cheese was removed entirely, but we can only dream.

And for the millionth time, RAID BOSSES SHOULD NOT BE SOLOABLE. I don't need to say anything more than that.

Thanks for reading my suggestions, feel free to share some of your own as well. Please do not respond to this post if you're going to disagree with me as I don't visit a public internet forum to be insulted like that, keep it to yourself.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

 

but agree, there are priorities that affects everybody instead of fixing things that only are celebrated by people that... well, i cant say what i think about them without triggering joew ban hammer

13 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

fuelweaver deaggroing when you use the lazy explorer

btw. this is so annoying and is the only thing that makes me feel forced to bring a WP to the fight

[Porkus]

I also use Peter Peng as my pfp, so I agree

[nimzowitsch10]

ahahaha funniest post I've read this year.

[Gi-Go]

You forgot to mention serious oversight devs made. Apperanetly you can cancel animation by equipping different item after each hit you do - making your character attack slightly faster. Personally I can't recreate this glitch consistently since the timing is too hard, and that makes me feel inferior. This is not fair, all players should be equal, and encouraging tryhard playstyle is just not good for the game. 

[marcoon]

Of all the above, I liked most the idea of redesigning the cooking mechanics closer to the one in the gorge, I think it's interesting, however I highly doubt klei will do something like that, as there will be a lot of whining on the forum. But there is also the problem that a game day takes only 8 real minutes. spending half a game day to cook one meal is not rational.

[Szczuku]

Well someone's cranky after their Bee Queen exploit got taken away

[Primalflower]

[lowercase skye]

I have to wonder what you're sticking around for if every single update to the game makes you so consistently angry.

[HowlVoid]

They say they have limited resources, but their priority list seems to always be all over the place. They add specks to the ocean and it still doesn't feel any less empty.

Also,

May be offtopic but I feel the need to say this given moderation has gotten stricter.

So many personal attacks, sure wish moderation did their job at getting rid of all problematic users and not just the ones they don't like. 

 

[omegapent]

I believe Klei has an incoming plan to make an alternative mode with changes in major gameplay mechanics aside from Classic, which will come with an improved fight from the forge and improved cooking from the gorge (trust in you, Klei!)

else those events would be tragically and heartbreakingly wasted 

but yeah the more immersive environment, disease, poison, birds, bugs, trees, would be coooool

[Spino43]

I was all for Guille bringing constructive, balanced and awesome suggestions until I saw "Bring back disease into the game".

[Pig Princess]

Actually the most notable problem in this game is extra pixels here and there, as well as slight mismatch in colors of glares in things like berries in Wilson's beard.

For record, I never had any troubles because Abigail suddenly can stop attacking and stay idle. It's just not important enough, especially in bossfights where one may want to use her help to provide AoE support, move her to avoid heavy hit, or in general apply helpful damage modifier to Wendy in order to roughly match Wilson's dps (without nightshade nostrum applied). Abigail wasn't designed to fight bosses and Wendy's refresh didn't even focus on making Abigail viable there, so her inability to participate in meaningful way should have stayed a feature, not small bug that is only really noticeable in Crab King, Celestial Champion, Bee Queen and sometimes Shadow Pieces and Dragonfly fights. The fact that it can happen in non-boss fights doesn't matter as well, because there should be something to compensate all that brain-dead gameplay with all that managing aggro stuff (during which bug happens the most). I hope that devs won't spend resources on fixing this even when many years pass after this moment, just like they did it many years before despite reports on bug tracker.

I can live without bee boxes being fixed as bees not coming to defend their honey is much needed QoL community asked for years. Not only that, the fact that bees are not producing more than 4 honey per bee box until the next day starts in case bees were forced with fire is irrelevant, because I personally find it irrelevant. It's not interesting way to utilize fire staff and ice flingomatic/pyrokinetics explained, and the fact that it can greatly increase honey production per day should be viewed as negative thing, as actively managing apiary to farm in a few days all needed for mass-cooking honey shouldn't be encouraged. We already have 1 perfectly working way of obtaining honey after all.

The fact that beefalo saddle can disappear from it's back is also perfectly fine. Game is uncompromising wilderness survival after all, so if you tried to switch shards because your cow was busy attacking chester and you wanted to ride it, it's on you. If you are not carrying 1-2 panflutes with you to stop any fight except with tentacles immediately, that's on you. If you forgot to feed cow before going to the caves because it peacefully slept nearby - it's also on you and you should be havely punished for that. Loosing glossammer/war saddle seems only fitting for that. 3 independent bug reports (not counting re-reporting) only show how weak people are and how optimized bug tracker system is, as well as show admirable consistency from the developer's side.

If other player attacks your beefalo - it's perfectly fine to loose 30% of domestication. It's your fault to play Don't Starve Together together with other people and try to domesticate cow (explore/polish strategy for new to you activities). After all it's not like rolling back on public server is problematic, and even 1 or 2 people can do that should something like that happen. It's the true nature of uncompromising game after all.

Other bugs such as Wormwood's spring bloom triggering/not triggering correctly, effect of Warly's dishes terminating too early, tallbirds being unable to make a nests in the caves period, Wortox's inconsistency with milk-made hat hunger gain, tendency points of beefalo decaying over time even if beefalo is not neglected, bonded beefalo running away from rider randomly on dismount, werepigs not recognizing baits on boats, fish being able to despawn on fishing rod, goats dealing damage to rider even if latter is on beefalo and wears insulation, etc. are all not worth to even looking to. The only other bug that maybe could match extra pixels is character's underwear not becomming hidden on equipping normal clothes in some cases, but it's not holding creativity in any way, so whatever.

And I'm definitely not giving OP "laugh" react: I find OP's post unnecessary and insulting to Klei, it has nothing to do with "Suggestions and Feedback" forum section being broken on mobile. I'm not giving links to mentioned unimportant bugs as well: after all search option works perfectly fine and it's not like I can't access my own activity on mobile.

[SuperDonuts]

Quote

Food in real life doesn't take 15 seconds to cook

And the days do not last 8 minutes…15 second in constant make 45 minutes in real life. It looks fair.

[Guille6785]

@Pig Princess at least we can confidently say something as basic as catching rabbits is totally seamless and intuitive and definitely doesn't have the jankiest hitbox detection in the universe