what character needs a nerf?

[Echsrick]

wendy and wanda

[djturner]

I'm not even sure the idea of nerfing makes any sense in a game like this. Some characters are better at some things than others, and as an extension, some characters, when taken as a net average, are better on the whole than others. The very existence of Wes sort of deconstructs the entire scheme of "this character is too good (relatively), this character is too bad (relatively), we need to address that." The only exception would be a really gross disparity in which a character had the equivalent of a god mode that devalued the fun of everybody else involved, as a cooperative game.

I don't think we have that in any character. There's some obvious suspects of who come the closest (that have been complained about on and off for, in some cases, years), but that's all. Closest doesn't mean close to the line in an absolute sense, much less across it. Much higher priority should be, as others have pointed out, characters that are perceived as boring and need... not even powerful buffs, necessarily, just interesting changes. Winona/Wilson at the head of that pack. That's why refreshes, focusing on positive and interesting changes for characters, have been a breath of fresh air approach to the hopeless/endless upward and downward tinkering of balance that plagues competitive games.

[Juanasdf]

For those who suggest nerfing Wanda take into account that you already know how most of the game works.

It's already been said that she's a glass cannon with a bit more range and a short distance TP, she has a rather unique and risky playstyle. This is the opposite of other characters who can fully heal mid-fight.

For a new player it will take considerably more skill to play her compared to (almost) any other character in the game due to her age meter.

You have to be mindful of which fights to take according to how much healing you have.

You also HAVE to kite with her because healing mid-fight can lead to taking more hits (specially vs bee queen or antlion) and not to mention it is completely negated by DoT.

Another thing to take into account is that you will need to be insane most of the time for NF, which yes it is easier to farm with her, but you will still need to kite terrorbeaks.

And as some other people said, to utilize her fully you need to have thulecite, nightmare fuel, tusks and living logs.

When I started playing I'd get only one tusk, 3-9 living logs (if i had luck with living trees), and no thulecite. As a new player, still struggling with seasons and food, these things were hard to get.

And just because she can travel across the map doesn't mean she's busted. It just means that klei needs to buff the lazy deserter for solo players or at least give us a new travelling mechanic.

[Cloakingsumo198]

Honestly with the last 3 reworks I don't think Wanda is "that" good anymore, she has some neat unique mechanics but I think they get stale pretty fast since their application is pretty straight forward.

[HellHeater]

 

 

[PetulantPansy]

The problem isn't that 1 specific survivor is too "OP". The broader issue is that all the survivors have gotten stronger but the constant hasn't increased in difficulty at all. I guess an analogy would be the ability to use 21st century technology in the 20th century. So the game isn't the "uncompromising" survival game it used to be that some of us initially enjoyed. 

Take for example wes. He's supposed to be a challenge character but most of us can play the game just fine with him. Also when fighting bosses, they aren't even challenges anymore. It feels more like I'm going to a restaurant where I choose from 3-7 options how the boss will die.  

 

We're not necessarily representative of the average DST player, but my initial point still stands.

 

Anyways, this is just my opinion, but the best course of action wouldn't be to nerf any character, but to introduce more challenges into the constant instead. 

[Guille6785]

5 hours ago, PetulantPansy said:

The problem isn't that 1 specific survivor is too "OP". The broader issue is that all the survivors have gotten stronger but the constant hasn't increased in difficulty at all. I guess an analogy would be the ability to use 21st century technology in the 20th century. So the game isn't the "uncompromising" survival game it used to be that some of us initially enjoyed. 

Take for example wes. He's supposed to be a challenge character but most of us can play the game just fine with him. Also when fighting bosses, they aren't even challenges anymore. It feels more like I'm going to a restaurant where I choose from 3-7 options how the boss will die.  

 

We're not necessarily representative of the average DST player, but my initial point still stands.

the problem isn't that the game has gotten easier but that you've gotten better, you're right that we're not representative of the average dst player because the forums are more like the top 1% in terms of player experience, the "average" player if you consider everyone who's played dst would be more like someone who has never killed any raid bosses and likely can't survive the first year

if you take a look around communities like discord, facebook, youtube comments, etc. you'll notice that there's just as many new players if not more complaining that the game is too difficult as there were back in 2017, all the things that have made the game easier for us in reality haven't made the game easier for the average player in any way, new players still get frustrated when deerclops kills them on day 30 as they always have and always will

5 hours ago, PetulantPansy said:

Anyways, this is just my opinion, but the best course of action wouldn't be to nerf any character, but to introduce more challenges into the constant instead. 

I know "make the constant more challenging" sounds like the perfect idea in your head but think of it this way: when the hypothetical dst hard mode update gets added, the forums will celebrate for 2 days, then 2 weeks later people will be complaining yet again that the game is no longer hard because the truth is that the demographic that finds the game "too easy" also happens to be the exact same demographic that instantly reads the posts explaining every new mechanic that gets added in every update in depth via datamining

the only way I can recommend to make the game harder for yourself is to self impose some challenges, personally I've sunk thousands of hours into this franchise and I genuinely can't think of a single way to make the game harder for old players that doesn't make the game more annoying for someone else by shoving said changes down their throats, this game just has too many different playstyles and you can't please everyone because not everyone wants the same things

a good comparison would be for example in dark souls games, once you get the hang of the gameplay loop you may even find these games to be disappointly easy, but the game makes it incredibly simple to challenge yourself by simply limiting whether or not you level up your stats or your weapons and that's exactly what people do rather than begging the devs to make the game harder for everyone including new players who already find it really hard

[benfroyobro9381]

7 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

the problem isn't that the game has gotten easier but that you've gotten better, you're right that we're not representative of the average dst player because the forums are more like the top 1% in terms of player experience, the "average" player if you consider everyone who's played dst would be more like someone who has never killed any raid bosses and likely can't survive the first year

if you take a look around communities like discord, facebook, youtube comments, etc. you'll notice that there's just as manynew players if not more complaining that the game is too difficult as there were back in 2017, all the things that have made the game easier for us in reality haven't made the game easier for the average player in any way, new players still get frustrated when deerclops kills them on day 30 as they always have and always will

I know "make the constant more challenging" sounds like the perfect idea in your head but think of it this way: when the hypothetical dst hard mode update gets added, the forums will celebrate for 2 days, then 2 weeks later people will be complaining yet again that the game is no longer hard because the truth is that the demographic that finds the game "too easy" also happens to be the exact same demographic that instantly reads the posts explaining every new mechanic that gets added in every update in depth via datamining

the only way I can recommend to make the game harder for yourself is to self impose some challenges, personally I've sunk thousands of hours into this franchise and I genuinely can't think of a single way to make the game harder for old players that doesn't make the game more annoying for someone else by shoving said changes down their throats, this game just has too many different playstyles and you can't please everyone because not everyone wants the same things

a good comparison would be for example in dark souls games, once you get the hang of the gameplay loop you may even these games to be disappointly easy, but the game makes it incredibly simple to challenge yourself by simply limiting whether or not you level up your stats or your weapons and that's exactly what people do rather than begging the devs to make the game harder for everyone including new players who already find it really hard

Thank you for pointing this out. Don't Starve Together is a sandbox game, so there's a lot of flexibility to shape your playthrough to your liking. The main concern of DST is that it's "fun."

[slendyproject]

18 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

the problem isn't that the game has gotten easier but that you've gotten better, you're right that we're not representative of the average dst player because the forums are more like the top 1% in terms of player experience, the "average" player if you consider everyone who's played dst would be more like someone who has never killed any raid bosses and likely can't survive the first year

if you take a look around communities like discord, facebook, youtube comments, etc. you'll notice that there's just as manynew players if not more complaining that the game is too difficult as there were back in 2017, all the things that have made the game easier for us in reality haven't made the game easier for the average player in any way, new players still get frustrated when deerclops kills them on day 30 as they always have and always will

Recently I got a bit of a perspective into how new players see the game through trying to get friends into it and this is honestly being generous even. New players are extremely lost. They constantly starve, forget that darkness kills, go insane every 2 minutes (I honestly dont even know how) and fighting is just not an option for them because the way attack animations  work in this game are...not intuitive and lets leave it at that. And also they have absolutely zero idea as to what even is the "goal" of the game. Anything that is deemed not a challenge anymore literally destroys new players, be it hounds, nightmares, clockworks whatever.

I know that this is not the point of the thread but this is why I hate the quite popular "wilson is the perfect character to learn the game with" sentiment. No he isnt. He literally doesnt teach anything to anyone, if anything he encourages the stand near a campfire and do nothing playstyle because he has nothing to craft or do to force players to engage with things. This game is insanely obtuse and everyone is just reading the wiki/watching guides anyway. At that point it doesnt matter what character new players start out with, they will need some kind of guide to the game either way.

If even more challenges were added to the early game it would be even less approachable to new players and I dont think thats what the game needs. Yes the game has gotten easier but thats not a problem and its still not easy by any stretch.

[Superlucas1231]

1 hour ago, Guille6785 said:

the problem isn't that the game has gotten easier but that you've gotten better, you're right that we're not representative of the average dst player because the forums are more like the top 1% in terms of player experience, the "average" player if you consider everyone who's played dst would be more like someone who has never killed any raid bosses and likely can't survive the first year

if you take a look around communities like discord, facebook, youtube comments, etc. you'll notice that there's just as manynew players if not more complaining that the game is too difficult as there were back in 2017, all the things that have made the game easier for us in reality haven't made the game easier for the average player in any way, new players still get frustrated when deerclops kills them on day 30 as they always have and always will

Hot take but the "the game didn't get easier you just got better" argument always never makes sense to me. You can point to so many updates that straight up makes mechanics easier, like:

Year of the beefalo making beefalo easier to obtain and retain

Wigfrid being able to eat sweets despite that contradicting her downside

RWYS making farms give more food with less costs

Celestial portal (Characters downsides being less of an issue because you can switch to another character to avoid the. I.E. making Warly's spices and switching to another character, switching to Wolfgang to fight bosses instead of playing as Wendy, etc.)

character reworks in general (notable mentions go to characters that just only got better with no additional cons, like Webber, Wormwood, Wortox, etc.)

etc.

I get that new players are still struggling but...that really doesn't prove that the game didn't get easier. I can see if there are more complaints about new content making the game harder, but if people are complaining that winter is too hard, the season that received things like flares and the ability to grow crops during winter, I don't think the updates didn't make winter easy, but easier. I don't think using new players is a good point to measure the games difficulty because they literally can't compare to a point when the game was hard...because they never played the game before. 

Can you clarify? because I see this argument a lot and I really don't understand if the take is "the game has been made easier just as much as it has been harder" or if is just straight up "the game never got easier"

[Guille6785]

34 minutes ago, Superlucas1231 said:

Hot take but the "the game didn't get easier you just got better" argument always never makes sense to me. You can point to so many updates that straight up makes mechanics easier, like:

Year of the beefalo making beefalo easier to obtain and retain

Wigfrid being able to eat sweets despite that contradicting her downside

RWYS making farms give more food with less costs

Celestial portal (Characters downsides being less of an issue because you can switch to another character to avoid the. I.E. making Warly's spices and switching to another character, switching to Wolfgang to fight bosses instead of playing as Wendy, etc.)

character reworks in general (notable mentions go to characters that just only got better with no additional cons, like Webber, Wormwood, Wortox, etc.)

etc.

I get that new players are still struggling but...that really doesn't prove that the game didn't get easier. I can see if there are more complaints about new content making the game harder, but if people are complaining that winter is too hard, the season that received things like flares and the ability to grow crops during winter, I don't think the updates didn't make winter easy, but easier. I don't think using new players is a good point to measure the games difficulty because they literally can't compare to a point when the game was hard...because they never played the game before. 

Can you clarify? because I see this argument a lot and I really don't understand if the take is "the game has been made easier just as much as it has been harder" or if is just straight up "the game never got easier"

I mentioned exactly this, the updates that forumites often cite as "making the game easier" only make the game easier for them, not for the average player

-beefalo becoming easier to tame didn't make the game easier for pablo.gonzalez.2007 because he will never tame a beefalo before quitting the game anyway

-the average player cannot kill bee queen nor do they even know electric milk exists so this is a moot point

-stone fruit bushes and banana plants getting added doesn't make the game easier for new players because new players don't even know the lunar island or moon quay exist

-your expectations are far too high if you genuinely think the average player comes even remotely close to making the celestial portal, also I don't even know how this makes the game any easier compared to just having different characters in your team which you could always do

-idk if you've ever joined any pub but every noobie trying to farm has 4 plots full of tillweed and 3 carrots by day 20

-stronger =/= easier, a character can be strong but hard to play or weak yet easy to play, reworks generally don't do much to make characters carry noobies anymore than 2015 wigfrid already did

-new players can't kill the day 30 deerclops, it's completely illogical to think the ability to summon more than 1 deerclops would somehow magically make the game easier for them

 

not a single update you mentioned makes the game easier for a player who's still learning how to play, you'd have to be a low intermediate player before you started noticing any of these changes and only players who have already spent hundreds of hours are affected by every single item on this list

[Dextops]

11 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

eixst

exist*
argument destroyed and i'm the phone with klei about getting your account banned for this mistake

[Echsrick]

here is something, if the game is so focused on pve and sandbox and all that that a character nerf is bad, then how come not every character is as equal powerful then the next one? why is it ok for 1 chacter to be just way better then another one? where do we draw the line of what is a good balanced character or not? i mean the fact we discus about this means that not everyone is in agreement of character balanching, wich is alsol something that shows up more often, and the fact that said topics about what characters are op seems to be mostly about the same characters aswell, so by that people sould know that there is a clearly a problem about character balance, how do we fix it the best is just the question? one can adjust the op character to be a bit more in line of power as the rest, be it in a nerf or changin how something may be done, example wendy, one could say that wendy is too strong of an character then most others, how we try fix it? well how about instead of wendy instandly being able to summon the ghost, how about instead wendy has to wait about 5 days and then needs a blood sacrifice to summon the ghost? sure people may say that these are some extra steps but is it a bit more balanced in the end without too big of an nerf? i would say yes that that could be a good start of things to do on how to balance a character better and more in line of power level with the other characters

[Juanasdf]

51 minutes ago, Dextops said:

exist*
argument destroyed and i'm the phone with klei about getting your account banned for this mistake

Wurt profile pic argument invalid /j

15 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

here is something, if the game is so focused on pve and sandbox and all that that a character nerf is bad, then how come not every character is as equal powerful then the next one? why is it ok for 1 chacter to be just way better then another one? where do we draw the line of what is a good balanced character or not? i mean the fact we discus about this means that not everyone is in agreement of character balanching, wich is alsol something that shows up more often, and the fact that said topics about what characters are op seems to be mostly about the same characters aswell, so by that people sould know that there is a clearly a problem about character balance, how do we fix it the best is just the question? one can adjust the op character to be a bit more in line of power as the rest, be it in a nerf or changin how something may be done, example wendy, one could say that wendy is too strong of an character then most others, how we try fix it? well how about instead of wendy instandly being able to summon the ghost, how about instead wendy has to wait about 5 days and then needs a blood sacrifice to summon the ghost? sure people may say that these are some extra steps but is it a bit more balanced in the end without too big of an nerf? i would say yes that that could be a good start of things to do on how to balance a character better and more in line of power level with the other characters

I don't believe a character is more powerful than the other.

Every character has some areas where they excel, while others don't.

You can do almost everything with every character, it will just take you more time with some of them, which guess what, you have no time limit!

Its kinda like a rock paper scissor, where characters can (or should) only excel at two out of three.

EDIT: Apparently this was an edit of my previous comment, I thought I was making another one lmao.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

6 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

rather than begging the devs to make the game harder for everyone including new players who already find it really hard

agree with you except in this. Nobody that is sanewants the game to be harder for everyone, there are ways to add content that is more difficult than the initial content a player face without it affecting all players. Like how ruins are more difficult, twins spawning from the same item than their easier version, monkey island being more difficult than exploring the land, etc

is true that players can get use to everything but isnt the same thing to get use to survive autumn than getting use to rush the ruins

[Evelo]

On 1/3/2023 at 6:56 PM, Mike23Ua said:

Just because a game isn’t PvP does NOT mean it shouldn’t be balanced, if you need proof of that just look at some of the many co-op only games that have seen character nerfs or buffs in the past- etc etc.

It is up to the player to play what they find fun. I agree that balance should be considered but getting everyone to be equal is going to be impossible and frankly, there should be easier characters than others. Wilson is the default. Most characters should be better or worse than him, though most of it is subjective.
Some could say Wormwood is harder than Wilson but I heavily disagree due to a variety of reasons.

Wanda is stronger than Wilson because of X, Y and Z. Her weaknesses are X, Y and Z which makes her balanced (granted I think Wanda's issue is the healing clocks but that's it really, you make 3 and you are invincible forever but you have to manage your inventory more carefully, is that a downside? I think so but maybe not to others.)

If a player wants to play the strongest character that is on THEM. If a player wants to rush ruins, do this that and the other thing to optimize as best as they possibly than, that is the player's actions and if they get bored or tired they can try something different or stop playing. To quote someone, I genuinely don't remember who, "Players optimize the fun out of a game."

I feel personally, Klei if they are going to focus on character "balance" it should be more on how the characters play rather than their power level. Numbers tuning can be beneficial in this regard or minor mechanical changes (such as giving a half cooldown to clocks of the same type to accommodate stacking healing clocks). There are an infinite possibilities of how these changes are in place and I don't feel it is Klei's responsibility to focus on that.

[Mike23Ua]

6 hours ago, Echsrick said:

-snip-

The entire reason Wendys use of Abigail wasn’t put on several days worth of cooldown is because the game is no longer a Single Player game, and if Abigail is on cooldown Wendy brings no other perks or usefulness to the other players, without Abby she hits weaker and is basically as useless as current Wilson.

This is why we saw changes to things like Wes’s rapid hunger drain, or Wolfgang not needing to be full belly to reach mighty status, NOW you can be starving to death as Wolfgang and still Mighty.

What this does while yes it makes the game easier- it also allows newbie beginner players to still be useful and helpful without being completely overwhelmed by needing to do X, Y, Z before being actually helpful.

I can even bring this argument up for characters like Willow, who even by complete accident can go insane and enrage Bernie so it’s helpful

Or A completely noob Wanda, who doesn’t need to burn through and waste the teams healing items because SHE doesn’t even have an option to even use them.

[Echsrick]

5 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

The entire reason Wendys use of Abigail wasn’t put on several days worth of cooldown is because the game is no longer a Single Player game, and if Abigail is on cooldown Wendy brings no other perks or usefulness to the other players, without Abby she hits weaker and is basically as useless as current Wilson.

This is why we saw changes to things like Wes’s rapid hunger drain, or Wolfgang not needing to be full belly to reach mighty status, NOW you can be starving to death as Wolfgang and still Mighty.

What this does while yes it makes the game easier- it also allows newbie beginner players to still be useful and helpful without being completely overwhelmed by needing to do X, Y, Z before being actually helpful.

I can even bring this argument up for characters like Willow, who even by complete accident can go insane and enrage Bernie so it’s helpful

Or A completely noob Wanda, who doesn’t need to burn through and waste the teams healing items because SHE doesn’t even have an option to even use them.

thats the point, balancing, being able to instand summon with no downsides at all for the character itself is something i would say is kind of broken in disign, like what is wendys downside? less damage? wich is instandly removed if she attacks the same thing as the ghost does, in fact that makes her able to do even more damage then wilson, and with my reason is that she sould have to somewhat work for that first, that being like 5 days of waiting and then needing a blood sacrifice, not having instandly the power without any punishment if the ghost actualy does die, since when she dead you can instand resummon her spam potions and its all good again, now tell me how that is balanced?

[ArubaroBeefalo]

10 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

she sould have to somewhat work for that first, that being like 5 days of waiting

wow that sounds super fun, engaging and challenging

[Juanasdf]

22 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

she sould have to somewhat work for that first, that being like 5 days of waiting and then needing a blood sacrifice, not having instandly the power without any punishment if the ghost actualy does die, since when she dead you can instand resummon her spam potions and its all good again, now tell me how that is balanced?

DS Abigail would never die against weak mobs, same happens with DST Abigail.

The difference is more present against bosses. You have to work to keep abigail alive against them, because if you keep summoning her at low health she'll just die in one hit again.

The summoning animation will end up losing you DPS, and that's where her downside resides.

You can either get good and manage abigail through her potions, your positioning and/or hitting her, OR you can waste DPS by letting her die, and bringing her back.

EDIT: Not to mention bosses in Dont starve are spaced and "scripted", they only come around seasons, and you will basically have her by your side all the time, because, again she will never die against weak enemies.

DST on the other hand lets you choose when to fight a boss, with some exceptions like deerclops and bearger.

Imagine this common scenario: Your team decides to kill DF, Abi dies, you have some extra healing after and decide to kill bee queen, you can't because she's on a 5 day cooldown -> food spoils. It just wouldn't be fun.

[Echsrick]

31 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

wow that sounds super fun, engaging and challenging

ah yes my favourit, ignoring the blood sacrifice, never forget the blood sacrifice that is needed to summon something from the lands of the dead

 

22 minutes ago, Juanasdf said:

DS Abigail would never die against weak mobs, same happens with DST Abigail.

The difference is more present against bosses. You have to work to keep abigail alive against them, because if you keep summoning her at low health she'll just die in one hit again.

The summoning animation will end up losing you DPS, and that's where her downside resides.

You can either get good and manage abigail through her potions, your positioning and/or hitting her, OR you can waste DPS by letting her die, and bringing her back.

EDIT: Not to mention bosses in Dont starve are spaced and "scripted", they only come around seasons, and you will basically have her by your side all the time, because, again she will never die against weak enemies.

DST on the other hand lets you choose when to fight a boss, with some exceptions like deerclops and bearger.

Imagine this common scenario: Your team decides to kill DF, Abi dies, you have some extra healing after and decide to kill bee queen, you can't because she's on a 5 day cooldown -> food spoils. It just wouldn't be fun.

and? its still is something more to work then just instandly being able to just spawn it, its some bit of work needed instead of just being free to spawn in, imagine if warly can just spice things for free, same thing realy if you think about it, why sould 1 character work for there powers while wendy can just instand spawn it with no work needed?

[ArubaroBeefalo]

54 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

ah yes my favourit, ignoring the blood sacrifice, never forget the blood sacrifice that is needed to summon something from the lands of the dead

that was a cool macabre thing that i always will miss but gameplay wise was a chore. Wendy could have better downsides than "hardcore waiting!1!!!1" gameplay

1 hour ago, Juanasdf said:

The difference is more present against bosses. You have to work to keep abigail alive against them, because if you keep summoning her at low health she'll just die in one hit again

and wendy will lose a lot of sanity which will bring shadows to the fight, she isnt wanda or wolfgang so she cant ignore being at low sanity but people dont even play a character before complaining as shown in the many topics that were open back when wanda was added

[Superlucas1231]

13 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

I mentioned exactly this, the updates that forumites often cite as "making the game easier" only make the game easier for them, not for the average player

-beefalo becoming easier to tame didn't make the game easier for pablo.gonzalez.2007 because he will never tame a beefalo before quitting the game anyway

-the average player cannot kill bee queen nor do they even know electric milk exists so this is a moot point

-stone fruit bushes and banana plants getting added doesn't make the game easier for new players because new players don't even know the lunar island or moon quay exist

-your expectations are far too high if you genuinely think the average player comes even remotely close to making the celestial portal, also I don't even know how this makes the game any easier compared to just having different characters in your team which you could always do

-idk if you've ever joined any pub but every noobie trying to farm has 4 plots full of tillweed and 3 carrots by day 20

-stronger =/= easier, a character can be strong but hard to play or weak yet easy to play, reworks generally don't do much to make characters carry noobies anymore than 2015 wigfrid already did

-new players can't kill the day 30 deerclops, it's completely illogical to think the ability to summon more than 1 deerclops would somehow magically make the game easier for them

 

not a single update you mentioned makes the game easier for a player who's still learning how to play, you'd have to be a low intermediate player before you started noticing any of these changes and only players who have already spent hundreds of hours are affected by every single item on this list

im still... confused. but i think we're arguing different a completely different argument

 

Quote

-beefalo becoming easier to tame didn't make the game easier for pablo.gonzalez.2007 because he will never tame a beefalo before quitting the game anyway

-the average player cannot kill bee queen nor do they even know electric milk exists so this is a moot point

The way I see, if you compare someone who knows beefalo taming between when it was first released vs. someone who know beefalo taming now, then the present player would be at an advantage. What you're arguing is that both the former and latter players don't know how to tame beefalo so then the update would not impact them. That's true that it wouldn't impact them, but when they learn about how to tame them, the present player would have an advantage over the one playing when taming released/prior to YotB. Which is why i thought that YotB would make the game at least somewhat easier, because beefalo are now better than back then, and there isn't any additional downsides to their buff.

I didn't know why you were mentioning BQ and voltgoat milk at first until I reread my own post lol. True, a player starting out would not have access (or at least, the ability to access) those items. But just as I said above, this compares the difficulty not as a whole but on the type of experience a player has. I'm still kinda confused with this point though, because Wigfrid can still eat things like taffy which isn't gated behind end game bosses or herds of really strong mobs that need to be fought a certain way.

The point is, both of these mechanics/changes makes parts of the game more rewarding without adding in additional challenges to them. Pubs are going to be filled with people who don't understand much of the game, that's true. But i don't think that means that either of these pure buffs doesn't make the game at least somewhat easier because said pub players don't engage with them. That just means the game has been made easier, at least somewhat, for the people who knows those mechanics and not newbies. If your argument was that the game was dumb down, rather than the game being made easier, then i'd agree with you. 

 

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-stone fruit bushes and banana plants getting added doesn't make the game easier for new players because new players don't even know the lunar island or moon quay exist

-your expectations are far too high if you genuinely think the average player comes even remotely close to making the celestial portal, also I don't even know how this makes the game any easier compared to just having different characters in your team which you could always do

-idk if you've ever joined any pub but every noobie trying to farm has 4 plots full of tillweed and 3 carrots by day 20

What I said above, its less of the fact that the game is easier for new players specifically, but it's an additional tool available to make hunger more manageable and less of an issue especially during winter. Granted sure, unlike other examples  i used, it isn't clear cut "made the game easier" since you would also need to learn about sea travel. Then again, if we are looking at pubs, you can argue that there is more ways for someone to babysit newer players, just like with hostile flares. My initial line of thinking was "if you get the stone fruit/bananas, that makes hunger more easier to manage during winter." But since you can't access this content without having to travel on sea first, which would make  game harder since you are exploring an area you are not familiar with and its different mechanics you have to learn or face the consequences of not learning them, it balances out and doesn't really make the game easier in general. Unless, of course, you grab these items for newer players. So this really isn't a good example of what I was trying to explain.

Celestial portal enables players to min max a lot more and lets player avoid some characters cons. Even in a multiplier setting, there really isn't that much of a point of playing as characters like Winona or Warly because you can get the best parts of there characters without dealing with their cons, and being able to play as other characters. New players/pubs not being able to set this up or use it really doesn't matter, because they don't lose much if anything for trying to set it up in the first place. It's less of "the existence of this item makes the game as a whole easier" and more "there is now more ways to deal with specific content if you already know where to find the materials to make the portal prior to its release." My line of thinking was something like someone maining Wendy in a solo world. before the portal was added, you would have to fight bosses as a character who had a hard time with them vs. now where you can switch to other characters who can do a better job than Wendy, but still have the option to switch back to Wendy. Kinda the same line of reasoning with Wig's diet where you have more options available to you to circumvent a downside without much of a downside attach to it. 

I'm trying to remember which post i saw that said that farming is generally more rewarding for less cost, but I can't find it anymore. Can't really add much to it, so this really wasn't a good example to use as well to show why I was confused with the argument

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-stronger =/= easier, a character can be strong but hard to play or weak yet easy to play, reworks generally don't do much to make characters carry noobies anymore than 2015 wigfrid already did

-new players can't kill the day 30 deerclops, it's completely illogical to think the ability to summon more than 1 deerclops would somehow magically make the game easier for them

But multiple characters received straight buffs. I mentioned Wortox and Webber because both of them have more tools to used than they did before. Webber having more healing options for spiders and having more tools to manage them would generally make him more easier. Wortox being able to teleport around the map instead of having to spam teleport makes him easier to play. Wormwood especially is a perfect example because RWYS straight up gave him more healing options, reduce the cons with blooming, etc. Like, im looking at this thread and the common opinion is that Wormwood was made  easier to play. it's not about carrying noobies, its "did this rework make a character upside better, remove their downsides, or give them more tools to use." Its why i did not want to use characters like: Wolfgang, who has been made somewhat more complicated to play last I seen; Wendy, who got a bunch of upsides but loses some things because of those new upsides (sanity station, and what Juanasdf has said; and Willow, who gotten a lot of upsides to the point it can be argued that it balances out the downside she got during her rework, but an argument can still be said that her new downside would make her harder to play for some people. Also, this goes back to the point I made about how making Wig's downside more lenient makes her more easier to play. I especially didn't want to mention newer characters like Wanda because, as you said, stronger=/=easier. But if a character has some of their cons remove and nothing else to their refresh...wouldn't that make them easier to play?

hostile flares I have mix opinions about looking back. My line of reasoning was that if a player experimented with hostile flares, they can now set up more desirable ways to kill deerclops and have much more control over her. yes, this would mean the first time they use the item they would have to deal with deerclops without being prepared for her. But unlike RWYS and stonefruit/bananas, where you have to make a dedicated effort to learn the new mechanics and get punished if you didn't, hostile flares is another tool experience players can use to make the game easier for them. and this goes into my general point and why I don't understand the argument about how the game hasn't been made easier -

If a mechanic has been added that only makes the game easier for a endgame player, but doesn't drastically affect the difficulty for a new player, wouldn't that still means that the game has been made easier, at least for some players? 

Would Wormwood be harder to play if everything in his refresh was removed? If yes, then wouldn't that mean his refresh made him easier to play, especially if you already played him before his refresh?

If Klei removed half of Fuelweaver's HP, would that make him easier to fight?

If Klei gave Wilson more tools to heal himself, buff others, and do things more efficiently, all without any additional downside to his character, would you think he has been easier to play? 

I'm asking these questions because i'm re-reading some of the points, especially the beefalo one, and I'm confused as to why the new update to beefs didn't make beefalo taming easier, and therefore not make the game easier, because someone who has never invested in beefs would not be impacted by the update... but...the people who have already invested in beefalo taming before the update are just... irrelevant? I can't see how the update didn't make beefalo taming easier unless the argument was never about the game being easier, but if the game has been dumbed-down.

and i know it redundant to state this because this doesn't apply to everyone, but if knowledge on some of these mechanics are readily available through other players, forums, game announcements, and other sources, would that not take away the already small time sink to figuring out how to use celestial portal and hostile flares? 

I don't know if I want to call pubs the average skill level of the game because I played too many games where pubs are always filled with people who have no idea what they are doing. Which is why I have a hard time seeing how celestial portal doesn't make the game easier if the argument being used against it is "well the maxwells and wendys in the last few pubs I played didn't even know how to type let alone know how moonrock idol so celestial portal didn't make the game easier, you just got better at the game when it was released." 

 

tl:dr some of the updates I mentioned added more tools for players to use without any major downside, made existing mechanics more rewarding, and remove some of the cons of characters and mechanics. I don't understand how any of those does not qualify for making the game easier, especially if you are comparing how those changes impacted people with an similar level of skill instead of comparing an endgame player to someone who started the game 5 min ago.

[Mysterious box]

20 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

the problem isn't that the game has gotten easier but that you've gotten better, you're right that we're not representative of the average dst player because the forums are more like the top 1% in terms of player experience, the "average" player if you consider everyone who's played dst would be more like someone who has never killed any raid bosses and likely can't survive the first year

if you take a look around communities like discord, facebook, youtube comments, etc. you'll notice that there's just as many new players if not more complaining that the game is too difficult as there were back in 2017, all the things that have made the game easier for us in reality haven't made the game easier for the average player in any way, new players still get frustrated when deerclops kills them on day 30 as they always have and always will

To be fair this is only partially true a large part of the difficulty in dst comes from the fact the game doesn't teach you anything and you can't for the most part learn some of the more core mechanics through natural play which can be really hard especially for people who hate spoilers now I'm not saying a player will suddenly trivialize the game if they get it explained or something but in a theoretical world where a "good" in game tutorial existed I imagine there would be a lot less grief for new players.

The game did indeed get easier in some aspects but at the same time a player would have to know how to make use of it for it to count but that doesn't mean the game didn't in fact get easier at all I like to think of it along the lines of how mario started including the invincibility suits in some of their later games for players who die too much many players go through the game never knowing such a safety net exists but it doesn't mean the game didn't get easier for it even if only theoretically so. 

[Lardee]

I wouldn't say any character needs a nerf, but I think some should be changed to make them less boring.